How do you all reduce reverb and make good recordings?

I notice some music artists record in hotels on the road in completely unpadded rooms and I was wondering if anybody else knows how they make such good recordings without even treating the room.
 
I'm about to tear my hair with the Acon Digital plugins and finding a way to edit a recording with so much reverb.

I was thinking about and looking at one of those foam acoustic shield thingies.
Guess I'll have to try doing close mic until I can get one. Try to get that nice and clear narrator voice.

In traditional studios, you have separate rooms for tracking and mixing, and each has very different acoustical requirements. Main rooms typically have minimal absorption and are designed to be reverberant, with movable gobos (absorbent panels) for spot treatment where needed. Control rooms, OTOH, need to be tight across all frequencies so that you're hearing the tracking room and not the mixing room.
 
Unfortunately, we bedroom producers and garage recordists don't usually have that luxury. We track instruments and vocals, and mix and master all in the same room. Those rooms are often too small, badly-shaped and overly resonant. You really don't want to hear those rooms at all in your recordings, because they have nothing pleasant to add.
 
The solution: make the room as dead as possible and rely on reverberation plugins to restore some life. It can be expensive to fully treat a room, so you may want to concentrate on a small part of the room. Start with the mix position, putting as much absorption as you can around that area so that whatever reverb you're hearing while mixing is in the recording, not being added as you mix.
 
Second most important is a dry space for recording vocals. Those microphone shields are not a solution. A finishing touch perhaps, but they shouldn't be your primary strategy. For the price of one of those, you can buy enough rigid fiberglass to construct an entire vocal booth that covers more than just the backside of the mike. You'll be amazed at the difference that'll make!
 
If you're tight on space and/or money, you can kill both of those birds with one solution: movable absorbers that can be place next to your desk while mixing, or placed around the singer or guitar amp while recording. 

DragonBlood
I notice some music artists record in hotels on the road in completely unpadded rooms and I was wondering if anybody else knows how they make such good recordings without even treating the room.
 
I'm about to tear my hair with the Acon Digital plugins and finding a way to edit a recording with so much reverb.

could you actually post some of these 'good recordings' that folks do in hotels, so we can hear just exactly where the bar is you want to set?
 
i personally have not heard any road recordings that i would deem as 'good' myself.

DragonBlood
I notice some music artists record in hotels on the road in completely unpadded rooms and I was wondering if anybody else knows how they make such good recordings without even treating the room.
 
I'm about to tear my hair with the Acon Digital plugins and finding a way to edit a recording with so much reverb.

First and foremost.... TALENT.  You have really good pickers and singers, and they have their engineers with them in many cases....
 
Jackson Brown:  Nothing but time : from the Running on Empty album..... recorded in the tour bus as it was running down the road. You can hear the bus engine in the recording.  I think a few of the other songs were motel room recordings as well.
 
A good engineer, with talented musicians, can use less than optimal gear, in less than optimal settings, and still get a superb recording out of the deal.
 

The sound on the video at that point is not related to the sound that mic is sending into the DAW.  That would be top quality.  The sound of the video is the sound of the camera mic I would say and is a good indicator of how that room might sound.
 
Recording even in a tricky environment like that with a half decent mic say 3 to 4" away with a pop filter in between will produce a result very similar to a studio environment done a little further.  In less than ideal rooms just get much closer on the mic.  (the pop filter becomes more important) If the performance is good the end result will be pretty good as well.  You definitely don't need any portable vocal booths on tour.  There will always be a spot in the room that sounds good.
 
The most important aspect is the fact those ideas were being captured at that very time.
 
Many reasonable hotel rooms are going to be well furnished and sound quite dead.  As long as there is not too much interference from adjacent rooms then decent acoustic guitar tracks could be laid down as well.  The convolution reverbs can add some slight room behind later on.
 
The idea of recording while on tour is really good one.  It is a time when everyone is very focused on the music and naturally other musical ideas are going to emerge on a tour.  This is one area that our current technology has really changed this aspect of recording away from the studio.  Just add in a powerful hardware synth or even just a controller and you can add tons more material without disturbing anyone.

One great singer here (I forgot his name), ALWAYS sang in his sister's bedroom ... facing the long window curtain (about 4-5 feet away from it, iirc).
 
Early reflections near the mic are one of my biggest enemies (the midi-synth, desk, heater, etc.).  Such *verbs* cause comb-filtering or something.  So you/I remember to just diffuse those hard surfaces near your mic ... with a jacket or sweater or blanket.  Allow 'some' of the rooms imperfections to 'color' your or another's vocals ... much sweeter than that dry-but-unnatural Real-Trap's-portable-vocal-booth (imho).
 
I am in a hotel now and ALWAYS carry a $100 dynamic mic (as others stated above) ... for when the muse awakens.  I will sing into the blessed long curtain (rarely into the wall corner (as others successfully do)!).  Every vocal performance takes me about 40 takes anyway (even after much warm-up) ... oft with different mics ... different environments ... and different ambients ... in every 'painted' song.  
 
But the majority of my 'imperfect' vocals become more 'manageable' (with comps, melodyne, verb, etc.) if condenser mics in a padded studio are used (not by Bat's impeccable logic).  Dynamic (hotel) mics require extremely inspired (perfect) performance-takes to become acceptable in the long haul.  Perhaps they sometimes 'overpower' the song-painting (if that makes sense) ... especially if the song painting has competing rhythmic enticements.  The talent must dance with the rhythm or dance with the magic chords to unite the painting.
 
IOWs, overly dynamic vocal performances ... seemingly can destroy a song-painting that relies on rhythm as the dominant element.  (if that makes any sense at all  :):):) )  I dunno.