In this TAXI 2024 panel on How to Produce Your Own Vocals excerpt, Nikki Flores emphasizes having the right setup to ensure your best performance, as well as knowing how to comp your own vocals. Vocal comping is the process of piecing together the best parts of different takes to create one final, polished take that will end up on the record.
The Ideal Environment for Vocal Production
That’s a question that I think everybody, if you’re a singer, engineer, producer, whatever, ask yourself, what’s the most comfortable setting for you to record your vocals in? Is that with an engineer that you trust? Is that with a good friend that hypes you up? Is that by yourself in your closet, you know, or with your own little sound system, whatever that is? For me, I’ve done it in all kinds of ways. I simply like to record by myself nowadays.
So that means start with your environment. I’m learning so much about how our vocal cords are intrinsically connected to the vagus nerve, which is responsible for our fight, flight, and flee responses. So if we come into a session feeling nervous, feeling insecure, feeling like we don’t know the song so well or we’re not really prepared, you’re going to get that shaky, wavering, uncontrollable feeling in your throat.
So first and foremost is taking care of your nervous system.
So set the mood. Set the rights right. Get some rain forest sounds going before you get started. Light a candle. Get a warm drink.
Background Vocals and Comping on “Guitar Hero”
On the first chorus, I only had these three [vocal stems] going. And these were originally voice notes.
When I was writing the song, I was just auditioning different background vocals to myself, rather than get my DAW station set up and go and record them on the right mic. Sometimes, I just want to go, [Nikki sings into her phone “I’ll stay at the…”] and see if it works. And I’ll just airdrop it into my session and see. Sometimes those end up staying in the session.
Because I don’t know if some of you, you might relate, but the iPhone compression is pretty good. It actually sounds pretty good in the mix sometimes. So the first three are just voice notes. I’ll record it. One take.
I add a pedalboard, my spot, to give it that rotary cabinet sound and texture. That’s really nice and vintage. A little bit of an octave effect. And then for the next chorus, I wanted to include all the stacks, so it’s a lot more lush.
I think it’s important to learn how to comp your own vocals. So the more you get used to it, the better you’re going to get at it. But playlisting, whether you do it in Pro Tools, Logic, whatever your DAW is, I like to get really quality takes, like at least 10 or 15 quality takes for a comp.
Learn how to comp your own vocals and get a take that you’re super happy with, so that, you know, in case the engineer ever plays you or whatever, you know how to take your session files home and get what you want out of that song.
[An audience member asked, “Do you sing the song all the way through or do It section by section? How about this song?”]
It depends on the song. This one I sang all the way through a few times, and I ended up comping different sections of it. But I think momentum helps some people to go all the way through the song, and it’s easier to connect to the emotion, I think, of the lyrics, more than cutting section by section.
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