Procesos internos

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“Omni mics exhibit no proximity effect and are virtually immune to “popping” on plosives, so you have

more freedom to position the mic, plus you get much less level/tone

variation if the singer moves around while singing.”

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does mean you can use mic positioning to counteract this. “Sing up close to the mic,” says Keith Olsen, 4 _{“and all of a sudden the room means nothing.”} You can further dry up the sound with acoustic padding behind the mic, or by using something like an SE Electronics Refl exion Filter. In my experience, room refl ections therefore rarely militate against using an omni mic for vocal over- dubbing, so anyone who glibly dismisses omnis as “too roomy” is frequently cheating themselves out of a better sound—particularly anyone working on a tight budget.

The other common polar pattern to mention is “fi gure-eight” or “bidirec- tional,” which is equally sensitive at its front and rear and has rejection nulls at 90° off-axis. Figure-eights can sound just as good as cardioids on vocals, but they do struggle with singers who move around a lot, for two reasons: Firstly, the frontal sensitivity region is narrower, so the singer only has to move 45° off-axis to drop 3 dB in level and the −6 dB point is only 15° further out; and, secondly, a fi gure-eight mic’s proximity effect is stronger, changing the low- frequency tip-up more for a given front–back movement. Figure-eight mics are also more prone to physical vibration and plosive air blasts.

Some condenser mics incorporate a back-to-back pair of diaphragms, rather than just a single one, and the benefi t of these dual-diaphragm designs is that they allow the circuitry to control the polar pattern. Affordable multipattern microphones of this type are usually switchable between cardioid, omni, and fi gure-eight polar patterns, but more expensive large-diaphragm mics are more likely to offer other intermediate polar patterns, including subcardioid, super- cardioid, and hypercardioid (see Figure 5.1 ), and may even have a smoothly variable pattern control. For vocal recording, what’s important is the polar pat- tern’s frontal width (which tells you how careful you need to be about keep- ing the singer still) and the strength of the proximity effect (which affects how bassy the vocal will sound for a given miking distance). However, proximity effect isn’t the only tonal consequence of changing patterns, because you’ll also get less predictable smaller-scale frequency variations across the rest of the spectrum.

I mentioned a whole list of classic vocal mics in Section 4.1.4 to demonstrate the professional preference for valves and transformers, but what is also notable about these mics (and indeed the Neumann U87, which seems to be the only non-valve mic that’s used as widely) is that they’re all multipattern. One of the reasons for this preference is that, assuming you’re recording vocals in a fairly well-damped space (as most professionals are), you can access alternate sonic colors just by switching the polar pattern, without recourse to any separate signal processing. “I usually try both cardioid and omni modes with the [mic],” says Alex Clarke, 5 _{“because there’s a subtle difference in the low end between them—} you have to decide which one works best for each particular vocalist, and with Tom [Jones] it sounded more open when it was in omni.” Be careful, though, to mute the input signal before operating any polar-pattern switches, because these can sometimes send powerful signal “thumps” though the recording chain.

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FIGURE 5.1

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5.1.2 Dynamic Mics

While large-diaphragm condenser microphones are certainly the most com- mon choice for studio vocal recording, there are nonetheless many situations where other designs are preferred. One of the main diffi culties is that condens- ers can be a bit delicate for loud and/or aggressive singers, even when you’re using the mic’s built-in pad. In these cases, the most common solution is to switch to a dynamic microphone instead, because dynamic mics are usually rugged enough to withstand any abuse and their poorer noise performance ceases to be a concern when the singer’s hammering the level. Here’s Bill Price 6 talking about recording the Sex Pistols, for instance: “Although we had a beau- tiful pair of Neumann U47s…when I put one in front of Johnny [Rotten] for his overdubs it sounded awful and died after thirty seconds of being gobbed at due to him using his middle register as loud as he could. So…I put him back on the [Shure] SM58 and thereafter always used that.”

But it’s not just technical concerns that prompt many engineers to go for dynamic models, because these mics offer a gutsy sound that often suits male rock vocalists better—which is good news for small-studio budgets, because dynamic mics are much cheaper on the whole! The Shure SM58 mentioned by Bill Price is no stranger to studio work: Robbie Adams, 7 _Flood, 8 _Ann Mincieli, 9 _{and Stephen Harris} 10 _{have all mentioned that Bono (of U2) prefers} it for recording; John Leckie 11 _{recorded Ian Brown with that mic for The Stone} Roses’ debut album; Garth Richardson 12 _{recorded Zack de la Rocha with one} for Rage Against The Machine’s debut album; Dave Eringa 13 _{used it for James} Dean Bradfi eld when working on The Manic Street Preachers’ biggest album, FIGURE 5.2

The frequency response of a multipattern large- diaphragm condenser mic changes as you switch between its different polar patterns. Here, for instance, are the polar plots for three polar patterns of the classic Neumann M49 large-diaphragm condenser mic.

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This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours ; and Bob Clearmountain 14 _{tracked some of Bryan} Adams’ vocals on it for Reckless . Its sibling, the Shure SM57 (a very similar design which sounds slightly different because it lacks the SM58’s ball-shaped grille) also featured on Anthony Keidis during The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication sessions (according to engineer Jim Scott 15 _{), and Eddie Kramer} 16 regularly used it for Paul Rodgers of Free and Bad Company.

An important part of the sonic character of the SM57 and SM58 is a strong upper midrange “presence” peak, which helps the sound cut through mixes laden with cymbals and electric guitars, but some engineers prefer Shure’s smoother- sounding (and therefore more general-purpose) SM7 instead. “To me, that sounds quite a bit better than your more typical SM58,” remarks Rich Costey, 17 _{and many} other engineers have also mentioned it in interview. For example, Joe Chiccarelli 18 used this mic for Jack White of The White Stripes; AC/DC’s Brian Johnson went through one during Mike Fraser’s 19 _{sessions for Black Ice ; Michael Barbiero} 20 recorded some of Whitney Houston’s vocals with an SM7; and many of Michael Jackson’s most celebrated lead parts were tracked with it by Bruce Swedien. 21 Shure mics don’t have some kind of monopoly, though, because other afford- able dynamic models are also well known for studio vocals. The Beyerdynamic M88, for instance, was for a long time Hugh Padgham’s 22 fi rst choice for Phil Collins, and it was also singled out for Bernard Sumner’s vocals when Stephen Hague 23 was producing New Order, and for Dion’s voice by Eric Schilling. 24 The Electrovoice RE20 is another favorite (Steve Albini 25 is amongst its fans), not least because it employs a unique design that minimizes proximity effect.

Because on-stage vocal mics are so often end-fi re dynamic models, another crucial advantage of using one is that the musician can perform with it in the same way they would during live shows. “A lot of people feel comfortable with a handheld,” explains Mike Hedges, 26 _{“even if they are not holding it,}

FIGURE 5.3

Some of the most enduringly popular dynamic mics for vocal recording (left to right): Shure SM57 and SM58; Beyerdynamic M88; Shure SM7; and Electrovoice RE20.

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but have it on a stand instead. It’s more natural, because it isn’t a big thing, so they can get as close as they want. This helps the performance, because the vocalist is relaxed.” Of course, if the vocalist holds the mic in their hand and is monitoring over loudspeakers rather than headphones (of which more in Section 5.3), you should try to persuade them not to stroll about too much (a few bits of gaffer tape on the fl oor can provide useful positioning guides here) and to keep facing the speakers so that the microphone’s cardioid polar pat- tern can do its job properly. Some singers have a habit of wrapping their hand around the grille of their handheld mic, presumably in an attempt to shield it from spill, but this is actually counterproductive, because the directionality of dynamic microphones is created using vents at the sides/rear of the head assembly—so if you cover those up you’ll get more spill, not less! One fi nal cautionary note comes courtesy of Stephen Hague, 27 _{and should make sense in} the light of what we learnt about vocal frequency dispersion in Section 4.3.1: “Things can get out of control very quickly when sibilant singers use a hand- held mic.”

THE BEST MIC ISN’T ALWAYS THE BEST-SOUNDING MIC

On occasion the best mic may not be the best-sounding one. Stephen Lipson 28 _{remembers Paul McCartney}

letting Ringo Starr use a dodgy-sounding vocal mic simply because he felt that the retro look of it would inspire

him to sing better, for instance. Joe Barresi 29 _{relates a similar studio experience with an Electrovoice 666: “I}

told the band, ‘Hey, this is the mic of the beast—it’s the devil mic,’ and… I swear, the guitar solo was one take,

the piano was one take, and the vocal was one take.”

5.1.3 Ribbon Mics

Ribbons were top of the tree quality-wise from the 1920s until condenser designs really began taking the industry by storm during the 1950s. Their understated high frequencies give them a slightly dull tonality to modern ears, but even if you equalize them to reintroduce brightness at mixdown they nonetheless retain a uniquely smooth sonic personality that remains popular to this day. For vocals, what most matters is that the resonant frequency of the mic’s diaphragm (a super-thin “ribbon” of metal foil) will be located toward the low extreme of the audible frequency range, which means you don’t get that high-frequency “condenser zing”—and sometimes that’s exactly what the doctor ordered, for example if your singer has an unpleasantly harsh edge to their voice, or you’re simply after the syrupy retro timbre of Doris Day or the Rat Pack. Almost all ribbon mics have a fi gure-eight polar pattern by the very nature of their design, and many also capture a slightly different tonal balance depending on whether you sing into the front or the rear, so this is something worth experimenting with.

The biggest practical diffi culty with ribbon mics is taking good care of them. The ribbon element is quite fragile, so even though it’ll happily record extremely loud sounds, it can easily be deformed or torn if hit by a puff of air.

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With vocals, that means it’s sensible to use a pop shield at all times to defend the ribbon against plosives, but you also need to be careful of anything else that might create gusts—ribbons have been known to break just from someone closing the lid of the mic-storage box too abruptly or slamming a door nearby! It’s a good idea to store the mic with the ribbon vertically as well, to avoid it sagging over time. Ribbon mics have a large and powerful magnet in them, so be careful to keep the mic away from any small metal objects/fi lings that might be drawn into the works—this is a good reason to avoid ever putting ribbon mics down on the fl oor without a dust cover on them. Most ribbon mics don’t need power to operate, and feeding phantom power to them may even damage them, so make sure it’s switched off unless you happen to be using one of the more recent phantom-powered active ribbon designs.

The fi nal issue with ribbon mics is that they only put out a very weak signal, so you have to push your mic preamp gain close to maximum, at which point cheaper preamps can start getting very noisy. One workaround is to use some- thing like the Cloud Microphones Cloudlifter, a phantom-powered device that connects in-line between the mic and your recording system and provides roughly an extra 20 dB of clean gain so that your preamp doesn’t have to strain as hard. Alternatively, investigate active ribbon mics, as they typically have

FIGURE 5.4

If you’re using budget preamps, active ribbon mics such as the Sontronics Sigma (above left) or Superlux R102 (above right) shown here may give you quieter recordings than passive designs. Alternatively, one of the Cloudlifter boxes (below) from Cloud Microphones can achieve similar noise-fl oor reduction for passive ribbon models.

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much higher output. (Before we go on, let me also clarify my terminology a little. Strictly speaking, ribbon designs are actually a subtype of the dynamic microphones. In this book, however, I’ve adopted the more widespread col- loquial usage I hear amongst small-studio engineers, who generally treat rib- bon mics and dynamic mics as totally different beasts. So whenever I have something to say about ribbon mics here, I’ll always name-check them directly rather than lumping them in with other dynamic designs.)

SMALL-DIAPHRAGM CONDENSERS?

Small-diaphragm condensers are usually slim end-fi re designs (hence their “pencil mic” nickname) with diaphragm diameters of less than half an inch or so. Although such designs often have better high-frequency extension and are less likely to fl inch in the face of extreme sound levels, their noise performance usually lets them down a bit by comparison with large-diaphragm models. I don’t think this is the main reason they’re hardly ever mentioned by professional engineers for vocal recording, though: It’s because they don’t enhance the vocal sound in the same fl attering way, which means that the recorded timbre often ends up sounding rather hard and unappealing. While there are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to mic selection (small- diaphragm mics were used for many Motown hits, for instance), I think it’s probably fair to say that a small- diaphragm condenser for vocals should probably be considered rather a long shot while overdubbing.

5.2 USING ACOUSTIC REFLECTIONS

Although we spent a lot of time in Chapter 4 talking about removing room refl ections from a vocal (because that’s what people do most of the time), you can also make a virtue of them. Bruce Swedien, 30 _{for instance, deliberately used} an array of cylindrical refl ectors (ASC’s Studio Traps or “Tube Traps”) to intro- duce a dense and controllable pattern of refl ections which enhanced the lead- vocal sound on Michael Jackson’s later records, and which also had the effect of keeping the miked sound a little more consistent as Jackson danced around the mic while performing. Another example comes from Steve Bush, 31 _talking about recording Kelly Jones for The Stereophonics’ debut album: “If we used the small stone room at Real World Studios, all the vocals had a really rich enhanced sound from the room… All the best singing went down in this par- ticular room, because of its sound.” This is also part of the reason why so many people like singing in the shower or in the front seat of their car, where there’s a hard acoustic refl ector right in front of them.

But it’s not just tonal enhancement that the refl ections offer, because they can also help blend the vocal into the mix. “When you’re recording a vocal, you have to think about how you want the vocalist’s voice to sit in the track,” says Paul Epworth. 32 _{“If you’re doing a rock tune and you’ve got the singer right up} against the microphone, you’re going to have to work really hard with EQ to try and make it sound like it sits in the track. Something I learned from John Leckie: You record the vocalist where you think you want to position them in the piece of music, and with a rock singer it’s better to record them an arm’s length away so that it seems to sit on that scale in the track.”

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If you’d like to pursue these ideas, however, let me offer a couple of hints. Firstly, a spread of refl ections is what you’re looking for, not just a couple of isolated ones that’ll cause obvious comb-fi ltering problems, so you’re unlikely to get a good result just by dragging a spare plank into an otherwise padded environment. Much better to hunt around for a room that has a more lively sound, and then experiment a lit- tle with positioning the singer and mic within that. By the same token, though, you rarely want an obvious reverb “tail,” so you may still want to soak up some of the more indirect refl ections, especially in larger rooms—this is where Bruce Swedien’s setup is so canny, because cylindrical refl ectors placed behind the singer within a larger studio room will provide refl ections which primarily arrive at the mic within about 10 ms of the dry sound. Room refl ections can help thicken up layered vocals too if you get the singer to take a step

or two back from the mic for each different take—a well-worn studio trick that Swedien 33 used for Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You,” for instance.

5.3 LOUDSPEAKER MONITORING

Most working engineers will tell you that some singers hate recording with headphones on, but even those who aren’t allergic to cans will often give a more emotionally uninhibited performance when monitoring via loudspeakers instead. “Many times I’ve recorded singers using stage moni- tors instead of headphones,” says Joe Chiccarelli, 34 _{“and I’ve even had} vocalists sing in the control room while listening to studio monitor speak- ers. It’s better to fi nd an alternative solution than sacrifi ce what might have been a great performance.” Clif Norrell 35 _{also asserts that speaker} monitoring helps singers with their pitching. It’s a crying

shame, therefore, that this approach is almost univer- sally ignored in small studios, presumably because of anxiety over foldback spill. There’s actually a lot you can do to reduce foldback spill to manageable levels, and besides (to quote Eddie Kramer 36 _{), “if} you get a great performance, who cares if there’s a little leakage?” The only golden rule is to make sure you don’t put anything into the foldback mix that won’t appear in the fi nal mix—so you can’t have a metronome click in there to help with timing, for instance.

FIGURE 5.5

A group of cylindrical