Day Tripper Isolated Vocal Track

Found this on YouTube and thought it might be of interest to people here.

The Beatles - Day Tripper (vocals only) - YouTube by audiokid posted Mar 27, 2015 at 8:59 PM

I like how you can hear them, just before they sing, trying to find their notes.. lol.. I though, "hey! I've done that!"

It's just that now with modern technology, all those things get edited out under the digital microscope.

 

Love stuff like this. Please, sir, may I have another?

 

So that bleed - it's not from the cans, right? Are they tracking with speakers out of phase in this?

 

apparently, headphones.

 

From "Recording The Beatles":

http://www.damngoodtunes.com/RECORDING_THE_BEATLES.html

DGT: I have been in and around studios my entire life and cannot imagine not having good headphones on when laying down a vocal or guitar part, yet you say that the Beatles did not use headphones for many years and most of their records. How then was it possible to isolate a vocalist or any other part for that matter, or reduce bleed through?

KEVIN: Yes, for the first half of their career, they didn’t use headphones. This is so alien to modern record production, but it wasn’t too unheard of at the time. If they were overdubbing a vocal, they listened to the music playing from a big speaker in the studio and sang along. The mics were positioned for minimal bleed, and what bleed resulted wasn’t too much of a concern.

BRIAN: They used to not worry so much about bleed-through of previous tracks as we do. It was there, but minimal. And they weren’t doing heavy processing, like crazy EQ or gating later on, where the bleed would be noticeable. There is a thing I find in studios – if you sing or play without headphones – that you actually do better, because that is the way you are used to performing. It’s natural to hear things in open spaces.

 

they sang the harmony live, with the echo printed! ..... all on one track. what i'm hearing is how uninspired it sounds soloed. but when the whole thing was finished, what a difference. it shows that they had a plan. i think they were monitoring a speaker or we are hearing a c/r mix. notice the instruments were louder at the top.

 

Cool!

 

Since this one was recorded in 1965, and the photos posted were from a later date, its likely that there aren't any headphones being used and the 'bleed' is from the studio playback monitors. In this case...at least on this song and its single partner, We Can Work It Out, both were originally mono recordings and like most of the songs on Rubber Soul were really dry. The stereo recordings weren't produced until a year later and were mixed by Peter Brown in Room 65 at Abbey Road and were mixed on the old REDD37 console which had been retired from Studio Two. The reverb was added then. Most likely its Abbey Roads famous chamber.

I'll add this......During these sessions (Rubber Soul) and the previous record (Help) The Beatles had become very very adept at arranging and playing their finely crafted Pop music to the point that there weren't a lot of "reductions" to make space for more instrumentation on the 4 tracks. This one , in particular, is a live to 2 track rhythm section WITHOUT a guide vocal at all and then a single track of the two main voices, Paul and John and then the last track consisting of the vocals again with George on the third voice, tambourine, and another lead guitar track. Simple, sweet, and to the point. Also another reason its fidelity is way up there.

 

There were three different chambers. The one in the video is chamber two and was associated with Studio Two. The pipes are 18" and 12" sewer pipe and their arrangement in the room was set by trial and error. There were also 4 EMT 140 plates in Abbey Road as well as a whole room dedicated to filters, drivers, pre-amps and controls for ALL of the echo and chambers and plates throughout the facility. The speakers and mics in the chambers changed over the years but mostly the mics in the chambers were KM53 Neumanns.

 

Yeah, how'd they do that? I hate using cans when I sing.

 

Very simply, its all about how well your microphone's patterns work. Placing the playback speaker in the 'null' of the mic is the way that it has been done forever. It is a true test of how defined your mic's pattern is and just how 'null' this area is. The Beatles had access to the 2 dozen or so U47's and U48's that Abbey Road had in their locker. The difference being, U47's did not come with a figure of eight pattern whilst the U48's did. However, Abbey Road's engineers are famous for getting things built in order to facilitate their needs. Several U47's were sent back to Neumann to have a figure of eight setting installed. There a lot of early tracks where the boys are singing into both sides of the mic and most of the harmonies were done this way. The early REDD consoles didn't have that many mic amps so it helped to be able to cature two sources with one input. It ALSO helped them develop that tight close harmony that was the trademark of their sound. In some cases you could see all three, John, George, and Paul, gathered in close proximity with two mics...one for the lead singer...probably a U47 in cardioid and the other two singing into both sides of a U48 or one of the 'special' U47's in Fig-of-8 and both of them in the null of the cardioid mic. No phones. The primary studio playback monitor was the RS 101 from Capitol records.

 

Cool!

 

This is why I like to put a slapback echo or some short reverb in the headphones during vocal tracking. Living in and around boxes all our lives we are used to hearing our voices reflected back at us.