Let's say you have a singer who is really getting into the music. Great! You are way ahead of the game. If you are recording a hardcore punk singer who usually plays guitar when he ?sings?, put a guitar in his hand. Seriously! I've seen a 12dB difference just by letting the singer play guitar too. Some of the excessive audio engineering people will say ?Won't the sound of the electric guitar be picked up by a sensitive vocal mic?. Well, sure the mic will pick it up. Even if the mic did pick up a lot of the electric guitars acoustic sound, who cares? If the singer can totally get into the vibe of what he's trying to do, why would you stop that? In mixing the singer will be asking you to take his tracks and make them sound exciting. I don't have an exciting knob on my DAW. It would be much easier for the singer to be excited in the first place (if that's what the song calls for).

The point: If you can get a much better take out of a performer, don't worry about a few little noises getting into the recording. No one will listen to record that doesn't convey an emotion. Everyone owns records with silly noises in them.

Let's say the singer is moving around a lot when he/she is performing. You are using a cardiod mic and when she moves you are losing both low end and high end in her voice. As a recording engineer, you need to sit down with your client and ask them what they would rather have. I'd go with the take with the most emotion every single time. Do listeners really care if your vocals don't have the bottom end of the guy that does the radio commercials? The answer is no. Listeners want to sing along or feel something. So give them something to feel. You'll have to approach your recording of the vocal a little differently, but what's wrong with that? There are no rules and no one said that you had to bury your face in condenser mic. Get creative. If I'm going to capture someone moving around, I'll probably go with a spaced pair. I'll try to make sure the phasing isn't too bad between the mics and I'll probably just keep them in mono. If the song is great, all kinds of people will be emailing you how you got ?that sound?.

I find that most upbeat songs do not require as much vocal fidelity anyway. Don't get me wrong. You don't want it to sound like shit, but generally the mega upbeat songs do fine with a dynamic mic. For the pretty songs, a condenser is often the way I choose to go. I think this is due to the fact that when a singer is being loud and aggressive, there are less nuances in his/her voice. When a singer is being quiet (and probably sad) there are more subtle things in the high end that are picked up more effectively with a condenser. So when you are recording a singer who wants to jump around, by all means let them jump around. When they do the pretty sounds, have them sit down in front of a condenser.

Some singers really want to use a hand held microphone. With almost every problem in a recording studio, the solution is the same. LISTEN TO BOTH VERSIONS!!!! There will usually be an obvious winner. If there is not an obvious winner, then no one will care either way. Try recording a take with the singer holding a SM 58 or whatever. Then do another take with your typical condenser microphone rig. Listen. If the singer sounds way better (I'm saying that the singer is actually emitting a much better sound) then the 58 will pick it up fine. If the singer still sounds damn good, but the condenser captures what he/she is doing better, then go with the condenser. If you can capture an amazing performance, your studio will stay busy!! Don't worry about doing it ?wrong?. The only way to do the recording ?wrong? is to miss out on the emotion (or make it sound like shit!!).