If you haven’t already recorded your piece from the last section, let’s discuss the best way to do so now. And for those of you who have, here’s a technical review.
First, let’s discuss environment. The two key aspects of WHERE you’re recording are your actual location and the ambience level in that spot.
So, you obviously want to record in an atmosphere that’s relatively quiet. It doesn’t have to be a tomb, but your goal should be to eliminate the extraneous sounds of the world of the world outside, from traffic to people to machinery and often, the normal sounds from around your home. Fridge, a/c, fans, kids, pesky SO’s, TV (really? What were you thinking?) microwaves…
If you’re recording on a desk or table top, be sure your computer is far enough away that the mic doesn’t pick up on any of its whirring or fan noises. This may take some doing if you’re all set up with everything currently in reach, but it’s a key element in making a good recording from now on.
Then, in a busy city environment like New York, you’ll want to insulate your mic from the sound of street traffic and construction noise. In LA, landscape gardeners seem to have a talent for starting up their mowers at the next door neighbors’ house about two minutes in to recording an audition for a key, national spot. And if it’s loud enough that there’s nowhere to run and no way to avoid a spate of noise like that, well, it’s time to get back to work on that blog post you’ve been meaning to write! Then back to recording once the years is trimmed.
Peace at last. Now that the room is reasonably quiet, its own sound characteristics will come in to play. One of the reasons people like to sing in the shower is because there’s often an echo effect that enhances your performance. Fun for singing, not so much for voice-over. That echo effect is technically known as reverberation or reverb, for short, and it’s the bane of all studio recording, because it muddies an otherwise clean-sounding voice and is difficult to eliminate in post-production.
Best to have control of it going in, which is exactly what we do in the studio.