Recording - February 2014 - 43

time slightly slower than the amount of time
it takes for transient peaks to decay.
With care and attention, this approach
yields a well-recorded vocal that will
serve the track well. You can easily adjust
these tips to work in your sessions... allow
some time to experiment but don't
exhaust your singers in the process!

tends to "eat the mic" when performing live,
you can reproduce that vibe in the studio
with a similar mic placement.
Avoiding plosives
Once the mic is chosen and set up at the
desired height and angle, I'll always set up
at least one plosive ("pop") filter on a mic
stand, and leave it close by, so that once
we start rolling, if we need it, it's right there
to be moved into position. My favorite
these days is an Audix PD133. Maybe I'm
only imagining it, but compared to other
similar-looking filters, it seems to perform
just as well at reducing plosives, while otherwise leaving less of a sonic footprint. In
addition to the first filter, I'll have a second,
and depending on the vocalist and the
song, sometimes even a third filter set up
and ready to swing into position!
I almost always position the pop filter(s)
at approximately 3" to 5" from the mic,
depending on the power of the vocalist. I
do this both to kill plosives away from the
mic and to define for the vocalist the closest point to the mic at which I want them
to sing. If I want the vocalist to move in on
the mic to bolster weak spots in their
range during the performance, I'll ask
them to get right up onto the pop filter.
The signal chain
Keeping in mind the vibe of the production, I'll choose the rest of the signal
chain based on the sonic characteristics I
desire. For me this usually boils down to
choosing between technologies-tube versus discrete solid state versus integrated
circuits. How one picks a preamp to
match a mic is a subject worthy of a
whole article in itself, and experimentation
yields great rewards and fun surprises.
I almost always use some amount of compression, usually a very light amount of an
opto compressor (I love my Pendulum OCL2 for this), and very occasionally a small
amount of limiting on top of that. Since it's
always possible to compress more later,
and it's impossible to remove compression
from a signal to which it has already been
applied, I don't aggressively compress
vocals while tracking unless I'm going for a
very stylized vocal sound. When I do gently compress vocals during tracking, I
almost always set the compression attack

The editors asked...
...what I have been up to. It's been a while
since I've written for Recording, and it's nice
to be back! Recent album projects for me
include albums by Victor Krummenacher,
Jerry Vessel, Kenny Feinstein, Misner &
Smith, Charles Charnas, Nancy McGinnis
and Jeffrey Halford. I've continued playing
pedal steel in the studio (Vox Vespertinus,

Francois Nguyen, Jodee Seiders [with producer Chris Johnson], and Bob Forrest [with
producer Ian Brennan]), and after a long hiatus I've begun playing live gigs again, performing with Mark Eitzel, Jodee Seiders and
Misner & Smith. I'm currently also scoring
Judy Irving's (The Wild Parrots of Telegraph
Hill) next film, Pelican Dreams.
By the way, if you'd like to hear some of
the vocals I have recorded in these sessions,
visit tinyurl.com/RecMagKaphanMyTake.
Bruce Kaphan (kaphan@recordingmag.com)
is a composer/musician/engineer/producer
based in the Bay Area of Northern
California. Learn more about him and his
work at www.brucekaphan.com. All photos
are of the artist Kaze, by The Sportographer.

http://www.tinyurl.com/RecMagKaphanMyTake http://www.brucekaphan.com http://www.dpamicrophones.com/dfacto http://www.dpamicrophones.com/dfacto http://www.dpamicrophones.com/dfacto

Recording - February 2014

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