Sing Like A Pro -make A Large Pop Screen For A Microphone - Free

Want to practice singing like you are auditioning for a show like The Voice, American Idol or X-Factor? Perhaps you are setting up your own recording studio. Make a pop-screen, put it in front of your microphone and sing away. Perfect for voice recording for audio content on blogs, vlogs, pod casts and more. Make a free anti-pop, noise protecting screen / filter for your microphone much like the professional ones used in recording studios but without the professional price tag. What does a pop filter do? Protect your microphone from spit, germs and blasts of air by making your own pop screen quickly and easily from materials you can find around your home. In this video we will look at materials and walk step-by-step through the construction process.

Background: many microphones pick up sound well enough to be subject to the troublesome popping noises you get from words that begin with the letter "P" (these are called aspirated plosives). By using a screen between your mouth and the microphone you not only reduce these noises but also eliminate spit and germs from accumulating on your microphone which should help the mic last longer (i.e. spit is salty and salt is corrosive... oh, and moisture is corrosive too). Studio pop filters are usually made with one or two layers of woven material that allows sound to pass but not bursts of air. In this video I have used a single layer of very loosely woven fabric and it works great when my mouth is 3" or more away from the mic (audio in this video was recorded with 2" between my mouth and the mic and the filter placed in between). This is great because I have a new microphone that is designed for studio-like recording and it works best when I am up close and personal. With this filter in place and can keep my recording level lower which means that my microphone will not pick up allot of extra background noises behind me. You can use other materials such as tights, nylons, speaker fabric, gauze-like material, etc. also. These are all acoustically transparent enough to allow great sound to reach the microphone will still holding back the popping air sounds.

I will have more videos in the future that cover DIY ways to make pop-screens / pop-filters as well as stands. The stand shown in the video is an articulated arm, desktop stand that I made entirely out of repurposed materials and it works great! I will share the build for this one very soon. I am using this with a Blue microphone (Blue, The Snowball) and it works great for me.

Music for this video was provided by Bass Nado. The song is Glitch Rabbit from Bass Nado Creations Volume #1.