Vocals: Live, like Neil Young??

[mcolling]

Beginning with his second album, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Neil Young recorded all his vocals live along with his band. My question is: How?

I'm fairly certain that with most of the albums, with the exception of Tonight's the Night, a condenser was used. I think that Eliot Mazer is on record as saying that Neil used a U87 for the Harvest sessions. And photos of the sessions seem to show Neil standing maybe 10 or 15 feet from the drummer, not in any vocal booth or anything.

The question is, wouldn't a condenser have too much bleed, even on the cardiod setting? Wouldn't the mic pic up too much of the other instruments to allow decent isolation? This is an especially pertinent question with regards to the albums recorded with Crazy Horse, since they played very loud.

 

[mcolling]

bbbump

ok, maybe i was a bit long winded before. here's a rephrasing;

Could you record a vocal track live with a band, in the same room together, and use a condeser mic? Even if it was cardiod, wouldn't you get too much bleed to isolate the vocals?

 

[Middleman]

Bleed is your friend. You count on the bleed to gel the mix in that kind of environment. If he was in the studio, there must have been baffles and barriers for the various instruments. As long as the players can see each other, that's live.

Unless you're saying they set up on a stage and played live, which would have a different set of issues, but heck yeah, a lot of that was done back in the day too.

 

[mcolling]

Thanks for the response.

They were in the studio, yes, but I don't think he had baffles or anything. Looks from the pics like they're all standing around ina circle, kind of thing.

Yes, bleed is good, but wouldn't the instruments be just too damn loud? Like, too loud to get the vocals loud enough?

 

[Middleman]

Well, I've done this, many years ago. It's a placement game and your EQ needs to be right on from the get go. They didn't use dedicated preamps back then. Most albums were recorded with consoles that had built in EQ. You could do high pass and low pass filters as well some notching. You could reduce excessive bleed problems by using these filters. Plus compression was there to control things a bit.

I can't imagine using a condensor on the vocals in this environment but an SM57, SM7 or SM58 reject side noise fairly effectively. These were the mics of the day remember. However, if you understand mic patterns a condensor would not necessarily be ruled out. Another benefit, if the singer is between a loud source and the mic, this makes a natural baffle.

With the proper placement and some very adept engineer who really understood mic placement as well as mic pattern characteristics, you can control the environment to your liking.

 

[mshilarious]

ok, maybe i was a bit long winded before. here's a rephrasing;

Could you record a vocal track live with a band, in the same room together, and use a condeser mic? Even if it was cardiod, wouldn't you get too much bleed to isolate the vocals?

Could you do it with a cardioid dynamic? Then it is no different with a cardioid condenser--assuming the singer-->mic distance is the same, the relative volume of the vocal and the bleed is the same.

 

[mcolling]

Could you do it with a cardioid dynamic?

Yeah.

Then it is no different with a cardioid condenser--assuming the singer-->mic distance is the same, the relative volume of the vocal and the bleed is the same

But the transient response of condensers is much greater, no? Maybe I should be brushing up on the big thread...