How to sing with Mic?

“Everybody’s got a thing

But some don’t know how to handle it

Always reaching out in vain

Just taking the thing not worth haaaaving

Don’t you worry about a thing (2) mama

‘Cause I’ll be standing on the side

When you check it oooooouuuuuuttt, oh!....” a beautiful song from the animation movie “SING” released in 2016. An innocent teenage girl, Meena (an elephant), overcomes her shyness to sing this song on the stage.

Likewise, most of you feel shy to sing a song even though you are good at singing. If you want to overcome like Meena to sing a song on the stage how will you proceed to sing? There is a difference between singing using a mic and not using a mic. Let us understand!

Why is your recorded voice sounding different?

Do you hate listening to your voice recording? Why? Cause, Your voice can be heard from two sides of your body. One is through your vibrating sound waves hitting your eardrum which is heard by others. The second way is through vibrations inside your skull set off by your vocal cords.

Those vibrations travel up through your bony skull, set the eardrum vibrating, and send the information to the brain. However as they travel through the bone, they spread out widely, and lower in pitch makes the frequency drop-down giving you a false sense of bass. Then when you hear your voice recording, it sounds vividly higher.

About Microphone

Microphone (Mic) is a transducer that converts sound waves through a diaphragm into an electric signal. Different designs for mics such as lavalier mic, a wireless mic, contact mic, throat mic, parabolic mic, stereo mic, noise-cancelling mic.

The applications of mic are wide range like for concert halls and public events, live and recorded audio engineering, sound engineering, megaphones, radio, television, broadcasting, and in computers for recording voice, etc.

Choosing the correct mic for you is not quite easy. Cause, every individual have different vocal cords. To use, the mic has to be chosen which one opts for you. The sound engineer will give you a clear-cut idea or choose the best one for you to sing in a studio recording session. The selection of the mic is preferably based on the cost.

Microphone Categories

Microphones are categorized by their transducer principles such as the condenser, dynamic, ribbon, carbon, piezoelectric, fibre-optic, laser, liquid, MEMS (MicroElectrical-Mechanical System), etc.

Dynamic microphones give flat frequency response used in the club or pub singing. Condenser microphone uses the same cable conductors and connectors for audio and phantom power to get a high-quality audio signal and it is now the popular choice in laboratory and recording studio applications.

Directional characteristics such as diaphragm size, intended use are used to describe the microphone. The microphone's directionality called polar pattern indicates how sounds arriving at different angles about its central axis.

There are different types of polar patterns such as omnidirectional, unidirectional, bi-directional, sub-cardioid, cardioid, hyper-cardioid, super-cardioid, lobar.

Best Microphones to Buy

Standard Shure (SM58, SM57) is a dynamic cardioid mic used in many club singers. 87A is a super-cardioid condenser mic. 258 is a dynamic super-cardioid microphone. Sennheiser and AKG brands are good microphones for buying. Sennheiser MD421, AKG C414 XLS, Rode NT1A, Neumann U87 ai are the best microphones to buy. For cable mic, suggested buying a 10m XLR to XLR cable.

Positioning Microphone

Holding a mic to sing or to give a speech, it is essential to know how to hold it. Within a few steps, you will be able to hold it like a pro:

Start by holding the mic in the opposite hand (probably left hand).
Put your right-hand palm facing up
Place the mic along with the point at which your fingers to join your palm.
Wrap your fingers around the stem of the mic
Place your thumb parallel to the stem so that it rests just under the head of the mic.

Now you are holding the mic correctly.

The correct distance to keep the mic is:

To bring the mic up to your mouth
Place it around two fingers away from your bottom lip
Angle the mic down just a fraction so that your audience can see your wonderful expression face.
Do the same even if the mic is held in a stand.

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