Developing a Partnership with a Microphone

Recently, my exploration into vocal technique has involved working with a Shure SM7B to record a variety of songs using a range of techniques from the Old Italian Style right through to belt voice.

I found the Shure SM7B to be poor for classical which is to be expected; truckloads of the colour in my voice went missing. However, I enjoy working with the microphone when singing contemporary. (Although, I am also not sure about the results when belting; colour seems to be lost when belting as well. In that aspect, the microphone works best for singing ‘smaller’.)

This week I wrote, recorded and uploaded three songs. There is some improvement from when I first started doing this at the start of the year. I don’t use a pop shield (in fact, I don’t even own a microphone stand and use a clarinet stand instead which is perched precariously on a tray). Therefore, I need to rely on the Old Italian School of Singing techniques to implode consonants. Ten months ago, there was a lot of popping but now, nada. So, I am happy to be now developing a partnership with the microphone in that I know what it can (or can’t) translate for me into the Logic Pro software and what I have to do as a singer to make that happen.

Another thing I am noticing is that I can use vocal techniques rather than the software when creating backing vocals. In the following examples, there is little manipulation from the software. Rather, the EQ is done naturally. I prefer this for myself because I feel this allows the colour of the voice to come through.

Accordingly, below are three different songs I wrote in the first week of my ‘holidays’. The first is ‘In Your Collection’. It is a bittersweet song and came out of ‘nowhere’; written, recorded and uploaded in one day. When I started writing the song in the morning, I wanted to take the listener on a journey that covered a lot of territories. I hope this was achieved.

The second is ‘River Will Carry Me’. This song was written, recorded and uploaded over one and a half days. This uses Taonga Pūoro in the background which are traditional Māori instruments. When I began to write the song, the goal was to confine the voice to as fewer notes as possible. Surprisingly, the genre ended up as some type of jazz (I think); I virtually never sing or listen to jazz so this was fun.

The song ‘Advice to a Songwriter in Love’ ended up a tad more ‘musical theatre’ than I had hoped for and my childhood love for country music really reared its head in the southern accent which mixed with the Southland accent from Aotearoa/New Zealand is very funny. However, I do like the construction of the song in terms of conveying emotion. In the end, music is about emotion. Regardless of how fancy we can become, for me as a singer who performs other people’s music, or my own, it is about the emotion and, hopefully, from time to time, a person listening and sharing that emotion with me.