In this article Grammy winning producer and mixer Dom Morley shares five steps to capturing a really great vocal. When, how, with whom and what, and most importantly, what is ‘the cocoon”? Over to Dom…

I’m going to start this with a bit of context. Stick with me here – I promise it’s important. As I write this (October 2023) it’s estimated that around 100,000 songs are uploaded onto Spotify every day. So somewhere in the region of three million new tracks appear on the streaming service every month. This often feels like an impossible mountain of noise for your track to climb to reach listener’s ears – so how do you do it? The annoying answer is to make your track great so that it stands apart from the crowd. But that’s kind of the right answer too. If the music you upload isn’t the best it can possibly be, then how does it stand a chance over the other 100,000 songs that were launched the same day as yours? This is why it amazes me when I hear of how little effort people sometimes put into their recordings. I’m not talking about gear here – that’s a minor detail when it comes to a great recording – I’m talking about performance. When I launched a course on recording vocals (shameless plug – apologies), I had someone tell me that they didn’t need it because they normally just have a cup of tea and a biscuit before hitting record and then they’re ‘good’. Well, if ‘good’ is the pinnacle of your ambition then you probably stopped reading a few of sentences ago, and the chances of being heard above the din of three million other new tracks released that month are slim. To give yourself the best chance of being heard you must give yourself the best chance to be great. Here’s five steps that can help you get the very best out of the recording process.

Is The Song Ready?

This might seem obvious, but if you take an unstructured approach to recording then it’s possible that you’ll begin hitting that red button before three important things have been finalised – the tempo, the key, and (perhaps controversially) the lyrics. While you’re still in the world of soft-synths and programming, it’s no problem to jump around different tempos and keys with no loss of quality. As soon as you’ve recorded some audio though, changing the tempo and / or key of that audio is going to be detrimental to the sound quality every time it gets stretched and shifted around. And the reason I think it’s important to know what the lyrics are is to do with performance – are you playing the right thing to reflect the lyric at that moment? I’m a big believer that every part of a production should be there in service of the song. If the song isn’t actually there yet (via the lyrics) then you’ve not got the whole picture. The lyrics should be integral in telling you, if not actually what to play, at least how to play in each part of the song.

Set Up The Studio

This step is about getting the ‘engineering’ part of recording out of the way before you start, so that you can concentrate on the ‘performing’ part. It’s even more vital that you do this if you’re recording yourself - with no-one else to take the engineering reins while you’re performing, you need to make that part of the process as minimal and stream-lined as possible before you kick off.

In this step you need to put all the microphones you might need on stands (and spares if you have them), and get them all plugged in. The entire signal chain needs to be checked, so the best idea is to put on the headphones that the performer will be wearing and talk into the mic that they’ll be using via a record-ready track in your DAW. Make sure it’s sounding good, there are no crackles (even if you wiggle the lead!) and it is basically ready to walk in and record at a moment’s notice. 

Build The Cocoon™

This is a phrase I use to describe the process of preparing and maintaining the psychological environment for a great performance. It starts with being comfortable. If your studio is too hot, then a performer can start to feel tired after only a small amount of exertion. If it’s too cold then the muscles won’t relax, and any sort of instrument becomes much harder to play. Also, a lack of fresh air will quickly make everyone in the room drowsy, so taking control of all of these factors is the first step. Next you need to make it safe. If you want a performance to be great, you need the performer to stretch themselves, which means they are risking going further than they are capable of going and then messing up. The ability to keep doing this is vital to capturing a great performance, and so you need an environment where the person on the mic can feel completely comfortable with this possibility. There are many ways to make this happen, but one of the most important is to prevent random people from being able to walk into your session. There is nothing that will prevent a performer from risking a potentially embarrassing mistake more than knowing a stranger could walk in at any moment and witness it. When I was an assistant in a recording studio the doors didn’t lock, so I would sit next to the main door of the control room whenever we were recording so if anyone did randomly try to wander in, I’d be able to jump up and push them out before they had the chance to break the cocoon™ of the session. I had to do this more times than you’d think in a professional studio! If you’re in your own room then a lock on the door is an option, or the classic red light outside the door letting people know that you are recording and are not to be disturbed. The third part of building the cocoon is to make the environment creative. Again, I could write a lot about this, but two important ideas are toys and lighting. By toys I mean musical ones – figurines are cool if that’s your thing, but here I mean filling a studio with odd little instruments that can be played with, which fills the room with musical possibility and fosters a creative mindset for performance. Low level lighting also works wonders – no-one wants to perform under a florescent strip light! The legendary recording engineer Bruce Swedien once said of recording Michael Jackson “Another thing I learned from Michael is he always sang in the dark...His feeling, and Quincy (Jones) has always agreed, was that the light is very distracting.” Which neatly bring us to focus, which is the final part of building the cocoon. All distractions should be absolutely minimised so that the performance is the only thing that everyone in the room is concentrating on. This means phones off. Yes. Even you.

Timing

What time of day is best for a great performance? Well, everyone is different on this one, but if you’re not sure then later rather than earlier is often a good rule of thumb. Not so late that people are tired, but late enough in the day that distractions are limited. The big ‘to-do’ list for the day has been done, there are no more urgent calls, maybe it’s getting a bit dark, and everyone can fully focus in on the recording.

The Gear

This is last because, as I said earlier, it’s the least important thing. However, getting a performer to sound great in their headphones is a really good way to support a great performance. So not only spending a little time picking the right instrument, the right mic, and the right mic-pre (showing you really care about this stuff as a producer / engineer can give confidence to a nervous performer), but also making sure the headphone mix is as good as possible will help a player or singer to give their best effort to the recording.
I can’t guarantee that any of this will give you a hit record of course, but I can be sure that this attention to detail and effort in recording will mean that you gave it your best shot. And if your music is worth anything, then it’s worth that.

More Recording Resources From Dom Morley

• Everything You Need To Know About Recording Vocals
If you'd like to delve deeper into the ideas in this article, then you can use the exclusive voucher code EXPERT50 to get a full 50% off the list price. Preproduction, DAW set-up, preparing the studio, psychology, equipment. Literally everything you need to know.
• Mixing 101
This is a short, free, mini-course on the four things that you really need to know in order to get great mixes, and the four things that you really don't!

Dom is the founder of the Mix Consultancy, a zero risk (money back guarantee) way to get notes on your tracks to help improve the sound. Whether you're an artist who likes to mix all their own work, a composer putting together a pitch on a limited budget, or an engineer who wants a discreet second opinion before sending a mix off to a client - we're here to help.

“I just completed a mix with the help of Dom Morley & The Mix Consultancy. The mix we turned over was qualitatively better than the one I would have gone with on my own.

It's been said that "a mix is never done, it's just abandoned", but the truth is, you *really* do feel a sense of completion and closure having worked with Dom because you know in your heart that you did everything you possibly could to get the best result possible for the client.

The beauty behind the process is that not only do you get a better mix for your client, but Dom's advice contains all kinds of gold that you can borrow and deploy in future mixes.”

Geoff Manchester

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