What does a “nice even vocal” even mean Andre? Go listen to a rap recording from an amateur rapper, the newer they are to home recording the more likely they’ll have vocals that just don’t sound even.

However, for rap purposes, I always find it nicer to record with a small amount of compression as it helps getting a nice even vocal.

In fact, if you have no idea what you’re doing it is probably best you record with no compression as if you plan on sending your songs of to be mixed and mastered later, the audio engineer will have a little more quality control. If you don’t have a pre amp that allows you to set the compressor, you can always get an external compressor (highly recommended) or not use one at all. What do I mean by a little compression? I usually set the compressor on my preamp to a ratio of 2:1, with a threshold of – 20, a release of 0.3 and a makeup gain of 2. What I like to do with rap vocals is to use a little compression during tracking. This means getting a good microphone, decent preamp and audio interface as well as a whole bunch of stuff you can learn about here.Īssuming you have all that, the next step is the actual vocal recording. The first step to getting a good sounding vocal is to ensure you have a good vocal chain. Only thing that will be different is your results because you’re obviously using a different: mic, pre amp, compressor, and vocal.

It wont matter what compressor you are using, the general princples will remain the same. One of the secrets to getting a good sounding rap vocal is applying compression and lots of it! In this tutorial I will teach you how to adjust your compressor to make the best sounding rap vocals.

How to compress vocals