How to Record

As you probably already know by now, I work based around systems and checklists. If everything were up to me, I would have you recording with your dedicated tracking engineer in a beautiful sounding live room or an isolated, reverb-less control room who knows exactly how to label a session to send to me to mix. But admittedly, inspiration often chooses to strike when you’re not paying by the hour and sitting at home, and often we don’t have access to these studios. Here are some instructions to make sure you get the best recording possible in Pro Tools and get the best mix possible from me!

1. Download this template and the instructions for it, which you should read before doing anything else.

2. Double-click on the template file (by default named “JE DIY Vocal Template.ptxt”), and match your options to the following before hitting “Create”:

3. To save this template and not have to continue doing this every single time, navigate to File-> Save As Template… and install the template to your system in a place you can find it again.

4. Plug in your microphone and record into VOX MAIN to check that you’re not clipping (resulting from an input level that is too high). As a good rule of thumb, the loudest you should be singing is -12 dB. To check this, click Cmd + = to open the Mixer window. You’ll find your peak volume towards the bottom of the channel strip like in the picture below.

If the level is too low, adjust the volume on your pre-amp, not on Pro Tools. Adjusting the volume in Pro Tools means that you also increase the volume of any noise in the background, adding some nasty hissing to your vocal that you don’t want.

5. Watch this video (15 min) on how to use Pro Tools playlists, and make playlists of each vocal part you perform. You can also view the video below.