When evaluating the performance itself, listen out for enunciation ‘errors’, and get your rapper to cycle through anything that’s imperfectly pronounced, vague or wooly until they nail it perfectly – every word should be clear and distinct. There’s nothing like a well massaged ego to bring the best out in a vocalist, so say whatever you can to boost their confidence and encourage enthusiasm without getting unrealistic, and be positive and constructive with any criticism of the rap they intend to serve up. Although there are various ‘reflection filters’ on the market that can help with this in the home studio, they’re only moderately effective, and you’ll get much better results by hanging a couple of duvets in a corner of the room or lining a wardrobe with soft furnishings of any kind to make an impromptu vocal booth.Ī great performance is obviously essential for any vocal track, but with rap usually involving more in the way of drama and attitude than ‘singing’, getting your MC firing on all cylinders should be considered mission critical. One of the goals with any vocal recording is to capture it with as little room reverberation as possible. The pop filter, meanwhile, should be about 6″ in front of the mic.

With your mic on its stand, pointed directly at the vocalist’s mouth, experiment with the distance between the two – the closer the vocalist is to the mic, the more the bass-boosting proximity effect will kick in, so make some test recordings and see what works best for your particular rapper. And as for that pop filter, any model will be fine – a tenner should easily cover it. With its flattering response and extraordinary durability, the Shure SM58 is always a safe bet. While sung vocals are often well-suited to the more sensitive condenser microphone type, for the aggressive delivery of rap, generally speaking, a dynamic mic is the preferred option. Get the microphone selection and positioning rightĪs well as your computer, DAW and EVO audio interface, there are just three other pieces of equipment to budget for in your rap recording endeavours: a microphone, a stand on which to mount it, and a pop shield.

Mix rap vocals fl studio