Last week I headed over to Colorado to record some demo vocals for the new album my band, Fluorescent Echo, is working on. We are in the process of writing and learning the songs currently and recording them as rough demos. After we have the song demos done I will do the synth and arrangement work and we'll get back together to record the final takes.
This was an interesting exercise for me as I hadn't ever taken a portable laptop recording kit out with the intention of recording vocals. I have taken DAT rigs and a plethora of mics out for sound effect recording, but never vocals in this type of context. In my suitcase I packed a little Lexicon Omega audio interface box, my BeyerDynamic studio headphones and some cables, which fit nicely in my carry on suitcase. I brought my laptop as well as my Akai LPK25 and Korg NanoKontrol which all fit in the laptop bag. I used Sony Vegas & Ableton Live in this session. My singer provided the microphone which was an MXL V69M Vacuum Tube Condenser mic.
We set up to record in a spare bedroom. I set up the "control booth" in the walkin closet and we set up his microphone in the bedroom. The bedroom was pretty empty except for a big bed which did alot to help absorb reflections in the room, which was good because we also had a window in the room without any drapes. Next time we might want to set up some sort of diffuser, but for these demo takes the room worked out ok.
The Lexicon Omega did pretty well except I really was wishing it had onboard audition reverb and compression. When we record the final vocals we will have to a better solution for this. The session went well and overall I was amazed at the clarity of the MXL tube mic we used. It sounded amazingly good for being a $400 microphone.
Stay tuned for announcements in the future about the Fluorescent Echo website and new release. In the meantime I'll be periodically posting about our happenings in the studio on this blog.
Over N Out...
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