Chaka Khan & the mic technique

 We now live in a world of Digital Audio Workstations, or DAWs for short. Protools, Logic, Luna, Ableton; each one has its own sound, and they all give you different ways to deal with mixing, particularly vocals. We can apply 1000 gain moves and level moves to a vocal to make it “speak,” making sure you hear every whisper, and also don't have your hair peeled back by a loud scream. But how was vocal recording done before digital audio? 

For one thing, as the recordist you had a daunting and awesome task: to get all that information on tape and not blow up the tape. Because if you did, your signal would distort on tape, and also blow out much of the high end and detail of the performance. It was also a grave sin to fuck up a vocal recording. So, for that reason only the best engineers cut vocals, because it was the most important part of the recording of the record. 

Certainly, getting it on tape as an engineer was job #1, but there is a secret technique that all the singers in history are aware of, and that's mic technique. What is mic technique, you ask?

Mic technique is the way seasoned studio singers used the awesome power of the amplification of the mic (about 80db) to “create the sound of the performance.” 

A good example of a master of mic technique is Chaka Khan. I had the good fortune to work with Chaka with producer Dave Gamson of Scritti Politti, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Chaka Khan fame. We were actually recording lead vocals for what would be the last record in her contract with Warner Brothers. For me to watch Chaka manipulate space and her body to produce her performance was a true thing of awe and beauty. Chaka was always smoking when she sang. Like Billie Holiday, I imagine that smoking was part of the amazing deluxe gravel and grit in her sound. Chaka would creep up an inch from the capsule and deliver the sexiest whisper delivery of the verse lines. Then when the track would kick in, she would take a drag of her cigarette, and lean back three feet and unleash a power line that blew your face off, and made your whole body erupt with goose bumps. 

Of course, not only was the performance a thing of beauty, flawless in its delivery, but it was the perfect level on tape, and for the mix. In that way, Chaka was able to “produce” the performance to the degree that it was really effortless to record. That is one of the great joys of recording, to witness a historic moment in recording, and count your lucky stars that you got to be there. Over the years, I’ve worked with many, many great singers who employ mic technique to create their vocal sound. 

From a recording standpoint the other thing they all know is “proximity effect.”

Proximity effect is the build up of low end that happens when you get really close to the microphone capsule.

You can hear it as an annoying “woof” sound, especially when the class principal gets too close to the mic when making announcements. In the hands of a skilled singer, they can create warmth and sexiness to the sound, or add low end warmth to a belt line if it's just the right distance from the mic. Analog recording is so fun. 

One of the first big producers I got an opportunity to work with was Kashif. Kashif had just built a huge studio on 37th Street called Marathon. It was two buildings down the street from Nile Rodger’s studio. There were studios all though that part of Manhattan. Most of the big producers used the A-list session singers. For Kashif, it was Tawatha Agee, Lisa Fischer, Sandra St. Victor, and Audrey Wheeler. All of these women went on to have huge solo careers as well, but at that point of time they were “the section.” If it was a Luther Vandross, David Bowie, or a Rolling Stones record, they were the section you called. When they arrived at the studio, they arrived. They weren’t in sweatpants and flip flops carrying their bed pillow, that's for sure. They would arrive in high heels, dressed to the nines , with the latest handbags and jewelry. They all looked, (and of course sang) like superstars. They were all divas, and they loved to chatter and gossip about fashion, relationships, and other such topics. It would drive Kashif crazy. He would yell at them to keep quiet in between takes, but he never succeeded. I loved it secretly, all the juicy gossip and jokes were amazing and fun. Great vibes.

What was more amazing was that when the track rolled, they snapped into formation like a military unit. All four of them would creep in close to the mic and sing “shoop”...or whatever. The harmony was perfect, pitch was perfect, and pronunciation was flawless. When they would rehearse they would look at each other carefully and watch and work with their hands on how they would pronounce every word. It wasn’t  the producer, it was really them. They would just figure out how to sing a line, and they would dance and groove together while they were watching each other's lips. When they were ready, they'd give me the high sign “we’re ready.” Then they would just deliver it, boom. 

It was really an extraordinary thing to witness. As Chaka did, when they needed to belt, like all seasoned singers, they would back up three feet and belt it. The even more incredible thing was that they would figure out who had the strongest voices and place themselves appropriately close or far depending on what they were doing. The soft girls would be a couple inches away. The loud and lower girls would step back. The balance was always perfect, because they balanced themselves…

In so many ways it was a blessing to work with so many seasoned musicians in those early years in New York City.  The funny thing is, I still teach young singers how to “work the mic” every time I produce a vocal, which is pretty frequently. This new singer Goldie Scott, who I imagine will be a big star by the time I finish writing my book, had no technique when I met her. But she took to it incredibly quickly. And now when I do remote sessions with her in NYC, she sings perfectly at the right spot on the mic. It all comes back to efficiency for me. It’s much easier to take a little time to get the performance really great, rather than let singers do a bunch of takes and assume you can fix it in the edit. That always takes way longer and is usually less exciting and immediate. 

What is Music Mixing?

It’s incredible how many times I’ve been out at a party or a bar and someone has asked me what a mixer does. Often they think I am a DJ, because DJs also refer to themselves as “mixers” because they mix records together into a cohesive playlist. It’s confusing for people, and apparently, the federal government doesn't know what a mixer is, either.

Any job search for mixers on Indeed will yield no results for what I do for a living, unless you’re interested in getting to the cement business. “Music Mixer” is not considered a job, even though thousands of people have done it historically and do it every day in the music business. How can it be that the work guys (and girls) who shepherd the project to completion in a $20 billion business do is not considered for a job category? Well, in the dark ages, musicians were not given a burial…they were not worthy. Wayne would be so sad. 

It might be easier to understand what a record producer is, partly because many record producers have been portrayed in movies and TV shows, and it's an easier thing for people outside the business to understand.

A music mixer, I have often said, is a conductor with total control over the balance and sound of every instrument and voice in a song.

A mixer is literally the person tasked with mixing together all the sounds of a completed production into a cohesive stereo mix of the song. Every song you have ever heard on the radio or a streaming service was mixed by somebody. 

When I was in college at University of Miami, my buddy Jerry Placken and I used to spend hours, and hours, and hours hanging in his room (which had an amazing homemade sound system), and pick apart every record in our collection. Of course, we were listening to the performances, and the arrangements, and the sounds, but mostly we were picking apart the mixes, the way a saxophone player listens to and transcribes a jazz solo. 

We listened to every aspect of these records: the drum sounds, the vocal sound, the position of the backgrounds, and placement of each percussion and keyboard instrument. The bass sound, and EQ of the bass, the relationship between the kick drum and the bass. We were obsessed.  We were also fanboys of the best mixers in the game: Bob Clearmountain (Roxy Music, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie), Geoff Emerick (the Beatles), Glyn Johns (Led Zeppelin), George Massenburg (Earth, Wind & Fire), Bruce Swedien (Michael Jackson). Though mixing is an obscure artform that very few people outside the business know of, it was our obsession, and these guys were some of our heroes. 

Mixing is an esoteric practice that involves listening to all the sounds in a production and carefully placing them in a three-dimensional space that eventually becomes the stereo mix that you hear in your iTunes collection or radio station.

There are distinct elements to mixing. They are identified as a selection of processes that you can apply to sound. This is not an exhaustive list, but it is the one that I used back in the day when I was running my Elements of Mixing seminars. They are volume, pan, EQ, compression, distortion, saturation, delay, reverb, modulation, and time compression/expansion. All of these techniques bring out a particular part of a sound or obscure it, depending on what the goal is. I will discuss all these processes in greater detail in future posts.

I have always thought of mixing as a bit like musical chairs, the game we all played as grade schoolers. Mixing is often the job of packing an extraordinary amount of information into one space. Once you become a bit further on in the mix process, simply pulling back one thing, like the background vocals or a keyboard part, will open up a whole new balance in the mix as the musical chairs again fill up. Each part in the mix is always vying for visibility. The important questions are what do you feature and what do you obscure?

Truth be told, everything is important: the drums , the bassline, keyboards, strings, horns, guitars, and percussion are all important. But, nothing is more important than the lead vocal (in my humble opinion). The lead vocal is the holy grail of recording, and mostly the reason we go into the studio to record; to create wallpaper to go behind the vocalist. It’s also how most of us make a living. This is not, of course, true for instrumental music — but for the time being we're talking about pop records with singers. I have read interviews with many famous mixers who build their mix around the lead vocal. I share that philosophy and have always made the vocal the focus of my mixes. There are many rule-based philosophies about where to place the vocal, and they often fall in to styles of a time, and genre of music. Most ‘70s and ‘80s rock, for example, tend to feature the guitars and a massive drum sound, while de-emphasizing the bass and vocals. In many great rock mixes, the beat and the guitars drive the attention and the vocal sits neatly tucked away inside the mix. In some pop and R&B, as well as rap, the vocal is king. Many listeners get “goose bumps” when they hear a particularly compelling performance from a diva like Aretha Franklin, or Whitney Houston, or Adele. Every bit of the gravel and breath and tiny bits of ad-lib have been meticulously manicured to make it easy for the listener to identify (and connect with) what the singer is doing.

I would say making the artist, producer, mixer or listener have goose bumps is pretty much job number one. Goose bumps are what typically happen to people on their arms when they connect in a particularly emotional way to a moment of a song. It can be enhanced by a brilliant string arrangement, or a particular dramatic break in the song which exposes the lead vocal by itself. Like the lead actor in a film, the lead vocal is typically the focus on a pop record. It’s all about engaging the listener and creating an emotional connection with them. If the producer has done his/her job, and the singer has performed admirably, and the mixer brings out all that is special in the performance, then you might just have a hit record. I’ve had a few, and I always knew it was a hit before it left the studio. Why? Because I got goose bumps.

Puff Daddy, who was one of my earliest and long-standing clients, often used to look at my arms to see if I got the bumps. The right arm was R&B and the left was pop, and if they both lit up, it was a cross-over smash. Music is all about emotion, and collecting it and bottling it properly can make a lot of money.

Is Mastering Your Music Necessary?

The whole process of recording a record, producing, engineering and ultimately releasing it can be daunting to new and established artists in this DIY wilderness. One question I often get from clients is “do I need to master?” That’s understandable given the options available in the new marketplace. For example, there are several online AI-based mastering platforms that are quite inexpensive. 

AI Mastering

How do they stack up? My personal opinion is that spending $20 dollars on an unassisted master from an AI robot after spending up to $10k to use the best players, best mixer and producer to dial in every nuance of your song, only to get it crushed and lose all that nuance, seems to me selling yourself and your project short. Having examined most of the online options as well as software and plugs, I have to say there’s no comparison. (Full disclosure: I have consulted for several companies that develop mastering AI).

Part of the reason I started mastering my own mixes for clients was that I got disillusioned by seeing my work trashed by a bad algorithm.

That’s not to say I’m a Luddite or against technology. I often use AI as a starting point when I’m mastering, but the operative term is “starting point.” It’s a starting point because many of the algorithms are geared towards maximum loudness, which often leads to all the beautiful low end and warmth of the mix being sacrificed for maximum volume.  

Loudness Wars

MS (or “middle sides”) processing can alter the spatial aspect of the song by enhancing the out-of-phase information which usually represents noise or reverb. By using more out-of-phase information, the mastering engineer can make the stereo wider, make the reverb more intense or present or enhance the noise (distortion) to make the edge “edgier” on the song. Mastering in that sense is as musical and creative as mixing, even though you’re processing a stereo or spatial signal. I think the best mastering is when you can show the producer or mixer or artist another conception of the song. 

Streaming Requirements

So…

Given that streaming services have their own thresholds and loudness rules for uploaded music, do you even need to master or should you just upload the mix?

My opinion is that the mastering process is extremely important for at least one reason: you don’t want your mix sounding boring or dull in comparison to other well-produced records in a playlist. The same goes for any other playback medium (DJs, radio, etc.). For your production to be successful, give it the best shot for success. The best mastering engineers bring your song in line with other great sounding records. Don’t short change your hard work!

Examples

Below are a couple examples of recent masters I’ve worked on. All of these are of other mixes not done by me. For my mixes, I tend to “pre master” my productions so there’s less dramatic difference when I master my own stuff. I think what you’ll hear is that not only are the mixes louder, but hopefully they’re more open, less harsh, and more engaging than the bare mixes. I’d love to hear your comments and feedback.