No vocal booth, reflections suck!

[Babar]

How would you guys recommend recording vocals and avoiding reflections? Last time I recorded the vox in a shower (Terrible fucking idea, I realised when I tried mixing the vocals in, haha). So far I've asked a few friends who work in studios and I've been told to either suspend a duvet over my singer's head, or to hold some towels in this kind of shape around the vocalist (The M being the mic and the other lines being the towels, the vocalist would be singing towards the M from below, where the V is, but imagine it directly underneath the M)

____
/ M \
V

What's the best way to eliminate reflections? I don't have the cash to buy foam and Se Reflection filters and all of that stuff, cheap solutions would be best, thank you

 

[brianhood]

How would you guys recommend recording vocals and avoiding reflections? Last time I recorded the vox in a shower (Terrible fucking idea, I realised when I tried mixing the vocals in, haha). So far I've asked a few friends who work in studios and I've been told to either suspend a duvet over my singer's head, or to hold some towels in this kind of shape around the vocalist (The M being the mic and the other lines being the towels, the vocalist would be singing towards the M from below, where the V is, but imagine it directly underneath the M)

____
/ M
V

What's the best way to eliminate reflections? I don't have the cash to buy foam and Se Reflection filters and all of that stuff, cheap solutions would be best, thank you

haha the shower is the last place you'd want to record vocals

find a small dead room(clap and see what the reflections are like), then put blankets on each of the walls. you could even hang a blanket from the ceiling right in front of the singer.
That's how i do vocals, and it seems to work fine for me.

ghetto method for life nig

 

[2000ContourSVT]

Record in a closet with clothes in it. Thats how I do it, and it works quite well.

You could also build a few DIY reflection traps for like $25 a piece.

Here is a good resource for learning about acoustics: http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

 

[colonel kurtz]

last time i had to do vox in my untreated room, the 1st thing i did was move my desk to the corner of the room, and stick my computer in the closet so that the tracks didn't pick up fan noise

THEN...i took a couple spare mic stands and used them to hang a heavy comforter behind the vocalist in a semi-circle

assuming you have a cardioid mic, you're better off having your absorption behind the singer than in front of them. sure, you might kill some of the sound coming out of their mouth if they sing/scream/whatever into it, but if there's nothing behind them, reflections will still hit the wall behind them and bounce back to the mic! you're also best off having a bit of distance between the wall and whatever surface you use...since my shit was all in the corner, i was able to put the singer about 2 ft. in front of the hanging blanket, which was about 3 ft. from the wall...

 

[egan.]

If you can avoid small rooms that aren't correctly treated you should. You'll generally get better results in a bigger room. One easy thing you can do is "build" a booth in a bigger room by fully extended boom stands so they look like a "T" and the draping blankets over them. The limitation is that only puts absorption up to 6 ft but in practice it's helpful. Obviously if you can build/buy some proper baffles all the better.

 

[crosstalk]

I've been wondering about this myself and the blanket idea has crossed my mind a lot. Would a moving blanket like the one found here work best?

 

[Forceps]

This may also be something to improve your recordings:

SE Reflexion Filter

 

[Trevoire520]

This may also be something to improve your recordings:

SE Reflexion Filter

If you had read the original post:

I don't have the cash to buy foam and Se Reflection filters and all of that stuff, cheap solutions would be best, thank you

Back on topic, I've had alot of success using mic stands in a "T" to hang sleeping bags from. Also got a set of Auralex Aural Expanders that come in handy too, only about £50 I think. Dynamic mic's can be good for vocals in rooms with alot of reflections as they're much less sensitive to low level sounds (like reflections) compared to condenser mic's

 

[Forceps]

Oops, you're right....

Maybe you can make sort of a reflection filter yourself just with some foam? You just need a small piece, can't be that expensive...

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

You should seriously consider building some absorbers from rockwool/fiberglass. It's really inexpensive, and if you make them mobile, you can place them around the vocalist during the tracking to reduce reflections.

 

[Morgan C]

If you can avoid small rooms that aren't correctly treated you should.

In my experience, a large room filled with not so much furniture is very live and reflective, whereas a small bedroom for example, filled with a bed, cupboard and a whole bunch of absorbant furniture works much better. You get less room sound in the mic. I record vocals in my bedroom and while its not ideal, it does the job for now. Compressing more than about 10dB starts bringing in the room but until then its fine.

 

[Forceps]

You should seriously consider building some absorbers from rockwool/fiberglass. It's really inexpensive, and if you make them mobile, you can place them around the vocalist during the tracking to reduce reflections.

Something like this I guess:

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Something like this I guess:

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant Though you'd want to cover the elements with a fabric of some sort so the vocalist won't choke on the wool particles

 

[Forceps]

Yeah, just some black fabric or old curtains of some kind and it looks damn professional. At the moment I have a small vocal booth, but when I expand (some day) and have a bigger room, I'll make some of these myself....

 

[Nebulous]

Going to have to make me one of those I think!

 

[Wave_D]

One thing to suggest..and I don't think anyone did is to not make the vocal booth TOO dead. It really can suck up all of your high end making the vocals kind of lifeless.

I remember working in a studio I was not familiar with and wondering why the vocals were so "stuffy". I went into the vocal booth and it was completely covered with treatment. All you could hear was your voice resonating in your chest. Some healthy reflections to me are needed.

 

[egan.]

In my experience, a large room filled with not so much furniture is very live and reflective, whereas a small bedroom for example, filled with a bed, cupboard and a whole bunch of absorbant furniture works much better. You get less room sound in the mic. I record vocals in my bedroom and while its not ideal, it does the job for now. Compressing more than about 10dB starts bringing in the room but until then its fine.

More what I'm talking about is use a bedroom instead of a closet or a bathroom as some others suggested. The comb filtering and early reflections is a tiny room will kill you. Obviously there are caveats-- a very live room bigger room is going to cause issues of it's own.

 

[nwright]

Here's a quick little vid I made when we were recording some demos...It was more a test of the new video editing program I had bought more than anything, but you can see a glimpse of our "booth".

I picked a corner of my movie/video game room and tacked a bedspread on the wall across the corner and then stacked my 4x12 cabs up on top of each other and laid another bedspread over that, so I had a smooth U shape (no corner, no parallel walls). I then tack another bedspread towards the ceiling on one side and pulled it over to drape over my stacked 4x12's to cut ceiling reflections.

It worked pretty well for our needs.



if you wanna hear the final demo mix/master and how these vocals sit, the song is called Victim of Mine, and you can hear it on Myspace, www.myspace.com/judgementband

 

[Babar]

I just realised, I have a few mattresses at my disposal. Would making a vocal both sized...booth out of mattresses stood up to make a small...booth P) work in getting a decent sound? or would that create different kinds of reflections?

 

[beyond dead]

mattresses take up a lot of space. I once had a vocal booth built of rockwool and material, but it was a little too "stuffy"

my new room was only framed, so I nailed carpet (got a whole shitload when my dad re carpeted his new house) to the walls, and put bass traps in the corners and a few places on the walls. havent done enough vocals to post results in a mix yet. but I will say drums sound much clearer now, the low end from the kick drum sounds great, but without being bass heavy. im noticing that things sound very clear across the whole freq. spectrum.

even though its a 20 x 10 live room, vocals are sounding very vibrant in here!