Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 910
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(For the unenlightened, Bruce Swedien is a Grammy-winning engineer who has worked with Michael Jackson and many other top pop acts.)
Ques - 1. Background Vocals: What's a typical treatment? Delays, harmonizer, cross delay etc.??? Different treatments for different harmonies? How to create a good R&B background sound?
Ans - I always try to think of how a record that I am doing will sound ten years from now. Will a processing device of today make it sound hopelessly dated in the future? I realize that that is hard to judge and I have no crystal ball to listen to. Think of it like this, it would be like doing a recording ten years ago and using one to many wah-wah pedals on the guitar parts. Don't put one to many processors on the music just because the effects are in the control room.
By keeping the musical 'sense' of a piece of music uppermost in our minds, the music that we record today will sound just as good years from now as it does to us today.
Now I’ll try and be as direct as I can with this answer. Here is an explanation of how I would record a vocal group of four or five singers. The singers are positioned facing each other. The mikes are placed close together, back to back about four inches apart or less. This method of keeping the mikes close together allows some mixing of sound to occur acoustically. It also gives good phase coherency so that when the mix is heard monaurally there will be no change in balance or quality.(Phase coherency is achieved by keeping the mikes close together so that the sound sources arrive at the two mikes at about the same point in time thus minimizing phase distortion.)
I will record a basic vocal track using two channels of the multi- track recordng device, one mike on each track. I would then ask the singers to step back from the mikes about two feet or so and record a "stack" or double of the original part. This also would be recorded in discrete stereo on two channels of the multi-track. It is very important to carefully watch the volume levels of the individual vocal tracks. Keep the levels on the individual vocal tracks as consistent as possible. By having the singers step back from the mikes during this vocal pass, in order to keep the track levels consistent, we are forced to raise the volume level of the two mikes on this pass, thus giving greater acoustical support to the sound.
Very often, in vocal recording, I hear a lot of single, monaural tracks merely panned either left or right in a half-hearted attempt at stereo sound. All this really creates is left and right mono and has nothing to do with the support of music.
I call this technique "Two-Channel Monaural". "Two-Channel Monaural" has absolutely nothing to do with stereo recording and affords little or no acoustical support to the recording. The additional effort and planning required to preserve real stereo and the acoustical support it provides is well worth it. Frequently when recording vocal duets, I will look for microphones for the vocalists that have an obviously different sonic character. This difference in microphone character will add to the already different timber of the two voices and make the resulting sonic picture more fascinating.
Ques - 2. Drums: What's some of your favorite reverb treatments for drums? Types, pre-delays, lengths? How much do you high pass you cymbals/hats?
Ans - My favorite reverb for drums is my AMS - RMX. I will normally use the ambience program with about a 100ms pre-delay to allow the early reflections to be heard. I generally use a high-pass setting of about 100 hz for all drums except the kick....
Ques - 3. Lead Vocals: Do you prefer close micing or micing from a distance? Examples? What reverb would you throw up on say a 75bpm vocal ballad? Pre-delay, time, early reflections? Plate? Hall? What's your favorite reverb for lead vox?
Ans - Generally speaking, I love close miking for lead vocals. My favorite reverbs for lead vocals are my EMT 250 or my EMT 252. I also use my Lexicon 480L pr my Lexicon 224XL.
Ques - 4. Mix Bus: I often find that carving a little 1k from the entire mix often warms up my digital recordings a little. When mixing digitally do you ever eq the mix bus? If so give us an example?
Ans - I almost never EQ the mix buss. Those of you who have been to my lectures or seminars aleady know that I use little or no limiting or compression! |
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