Bottom-End, Writings and Reviews from Music Producer Pete Strobl

I made the switch from gym rat to studio rat when I realized that breaking fingers on the basketball court didn’t add much to a bass track. So I hung up the old sneakers, grabbed my bass with both hands and took my gym rat mentality with me into any studio with a good espresso machine. What can I say? The things I would forego for a chance to be in the room with the guys and gals is a very short list. And that is why I jumped at the invitation to travel to Holland to work on Traveling Girl with some good friends who also happen to know their way around a recording studio.

I was picked up at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport by the Traveling girl herself, Lille Mulder. As we knew each other only by email, we both did a few laps around the terminal before the process of elimination successfully put us into the car together. The two hour drive to Dick Kemper’s Studio in Doetinchen gave us a chance to tell our life stories and lay the groundwork for the two week’s work ahead.

Dick Kemper

S&K Studio reflected all the know how of the seasoned musician/engineer/producer that is Dick Kemper. Dick toured the world as the bassist of Vandenberg sharing major concert venues with Metallica and Ozzy and that experience combined with the intervening years of recording have served to create a consummate studio pro. I was here to work with Lille  only on the vocal tracks but a quick tour of the studio and a listen to the basic tracks told me that she would have plenty of inspiration to draw upon when it was her turn on the other side of the glass.

As good as Dick is at his job, any engineer or producer will tell you that they are only as good as the talent holding the guitar or bass, or in the case of Nico Groen, hitting things with sticks. And in this department Dick had plenty to work with. The producer of The Traveling Girl is my good pal Casper van Vulpen and Casper started the project off with plenty of wind in his sails by choosing great songs to record and the right combination of players to make the magic happen. This project was truly an international effort as Casper had gathered the forces of a Russian from Poland, a Polish songwriter from England, a British writer from London, an Austrian from Los Angeles, a rhythm section from Holland and one of the best singers I’ve worked with in years. Lock the doors and get the coffee going. This was going to be more fun than a pick up game at the Fourth Street cage in the Village.

The Traveling Girl

Lille was a dream to work with. Many singers can be temperamental, moody or demanding. Lille was all of these but in a very unique way. Where some singer’s moods or demands are driven by insecurity, inability or lack of preparation, Lille took full responsibility and her demands were only of herself. And where some singers might hit the wall of their endurance or storm out of the room blaming it all on the headphone mix or the color of the pop filter, Lille forced every mood directly through the microphone and into her vocal performance for upwards of eight hours at a stretch.

The main focus of my involvement was in creating authentic and sincere vocal performances with a singer in English as a second and sometimes third language. Regrettably, I only know how to say “Goddammit” “Two Beers” and “Screwing in the kitchen” in the Dutch language but Lille and I were able to work together in German as well as English. I find sincerity to be the most attractive element of any vocal performance and this must be based on not only a thorough understanding but also a convincing belief in the lyrical content of a song.

Producer Casper van Vulpen

Whenever studio rats get gather in the temple of sound they follow a timeless ritual. Everyone let’s everyone else know who they know, which new plug-ins they use, choice of recording software, past, present and future drug, alcohol and gambling profile and whatever other factoids seem pertinent to the session. It’s just a bit of canine butt-sniffing really, but it serves to lubricate the initial get-to-know-you period better than passing out resumes. We already knew each other via the internet so the circle sniff was just a bit if handshaking and joke telling. Before I hit the pillow that first night I felt warmly sniffed into the pack.

My second day in Holland Lille and I went to work in earnest. As we went line by line dissecting the finer points of pronunciation we also discussed the inner meaning of every phrase. Sometimes when writers create in a foreign language they might say something that makes perfect literal sense but loses symbolic meaning or poetic value in the translation. There were a few corners to smooth over in this department and we changed a few words or phrases to insure that Lille was portraying the feeling behind the meaning with belief, conviction and precision.

Nico Groen at S&K Studio

I had initially thought to coach Lille into a strictly American pronunciation but her delivery has a certain international charm which we certainly did not want to lose. So we concentrated on clarity and those areas where letter sounds differ between Dutch, German and English while retaining the feel and passion which went into the original demos of the songs. On a technical level, most problems arise when losing the distinction between voiced and un-voiced consonants. Using the word “Love” as an example, the ‘V’ must have pitch. Dutch and German speakers pronounce the word as “Luff” because their ‘V’ is our ‘F’ and so “Live” becomes “Life” and “Very” becomes “Fairy.” Another pitfall is the American ‘TH’ sound which doesn’t exist in many European languages. To make the sound one must extend the tip of the tongue between the teeth and blow out a puff of air. Euros tend to replace the ‘TH’ with either the hard ‘D’ or the sibilants ‘Z’ or ‘S’ as in “Vaht do you Sink about ziss.” And, as the sentence indicates, even our ‘S’ sound has voiced and un-voiced versions as does the ‘TH’…hear the difference between “This” and “Think” “What’s” and “Was.” And then there is our ‘W’ which is their ‘V’…so our “Was” would be pronounced “Vass” two corrections for the price of one on that one.

The key was to make the corrections seem effortless and allow the vocal performance to be driven by Lille’s amazing sense of phrasing. As I got to know her day by day I learned that Lille is fierce when it comes to learning new things. She was hell-bent on mastering whatever I suggested and made notes on the lyric sheets, wrote on the leg of her jeans, pounded the table and repeated the ‘TH’ sound until I had to cover my coffee cup. But I didn’t want her to obsess so the best and most efficient learning came through simple conversation. We decided that when in the studio we would speak only English and I would try to catch and correct every mispronunciation as it happened.

Lille keeping an eye on Roland Franken

There are many structured exercises aimed at engaging the diaphragmatic-intercostal musculature but none is more efficient than uncontrolled laughter. Being among new friends gave me a fresh audience for the jokes that elicit groans from my stateside friends and I took full advantage. Teaching the jokes to Lille was also a way to practice Americanized idiomatic pronunciation. What seemed to be breaks in the work were actually quite useful and her delivery of the songs as well as her complete understanding of the intent behind them improved at a fast clip.

Two weeks later my job was done and Lille dropped me at the airport where she had first found me. We were in the studio every day and the two weeks seemed like one long session. Working with Casper, Kostek, Dick Kemper and especially Lille had made the time go much too quickly and on the Los Angeles bound flight I wished that we had been making a double album. The musicians played their asses off, Lille sang her ass off, Dick engineered his ass off and now my ass was off for home.

Traveling Girl will be  available online and represents the hard work of very talented people from all corners of the globe (yes, I know that the globe doesn’t have corners, just go with me on that one). It was a ton of fun to be involved with the project, the music and, most importantly, the people. I hope you all enjoy it.

When I was in my twenties I worshiped at the altar of funk. James Brown, Tower Of Power, Ohio Players…you get the picture. If they marketed action figures of funk musicians my toy box would have looked like the line-up at an Oakland barbeque and funk fest. From my perspective, country music was completely of, by and  for sequined, cowboy-hatted shit-kickers who lived in trailers with two cars parked on cement blocks in the front yard. If anyone had told me that The Ohio Players’ wardrobe was  as ridiculous as Porter Wagoner’s there would have been trouble.

But as a musician who earned the daily bread by making club crowds of many persuasions happy, I found myself in playing situations that didn’t always correspond with my personal tastes. That didn’t prevent me from being a smart ass and when a customer would request a country song, my witty answer would be, “Sure, what country?” Thankfully I grew out of my bias to discover that there was crappy music to be ridiculed in every genre and, as I gained further wisdom, great music to be cherished as well.

Over the years and during the time I managed The Band’s old haunt, Shangri La, I had the pleasure of getting to know and appreciate the work of some great rock musicians who had one foot planted firmly in a cowboy boot at some time in their career. I can also say that standing on the stage of the Grand Old Opry and playing to the 4,000 fans who fill the concert hall was one of the big thrills and chills of my playing career. Patsy Cline, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash have become as firmly ensconced in my iPod as my erstwhile funk gods and I feel no sense of disloyalty shuffling between What Is Hip and Your Cheating Heart.

Katie Thompson

There is an up and coming young country artist on Sellaband who answers my “Sure, what country?” dumb-ass question with a vengeance. Katie Thompson is a classic country singer/song writer from what is probably Nashville’s most remote satellite, New Zealand. Katie exhibits her own sense of style, opting for cocktail dresses over blue jeans as she leads her accomplished band through a repertoire of classic country tempered by her Kiwi upbringing.

Katie’s three original tracks on her Sellaband profile page indicate that she has the potential of becoming a household name not only in New Zealand but anywhere that hosts “Electric Slide” night. When she reaches the budgetary goal of $50,000 Katie will have the opportunity to go into the studio with the right people and the right toys to create an album worthy of her honest approach to writing and singing. Her vocal delivery is intimate in the vein of classic story tellers like Emmy Lou Harris and Patsy Cline. Katie doesn’t deal in pyrotechnics or phony gospel riffing. She just tells a story as if she were talking over the back fence and her fresh sincerity is her most engaging quality.

Tall Poppy is written and sung with the voice of a typical young person battling the slings and arrows of peer pressure as she develops a sense of self worth in a cruel world. The story, while common to anyone who hasn’t been raised by wolves, is nevertheless a persecution unique to each individual. Everyone coming of age in the world of schoolyard, fashion, teen dances and the required accoutrements associated with being “cool” has moments when they feel themselves too tall, too short, too skinny, too fat, too stupid or too smart to be considered acceptable by their peers. Katie’s angst laden lyrics ride over a deceptively cheerful rhythmic track but the darkness of the chord progression brings clearly into focus the pain of wanting to be accepted . The guitar playing on this as well as all three of Katie’s Sellaband tracks is not only well executed but tasteful and most importantly, relevant to the song.

Tall Poppy

Monteiths On Tap is a bit of fun and could very well be the hook that lands the big fish for Katie. One can quibble about product placement or the political correctness of glorifying the imbibement ( I think I just invented a word) all the way to the steps of their favorite house of worship, but what is a good old country song if not a paean of praise for either fast cars, faster trucks, loyal dogs and good beer? New Zealand’s Monteiths Brewery has stepped up to the plate in supporting Katie’s Sellaband journey and well they should. Who can say how many Monteiths empties land in the recycling bin the morning after one of Katie’s appearances at a pub pouring the “liquid gold?” Wonderful resonator guitar work on this track, while the feel of the rhythm section never strays from the “sawdust on the floor” vibe that just begs for another round.

The third track on Katie’s Sellaband profile is an introspectively dark recitativo of bittersweet goodbyes. The emotion of the song, as in the case of Tall Poppy, is one to which any listener can easily relate. I don’t like to repeat myself but here again the guitar work provides a perfect sense of yearning to Katie’s wrenching story. Katie’s song writing skills, while well down the path of becoming memorable, could do with a bit of soul searching here. She has great instincts and her topic choice is right on the money. But some of her lyrics, while not being brazenly cliche, could be more intimately powerful with a tweak here and there.

Song writing is an exercise in telling a story or conveying an emotion that can be related to by the broadest possible cross section of an audience. This is what makes a song popular, and why bother to put music before the public if popularity is not the desired result.The magic of masterful song writing lies in the ability of the writer to say something in a way that is familiar yet original. When Bob Dylan sings “The answer is blowin’ in the wind” we say to ourselves “Well of course it is. Who didn’t know that!” But inside we all know that we could never have come up with such a simple way to state the obvious. Economy and eloquence are bought and paid for in currency represented by reams of discarded lyric sheets.

Katie Thompson is deep in the process of honing her craft and this can be a critical phase in the development of a young writer. Staring at a page of lyrics with the unbiased eye of a supreme court justice and knowing what will go on an album and what will better serve as kindling for the grill is not a skill that comes easily. That process marks the difference between great songs that remain relevant for generations and about a gazillion MP3s on Myspace.

When Katie reaches her $50,000 budget on Sellaband, New Zealand, with a population of 4.3 million, will have cornered what might be the highest degree of success per capita on the internet crowd sourcing platform.  Katie Thompson’s success combined with Sellaband Hip-Hopper Maitreya will have made a strong showing for New Zealanders.  And with Katie’s Sellaband release, I’ll no longer be asking “Sure, what country?”

The invention and marketing of the electric bass represents the dawn of modern recorded music. Giving the event the weight it deserves moves me to declare that we are now living in the year 59 F.E. or “Fender Era.” The amplified solid-body bass holds a special double-faceted place in modern music. First developed as a way for bassists to compete with amplified guitars, the increase in stage volume eventually caused guitar players to turn up their own amplifiers to the point of distortion thereby becoming the pivotal influence in creating a rich soundscape with equipment tortured beyond previously acceptable limits.

The electric bass is a mule combining the strength and firm footing of a donkey with the sleek lines of a thoroughbred. Recording this beast can be as challenging as you want to make it but keeping the function of the bass in mind will ensure that you don’t go astray. To put it into pugilistic terms, leave the jabs and uppercuts to the guitars. Bass notes are the “low blows” of any good track. All’s fair in love, war and rock and nothing says it better than a size 15 boot to the balls. The bass has such influence on a track that even a light tap to the right spot will get the listeners attention.

My Outboard Rig

As to the proper equipment, simplicity is the key. After trying all of the amazing toys dedicated to bass amplification I’ve found that nothing will make a crap bass sound acceptable while there is an abundance of tinkertoys that can fuck up a great sounding instrument. So let’s begin at the beginning and make some decisions as to which instrument should get the gig. The vast majority of bass tracks we hold in special reverence were recorded on Fender basses. The Precision and later, the Jazz bass were so prevalent in recording studios that many professionally copied charts were designated “Fender Bass” in the upper left hand corner. The sound of the instrument was usually captured by direct injection (DI) to the recording console and if an amp was used it was usually a low wattage Ampeg B-15 or something equally as portable.

Ampeg B-15

During the past 30 years I’ve had every bass imaginable in my hands and I recognize the attraction of having a lot of pretty things hanging on the studio wall. But it seems that the dominating feature most often associated with high end basses is that it “gets that old Fender sound.” I have a revelation for you, so do the new Fenders…even the cheap ones! I played a $200 Squire recently that sounded more like an “old Fender” than many basses with 10 times the price tag. Think about it, what is an electric bass? A flat piece of cheap wood bolted to a long piece of hardwood, some strings and a primitive magnetic coil like we used to make in science class out of wire and a 16 penny nail. Like the string bass before it, the electric bass is a physical instrument that responds best when man-handled and all the gizmos that make it easier to play can sometimes emasculate a track.

Bass tracks are not just low notes and there is a fine line between punch and definition. It can be difficult to make out precisely what notes James Jamerson was playing on his early electric recordings, but there was no lack of bottom end punch. Many modern basses and bass rigs offer much wider frequency ranges than were available to early electric players, but it was the physical act of pulling sound out of a primitive instrument that made recordings by guys like Jamerson, Tommy Cogbill, Joe Osborn and Donald “Duck” Dunn have the punch that made a generation dance. The tools to make that happen are still here and are not hard to find.

The first step for any aspiring bassist should always be to learn to play the damned thing. Find a decent bass and don’t plug it in. Play for hours until you can hear and feel the instrument with a minimum of non musical noises. See how long you can get low notes to last.  I remember my first lesson with Monty Budwig. He had me play a low ‘F’ and then pressed my finger down into the fingerboard with both of his thumbs and had me play it again. The sound was twice as big and he said, “That’s the way a bass sounds. Don’t ever forget that it’s a physical instrument.” Once you’ve got the physical aspect of the bass under your belt you can proceed to get your rig together. But always remember that the sound and feel must come from you and the plank, not the gear. Half-assed playing through great amplification is just louder half-assed playing.

A bit of sponge

Older basses were fitted with sponge mutes. I’m not a nazi about keeping every detail of an instrument intact and the bridge cover holding the mute was usually the first thing to end up lost in a drawer. But they do have a very useful purpose and I frequently wedge a piece of sponge under the strings at the bridge. Without the mute, the bass will have more high frequency ring and sustain. But these frequencies and overtones also have a way of smudging areas in the soundscape that may need to be left available for other instruments. While the un-muted sound may be more pleasing on its own, it may not work as well in the mix in combination with the kick drum. Much of what you hear without the mute will never be audible in the mix so experiment and don’t be afraid to sacrifice ring in the interests of more thud.

One of the iconic bass sounds is that made by the Höfner Beatle bass and Club bass. It is interesting to note that these are not fitted with mutes and the string saddles are actually bits of fret wire set into a wooden bridge. The classic sound has a full bottom end attack initially and does not sustain as much as one would think given the construction of the bass. I discovered the reason when I loosened the strings on an old Höfner to clean it. As soon as the strings were slack, they were drawn to the pick-up magnets with a great deal of force. These magnets were seriously powerful. When you attack the string, the powerful magnetic field is disturbed creating a huge initial impact. But because the magnets are so powerful, they actually stop the string vibration and don’t allow sustain. It is the power of the pick-up that gives the Höfner its Tuba-like characteristic punch and short sustain.

Playing a muted bass with the fingers is a great way to learn just how much you need to lean into the strings to get a good sound. Many early electric players were string bass converts and brought their right hand chops with them. Try stroking the string with the whole fingertip of the index finger or even the bone of the first joint and you will be surprised at how much bigger the sound can be. Then there is also the great sound of a muted bass played with a pick. The pick will give definition to the attack and as you move the picking hand from the bridge toward the neck you will find a wide range of usable sounds that no amount of knob twisting will give you.

Polytone Mini-brute

When it comes to getting the bass on tape or, better said, into the hard drive, less is always more. Mic’ing an amp can be fun but not always possible. The most desirable recording amp I can think of is the old Ampeg B-15. Another great amp if you can find one is the Polytone Minibrute. It’s a little solid-state combo just big enough to hold a 15″ speaker. Yeah, I know…it’s not a tube amp. But it is one of the most versatile little bastards on the planet. It gives you exactly what you put into it so the only reason not to love it is if you have a shitty sounding bass. I’ve also used a Trace Elliot tube pre-amp and sent the signal direct from the XLR output with good results. I spent a lot of time convincing myself that the PODxt bass models were pretty good…and they are fine to a point. But 90% of the time I find that plugging the bass into a cheap passive direct box gives me the most cluck for my buck. I’m lucky to have great sounding basses and it seems that the less I put between my fingers and the screen tends to result in the most sincere playing. With no sound sculpting toys helping you along, you are forced to come up with a convincing part based on your playing. And a well played fat-assed track can always be diddled with later.

To summarize:

Don’t get hung up on a high end bass unless you have a specific reason (or you have loot to burn).

Go to the source. Plug into a small amp, set everything flat and try to play like the great players that you admire.

Get physical. Watch Ray Brown use his right index finger to pull the sound out of his instrument.

Experiment with a sponge mute and a pick…go ahead, nobody’s looking.

If you mic an amp, don’t think you need to go broke. A low wattage amp that lets your bass sound like your bass will do. If you are working in a home studio you’ll do fine with a relatively inexpensive Shure SM7 or even an SM57. An expensive condenser mic can sound great, but it might also hear things that have nothing to do with your song…like refrigerator motors, traffic noises and helicoptors. The SM7 will only hear what’s right in front of it.

Get a cheap passive direct box and leave all the toys for your live gigs where they might impress someone.

And most importantly, realize that the electric bass is a bastard instrument without a hard and fast pedagogy as to playing or recording the thing. Don’t become a disciple of one method to the exclusion of others. Play it with your fingers, a pick or a can opener…but play it with intent and record it as honestly as possible.

Quoting one of my earlier posts, rule number two states , “It’s always simpler than it seems.” Okay, so the rule is a bit simplistic. But it  can furnish a sense of optimism, false or otherwise, in the face of overwhelmingly difficult tasks. Creating a piece of music consists of the same multi-tiered process as cooking a great meal or putting a man on the surface of Mars. When considered in its entirety, the process, from conception through development and execution, can be daunting, and every artist has a distinct method of logistical organization.

Some of us take the trial and error route and agonize over every conceivable possibility before finalizing a guitar solo, a kick drum eq or even which color to use for the EFX channel strip. Then there are those who seem to float through the process effortlessly, the so-called “naturals.” Both extremes and all points between are valid but I think that what makes a musician, athlete or even an accountant seem like a natural consists of two things. First, and this is a topic all to itself, being exquisitely prepared through education and repetition. When you really know what you are doing, things tend to come naturally, or so it seems to those less prepared. And second, with intense preparation and knowledge comes the ability to predict the future.

Okay, so before you think I’ve gone off the deep end, I’m saying that competence allows one to predict the future by taking the guess work out of the creative process. With the ability to filter irrelevance before the fact comes courage. And a courageous artist is not afraid of the obvious. There exists an image of the mythical studio musician who can read fly shit on paper and play every Charlie Parker solo at 260 bpm. Many young musicians, thinking that this is the yardstick by which they are to be measured, start right off bumbling their way through be-bop solos before they can play Happy Birthday or even Row Your Boat without making a mistake. And when it comes to putting a rhythm track together for a pop song, they will reach for the most complicated fingerings or extended chord voicings instead of the major triad waving from the back of the room begging to be called upon.

With all the great new toys available, one person can be band, engineer, producer and mastering studio without ever leaving the chair. The possibilities for creativity are endless. But when working alone, I try to put my head back into sessions where the room was filled with real people who were very good at whatever it was that they were there to do. Great drummers play even the simplest parts with conviction. Great bassists play big fat grooves that lock with the drummer and stay out of the way of whatever is happening up top. Right down the line-up it can be striking how very simple a guitar or keyboard part can be when taken out of context. But all those simple little parts can add up to a killer track because they are played with conviction. Experienced studio musicians have huge vocabularies but their main talent lies in quickly and unemotionally eliminating material irrelevant to the song no matter how cool it may be.

In working with musicians of limited recording experience, and using my own early years as prime example, young musicians can be stymied by knowing what to leave out more than what to put into a recording. Experimentation is a great device, but the knowledge resulting from detailed analysis can allow an artist to develop a personal style based on skill and preference rather than the limitations of a truncated vocabulary. All of us have musical heroes or favorite artists to whom we look for inspiration. So why not go further and perform an autopsy on a favorite recording? Cut it open from chin to scrotum and find out what’s really in there. Figure out the chord voicings and guitar articulations. Pull the bass pattern out of the deceased and give it a good once over. It might be absurdly simple laying there all by itself but observe how exquisitely it interacts with the other instruments. Take the vocal apart and imagine yourself singing the song. Out of everything you hear, what would you need in the headphones in order to make it feel that way.

In practical terms, don’t be afraid to go with the obvious whether it’s a guitar lick, a drum pattern or a reverb preset. The important thing is the song and there is absolutely no danger of some grad student in an audio engineering course tearing apart your track and accusing you of not diddling enough with the high frequency roll-off of the reverb plug-in. And don’t worry about impressing your fellow musicians. Some might criticize your work because you didn’t use the Lydian mode in the fourth measure of the solo…but those types don’t buy music anyway so don’t waste your time. If you’re using Guitar Rig, Amplitube or something like Line6’s Pod products to get your guitar sounds, don’t let all the wacky toys overwhelm you. You might create an amazing sound that turns to mush as soon as you try to cram it into your mix. Somewhere in that program there has to be a decent Marshall Plexi, Vox Top Boost, or Fender Tweed that will sit in there just right.

And don’t be afraid of doing the work that will give you the time saving skills of a natural. You can spin your wheels around all the ways to improve your skills. But ask anyone competent in their field, any so-called natural talent,  and they will tell you how easy everything became after they really knew what they were doing. Work your ass off and you will realize that it is indeed always simpler than it seems. Don’t be afraid of the obvious.

Building an effective vocal track is essential to any recording whether it is a writing demo, a demo intended to showcase an artist, or a finished master. Re-reading the last sentence I realize I’ve stated the painfully obvious, but the truth is that the painfully obvious can become the painfully impossible to accomplish when putting theory into practice. One of the most useful tools in building a great vocal is the instrumental track itself and here are a few tips on how to use it effectively.

Singers can be the laziest of musicians. They have no buttons to push, no keys to depress, no strings to strum and no finger positions to learn. And, in the case of my protege Theo, pictured above, they sometimes learn their craft without the aid of opposing thumbs. They just open their mouths and “Thar she blows!” Singers can hit the ground running whereas instrumentalists have to master a modicum of physical tasks before they can make anything resembling music. Unfortunately, and as is usually the case, the easier it is to get started, the less one is likely to work out the details that result in masterful technique. A reasonably competent singer can hear a melody and recreate it immediately without ever having to learn the rudiments of musical notation. But it’s been my experience that any vocal performance can be improved upon by fine-tuning the grossly ignored apparatus protruding at opposite poles of the cranium known as the ears.

A vocal performance, unless performed a capella, must exist in relation to the instrumental track. In building an arrangement, we normally take great pains to build a track from the bottom up. We align the bass and kick drum parts rhythmically as well as sonically and all the subsequent instrumental parts have unique relationships with the bottom end. Consequently, it makes a lot of sense to make the bottom end the focal point when working on a vocal as well.

When I was in school studying voice, I spent days, hours and years learning all the usual technical exercises, sat through hours of students wrestling Italian songs to the ground and reading every book on the “science of singing” that I could get my hands on. Soon I was giving lessons on my own and one day I made a great discovery that had not been addressed in my formal education. I had just moved house and my piano was too horribly out of tune to give a lesson. During my time in Vienna, Nikolaus Harnoncourt had used a small cello to teach us vocal lines. Well, if it was good enough for him, who was I to quibble? The nearest thing at hand was my old Jazz bass so I started to vocalize my student, a competent soprano, using my bass as accompaniment.

I was surprised to find that she had trouble matching pitch with notes played two octaves lower than those to which she was accustomed! Up to that point, I had always played exercises in the same octave they were to be sung but this was really interesting to me. Student after student, I found that singing in relation to the bass was completely out of the comfort zone. Applying this discovery to pop songs, I found a parallel in the songs of Franz Schubert. Schubert often shifted between major and minor keys and sometimes omitted the third of the chord from the accompaniment. This left the singer completely responsible for the quality of the chord. If singers aren’t focused on the bottom end the intonation will suffer.

Many pop vocal tracks are recorded with the aide of guide tracks which lay out the melody. When the guide track is not used, the singer usually relates to piano, strings or perhaps guitar lines that lie in the range of the vocal line. Although reasonably effective on the surface, I don’t think that guide tracks or instrumental cues go far enough in giving the singer a focused image of where to lay the vocal. After all, if you really want to play guitar like Jimi or Eric, listen to them, but study and play close attention to the music and players that influenced them. Applying that same logic, rather than just listening to parts built upon and influenced by the bottom end, why not go to the source and build the vocal on the same foundation.

So, here are some helpful household hints. When I record basic tracks, I always like to have the singer lay a guide track for reference and to give the band some inspiration. And who knows? Sometimes you catch a break and get a performance that turns out to be a keeper. Then, when it’s time to start working on the vocal, I might warm up the singer at the piano just to make some sounds and get comfortable. I might move over to guitar and play either exercises or song fragments to get one foot out of the comfort zone and acclimate the vocalist to something a little different. And finally, without lecture or purpose, I’ll just casually pick up the bass and continue to work in a very relaxed way. Without having to think, the singer has become comfortable singing to a completely new set of references.

When I set up the vocal session, I will start by letting the singer decide what should be in the headphones. I try hard to remove any time constraints or pressure from the session as these always end up costing more time than they are worth. I’ll run the song, always recording, as many times as it takes to get the singer comfortable. And then, when it’s time to go for keepers, I’ll start to thin out the upper instruments. I’ll put the bass up a bit more than what a final mix might be and also get the kick drum in there big and fat.

Getting the bottom end dominant in the cue mix is not a matter of sheer volume. I want the singer to be influenced by the bottom end without having to think. I’ll play with equalizers so the kick is warm and comfortable and not loud and snappy as it might be in a live floor monitor. The idea is to replace the upper register comfort zone with something rhythmically solid yet warm and comfortable. If the upper parts are too prominent, the vocal can get lost in the mix. The usual tactic is to turn up the vocal, then crank up some keyboards for pitch reference, then try to fight through the frequencies and turn up the vocal some more. With the bottom end as the focal point of the cue mix, there is less for the singer to fight through. When the pulse is felt more than heard, the singer will tend to sing more in tune with the foundation of the track.

A welcome side effect is that the vocal will find a more comfortable relationship with the rhythm of the track. When a singer struggles to cop a feel, the result can be close but often uncomfortable. Over-thinking tends to be constrictive to feel. By creating an audio environment in which the vocalist can perform instinctively on a more primal wavelength you may find that the finished vocal performance will even inspire you to revisit some of the upper parts.

To summarize, singers should practice and become accustomed to listening to the bottom end. Singing teachers should address the ears of their students as well as the singing apparatus and spend some time accompanying exercises in lower octaves. And if you are working with a singer at any level of recording, try building the vocal from the bottom up. The results might surprise you.

Goddamn! It has been a busy spring for me and I finally have some time to write. Many great stories, thousands of miles traveled and two fun projects signed, sealed and delivered. I’ve just delivered the masters for the ConFused5 album “Out of Confusion” which Ron Hitchcock and I mixed at RixMix here in the LA area. Man, what a great room. The place belongs to our pal Rick Ruggieri, a phenomenal studio designer and a fine engineer as well. As a matter of fact, Rick’s latest Grammy award arrived during the time we were working. He placed it on a pedestal between the Mastering Lab monitors so we had to stare at the damn thing 12 to 15 hours at a stretch. I’m really happy for him, but that was just too cruel.

Working in Rick’s room was a godsend for us. First of all, he doesn’t let a lot of projects in to begin with because it means that either he can’t work, or he has to go rent another room somewhere else. Secondly, he designed and hand built the place…and any studio that Rick has a hand in is always dead-nuts on the money when it comes to mixing accuracy. What you hear is exactly what you recorded and there is not a decibel of bullshit in the room. I know that when I take a mix out of RixMix there simply will be no surprises. Plenty of rooms can make a mix sound amazing, great bottom end…sizzling highs etc. But when you take the project for mastering you realize you’ve been fooling yourself. Ron and I were confident that whatever we took out of the place was accurate and exactly how we intended it to sound prior to putting the final mastering touches on.

Another point in the room’s favor is that, being a relatively private facility, there is not the usual parade of clowns walking through the control room to tell you how they would have dialed in the Fairchild or panned the vocals. Although Rick made himself available whenever we had need of his expertise, Ron and I could work in peace and give the sessions our full concentration. Ron had his granola bars, I had my new espresso machine and we just hunkered down and got to it.

We did have one visit with a notable musician that turned out to be fruitful. Ron has a boutique record label of his own and one of his artists is the well-known jazz guitarist Don Peak. For the unaware, Don gained notoriety as the guitarist with the Everly Brothers and now composes TV scores as well as continuing to play his ass off. Don had some business with Ron so we took a short break and visited a while. As Don was telling us how little time he had and how he had to rush off he made the oldest mistake in the book. He asked us to play him a bit of what we were working on. Everyone knows that this always results in at least an hour’s worth of “dig this…no, check this out…what do you think of this?” And whatever Don was in a rush to do went right out the window.

We had just been working on a ConFused5 song that had gone through some heavy changes during the recording process in Austria. The vocal had been transposed down an octave ala Henri Salvador, and the rock band that played the rest of the album had been replaced by a well-worn New Orleans jazz/blues combo. Oh…it was still the same guys, just a completely different approach. At that moment we were listening to the guitar solo which had originally been played with a solidbody PRS and a high gain boutique amp. The band’s guitarist, Markus Melms had acquired a lovely vintage ES345 recently and I had been dying to prove to him what a fantastic guitar it was. I plugged the beautiful thing into an old Fender Twin Reverb amp and we proceeded to spend the better part of a day creating a whole new vibe for the solo.

As we played the take for Don he looked up and said, “I thought you said you were doing a rock album… this is really interesting.” And I have to say it really is…interesting. Playing a substantial guitar like the 345 through a clean vintage amp was something Markus had probably not done in a good long while. A rig like that doesn’t play itself, you have to pull the music out with your bare hands. But once we got into it, Markus really put together a nice solo. It had interesting content, beautiful tone and most importantly, it was played with conviction. This is what caught Don’s ear…and he spent the next 20 minutes or so showing us what effects and equalization he would use on the track. You see, when you get a performance like that on a recording, you want to make damned sure that the intentions of the player reach through the speakers and tap you on the shoulder as if to say, “Hey man, lend me an ear, I’ve got a story to tell you.”

So Markus, meet Don. If you don’t like the sound of your solo, it’s all his fault. If you dig it, just remember, it was all my idea in the first place. The public can decide what they think when “Out Of Confusion” is released on the Sellaband label on July 4th.