|
Welcome to PSW’s Best of the Rec Pit. This latest thread
recently appeared in Fletcher’s forum. Send your suggestions
of threads to feature to keith@prosoundweb.com.
Go to Rec Pit
Go to
Fletcher’s Forum
Add
your comments to this thread
Posted by kifaru:
|
|
 |
I've been brought a song to
record that has a part in it that requires a chorus to sing
part of it. The performer told me that what he had in mind
for the part was a sound like the choral parts in Bohemian
Rhapsody by Queen.
I'm really not sure how to achieve this sound and the performer
does not have the money to hire a choir to do the part or
an arrangement to give them if he did. So here's my question.
Did Queen do the choral parts themselves and if so did they
use any effects to achieve the sound?
|
I have a large church space to record the part in if it's just
4 guys singing the harmony. However if not is there a way to achieve
this effect with a few guys? I'm assuming that I'll use no more
than 2 mics: one for the room and one close for the choir. Any help
would be appreciated.
Reply posted by fletcher
From
what I've heard, the vocals on Bohenian Rhapsody were all Freddy
Mercury. All of it. Every voice, every harmony, everything that
came out of a mouth came out of his... so... you might want to explain
to your client that he has about 40 vocal overdubs in his immediate
future... and it'll really help if he [or who ever gets the arduous
task of singing on the project] has a great voice, and an excellent
sense of harmony and vocal arrangements...
With a choir
you end up with "You Can't Always Get What You Want"...
which may be the case anyway...
Reply posted by pricey
If
memory serves, the liner notes say that the vocals on "Bohemian
Rhapsody" are all four of them. It certainly doesn't sound
like one person. The key to that beautiful, glossy sound is
1)
EXTREMELY good pitch and timing
2) Massive overdubbing
3)
A neutral, uncolored tracking room.
After listening to "A
Night at the Opera," the Beatles and the Beach Boys sounded
like crap in comparison!
Reply posted by rivers
I'm
pretty sure most of those parts involve more than one voice but
will require layers of overdubbing(not to mention talent) and many
dedicated tracks (at least before some mixdown or reduction mix).
IMHO the Queen vocals can't really be replicated with a
"plug in " or simple doubling but usually requires triple
or quadruple tracking of harmony parts AND the right arrangement
to make it happen. All of this assumes talented vocalists and a
engineer/producer that has an ear for vocal arrangement.
Long
and short....it's easy to do poorly and quite difficult to do well.
Reply posted by chrisj
I hear breathy compression
on their stuff, is it me? I'd love to have more information on,
say, the 'Sheer Heart Attack' background vocals. Sometimes they
get a peculiar edgy chime that's like the Beatles got with out-of-phase
combinations of mics.
It's not just EQ doing it, or just
compression. I keep thinking out-of-phase. They had to be savvy
to this, Brian May's guitar always had the capacity for out-of-phase
pickups. Could it have been applied to vocals?
Reply posted by kifaru
I don't think the young man has the bucks
to achieve his vision. I think I will subsidize his project because
this has intrigued me. Let's say that I am able to get the men’s
chorale at my local university to donate their talents, how many
mics do I use to record them and should I switch mics when doing
the overdubs?
Reply posted by fletcher
I think
the biggest part of the thing is going to be to have the parts clearly
defined... as for switching mics/pre's and other elements of the
recording chain... it usually makes it way easier to mix when you
do.
Best of luck with it!
Reply posted by hiltonius
My
money's on Fletcher on this one. Here's why:
Shortly after
the untimely passing of Freddie Mercury, I had the honor to work
on a Freddy Mercury track for the "Great Pretender" record.
Our mission was to peel the vocals that had been recorded previously
off multitrack and build a new track around them.
The opportunity
to examine that legendary Queen vocal texture in this detail was
appreciated by us all. Every single vocal on the song we worked
on was quite obviously the voice of Freddy, and the overall texture
(thick choral....you know, that Queen thing) sounded just like all
that other stuff they did, including Bohemian Rhapsody. I think
he had bounced (that's right, bounced) all the finished vocals to
an entire 24 track slave - there had to be upwards of 100 voices
bounced together on that song.
The unfortunate title of
the track we did was something on the order of "Time Waits
for No One", and was taken from some west end London show that
he'd written it for (which, btw, was produced - the show not the
record- by Dave Clark, yes, that Dave Clark from the Dave Clark
5).
Next time I see Gary Lyons, I'll ask him if Freddy did
all the vocals on BH.
|
