Did you notice the sound of the lead vocalist, Thomas Mars, on Saturday Night Live (April 6th, 2013)? That is the sound of double-tracking, or since it was a live performance, it would just be called “vocal doubling.”
Double-tracking a lead vocal is a really common technique used mostly in recording. You probably never heard a Beatles song without it. But when performing live, it’s much less common.
There are two primary ways to get the sound of a double-tracked vocal. You can either have the lead singer actually sing the part twice, which is actually more common these days when recording (obviously impossible live, at least without some creative vocal surgery;)). Or you can do it electronically with an effect box. The Beatles actually started with the singing-the-part-twice method, then moved to an automated way to do it (artificial double tracking – ADT), since John Lennon did not like singing his part twice, or so the story goes. See my article What The Beatles Can Teach Us About Mixing Music for more on this.
The reason for even doing the double-tracking thing is to create a nice, thick sort of chorus-y sound on the voice. That sound is very distinctive once you know what to listen for. And I most definitely heard it from Thomas Mars last night. It could have been the automated effect being used. But there may have also been an actual recorded version of the lead vocal coming over the PA that Thomas Mars sang along with to create the effect. I have no evidence one way or the other. However, as you can see in the picture above, Thomas had a bank of effect pedals that he is stepping on, which I strongly suspect were for chorusing and/or double-tracking. But even if he did have a pre-recorded version to sing along with, I need to point out that this is NOT the same thing as lip-syncing, where the recording is all the audience hears while the singer fakes the actual singing. With double-tracking, you actually hear the live vocal as the singer sings. It’s just that it is augmented by a recorded version as well.
Either way, I have no problem with it at all as long as the performer is actually performing live.
So if you didn’t know what double-tracking sounded like, now you do. And if you need to thicken up the sound of a lead vocal, you know how to do it.
There are tutorials on double-tracking in our home recording course, The Newbies Guide To Audio Recording Awesomeness.
Archives for April 2013
MIDI Tools For iPhone From iDesignSound
The MIDI Tools app for iPhone from iDesignSound is now available from the app store for free. This simple app helps your device work better with external MIDI devices, and even allows you to play chords. If you have any interest in using MIDI with your mobile recording or production, take a look at this app.
You can read more about this app here: http://www.idesignsound.com/midi-tools-iphone/
Data Storage, Audio Production, And You
Data storage on your production computer is an important topic. Not all hard drives are created equal. A few key points to look at are capacity, RPM, and warranty. You will know best how much storage will suit your needs, but the RPM (revolutions per minute, just like your car) of a hard drive will effect how quickly the drive can access information. Most companies offer a standard one year warranty, but many companies offer a 3 year warranty on some of their products. From personal experience, Western Digital warranty service is hard to beat.
With the decreasing cost of solid state drives, it may be time to add one to your machine. They’re still not cheap compared to traditional hard drives, but the difference in performance has been compared to the difference between dial-up and cable internet connections. These drives do not have any moving parts, so they’re completely silent. The cost-per-gigabyte is still relatively high, so you may want a solid state drive to work from in addition to a traditional hard drive for bulk media storage.
Regardless of what drive you use, don’t forget to back up your data frequently!
There’s plenty of other information to consider when selecting a drive, read the full article here: http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/production/hard-drives-and-audio-hardware-considerations/
Staying Motivated In The Studio
The ambitious dreams and aspirations of childhood are slowly replaced with reality as we age. Whether that’s a good thing or not is up for debate. Are we better off living in the “real world”, being happy with mediocrity and monotony? If you find yourself dreading studio time, or more than a few small parts of your production process, you may be overdue for some soul-searching. Find the excitement and ambition that got you interested in recording in the first place. Even if you don’t become the King Midas of audio engineers overnight, you might find a bit more joy in the production process than usual.
You can read more here: http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/keeping_fresh_the_art_form_of_recording/