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Yes, we are talking about what to do before recording vocals.
No, it won't be boring. It will be highly worth it and help you in the long run.
You will learn so much in this article that your friends will look at you in shock after you make your next song like, "Damn did you make that?"
Ok, let's get to it...
When you're setting up your session make sure that the meter in your recording program isn’t peaking (aka bouncing below the red section in the input meter).
Have your vocalist do some loud takes so you can get a sense for how much you need to bring down your levels. Usually you can tell it’s peaking when you see the highlighted “red” on the input meter. We want to make sure we bring this down to a reasonable level. By reasonable, we should be hovering around -5db and -10db.
When we neglect to do this exercise our vocalist will typically peak out in some areas of the track. This can be nice if you have great gear like an 1176 compressor. It could also sound like trash if you are recording through all digital equipment. Err on the side of caution and make sure your vocalist has lots of headroom. We can make the decision to add distortion later.
Keep those input volumes controlled! We can bring em up later.
-Ryan