Recording vocals in a "bad place"

[Sinapse]

i've read about using a similar method (phase cancellation) to get acapellas from songs, but that shit is crazy, some serious studio tricks right there

def not a "studio" trick lol. in studios they get clean recordings. in general if you need to fix major flaws in a recording after the fact, you already lost. you wanna minimize those flaws and be doing as little manipulation as possible to the recording --- so basically I can't urge people enough to work on treating the space, i.e. build a mini booth if need be, rather than wasting energy and time with workarounds...the best solutions to any problem are the simple ones!

one more tip in there that could be misleading is the idea of just performing louder. I've worked with some great artists and I was always amazed at how composed and controlled they were with their delivery...one of the most important aspects of singing or rapping is controlling your breath and the louder and more out of control you get, the more problems you will have --- actually with rappers, poor breath control and getting too loud (yelling) are big problems I hear in amateurish artists...learn how to create presence and power in your voice without having to yell. And for the record IT DOES NOT TURN ON THE LADIES. The ladies like that smooth cat, not the cat yelling into the mic like he mad at someone.

[Sinapse]

yo Organism...I'm not trying to argue or nothing. This forum is all love. But we trying to get it right here...I'm not saying that you got it all wrong, because you obviously putting energy in to educate yourself bout this ish and I respect that. I'm just contributing my take so that people can choose one path or another...there are obviously so many diff routes you can go when you are making music in your home or other non studio space...no real correct answers but I have made TONS of mistakes over the years and I just try to share my experience.

[theOrganism]

I was just adding to the list of possible solutions. I wasn't even going to go into that last one, but ellaguru asked. These techniques can be useful for all sorts of applications, not just fixing problems after the fact. If you are using a balanced microphone cable, then you are already using phase cancellation to reduce unwanted hum, just by the way it's wired.

I'm not a big fan of the 'fix it in the mix' attitude myself, I agree with you there. Get it right the first time, or learn from your mistakes and do better next time. I've worked in fancy studios with expensive equipment, but for all that, I'm very much a DIY, 'use what you have' kind of guy.

I've seen people hold themselves back from making a track because they haven't got enough money saved for some expensive piece of equipment, when they could have been getting on with it and learning their craft.

What I was saying about the ladies was - confidence turns the ladies on, not 'being loud turns the ladies on'. If you read it back, it wasn't meant to be serious anyway.

I'll post a list of my equipment at some point and then you'll realise why I joined SP-forums and not gearslutz, lol. I'm DIY and Lo-Fi all the way. I started out that way, and I still make music that way.

[ellaguru]

good news.
i tried the first "theOrganism tip" for now:

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1.Use your microphone's null point (if it has one)

Some mics have an area in the pickup pattern where it will reject any sound coming from that direction[it's usually the opposite way the from the way the ball of the mic is facing].
Point this null point at the fan. If your mic is omnidirectional, this won't work. 
A unidirectional mic is the best solution, cardiods were designed for this task also.

and it works.
i noticed, as we said with theOrganism that my condenser mic is very versatile, so it can be omni and unidirectional (maybe you can record instruments too with this, ut i'm not totally sure), in fact it came with a little acdc box (i tought it was just an acdc power box ) in wich you got some switch to change this functionality.
naturally i had some little background noise (almost not many noise came from the pc) but this is impossible to do without.
so i removed that with cool edit pro.

still thanx for the advices theOrganism; and i think that the more we hear the more we can try.

@Sinapse
how is it difficult to built that "little box for vocals" in your studio?

[IIIII]

i do my vox in a cave thru headphones compression on all knobs to the right with lofi mode on in the dark