70's vocal sound.

[jkhuri44]

yo dudez...

do you guys know what the typical vocal chain was around the 70s ??

singer's like Robert Plant, Steve Tyler, and Ian Gillan....maybe freddy mercury too...


have a really nice quality about them....

anyone know what stuff was used in terms of mics, eqs, compressors, reverbs...

would be greatly appreciated. :)

[mark rachelle]

freddy mercury as i'm aware was Sm 57 La2a neve 1073
with the interesting fact that vocals were recorded in the control room with monitoring done with a pair of ns10s placed at his feet like foldback wedges (ns 10 s wired out of phase)

[chris p]

The chain for each of them starts with a great musical brain, into a talented singing voice filtered through passion and experience. Oh, and duplicate it all for the backing band, substituting virtuosity for the voice.

The rest, JK, is just gear. Putting the gear together will not produce the sound without the above. Don't get me wrong: I'm as much a gear freak as the next Turtlerocker, but Robert Plant would probably even sound good direct tracked into Protools.

[jkhuri44]

The chain for each of them starts with a great musical brain, into a talented singing voice filtered through passion and experience.


nice one :)

[Linear]

The chain for each of them starts with a great musical brain, into a talented singing voice filtered through passion and experience. Oh, and duplicate it all for the backing band, substituting virtuosity for the voice.

The rest, JK, is just gear. Putting the gear together will not produce the sound without the above. Don't get me wrong: I'm as much a gear freak as the next Turtlerocker, but Robert Plant would probably even sound good direct tracked into Protools.

While this is true, I think there is a definite 70's 'sound' that can be partially attributed to equipment.

It's a tough question to answer. Key things that I've garnered from reading books/talking to people from that era were:

- limited console headroom + limited tape machine headroom + low output tape formulations.

This would seriously influence how the vocal would have been recorded - It's not easy to record a vocal with only 50db of dynamic range, particularly if the console gain structure/headroom is lacking also. So I think par for the course vocals would have been solid state console pre/HP filter/fet compressor to tape. And there wasn't facility for 500+ takes, so the makeup of the vocal in the first place would have been a little better thought out and rehearsed (see above). Plus those recordings all sound great as they're in the context of a nice, minimally-edited, limited-track-count mix again to tape.

Another thing would have been the fact that many vocal recordings would have been done with dynamic mics - I've read that Stevie Nicks used a Sennheiser 441 for every recording. And back in the 70's, there was ALOT less crap gear around, so a standard piece of gear from that era was above average in todays terms.

Chris

[Text_Edifice]

I think dynamic mic's might be a bit of a key - I remember reading somewhere that one of the Motown engineers used an EV PL-5 a whole lot (but then some other stuff I've read said they had an overabundance of ribbon mics and used to use them on everything).

Listening back to a lot of the 'character' vocals that I really like from that period and there's something different in the sonics of the vocals - high's in particular on a lot of old soul / funk stuff (personal bias) sound very different to contemporary vocal sounds in the same genre - then again maybe it's just the pursuit of a great performance over 100% sonic purity (I love the sound of Otis Redding's vocals where they start to break up).

Rather than trying to replicate the signal chain I wonder if it wouldn't be more productive analysing the sound you're after and then figuring out how to get something similar with the gear you have available? Just a thought.

[rick]

go to the vintage king or sonic circus website and snoop around in their used gear list , you will probably come across THE ACTUAL EQUIPMENT that was used for each of those guys , everything it seems has a price and some people will pay it .

the thing you will find is that the tone your looking for is before the days of boutique external mic pramps and ssl consoles , so you can bet it was always the same story
classic english board, classic american compressers and classic german microphones .

so there is nothing particlarly 70s about that sound , nowadays we just use those claasic boards for their pres and eq after they have been pulled to bits or reverse engineered into new /old micpres. and we also "eq " the shit out of the vocals at mix time.

except for the freddy " shure mic story " which mark just shared ( good to see you posting again mark !)
i have also seen lots of freddy m recording photos soaring into an m49 from lots of different sessions in time


the seventies magazine interviews i have read like the magazines we have today

neumann mic into neve 1073 into la2a or 1176 except nobody ever mentions a tube pultec !


do not discount the westake acoustic design influence on the 70s sound .
they single handedly managed to make recording a band one track at a time the standard way to work.

somebody should jump in my wayback machine set the date to 1975 and find the guy that told tom hidley overdubbing every track including hi hats was a great way to make records sound "clean with seperation " -
and then stick that guys head in a bucket full of water over and over again untill he changes his mind .

err the last bit was my inside voice typing to the outside world

i recommend no violence towards anybody who knows how to press a record button ever :)

[rick]

actually to reinforce chris ( linears ) point those seventies mags are FULL of conversations about trying to get stuff on tape with out extra noise or distortion , so there was always some new way of compressing or limiting going on
and pages and pages and pages about dolby noise reduction .

i have recorded stevie nicks , she asked to use the u-47 !

[jkhuri44]

well, im asking this partly for my own voice..

the dudes in the 70s sound like they're wise and been around for ages, no doubt about their skill and passion, but the sonics just put me in a different place than from alot of other "old and wise" (alan parson's pun intended) singers today..

i've heard with alot of the old soul singers, the ribbon mics (i think) that were used used to tweak out and distort in the high end...contributing to some of the sound im after...

so..any more tricks like that? would be interesting to know

but i hear you guys...i suppose i re ask my question..."imagine the singer is really good, and passionate....what were they using in the 70s, to get that sound".

J.

[Text_Edifice]

just a quick observation - there seem to be a couple of distinct (and idealised) 'sonic' signatures that are referred to by 'that 70s sound'.

For some reason the sound that springs to mind for me is the vocal sound found on motown / stax records of the late 60s / early 70s (but probably more the late 60s - as I said the sound is probably a very much an idealised one). For some reason I also tend to think of this idealised sound as really roomy / bleedy (even though I know this wasn't always the case).

Other conversations I've been privy to have also discussed the relative the 70s US and UK 'sounds' predicated on the belief that there is a definite (though probably equally idealised) difference between the two.

When trying to get that idealised 70s soul sound I have in my head I haven't always had much luck with condensers and on one occasion having auditioned a bunch of different options (including a couple of Neumann's- though not an M49 or U47 unfortunately) decided the right mic for the job was an old italian ribbon mic a friend had literally picked off the garbage dump (albeit plugged into some fairly nice outboard...).

Dunno where I'm going with this anymore - got distracted by something and coming back to the computer I have completely lost my train of thought...

Best thing about the internet - all your half baked thoughts and impulsive responses are for the ages...

[mfdu]

i know what you mean about 'the' sound.

i haven't used phantom power for about twelve months. i stick to ribbons, dynamics and if i need a condensor, it's a self-powered tube, and it's usually in omni.

i've heard stories of dynamics being jammed straight into LA2A's, with no micpre b/w the two. well, i haven't finished my FAKE (sorry - 'clone') la2a's yet, but my DIY opto compressor has so much gain that i have run vocals through sm57's or md421's directly into it, without a preamp. that's a pretty damn fine sound. the channel with 2520 DOA's definately has it over the unit with 5532 IC's. what does that say, i wonder?

not to hijack the thread, but in terms of 'classic' sounds, i keep telling clients about my '3 mic drum sound' - they never believe me.

it's all "oh no, i need you to mic the whole thing up,because that's what validates my sense of being a recording artiste"
until we're listening back, and they say "that's a pretty righteous drum sound" - invariably they're simply hearing a ribbon > TAC preamp > 1176 clone (4:1, prompt attack with lagging release, with about max 8dB gain reduction) > DAW - that's five transformers right there - mic output, mic pre input, bus output, compressor in/out.

add a touch of kick mic, a touch of snare mic and we're there 80% of the time.
(depending, of course, on the kit, the skins, the sticks and the dude or dudette who's bashing his / her little heart out)

toss the tom mics in, and the hit rate drops in an exponential curve according to the number of additional mics it takes to make you feel like a winner.


$0.02

chris
mfdu

[astrovic]

toss the tom mics in, and the hit rate drops in an exponential curve according to the number of additional mics it takes to make you feel like a winner.

Apart from being a very interesting post, this last line cracked me up!!! :D

[JulienG]

i keep telling clients about my '3 mic drum sound'

I love the 3-mic kit, overheads and an elvis-style mic for the kick (I had some ancient Beyer thing at the old studio that worked perfectly). The only reason I'd say to mic anything else would be for empahsis. A clean snare or cymbal mic unmuted for a single hit can be really effective.

[mfdu]

so you use a pair of oh's? how, like, totally normal of you.

i usually go for one of my ribbons (fig 8) with the null-point top/bottom - that way if i want to get tricksy, i do the M/S trick (without the M) - copy the audio to a new track, flip the phase and get stereo from the one mic. (if i need more toms than cymbals, then adjust null-point to suit, salt to taste)
which ribbon depends on how dark i want the kit to sound.

that leaves me with kick and snare. kick can be b52, d112, md421 etc. snare is sm57, md421, 70's 'Realistic', whatever fits . . .

why no phantom power? a long time ago i realised that all the small studios relied on hyped condensors and thin sounding AD convertors, comprehensively electrically balanced, and usually 5532's or tl072's.
it all sounded the same. blah blah blah.

i could easily avoid one part of the equation - phantom. so that's how i get the 'mfdu' sound.
(otherwise known as dark and crunchy, with a thick centre - kind of like a dark chocolate Tim Tam?)

astro - when are we catching up? the barbeque is now officially in use . . .

chris
mfdu

[Kris]

hmmm.... at the risk of being pelted with beer cans.... I reckon if the 70's dudes had access to the toys we do these days, well... I reckon they would have used them.

Anyway....

Speaking of 70's dudes, does anyone know how the new Led Zep album was recorded? Did they do it Old School or Pro Tools?

[mfdu]

[quote="Kris"]hmmm.... at the risk of being pelted with beer cans.... I reckon if the 70's dudes had access to the toys we do these days, well... I reckon they would have used them.
[/quote]

that's a bit of a 'tree falling in forest' type of thing though, innit?

i mean, if the 70's dudes were using 80's solid state equipment and 00's hyped condensors, we'd have our fingers in our ears trying to tame the top end. definately not trying to replicate the sound.

so if Phil Collins was using 70's gear, would we have ended up with a decades worth of gated reverb?

and if westlake had've been a fashion designer, not an acoustic designer, we might have had a few decades of musicians actually playing together AS MUSICIANS IN A ROOM. i mean, oh my god. can you imagine the damage that could've done??????

('more cowbell')

that brings to mind a whole 'nother topic - why do we insist on inflicting multi-tracking techniques upon musicians when all they wanna do is play? you know what i'm saying . . .
people pay me to record them playing music, not to record them individually and monophonically making sterile sound-pressure waves, to be plucked from the air by my pristine transducers.

sorry - i did it again, didn't i?

chris
mfdu

[Chris H]

.........No one has mentioned the tight jeans for for those falsetto vocal performances ....

[Kris]

"sorry - i did it again, didn't i?"

yes, you did.

[Ausrock]

Speaking of 70's dudes, does anyone know how the new Led Zep album was recorded? Did they do it Old School or Pro Tools?

What new Zep album?

[Kris]

I keep hearing about it on the radio.... called "Mothership"?

[TimS]

I'd love to be at The Apollo in London for that show!
Awesome!!

[walding]

NO Mothership is yet another compilation YEECH flogging the bones of the horse now Ah Pagey knows his on to something.

However Jimbo has said that there might be a new album come out of it

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 24,00.html

Still i'll give to the JP Zep 1 is text book. You want to make a good rock album kiddies, well here is the template go away and see if you can better it.

Back in Black did but very few others have

And it was recorded and mixed in 30 hours.

Good work from the devil eh jimmy satan page

[Ausrock]

Thanks Walding, I knew Mothership was a compilation and The Song Remains The Same is being re-released but I hadn't heard of any new material being recorded.

From LedZep's website.........."On November 13th, a new two cd 24-track "best of" entitled Mothership will be released, with songs selected by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones. The long awaited remastered edition of the Song Remains the Same follows and features bonus material.

"We have revisited 'The Song Remains The Same'," says Jimmy Page, "and can now offer the complete set as played at Madison Square Garden. This differs substantially from the original soundtrack released in 1976, and highlights the technical prowess of Kevin Shirley, who worked with us on 'How The West Was Won'. When it comes to 'The Song Remains The Same', the expansion of the DVD and soundtrack are as good as it gets on the Led Zeppelin wish list."

[Kris]

I should pay more attention.

Still, I bet this gig in London will be recorded, mixed and turned around for sale on itunes pretty fast.

[walding]

If not by them someone in audience :(

P2P next day AGHHHHHHHH

[jkhuri44]

the reason im interested in the 70s vocal sound is not so i can replicate it straight up... but even if thats why i wanted to know...i dont care..


im just interested in knowing what makes it, so i can incorporate it...

any ideas on reverbs? AMS?? spring verbs??


....

[rick]

have a listen to david essex " rock on" when you figure out what they did report back and tell us all :)

[jkhuri44]

DLing David Essex now...


btw...if i wanna know what was used in the 70s...how the hell am i supposed to know what they used on THIS!


haha!

[TimS]

how the hell am i supposed to know what they used on THIS!

"Ah Luke, feel the Force"

:)

[Text_Edifice]

Dunno if it necessarily matters what they used - I guess the challenge would be 'how would you get that sound?'.

I'm sure a lot of times innovation is spawned by trying to figure out how someone else got a sound and then trying to copy it.

Realise we've taken this thread completely off topic so apologies.