Recording Matters, Part 7: Recording and Editing Backing Vocals!

Hi! My name is Jeff Berkley. I’m from San Diego California. I am a musician, songwriter, engineer, and producer. I spend four or five days a week at Satellite studio, in San Diego, California, producing records. I’ve made lots and lots of them. I’m very lucky to be able to find magic in all sorts of different types of musical situations, levels, styles, and vibes. Somehow, I can focus on what’s authentic and draw it out. I have no idea how I got here but, I sure did luck out!

This is part seven of my attempt to somehow articulate my own recording method to you. As I’ve said before, it’s just my method. It works for me. It seems to work for others as well.

So far, we’ve chosen, written or co-written, edited, and “memo demo’d” the songs. We’ve chosen a producer and studio. We’ve talked about choosing and preparing the musicians, recording basic tracks and editing them, the instrument overdub process, recording and editing lead vocals, and this month we will tackle the ambiguous art of recording and editing backing vocals!

Well thank all the gods and the universe! We finished lead vocals! What a great feeling it is to have those in place as well as sounding and feeling correct!

Now what to do about backing vocals? Whether or not you plan on very sparse backing vocals—or all sorts of counterpoint and big bluegrass-style harmonies—the backing vocals are another extremely important step in the process.

My dad, who was a preacher and record producer, would talk about backing vocals, horns, and strings as “sweetening.”

I think he referred to them like that because it was expensive to add those things back in those days. You had already spent so much money just getting the songs you like to do them live. Adding strings and a bunch of backing vocals was like the cherry on top of the Sunday for him.

I’ve kind of come to see those things as just another wonderful element to make people’s emotions light up!

With backing vocals, it’s another opportunity to deepen and widen bigger parts of the song. Choruses, pre-choruses, post choruses, and bridges very often like to have at least one harmony to help lift the dynamics.

There are no rules about backing vocals. If it moves you as an artist and feels like your character, then add them. If you like people to sing oohs, ahhhs, and La La La La La’s, do it!!!

From the technical standpoint, it’s important to consider wisely whom you choose to sing. You definitely want to choose someone who can complement your voice or the voice of the lead singer. If you want the harmony to be above the lead vocal, then you need to choose someone who sings in that range freely and easily. Also, someone whose voice is complementary to yours or the lead singers.

Male or female vocals add different kinds of flavors and intentions. It’s all about each specific application. If it’s a punk song and you want one harmony above, make sure that you choose someone who has the same kind of angst as the lead singer. Someone who’s going to get the spirit of the song and slide right in. As with everything else, it’s all about casting!

This brings us to a very important question. “Should I do my own backing vocals?”

There are no hard rules on this. I have my own experience and, based on that, I like to have a different vocalists sing the backing vocals rather than the lead singer. That’s just my preference because my ear gets pulled away from the feeling of a live band playing together to hear the same vocalist layered several times over.

I’m a huge Rickie Lee Jones fan and she does all her own vocal layering, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s not always supposed to sound like a live band. It’s supposed to be a work of art. It’s supposed to be done in a studio and create an experience for the listener. It’s all about what you’re after.

As long as those things are happening, you’re making the right choice.

Anyway, I like to bring in a male and a female backing vocalist, work out the parts in the room and then record them. I’m very lucky to have all sorts of wonderful backing vocalists coming through the studio—Sandi King, Josh Taylor, Cathryn Beeks, Lauren Leigh, and many more amazing singers that are brought in on a regular basis to create their magic!

This process is very collaborative and joyful! The artists and clients align and become a team. It’s so much fun to be part of that process.

It’s a simple method. We play the song, and the singers try stuff out while everyone listens. We all work together to arrive at the part!

This process should go very quickly and smoothly if you have professional, talented singers. If you’ve got some friends who are amazingly talented but haven’t done this very often, it just slows down the process. It can still be very effective and wonderful! Some of the coolest sessions I’ve had were just friends of the artist singing a gang vocal. There’s so much love and magic to sprinkle into a track that way.

Once we have the part worked out, the singers go into their different corners of the studio. I’ll usually have one vocalist in the live room and another in the vocal booth. I very often don’t do more than two at a time, but if I do, I find other isolated areas for them.

Once everybody is in place and we’ve got good sounds going, we start tracking. I usually take a few takes of each part, which includes takes that I can use as a double in the mix.

Make sure you’re monitoring with the vocals really hot during these sessions. It’s important to make sure that all the parts are correct and to be kind while talking to your singers. They want to get it right and it’s really not easy sometimes.

Even the best singers have moments of frustration trying to find a note or breathing in the right places or any of the stuff that’s very difficult about singing. Try and give folks plenty of time and leeway to work out something and to even come up with a cool idea in the moment. I’m not always successful, but that’s what I strive for. If you’re a singer and you know what note you want, let them know. Some folks love input, some folks love to find the part on their own.

Just a little note on double tracking.

Through the years, the popularity of doubled backing vocals comes and goes. All it means is that you’re singing the backing vocal several times the same way and playing them all back at the same time, so you get sort of a chorus effect on the vocals. This can make them sound really big and wide and sit in the mix in a wonderful way. It’s definitely a commitment in that way. Some people triple and even quadruple the vocals.

The main difference between single tracked backing vocals or just the actual vocalists singing the part once and double or triple tracked vocals is very simple.

If you want the backing vocals to have character and to be able to really hear the person singing, you wouldn’t want to double track.

Double tracking immediately changes the character of the vocal into something more affected than real. Neither is wrong and both can be beautiful, but it’s absolutely a choice to make. I do both all the time.

There are all sorts of different types of backing vocals.

Single, one-harmony backing vocals are great! It allows the lead vocal to pop with just a little bit of spice riding along on top of the lead vocal. I know you know what I mean. We hear this all the time.

There are also duos that sing melody and harmony together with equally loud and both characters coming through. I know you know what I mean here as well. Simon and Garfunkel, the Jayhawks, Berkley Hart, etc. Lol

Sometimes we hear big, several-part harmonies! I know you can hear these in your head right now. That’s where several vocalists find alternate notes in the scale to sing with the lead vocalist. No one is singing the same note, but they all fit together in a beautiful triad! That just means the melody and two harmonies.

Once you’ve got a melody and two harmonies there aren’t many choices left for more parts. Four-part harmonies are great but you have to really love extra spicy notes. Once you’ve got the first third and fifth notes of the scale, you’re adding in sevens and twos, and it starts to get wonderfully spicy at that point!

This kind of harmony can be very effective, but people will expect it to be live if it’s on the album. It’s a huge choice and something that I really love, but it’s got to be something you really want as a big part of your sound.

There are choir and gang vocals as well. What’s the difference? Well, a choir is a group of professional singers, all singing in different ranges to create a beautiful blend of harmonies and melodies with the sound of a big group. A gang vocal is just a bunch of friends coming in and standing in a circle or semicircle in the studio while they sing along on the last chorus or a breakdown chorus or some part of the song that wants to have a bunch of friends singing on it!

It’s a complete blast to do this kind of session!

I love working with a choir as well. I’ve done several sessions where Veronica May arranged some beautiful choir arrangements for me. It can be very, very affective with the right arrangement. It can also be really cheesy, but that kind of goes for anything. That’s why hiring an arranger like Veronica May, who’s not cheesy (unless you ask her to be) is vital!

I’m sure I’m missing other styles of backing vocals, but these are kind of the main ones that I see the most. Sometimes people have a bull horn and sometimes people want to scream and shout. I even had one client who wanted to “authentically moan” on the microphone.

There are no rules.

Now that you’ve got your backing vocals recorded, it’s time to edit them.

This is just like the lead vocal editing process. You’re going to comb through all the parts to find a composite track of what you want to be in the final mix.

Again, every DAW is different and copying vocals is different for everybody. It’s important to listen through everything. If there were vocalists singing together, I would listen to all of them together take by take. There’s usually some continuity on the takes they sang together.

This is also where you will create the playback for all the doubles or triples you did. You’ll need to open tracks and put those all in place so they all play back at the same time. Get creative with how you pan things or where you put them in the stereo spectrum. You can really deepen and widen a mix with backing vocals.

At this point, go ahead and tune anything that you need to tune. Nowadays, everybody gets tuned just a little bit. For better or worse, music connoisseurs have gotten used to the sound of tuned vocals. Don’t believe me? Put on a Grateful Dead or The Band record from the ’60s or ’70s and check out how different it sounds. I personally love to listen to those records.

Conversely, put on a Queen record or a Beatles record and listen to how amazingly in tune their vocals are. That’s just amazing singing.

Things have definitely changed, but tuning a vocal doesn’t take away from how it affects the listener emotionally and as long as the tuning software doesn’t change the intention or sound, who cares?

The emotional effect on the listener is the number one directive for those of us who make records. It’s a dynamic and interactive art form that moves people like no other Art form. It lights up all our senses and changes the way we feel immediately. It can bring joy and healing as well as deep despair, which is probably something you needed to feel anyway.

Recording matters! Next month we tackle horns and strings!

Jeff Berkley
619-957-3111
www.jeffberkley.com