I guess it's time for vocals. I'm kinda dreading drums, because that's going to be a loooooong post or four.
Recording vocals for metalSince I started with the absolute basics for guitar and bass, I'll do the same for vocals. Whether your singing operatic vocals, some falsetto shit, blackened shrieks, or guttural death growls, all the power should be coming from your diaphragm/abs. If you doubt that, just ask George Fisher. He'll tell you the same. Also, check out this awesome video of Death playing live in L.A.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9_9y9zBRVQWith Chuck being all shirtless and whatnot, you can see how much his midsection tightens when he sings. He's got a damn 6 pack busting out from singing. At the same time if you watch his face, he's not straining his throat or face muscles or anything like that. It's all core power. (that sounds like some kind of stupid super power. Activate CORE POWER!)
So to continue with the absolute basics, you should pay at least some attention to your diet. Don't eat or drink any dairy products before recording vocals, as they'll cause your throat to produce more mucous. Apple juice is good for keeping the throat clear. The best thing is lukewarm/room temperature water. Yeah I know it's bland, shut up and sip it between takes. Keep your throat from drying out, as a dry throat can kill your vocal quality. And while having a beer or glass of wine can be good to help you relax and get into it more, limit yourself. Drunk vocals do not sound as good as non-drunk vocals. One drink is enough. If you're a raging alcoholic, have two. Try to limit the smoking also, as that dries out your throat and vocal cords. Also, warm up your voice, even for death growls. Just go to youtube and follow one of the million warmup videos that's appropriate for your vocal range, be it tenor or baritone, or for a few of you, bass.
Mic selection. For vocals you want a mic that captures the vocal sound cleanly and doesn't pick up too much shit from other directions. A cardioid pattern. An SM58 is a tried and true mic, and though I've never used it, it's been used on more albums than can be counted. Mattp, who used to frequent around here and recorded some nice sounding stuff, preferred a Shure SM7 for extreme vocals. A Shure SM57 can be good at vocals also, partially due to it's slight presence rise, which can add life and clarity to the vocals. I personally prefer a Rode NT1-A. It's an excellent quality condenser mic (so it needs phantom power) that has a slight presence rise and comes with a nice shock mount and pop filter. Brand new they're less than $200, used you can find them around $100, and they're well worth it. The guy from recordingrevolution.com says you can't have too many of them, and they'll work for everything. It's also a sensitive mic, so if you're doing something quiet it can pick up the subtle nuances. And while all that is great, I've recorded decent vocals on a $20 mic with a sock on the end to act as a pop filter. While the mic is very important, technique is the most important. But a mic definitely is a big part. Anyways.
On to recording. Use a pop filter. Period. Be it the $1 foam covers for the tip of the mic or the $10 circular screens, they are such a wonderful thing to have. They don't detract from the sound at all, but they help eliminate popped "p"s and hissy "s"s, which is something you can't really fix in the mix. And as I mentioned earlier, I have in fact just put a sock over the mic. Eh, it did the trick, although I highly recommend spending the pennies on a real pop filter. I also would not recommend holding the mic, unless that's the technique you're just really accustomed to. And even then, I would have it on a stand, with the vocalist holding it. That keeps the mic stable and close to the vocalist's mouth. It keeps the volume a bit more stable. I personally have my NT1-A on a shock mount on a stand in front of me and I stand so my lips are just touching the pop filter. I try to keep my face pretty much there the entire vocal take, just to keep things level.
While blasting your music at full volume is excellent so you can rock out and headbang while growling, you'll end up with plenty of noise and music in the background of your vocal track, and you don't really want that. So headphones are definitely the way to go whilst recording vocals. Some vocalists like to hear themselves along with the mix when they're recording. That's fine, put it in their headphones.
Then, record. Growl. chugga chugga durr durr COOOOKKIIIEEEEEE
Okay, onto mixing. We'll start with compression, because that's first in my effects chain on my vocal tracks. If you want decent sounding vocals that stay roughly the same volume through your song you have to compress it. Even the best singers need compression, it's perfectly fine. When compressing vocals, be they clean or growls, you don't want to compress the initial attack of the voice too much. The exact figure of your attack setting on your compressor will vary from singer to singer and from style to style, but for aggressive vocals I use an attack of 20-23 milliseconds. Your mileage may vary. For the release I use 100 milliseconds. Some use less, some use more. Experiment. I should make a post about compression and phasing and stuff so I won't have to explain any of that any other time. Note to self. As for the ratio, this is where you level off the volume. You don't need a 20:1 ratio to keep things level (if you do, your singer is horrible and you should redo the vocals), somewhere around 3-5:1 should be plenty sufficient. Be careful because the higher ratio you use, the more your volume can drop.
Now EQ is where you really craft the sound of the vocals. If your name is Andy Sneap and you have uber expensive acoustically treated tracking rooms and a $2000 mic to sing into, then you won't need much EQ to get a great sound. Fortunately for the rest of us, in a mediocre bedroom studio you still shouldn't need much EQ to get a good sound. Even with super guttural growls, you need to put a high pass filter on the vocals. It cleans them up and takes any rumbling and muddiness out, and lets the actual vocal tone punch through the mix. I personally have a peter steele-esque voice when I sing, and when I look at my vocal tracks, even death growls, on a frequency analyzer, there's a lot stuff going on at 60-120Hz. That's the frequency where the bass and kick drums and low end of the guitar are compiling their brutality and the last thing you need is to add another low bassy signal to that mix. For death growls, even low pitched ones, I high pass at about 180Hz. For higher black metal stuff, 200Hz. For clean singing, I tailor it to the range I'm singing in. If i'm singing down as I said, peter steele range, I'll high pass it at 80-120Hz, depending on how bassy I want it to sound and depending on what's playing in the background. If there's heavy guitars, bass, drums, then I'll high pass it a bit higher. If it's over something clean, or ambient or whatever, then maybe a bit lower to get a bassier tone. For higher singing, to include both clean singing and thrash metal uh, yells(?) the high pass will again be tailored to the timbre of the vocalist's voice, but it will be in the 100-200Hz range. You want to get rid of any useless low end rumble and muddiness without altering the sound of the actual voice, and without making it sound thin. And this is another place where good vocal technique comes in to play. If you sound like Peter Tagtgren, you're still going to sound badass even with a high pass at 180Hz, so stop worrying. After the high pass, you want to put a low pass on also, just to get rid of any hissing or high end frequencies that you aren't using anyways. That's usually set at around 10K. You can't sing at 10KHz, so don't even worry about that affecting your voice lol. Now that we've gotten rid of frequencies that are either useless, unused, or muddy, let's make it stand out a bit. And this is where I differ with some of the old school "purists", but I'll make a post about subtractive EQ later, along with compression. Second note to self. For male singers, to help accentuate frequencies that will help your voice stand out - be it clean singing, yelling, or growls - I add a small boost - and by small I mean +1.5db, with a bandwidth of 1 octave - at 650-700Hz. If you're playing metal, which you probably are because you're on the metal archives, your guitar tone probably doesn't have a ton of mids in this frequency range. So a slight boost here will help your voice stand out a tad without altering the actual sound. I also add a second boost, equally small in size, at about 5KHz. Depending on the vocal take, I'll move that one around a tad. If I recorded a particularly hot vocal take, then I may need to take that one down a bit to avoid it sounding too sharp. Same with the low pass filter up top. For a female vocalist the EQing will be basically the same, but the boost at 650-700 may need to be tweaked a bit.
After EQ we have reverb. Ah yes, reverb. Every black metal musician's dream. Reverb, when tastefully applied, can help glue things together, so to speak, and help things blend better. It can also give a vocal track a much more natural feel. The key is not to overdue it. I like to dial in just enough reverb to make it noticable, and then I'll blend the wet and dry signals to taste. For death growls, which are usually pretty dry sounding, I'll have the dry signal at 0 and the wet (reverby) signal at -4db or so. It's a small addition that you won't even really notice, unless you A/B your vocal track with and without it. But it really helps make things sound better, fuller, and more natural. For black shrieks, I'll use just a tiny bit more. And for clean vocals, again I'll tailor it to the song. If it's doom and I'm singing down low, I may dial in just a bit more. If you're doing some power or progressive metal, you may not want much (but you'll still want a touch).
That's all I use for vocals, personally. I guess whenever I release these million fucking albums I'm finishing up I'll post some sound clips so you can hear some of the techniques, and know that I'm not just talking out of my ass, hahaha.