How to Record Vocals at Home: the Room, the Mic, the Position

80% of a good vocal is decided before you hit REC. You don't need a new microphone: you need the right room, position and gain. This is the guide I promised in Home Studio Gear on a Budget. As always: I'll tell you what I would do in your shoes, because it's what I do.

1. The room: keep it out of the recording as much as you can

• Clap your hands. Stand where you'd like to sing and clap once: if you hear a tail, a short metallic echo, that tail will end up in every take. The voice can be treated in the mix later, the room can't: once recorded, it stays.

• Small and full beats big and empty. A bedroom with a bed, an open wardrobe full of clothes, a rug, curtains and a bookshelf sounds better than a living room with a tiled floor. The boom comes from hard, smooth surfaces: the more soft stuff around, the less you hear the room.

• Where not to stand. Never with the mic against a bare wall or facing the window: glass reflects everything. Get as far from the walls as you can. A cardioid microphone, which is almost every vocal mic, mostly listens to what's in front of it: you and the wall behind you, so keep your back to the least reflective wall (the open wardrobe, the bookshelf, the heavy curtain). But what bounces off the wall behind the mic also reaches the capsule and dirties the voice: in the end it's a compromise, treat what you can on both sides.

• The louder you sing, the more the room comes in. A whisper is short and made almost only of high frequencies, which rugs and curtains absorb: the room has no time to respond. A full voice is sustained and sits in the mids, and that's exactly what makes the walls ring. If your song has a big chorus, test the room on that, not on spoken words.

2. Treating the room on a budget

• First, what you already have. A mattress standing behind you, a duvet hung on a stand or a clothes rack, heavy blankets on the nearest walls. Ugly to look at, but it works better than many panels you can buy.

• What to buy, in order of results. DIY panels: a wooden frame, soft rock wool inside (or polyester fibre, which doesn't itch), acoustically transparent fabric on the front, which lets the sound through and is also the good-looking part, and non-woven fabric on the back to hold the wool in place. 8-10 cm thick, a couple of one-metre panels behind the singer, and the room changes face. If you don't want to build anything, the blanket "tunnel": two stands with heavy blankets forming a U around you, open towards the mic.

• What not to buy. No egg cartons, no 2 cm pyramid foam. Thin foam only absorbs above 2-3 kHz, while the boom that dirties a voice sits lower, roughly between 150 and 2000 Hz: to stop it you need thick, dense material, not a mat stuck to the wall.

3. The mic: distance, height, side

• Distance. A fist or an open hand, that is 10-20 cm, for a normal voice. Closer if you whisper: up close, microphones boost the lows (it's called the proximity effect) and the voice gains body. Further away if you push: a loud voice at 5 cm saturates the capsule and the preamp before it even reaches the DAW. Close or far changes the tone, and that choice is yours: what doesn't change is that the further you move from the mic, the more the room comes in.

• The pop filter. It stops the "p" and "b" sounds, but it has a second job: if you fix it 10 cm from the capsule, it's the ruler that keeps you at the same distance in every take. With a thin fabric a hand's width from the capsule you won't hear the voice change.

• The right side. On a condenser you sing into the side with the logo, which is usually the same side as the switches (pad and filter). If you sing into the wrong side the voice comes out muffled and distant and you think the mic is broken: it has happened to everyone at least once.

• Height and angle. Capsule at mouth height or slightly above, tilted a little downwards: the breath passes underneath and plosives lose their punch, the tone stays full. Standing, not sitting: you breathe better and the distance stays constant.

4. Gain: the right level on the interface

• Peaks between -18 and -6 dBFS on the DAW meter, never near 0. At 24 bit the noise floor is very far away, so better low than high: a slightly quiet file is raised in a second, a clip can't be removed. That said, the ears decide: the odd converter clip isn't necessarily audible. If you nailed that take and it clipped a couple of times, so be it: the take stays. Lower the gain for the next ones.

• Test the loudest part of the song, not the verse. Gain is set on the chorus shout: if you're under -6 there, the rest takes care of itself.

• Record at 24 bit (or 32 bit float if your DAW offers it). Compressor, EQ and autotune on the track while you record: yes, if they help you sing, because in almost every DAW the plugins in the inserts are heard only by you and the file stays clean. How to check it, and the exception, are in the recording template.

5. Headphones and monitoring

• Closed headphones, as I said in the gear article. At the right volume: beat and click must not bleed into the mic. Try recording two seconds of silence with the beat in the headphones and listen back: if you hear the click, turn it down.

• Latency. If you hear yourself late in the headphones, the simplest route is the interface's direct monitoring (Direct Monitor): the voice reaches the headphones without going through the computer. The alternative is lowering the DAW buffer to 64 or 32 samples. In the template you already keep it low for recording.

• One ear off. Singing with one ear free helps many people stay in tune. Fine, but the uncovered cup plays into the room and ends up in the mic: press it against your head, behind the ear, instead of leaving it in the air.

• To hear yourself more, turn up the headphones, not the gain. Gain is set once, for the recording level, and never touched again. If the interface's volume isn't enough, the fix is an external headphone amp, not a file recorded too hot.

6. Takes: how to organise the recording

• Doubles and adlibs. The rule says: same position and same distance as the lead, otherwise they won't glue in the mix. True, but expressive freedom matters more. If a double only reinforces the lead, and you perform it the same way, then yes, make it identical; if you put a different intention into it, feel free to move.

• The order. One chorus, and right after it all of its doubles, while voice and position are still the same. At least 2 takes for the verses, at least 3 for the chorus, not counting doubles and adlibs. Harmonies: always offer them at least twice.

• Water, breaks, never cold. Warm up your voice before hitting REC, drink, stop when you feel you're fading: the last tired take costs more in editing than a ten-minute break.

• Choose the takes on the spot, not the day after, and if possible put the song together as you record. Don't throw away the almost-good takes: in editing, one syllable rescued from a "wrong" take covers a mistake in the good one. To do it without going crazy you need a session that's already organised: it's all in the recording template.

When you're done, send me the voice as recorded, no effects, and all the takes, starting from bar 1 even if the singing comes in later: how to do it is in How to Export Stems from Any DAW, and what else I need is in Prepare Your Files. If something doesn't add up, write to me.