Recording Background Vocals
If you’ve come up with a clever backing bit, naturally you’ll want to make sure you record it properly. To that end, we asked a few experts to give us some background on cutting good-sounding background vocals.
By Dave Simons
When it comes to embellishing your work in progress, a well-crafted backing vocal can go a long way. Background harmonies not only add flavor and make a nice production technique, they’re often the hookiest part of the whole song. If you’ve come up with a clever backing bit, naturally you’ll want to make sure you record it properly. To that end, we asked a few experts to give us some background on cutting good-sounding background vocals.
Changing the “Voicegram”
Back in the ‘60s, producer/engineer Brooks Arthur, the man responsible for dozens of classic girl-group hits by the Shangri-Las, the Cookies and many others, developed a unique method for recording background harmonies. “One of the essential ingredients on those girl-group productions was doubling and tripling the backing vocals,” says Arthur. “But the thing that really made it work was moving the girls to a different spot around the mic for each overdub, so that the mic would be picking up a different ‘voicegram’ - that is, same singers, but the new positioning would somehow make it all sound fuller. That formula remained a constant for me through the years.”
When doing the overdubs, Arthur would typically record the vocals using a three-partition room separator, positioned about 10 feet from the control room window. “That way, we could utilize the height of the ceiling, the sound of the room, even the vocal deflection off the window.”
One for All
Recording multiple singers doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to use multiple microphones. Many engineers prefer grouping background vocalists around a single omni-directional microphone and allowing the singers to balance themselves live, rather than “riding” individual vocal tracks. Roy Halee seldom strayed from the one-mic method during his tenure with Simon & Garfunkel. “Whenever I tried isolating Paul and Artie on separate microphones, it never worked - the blend just wasn’t the same,” recalls Halee. “When the two of them were singing together live, something would happen in the sound field between their voices and the mic that was magical. That’s just the way it happened. The minute you’d put a piece of cardboard between them, it went away. So I’d always insist that we do it live. And occasionally we’d get into some pretty heated discussions about it, too!”
Halee also preferred fleshing out the vocal parts with an additional layer. “It wasn’t really doubling, it was more 3/4 original to 1/4 overdub,” says Halee. Of course, a great mic was always a necessary ingredient. “I’d use a good tube mic, like an old Neumann U67, or an M49. The choice of microphones is really important, obviously, but I was always adamant about keeping everything as clean as possible on the way to the recorder - the channel, the pre-amp, everything.”
Monitor Method
If you have a small group of singers but you’re short on headphones, no problem - next time, try recording the backing vocals right in the control room while running the reference track through the monitor speakers at a moderate volume, perhaps rolling off a bit of the bass in order to control leakage (you could also try using a dynamic microphone or a condenser mic in cardioid position, with the singers facing the “live” side of the mic). Producer Elliot Mazer used this method on Neil Young and guest vocalists James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt during the making of Young’s classic Harvest album. “We’d just finished the rhythm tracks for ‘Heart of Gold’ and had agreed on the master take,” says Mazer. “Neil, James and Linda came into the control room, sat down on the couch, we put up the mics, and rolled the playback right through the big speakers we had in there. That’s how they cut those background vocals. Normally you’d put on the headphones and get in a separate room and do it that way. But this worked out great - and it also kept the live feel intact.”
Finishing Touches
When mixing your background vocals into the completed track, be creative. If you’ve layered the vocal parts, try spreading the separate tracks across the stereo field - start hard left and hard right, then gradually move each part toward the center until you achieve the right balance (and there’s nothing wrong with stacked vocals in mono, either). A bit of echo or delay (or delayed echo) never hurt, particularly when applied to stereo vocals; for a really atmospheric sound, increase the effect level (while decreasing the direct signal), suitable on generic bits like “ooo’s” or “ah’s.”
Posted Jul 14, 2006
Member Comments
It’s also useful and interesting to vary the parametrics on the eq in order to give additional vocal flavor to a multi-stack of vocals, and swapping positions to enhance the effect.
Dave, thanks for providing info from the experts. “One For All” was particularly enlightening. I learned from this article that Artistry, such as Simon & Garfunkel displayed in their career, requires “Skill” to capture. My thoughts are that some vocal duos need to hear their partners Live in order to effectively record as they feel it. This displays their artistic uniqueness.
Try adding some highs and cut the lows for that Eagles type flavor on background vocals. Then tweak the reverb carefully to add an etherel quality.
I like the singers to rehearse a bit with it too. Try taking the part that your putting background and loop it. When no one knows during the reheasal, punch it in. You don’t get that unrehearsed vocal track that way and the singers are comfy with their parts.
Changing the “Voicegram”, and “One For All” Fantastic tips!I have an artist who insists on double vocals, a lot. Perhaps these with help us find a happy medium.
A good example to compare the blend of Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel’s voices is to listen to their first album “Wednesday Morning 3AM” in which the vocals are separated left and right, and any other S&G recording that came later, particularly “Sounds of Silence”. The original acoustic version vs. the electrified version from their 2nd album shows how the same recording can sound so different when the vocals are panned left & right or dead center.
We play rock.. we have a few things we do with a lot of the vocals. Depending on the song I have the vocalist talk or whisper the lead vocal underneath the main, and drop it low in the mix and play with distortion and such, sometimes it really adds to it. Sometimes it doesn’t sound good… and we scrap it. I’ll also usuall do two vocal throws (exact copies on two seperate tracks) and pitch shift one up 8 cents, and one down 8 cents, pan them L and R 50%, add some extra reverb and drop the volume down… you find the sweet spot in the volume with the two pitched tracks it makes the lead vocal a lot fuller.
Vocals are a lot of fun to mess with.
I had a comment on my background vocals from a friend (Nate Best) when he was with The O’Jays. On one particular song I had recorded the drums in stereo, and all the other instruments were mixed duophonically with the dominant track on the right, the layered background vocals in 3-part harmony, were also mixed duophonically with the stronger track on the left. The lead vocal was panned dead center. He really liked the result, and didn’t realize that I was not only the writer and performer, but also the engineer. Yes, it’s fun to mess with vocals.
