To record vocals online, open the Vocal recorder (also at record.aden.space), drop your beat, put on wired headphones and press Record. The beat rolls in a bar early, you sing, and the take lands on the timeline where you sang it, ready to download as a 24-bit WAV or save to Aden. It's free, needs no account, and everything stays in your browser until you download it or save it.

What do you need to record vocals in the browser?

• A microphone. A USB mic or an interface with a mic is best; a headset or laptop mic is fine for ideas.
• Wired headphones, closed-back if you have them.
• The beat as an audio file: an instrumental, a loop or a rough mix. No beat? Record over a click.
• Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, and a quiet room.

Why you need headphones

If the beat plays from speakers, the mic records it too. That bleed stays in your vocal for good: change the mix later and you still hear a ghost of the beat inside the take, and a tuning effect tries to tune the beat along with your voice.

Use wired ones. Bluetooth headphones add a delay, often well over 100 ms, so the beat reaches you late and you sing late against it. Closed-back headphones leak less than open-back ones, but even they leak at full volume: play the beat only as loud as you need to stay in time.

How far from the mic should you sing?

Distance changes the sound more than most settings: closer means more low end and less room, further means a thinner sound with more room in it.

Step back for belted lines and come closer for soft ones, but keep the distance the same for every take of a part so the takes match.

The room matters as much as the mic. Bare walls give a boxy, ringing sound no plugin removes cleanly. A wardrobe full of clothes, curtains or a duvet behind the mic help more than you'd think. Turn off fans and air conditioning.

How do you set the gain so the vocal doesn't clip?

Clipping is when your voice goes past the loudest level a recording can hold, 0 dBFS: the peaks are cut flat into a harsh crackle that can't be fixed afterwards. Set the level before you record:

1. Sing the loudest part of the song at full performance volume.
2. Turn the gain knob on your interface, or the input volume in your computer's sound settings, until the loudest lines stay well under the top of the meter: peaks around -10 to -6 dBFS.
3. If your interface has a clip light, it should never come on.

Recording a bit quiet is fine. A 24-bit WAV has about 144 dB of range on paper against 96 dB for 16-bit, so a vocal peaking at -12 dBFS loses nothing you can hear.

Latency: why takes can sound late

Latency is the delay between a sound happening and you hearing it. Recording over a beat has two: the beat reaches your ears a little after the computer plays it, and your voice reaches the recording a little after you sing. The Vocal recorder puts each take where you sang it, but your setup decides how much delay there is. To keep it small:

• Use wired headphones. Bluetooth is by far the biggest source of delay.
• Close other apps that use audio, such as a DAW or a video call.
• Hear yourself the right way. The headphones button in the record lane lets you hear your voice. Use it with wired headphones only: through speakers your voice feeds back into the mic. If it sounds like a slapback echo, turn it off and use your interface's direct monitoring, if it has it.

If a take still sounds behind the beat, suspect Bluetooth or the mic chain first.

How to record vocals with the Vocal recorder

1. Open the Vocal recorder and drop your beat, or press Upload a beat. It reads the beat's BPM and key, so the click and the vocal effects follow the beat. No beat at hand? Press Record without a beat to sing over the click alone; the metronome in the record lane sets its tempo.
2. Allow the microphone when the browser asks.
3. Press Record. The recording lane opens under the beat, and the beat rolls in a bar early from the playhead.
4. In the record lane, the headphones button lets you hear yourself, the music note sets how loud the beat plays under you, and the wand adds vocal effects.
5. Pause and carry on whenever you need. To redo one part, drag across the lane's top strip over it and sing it again.
6. Listen back before you keep it: once paused, press play (or Space) to hear what you've sung so far with the beat.
7. Press the check to keep the take. It lands as a lane under the beat, at the spot you sang it.

Takes: record the part more than once

After a take, the playhead goes back to where it started, so pressing Record again sings another take over the same part. Every take is its own lane under the beat, and they all play together (Space plays and pauses). Use that for three passes of a verse to pick from, a double of the hook for width, or ad-libs on their own lane.

The speaker on a lane mutes it, and hovering it shows the take's level. The × removes a take, with Undo.

Sing the whole song through once before you chase single lines. A full take keeps the energy; fix lines afterwards.

Vocal effects while you record

The wand adds vocal effects: tuning, tone, reverb and echo. The recorder reads the beat's BPM and key, so the effects follow the beat. A little tuning and reverb in your headphones makes many singers more confident.

But a downloaded take has its effects printed in. If the vocal will be mixed later, record with the effects off and add them in the DAW, where you can still change them. For a demo or a quick post, keep them on.

Download a 24-bit WAV or save to Aden

• Download: the arrow on a take saves it as a 24-bit WAV, with its vocal effects printed in. There is no lossy compression, so it's ready for any DAW.
• Save to Aden: makes a new track. The beat is the track's audio and each take is a stem that starts where you sang it. Muted takes stay out. Without a beat, the take is the track; several takes are added up into one, each kept as a stem. Without an account, the song waits in your browser while you sign up.

Your takes live only in that browser tab until you do one of the two, so download or save before you close it.

Writing a topline goes faster when you know the beat's key first. Once the vocal is down, transcribe the lyrics into an LRC file, and keep proof that you made the song before you send it around.

When the microphone doesn't work

The page says what went wrong. The fix is one of these:

On a Mac, also check System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone. If it records the wrong mic, make your interface the default input in your sound settings.

FAQ

Can I record vocals online for free?

Yes. Aden's Vocal recorder is free and needs no account. You drop a beat, record over it in the browser and download each take as a 24-bit WAV. You only sign up to save the song to Aden.

Is my vocal recording uploaded anywhere?

No. The beat and your takes stay in your browser until you download a take or save the song to Aden. If you close the tab without doing either, the takes are gone.

What quality is a vocal recorded in the browser?

The take is your microphone as the browser hears it, saved as an uncompressed 24-bit WAV. The quality comes down to the mic, the room and the gain you set.

Why do I need headphones to record over a beat?

Without headphones the mic picks up the beat from your speakers, and that bleed stays in the vocal for good. Wired headphones keep the beat out of the take and avoid the delay that Bluetooth adds.

Can I record vocals without a beat?

Yes. Press Record without a beat and you sing over a click instead, with its tempo set on the metronome in the record lane. When you save to Aden, the take becomes the track's audio.