Episode 28 - Vocal Production
Show Notes
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 28
Nov 22, 2020
w/ Matt Beckley - Week 2
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Matt Beckley spent the last two weeks just focusing on writing and only now they are going into the studio today to lay it down.
Matt Rad’s vocal chain has changing from his late 80s’ U87 to his 50s long-body U47.
Rad is still using the Undertone preamp.
Beckley likes the Chandler preamp for the way he works.
The U67 is a very bright mic. There’s a lot of circuitry that makes it get there.
Almost every vintage 67 is going to have this mod from the 80s that opens up the top-end.
As a result every U67 is going to sound very different. Some will be great and some will be total garbage.
There’s so much more resolution in a ribbon mic that you can EQ them really hard and still have it sound great. Even if they don’t sound great from the jump.
How a mic sounds when you first pull it up is not necessarily indicative of how they sound.
Vintage mics may capture more information that you can then boost.
Really get to know the pieces of gear that you have. Having a deep knowledge of the things you have is going to take your farther.
Beckley likes to get new gear one-by-one instead of buying a bunch of new gear all at once.
Beckley’s setup is a new but modded ELAM 251.
He asked them to put a brighter capsule in there, cause he does a lot of pop music. It’s the same kind of capsule, but tuned brighter.
Manley used to have one guy function as QC on capsules. He would listen to every capsule and throw them out until he found one that worked correctly.
Uses Chandler TG channel. Most guys he know use the TG2.
He loves the low-cut on it. Especially for vocals before it hits the compressor. Everything below 60 or 90. Get all the low-end and the shit you don’t need out before it triggers the compressor.
Alan Yoshida who used to be mastering guy at Ocean Way had a console EQ that went up to 24k-32k. He did it so that he could lift 10k-12k with minimal phase shift. This gave a lift without any ringing in that range. All the phase anomaly is outside of the audible range.
The Chandler has a 12k-16k which he’ll use just a little bit of to open up the top-end.
Uses Slate Dragon compressor for his vocals.
He loves that it has a mix knob for parallel compression. It gives you the vibe of compression without killing the transients.
Try sweeping a high-q boost at 10dB and sweep it slowly across a mix to hear the effects of phase shift.
Reverbs and Delays:
Rad’s go-to’s change every 6 months.
He’s using the Seventh Heaven reverb.
He’s using the Valhalla Vintage Verb.
Try EQ’ing before you go into the Valhalla reverbs.
Put a Decapitator before the reverb.
EQ’ing into and out of reverbs is hugely important.
Rad likes to heavily autotune a vocal send before it goes into the reverb or delay. It makes the vocal pop out more. The ambience is perfectly in tune. It’s beautiful and unexpected.
Put an extra mono reverb and a slap that goes on the vocal to make it stand out.
Beckley will heavily “robot” the doubled vocal with tuning and compression and tuck it in beneath the lead vocal. It gives you the pop perfection beneath your lead.
Beckley loves pedal and hardware delays.
Rad wants to build a setup where you can run pedals as inserts.
That’s been Beckley’s secret for years.
The signal coming out of a guitar is super low and so pedals are super low voltage. Therefore the signal needs to be boosted going into line level. Then you need something to knock the level down from line level back into the guitar pedal.
Little Labs make great gear for solutions like this. Their Red Eye re-amp box helps.
Beckley feels that most guitar delay pedals are really good about staying out of the way of the vocals. Probably because their not full frequency bands.
A pro hack for a lot of people is to print your verb. Once you render it down you’re far more likely to manipulate it and automate the sound.
He gets a much better result because he’s more apt to mess with them.
On his template, Beckley has a good Lexicon hall and a good Lexicon plate.
Having a master reverb helps to make everything feel like its all the same song.
Echo/verbs on individual tracks are for special effects.
Q: How do I consistently develop the best vocal harmonies?
Play the song chords on a piano. Find where your lead vocal lives and decide which other chord tones you want to include on your track.
Try using pedal harmonies.
“Trust me. Try it” is the vocal producer’s mantra.
Have a ready-to-go keyboard in your studio so that you can quickly try out harmonies/melodic ideas.
Q: Any tips or tricks when the vocal tracking isn’t feeling right? How do you broach this with the artist without killing the mood or cutting down ideas?
You don’t want to be someone who says no. You want to be someone who offers alternatives.
Don’t shit on something unless you’ve got an alternative.
You’ve got to have more techniques to draw on so that you can have different breakthroughs.
Have the experience and the comfort and knowledge to know how to just keep things moving.
Take breaks. That’s one of the best things you can do instead of pushing through.
Take frequent breaks. Go outside.
Do 4 10min sessions in an hour instead of 1 60 min session.
Geoff Emerick did some America records. He thought analog was better than digital because it forced the performer to be super-practiced before they came into the session. Then the process of rewinding forces them to pause and consider the take that they just did.
For Flood, the psychology of using tape where you can’t edit forces the performers to show up differently.
Producing is all about getting the best out of their artist. It’s not just the beats.
When you’re in with the artist is just the tip of the iceberg.
Beckley works hard to create an environment where people feel comfortable saying “no”.
He works hard to assure the artist that they’ve already proven themselves to him and he wants to work with them.
This also makes the “yes” more impactful. The artist doesn’t worry so much that you’re just trying to comfort them.
Beckley:
If you don’t believe in something there’s no amount of money that’s going to help you make that record well. You have to be genuinely excited about what you’re doing.
If something you make is trash then you’re going to have trash on your discography.
Q: Thoughts on comping?
All the people that Rad knows who do vocal production are in Pro Tools.
Comping as you go is super important. Make notes as you go.
Rad likes doing full passes of vocals with artists.
Rad puts descriptions in the playlist
Beckley puts notes in the notes field.
Don’t lose the forest for the trees. Don’t just listen to each word/sentence as an island. Listen to it in context when making your judgement on what to comp.
Listen front-to-back for each take/comp that you do.
On Michael Jackson, when they made a small change in the bridge they would listen to the song from the top to put it all into context.
Michael would stack his vocals by stepping back from the mic.
To make a gang vocal/choir sound. There’s a lot less low end on those. You need to step back from the mic so that it doesn’t all sound so close up. Then do a take close up and blend that in for proximity.
Take some steps away from the mic to play with your natural EQ.
EQ’ing low end out of a close vocal is not the same as stepping back from the mic.
