Instruments & Gear

Stephen Wise is your guide to home recording.

Until now, I have not encouraged the use of Audacity® 1.3 Beta versions. They have had some instabilities and have been less than reliable.

Audacity® 1.3 Beta nonetheless has some compelling improvements that are hard to resist, such as side chaining and graphical interfaces for VST plug-ins. With 1.3, Audacity® is turning into a real studio. You will need 1.3  in order to try the technique in this post.

You can download Audacity® 1.3 Beta here. There are instructions on-site and you can refer to my earlier posts on installing 1.2. Do not uninstall 1.2. You can and should maintain both versions for now. Projects that you created in 1.2 can be opened in 1.3, but 1.3 projects cannot be opened in 1.2, so save your 1.2 projects and be careful not to overwrite them.

Fun with ducks
Has this happened to you? You record a narration, say for a YouTube video, and it sounds, well, dull. There are silences where you only hear the hum of equipment and some random sounds. Some of the more interesting narratives have background music, so you add music, but the music makes the speech hard to understand.

You turn down the music, but now it sounds like someone playing a radio in the background. What the pros do that you’re not doing is that they “duck” the background music. Whenever there is speech, the level of the music is lowered automatically so that both the speech and the music can be at the maximum level.

“Ducking” requires a side chain, something that is not available in Audacity® 1.2. In order to perform a duck, we will revisit our old friend the compressor; only this time, instead of the track compressing itself, we will apply a different track, the speech track, to the level detector. When speech is present, it will knock down the audio that is passing through the amplifier.

To get started, record and process your audio track to its final version and save it. It can be in stereo. Do the same with the narrative track. If you have a project where synchronization is important, you can work with audio and narrative at the same time.

Audacity® 1.3 is set up so that the control track must be placed immediately below the track to be controlled. Since you will be ducking the “background”, you will place it on top. Next, you will place the narrative track immediately below this track. Now, select the entire background track (or the portion that you want to duck). In the Effect menu, look for “Auto Duck…” and select it.

You will see the window in Figure 1. This window is showing you what will happen to the background when the narrative track reaches the Threshold level. The default settings work well, but a 12dB drop is a little extreme for my taste. Figure 2 shows the result of using the default settings on typical music and voice files. You will want to play around with the settings until you get just the effect that you want.

What can you do with ducks?

The background doesn’t have to be music. In fact, you can create some very realistic “on-site” narratives using local sounds. For example, if you’re a rail excursion fan, you might want to record some loud, close-up train engine sounds as a background. Then you can “shout” your narrative (recorded separately).

When combined, you will capture the excitement of the moment as your narrative will appear to be forced over the very loud ambient sounds, yet every word will be clear. Perhaps you’ve persuaded a veteran to recount some of his more harrowing combat experiences. Imagine how much more compelling the story will be with the sound of artillery and shouts “interrupting” the narrative. The story of how your parents met can be that much more romantic if you include appropriate backgrounds such as period dance music, restaurant sounds, etc.

If you want to create excitement as in a TV commercial, then you want loud! Back the breathless narrative with some pumping music. Drop the music level just enough to get the voice in and set the slopes of the Ducker very steep so that individual beats pop up in every little hole of the narrative. Conversely, if you’re doing a scholarly lecture, then you will want to drop the music a lot and very gently (long slopes).

No one says that the control track has to be a narrative. There are a lot of creative effects possible when both tracks are music. Many of the hard driving pop hit tunes are, in fact, mixed this way. Typically, you would want to use one or more rhythm tracks as the control track. Alternately, you can use the solo or melody track to knock down the accompaniment. You might also use a non-musical track, since you don’t have to include the audio from the track in the mix.

“Hollywood” used to use these techniques a lot, but lately, with the “reality” movement and the wireless microphone, dialog is once again becoming difficult to understand in a noisy background. If not for the technology of captioning, much dialog would again be lost. I’m not a big fan of wireless microphones in other than a live setting. It’s much easier to understand someone who’s standing next to you than it is to understand someone in a TV mix. I still prefer the artificial reality of the ducker.

Stephen Wise has been designing electronic musical instruments since 1975. Steve specializes in realistic recreations of traditional instruments. He became interested in the field after hearing Walter/Wendy Carlos’ “Switched On Bach” and upon being introduced to the Allen Digital Computer Organ, the world’s first all digital musical instrument. Steve is currently designing instruments for Schulmerich Bells, maker of handbells, electronic carillons, and the breakout MelodyWave® instrument

Sound engineer Joe Zook has recorded or mixed projects for Modest Mouse, Katy Perry, and Dashboard Confessional.

This post first appeared in the Disc Makers blog in a longer form. 

I caught up with two top studio engineers, Joe Zook and Rich Travali, and asked them to share their opinions on how loud is too loud in the control room, and what effects high volume monitoring can have on your ability to accurately hear a mix.
 
What do you do when you find yourself in a situation where the client wants to listen to the mix at a very high level?

Joe: A long time ago I was assisting a very famous producer that would listen at probably 110db all day long in a very small control room. I put ear plugs in and he saw me doing it and asked me: “What are those for?” I said to protect my ears and he said: “It’s not going to do any damage. It sounds amazing. The frequencies are all even.” I kept my earplugs in despite his frequent head shaking. These days, I throw earplugs in all the time if someone wants to play at uncomfortable levels for too long. I don’t want to tell someone to turn it down because people have their own preferences and I respect that, just as I’d hope they respect that I put plugs in or leave the room before my ears start to bleed.

Sound engineer Rich Travali has recorded or mixed projects for Nelly, Jennifer Hudson, and Gwen Stefani.

Rich: Some of the younger “hot shot” producers that I’ve worked with would never entertain mixing at moderate levels. For many of them, they feel like they need to hear it like they’re “in the club.” Thankfully, I don’t find myself in that situation very often now for two reasons: one is that I mix predominantly at my own facility unattended by clients, and also that over the years, many of my clients have become more sophisticated and understand the downside of loud monitoring.

What happens to a person’s ears during prolonged listening to high levels in the studio?

Joe: In my experience three things happen. First, everything seems to sound amazing at high levels. Then, all of a sudden the mix seems to sound dark. So you brighten it up and turn it down and continue working. Then, everything suddenly starts to sound really bright and painful, even at low levels. The next day you listen to it and realize that all of the levels are off. The bass and kick are too quiet, it’s too dark, and the highs and lows aren’t right. You end up with a mix that’s mostly dull and somewhat lifeless because you were listening too loud.

Rich: When I’m working unattended, I like to fill the room with sound, but not “over monitor,” so the room folds up, and your ears soon follow. Obviously, the louder you listen, the more the room’s acoustic imperfections will affect your judgment. One thing I’ve learned to do is that if I’m not sure about a level or EQ on something in a mix, I turn the monitor level down, not up, to make the decision. Also, I like to take breaks, frequently, if necessary. I find that the monitor volume can easily creep up on you if you’re having trouble getting the mix to do what you want it to do. Taking a little ear break and clearing your head can help to keep that in check.

Do you have a personal rule of thumb for both volume (how loud in dBs) and length of time you normally will work in a single session?

Joe: In my experience, most of a 6 to 8 hour day with music playing should be at around 85dB SPL to get the best results. If you mix too loud, or too long, I believe the mix suffers. The good news is that good mixing results just happen to coincide with taking good care of your hearing.

Do you use ear plugs in situations where the volume level might be damaging to your hearing?

Joe: Yes, I have fitted ear plugs that are “flat” and take everything down 20db. I love those and wear them a lot just because they are more comfortable and I don’t enjoy loud environments outside the studio. Actually, I never look at it as protecting my hearing so much as just being comfortable. I hate the feeling of ear fatigue and pain.

Rich: When I can’t avoid a situation when the monitor level is crazy, I wear ear plugs. They are life savers, whether I wear my [custom-fit] flat attenuating plugs which I got at the NY Eye and Ear Infirmary, or the foam ones from the drug store which are cheap and effective. The obvious downside is that it’s harder to communicate instantly with the client (even though they are already shouting in your ear over the music). I really prefer to just turn it down and listen naturally.

This post, by Keith Hatschek, first appeared in the Disc Makers blog. Hatschek has been a musician, educator, recording engineer, producer and marketing executive. He is the author of  The Golden Moment: Recording Secrets from the Pros and How to Get a Job in the Music Industry. Hatschek currently teaches Music Management at the University of the Pacific.

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote numerous hits for Elvis Presley and others, but, mainly they wrote songs that they liked, first and foremost.

"Gear Guy Chris," who writes about instruments and gear, was a roving reporter at the recent NARM convention.

Part II of my NARM 2010 Convention coverage brought the distinct honor and pleasure of a sit down chat with legendary songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. They were in Chicago being honored with the NARM Outstanding Achievement Award For A Lifetime Of Musical Collaboration, which they can add to their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame, and a litany of awards amassed over their 60 year partnership – that’s right 6 – 0!

The Leiber & Stoller songbook contains tunes that defined a generation and arguably lit the fuse on a new genre of music that morphed its way from American rhythm and blues into what kids in the 1950’s called, “rock and roll.” 

There are the iconic hits such as “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Stand By Me”, and hundreds of others covered by just about everyone: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Sinatra, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix…talk about a résumé!
 
Gear Guy Chris: Congratulations on your NARM award and happy 60th anniversary.

Mike Stoller: Thank you.

GGC: The MA50 web site is a forum for folks getting into or returning to music later in life; do you have any songwriting advice for that audience?

MS: Listen to our songs, buy them, and pay for them {laughter}.

Jerry Leiber: Listen to the music that’s caught your attention most of all, and listen to as much as you can, over and over again, especially the hits. Because every hit has something positive about it.

GGC: What was a typical songwriting session like back in the day?

MS: I would be at the piano just doing stuff, and Jerry would pace around, and he would shout out phrases, lines, words, and if something that came together sounded good – then OK, there’s an idea.

JL: Now let’s work on it from there.

MS: And we both smoked, incessantly in those days. I haven’t smoked in forty years.

JL: We only look this way due to the smokes; we’re really only twelve years old each {laughter}.

GGC: So would you say there’s a Leiber and Stoller songwriting formula?

MS: I think the formula, if there is one, is that we wrote to please and impress ourselves first and foremost.

GGC: There’s the story in your book where Elvis’s music publisher barricaded you in your hotel room and wouldn’t leave until you guys wrote him some songs – so you cranked out four in one day, including “Jailhouse Rock.” Any other examples of that type of lightning in a bottle moment?

JL: “Kansas City,” that one came quick.

CCG: That’s back in 1952 if I’m correct.

MS: You are correct.

GGC: And how about the flip side – where there was more of a struggle?

JL: We spent a lot of extra time on “Is That All There Is?” {A huge hit for Peggy Lee in 1969}.

MS: As a matter of fact, the spoken word parts were finished first, and the artist we were demonstrating for at that time was the British singer-actress Georgia Brown, who liked it but she needed something else. We needed a chorus, so I went home and the next day I called Jerry and excitedly said I’ve got the music, I know it’s the right tune.  Jerry said I’ve got the words, let me show you…and when we got together and sat down, then finally…{gestures hands together, fingers interlocking}.

CCG: It fit like a glove.

MS: Yeah, it was unbelievable. That never happens.

JL: And it never happened again!

MS: That’s for sure.

CCG: How about songwriters you admire or a song you wish you had written?

MS: Oh, there are a lot of them. ”Where or When,” Rodgers and Hart –”Day and Night,” Cole Porter.

CCG: And more contemporary?

JL: Some of the Beatles stuff, oh yeah, and Randy Newman.

CCG: Your book comes out in paperback soon; what can people expect?

MS: We’ll, we’re pleased with it. It’s about us, the songs we wrote and who we wrote for, and other things that are more personal and less about our work, bur mostly about our work.

And as not to forget that this is a ‘Gear Guy’ post after all, I followed up with Mr. Stoller via email about the keyboards that created the magic. He wrote:

 “Back in the day, I used to have an ancient pre-pre-pre-owned upright piano. I have no idea what make. From 1957 to 1967 I had a new Baldwin and then I got a 6′6″ 1902 Steinway with an incredible bass. It’s now in my living room along with an 1895 Steinway. I rarely touch them – my wife uses them. However, my wife bought me a Yamaha grand, which I have in my workroom. It’s a terrific piano, but I tend to write on an old Yamaha PF/10 with earphones. I’m very private when I write, even if I’m all alone.”
 
Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography is out now in paperback. It’s a quick paced, back and forth conversational romp through the lives and careers of this legendary American songwriting team. It’s a terrific read and a definite ‘Gear Guy’ pick of the month, as it reveals the stories behind the men and the classic songs they wrote together as one of the most iconic songwriting duos in Rock and Roll history.

“Gear Guy Chris,” aka Chris Grova has been providing shelter, love, and a good home to wayward guitars, amps, effects pedals, and other assorted musical gizmos for over 30 years. Luckily, his wife and neighbors don’t seem to mind.

Stephen Wise is your guide to home recording.

Have you ever wished that you could listen to your collection of vinyl records on your mp3 player or PC?

Some people simply purchase the current digital versions of these albums. Reasons that you might not want to do this include:

- Cost. It could cost a lot of money to “repurchase” your collection.
- Availability.  Has anyone re-issued your high school glee club’s 1970 Spring Concert?
- Aesthetics. The original masters have been re-mixed to compete against the “pumped up” sounds of today (see “It’s Not That You’re Older…”).

Great, but I’m an engineer by trade, so here’s the flip side: Converting your vinyl will take a lot of time and a lot of effort. If you have the time, it could be a fun hobby given that you have a lot of control over the result. If you’re busy, then you will probably want to limit yourself to records that have special significance to you.

The set-up
The no-brainer way to “spin the vinyl” is with a “USB Turntable.” You will have to purchase one of these units. The advantage of the USB turntable is that you just plug it into your PC and you’re set! When you’re done, you just unplug it and put it away. Your vinyl is converted directly to digital with no fuss. You could also use your old turntable, but there are many pitfalls.

If you haven’t been using the turntable, it may need a lot of maintenance. The belt may need replacing, the bearings cleaned and lubricated, and the cartridge replaced (cartridges age). You must have a phono preamp and you will have to plug into the “AUX” input of your Sound Card. Aside from the messy set-up, the result will probably be less than satisfactory. After all of these years,though, Radio Shack still sells a phono preamp that you can use with a conventional turntable.

Recording
It’s probably easiest just to play an entire side into Audacity® and to sort it out later, unless you want only a few cuts. Follow the steps outlined in my earlier posts on Sound Cards and setting up Audacity®. Once you’ve collected some “sides”, you can either split them into separate tracks or you can merge two sides for a complete album. Unless you create separate tracks, though, you won’t be able to display song details on your mp3 player. More sophisticated studio software can automatically split a file into tracks. Audacity® cannot.

Processing
You might just want to leave the recordings “as is.” I prefer “as is” when a special instrument is involved and I don’t want to change the character in any way. Otherwise, we’re spoiled by “digital quiet.” If it’s just about the music, then I might want to clean it up. You can do hand editing, and that may be the only option for some problems, but you will quickly tire of it. Audacity® has some automatic tools such as “Click Removal….” and “Noise Removal…” [Figure 1]. Experiment with them and see if you like the results. I’m not entirely happy with Click Removal, but Noise Removal is good for eliminating surface noise. Just sample the noise between tracks.

Making the mp3
When saving your results as mp3 (or flac if your particular, or maybe ogg vorbis), be sure that your player can handle the format. The instruction manual might tell you, but they’re sometimes wrong. You can always try something to see if it works. PCs and Macs can play any format if you install the required codec. Audacity® “Preferences” allows you to change the default settings Figure 2). Your player may not handle all of the available bit rates. When you save for the first time, a tag editor will pop up (you can also edit tags under the “Project” “Edit ID3 Tags…” menu). This “box” is where you fill in the information that will be displayed in your player window. Fill some stuff in. You will eventually become familiar with what looks best on your player. For additional information, see my post on formats.

Copyrights
Although the record companies would love for you to re-purchase you’re entire collection, the courts have viewed it as unrealistic. You still may not, however, make copies for friends. It’s also considered a violation to digitize your albums, then to sell or donate the originals. When you sell, donate, or even destroy the originals, you give up your rights to the content. The jury is literally still out, though. On one hand, it’s maintained that when you purchase a copy, you may have that one copy installed on one player at a time. The record companies would like to see you buy one copy on CD, one copy for the mp3 player, one copy for the laptop, one copy for streaming, etc. Remember though, that when you release a recording of your own work, you don’t want everyone listening to it for free if that’s how you’re making a living.

In upcoming blogs, I will discuss additional techniques and processes that you may also find useful in improving your old vinyls.

Stephen Wise has been designing electronic musical instruments since 1975. Steve specializes in realistic recreations of traditional instruments. He became interested in the field after hearing Walter/Wendy Carlos’ “Switched On Bach” and upon being introduced to the Allen Digital Computer Organ, the world’s first all digital musical instrument. Steve is currently designing instruments for Schulmerich Bells, maker of handbells, electronic carillons, and the breakout MelodyWave® instrument.

Apple's GarageBand software can be used by non-musicians to put their ideas to music.

This post first appeared in the Disc Makers blog in a longer form.

GarageBand is a music creation software application that is part of Apple’s iLife suite and ships on all new Macintosh computers. For this column, I jumped into learning how well GarageBand might work as a musical sketchpad to rough out a basic song demo. I enlisted the help of two friends, vocalist Josh Washington and songwriter/percussionist Dan Faughnder, for the home sessions.

In the process, we recorded live vocals and electric guitar to go along with the software-based instruments and loops found in the program’s library. We wondered just how good a song demo could be created in a couple of hours by GarageBand rookies.

After two short sessions totaling about three and a half hours, we had a complete song (named “Springtime Blues,” a whimsical reference to the seasonal allergies that Josh had been suffering from on the day of our vocal session).

Springtime Blues Instrumental

Springtime Blues Final Mix

The current version of GarageBand offers a wide range of instruments and features that make it a good choice for someone just getting started creating music. Using the library of loops, even non-musicians can quickly create new song ideas.

Since we didn’t have a USB keyboard at the time we were doing the sessions, we found it easier to use the Piano Roll editor to create various instrumental parts. For anyone with basic keyboard proficiency, an inexpensive USB Keyboard would make creating parts even faster.

Did I forget to mention GarageBand comes free on any new Mac? (PC users, sorry to report that there isn’t a PC-version of the program available.) GarageBand’s effects, automation, editing and live recording capabilities elevate the program to the point where it can be useful for creating song demos, certainly at a quality suitable to share with other musicians, for learning arrangements, sending to the Copyright office to register a sound recording, or just for fun. Apple also offers five different extensive sample libraries ($99 each) with even more instruments, loops, background vocalists and a wealth of real instruments to choose from.

Sound quality
Listening back to our mix, I noticed that the overall sound quality of the drum loop lacked the texture and spontaneity that a live drummer adds to any recording. However, for a song demo, if we would have spent a bit more time programming drum parts rather than relying on a two-bar loop repeating throughout with a few overdubbed cymbals, we could have created a more nuanced drum part in GarageBand.

How good your GarageBand song demos sounds all comes down to the amount of time a person is willing to invest in programming the nuanced fine points that help any track sparkle. Likewise, the tonal colors and shadings available using the software instruments were pretty impressive, but a talented live musician is often able to create and add texture and personality to a song arrangement in ways that a programmed part seldom equals in my experience.

When I asked Dan to share his thoughts, he agreed that it certainly is possible for a songwriter to make a serviceable demo using GarageBand. However, he also felt that, “In the end, it seems as though GarageBand’s attempts to simplify so many functions ended up making things a bit more difficult. For instance, although there is a track compressor available, there is no metering to see how much the compressor is affecting particular track. The guitar amp modeling in GarageBand was fun to play with, but hard to customize in the time I spent with it. It seems we ran into some of the limits that the program has doing this project.”

DIY tools
From my perspective, I believe that GarageBand offers plenty of power and flexibility to get a songwriter started with learning how to make DIY song demos at home, with the addition of an audio interface such as the X2u. We only scratched the surface of what this free program is capable of in the few hours we invested to create a quick song demo. However, Dan’s comments about the greatly simplified features found in GarageBand are true.

If you start out on GarageBand with its very simple learning curve, you may eventually consider moving up to Apple’s Logic Express (street price $165- $199), a program that has a more comprehensive approach to the art and science of sound recording, and a much more fully featured set of tools, plug-ins and effects. The good news is that the feel and basic layout from GarageBand is instantly transferable into Logic, so you’ll likely be creating and mixing your tunes in Logic Express in no time at all.

[Ed. Note: For those who want more detail about the nuts and bolts of how "Springtime Blues" was created, read on...]

First, Dan opened a new project, gave it a name, and selected “New Track” from the Track menu. A pop up window appeared with three choices: A) Software Instrument, which draws on the library of available GarageBand instruments playable by a USB or onscreen keyboard; B) Real Instrument, which is any instrument or voice you choose to perform live into GarageBand; and C) Electric Guitar, which allows you to play your guitar into the program using the amp and stomp box combinations found in GarageBand. We decided our test drive would utilize all three methods of adding tracks to compare the various methods to create a song demo using GarageBand 5.1.
 
GarageBand’s Loop Browser has hundreds of loops in almost any style of music you can imagine. Guitar Loops are currently displayed on the right side of the screen. After checking out the various guitar, drum, and keyboard sounds available in the software library we started out by creating an acoustic guitar track using a pattern and sound from the Loop Browser library called “Classic Rock Steel 02.” This two-bar loop is a short guitar pattern with a descending line.

The range of choices in the Loop Browser is very broad, and one interesting feature is that you can combine an instrument, genre, and mood, and then GarageBand will find and display the loops that fit your criteria. We tried “guitar/metal/intense,” and “piano/country/cheerful” and found the results pretty accurate in most cases.

You’ll also note that some loops have a green icon showing a note next to them, while other have a blue icon with a waveform next to them. The green icons represent software instruments found in the library, which include MIDI data so that you can readily change the pitch, duration, velocity, etc., for any note. The blue icon denotes a real instrument recorded as a digital audio file that can be edited, but not to the same extent as a software instrument with its editable MIDI data.

What the colors mean
As we built our tracks for this song, GarageBand automatically differentiated the different types of audio files use for each new track: green for software instruments, blue for real instruments, and purple for recorded instruments including any electric guitar or bass you play live into a song.
 
After experimenting with the acoustic guitar loop we started with, we decided to scrap the loop and just build a part from scratch using the acoustic guitar sound we liked in the Piano Roll editor. Creating and copying note patterns in GarageBand is easy to do. After creating the acoustic guitar part in the key of F, which started with a descending pattern similar to the one in the loop we had experimented with, Dan highlighted all the notes from the first two bars, copied and pasted the pattern into a new region, and then dragged the note pattern he had just pasted up to the correct notes to fit the B-flat chord for bars five and six.

Next, he highlighted those notes, again copied and pasted into a new two-bar region, then dragged that pattern up to a C-7 chord for bar nine, then back down to B-flat for bar ten, finally returning to F for the final two bars of the first verse. We now had six two-bar sections that made up the verse. He played it back to confirm we had a usable guitar part. To make copying the verse guitar part easier, Dan then used the “Join” command from the Edit menu after selecting all six regions to convert them into one 12-bar region.

After finishing up the guitar part for the first verse, we decided to add a basic drum part and chose to make the song demo four verses long, a total of 48 measures. For the drums, we went back to the Loop Browser and chose a simple rock loop named “Live Edgy Drums 12” in 4/4 meter. We proceeded to extend the loop out for 48 bars to make a four-verse song. Dan then copied the 12-bar guitar part three times by grabbing the edge of a region and dragging it until it looped three times before we moved on to the bass part.

As we checked out various bass sounds, we decided on a stand up bass software instrument named “Round Latin Bass 04.” Dan and I traded places and I proceeded to use the same method to program the bass part in the Piano Roll editor: “Command + Click” on the note value I wanted, then extending the right edge of the note value for as many beats as a I wanted a bass note to sustain. We both found that while using the Piano Roll editor to create instrumental parts, we would sometimes have to adjust the velocity setting for a preset instrument.

For instance, on the software instrument stand up bass we were using, the velocity had to be increased to get the nice attack a bass player can create when she/he really pulls on a string. And by varying the velocity a tad between notes, a little more texture results in the overall bass pattern. It took about fifteen minutes to create the bass part, once again, copying and pasting the basic note patterns in two-bar regions. I also added a chromatic walk up to the C-7 chord in bar nine. Then, as we had with the acoustic guitar, we joined the six two-bar regions into one verse-long region. Finally, we dragged the edge of the joined 12-bar region until it looped three times, giving us the completed bass part.

Volume control
At this point we played around with the track volumes, which are controlled by small horizontal faders on each track. Adjacent to the track volume, are buttons allowing you to engage Record, Mute, Solo, or Lock each track, along with an Automation control which allows you to program changes in volume, such as fades. We boosted the volume of the string bass and decided to add an electric piano, which took about fifteen minutes to program in the Piano Roll edit window once we had selected a software instrument sound we liked.

As we played back the whole track, we realized a human drummer would hit a few crash or ride cymbals to accent chord changes and such, so we added another drum track, which would only be used to add cymbals. Dan clicked around the vertical keyboard in the Piano roll editor until he came up with crash and ride cymbals, hit the record button on the new track, and then added cymbal crashes, along with a nice ride cymbal accent in the third verse that would become an instrumental verse.

He missed two cymbal hits along the way, and rather than re recording them, we located each mistake, and repositioned the crash right on the beat using the mouse. We were ready to wrap up our first session, but realized a normal band would hit a final F chord together and let it ring out for the end of the song. Dan added a one-measure region and programmed a final chord/beat for each instrument.
 
Adding live tracks
A few days later, vocalist and songwriter Josh Washington dropped by to add a vocal part. Although the MacBook we were using has an internal mic, we decided to use a better quality vocal mic and at the same time test out the Shure X2u USB to XLR computer recording interface. Plugging the mic into the XLR end and using the Shure-supplied USB cable, we were quickly up and running.

The Mac recognized the X2u almost immediately and asked permission to make it the Audio Input. We plugged a 1/8” headphone splitter into the headphone output on the X2u allowing both Josh and Dan to monitor the overdub on headphones. Next, Dan adjusted mic input level, overall volume and the mix between the backing track and the live vocal Josh was performing.

Josh was ready to improvise a blues lyric over the backing track, but Dan and I realized we had neglected to program a song count off. No problem. Dan moved all the backing tracks down exactly one measure, leaving a four beat gap before the song began. Lesson learned. Always program a measure or two of click track to use later in case you want to overdub any live performances.

Josh practiced his entrance a few times and when he could come in correctly we were ready to record. After three takes, we had a vocal everyone liked and Josh headed home. The final test would be to record a live electric guitar part for the third verse solo section using GarageBand’s amp and stomp box emulations.
 
I got out my Fender Tele-Coustic, which has an active preamp on board (I had experimented earlier with an older passive electric guitar and found the input level was too low to get a decent tone.) We used a regular guitar cable and put a 1/8” adapter on the end and plugged directly into the Mac’s audio input and turned the Tele-Coustic’s volume up all the way.

As I played, Dan started experimenting with the various amp and stomp box combinations found in GarageBand. The small LCD at the bottom of the page offers an option for an on board guitar tuner which we found was incredibly accurate. We settled on an amp-stomp box combination dubbed “Vibrato Blues,” a black face Fender-style amp with a distortion box and chorus pedal. I started out trying to add a lot of licks to the song, but after we had run it down a number times, realized that a simple retro swamp boogie part on just the instrumental verse seemed to fit best with the overall sound and feel of the demo.
 
After playing back all the parts, we decided to do add a few effects and then do our mix. For vocals, GarageBand offers a number of preset effects packages some of which are highly specialized (Helium Breath, Megaphone) to more traditional (Male Rock Vocal, Female Dance Vocal, etc.) We liked the “Male R’n’B Vocal” preset on Josh’s vocal. It uses a nice delay, a touch of compression and some reverb, each of which can be further adjusted very easily. We added some reverb to the drums and acoustic guitar and boosted with the amp emulator’s vibrato in addition to the chorus for and even swampier sound. I also decided to use the Track Automation, a really nice feature to remove one glissando I threw into the solo, which didn’t really fit after a number of listens.
 
It’s easy to automate fades or pans on an individual track in GarageBand to fine tune your mix. With track automation, I also faded the last notes of the solo so that they didn’t conflict with the last verse vocal entry. (You can also automate Pans, which can be a cool effect.) As the mix was getting a little busy, we panned the electric piano and acoustic guitar to opposite sides to open things up a bit.

The last step was to tweak levels a bit more, boosting up the bass and automating the ride cymbal during the solo. Last, I exported the mix to iTunes using the “Share” pull down menu so I could burn the song to CD, email it to friends or include it in an iTunes playlist.

This post, by Keith Hatschek, first appeared in the Disc Makers blog in a longer form. Hatschek has been a musician, educator, recording engineer, producer and marketing executive. He is the author of  The Golden Moment: Recording Secrets from the Pros and How to Get a Job in the Music Industry. Hatschek currently teaches Music Management at the University of the Pacific.

Keith Hatschek talks to Paul Butler of "Band of Bees" about how the band records using vintage gear to achieve its vintage sound.

This post first appeared in the Disc Makers blog in a longer form.

While the revolution in recording technology centers on affordable digital audio workstations, the affection for the old analog traditions and sounds is more than just nostalgia. To that end, Britain’s six-piece “Band of Bees” is working hard to recapture some of the vintage sounds of legendary artists from the ‘60s and ‘70s like the Beatles, Buffalo Springfield, and the Young Rascals in their recordings.

To create the celebrated sounds from past eras takes more than modern simulators – it requires an esoteric mix of current and vintage gear, and the Bees’ arsenal is mostly made up of co-founder Paul Butler’s collection. Butler, a self-declared student of vintage production technique and technology, emerged from the band’s newly-constructed studio, The Steamrooms, for this interview.

“Octopus” is the first album to be recorded at The Steamrooms, and is the band’s third release. It’s another entirely original mélange of hot grooves, solid vocal lines, and funky horns, with echoes of many classic pop productions simmering in the mix. [Listen to the cut "Got to Let Go" on Octopus.]

Butler has spent a lot of time studying old recordings, carefully analyzing how certain sounds were created. Here he describes the mics, console, reverbs, and echo used on “Octopus,” as well as the techniques used by the band to record the album.

You’ve recorded each of your three albums in completely different environments, from a garden shed, to Abbey Road, and now your own studio. Could you talk about the recording journey you’ve made over the last four years?

I’ve always admired the sound of older productions, not only do they capture the energy better, but they have a certain chunky sound I love.

For the first album (2002’s Sunshine Hit Me), it was very hard work to get the mix to sound right, to get a vintage sound, so we had to rely on a lot of outboard gear. To add to that, while recording the album, our monitor speakers broke, so we had to wait while they were repaired. As we struggled with the mixes for the album, I complained that we ‘should have just gone on to Abbey Road Studio 2.’

As it goes, the album was nominated for a Mercury Prize [Ed Note: the UK’s most prestigious annual music award] and before I knew it, we were signed to EMI. It wasn’t long after that my wishful thinking became reality and we were booked into Abbey Road Studio 2 for six weeks to record our follow up album, 2004’s Free the Bees.

Was working at Abbey Road as good as you imagined?

Yes. We certainly used the opportunity to use all the old kit that was available. For instance, we always admired the sound of the big old Fairchild 660 limiters, and had the chance to use them. We also used the TG 12413 stereo limiter, sort of an answer to the tube Fairchild, a solid state version developed by EMI labs. The sound of these is really magic, though a bit violent in how they respond.

We were also using the actual TG console, [Ed Note: The EMI TG consoles were designed by the engineers at Abbey Road and built by EMI’s own laboratory in Hayes. The Beatles recorded the Abbey Road album using a TG.]

Before we started the interview, you mentioned that you have been avidly shopping on eBay to continue adding to the Steamrooms’ complement of vintage gear.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a habit. I’m continuously checking what old kit is available online and adding bits and pieces as we go.

Is that how you acquired your console?

No, we actually got it through our friends that run a vintage equipment firm in London called Funky Junk. Our console is an SBC (Swedish Broadcast Company) desk designed for Swedish radio with no EQ and just a bass roll-off control, and a cut or boost switch at 60 Hz and 10K for each module. There was a midrange control on only one channel. It also came with a brick wall frequency limiter that’s quite useful for certain vocal effects or on drums. Anyway, the Neve restoration engineer, a fellow named Blake Devitt, vouched that the console had very good preamps, with lots of headroom and lovely distortion, so that with a couple of external compressors, we would be set to record the way we envisioned here at the Steamrooms.

Blake did a total restoration that took nearly eight months, as it had been built with internal DC wiring for the Swedish studio. Removing all that DC wiring from the console resulted in two dustbin loads of parts removed. He also added direct outs on every channel. Since the original design was for radio, there were many more inputs than outputs. One more point about the console is that all the controls are labeled in Swedish!

It seems that Octopus really has a very human, organic live feel to it, just a bit more than the previous albums. How do you go about building your tracks?

On our debut album, it was pretty much me just laying up all the parts in my shed, and adding in other parts as needed. For Free the Bees, the songs were ready to go, so we just went in and started playing through them at Abbey Road. For the new album, we set out to record as many parts simultaneously live as possible. For many of the songs, we’d lay down bass, drums, rhythm guitar and Hammond in one pass and then move on to some vocal overdubs.

We tend to start working from grooves, not complete songs. For instance, on “Got To Let Go,” we had that groove for awhile and the song came a bit later. “Listening Man” came together on our third try to write something over the groove we had for it. “Left Foot Stepdown” started the same way, not as a song per se, but as a groove we loved to play. We all share a real love of dance music, so once we get a groove that works well, we find a way to build up from there. We got most of our grooves out of our system on this last album, so now we’re working on some ideas for the next record that will be a bit more folksy.

It seems the reverb sounds you use, on guitars and on some vocals, really calls up the sound of the great ‘60s productions. For instance, the short guitar solo on “Love In The Harbour,” what do you use to get that sound? Was it a spring reverb?

Yeah, I like the sound of spring reverbs. I’ll use an AKG BX-15 on vocals and distant percussion. It’s a bit clean for my liking, but it has a natural sound and a minimum of circuitry. We also have an EMT 262 Gold Foil Plate that was used on vocals. I’m really into carefully analyzing the old tunes and the reverb sounds they used. In those days the reverb really got out of the way of the track, so I now have two separate racks of older reverbs. I prefer units with smaller trays (for the springs).

For guitars, I’ll use a Roland Space Echo (SE-201 or 301), Roland 555 (Chorus Echo) and I have a 1959 Fender stand-alone reverb unit that I’ll use in the studio to get that old surf sound. I also picked up a Fairchild Reverbertron II about a year ago on eBay.

The bass sound on Octopus is full and deep; was that done with a DI?

That’s interesting, because I often struggle to get a good bass sound. I feel like bass frequencies often swamp everything in the mix. My favorite bass sounds are on soundtrack albums by Lalo Schifrin and anything that came out of Studio 1 in Jamaica, that bass sounds beautiful.

I decided to take the bass and go straight into the Swedish desk, and push up the input and keep phase testing it as we recorded.

The horns on Octopus have a sort of funky Jamaican sound to them. How did you get that sound?

That’s mostly Tim Parkin and myself. We would do two, three, or four takes, starting with trumpet and sax. Then I’d often add two tenor parts, bouncing them down as we go. I like the Neumann-Gefell UM-57 for the horns, it’s really magic on brass. I had gotten a Coles 4038 for brass, but it took too much edge out for my ear. I like to have some edge on the horns. Where you place the mic in the room makes a big difference in the sound, so we experiment a bit with that. For brass, I try to get a sound like some of the Nigerian brass bands. You hear some inconsistencies and some weird resonance, which I like.

Your vocal sound has its own signature, how much of that is your arrangements and how much is studio technique?

Some songs feature all of us singing together and some are all me. Aaron is featured on “Hot One,” whereas the “Ocularist” and “Better Days” feature the whole band singing. My favorite vocal mic is the UM-57, but I also use the Rode 2, which gives a classic, clean sound. We have a Neumann-Gefell CMV 563 valve mic, with the M-8 head, but I want to get the M-7 head on that one. I listen a lot to J.J. Cale’s album Troubadour as a reference for vocal sounds.

Actually we got one of my favorite mics in a roundabout way. We were doing a live appearance at a radio station in London, and as all of us squeezed into the booth the call went out to “go and find some more microphones.” After a few minutes someone came in with an RCA DX 77 ribbon mic in absolutely mint condition and he was chastised with the remark, “Is that all you could find?”

After our performance, I made an offer of 100 quid for the old mic and the guy said, “Yeah, sure.” This is a mic that was used on so many classic recordings, its sound is an influence on great music we all know. For instance, if you want to get the authentic James Brown squeal, the 77 is the mic you must shout into to get that sound.

A newer ribbon mic won’t do?

No. I’ll stick to the down and dirty. A new ribbon mic won’t produce that recognizable sound when you shout into it.

What about “Stand,” which has a very nice echo effect on the vocal?

We learned so much at Abbey Road about delay and flanging. It was a bit like going to school. That was an echo created by feeding the vocal into an Otari MX-5050 two track and using Vari-pitch to adjust the echo timing. We also have a late 50’s WEM Copycat, which has one head with a split right down the middle. So it gives a little “click” every time the signal passes over it. It also can produce amazing psychedelic feedback like Joe Meek used to get. We master to a Studer B-67 analog reel to reel and also use it as a main delay. Using a feed to a tape machine gives you so much control at the desk, as you feed the echo return back in. Of course, the master of delay is King Tubby, the Jamaican artist.

Do you also cut basic tracks to analog tape?

Yes, our main machine has been an Ampex MM-1200 2”, but I feel like I’ve lost 10-15 years off my life trying to keep it working. It could be that the transport goes, some transistors popping shut down the motors, or there was too much power applied. Finding replacement heads isn’t easy. I’ve just gone back to the Fostex D 2424, as tape is pretty expensive for certain projects. Still, there’s nothing quite like splicing a 2” master successfully, if you do it right.

This post, by Keith Hatschek, first appeared in a longer form in the Disc Makers blog. Hatschek has been a musician, educator, recording engineer, producer and marketing executive. He is the author of  The Golden Moment: Recording Secrets from the Pros and How to Get a Job in the Music Industry. Hatschek currently teaches Music Management at the University of the Pacific.

Stephen Wise is your guide to home recording.

In the following post, I will be discussing the creative uses of “Reverb.” Since Audacity® does not come with any reverb, you will have to download the LADSPA plug-ins. A hint: there are a lot of effects in this package and no way to manage them. Since the file names are similar to the screen names, the Effects can be made much more manageable by moving the ones that you don’t want from the “Audacity” “Plug-Ins” folder to some other folder outside of the Audacity folder. You can always move them back later.

Reverb can do much more than just “make it sound as if you’re in Nortre Dame Cathedral.” I got to know reverb pretty well after designing two reverb boxes for a former employer. A reverb unit or effect is just a large array of filters. You can exploit this filter array in various creative ways beyond the obvious. I will show you several that I use all of the time.

The LADSPA plug-ins have two reverbs: “GVerb” and “Plate Reverb.” Plate reverbs can be good for this application, but this one does not have all of the adjustments that you need. See what you can do with GVerb. It’s something that you have to get a feel for, but it helps if you know the wavelengths of various pitches. The web has many charts, but it’s simply 1/frequency. If you like these techniques, then you will want to collect reverb effects, since it’s not a “one size fits all” situation.

Z – Axis Manipulation
If you listen to a group of performers (un-amplified), you can tell which instruments are up front and which are in the rear, even with your eyes closed. You can do this because you’re not hearing just the sound of the instrument, but also all of the instrument sounds that are reflected off of floor, ceiling, walls, and other objects in the room. When the instrument is close, its presence overwhelms the reflections and you don’t notice them. When the instrument is far away, it no longer hides the reflected sounds. The trombones might be louder than anything, but you still know that they’re in the back. When you mix down multiple tracks, you pan them left or right, but you might also wish to consider placing them front and back. To move instruments to the rear, you add increasing amounts of reverb (known as the “wet” sound) to the track and you decrease the amount of the original “dry” sound.

Mixing
Reverb is a wonderful mixing aid. When instruments combine in a room, the effect is somewhat “spongy.” When you mix electrically, you’re just adding the numbers together. If you’re not convinced that there’s a difference, try this experiment: Take a dry instrument track and make a copy. Now use “Effect” “Invert” to create a “negative” of one of the tracks. Pan one track full left, the other full right and play them through the speakers. The sound will be a bit anemic, but it will still be there. Now mix the two tracks and listen again. You will hear…nothing at all! Many sound engineers “fix it” with EQ, but if you do it this way, the sound will be decidedly electronic. You can simulate “spongy” mixing by applying reverb to each track before you do any mixing. A short or “small room” reverb works well.

Re-voicing
Instruments can be “re-voiced” with reverb. Suppose that you have a nice acoustic guitar track, but after listening to the mix, you decide that the guitar needs to be a little more “chesty”. You can use the traditional technique of applying some bandpass filtering, but the result always sounds a little “electronic.” Real instruments aren’t simple filters. Real instruments are complex arrays of filters – like the reverb function! In order to re-voice instruments, you need a reverb that allows you to adjust length or delay time, level, and also pre-delay. We move into the realm of art at this point and I can’t give you specifics, but you want to adjust the parameters until you have the desired effect. A hint: When the delay lengths are multiples of the wavelengths of interest, you will notice some significant changes. The tweaking has to be rather precise.

You can also go in the opposite direction to “thin out” an instrument that’s too heavy. Tuned reverb can give you some really profound, fundamental bass effects for when you want bass at awesome levels.

Why it all works
Filters do two things: they select or reject certain frequencies and they shift the phase. Most of the filters in reverb units are designed not to introduce coloration, but they do shift the phase a lot. They are also tuned to some pretty low frequencies. What we are doing with the reverb is phase annihilation. If you’re a sci-fi fan, you know about matter and antimatter and the fun that you can have with it. Antiphase works the same way. Two identical signals in antiphase completely cancel out when added together. If not identical, the cancellation is only of the identical portions. If of some other but different phase, the cancellation is partial. Of course, if they are in-phase, then they get larger. The reverb thus filters through phase addition and cancellation. Since a reverb is a large bank of filters, the result is complex, as in the real world.

Stephen Wise has been designing electronic musical instruments since 1975. Steve specializes in realistic recreations of traditional instruments. He became interested in the field after hearing Walter/Wendy Carlos’ “Switched On Bach” and upon being introduced to the Allen Digital Computer Organ, the world’s first all digital musical instrument. Steve is currently designing instruments for Schulmerich Bells, maker of handbells, electronic carillons, and the breakout MelodyWave® instrument

"Gear Guy Chris" aka Chris Grova is a veteran collector of instruments, gear, and gizmos. He shares his knowledge about what to buy, or what to dream about buying.

NARM, the Nation Association of Recording Merchandisers, recently held its annual convention in Chicago where retailers, artists, labels, and various other music industry insiders met to exchange ideas and survey the landscape of today’s music industry, all while charting a course for its future. As part of the numerous sessions and presentations,  the opening day and a half served as a high-level primer for the music business: the Crash Course.

Presented in conjunction with the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), the presentation covered an assortment of topics — specific to artists (from newbie to established), record labels, tech players, and marketing companies. For this post, we’ll deviate from a traditional ‘Gear Guy’ discussion, and concentrate on the artist-centric content.

The Crash Course started with a state of the union of sorts detailing an overview of the current music marketplace. Not surprising, things aren’t exactly rosy in the physical retail world, with sales of music products declining since 1999. 

The old world paradigm of listening to radio and buying physical plastic product has been flipped on its head by the iPod, satellite radio, web radio, subscription services, digital downloads, and the like. Obviously the fragmentation makes it much more challenging for new bands and artists to rise above the din and get their music heard and bought.

Some interesting tidbits really drive home the point that (for better or worse) there’s A LOT of music out there. Are you an artist with a MySpace page? You’re not alone by any stretch. Estimates from 2008  indicate that more than 5 million (other recent sources say as many as 8 million!) artists or bands have an internet presence of some sort.

Of those millions, the number of artists selling over 10,000 albums in 2008 was less that 2,000 – so the figures speak to a success/obscurity ratio where only a very small percentage of acts make it to the top – or anywhere near. Looks like plenty of folks aren’t quitting their day jobs – myself included.      

Next up were some sobering tales of artist economics where the all too familiar tale of a gold record (500,000 units) selling act is deconstructed into head shaking detail. A $2.00 royalty for each unit sold nets a cool million dollars – not too bad, right? 

That is until you repay the recording advance, tour support, promotion, and videos costs, not to mention lawyers, managers, producers, and the like. It’s not surprising that the band/artists themselves have little to show for after all’s said and done. 

Even on a smaller scale (independent label) and with alternate revenue streams (ie,  merchandising, licensing, downloads, etc.), the forecast for a new, up and coming artist calls for a lot of hard work and a fair amount of luck, in addition to the raw talent – which there better be a ton of!

Some of the main ‘take aways’ from the Crash Course for any artist looking to make a living in the music biz (or at least give it a try) goes like this:

1. Write your own songs. Each song contains two copyrights:  the Musical Work (The Written Song) and the Sound Recording (The Recorded Performance). A songwriter gets what are referred to as mechanical royalties (also known as copyright royalties) whenever their song is performed by anyone, including themselves.
2. NEVER give away any publishing. Get a good lawyer, read the fine print – if you wrote the song, you should own it (or a major portion of it).
3. Familiarize yourself and register with performance rights organizations such as SoundExchange. This is a non-profit group that collects and distributes digital performance royalties (ie, satellite radio, internet radio, cable TV, and other ‘streaming’ sources) on behalf of artists.     

So, if you missed that window of opportunity to crisscross the country in the touring van in hopes of music stardom, it’s OK. You’re never too old to get a good solid understanding and feel for the inner-workings of the music business – thanks to the good folks at NARM. And if you work hard enough, you might just make a buck doing something you really love. 

Next time in Part II of the NARM convention wrap-up, a chat with songwriting legends Leiber and Stoller, who I had the privilege of meeting. Till then…

“Gear Guy Chris,” aka Chris Grova has been providing shelter, love, and a good home to wayward guitars, amps, effects pedals, and other assorted musical gizmos for over 30 years. Luckily, his wife and neighbors don’t seem to mind.

Stephen Wise is your guide to home recording.

Another workhorse module in the recording studio is the compressor. It can be the most essential tool or the worst evil incarnate, depending on your point of view. Debates over compression can take on a religious fervor.

“Purists” despise compressors and compression may be totally absent from classical and other acoustic recordings. Today’s pop music, on the other hand, employs multiple levels of compression. If it sounds incredibly loud, then it’s probably compressed.

The compressor has an extra level of complexity above that of the effects that we’ve used thus far. It’s a little harder to set up and sometimes you just can’t get it quite right. Compressors also introduce audible artifacts that the trained ear can identify. A compressor has two main components: a variable amplifier and a level detector.

Before compressors, humans did the compressing! You’ve probably done it yourself. You listen to some music. When you hit a passage that is a bit too loud, you turn down the volume. When the loud section has passed, you turn the volume back up again. A compressor does exactly the same thing – automatically! A compressor can also work quickly and tirelessly, never missing anything.

The Audacity® compressor can be found under the “Effect” menu. Select “Compressor…” A basic compressor has four controls that let you determine how the compressor will behave: Threshold, Compression Ratio, Attack Time, and Release Time. For reasons unknown, the basic Audacity® compressor is missing a release time setting – a rather unfortunate situation.

“Threshold” lets you set the loudness at which the compressor will start to turn down the volume. Compression Ratio tells the compressor how much you will be turning down the volume. A ration of 2:1 (two to one) means that the compressor will be turning the volume down to one half of what it should be. Some compressors will let you set the ratio all of the way to “infinity”. At this point, you have a device known as a “peak limiter.” Attack Time tells the compressor how quickly to turn down the volume. Attack Time is very important and usually takes some tweaking before you get a smooth transition. Release Time, if you have it, is usually set longer than Attack Time. You want the volume to come back up slowly in classic compression.

Now you have it. What can you do with it? Suppose that you have a recording that has occasional loud sections. If you set the volume to a comfortable level, then the loud sections really hurt or cause distortion. You can set the volume lower, but then the quiet sections are too quiet. If you’re listening in your car, then you can’t hear the quiet sections over the road noise. The compressor can fix it at the expense of giving up some of the natural dynamics of the music. Everything that you hear on the radio is compressed and peak limited to keep the sound from getting lost in the static and to keep you from moving on to a “clearer” station.

If you compress a track or a mix, then boost it up to to maximum level, it sounds louder! That’s why commercials sound so loud even though the stations insist that they’re not any louder than the programming. The speaking voice can be compressed a lot. When the parts that should be soft are loud too, it just sounds loud, plus, you can hear every word over the noises in the kitchen! The “Normalize” check box on the Audacity® compressor does it for you automatically. The compressor is the main weapon in the “loudness wars”.

You may have noticed that today’s music sounds a lot louder than your old albums from the ’60s and ’70s. In fact, the digital remixes of those old albums sound louder too. That’s because today, “louder” means “better.” If an mp3 can only hold so many bits, make them all loud ones! Compress each track, then compress the final mix – more than once if necessary!

Although I dislike this approach to remixing old albums (it changes the character in a fundamental way), I have no objection to using compression as a creative tool. It’s a part of today’s sound just as “slapback echo” was a part of the Rockabilly sound.

Compressors all introduce a “pumping effect” into the sound. “Pumping” is descriptive of the effect of the volume being turned up and down. Play some music while rapidly turning the volume control up and down and you will hear the effect. Normally, you want to hide pumping as much as possible, but it can also be used as a creative effect. As an example, if you set up the compressor just so, you can get everything to “pulsate” with the drum beats, adding extra “drive” to the sound.

Since I have completed this blog, Leah has inadvertently done me a great service by posting the article “It’s Not That You’re Older, the Music Really is Louder,” saving me a lot of wind. Here is another great link on the subject: “What Happened to Dynamic Range?”

Stephen Wise has been designing electronic musical instruments since 1975. Steve specializes in realistic recreations of traditional instruments. He became interested in the field after hearing Walter/Wendy Carlos’ “Switched On Bach” and upon being introduced to the Allen Digital Computer Organ, the world’s first all digital musical instrument. Steve is currently designing instruments for Schulmerich Bells, maker of handbells, electronic carillons, and the breakout MelodyWave® instrument.

Singer-songwriter Jonathan Butler may record one or two takes of a song for an album; others do several takes and combine them. Butler's sound engineer Paul Klingberg talks about his approach to recording Butler and others.

This post first appeared in a longer form in the Disc Makers blog.

In this post we take a look at the techniques used to create composite lead vocal tracks, referred to as “comping the lead vocal” by studio engineers. After a brief overview of the technique, we’ll speak with veteran engineer Paul Klingberg, who has recorded vocals with a wide range of artists including Earth, Wind & Fire, Jonathan Butler, Loreena McKennitt, Cheap Trick, Brian McKnight, The Simpsons, James Ingram and many others.

In an ideal scenario, you or your lead vocalist would nail the perfect studio performance of you new song in one continuous take.  However, once you put that vocal performance under the sonic microscope of the recording process, you’ll undoubtedly hear some elements of the lead vocal that could be improved. Maybe the phrasing is a bit rushed in one part, or a particularly long sustained note tends to lose pitch, or some other problem becomes apparent.

Rather than singing the track over and over from top to bottom, doing a number of solid takes of the song on separate tracks, then listening to and selecting the best parts of each take will eventually result in what will become a composite lead vocal track. When done correctly, this technique will give the illusion of a single, seamless performance when placed into the final mix of the song. Often the artist will also use the separate takes to experiment by slightly modifying their level of intensity, vocal placement, rhythms, etc.

Before you start recording
Before we get to the nitty-gritty of how to best put together comped vocal tracks, it’s important to note that the choice of vocal mic, mic preamp and recording set-up make a significant impact on the sound of your lead vocal tracks. As a general rule, large diaphragm condenser mics make excellent vocal mics, since they generally are more sensitive to the shadings and nuances that the human voice is capable of producing.

For the home studio, there are a number of excellent mics well suited to recording vocals in the under $500 price range. If you’re just starting out in home recording, you probably won’t be ready to invest in a separate mic preamp to enhance the sound of your vocal recordings. As your recording chops progress and your ears become more fine-tuned to the subtleties of recording, you’re likely going to want to invest in a high quality mic pre that will further enhance the warmth and richness of your vocal recordings.

It’s important to note that each specific mic and preamp will have its own sonic signature (or lack thereof) so when you’re ready to start shopping for either, it’s essential that you get yourself to a pro audio dealer and listen to the various models in your price range to see which ones best complement your voice. Many pro audio dealers will also let you try out a piece of gear at your home studio if you are a regular customer, which is the absolute best way to insure that any new gear will do what you expect it to at your own home studio.

Personally, I prefer to record vocals flat (meaning no EQ applied during recording) and with no compression or limiting during the tracking. If I want a brighter sound, I’ll try switching to a different mic which I know emphasizes the highs more than the first mic I tried. Once you have a sound, then it’s time to focus on helping guide the vocalist to getting that perfect take – compositely speaking, that is.

Many tracks end up being carved up down to the syllable or vowel level, which can be done quite readily using any of the popular digital recording programs available. How small you go depends on your level of attention, your patience, and what you hope to achieve with the finished track. However, it’s not uncommon for the lead vocal track of a pop song to include hundreds of sections, as well as a great deal of riding the gain of the vocal track (more on this in the next section.)

Sound engineer Paul Klingberg.

Vocal comping with Paul Klingberg
For many years now, Paul has been the go-to guy for the amazing vocal sound of Earth, Wind & Fire collectively, as well as solo albums by Maurice White and Philip Bailey. Among Paul’s latest projects was recording and mixing Jonathan Butler’s “So Strong,” released on Mack Avenue Records.

You’ve been at this for a while now. What’s changed about the way you approach vocals and composite tracking?
Essentially, vocal comping hasn’t really changed in practice since the ‘70s and ‘80s when we would use different tracks on a 16- or 24-track tape to record different sections of a vocal performance and then create a composite track, usually by bouncing the sections we wanted over to a new, final lead vocal track. In fact, back in the day, I had a friend of mine build me my own “comp box” which was essentially a switcher with two rows of eight buttons each and a cable harness to interface it with a studio patch bay. It had a fader right in the middle which allowed me to switch seamlessly between the vocal tracks using a little analog crossfade to smooth out the transition. That box made me a pretty popular engineer among studio vocalists at that time. I used it regularly on my early work with Earth, Wind & Fire.

The practice really isn’t any different today, except of course that with DAW’s like Pro Tools, Logic, etc., we have a graphical interface to see the waveforms as we edit and lots of crossfading options to arrive at a seamless vocal track. Although I primarily work in Pro Tools, it’s a good idea to develop a basic understanding of the various platforms so you can work with whatever [program] the artist is using on a particular record.

For instance, Jonathan Butler’s latest album was done primarily at his home studio and he works in Logic. Jonathan is a very talented singer, so he would sing it straight down, rarely doing more than two takes of any song. We’d just use the best portion of each take to make up the final vocal. With a group like Earth, Wind & Fire, on the other hand, with multiple takes, we’d end up with a big matrix of vocal performances in Pro Tools, allowing nearly endless possibilities for the final vocal track.

Personally, I’d rather not copy and paste the lead vocal track together from any number of earlier takes. Instead, what I prefer to do is record the best sections together onto a new master composite lead vocal track. The producer and I will listen to each section of the song and decide which of the multiple vocal takes offers the best performance. Today, most everyone is using some type of pitch correction software, so I assign that plug-in on each vocal track as an insert. As I get ready to record that section of the vocal to my newly created composite track, I can make whatever tuning adjustments might be needed.

For example, assume I have three complete takes of a lead vocal on three separate tracks, each one a little different. Working in the graphic mode of the pitch correction software, I’ll assign the output of each track to bus 1; then open up a fourth track to record all the sections I want to include in the final vocal recording. The input on this new fourth track will be bus 1’s output. This way, I’m really doing two things at once: I’m making the choices on which individual sections I want to use and I’m fine-tuning them with the pitch correction software. Once I have the sound just right, I’ll print it to the new track, then move on to the next section and repeat the process. This method really helps ensure proper intonation and better continuity, meaning the final composite sounds like a single performance.

When I’m done, I listen critically and confirm that the new lead vocal is the best composite performance given the performances available. That’s what it’s all about with regard to the process; I want to end up with one continuous track from top to bottom.

What pitch correction software do you prefer?
I’ve been using the Antares Auto Tune program for years. It comes in a number of different versions and is a very powerful and flexible solution to tuning problems.

What advice would you give to new artists or those new to recording at home doing vocals?
When I’m mixing an album for a new artist, I often find that there are not enough takes to get the job done. Of course, it depends on how savvy they are about how technology can help them capture a good vocal performance. When you are faced with a tough passage, be sure to do at least three or four takes and then assemble a comp of that section to see if it works as well as you want it.

Remember, more takes equals more options when it comes to creating the master composite vocal track. You can go overboard and have too many choices, but since you have the luxury of time when you’re working at home, do enough takes so you can try out your own composite and be confident it will work.

The other thing is that there is no substitute for working with an experienced audio engineer. Some people are willing to experiment and spend the many, many hours necessary to learn how to get good results recording at home. However, I’ve often been called in to mix an album and find that what has been recorded is just horrible. When your album is playing, no one knows how or where it was recorded, they only judge the recording by its overall quality.

Everything from the choice of the vocal mic and preamp to the space around the vocal (room ambience) becomes part of your sound. Unfortunately, often musicians may stumble trying to simultaneously perfect their music and learn the art of recording. In a case like that, consider working with an experienced engineer at your home studio, as it’s sure to result in a better sounding record. You really do want to end up with an album that will be competitive with the sound of what everyone else is listening to at any given time. Using the proper equipment and when you can, a professional studio, will make an audible difference to anyone listening to your record.

Back to vocal comping, what do you listen for when critiquing the master composite track you’ve just created?
It’s the subtle things that make a difference. I try to put myself in the shoes of a listener hearing the song for the very first time. Especially the dynamics, from loud to soft. And making sure there is midrange clarity so that every little nuance can be heard. I really perfected the techniques I use by working closely with Maurice White (of Earth, Wind & Fire). He would focus on the little trails, the endings of a word or a phrase and have me ride up the volume to wring every last bit of emotion out of the artist’s delivery. I may do it by bringing up the fader, or using some EQ to emphasize a particular frequency, or pump up the vocal with a compressor… whatever it takes to have exceptional clarity. Maurice taught me that really bringing out all these subtleties has an emotional consequence, it makes a real difference.

This post, by Keith Hatschek, first appeared in the Disc Makers blog. Hatschek has been a musician, educator, recording engineer, producer and marketing executive. He is the author of  The Golden Moment: Recording Secrets from the Pros and How to Get a Job in the Music Industry. Hatschek currently teaches Music Management at the University of the Pacific.