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Thursday, October 2, 2014

Lorde "Royals" Isolated Vocals

Lorde Performing at KCRW
Here's a very interesting example of modern vocal production. It's the isolated vocal track from Lorde's big hit "Royals." Here are a few things to listen for.

1. What you'll hear sounds like it was a center channel extraction from the original record, as you can hear bits and pieces of the other tracks slipping in along the way.

2. The song is deceptive, since it sounds so sparse as compared to other hits that you hear these days, but there are a lot of vocal layers going on, especially the background vocals. It sounds like the harmony vocals are at least triple tracked so they're very thick.

3. The lead vocal is very squashed in places, not that it bothers the ears in the final mix.

4. There's a lot more reverb on the vocal than meets the ear during the mix. It's a nice long dark hall, which is unusual in these days of shorter decays.


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1 comment:

Rand said...

Triple tracked, etc. call me old-fashioned but if Elvis and Sam didn't need to sweat and polish so much high tech into, what should be a simple song, why do it now?

Probably because real music from real records like 'The Sun Sessions' will still be classed as historical landmarks in music history, long after all the 'fast food' music pretends to be these days.

Not wise to over-think music. Keeping it simple and true is learning from the very best.

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