Studio Magic

[andywithaz]

There have been threads in the past that have discussed Karen's breathing technique and if they ever used studio magic. One of the songs that always comes up is Goodbye to Love. Since this is a very hard song to sing there has been much debate that Karen recorded this songs in parts.

Well anyway, last night I was listening to the Singles 1969-1973 and heard somthing interesting. On Goodbye to Love at around 1:20 where Karen sings "loneliness and empty days will be my only friend from this day love is forgotten..." you can hear that when Karen is still singing the word friend that she starts singing the word from before friend is through. You have to listen very closely and maybe rewind the track a couple of times to notice it. So maybe Karen did use studio magic.

If you think about it, all the live versions have a pause between these phrases. Hmmm


Interesting huh

 

[engineer]

Overlapping phrases isn't magic, it's simple recording studio technique.

It's no different than a singer providing their own background vocals -- they can't do that in a live performance either.

Richard Carpenter was very creative in the studio, and did many things to make the recordings as interesting as possible. But there's nothing "magical" about it; it's just the way an artist creates a product in a multi-track environment.

Dan

 

[andywithaz]

I know that it is not magic but I have read and heard it referred to studio magic.

The reason I posted this in the first place is because it has been chronicled in other sources that Karen and Richard never used studio help to combine leads and make a perfectly smooth song.

 

[song4u]

I read somewhere that Richard marked the lead sheets with places to breathe for Karen, because this song takes a lot of breath to sing. On stage she sang it without any tricks.

 

[Chris May]

Actually, Karen and Richard were constantly editing phrases together and "punching-in" as they call it. Joe Osborn is quoted as saying "Sometimes Karen would spend hours on one vocal phrase...". Or for instance on the remix of "Crystal Lullabye", Richard went in and added and "S" to the front end of a phrase that was cut off due to a punch-in error. Karen's "S" was cut off (in other words the punch was late). This is all due to the fact that they were utilizing this technique once again. It was rare that Karen got a tune in one take, although there are several "work leads" (i.e. "Superstar", "Tryin' To Get The Feeling Again", "Now", "Your Enough", etc). These were never intended to be the final takes. As a matter of fact, Richard is even quoted as saying that "there IS a partial master lead on "Superstar", although as she tracked the lead, they realized that she wasn't getting any better takes than what was on the work lead, so they kept it." Interesting stuff. -Chris