It is essential that music engineers understand basic music theory, and the sound sources being recorded – otherwise it is impossible to communicate musically and coach the performers towards delivering a magical performance. Experienced perform-ers have favorite engineperform-ers and producperform-ers because they have, over the years, developed a bond, trust, and musical understanding, and they work well together.
BE A PROFESSIONAL!
As a home or project studio owner/engineer, or an employee in a commercial studio, you should:
• Have a personality, demeanor, and be presented in a way that is likeable, polite, and positive.
• Be able to quickly establish professional trust and a close working relationship with the artist.
• Quickly establish what role the client wants you to fulfill. Are you simply the engi-neer, capturing their performance to the best technical standards? Or is the client receptive to feedback and coaching – producing – from you in order to get them to deliver the performance the song needs?
• Know the sound sources you are recording. How do they sound naturally? How does a good recording of that particular voice or instrument sound? What micro-phones and techniques can be used to obtain those goals?
• Be able to talk music, instruments, and gear. Know scales, chords, and rhythm values – it will help when discussing the musicality of parts and performances.
Know how instruments and amplifiers work, so that if something doesn’t sound right, or isn’t working properly, you can offer helpful suggestions to remedy the problem.
• Be a psychologist! If things aren’t going well, what can you say or do in order to improve the physical, psychological, or emotional state of the artists and help them deliver the performance of their life?
• Be positive! Ultimately, if something about the performance is not quite right, someone in the control room (the producer, engineer, or producer/engineer in most home and project studio environments) should be able to identify what’s not right and encourage the performer to try something slightly different to make it right.
A simple “It sounds great! But let’s try the last phrase again, and I really want you to focus and push into the high note at the end” promotes a much better performance, vibe, and relationship between both sides of the soundproof glass than, “OK, let’s try that again because you were flat and late on the last note.”
9.3 VOCAL TRACKING METHODS
When using analog tape, the number of tracks is more limited than on modern DAWs. It used to be common practice to record three or four vocal tracks, either in their entirety or with a punch in or two, and then comp or compile a good vocal track from the best parts of each of those tracks to a spare tape track. When using a modern DAW, it’s possible to use an approach similar to this, or to work on the vocal track more linearly, top to bottom, concentrating on
and wears out the more it is stopped, rewound, stopped, played, and cycled – so re-recording or punching in a particular phrase too many times is not good for the tape or its sound. This type of wear and tear is irrelevant when using modern DAWs, and most systems have an
“undo” feature in case of an incorrect punch or edit.
Some pros and cons of recording a handful of complete vocal takes, and comping the best parts together to form the vocal performance include:
• Continuity is generally better – phrasing, performance intensity, and style are more consistent throughout the longer takes.
• The process is more comfortable for a performer who is used to singing the song top to bottom, and not jumping in somewhere in the middle.
• There may still be parts of the performance that are less than perfect, despite recording multiple versions.
Some pros and cons of building up a vocal performance on one track, and punching in, making as many edits as necessary include:
• A perfect performance is possible on one track. This means that only one set of pro-cessing plug-ins, or one mixer channel is necessary during mixing, and the mix process is more streamlined.
• Depending on the singer, there may be less continuity of phrasing, intensity, and per-formance style.
• There may be more timbre or tonal differences between different punches, created by inconsistencies in the distance between the singer and the mic.
• If the singer does not know the song intimately enough and cannot deliver convincing performances of isolated smaller phrases, punching may be a slow process.
One good approach for most home and project studio situations is a hybrid, somewhere in-between the two tracking methods described above:
• Record multiple takes, top to bottom, or in large sections.
• Identify which take has the best performance of each part of the song.
• Identify any sections or phrases that are still not ideal, and punch in to replace those on an additional track as necessary. Use plenty of pre-roll and post-roll, so that the singer is confident of their entry, and so that you can spot continuity differences, and fix them immediately.
• Comp the final performance together from these tracks.
Whichever method you use, have a copy of the lyrics on hand so you (or an assistant) can mark off which parts of each take are good, as you are recording. This way, you instantly know which sections you still have to work on. Even if you are building a track a small section at a time, having the singer warm up with a couple of beginning to end run throughs will help them feel comfortable.