For most artists, the creative process often begins with working from a bedroom and not from a studio. But turning raw ideas into polished, professional recordings typically requires expensive studio time, booking logistics, and pristine acoustic environments. These requirements can slow down momentum or make professional-level output inaccessible to many.
Thanks to the rapid evolution of AI voice modeling, there’s a way around this. Artists can now record once in a professional studio (capturing various vocal styles and ranges) and then use that material to train a custom AI voice model. Once built, this model can be used to “reskin” future vocal recordings made in non-ideal environments (like a home studio, an untreated room, or even a phone). The result? Pro-studio quality from just about any setup with minimal sacrifice and maximum creative freedom.
The Problem with Traditional Recording Setups
High-quality vocal recording was always the bottleneck for the artist. Session time is expensive and often short. Working around busy schedules or small timelines can freeze the creative process where it flows best. Many artists write and record their best material at home, in familiar, comfortable environments, but home recordings are full of technical problems.
Room reverb, background noise, and inconsistent mic setups make it nearly impossible to achieve a clean, professional sound without extensive processing or re-recording altogether.
Even worse, many artists find themselves losing creative momentum when they’re forced to wait for studio time just to capture their vocals properly. The spontaneity and experimentation that often fuel great songwriting can get lost in translation.
The Power of Custom AI Voice Models
So, if we were to get all the technical hurdles out of the way, we could create the optimal foundation for a creative workflow. With AI voice modeling, this is now possible. With only a one-time effort to invest in initially building the model, results are reliable and high-quality. This enables the artist to record creatively without thinking about the recording chain or settings. It’s likely that artists like Tory Lanez use this technique to produce studio-quality vocals from recordings of a prison phone. His engineers have probably used their large database of his vocals to create sample material for the vocal model, which they now use to fix his low-quality recordings. The results are incredible.
Here’s how it works: You train an AI model to replicate your voice using high-quality, clean recordings. Once trained, this custom AI voice model can take new recordings (captured in less-than-ideal conditions) and re-synthesize them using the vocal tone and quality of your original studio recording. The result is a version of your performance that sounds like it was recorded in a professional environment, even if it wasn’t.
Because the input voice and the modeled voice are fundamentally the same, just recorded in different conditions, the AI has to do less “guesswork.” This leads to a more natural, artifact-free result compared to using generic AI voices. You keep your emotional delivery, tone, and nuance. Just in a clean, high-quality form. Platforms like kits.ai make this workflow accessible, letting artists build custom AI voice models and apply them with minimal setup.
The Process: From Studio to AI Voice Model
Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating this workflow:
Step 1: Record ~60 Minutes of Studio-Quality Vocals
Book time in a professional studio and record at least one hour of clean, unprocessed vocals. Include different vocal styles, intensities, and ranges so your model can handle any future performance you throw at it.
Step 2: Edit and Prepare Your Recording
- Remove as much silence as possible
- Ensure a consistent recording level across the session. Clip gain if needed to ensure a consistent level.
- Leave vocals unmixed. No reverb, compression, or EQ (unless you’re sure it will work across all future uses).
- Export everything as one long audio file (I use WAV, 24 Bit, 48 kHz)
Step 3: Train Your Model
Upload your file to a platform like kits.ai. The platform will analyze the data and generate a model of your voice that can later be used to re-synthesize any vocal performance.
Step 4: Use the Model on New Recordings
Now, when you record vocals at home, on tour, or even on your phone, you can run those takes through your custom AI voice model. The result: clean, studio-grade vocals that sound like they were recorded during your original session—ready for mixing.
Own Experiment
In 2023, I tested this with Jenny Wolf. As she moved to a different city, she had to record from her room, which had non-ideal acoustics and audible reverb in the recordings. So when I found kits.ai, I had the idea to use the acapellas of our approximately 30 songs as sample material for a custom AI voice model.
Once the voice model was created, we tested it with two different recordings: one from her mic setup in her room and another from a WhatsApp voice memo on her iPhone. The results were mind-blowing.
Here is a playlist of the files:
I have to note that, as this was a quick experiment, I haven’t removed the vocal processing, so the sample material was the mixed acapellas. I will create another voice model with unmixed vocals in the future, as that is a more solid foundation for any type of song you are mixing.
But with this technique, I hope you can simplify your process, become more creative, and have the best results you’ve ever had.
Happy creating!