Many of them even provide a headphone jack for monitoring. These are especially useful for beginner home recordists, because they combine an LDC and an audio interface in one device. However, there's a more recent development in the world of home recording that you should investigate also: the availability of a variety of USB-powered large diaphragm condensers. Condenser mics do require an external power source, referred to as phantom power, so if you go for a standalone condenser mic, you'll need to be sure that your audio interface supplies phantom power. The advantage of an LDC mic is that they're more sensitive than the standard dynamic mics you're more likely to see on a live stage, and they tend to "warm up" a recorded voice, which is why they're favored for studio recording. But for home recording purposes, you can do well for under two hundred dollars. There are many of these available too, with prices that can run into the thousands of dollars for a top-of-the-line model.
But if you're looking to get a vocal sound that compares with professional recordings, one of the standard types of mics used in the recording industry is what's called a large-diaphragm condenser (LDC) microphone. There are a million different mics available that are appropriate for vocals, and we aren't going to recommend any specific ones here. However, for recording vocals for a song, unless you're going to be heavily processing the voice track or are looking for an intentionally raw sound, you'll want to use a reasonably professional vocal microphone. Now, you could record your voice through your Mac's built-in microphone and in some cases, like recording a podcast or a simple video voiceover, you could get useable results.
So, in this tutorial, we'll show you the basics of recording vocals into GarageBand '11.īefore you can begin recording your vocal track, you'll need something to record your voice with and a way to hear what you're doing.
Or perhaps you want to record a podcast or some other non-musical material. Inevitably though, the time will come when you'll want to add your own vocals to a song you've created in GarageBand.
The massive collection of Apple Loops and software instruments included with the program, as well as the huge variety of third-party content available, make it easy for even beginner users to produce professional-sounding songs.
Home music production really took off with the introduction of Apple's GarageBand, included with all new Macs.