Producer/Engineer Ken Caillat On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

Regardless of your age, you've no doubt heard much of Rumors over the years, the great Fleetwood Mac album from 70s. The songs from that record are still heard everywhere today, and a tribute to the contributions to the project (as well as 3 others by Fleetwood Mac) by my guest on this week's podcast - producer/engineer Ken Caillat.

Ken has a long list superstar credits including The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Pat Benetar, Herbie Hancock and many more. He's also the father and producer of singer/songwriter Colby Caillat.

During the interview we talk about how he first connected with Fleetwood Mac, the recording of Rumors (including an interesting tape loop story), as well as what it's like to produce your daughter.

In the intro I'll take a look at how EDM has peaked and its popularity is slowing, and the implications of SoundCloud's new Go paid tier.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play

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Fleetwood Mac "Go Your Own Way" Isolated Vocals

It's Friday again and that means it's time for another isolated track. Today we'll listen to the isolated vocals from Fleetwood Mac's big hit "You Can Go Your Own Way, (this is a Spotify link)" the first single from the band's huge 1977 Rumours album. Here are some things to listen for (the track starts at 0:07).

1. Check out all the the breaths on the track. You can hear lead singer Lindsey Buckingham take a big breath of air before most vocal phrases, and the whole band before each harmony chorus. We'd probably delete these today in our DAW world.

2. There's a nice medium length delayed reverb on the vocals. There's more there than what you think is there when you listen with the instrumental track.

3. The lead vocal is at the top of the harmony stack, which is somewhat unusual.

4. The harmonies begin to get sloppy with the releases towards the end of the song at 3:30. You can hear all vocalists ending the phrases at different times, which doesn't happen earlier on.

Fleetwood Mac "Rhiannon" Isolated Guitars And Vocals

Today we'll listen to the first hit from the reconstituted Fleetwood Mac  - "Rhiannon" from the big selling self-titled album that made the band a household word. Here's what to listen for.

1. The playing is extremely precise. This is one of the records that led to the modern production techniques of today, but remember this was done without a DAW. The precision came from playing or singing it over and over until you got it right (ah, the good old days!).

2. There are 4 guitars playing throughout: a low string guitar toward the left, the riff guitar towards the right, a harmony riff guitar and a strummed guitar. These enter in varying amounts throughout the song as needed keep it interesting. Take notice that all guitars have basically the same sound, yet they all work extremely well together.

3. The vocals are about perfect, and the doubled background vocals on each side are gorgeous. There's a nice long plate verb on them which also sounds great. You can see why this record was such a huge seller.

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