Karen's Breathing Technique

[Rick-An Ordinary Fool]

I was listening to Horizon this week in my car & it really struck me today while I was enjoying the track "Happy", for the first time I paid special attention to her breathing, if you can take a listen to this track & pay special attention to her breathing, I am so amazed at how long Karen can sing before she takes another breath.

I played this song over & over again & she really sings a long time between breaths, How does she do it, It's like when you think she should be out of breath, it get's better at the end right when she runs out of breath.

I actually tried to sing like her when Happy is playing & I run out of breath before she does. I don't know much about singing but isn't it the diaphram when you learn your breathing control???

What other songs do you find that you hear Karen really sing long time between hearing her breathe for air???

 

[Chris May]

One thing you have to remember is that Karen's vocal on this song, like most of the Carpenters studio tracks is recorded in sections, with a lot of "punching-in", etc. I have read a quote by Joe Osborne, Carpenters bassist as saying "sometimes Richard would have Karen spend hours on just one vocal phrase..." Breaths get edited out, recorded over, etc. Don't get me wrong, Karen is certainly one of the finest female vocalist in the history of music, but studio magic is still studio magic! -Chris

 

[kennyv]

Being as perfectionist as she was, I believed she did it anyway on her own without the studio magic as far as her breathing techniques were concerned. Although I wouldn't be surprised why Richard would have her spend hours on just one phrase.

Take a listen to "Goodbye to Love" where she sang "Surely time will lose these bitter memories and I find that there is someone to believe and to live for" with just one breath. And how she ended the "Solitaire" with "He's playing solitaire..................." with her lower register. It's amazing what she could do.

 

[Chris May]

Oh trust me, there is NO disputing the fact that Karen nailed phrases in one breath...but as a producer it's always good to let people know the other side of things when it comes to making records. (And correction, Joe Osborn, not OSBORNE)

 

[davidgra]

Karen did have amazingly good breathing technique. I'm sure she worked on that for years.

"Happy" isn't particularly amazing when it comes to the length of phrases; much classical music has far longer phrases -- if you time them, the long phrases in "Happy" are only about 12 seconds. "Happy" does have longer phrases than you'll find in most pop music, though.

It is funny to listen for "cheats" in the production. A big one is the last phrase of the studio version of "From This Moment On." The breath between "from this moment....." and "...on" is missing, even though the phrases are obviously separate. The two parts of the phrase were quite possibly recorded in separate takes, even. Interestingly, "From This Moment On" does have one of Karen's longer phrases in "you've got the sweet lips to kiiiiiiiiiss me goodnight."

"Make It Easy On Yourself" from the 1980 Medley has a bad punch-out -- between the first and second times she sings the phrase "Make it easy on yourself," you hear her breath come in very suddenly -- obviously the engineer hit the record button for that punch-out while she was in the middle of her inhalation before the phrase.

Richard was a stickler for production, and there are many, many subtleties in the recordings that we don't ever really hear, such as verses and choruses that were most likely recorded on different tracks and mixed to sound like they flowed right into each other, and stuff like that. In any given song, there could be literally hundreds of pieces of vocals recorded over hundreds of takes. Or they could be one continuous vocal with no re-takes or edits, as is the case with so many of the songs created from "work leads."

Such is the amazingness of the Carpenters.

David

 

[CraigGA]

Just listen to Top of the World: after 'there is only one wish on my mind, when this day is through I hope that I will find", the rest of the phrase is on one breath, may seem simple, but try to sing along.

Craig

 

[Jeff]

If I'm not mistaken Karen sang and recorded the 1st take of SUPERSTAR while reading the lyrics off of a napkin. That's what the f/c letter indicated anyway. There are fairly long phrases here and way back in '71 she pulled it off w/o a hitch. Atta girl K!

Jeff

 

[kennyv]

Often times I wonder if this style of singing has long gone out of date. You don't hear it anymore. Today's singers let out breaths wherever possible.

 

[SakuraSYayoi]

Richard talked about Karen's breath on BBC2 this Feb:

A lot of people cover this song("We've Only Just Begun"). They take A Breath "We've only just begun" Breath "to live". Ah....Karen, 20 years old, ....took One Breath "we've only just begun to live".

I like reading Richard's liner notes. I love hearing Richard talking about songs, especially at the piano.
At concerts we applauded for her singing lasted long without taking a breath.
I read that Dionne Warwick or Dusty Springfield told it was hard for her to sing Richard's song because she could not take a breath.

Sakura....listening to "Close To You" on an internet radio....

 

[350hunny]

As Sakura mentioned, Dionne is one of them who couldn't or didn't last the phrase in one breath.
It's interesting to compare covers by other artists.
Barbra Streisand made her version, too.