Microphone Technique Quotes

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

The fact that I'm often pushing my voice as hard as I can is from playing in nightclubs in Albuquerque where you don't have a good sound system.

I'd been studying the microphone for a dozen years, and I suddenly saw what I'd been doing wrong. I'd been singing too loud. One night I was listening to a record by Lester Young, the horn player, and it came to me. Relax, just relax. It's all going to be all right.

It's only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.

It's tricky when you're doing a recording, because the only weapon you have is your voice and the delivery of that voice. You don't have a gesture or a facial expression, there are no costumes or set pieces. Everything needs to be present in the voice.

I don't have the genetic make up of a frontman, but I'm learning how to do it.

Also, from a technical point of view, as you're standing in front of a microphone all day, it's quite a good idea that I should play a laid back sort of character because if he was too frenetic, I'd be exhausted by lunch!

Getting comfortable again and being in a vocal booth on the opposite end of the spectrum, when you're normally the one tracking the vocals, is kind of scary.

Singing for stage, if you don't hear yourself, that's when you push, and that's when you can hurt your voice sometimes. So if I can hear myself in my ear, it really helps me to find that balance of how loud I needed to be singing.

I like to hold the microphone cord like this, I pinch it together, then I let it go, then you hear a whole bunch of jokes at once.

Recording vocals has the same kind of physical demands as you experience a lot in theater work.

I had a couple of chances to go inside the broadcast booth when I was out of the car in 2016 and loved it a lot.

When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.

All the experience from 'X Factor' U.K. I can use that - I know what I'm doing on a big stage.

Getting into the voice-over booth, there are no cameras and no inhibitions.

It's an enthralling experience to be in front of the mic and record a song.

The whole thing with playing on a stage with mics and all that has always been kind of uncomfortable to me.

Oh, I try to stay as far away from karaoke as humanly possible!

You're gonna have to learn to get out there in front of those cameras and hold your head up. Take charge when you're singing.

I used to love watching Angela Lansbury and other people when they were doing voice-overs for Disney shows. You'd see them doing these wild gestures in front of the microphone. I used to think, 'Is that really necessary?' What you realize when you're doing it is that that's the only way.

A singer for me is more like someone who is standing alone with a microphone like Scott Walker, rather than someone who is bashing a plank and is spitting all over a microphone.

Singing is something I do every day - not every other month. When I touch the mic, the same thing happens every time.

The first band I was in out of college was a Celtic band, and I had to learn to sing with a microphone, because I'd never done that before. At Oberlin, I never used a mic for any kind of singing.

I preferred not to be laden down with a big instrument. If you're behind a guitar, you get used to being behind a guitar, and you don't really perform because you can't. I wanted to be able to just hold on to the mike and sing.

If you're going to sing on stage, wear lip stain.