One of the most important things to get a great vocal take is to make sure that the performer is comfortable with their environment. If the singer is uncomfortable then you won’t get the best performance they can give you. so we made sure that Abigail was comfortable with certain things such as microphone placement, height, the headphone mix, and the particular microphone being used. Pitching is also an important aspect to consider, you have to be sure that the key of the song is correct for the singer, you’ll be able to tell if the key is too high or low for the performer to sing comfortably or not.
Proximity effect was considered because the closer you are to some microphones the more low end there will be. we set the microphones up so that they were slightly off axis, this is to reduce the strength of sibilances in the recording, we also put a pop filter in front of the microphones to reduces plosives, then we tested the 3 microphones that we had set up; a Shure SM57, an AKG 414, and an Electro-Voice RE20. out of all of these we decided that the RE20 had the nicest sound from the three, because it had a more creamy sound than the other two, which suited Abigails voice and complimented the piece well.
We EQ’d the microphone to cut out some low end because Abigails vocals are higher pitched, this means that the lower frequencies weren’t being used. after we picked the right microphone, set it up properly, and EQ’d it, we went for a take. Everything went well. We were going to go for a second take to double track the vocals but we unfortunately ran out of time.