, 33 1 3 085 Portishead's Dummy R J Wheaton (pdf) 

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expulsion of air on the plosive pushes the microphone s
diaphragm against the casing of the mic, registering a
slight, dull thud. There is a slightly longer, although
courser, intake of breath before  this salvation, again
with a rough sibilance on  salvation which contrasts
with the smooth, languorous delivery of  and desire.
It s a beautiful sequence, astonishingly unmediated
and intimate. Yet it showcases a number of elements
which would ordinarily be removed in post-production.
Recordist Jay Hodgson points out that as a sound
engineer  when you ve got a close-mic d vocal track, the
very first thing you do before you do anything else is you
go in and you cut out the breaths. But those touches
remain on Dummy.
Sometimes the vocals were not re-recorded after
the State of Art sessions but, to preserve the feel of
the original recording, the original demo takes were
instead used for the final recording.169 Dave McDonald
remembers that the spontaneity, the authenticity, of the
vocal take was critical:
There was a bit of a battle sometimes between me and
Geoff about cleaning things up. I m very in the world of,
that was it: that s the take and that s the take. And all those
little noises and little things are part of it. Right down
169
Miller 1995.
" 111 "
DUMMY
to  sometimes I would lose battles like  on  Roads,
right at the end on the masters that I have here you have
Beth saying something like  Oh, that s it. It s over. And
I just said, we should always keep that. And she agreed
with me but Geoff wanted to get rid of it so we got rid of
it. So there s always been those little natural things and
I think Beth was very much into that sort of  being a
country girl  the sort of  organic way really. So that s
what we liked.
The choice of microphone  an AKG 414  contributed
to the vocals particular sound:
That was just our mic of choice. And also of budget,
really, at that early stage. It was all we could really
afford in State of Art & The 414 microphone has the
C12 capsule in it which was  when you see those old
pictures of someone like Billie Holiday or Frank Sinatra,
when they re using an AKG C12 microphone it s exactly
the same capsule so you kind of get the old sound & That
was something I was deliberately seeking. I ve always
liked the sound of old vocals. I grew up listening to old
records. I love that intimacy.
The vocals on Dummy are also highly compressed, which
is to say that they are processed in a way that ensures
that the dynamic range is collapsed: the volume of
quieter elements is brought closer to that of the naturally
louder elements. Andy Wright, a producer who worked
on Massive Attack s Protection, describes a record with
a compressed vocal as one with  a lot of presence &
you can hear all the breaths and all the nuance in the
" 112 "
R. J . WHEATON
recording. Dave McDonald rhapsodizes the effect of
the Teletronix LA-2A compressor on the album s vocals
  it just instantly changes them and brings them alive.
Gibbons vocals were also subject to equalization, in
particular boosting frequencies in the 1-kiloHertz range
to deliver something like  a Tannoy effect. Like you
would hear in [public address systems in] old factories or
in buildings or old train stations & You d hear it on like a
Noël Coward record. It s the sound you can hear promi-
nently on  Numb and  Pedestal  a slightly artificial,
processed sound, almost nasal. As Jay Hodgson points
out, the frequencies in that range are below audible
 sibilance (s, ch, and t sounds) but  above the boomy
chest resonance area. The frequency boost in that area is
utterly distinctive. As Dave McDonald describes the old
records characterized by that sound:  they almost sound
like they re in your ear. And it just seemed to suit her
voice, and that s what we always went with.
The vocals were also fed through a Roland Space Echo
delay unit  the kind used to produce the vocal echo
that characterizes many dub recordings. Dave McDonald
cites the technique as  one of my favorite things with
 such a beautiful sound to it, a technique that dated back [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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