Background vocals ala "Mutt" Lange

[kouly]

I was listening to the Cars tune "Why Can't I Have You" and I am always impressed with the sound of the backing vocals on that song. Mr Lange seemed to have perfected the "airy" sound. It also shows up in the work he did for Def Leppard. I have some ideas but was wondering if anyone had some tips to get that airy sound. I have not read or heard anything so any thoughts on the subject would be interesting to hear. Thanks, K

[aimusic]

I think it's coz he's South African and we.... well.... we ROCK!!! ...Just kidding, sorry for the absolute useless reply, just wanted to write sumin!!!!Take CareB

[gitarrero]

hi kouly,I'd say:* good singers who know how to use their voice. you can sing with more "air" to get that smooth sound. doubling is also highly recommended - not only twice, you can double the hell out of it here. provided the singer is good...* a good mic with some highs won't hurt; lawson l 252 could be a good (pricey..) choice. another good large condenser mic that has some hights would do it also of course* compression: use a little higher attacks, maybe 13-17 ms. compress more than once (several compressors in line, each one with a few db gain reduction)* eq: use an eq that has brilliant hights, some at maybe 8 khz, and also some very high ones @ about 14, 15 khz. in that ballbark.* use a good reverb with a room that fits the song you're doing. better a little larger rooms here.hth,martin

[mazz]

There's an old school trick that I read about years ago that was used on George Michael's voice that may have been what they did on the songs you're referring to.There used to be a piece of hardware called Dolby A noise reduction. The way it worked basically was to boost the highs dramatically on encoding and then cut them with some type of extra filtering on decoding, the net effect being to reduce "tape hiss" (remember that?). Well what "they" (the producers) discovered was that if they didn't decode the signal on playback, they got an extremely airy sound due to the artifically boosted highs created by the Dolby A encoding. This same effect may have been used on the background vocals for the songs you mention. I have a feeling they were bussed together as a group and effected that way (not individually) but I could be wrong.I strongly recommend grouping the background vocals and processing and EQ'ing them as a group. One thing to experiment with is to use EQ both before and after compression, or only after. Also, putting a very bright reverb with an extremely short decay time as an insert on the group could be effective.Sending the group buss to a reverb via an aux send and then compressing the reverb return is a great sound as well. The compressor will "turn up" the reverb as it decays. You could EQ the heck out of the reverb return as well, you could get some of the airiness there as well.Lots of fun!!Mazz

[gitarrero]

@mazz: I didn't know this dolby A - story, thanks for sharing!route all the tracks to one group & process it there indeed is a good technique; I often found it sounding more "natural" and embeded in that way.keep on turnin' those knobs martin

[sgs4u]

I have buddies that have worked on Mutt's background vocal sessions for Def Leppard. Here's one of them, Dave Steelehttp://www.e-session-singer.com/online-session ... htmAnother thing they used to do to get the really high parts was varispeed tape decks down to really slow. Record 20 tracks of every part, then speed the deck back up to pitch. The "air" will be there. As you record the same part over and over, have your singer move around to sing from different spots in front of the mic. You can also EQ in some air by bumping up the 16k range a few db. Bouncing them all together w compression really helps, as Martin pointed out.Good luck Phil, making the vox huge, is really fun (but unfortunately a bit dated sounding)

[mazz]

See #10 in this article regarding the Dolby A trick:http://www.harmony-central.com/articles ... _tips/Good stuff!Mazz

[kouly]

Thanks guys for all the tips. This is just what i was hoping for. Just to hear some other opinions. It is great to hear stuff like that Mazz, I love to hear the legends. Steve, I agree it could sound dated, which would be a bad thing unless you were writing for that period. I did see one listing for an 80s sounding rock song a while back. Might come in handy for something like that. I think my goal would be to use some of these ideas but still try to keep things fresh sounding. A bit tougher than it sounds. Martin, I think you have a good foundation there with those thoughts and with keeping things together on a bus and compressing the bus you keep a consistent sound. Thanks everyone, if I ever get anything that sounds good I will let you know.