Useful Tips for Recording

[Willy]

Is there a thread for this? I was looking around a bit but couldn't find anything. Anyways, I am still very new to recording but I have found a few things that helped me out:

-I'm not that comfortable with my voice, so a lot of times when I am playing shit back I am like wtf, I sound like a little ho. Sometimes its because my delivery just wasn't good enough, but other times I found it was just because I'm not comfortable with my voice. So, I pitch shift my vocals down, and listen to the recording. If the flow, enunciation, and emotion are all there with the pitch shifted verse, then I keep it. (I don't keep the pitch shift on the verse, lol)

-When I rap I am very conscious of the beat, I think its a beginner thing. I made sure I hit the snare perfectly. I would stretch words out, or say em' quickly so it all fit. However, I found that doing this made me sound very rigid, n00bish. My problem was that I was cramming too many words in my lines, and not giving myself any pauses. The pauses were huge, made it sound so much more natural, and suddenly the lines were just fitting better. Instead of stretching words out, I would do a slight pause. Also, I think experience helps a lot with this.

-And then. And then and then and then and then I found problems with my delivery. I listened to my shit and I just didn't sound passionate, no character. Sounded like I was reading the words off a paper. Then I realized I was. Memorizing my verse was huge. This way, I'm not focusing on what I'm going to say, but how.

-Instead of listening to an instrumental over and over again on Youtube, download Reaper, then put the beat in there and loop a section of it. This has been so useful, as I don't have to get out of my writing zone to click play again. (Again, probably pretty obvious, but it's new to me : P )

-Dry your fucking tongue when you are trying to rap fast. This has helped me SO MUCH. I was practicing this verse all night and noticed it got so much easier when my tongue was dry. It worked for me atleast lol.

Anyways, that's it for now. And I don't mean to sound pretentious, I have A LOT to learn. But these are just a few things I found helped me, and was thinking it might be useful to others. Also, feel free to add stuff fellas, cheers!