Hi Laura, hi Oli,
could you walk us through the vocal chain (mic, outboard & plugins) of your following artist collaborations?
a) Taylor Swift
b) Lana Del Rey
c) Jon Batiste
d) Peter Gabriel (especially Oli’s work on i/o)
In case you know: what else was done in general with those vocals during production and mixing?
Could you also recall certain settings, workflows etc.? Especially, if they are out of the ordinary?
Could you give us some insights of the preparation of the recording sessions and how to get the best performance from your artists?
Thanks a lot and all the best,
Timo
Hey Timo
Great questions. I’m going to focus on Peter beacuse there’s so much stuff to say!
The go-to setup is a Shure Beta 87A. It’s unusual because it’s a hand-held mic but it means its easy to get it into a good position for him to sing while he’s playing piano or keyboard. He often works with the speakers on so having something designed for live use is helpful for getting rejection from the speakers during vocal takes. For some takes we moved over to either a 47 or Sony C800G. The other unusual thing with the way he uses the 87A is he often sings into the side of it to control how much top end is coming through. You’ll see him adjust based on what he’s hearing as he does takes! Processing wise, last album was normally a Neve 33115 pre or an SSL. Peter’s very dynamic so I started moving to something that wasn’t stepped so I could adjust on the fly.
I’d normally have some sort of high pass and a gentle compressor (plugin 76 or LA2a clone) and de-esser when needed. I was mostly using Valhalla Room or Vintage Verb for his tracking reverb, but he also loves D verb!
Aligning them was mostly done manually if needed - it sounds better than using automated processes to me. Sometimes we’d figure out harmonies together and sometimes he already had them fully laid out in his mind - he will always have the keyboard in his headphones so he could play the harmonies to himself before he sang.
The other unusual workflow is that I always had a set of tracks (keyboard, vocal, MIDI) that were record enabled. You never know when he’s going to want to do a take so we could be listening back and Peter would just start singing along so I could punch in and grab that - having to stop and say ‘sorry ok lets record that now’ sucks. We also had a separate rig running the whole time just doing room mic/vocal/keyboard/MIDI - just in case something cool happened and we didnt have a pro tools session up. Peter’s been doing that forever - first with cassettes, then minidisk and DAT before Pro Tools. It led to an album - “So - DNA” - where they used the cassette recordings to play the early stages of the songs being made.
Preparing recording sessions - great q. For me, the #1 thing is that everything should be in the template, mics and headphones sounding great and ready to go before anyone arrives. You get the best results from artists when you don’t get in the way of the creation. Being able to fault find and address issues quickly and without causing stress in the room is also really important. The best is if you can fix an issue without anyone else even knowing. Worst case, say you need 5 minutes and just calmly handle it. The other obvious thing is, of course, your attitude in the room and learning to read it. When to speak and be animated, when to be quiet or step out for a bit. Remembering it’s not your name on the cover - you’re just there to facilitate and do anything you can to keep things flowing and everyone feeling good!
Oli