Phil Allison wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyMtIwobqbI
It's the isolated vocal of a famous recording, from 1967.
AFAIK, no effects used - just a mic (or two) in a largish room.
Now, some of the regulars here operate home or small studios that must sometimes take on jobs from members of the public who want themselves recoded professionally.
Likely as a demo, to help get themselves a gig or a position in a band.
So, I started thinking hypothetically:
What if a young lady came along with that kind of request and on first attempt produced exactly what you hear in the vid ??
Well, first I'd ask for a second take for protection, because you should
always do that.
And then I'd ask if she'd ever tried singing tenor parts, like say Nessun
Dorma? She could do it.
The dynamics on this are amazing (and it's been severely compressed to tape
both to bring up the reverb tails, to make it fit in the mix better, and
because we didn't have great dynamic range to throw away like we do now).
But the thing is, it's right on pitch throughout. She screams, she growls,
but she's never off key and it never breaks. The timing is weird and she's
not always on the beat but she can hit every note solid.
Do you say:
"nice voice miss", hand her a digital file and a modest invoice ?
Or, is a bit more needed.
Has something similar ever happened to you ?
I get classically-trained folks all the time who can hit it all perfectly on
the first try, but they still want to do a million takes and comp them. And
in the end, the final comp usually doesn't sound any better than the first
take. But I'm just the engineer, I'm not paying the bills.
I also get a lot of folk singers who can't hit the note no matter what, and
it's not even worth trying. I'll do two takes, maybe three at most, then I'll
try and punch in the worst of them, but for the most part I feel that if I
tried to clean it up too much, it wouldn't be real any more. But that's just
me. If they want to do a million takes or want it sent out to Mr. Fingaz for
editing, I can do that, although I'd recommend not.
Sometimes I say "Hey, why don't we make this a duet, you can sing the high
part and someone else can sing the low part..."
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."