ac cd,britney, defleppard background vocals

[leccisi]

anyone know how to get those crowded kinda sounding back vocals that mutt lange puts on acdc, britney spears, bryan adams tracks? theyre huge and its diffictult to pick out individual voices in them. is it a question of arrangement, does he put 20 of them down? what sort of fx? anyone have any ideas? tony

[TAPKAE]

He puts 100 tracks down, and if I exaggerate, its not by much. Leppard is known for doing that. Everyone does their parts 15-20 times, times several parts, and all in what must be the human equiv to "sample accurate"-- no timing slop. He is the master of EQ. And of having a part done exactly the same so it doesn't sound like a choir, with drift and all. Take all those vocals, and you can't use the same mic for it all and keep your EQ flat. Too much buildup and reinforcement of frequencies. So change up the mics, mix the things with a lot of EQ to subract freqs that will build up. Its not easy. Lest you think that Lange is a slavedriver and has people do unnatural stuff, realize that he subject himself to that same process. He does many parts in the midst of those Def Leppard and Shania vocals. He's a great singer as well as a producer.

Get your EQ ready.

[OgnKog]

I really enjoy how Mutt works...

[img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img] Damn, how far we are !! [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

Al.

[cracker729]

Originally posted by TAPKAE:
He puts 100 tracks down, and if I exaggerate, its not by much. Leppard is known for doing that. Everyone does their parts 15-20 times, times several parts, and all in what must be the human equiv to "sample accurate"-- no timing slop. He is the master of EQ. And of having a part done exactly the same so it doesn't sound like a choir, with drift and all. Take all those vocals, and you can't use the same mic for it all and keep your EQ flat. Too much buildup and reinforcement of frequencies. So change up the mics, mix the things with a lot of EQ to subract freqs that will build up. Its not easy. Lest you think that Lange is a slavedriver and has people do unnatural stuff, realize that he subject himself to that same process. He does many parts in the midst of those Def Leppard and Shania vocals. He's a great singer as well as a producer.

Get your EQ ready.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Forgive me for asking, but how do you know all this? I would like to read more about these things...

Regards,
Jason

[TAPKAE]

Well, I uh, used to be into DL a lot more some years ago, and read up. But I also have read volumes of magazines about recording and all the accounts of musicians that work with him. Its out there. Maybe do a google for Mutt Lange and production notes or something. I just stumble upon it. But instead of seeing it and bypassing it because it will make me into a soulless megamillion selling producing machine, I actually read the stuff because he obviously knows something I don't. I really couldn't help you to single out where I got this. But its not underground stuff. Maybe consult some back issues of magazines in the years when Def Leppard released albums... they aren't secretive of the process. I do now remember that there was a book about DL done not long after Hysteria was released, and its got a lot of detail in it about their story to that point, and more than a few stories of incredible studio tricks requiring great patience. Lange is so detailed in his work, its sick. DL used to have to do guitar parts, almost at a rate of a string at a time. Overdubs of cymbals. Weeks of background vocals, trying out a milliion guitar/amp/speaker/mic/pre combinations, stripping songs down and building them up again with hooks aplenty and all that. He isn't just a fader monkey. He basically joins the band for the duration of production.

[leccisi]

sounds good. what do you mean by eq's that will build up?