Hire an engineer and go into a recording studio and do it right. :-D
Support your local recording studios!
That's why I say as still as comfortably possible. A professional vocalist soon get's used to it. The big difference is live vs studio, two totally different styles! Someone who's done lots of live work can be a bit of a nightmare in the studio.
Oh yea totally!
Mic control is mainly just for live work.
In the studio the vocalist should stay as stationary as is comfortably possible, let the voice channel comp sort out any loud bits and/or bring up the quiet bits. If they start moving about you can get weird phasing type noises, especially with any sibilance.
You can always spot a singer who has done mainly studio or live by their mic technique
Whoops, I feel like I should have known that. I know how much studio engineers can care about mic placement. Sorry if I misled anyone.
I have a buddy who recently paid top dollar to have his album mixed by the guy who does all Jason Mraz's (yeah) stuff. He said when he went into the studio to hear the final mix, he took a look at the Pro Tools session and said the dude had gone nuts hand drawing the the track volume automation to make sure each syllable was just right. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just throwing it out there as technique used by modern industry professionals.
aka 'ride the faders'
also: not too tricky if you have a good workflow, stuff like this is all about learning to be speedy with your program. No doubt this producer used motorized faders to do rough vocal mixes then hand draws the fine detail.
If they start moving about you can get weird phasing type noises, especially with any sibilance.
Of course this greatly depends on the amount of mics used, their polar patterns and the acoustic properties of the room.
It gets even more delicate to have the vocalist stationary when recording in a live room.
Ride the fader, get eq'ing right and go easy with compression is my advice.
waves Rvox plugin.
Not got this yet....might have to put it on my Christmas list
Yea I remember reading about abbey road sessions where it would be all hands on deck for a mixdown with all the assistants riding a groove o faders and mutes for the final mixdown.
My dad ran a music studio here in Toronto for several decades and I can assure you that was standard operating procedure for big mixes.
Yeah but this is 2010, and we have automation now
Yea we have autotune too, doesn't automatically make it BETTER
Yeah but this is 2010, and we have automation now
It's just an example of how important it is to take a lot of care in automating your mixing levels and whatnot. We may have automation now but that just means that one person has to do the job of several (albeit, with computer assistance).