Starting gear for online lessons

One of the most confusing things when starting out is “what equipment do I need?”

There are so many choices of microphones, interfaces and software and there is no clear indication of the best use for each.

Part of the choice will depend upon your end goals. Do you want to make recordings? Sing for church? Audition for musicals? Sing for a band? Busk?

While you can use your webcam or phone for recording audio, it is far from ideal for the purpose. You need a proper mic to sing and perform.

Regardless of the connections you plan to use, for lessons you want a condenser mic with a cardiod pickup pattern. This means a cone right in front of the mic. Super-cardiod is the same, but with a narrower cone. Expect to keep a distance of about a 'hang ten' gesture of width.

Dynamic mics are stage mics. They are meant for noisy environments, and you are meant to be right up on the mic. This type of mic is actually a 'reverse speaker' and they are hard to overload. Later in your training you can add this to your locker when you want to start playing with proximity effects and distortion.

You want it to operate as close to a range of 20Hz-20,000Hz as possible. This is more important for a ‘studio’ use mic. Stage mics will top out closer to 15,000Hz.

The simplest, direct route for most of you will be a USB connection-based microphone. These can be used with PCs, tablets or phones. Good mics in this range start at ~$100+ and go up to about $250. You can spend more, but it isn’t going to get you much better performance as a beginner. Think of this as a 5-year purchase.

Some examples
Rode NT1
Shure MV88
AudioTechnica AT2020USB

I dislike podcast mics for singing. It works, but it sounds muffled to my ear. This is true of the mighty SM7B and all its variants.

Some of you want XLR hardware to work with amps, guitars, mixing boards, etc. You can still get into this for about $250, including mic, mixer and cabling.

There are some great deals to be had on the used market, as it is common for musicians to sell off the old stuff to help buy the new.

The most basic is something like a Behringer Xenyx 302USB. (~$50)  This will allow you to do lessons and karaoke, and will allow you to plug in an instrument if you desire. It will allow you to use many microphones as is, but it does not prove sufficient power to drive the 48v required for some microphones. You can buy a 48v Phantom Power unit for about $30.

Interfaces like the Focusrite Scarlet are just fine, but be sure you are aware of what the extra features really do for you.

One of my colleagues shared this:
" The best setup I can advice around 100$ is interface Presonus Audio box iOne and AT-2020 microphone. You can find both costing around 50$ averaging in 100$. This condenser microphone can give you studio quality if you tweak it around well. First Billie Eillish album was fully recorded on AT-2020 so it even has a wide commercial use for low price"

Another shared this:
"I bought a TASCAM DR-40X, and the built in mics are great, it takes two XLR inputs, AND serves as an audio interface AND a stand alone recorder. Not bad for ~$150 used"