Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter" Isolated Tracks

Here's something that I posted before but seems to keep disappearing. It's a brilliant breakdown of the individual tracks from The Rolling Stones seminal "Gimme Shelter," one of my all-time favorite songs just in terms of shear passion.

I've posted isolated tracks from this song before but the difference in this video is that most of the individual elements are broken out and soloed in combinations during the song.

The video labels some of the parts incorrectly, but that really doesn't matter as it's fun to hear any of the parts by themselves. Here are some things to listen for:

1. The vocals really have a lot of reverb on them, although it all disappears in the final mix (which you never hear in its entirety on this video).

2. Keith Richard's lead guitar plays through most of the song. You don't hear it in the final mix because it's either lowered or muted. He's also playing out of the pocket in the intro, not that it ever bothered anyone.

3. As the elements are soloed, listen for both the harp (harmonica) and the piano, which are somewhat buried in the final mix.

4. Merry Clayton's solo bridge vocal is still spine-tinglingly excellent all these years later. The fact that her voice breaks just adds to the passion (but it's something we probably wouldn't leave in the track today, unfortunately).

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The Automatic Orchestra - Music Through Algorithms

Electronic music has been with us for 60 years or so but there was always a human in control. That's no longer the case, as the human musicians are replaced in a configuration called the Automatic Orchestra.

The Automatic Orchestra was designed by a group of students from the University of the Arts in Bremen and the Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design, and consists of 12 pods, each with a microcontroller that's attached to speakers. All of the pods are connected with one another and data is transferred between them.

What you'll hear below starts out with Pod #1 originating the algorithm and then passing the data on to Pod #2, which then adds its own data and passes it to Pod #3, and so on.

While that might seem a bit too mathematical to some, there is an element of improvisation that's programmed in, so some pods actually introduce a measure of unpredictability, almost like a human would.

Check it out below. What's especially interesting is the dynamics of the piece.

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8 Steps To A Better Vocal Performance

The voice is just as much of an instrument as any other instrument in the band. Like the others, it needs regular maintenance to stay in its best shape. Here are a few tricks compiled from How To Make Your Band Sound Great and The Music Producer's Handbook to not only get the best vocal performances, but to stay away from a sore throat as well.

1. Remember the 3 P’s – Pitch, Passion, Pocket. You need all three for a great vocal.

2. You’ve got to hear yourself at the correct level to stay in tune. Unless you have a lot of experience, you’ll most likely sing sharp if you’re not loud enough, and flat if you hear too much of yourself.

3. Avoid alcohol, dairy products, tea, coffee and cola before recording or a gig. All will make it more difficult to sing by either drying your throat or increasing your phlegm production.

4. Choose the best key for the song. Better to change the key than hurt yourself or sound bad trying to sing something that you’re not capable of.

5. Take care of yourself. Gets lots of sleep and drink plenty of water before recording.

6. Rehearse harmonies without the band first. It’s much easier to learn parts that way.

7. Phrasing is everything in background vocals. Concentrate on the attacks and releases to stay tight.

8. Pay attention to background vocals. If they don’t sound good, then neither do you!

Remember: If your throat gets dry while recording, try some warm water, tea with honey and lemon, or Superior Vocal Health's Throat Saver.

You can read more from The Music Producer's Handbook and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Instruments Can Now Travel On Planes

I've been seeing a lot of instruments on planes lately and there's a reason. Late last year the U.S. Department of Transportation ruled that musicians who travel on planes must be allowed to carry their instruments on board as long as they fit in the overhead bin.

What if the space isn't big enough for the instrument? The musician is permitted to purchase a second seat where the instrument could be stowed.

Sounds simple, right? You'd think that airlines would be allowing this all along, but the fact of the matter is that carrying an instrument  on board had been at the discretion of the airlines before, which could lead to having to check it as baggage and some disastrous results. Now, if you can carry it on, it should be safe.

There is a caveat however. The airlines won't prioritize an instrument over other types of baggage, so you have to be able to get on the plane early to make sure there's space available.

The best way to do this is to either enroll in a loyalty program or buy priority boarding so you can be one of the first to board the plane to make sure there's room in the overhead bins. It also has to be one of the your two carry-on items, so the other must fit under the seat in front of you.

That said, this is good news in that we no longer have to worry when carrying instruments on a flight (at least in a gig bag).

If you like legalese, you can read the full ruling here. Here's a list of the individual airlines instrument policies.

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New Music Gear Monday: String Strecha

Everybody loves the sound and feel of new guitar strings, but they go out of tune so fast. Veteran guitar players and techs know that you have to stretch the strings to break them in, but doing it manually takes so long.

That was before this simple device that will stretch your strings so quickly and easily that you'll wonder why no one ever thought of it before. It's called String Strecha.

String Strecha is a device that cups under the strings and allows you to give them a pull in one short motion. It will allow you to stretch each string by the same amount every time, so there's no over-stretching if you follow the instructions (see the video below).

This thing is a favorite of top-flight guitar techs everywhere, and you should have one in your guitar case or in the studio at all times.

It's only $14.95, but you can get a couple bucks off on here on Amazon.

Check out stringstrecha.com for more info.

Seriously, this is my favorite new studio tool!

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The Guess Who "American Women" Isolated Percussion Track

Percussion is the secret weapon that producers use to give motion to a song. Sometimes the percussion is obvious in a mix, and sometimes it's almost imperceptible (like the shaker on Tom Petty and the Heatbreaker's big hit "Refugee"), but it almost always makes a big difference how the song feels.

For decades now garage bands have been playing The Guess Who's "American Women" and wondering why it didn't sound like the record, and the reason is they're not playing the percussion that's an integral part of the song.

Take a close listen to the following video and you'll realize why it's almost a different song without the conga and  tom hit.

Note that they're not playing totally in the pocket, but that was the state of production for the era, when timing wasn't scrutinized as closely as it is today.

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George Massenburg On Recording Drums

George Massenburg is not only a legendary engineer, but he's one that likes to experiment.

Here's a video where George breaks from the norm when recording drums and tries some different and interesting techniques.

As always, there's a lot of thought behind everything that he's attempting to do.

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4 Reasons To Add Reverb To A Track

Like many other aspects to mixing, the use of reverb is frequently either overlooked or misunderstood. Reverb is sometimes added to a track to create width and depth, but also to dress up an otherwise boring sound. The real secret is how much to use and how to adjust its various parameters.

Let’s look at some of the reasons to add reverb in this excerpt from my Audio Mixing Bootcamp book.

When you get right down to it, there are four reasons to add reverb.

1. To make the recorded track sound like it’s in a specific acoustic environment. Many times a track is recorded in an acoustic space that doesn’t fit the song or the final vision of the mixer. You may record in a small dead room but want it to sound like it was in a large studio, a small reflective drum room, or a live and reflective church. Reverb will take you to each of those environments and many more.

2. To add some personality and excitement to a recorded sound. Picture reverb as makeup on a model. She may look rather plain or even only mildly attractive until the makeup makes her gorgeous by covering her blemishes, highlighting her eyes, and accentuating her lips and cheekbones. Reverb does the same thing with some tracks. It can make the blemishes less noticeable, change the texture of the sound itself, and highlight it in a new way.

3. To make a track sound bigger or wider than it really is. Anything that’s recorded in  stereo automatically sounds bigger and wider than something recorded in mono, because the natural ambience of the recording environment is captured. In order to keep the track count and data storage requirements down, most instrument or vocal recordings are done in mono. As a result, the space has to be added artificially by reverb. Usually, reverb that has a short decay time (less than one second) will make a track sound bigger.

4. To move a track further back in the mix. While panning takes you from left to right in the stereo spectrum, reverb will take you from front to rear (see the figure on the left). An easy way to understand how this works is to picture a band on stage. If you want the singer to sound like he’s in front of the drum kit, you would add some reverb to the kit. If you wanted the horn section to sound like it was placed behind the kit, you’d had more reverb. If you wanted the singer to sound like he’s in between the drums and the horns, you’d leave the drums dry and add a touch of reverb to the vocal, but less than the horns.

If we were going to get more sophisticated with this kind of layering, we’d use different reverbs for each of the instruments and tailor the parameters to best fit the sound we’re going after.

You can read more from The Audio Mixing Bootcamp and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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7 Rarely Used Pro Tools Features

For those of you who use Pro Tools, you'll enjoy this video by Paul Maunder. It's all about 7 rarely used PT features that could save you a lot of time during your next session. If you use another DAW, you might be able to find a similar function as well.

The rarely used features are:

1. Plug-in Settings Auto Increment
2. Restore Last Selection
3. Consolidate Clip 1kHz Tone
4. Rectified & Power Waveform Views
5. Metadata Inspector
6. Slip/Grid Mode
7. Cursor Location Indicator

Very cool. Thanks, Paul!

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Engineer Richard Chychi Discusses The New Dream Theater Album

My guest on this week's Inner Circle Podcast is engineer Richard Chychi, who was on the podcast about a year ago. This time he comes on specifically to tell us about recording the new Dream Theater album, which was pretty spectacular technically.

The album features the band augmented by a full orchestra and multiple choirs, which lead to some songs having more than 500 tracks across 3 Pro Tools rigs.

The story of putting it all together is fascinating (especially the 700 hours of mixing). I'm no longer going to complain when I get a 100 track session in to mix!

In the intro I'll discuss how AM radio is dying both in the US and in other parts of the world, the latest RIAA metric giving 1500 music streams the equivalent of 1 album, and the layoffs over at Avid.

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

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New Music Gear Monday: IZotope's Free Vinyl Plugin

Did you ever want to get that old vinyl record sound on a recording? It's pretty hard to do manually, since you have to simulate everything from scratchiness to electrical noise to record warping. There is a plugin that will do all of that for you and more, and and the best part is that it's free!

I'm talking about iZotope's excellent Vinyl plugin - the ultimate lo-fi weapon. The plugin will return your tracks to a previous era quickly and with ease, and once again, it's free!

Vinyl provides controls to inject mechanical noise, record wear, electrical noise, dust, scratch, and warp, as well as simulating the era of the recording (1930, '50, '70, '80 and 2000) and the speed of the record (33, 45 and 78 RPM). There's even a unique Spin Down feature that simulates the sound of slowly stopping a record, as well as a stereo to mono switch.

A few years ago I was mixing a song that was a newer version of 1940's blues song, when the artist asked me to "make it more realistic." Vinyl was inserted into the stereo buss, and before you knew it, you'd swear we were back there listening on an old record player.

To get Vinyl, go to iZotope's website. Did I say that it's FREE.

Here's a Soundcloud example of Vinyl getting that old radio sound.

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Michael Jackson "Thriller" Instrumental Track

Engineer Bruce Swedien

Michael Jackson was a star for a long time before Thriller, but the iconic album made him a superstar. Here's the instrument-only track (with some background vocals) that is a model of excellence, from the production (Quincy Jones) to the engineering (the Godfather Bruce Swedien), to the great performances. Take a listen.

1. Check out how the song develops, with something new happening in every section and in every 8 bars of the verse. Either a new instrument enters or a main instrument moves to a new register.

2. Listen for the synth on the left side during the chorus. It's difficult to hear during the final mix.

3. Bruce Swedien is a master of ambience. Check out how each of the instruments are in their own space, from the synth pad to the handclaps to the guitars to the horns, everything fits so well. Especially listen for the parts where you can hear the reverb tails to hear how they fit into the song.

4. Listen for the percussion in the last verse around 3:10. Again, it's something that's easily missed in the final mix.

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