Now this was a fascinating session with Haydn Bendall…
Producer, engineer & mixer. Chief Engineer at Abbey Road & awarded the Audio Pro Industry Excellence Award for Best Studio Engineer in 2009. Haydn knows his stuff, inside out, back to front & mid to side.
Haydn’s session focused on recording vocals with some fascinating and honest dips into parallel compression, speech impediments and doing it ‘old school’.
Refreshingly, he never strayed far from everything being about making the artist feel comfortable rather than relying on rehearsed technique and technology.
There was so much in this session, here’s our attempt to summarise…
“I’ve made some faboulous records and some awful ones”
Top tips:
- Make the artist feel comfortable and involved
- The difference between good and bad is the vocalist but the same principles apply to all musicians
- Haydyn walks them round the room to see where they want to sing to immediately get them feeling involved, esp as singing on headphones is an awful experience
- Give honest and accurate feedback (is it really flat or just out of tune?)
- For many vocalists it’s not about compliments or flannel – they get that all the time and its not necessarily useful
- Know when to let up in terms of feedback and stop to have a break
- Being out of tune is generally due to tiredness, attitude, headphone balance or just not being able to sing!
- If that’s the case, change something (not the singer!) – perhaps headphone balance or environment
- Haydn never limits or compresses during recording/tracking. You can never get back what you might have lost
“We know in our hearts what sounds right”
- Haydn doesn’t record loud. He controls later with faders
- He also records at the level he wants to mix at
- Think about perspective, performance and depth – forward and reverse rather than louder/quieter
- He’d love to work on reverse fader desk (bring faders towards you for louder/closer). Nice idea.
- He’s not a fan of parallel compression (and apologies to Gary B)
“We’re dealing with music not frozen peas”
- Haydn prefers whole takes. Let them go for 3 or 4 times. A few times without any input to help you hear the ‘shape’ of the song
- Perhaps encourage the artist to visualise certain imagery can help with tuning and feel
- Use E.Q to remove the rumble at Abbey Road Studio 1 and the lorries at Air Studios!
- Knowing when to stop is a valuable tool
”Things are never finished, they are just abandoned at the right time.”
Many thanks Haydn. A great session.
