The Mic
The process of recording vocals with Stock / Aitken / Waterman at PWL was similar in practise to recording vocals with any other producer or song writers I have ever worked with in or outside PWL.
Before we talk about the World famous Pete Waterman Ltd ‘Calrec Soundfield Microphone’, lets just mention a few words about other microphones to record vocals with, one of my favourite is the Neumann U87 and the black Sony mic (not sure of name) but made famous by Mariah Carey.
Neumann U87 - A classic vocal mic
The Calrec Soundfield Microphone has it's own control unit (the Calrec Box) and was linked to that unit by a complex and delicate lead, it was so delicate that us tape-op’s would often man handle it and have to call maintenance to fix it.
Most of the settings on the unit were to do with the directional sound of the mic, which was just kept on normal settings for recording PWL vocals. The most important dial on the unit was simply the input level dial, which would be adjusted as the singer was singing to create a good input level and to make sure it didn’t peak into the red.
The Calrec box at PWL Borough Studio
The output of the Calrec box was two XLR's (left / right), these outputs would then be fed into the SSL patch bay and would return up to 2 channels, on most occasions channels 25 / 26 would be used.
Different engineers would treat the vocals differently. Karen, Peter Day and Yoyo would us the SSL EQ, say + 2/3 db's of 10-11K, and a high past filter set at 100HZ rings a bell, and maybe -2 db's at abound 1.5 – 2.5 K.
Karen, Peter Day and Yoyo would also use the on board SSL compressors on those channels for compression. DBX de-sesers would also be inserted across the channels.
The vocals recorded onto tape basically would be heavily treated with EQ, compression and de-ssering. Not the best engineering in the world, but with great songs this didn’t matter too much.
The Singers
Most people who have never sat in on a vocal recording session would be shocked as to how long and tedious it can take to record a good vocal. Not all sessions are the same, singers have good and bad days, bad singers can be quick sometimes and good singer can have bad days and take hours to record.
My first week at PWL was working with Stock / Aitken / Waterman on Donna Summer tracks and from memory most sessions were done very fast, that also applies to Kylie who was a fast learner of songs and her tuning was spot on.
Getting ready for a vocal session
After Mike and Matt had finished penning another smash hit, the lyrics would just be scribbled on a bit of paper, so Mike would go off into Lucy Anderson’s office (ALL Boys Music), for Lucy to type up the lyrics and print a few copies for the vocal session.
Most Stock / Aitken / Waterman vocal sessions were done to basic backing tracks. In the days of only having the Sony 24 track tape machine, that basic backing track of say 16 tracks would then be mixed / balanced and then bounced to 2 tracks so the other tracks could be used for recording vocals. Sometimes a digital to digital mutli-track copy would be needed as a backup.
It would be down to the tape-ops to set-up the Calrec and plug up the Calrec box and patch it’s output returns up a couple of channels on the SSL. Any inserts like compressor and de-sesser would also be inserted on those channels.
The tape-op would also talk into the mic so the engineer could set rough levels and make sure the mic was working OK. This was fairly important as if the Calrec lead was broken that could make the mic sound awful.
The Session
Mike would send a tape-op to get Kylie or whoever we were working with at the time from the missile room or reception, where most singers would wait before doing vocals sessions.
Before recording anything Mike would teach the new song to the singers by playing the tape and Mike singing the song over the backing track. Sometimes Mike would lay down a demo vocal on tape so the singer could learn the song that way.
The funny thing is that the song wouldn’t sound like much with Mike singing it, but as soon as Kylie / Donna / Rick would start singing it, you would look at someone else in the studio and think ‘another smash SAW song’ and 4 weeks later it would be No.1 in the charts and over time become a classic song we all love now.
Fascinating to watch really, and a credit to Mike, Matt and Pete.
After the singer had roughly learned the song he or she would go into the vocal room and start singing it. The singer would normally sing the song from start to finish warming up and for the engineer to set EQ, compression and recording levels. After the singer had warmed up and the engineer was happy, the session would go two ways depending on Mike or Matt.
Line by Line and Dropping In
If Mike could sense the singer was 1. Having a bad day 2. Not a good singer or 3. Struggling to sing the song. Then Mike would focus on recording the song section by section, starting with say the verse or chorus.
The engineer would then cue the tape machine about 5 seconds before the verse started and play from that point, only the verse would be recorded (8 bar on most SAW records).
The singer would sing the verse over and over a few times until Mike was happy to keep a part of the verse on tape. This could be one line or one word or 2 /3 lines. Mike would be in total control of the production of the vocals and instruct the engineer on what lines / words to drop the tape machine in and out for.
This process of recording vocals is mentally hard on both producer and engineer as total concentration is needed to drop the tape machine in and out without erasing an important bit of singing that Mike liked and wanted to keep. But mistakes were made and sometimes the tension in a vocal session could be high.
After a full lead vocal on a verse was recorded and Mike was happy with it then the singer would do a double track recording take, and the same process of recording the lead would apply to the double track vocal (DT).
If you were to get an SAW multi-track tape and solo the lead vocals you would hear drop-in recording clicks all over the tracks, some worse than others depending on who was singing. These drop-in recording clicks on the vocal track can sometimes sound bad in solo, but when fx’s like reverb and delay were added and the vocals balanced in with the rest of the track the clicks could not be heard.
After the verse was recorded, it was the bridge and then the chorus and maybe some ad-libs at the end. The master chorus vocal would then be sampled and flown in (moved to other chorus), so the singer would only sing one chorus and that chorus would be used though out the rest of song. This was also applied to the bridge (the build up verse before the chorus), also sampled and moved to other bridges.
The worse the singing the more sampling and moving of vocals parts was needed.
The recording of vocals this way could take an hour to 4 /6 hours, depending on the singer. And believe me if you were having a bad day or you were a shit singer then Mike would get very irritated and short with Stock/Aitken/Waterman were working with were having huge success and couldn’t sing a note in tune. This was very frustrating to Mike and Matt and all in the studio.
Doing Vocal Runs
The second process of recording vocal was to do vocal run takes. Some singers work best this way, mostly good singers. They seem to get vibed up on the track and sing better when singing the song from start to finish. But this would still be Mike decision on if to record them this way or not. The singer would simply sing the song over and over again and you would build up 8 to 10 tracks of good vocals runs on tape. These vocal runs would then be compiled onto a master lead vocal track by Mike and the engineer.
If Mike still felt that some vocal lines were weak, then the singer would sing those lines again for the engineer to record again.
Sampling of chorus and bridges still happened as well, but maybe not so much.
This way of recording vocals was far less hard than to drop-in and out of record, but as I’ve said before you need a good singer behind the mic in the first place to do this.
The SAW sound / Effects
This is hard to write, but ‘the SAW vocal sound’ was created by the songs and how they sounded. The ‘tight’ double tracking was part of that sound and a SAW artist like Kylie became so good and tight at double tracking because they did it so often in the studio with Mike.
This was in the days before auto tune and vocal tuning problems wound be corrected slightly by the pitch blend wheel on a keyboard as the vocals were been sampled and flown in. Slight timing problems could be corrected with delays and so on.
None of the engineers at PWL were world class engineers (including me) and the vocals and overdubs were recorded quick and hard sounding, hard EQing and hard compression was added at the recording and mixing process, maybe that’s why SAW records sound punchy and sound great on small radio speakers as well as large club systems.
The double track vocal would be balanced about 5 db’s lower than the lead vocals and a good Lexicon plate revert and a nice 4’s delays with feedback set at about 35% and the vocals would sound great.
I hope you find this write up helpful in explaining how we recorded vocals at Pete Waterman Ltd and with Stock/Aitken/Waterman.
