By Mark Marshall
Vocal sessions can be a some of the most challenging moments of making a record. Not because vocalists are difficult (we all know they are. Let's keep that to ourselves though), but because the human voice is affected greatly by environment and use.
Here are 11 tips to make your next session more consistent.
1. Speed Limit
We all love our coffee as a pick-me-upper. But what we might not realize is that caffeine dehydrates your vocal chords.
Dehydration is an enemy of vocalists. You should recommend every singer limits caffeine consumption either in soda, tea, energy drinks or coffee during tracking.
2. Boozehound
Alcohol also dehydrates the vocal chords.
Save the scotch for after the vocal tracking as a celebration. Whatever you think you gain in getting loose”, you lose in stability.
Alcohol also numbs the vocal chords. This can prevent you from knowing if you're doing damage. We all love a good party, but don't let it affect your performance.
3. H2-Woah”
Even if you're not drinking caffeine or alcohol, you still ned to keep drinking water.
Keep the hydration going. Always have extra bottles of water around or buy a Brita filter to clean tap water.
4. Voices Carry
I can go on about headphone mixes… Oh wait, I already did
It's vital that vocalists hear themselves very well. It's also really important the sound is flattering. This means adding reverb and compression (aka makeup).
After you get your levels set — which should be fast, as singers can be restless — put the makeup on fast.
5. Put Me In Coach
Everybody is budget-aware these days and for good reason. But, if you can spare a little extra bread, having a talented vocal coach there can really save you time and strain.
It has nothing to do with a vocal coach giving you tips on the style of singing. Nobody is trying to kill your mojo. It has everything to do with making sure the singers voice always stays in a safe place. The vocal takes will be more consistent and the singer won't wear out as fast.
Plus, if the vocalist is struggling, a vocal coach will know the dialogue to help out. They're not there as a dictator, simply as support for team artist.” I highly recommend this for less experienced singers on recording sessions.
6. Closing Time
Never book more than a 3-4 hour vocal session. Even 3-4 hours of singing is overkill. However, it's not likely in any session that the vocalist will be singing the full 3-4 hours. Unless they are struggling, in which case I suggest you check out tip #5 again.
Voices get tired. The more exhausted a singer gets, the more they strain. This could lead to improper singing and damage. Voices are sensitive and always being used for talking and yelling at the younger generation.
If you're overdubbing vocals as opposed to tracking live with a band, limit the session to one song a day. Split the vocal sessions up. Half of the day work on instrument overdubs or
editing. The other half, work on vocals. You're likely to get much better performances this way.
7. Wrap It Up
One can end up lost in a roundabout (who's been stuck in these while driving around Europe?)
Singers will keep saying, let's do it again.” They may plow over perfectly good takes.
Here's what I try to do: In the beginning I'll let them do 1-3 takes to get warmed up. After that, we listen after every take. This way they can keep dibs on what is working and if their mind is playing tricks on them.
It's important to prevent destructive cycles.
8. I Crossed Out The Options
Don't make a vocalist try different mics for an hour. You'll burn them out.
You need to be good enough at your job that you can narrow down the mics to audition to about 3. You're wasting valuable performance time. It's not going to matter if the 10th mic you tried blew the rest out of the water if you'll be capturing a strained performance.
Also, too much setup time can ice singers. You want things to flow and give them as little time to build up insecurities as possible.
9. Smokestack Lightening
I don't think I need to tell you how bad smoking is for anyone, let alone singers.
If you do smoke, don't think you can just quit a few days before a session and all will be good. Your voice will go through a change. My recommendation? Stop smoking. If not permanently, at least several weeks before tracking.
If you smoke recreational herbs (you know what I'm talking about Colorado), look into a vaporizer. Make sure to get a good vaporizer though. The cheap ones still burn a little. A good vaporizer is much kinder to your throat. Even with a vaporizer, I would recommend cleaning yourself up for sessions.
10. Cheat Sheet
Funny things happen on sessions. You can blank for no apparent reason.
You can prevent frustration by having a printed set of lyrics in front of the singer. That way, there is no guessing. Straight to the point.
12. Positive Vibrations
It seems really obvious, but refrain from negative comments.—
These 11 tips should greatly improve your next vocal session.
Showing posts with label sessions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sessions. Show all posts
Friday, 6 January 2017
Sunday, 21 August 2016
Andy Johns On The Secrets Behind The Led Zeppelin IV Sessions
Andy Johns, the younger brother of another famed engineer, Glyn Johns, began his career working as an assistant engineer with Eddie Kramer on Jimi Hendrix sessions. Andy also produced The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street and worked with Free, Blind Faith and Van Halen.
More recently he produced Chickenfoot with Sammy Hagar, Chad Smith and Joe Satriani. Andy was instrumental in shaping the sound of Led Zeppelin's seminal fourth album, including John's Bonham's ferocious drum sound on When The Levee Breaks.
Sadly, Johns passed away earlier this year, but in this 2009 interview (first published in Rhythm Magazine) he recalled the highs and lows of those sessions...
Where did you kick off the sessions for Led Zep IV?
"The Rolling Stones had the first mobile recording unit in europe. I had done the Stones' album 'Sticky Fingers' and I had also done two other album projects at Mick's house, Stargroves, with the truck and I really liked it. It was a lot of fun and you got so many different spaces and it was better than being stuck in some airless, windowless room.
"We were getting ready to do the next Led Zeppelin album and I said to Jimmy Page: 'Why don't we use the Stones' truck and we'll go to Mick's house?' So Jimmy says: 'How much will that cost?' It worked out to be the same as a regular studio and a thousand pounds a week for Mick's house. He said: 'I'm not giving Mick Jagger a thousand pounds a week for his place.
I'm going to find something better than that.' And he found Headley Grange, which was rather fortunate. We did a few tracks there including When The Levee Breaks, Rock And Roll and Boogie With Stu."
What was your approach to recording at that time?
"I'd been using very few mics on tracks like Can't Find My Way Home by Blind Faith. I had recorded the whole thing using just two mics including vocals, guitar and Ginger Baker's drums. So I was really getting into that."
John Bonham was famous for his very particular drum sound. How hands on was he?
"I never had Bonzo turn round to me and say, 'oh that's a great drum sound, Andy.' He'd just say, 'There's not enough 'frudge' on the bass drum.' That was his word and I knew exactly what he meant by 'frudge'."
"We took Bonham's kit and stuck it in this lobby area. I got a couple of microphones and put them up the first set of the stairs"
When The Levee Breaks put Bonham centre stage, held down by that monstrous 26" Ludwig bass drum. What was the process behind achieving that sound?
"One night Zeppelin were all going down the boozer and I said, 'You guys bugger off but Bonzo, you stay behind because I've got an idea.' So we took his kit out of the room where the other guys had been recording and stuck it in this lobby area. I got a couple of microphones and put them up the first set of the stairs."
The drum sound on When The Levee Breaks is one of Johns' greatest contributions to IV
It wasn't just the stairwell that got that famous, earthy delay sound though...
"I used two Beyerdynamic M160 microphones and I put a couple of limiters over the two mics and used a Binson Echorec echo device that Jimmy Page had bought. They were Italian-made and instead of tape they used a very thin steel drum.
"Tape would wear out and you'd have to keep replacing it. But this wafer-thin drum worked on the same principle as a wire recorder. It was magnetised and had various heads on it and there were different settings. They were very cool things!
"And so playing at that particular tempo on 'Levee the limiters had time to breathe and that's how Bonzo got that 'Ga Gack' sound because of the Binson. He wasn't playing that. It was the Binson that made him sound like that. I remember playing it back in the Stones' mobile truck and thinking, 'Bonzo's gotta fking like this!' I had never heard anything like it and the drum sound was quite spectacular."
What was Bonham's reaction to hearing the track back?
"I said: 'Bonzo, come and listen to this, dear chap.' And he came in and said, 'Oh yeah, that's more fking like it!' And everyone was very happy. I guess I must have done it as a one-off thing and I didn't start using that technique of room mics all the time until later in the '70s with people like Rod Stewart. Jimmy picked up on it and used it on 'Kashmir'. When The Levee Breaks came out quite well and people still ask me about it when I appear on music biz panels and what-not."
You then moved onto Island Studios…
"Black Dog was the first thing we did there. That was a collaboration with Pagey and John Paul. My contribution to that was triple-tracking the guitar riff played on a Gibson Les Paul. I used a couple of universal limiters. It worked really well but as soon as Jimmy stopped playing, with all that gain it went 'Ssshh woarg!'"
Tell us about the recording of Rock and Roll and Stairway To Heaven…
"Rock and Roll was a little tough to record because with the hi-hat being so open and Bonham hitting it that hard it was difficult to control. But I managed somehow or another. We did Stairway To Heaven upstairs in the big room at Island.
"I had said to Jimmy that we needed a song that builds up and hadn't been having much luck. But then he said: 'I think I've got something that you'll like and we'll do it next week.' And he came in with Stairway To Heaven.
Johns helped nail Jimmy Page's 12-string sound on Stairway To Heaven
"We tracked it with drums and acoustic guitar and John Paul was playing an upright Hohner piano. I'd never even seen one before or since. The drums come in later because it's a 'building song', innit! I didn't have a lot to do with Stairway except for the 12-string guitar sound that I really liked at the time.
"Jimmy was always running his 12-string Rickenbacker through a box, which is a good sound. But if you do it direct and compress it, you get a much more bell-like quality. So I suggested we try that and he really liked it. There was a bit of a struggle on the solo. He was playing for half an hour and did seven or eight takes. He hadn't quite got it sussed. I was starting to get a bit paranoid and he said, 'No, no you're making ME paranoid.' Then right after that he played a really great solo."
The initial mixing sessions took place at Sunset Sound studios in LA...
"I had mixed an album with Gary Wright at Sunset and there were some wonderful mixes coming out of that studio. We got there just after a big earthquake had struck in 1971 and we were running around like maniacs. In Going To California there is mention of an earthquake in Robert's lyrics. I remember Jimmy saying: 'oh don't put that on there, it will cause another earthquake.' I said, 'oh, don't be so bloody stupid, gimme a break!'
"As it turned out, mixing the album was an absolute disaster"
"So the tapes began rolling and sure enough there was an aftershock. Totally coincidental of course but Jimmy was convinced it was the power of the music. So that was rather funny.
But Peter Grant Led Zep manager would lie on his bed clutching the sides. He was a hard-nosed character but he was petrified of the earthquakes. Everyone thought the place was going to fall into the ocean. And as it turned out, mixing the album was an absolute disaster. That's why I didn't get to work with Zeppelin again after that album.
"It all sounded great at Sunset but the only mix that got used was When The Levee Breaks. That, for some reason turned out alright. But we did this playback at Olympic Studios in London and it wasn't the greatest place to hold a playback session. I should have chosen Island. Anyway the first song goes by and it doesn't sound very good at all. Jimmy and I are sitting on the floor with heads in our hands going 'What the hell is this?' Then we played the next one and the next one… and it all sounded 'orrible.
"The other three guys were turning round and giving us funny looks. 'What's happened here?' If it had been anyone else I would have been booted off the project there and then. Jimmy said: 'Well, that's not very good is it? Let's go back to Island where we should have been in the first place. We'll mix it there.'"
You must have been devastated?
"My bottle had gone and obviously I was shattered. The previous stuff I'd done at Sunset had come out Jim Dandy and was really good. I thought Sunset was a cool place but they had changed the room since I was last there. I don't know what happened. So we went back to Island and re-mixed Zeppelin IV although we still used the Levee Breaks mix from Sunset.
But it had all cost a few bob, flying us over there to LA and staying at the Hyatt House. And I know that Bonzo was furious about it."
The When The Levee Breaks drum sound has been sampled and copied many times over the years, notably by the Beastie Boys.
"It's funny actually. I remember mixing some tracks in Tokyo and there were three 32-track machines all strapped together. It was insanity. One machine had all the percussion tracks and I found it even had a little of bit of When The Levee Breaks. Who would have thought all those years later I'd be stealing my own stuff!"
More recently he produced Chickenfoot with Sammy Hagar, Chad Smith and Joe Satriani. Andy was instrumental in shaping the sound of Led Zeppelin's seminal fourth album, including John's Bonham's ferocious drum sound on When The Levee Breaks.
Sadly, Johns passed away earlier this year, but in this 2009 interview (first published in Rhythm Magazine) he recalled the highs and lows of those sessions...
Where did you kick off the sessions for Led Zep IV?
"The Rolling Stones had the first mobile recording unit in europe. I had done the Stones' album 'Sticky Fingers' and I had also done two other album projects at Mick's house, Stargroves, with the truck and I really liked it. It was a lot of fun and you got so many different spaces and it was better than being stuck in some airless, windowless room.
"We were getting ready to do the next Led Zeppelin album and I said to Jimmy Page: 'Why don't we use the Stones' truck and we'll go to Mick's house?' So Jimmy says: 'How much will that cost?' It worked out to be the same as a regular studio and a thousand pounds a week for Mick's house. He said: 'I'm not giving Mick Jagger a thousand pounds a week for his place.
I'm going to find something better than that.' And he found Headley Grange, which was rather fortunate. We did a few tracks there including When The Levee Breaks, Rock And Roll and Boogie With Stu."
What was your approach to recording at that time?
"I'd been using very few mics on tracks like Can't Find My Way Home by Blind Faith. I had recorded the whole thing using just two mics including vocals, guitar and Ginger Baker's drums. So I was really getting into that."
John Bonham was famous for his very particular drum sound. How hands on was he?
"I never had Bonzo turn round to me and say, 'oh that's a great drum sound, Andy.' He'd just say, 'There's not enough 'frudge' on the bass drum.' That was his word and I knew exactly what he meant by 'frudge'."
"We took Bonham's kit and stuck it in this lobby area. I got a couple of microphones and put them up the first set of the stairs"
When The Levee Breaks put Bonham centre stage, held down by that monstrous 26" Ludwig bass drum. What was the process behind achieving that sound?
"One night Zeppelin were all going down the boozer and I said, 'You guys bugger off but Bonzo, you stay behind because I've got an idea.' So we took his kit out of the room where the other guys had been recording and stuck it in this lobby area. I got a couple of microphones and put them up the first set of the stairs."
The drum sound on When The Levee Breaks is one of Johns' greatest contributions to IV
It wasn't just the stairwell that got that famous, earthy delay sound though...
"I used two Beyerdynamic M160 microphones and I put a couple of limiters over the two mics and used a Binson Echorec echo device that Jimmy Page had bought. They were Italian-made and instead of tape they used a very thin steel drum.
"Tape would wear out and you'd have to keep replacing it. But this wafer-thin drum worked on the same principle as a wire recorder. It was magnetised and had various heads on it and there were different settings. They were very cool things!
"And so playing at that particular tempo on 'Levee the limiters had time to breathe and that's how Bonzo got that 'Ga Gack' sound because of the Binson. He wasn't playing that. It was the Binson that made him sound like that. I remember playing it back in the Stones' mobile truck and thinking, 'Bonzo's gotta fking like this!' I had never heard anything like it and the drum sound was quite spectacular."
What was Bonham's reaction to hearing the track back?
"I said: 'Bonzo, come and listen to this, dear chap.' And he came in and said, 'Oh yeah, that's more fking like it!' And everyone was very happy. I guess I must have done it as a one-off thing and I didn't start using that technique of room mics all the time until later in the '70s with people like Rod Stewart. Jimmy picked up on it and used it on 'Kashmir'. When The Levee Breaks came out quite well and people still ask me about it when I appear on music biz panels and what-not."
You then moved onto Island Studios…
"Black Dog was the first thing we did there. That was a collaboration with Pagey and John Paul. My contribution to that was triple-tracking the guitar riff played on a Gibson Les Paul. I used a couple of universal limiters. It worked really well but as soon as Jimmy stopped playing, with all that gain it went 'Ssshh woarg!'"
Tell us about the recording of Rock and Roll and Stairway To Heaven…
"Rock and Roll was a little tough to record because with the hi-hat being so open and Bonham hitting it that hard it was difficult to control. But I managed somehow or another. We did Stairway To Heaven upstairs in the big room at Island.
"I had said to Jimmy that we needed a song that builds up and hadn't been having much luck. But then he said: 'I think I've got something that you'll like and we'll do it next week.' And he came in with Stairway To Heaven.
Johns helped nail Jimmy Page's 12-string sound on Stairway To Heaven
"We tracked it with drums and acoustic guitar and John Paul was playing an upright Hohner piano. I'd never even seen one before or since. The drums come in later because it's a 'building song', innit! I didn't have a lot to do with Stairway except for the 12-string guitar sound that I really liked at the time.
"Jimmy was always running his 12-string Rickenbacker through a box, which is a good sound. But if you do it direct and compress it, you get a much more bell-like quality. So I suggested we try that and he really liked it. There was a bit of a struggle on the solo. He was playing for half an hour and did seven or eight takes. He hadn't quite got it sussed. I was starting to get a bit paranoid and he said, 'No, no you're making ME paranoid.' Then right after that he played a really great solo."
The initial mixing sessions took place at Sunset Sound studios in LA...
"I had mixed an album with Gary Wright at Sunset and there were some wonderful mixes coming out of that studio. We got there just after a big earthquake had struck in 1971 and we were running around like maniacs. In Going To California there is mention of an earthquake in Robert's lyrics. I remember Jimmy saying: 'oh don't put that on there, it will cause another earthquake.' I said, 'oh, don't be so bloody stupid, gimme a break!'
"As it turned out, mixing the album was an absolute disaster"
"So the tapes began rolling and sure enough there was an aftershock. Totally coincidental of course but Jimmy was convinced it was the power of the music. So that was rather funny.
But Peter Grant Led Zep manager would lie on his bed clutching the sides. He was a hard-nosed character but he was petrified of the earthquakes. Everyone thought the place was going to fall into the ocean. And as it turned out, mixing the album was an absolute disaster. That's why I didn't get to work with Zeppelin again after that album.
"It all sounded great at Sunset but the only mix that got used was When The Levee Breaks. That, for some reason turned out alright. But we did this playback at Olympic Studios in London and it wasn't the greatest place to hold a playback session. I should have chosen Island. Anyway the first song goes by and it doesn't sound very good at all. Jimmy and I are sitting on the floor with heads in our hands going 'What the hell is this?' Then we played the next one and the next one… and it all sounded 'orrible.
"The other three guys were turning round and giving us funny looks. 'What's happened here?' If it had been anyone else I would have been booted off the project there and then. Jimmy said: 'Well, that's not very good is it? Let's go back to Island where we should have been in the first place. We'll mix it there.'"
You must have been devastated?
"My bottle had gone and obviously I was shattered. The previous stuff I'd done at Sunset had come out Jim Dandy and was really good. I thought Sunset was a cool place but they had changed the room since I was last there. I don't know what happened. So we went back to Island and re-mixed Zeppelin IV although we still used the Levee Breaks mix from Sunset.
But it had all cost a few bob, flying us over there to LA and staying at the Hyatt House. And I know that Bonzo was furious about it."
The When The Levee Breaks drum sound has been sampled and copied many times over the years, notably by the Beastie Boys.
"It's funny actually. I remember mixing some tracks in Tokyo and there were three 32-track machines all strapped together. It was insanity. One machine had all the percussion tracks and I found it even had a little of bit of When The Levee Breaks. Who would have thought all those years later I'd be stealing my own stuff!"
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