"Pop" Vocal with Al Calderon

Producers Corner - SpeakerSonic Studio

Today's session was with an up and comer making his way through the entertainment machine. Al Calderon was a featured performer on The X Factor recently. A mutual friend of ours put us together to work out a recording for future release. My role, producer & engineer. Al's role, sing his ass off.

Sarah Smiles, by Hall and Oats, has made a comeback with the help of Al and the television show. His performance led to hoards of fans and his star is on the rise. 

Posing for a picture

I put Al in a room with Ben Pegano for a rehearsal. My idea was simple, get that old school Wurlitzer electric piano sound with a clean and well performed vocal. I had a sound in my head and thought Ben, with his soul and keys background, would be the perfect match. After a shaky, feeling each other out rehearsal, there was some uncertainty. I barreled ahead with Ben coming in the next day and he laid down a smooth and dynamic performance on the first take. We recorded several more takes after that, but we ended up using 90% of the first take. WTG BP!

Al loved the track and came in to sing a week later, that being today. I warmed him up a bit with some scales and his voice was right where it needed to be. Al has a great voice. Its very clean and he can throw down a riff. It took a take or two to get the headphones and levels just right because on a track like this, where the vocal is wide open, the singer needs to be able to hear every single breath and nuance of the performance. The soft parts have to be loud enough, and the loud parts have to not overdrive the input, nor blow out the ear drums.

Today's setup; U87 with -10db pad, into the Trident. Outboard inserts; API 550b with a boost in the bass, LA-3A compressor edging off the peaks, API 550b with a reduction in the bass. This is a similar principle to a previous session. Boost the bass on the way to the compressor so the compressor leaves the high frequencies buoyant. Then reduce the bass after, leaving a very tasty and lively sound.

Photo by Alex Beaufort

For Al's headphone mix, I added a touch of reverb, and then a very heavy compressor "in the box". I simply set up an Aux and bus it to the channel. The actual recorded track would not be squashed, but in order to feel and hear all of those little vocal breaths and do dads that pop vocals love, we had to compress it for the headphone mix. The song is Very dynamic, the soft parts are practically whispers and the loud parts are like Stevie Wonder. You can't expect a singer to whisper, and then not hear themselves. You also can't have them wail, and blast out their hearing. 

For the mix, which still needs to be finished, I'm creating two separate vocal tracks. One will be for the soft stuff, and one will be for the louder stuff. I can compress them differently according to how they need to sit in the track and then I'll adjust for volume accordingly to maintain a linear sound. ~ adjust my nerd glasses ~

He sang the shit out of the song, it sounds Fantastic, and I'm glad to have worked with him. He's humble, cool, talented and he's doing some pretty great things. Success!!

I'll post a link to the track when it "drops".