The _Newsletter_ files 2: Del Palmer's article, issue No. 23

[IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu]

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: The _Newsletter_ files 2: Del Palmer's article, issue No. 23

    <Here is Del Palmer's article from the twenty-fourth (Fall '89)
issue of the Kate Bush Club _Newsletter_. Edited by Andrew Marvick.>


                     A Soft Landing on the Sensual World
                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

     Well, we've finished it at last...
     "_Hooray!_" I hear you shout, and well you might, you've had to
I hear you shout, and well you might, you've had to wait such a
wait such a _long_ time to finally get your hands (and ears) on _The_Sensual_
_World_, but I'm sure that you'll all feel that the wait was worth it.
     Kate has been very prolific on this project, and one of the first
problems we had was which of the songs to use and which to leave off.
As you probably know by now, the way it works is that Kate has an idea
for a song and as soon as possible she lets me hear it. She'll
then suggest the kind of "feel" she is after and I then
spend some time with the Fairlight Rhythm Composer trying to work up
her idea into a pattern to work to. When Kate is happy with this,
we then record the rhythm pattern onto tape, and it then becomes the
basis for the finished track. (Much of this early rhythm track is
replaced later by real drums, but quite a lot tends to survive into
the final mix.) A rough keyboard and vocal idea finish this phase.
     At this point Kate must evaluate the "demo" and decide if the
song is worth pursuing, or leave it. This was, apart from writing
the lyrics for the album, the most difficult and time-consuming part.
     Anyway, I'm not trying to make excuses for the length of
time it took to finish the album. You all know by now that recording
is a long and sometimes painful process for Kate, and I can assure
that she will never settle for second best. She makes us all work
very hard to fulfill her "vision".
     Right now, though, I'd like to tell you a little of the
day-to-day work involved from my point of view. From the start
it was decided that we would try to record as much of the album
as possible in Kate's own studio, and that I would engineer these
recording sessions. It was quite a daunting prospect, I can tell you.
It would be my first major project, and the thought of recording
some of my all-time favourite musicians sometimes filled me with
great dread. <Heretofore Del's role as an engineer had been
mainly limited to the overseeing of demo-recording.>
     At this point I'm going to do my "with thanks" bit. I would have
found the whole thing a nightmare if, on earlier sessions (_Experiment_IV_,
etc.), I'd not had the help of some great engineers like Haydn Bendall,
Julian Mendelsohn and not forgetting my old mate Paul Hardiman. These
guys were always willing to answer any questions I had about recording
techniques and were always positive about my involvement in Kate's
work and never felt threatened by me...Thanks, guys.
     After the first phase of demo-ing had been done, we moved on to
the recording of musicians. You'll notice that we used a lot
of our old favourites like Stuart Elliott and Alan Murphy, but we
also brought in some "New Blood". One of these was Nigel
Kennedy.
     We had already worked with Nigel on the _Experiment_IV_
track, and since that time had become firm friends with the
"Monster". (Monster is one of Nigel's favourite phrases.)
     The day that he came in, as I remember, was quite cold and
gloomy, and we'd been trying to get enough of the track done
for him to play to. The back-track at this time consisted of the
Fairlight percussion track, and "orchestra" that Kate had played
on the Fairlight (and finished up on the final mix along with Michael
Kamen's orchestra), and a guide vocal which at that time was
very different from the final one. <This is further evidence
that Kamen and other orchestral arrangers were called in simply to
perform the actual transcription of Kate's already fully composed
ideas for the orchestral parts.>
     First off we sat him <Kennedy> down and filled him up with
teaso that he could recover from the drive across town to the
studio. We then played him the track several times so that he
had a pretty good idea of its construction before Kate got into
telling him what she was after from him. Nigel's first reactions
to the tape seemed very encouraging. Kate mentioned that she heard
him playing in a Vaughan Williams-type style, and he immediately
understood, and began to play the top line in the most beautiful way.
     While this discussion was in progress I began to prepare
the studio for the session. From what I could gather from the
conversation, we would be trying for a very ambient sound. So,
this meant no close mike placements (the closer the mike to the
instrument the less ambience). I decided, therefore, to use
my favourite microphone, the Neumann U-87 (see figure 1). <A
photograph of this microphone appears, with a caption that reads:
"The Neumann U-87 in its special holder, called an acoustic
suspension. Note the small window just below the mesh head-cover,
which is displaying the cardioid symbol.">
     This without doubt doubt is the best all-purpose mike
available, and I'd stick my neck out and say that it's
possibly the most widely used in studios throughout the world.
We used it for practically every set-up on the record, from the
drum kits to Kate's lead vocals.
     I decided, with a lot of consultation with Kate and Nigel, to
stand him in the larger and slightly deader of our two rooms.
I then set up a U-87 and placed this behind and above so that
it was pointing down to the voilin over Nigel's left shoulder.
I should also mention that I also set up two other types of
microphone along with the U-87 to see which of them would give the
better sound. In the end I did not use them. This was something
that happened quite a lot during the course of things: I'd
set up two or three different mikes as an experiment, but always
kept coming back to the U-87.
     I then placed another U-87 in front of him and down slightly,
so that it ended up pointing upwards towards the other one. Both
of these mikes were placed approximately six feet from the instrument.
It's also worth noting that both of these mikes were set on
cardioid to emphasise the signal coming from the front.
     Back in the control room I had him play some bits and
pieces so that Kate and I could assess the sound. At first it was
quite thin and hard, so a little bit of low mid-frequency
equalization was added to the sound. This helped, but it tended to
soak up the ambience somewhat, so I decided to add one further
mike, purely to act as an ambient fill. Another U-87 was added in
front of Nigel and about nine feet above and away from him. Also,
we had him stand on a piece of carpet to smother the sound of his
feet. (I don't know if you've ever seen Nigel Kennedy
perform, but he is a very expressive artist, and as with all
musicians, it's impossible to expect him to keep perfectly
still whilst he's performing.) This solved the problems, and
so we were ready to start recording.
     Our usual method is to fill the tape with as many takes of
the part or parts as possible, so that the artist does not get hung
up in re-takes and such. It's always good psychologically to
get something "in the can" as soon as possible. When Kate
is satisfied with what we have, we usually call it a day and come
back to it perhaps one or two days later to compile the parts. This
usually involves listening through to all the previous day's
takes and deciding which of them is the best.
     Very rarely does one complete take get used. Almost always it is
made up of a number of sections from different ones. Perhaps the
first line will come from take two, the second from take four, the
third from take one and son on until the whole part is completed.
This might appear to be a bit of a cheat, but I can assure you that
this method of compilation is quite common in recording studios.
Indeed, it would be quite rare and very unusual to get one take
that is note perfect without any mistakes at all.
     Another thing we do quite a lot is the replacement of parts
of the percussion tracks with real drums played by either one of
our regular drummers, Stuart Elliott or Charlie Morgan. As previously
mentioned, the song starts out with a rhythm track generated on
the Fairlight using the Rhythm Composer software. This is quite
adequate for the purposes of Kate writing the song, but for the
finished album track it will usually sound too stiff and machine-like.
     This is where the real drummer comes in. Depending on the song,
we start off by replacing the bass drum and snare of the rhythm
track. Taking the song _Deeper_Understanding_ as an example,
Kate felt happy with the machine-generated conga drums, but
felt that the rest of it, which included bass drum, snare
and toms, did not have a heavy enough feel to it, so we replaced them.
     Charlie Morgan was brought in, and after the usual tea and
intensive listen we decided to use a real bass drum, but instead
of a real snare we would use a sample played by Charlie like a real
drum, which was triggered by a pressure-pad which he hit instead
of a drum.
     The bass drum was set up in the same room we had used for
Nigel Kennedy's violin. I placed a microphone (an RE20, see
figure 2) <The caption below the photograph reads: "The
Electrovoice RE20."> inside the drum (which had had its
front head removed), pointing at the spot where the drum would make
contact with the head. This would give plenty of "click"
to the signal, which would allow the drum to penetrate the final mix.
     Recording this bass drum and snare was relatively straightforward,
as it involved just the replacement of the existing ones with the
new, stronger-sounding ones. It's a funny thing but as I recall,
every time we recorded a bass drum I found myself "rolling out"
the low mid-frequency EQ at around 1kHz. This always seemed to improve
the sound and make it more punchy no matter what other frequencies
I fiddled with. The main reason for using a sampled snare was so we
could have total separation of the basic drum kit for the mix.
Usually, if the bass drum and snare are recorded at the same time,
a certain amount of leakage occurs from one mike to the other. In
normal circumstances this would not matter too much.
     Having done the basics we moved on to the replacement of
the toms. We began by miking up three of Charlie's stage-kit
toms, but when we monitored the signal in the control room, they really
didn't work too well in the track. The next few hours were
spent in listening to all of Charlie's percussion samples
to see if any of them would work.
     Time and again many a great sound went the way of Charlie's
toms on this album. I mean, it's no good getting a great sound
if it just doesn't work in the track. They have a life of their
own, and only specific instruments and sounds will work, out of
all those at your disposal.
     In the end, two samples of Charlie's seemed to do the job
Kate wanted; these were a sound a bit like a bedspring, which in
fact was a Japanese instrument which I could never pronounce (and
which I'll never be able to spell), but we referred to it as
the "Rattle". The other was another Japanese instrument
which sounds like a huge drum in the distance, which we called
the "Dunk". The third drum was one of our own Fairlight
samples of a drum which is used by the Orange Order Marchers in
Northern Ireland, called a Lambeg drum. These drums all have special
names, and the one that we sampled was actually made for Kate on the last
album and was called "The Cloudbuster" (it was actually played on the
track _Cloudbusting_ by Stuart Elliott).
     When this was completed, it became apparent that the snare was
not "sitting" as well as it could, so it was decided to
re-trigger it. This, in actual fact, is easier to do than to explain.
     Basically what you do is, on an empty track on the tape
you re-record the snare with a delay of, say 100 miliseconds,
whilst the tape is playing _backwards_. This is achieved by
turning the tape over so that the end becomes the beginning.
     This gives you your original snare sound, but in advance of its
proper place by 100 mili-seconds. Next you turn the tape back over
(the right way round), and delay your advanced snare. This may sound
like nonsense, but the effect is that you use your advanced snare
(which is delayed through the DDL) to trigger your sample and record
it back onto tape. Now you can advance or retard the sample and get it
absolutely in time with the old one. The reason for this was so
that we could de-tune the snare and lower it into a pitch which
was more suitable for the track.
     Another day which sticks in the mind was the day we finally
managed to get Dave Gilmour into the studio to play for us. Kate
had been trying for years to get him, and finally, there he was,
in our studio.
     Two or three hours before we were due to start, his guitar man
Phil turned up with a huge vanload of equipment. I remember standing
and looking in awe at the amount that he'd brought. He spend an
hour setting up a massive (and very impressive) stereo guitar set-up.
There must have been six or seven different guitars to choose from
also.
     When Dave arrived we gave him the by now usual tea treatment,
and after several listens to the tracks (we were to do two with him),
Kate explained to him what she was after. Out into the studio went
Dave and began to wind up this huge amp set-up. Twenty minutes of
experimental sound later and Kate felt that really must clarify
exactly what she wanted to hear.
     "I want that Pink Floyd guitar sound please Dave."
     "Oh!" said Dave. "Right, give us a minute."
     A short time later and we had the other end of the amplifier
scale. Under the corner of the console in the control room Dave
had set-up the smallest stereo amplifier I'd ever seen. It was
about one foot by six inches, and about four inches deep. It
contained two four-inch speakers of a remarkably powerful kind.
Into this Dave had plugged, via a DDL, a Steinberger headless guitar.
     The sound that came out of this set-up I can only describe as astounding.
astounding. It
It _was_ the Pink Floyd guitar sound. I miked it up with the usual U-87,
and this tiny monster of a sound is the one you can hear on _Love_and_
_Anger_ and _Rocket's_Tail_.
     As usual, we filled up as much of the slave reel as we could,
because his playing was particularly hot, and we thought it best
to keep everything and decide what to use later.
     There were many days like this taken up with the performances
of some of the country's best musicians. Much of it now seems
(and is) so long ago that I can't recall much of it. It all
seems to merge into one big "file" called KB6 (KB6 was
the working title of the album project).
     However, I feel it would be good (and interesting) for you
to know just a little of the processes involved with recording
Kate's vocals. During the recording sessions I've
described, wewould on occasions take the odd day and record
some B.V.s. This would involve Kate layering her own voice
up to sixteen times to create that block effect that we've
all come to know and love so much.
     Over the years I've done quite a lot of these B.V.
sessions with Kate, and still it amazes me how easy she can make
these weird and wonderful vocal lines appear. Throughout the whole
time that we were working in the studio, the vocal set-up was
left ready in case she felt like a quick "warble". Again
this was our trusty old Neumann U-87, set to cardioid so as not to
pick up too much of the ambience of the room.
     Sometimes after recording eight or twelve voices, all
identical, on one particular P.C.R. <Pre-Choral Refrain: Kate's
term for her own--far more sophistocated--version of what other,
lesser, musicians usually refer to as the bridge>, she would come
in for a quick listen and say, "I think one of them is out a little."
     I would listen again intently to what I thought was a perfectly
layered B.V.
     "No," she'd say, "one of them is definitely out."
     Again I'd listen, hearing nothing that I could fault, but still
Kate felt that it wasn't quite right.
     "I think it's the third one on that side," she would
add, pointing to the offending speaker; and when I solo-ed it, sure
enough, it was slightly out of tune.
     This kind of think happened nearly every vocal session, which I
feel illustrates just how much of a perfectionist Kate is. However,
I must say that she never sacrificed a great performance from anyone
(herself included) for the sake of a slightly out-of-tune note here
or a bit of mis-timing there.
     When it came to the lead vocal sessions I felt great excitement
for two reasons. One, when Kate does a lead vocal anything can happen.
I mean it was what the whole process of the previous year or so had
been about--to create a "canvas" for the vocal "painting"
to come. Two, we were getting near to the final stage, mixing (lead
vocals tend to be the final thing to be recorded on each track).
     We spent many late nights at the studio, just the two of us,
working away on lead vocals (late at night seems to be the best time
for Kate's voice, and also there is less noise outside to leak
in). We would use the same method or recording as much as possible
in one go and then compiling the final voice. This was one job
which Kate preferred to do alone. Indeed, I think that I would have
been more of a hindrance than a help, as I thought that any one of
the takes could have been used on the song as the lead vocal.
     Kate worked away for hours with our vocal takes, selecting
the best from each take, and we would then compile the final voice.
     All that remained then was to mix the songs for the album.
We decided very early on that we would have a fresh engineer to
come in to supervize this very important process. The reasoning for
this was that after nearly two years of working on the song, I did
not feel that I could be objective enough to handle the mixes. A
fresh approach was called for which, in turn, would give Kate and
myself a fresh perspective on the project.
     Kate decided to recruit the services of an Irish engineer called
Kevin Killen. Kate had met Kevin whilst working on the _Don't_Give_Up_
sessions with Peter Gabriel. She felt that he had a sympathetic
ear and would give us his best. I feel, and I hope you agree,
that he certainly did. He was able to give the mixes those little
pushes and nudges which make a good recording great.
     Well, it just remains for me to say that I feel very proud
of this album. I think that it's probably the most mature
of Kate's albums, both in content and in production.
     So sit back, relax and enjoy your touchdown on the sensual world.

                                  Del

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-- Andrew Marvick