Recording Tips
Before reading this (and hopefully recording) please watch CZ's videos on...
VCCV pronunciation: https://youtu.be/JZJbM2PNqV0
Recording in OREMO: https://youtu.be/3IeipkpO7KU
Keep in mind that anything you record, you'll also have to oto, so you should try to pronounce things so you can clearly see their waveforms. If you're a native English speaker you may think, much like I did, that if you just pronounce things as naturally as possible, everything should turn out ok. Nope. Speaking naturally, there are a lot of times where we may not pronounce consonants clearly or at all, which will either give you missing otos or make the recordings strange to oto. Even if it seems unnatural, always pronounce the consonants clearly. If you can't pronounce them fast enough, it's o.k to slow down. There are some people that record without a BPM at all, so getting a little off time wont affect too much so long as the recording is captured. All that will be affected is that you'll have to slide around the parameters when you oto a little more (which wastes time, but hopefully that won't happen too much). You can tell if you've pronounced them well enough from the waveforms- I'll post about what you should be seeing for certain types of sounds you'll be recording.
Secondly, when it comes to recording in general, be mindful of the noise in your surroundings. Make sure you record in a quiet room- there are times, like at word endings where silence needs to be looped, and if that silence is filled with the sound of your air conditioner running in the distance, your air conditioner will be what is heard instead of silence. Also make sure you are speaking loud enough and record at a constant volume level. Do not move your face towards and away from the microphone while you're talking, and if you don't have a pop filter mind your p's and s's (if you don't know what I'm talking about, look up what a pop filter does).
Let's get onto what the recordings should look like. The first one is what a CV_CVC should look like, with four consonants clearly visible (circled), and four vowels. Sometimes with shorter consonants they may blend into the vowel a little bit- that's ok for the first and second consonant, but the third one should really be separated from the vowel in order to be oto'd correctly. It should also be clearly distinct from the last word (which is usually said starting with a 'k' or 't'). In other words the third consonant should ideally be floating in between the second and third vowel with a little bit of silence on either side.
Let it be a general rule, that when there's a consonant, there should be a visible band in the waveform. It doesn't have to be big; it just has to be visible enough to oto it.
It should be noted with some consonants that sometimes they won't make clearly resolved bands. For example, in this CV with 'ha', the second 'h' is not a distinct band, however the region where it's located is still clearly visible. The same case applies with the CCV 'zye.' The consonants y, w, l, and r do not usually fully separate from the vowel so they can be difficult to see, however you should still be able to see a distinct region where those consonants are. There will be a more detailed discussion of what each consonant looks like in the section about otoing.
Some people batch process their recordings after they're finished with them, but I personally don't do that (I just never really felt the need to). It may be helpful to do that however if there's a lot of noise in your recordings, or if you want some sort of special effect on the voice (I don't recommend that though- leave effects to be done in mixing).
That's pretty much it for recording, feel free to click here to continue onto otoing tips.