A Vocal Recording Checklist

Here's a series of things to check before recording a vocal that I culled from the Recording Engineer's Handbook and The Music Producer's Handbook. They cover everything from mic position to signal path to singer comfort, but you'll find if you following them you should have a pretty good session (providing that you have a great vocalist, of course).

•  Did you select the correct mic for the singer’s voice? Choose a mic with a lot of body for a thin voice and one with enhanced high end for a dark voice. 

• Did you select the correct microphone preamp?  Certain mics come alive when they’re paired with the right preamp. Also, a certain mic/preamp combination can be just the right color for a vocal.  Experiment.

• Did you select the correct microphone pickup pattern? Not every vocal needs to be recorded with a cardioid pattern. An omni pattern will cut down on proximity effect and a figure 8 can help with isolation from speakers or other instruments.

• Is proximity effect wanted or needed? Remember that the closer you get to a cardioid mic, the more the low end will become exaggerated. This could make the vocal too big for the track. Try the mic on omni if you really need to get a close and intimate sound.

• Is the singer the correct distance away? Too far away and you’ll hear more room, which could change the vocal sound or take away the intimacy. Too close and the vocal might sound too big or too close due to the proximity effect of a cardioid mic. If the singer is singing softly and breathy, keep the singer close to the mic. If the singer is shouting, screaming, or just plain loud, back the singer off the mic from two to three feet.

• Is the singer drifting off-axis? Some vocalists drift around the room and off-axis of the mic if they feel it’s too far away.  Put up a dummy mic that they can get close to so they can feel anchored. This also helps when putting up different mics to determine which one works best for the vocalist.

• Is the singer popping the mic? Place the mic at eye level and point it down at the singers mouth, turn the mic slightly off-axis, switch the pattern to omni, back the singer off the mic until the pops disappear or use a pop screen.

• Would a handheld mic work better? Some singers aren’t comfortable unless they feel like they’re on stage. Give them an SM 58 and don’t worry about the sound. A great performance beats a great sound any day (and a 58 isn’t all that bad combined with the right preamp).

• Are you limiting the signal? Just a few dB of limiting can help keep the vocal under control and stop overloading the signal chain. Don’t use software compressor/limiters because of the latency.

• Is the headphone mix at the correct level? The phone mix is crucial to a good performance. If the track is too loud, the vocalist may sing too hard which might not be the sound you want. He may also sing sharp as a result. If the track is too soft, the singer may not sing aggressive enough.

• Is the ambience conducive to a good vocal?  Most singers like the light down low when they sing.

For additional tips and book excerpts go to the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Get That Vintage Sound From Fungi

Trying to determine why a vintage instruments sounds better than one recently made has gone back seemingly forever, with almost every violin maker wondering why a Stradivarius sounds the way it does to every guitarist wondering why that 1955 Martin beats a new one from the factory.

It's long been known that as an instrument ages it purges the moisture within, making it lighter in the process. Also, the more it's played, the more it begins to resonant as the vibrations are set in the wood (you can get more detail from The Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook). But there's more to it than that, as any vintage collector will tell you. There are some vintage instruments that just sing while others aren't on the same level.

Now a team at the Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin believes they've found the answer - fungi. After analyzing wood from various vintages of violins, Professor Francis Schwarze discovered that the one thing that everyone has been overlooking all these years is the fact that back in the Stradivarius' day, two species of fungi (think mushrooms) were normally found in the wood, and it decayed it in such a way that an instrument's tonal properties improved. The fungi reduce the density of the wood (just like the moisture being naturally purged) and increased the speed that the sound traveled through it. The interesting by-product is that the wood still remained as strong as ever.

So why don't we have natural wood fungi today? Most wood today is treated with an ethylene oxide gas before it's processed, which instantly kill all the fungi.

To put it to the test, the team exposed a new violin to the two fungi for a period of 9 months and then held a blind test against a Stradivarius. Although a test like this is always subjective, a panel of experts were fooled into thinking that the new violin was also a Strad.

Will this work on acoustic guitars as well? Maybe. Violins are typically made out of spruce and sycamore, and acoustic guitars typically use spruce for the tops, so it seems like an exposure to fungi might work (more on acoustic guitar woods in this post). Any takers out there?

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Make Your Videos More Interesting With The L-Cut

A few years ago I wrote a book called The Musician's Video Handbook which outlined the many things that I learned while producing music television shows like Guitar Universe and Desert Island Music (check out my YouTube channel to see some segments). In the book I tried to show some of the common techniques used by Hollywood producers, directors and camermen to make any type of video that an artist or band might need (music, concert, interview, EPK) more professional looking.

Recently I came across a video on reelseo (of all places) that outlines a well-used story telling technique called an L-cut, which is the shape that the edit makes on your video editing timeline. What it means is that the video from a new clip begins to play over the audio from a previous clip, like in the case where you might hear the end of the dialog from an interview from the previous scene but see the band on stage. There's also an opposite of this called a J-cut where you hear the audio from the next clip while you see the video from the previous one.

While these cuts won't help you too much in a music video where there's music over the top, they can make any interview footage seem to move a lot faster and feel more professional. Here's the video that shows how it's done.

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The New Bronze Music Delivery Format

I rarely cross-post to this blog from by Music 3.0 music industry blog, but I thought that this topic is worth it. It's about a new online music delivery format called Bronze that's pretty interesting. Is it "take over the world" interesting? Probably not, but I think that there will be a place for it in many genres of music in the future.

Why? I'm glad you asked. Bronze is the first format that can alter the mix of a song with each playback. It's non-interactive, so the user has nothing to do with how it's played back, but each listen is different, just like a live performance.

Supposedly the chance of hearing the same version twice is about the same as winning the lottery, and it's not possible to freeze any version to listen to it again. Just like a live performance, once it's gone, it's gone forever. That said, it's possible for an artist to continue to update a song with new tracks long after it's been released. Considering that some of the artist's that I've worked with in the past can never let go of a song, this could certainly cut down their overall output of songs.

Regardless of if you like a song or not, Bronze is probably better suited for some musical genres than others (think electronic music). As a mixer, I'm pretty suspicious of the format, since what we do is to try to freeze a moment in time, but as a consumer, I'm very intrigued. A great mixer can bring certain things to the table that makes it a hit that you might not have in another mix. On the other hand, if you really dig a song, you'd probably want to listen to it over and over to see how it would change every time. That said, that means you'd probably not want to look for new music as much, since the music you already know is somewhat new every time.

That said, as a business, Bronze probably doesn't make much sense. A record label sells a frozen archive as a product, so this wouldn't appeal to them. And legally, how to you copyright a product  that's not a fixed recording?

But the idea of Bronze is pretty cool in that it's a unique use of existing technology. Now let's see if anyone will play along. The first song released in the format is by ex-Golden Silvers frontman Gwilym Gold called "Flesh Freeze." Check it out on the Bronzeformat.com website.

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New Musical Instrument Monday: Auria iPad DAW

For those of you who love your iPad and want to do more actual audio work on it, here's an amazing digital audio workstation app by WaveMachine Labs called Auria. It's easy to take a mere iPad app lightly when it comes to some heavy duty audio lifting, but Auria can play back up to 48 mono or stereo channels at up to 96kHz/24 bit, and can record up to 24 tracks at the same time, as well as having a feature list that can rival many widely used DAWs.

The Auria DAW has both a full channel strip and master strip package designed by the clever guys at PSP Audioware (thanks, Antoni, for turning me on to this gem). It's excellent in both look and function, and sounds great, just like all PSP plugins. I only wish that they were available as a plugin for Pro Tools as well.

But the Auria is not only a full-on mixer, it's an editor too, just like your favorite computer-based DAW. It's a little clunkier to do with your finger and a touch screen, but you can always use an Apple wireless mouse for more precision if needed.

The Auria iPad DAW is available from the App Store for only $49. There's a variety of approved interfaces that work with it (some a little easier than others), but just about anything will work as long as it works with Core Audio and doesn't require a driver.

Check out the video.

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KISS "Detroit Rock City" Song Analysis

JW asked for a song analysis of "Detroit Rock City," the third single from KISS's hit album Destroyer. Although the song didn’t initially go anywhere on the charts except in Detroit, it eventually caught fire as the B-side of the single “Beth” during a release a year later. Today, "Detroit Rock City" is still a KISS concert favorite, while "Beth" is.........that KISS song with strings. Like with all song analysis, we'll look at the song form, the arrangement, the sound and the production.

THE SONG

"Detroit Rock City" is basically a simple song based around a verse and hooky chorus, but is skillfully put together both to add some length and some interest. The song form looks like this:

intro ➞ verse ➞ chorus ➞ verse ➞ chorus ➞ 1/2 chorus ➞

bridge ➞ verse ➞ 1/2 chorus ➞ solo ➞ chorus ➞ verse ➞ chorus

The lyrics tell a story and rhyme where they have to. They’re not too clever but they never seem forced in rhyme or cadence.

THE ARRANGEMENT

"Detroit Rock City" is cleverly arranged to make it more interesting. The intro is a combination of a harmony guitar line played with the bass leading into the chord progression of the chorus. When the vocal enters you hear the basic instrumentation of the band with the drums playing a double time feel, the bass playing a counter line, and both guitars panned left and right and playing power chords.

During chorus, the lead vocal sings in the holes left by the background vocals harmony (quite the opposite of most songs), while the guitar power chords are augmented by a low octave piano and at the end, a reprise of the guitar intro in the left channel. What’s different from most hit songs is that both the verses and chorus are mostly identical in instrumentation throughout the song, without adding or subtracting any instruments with one exception towards the end of the song.

The second chorus changes in that it’s a half-chorus vocally, then modulates up a whole step to act as a bridge with the same guitar figure playing over it, then drops back down and ends with the chords to the chorus.

After the next verse, there’s another half chorus, then everything is muted except the drums for 4 bars, then a lead guitar line plays 4 bars, which is joined by a harmony guitar for the next 4 bars. When the next chorus plays, a third harmony guitar is added and only the hook of “Gotta lose your mind in Detroit rock city” is sung in harmony.

The next chorus has the first half vocals, then a 4 bar hole with a drum fill at the end, back into the chorus with the harmony lead line playing on the right side to the hard ending with a high guitar and low piano note.

• The Foundation: drums

• The Rhythm: bass

• The Pad: power chord guitars

• The Lead: lead vocal, guitar line in bridge

• The Fills: background vocals in the chorus

THE SOUND

The lead vocal is doubled, but singer Paul Stanley does a great job because the double is so close to the lead vocal that it almost doesn't sound like a double at all. The vocal also has a short regenerated delay and very bright long reverb on it. The sound is state of the art for that period in time (1976). Stanley has a pretty dynamic voice, and you can sometimes hear the compressor flattening it out as a result, but it doesn't sound too bad in the track. When you're listening, check out how apparent the vocal double becomes in the chorus at around 2:10.

Both the drums (especially the toms) and the lead guitar lines have a long reverb on them, probably the same on as on the vocal.

THE PRODUCTION

“Detroit Rock City” is a great production job by Ezrin, not for how good it is but for how bad it could have been. Just about all the instrumental parts are shaky. They’re pretty good, but they’re not precise in the articulations, and certainly not as good as the band would become in later years. As a result of the playing, the song just doesn’t have much of a groove, although everything is in time. Still, several million kids at the time could care less, and loved the song anyway. Chalk that all up to Bob Ezrin's most excellent production.

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The History of The Leslie Speaker

If you love the Hammond organ as I do, then you're probably a Leslie speaker lover as well. The venerable rotating speaker system has been with us from even before the Hammond, and has taken on a life of its own when used by guitar players, electric violinists, and experimental musicians everywhere.

Here's a great short video on the history of the Leslie.

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5 Best Audio Editing Apps?

Adobe Audition Timeline

Lifehacker recently ran a survey trying to find the 5 best audio editing tools, and it turned up some interesting and surprising choices. Granted, Lifehacker is not a site with a core audience of audio professionals, but it's still interesting to see exactly what computer literate people consider when it comes to their audio editor of choice. So here we go:

1. Audacity (56% of the votes) - I can see why this was chosen since it's a fairly powerful audio app and the price is right (free). Plus, it's cross platform.

2. Adobe Audition (14%) - I think that a lot of people use this because it's included as part of the Adobe Creative Suite.

3. Avid Pro Tools (10%) - The big daddy in the pro world, Pro Tools has dominated music, film and broadcast for the last decade. If you're going to be a real-world pro, use anything else at your own risk.

4. Reaper (10%) - Here's a DAW that's coming on strong. The price is only $60, and so many people rave about it that I can see it taking over as the top dog if Pro Tools should ever falter.

5. Ableton Live (10%) - If you're making or working with electronic music, then Ableton Live is the center of your universe. If electronic music isn't on your radar screen, then probably neither is Live.

There was also honorable mention for Goldwave, which I wasn't even aware of, and Soundforge, which as noted in a previous blog, is coming to the Mac soon after a long run as a PC-only app.

So now it's your turn. Think the survey got it right? Oh, and if you decide to purchase any of the above workstations, help support this blog by starting from this link.

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10 Ways To Compose Music More Effectively

Marcel Thomas recently had a wonderful post on Music Think Tank regarding "8 Ways To Compose Music More Effectively." You can read the entire article to get Marcel's take on the first 8, but I added a couple of extra points that I found to be particularly useful.

1) Don’t disregard your ideas too quickly

2) Write something every day

3) Go for a walk before you start composing

4) Listen to your music with fresh ears

5) Write out a structure

6) Seek the advice of other musicians and friends

7) Write in a style you have never done before

8) Learn from other composers, songwriters and producers

9) Don't feel you have to be perfect right away. Too many writers feel that if they don't have a masterpiece right way, the song is no good. While some writers are lucky enough to channel a hit in 10 minutes, that doesn't happen the vast majority of the time. It takes some time and work to polish your idea. Which brings us to:

10) Don't be afraid to refine what you first wrote. While your initial ideas may be the best, the entire song probably isn't. It can take a lot of passes before you get it right, so don't feel like you might be losing some of your mojo by doing a rewrite or two or five.

Songwriting is just like any other creative endeavor. For all but the lucky few, it takes time and effort to polish an idea into a song that other people want to hear.

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New Musical Instrument Monday: The Tonara App

For those of you who don't read music this won't be too earth shattering, but if you do, you know the problems of having to turn the pages of music while you're playing. Even worse, with a number of the sheet music apps available, if you don't swipe your iPad correctly, you can move pages ahead and never be able to easily find your place again.

That's where Tonara comes in. It's an intelligent music page turning app that actually follows the music as you're playing and automatically turns the page at just the right time, regardless of the tempo that you're playing at. Even better, it can even be used with multiple instruments.

Check out the video.

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Sheryl Crow "Soak Up The Sun" Song Analysis

Here's a song analysis request from my buddy JW. “Soak Up The Sun” was the lead single from Sheryl Crow’s 2002 album C’mon, C’mon, an album that was nominated for a Best Rock Album Grammy in 2003 and went on to sell more than 2.5 million units. “The song was also nominated for Best Pop Female Vocal Performance, and also features singer Liz Phair on background vocals. Like with all song analysis, we'll look at the song form, the arrangement, the sound and the production.

The Song

“Soak Up The Sun” is one of those songs that appears to be simple on the surface, but there’s more going on than meets the ear. The song form looks like this:

intro A ➞ intro B ➞ verse ➞ verse ➞ chorus ➞ intro B ➞ verse ➞ 

B-section (4 bars) ➞ chorus ➞ intro B ➞ verse ➞ 

B-section (5 bars) ➞ chorus ➞ chorus ➞ chorus 

The form is unusual in that it has two intros, one that’s based on loops that only heard once in the song, and a second one with the songs main instruments that’s heard multiple times. Although it doesn’t have a bridge, “Soak Up The Sun” does have a B-section that unexpectedly enters at the end of the third and fourth verses instead of another verse, with the second B-section having an extra bar. That form change, along with the arrangement, keeps the interest high throughout the song.

The Arrangement

Just like the song form, “Soak Up The Sun” has a much more complex arrangement than you might think on first listen. There are many more arrangement layers that glue the song together than most pop songs.

The intro is made up of various loops over what sounds to be a old record playing that goes into the second intro made up of the drums, an electric guitar through a Leslie speaker in the center playing a riff answered by doubled acoustic guitars on each side. The glue that holds the mix arrangement and mix together is an organ pedaling a single note way in back of the mix. While it’s not heard clearly, it’s integral to the song as it would sound empty without it.

When the doubled vocal enters in the first verse, the Leslie guitar exits but the other instruments remain. The Leslie guitar then returns in between verses. For the chorus, the vocals are joined by the bass, doubled harmony vocals and multiple electric guitars panned left and right, and the doubled acoustics now strum to add motion. On the second half of the chorus, a slide guitar enters to add additional motion.

On the second chorus the instrumentation is the same as the first except that the slide guitar enters right away instead of waiting until the second half. Then on the next intro a different electric guitar line plays instead of the Leslie guitar. The fourth verse is different though, as the bass and electric guitars exit and the section is carried by the drums, acoustic guitars and organ pad behind the doubled vocals. The next B-section is the same instrumentation as previous, except for the addition of the extra bar at the end. 

The three outchoruses are interesting in that the instrumentation stays the same for the first two, except the melody vocals change slightly on chorus three and harmony background and answer vocals enter on chorus four. On the final chorus everything breaks down to acoustic and electric guitars, bass and organ pad and vocal.

Once again, like most hit songs the dynamics vary throughout, which keeps it interesting.

The arrangement elements look like this:

• The Foundation:  bass and drums

• The Rhythm: acoustic and electric strumming guitars

• The Pad: organ and distorted electric guitar

• The Lead: vocal

• The Fills: slide guitar in chorus, harmony vocals on fifth chorus (second outro chorus)\

The Sound

Except for the vocals, “Soak Up The Sun” isn’t what you’d call a distinct mix. There are a lot of guitars, but they all pretty much blend into one another, and the organ pad is buried, but that’s actually a good thing as it helps glue everything together.

There doesn’t seem to be any effects in the song at all, with all the instruments and vocals being dry. As a result, any layering is done exclusively through level and tone. There is a fair amount of panning, with all of the guitars except for the Leslie guitar and slide panned to one side or another to stay out of the way of the vocals.

The Production

As with most hits, “Soak Up The Sun” breathes dynamically with instruments entering and exiting throughout the song, and new parts subtly being added in throughout to keep the interest high. There might not be much of a change from section to section, but it doesn’t have to be a lot to hold your attention. Listen to the slight melody change on the third chorus and then the new high background vocal part that enters on the fourth verse as good examples of that.

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Here Comes HyperAudio

There's something new on the horizon that anyone involved in audio should be interested in and it's called Hyperaudio. Hyperaudio is a way to take audio to another level by integrating some common sense things that haven't been possible until now, like search, subtitles, versions and translations, and all sorts of additional text info.

In other words, it's a way of adding into audio all the features that we've been using with hypertext for years. All this is now made possible in the new HTML5 platform that is thankfully replacing Flash as the media platform of choice on the Web.

This is a technology in its infancy, but it holds much promise. Those that think that hyperaudio will be the next big thing (maybe only A big thing), hope that it will:

• make audio searchable
• make audio linkable
• make audio navigable
• dynamically generate audio
• convert speech to text
• represent audio visually

Ok, some of these we can do already, but require a separate app to do so. The hope is that this will all be built into HTML5 at some point. Here's an early example of how it works from WNYC famous RadioLab program. Remember, you heard about it here first!

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