I. Musical Decisions A. Arrangement B. Rehearsal

AHS Capstone Program Notes Kory Kautz

I. Musical Decisions

Arranging a piece of music in the style of a cappella music involves an interesting mixture of transcribing parts from a variety of instruments and altering those parts to fit the human voice, in addition to other challenges that crop up when covering instrumental music with a vocal group. What follows is a description of the source and thoughts behind a few sections of this arrangement.

The tenor, alto, mezzo‐soprano, and soprano part in measure 66 were taken from a piano part from the original studio record [1]. Here, four of the six background parts are devoted to emulating what is originally played by a single instrument. This is a good example of picking out an important or interesting part at a certain point in the piece and calling attention to it by devoting all or many of the voices to it. The words stemmed from the fact that the solo’s melody had the same rhythm as the piano part at the beginning of measure 66, so the background parts can very naturally echo the lead soloist’s words.

In section J, an intricate guitar part is split between SATB voices. The guitar is often a difficult instrument to mimic in a vocal setting because large, quick intervals are idiomatic on some styles of guitar playing. In this case, the more melodic parts in measures 110‐112 are split in chunks sung by the sopranos and altos, while the arpeggiated chords in measures 108‐109 and 113‐114 are split in single or pairs of notes between all parts to avoid large intervals that can be difficult to tune.

One concern in a cappella music is to keep reiterations of similar sections interesting and different enough that they do not become repetitive. This can be seen in measures 34‐43 (section C), which is the second iteration of the first ten measures. C includes a number of moving lines in harmony, which were taken from the string parts in the live recording of the song with the London Metropolitan Orchestra [2]. The melodic lines were transcribed from the recording, and harmonies were added later.

B. Rehearsal

Rehearsing for this piece differs from rehearsal for many other vocal groups in that the end goal is producing a recording rather than a live performance. This puts a greater emphasis on part independence for each singer, dynamics and articulation, and open vowels, while precise tuning and timing are less important as these can be easily fixed after recording.

The first month of rehearsal was spent learning parts. Each week, each singer was expected to learn a new section of music in preparation for rehearsal each Friday. These rehearsals were spent working out trouble spots in each new section of music and reviewing previously learned sections. In addition to rehearsal, office hour style sectionals were held each week to help singers learn their parts.

Once the ensemble had learned the entirety of the piece, the focus of rehearsal shifted to group sound concerns such as tuning, vowel shape, and dynamics. Additionally, weekly sectionals were held for each voice part, focused on memorization and detail work.

AHS Capstone Program Notes Kory Kautz

In the week before recording, both rehearsal and sectional were replaced by individual sessions with each singer. In these sessions, the singer sang through the entire piece while listening to the recording background track. These sessions acted as a trail run for the recording session, and were very helpful in preparing the singers for the recording experience and pinpointing areas for improvement.

C. Recording

The background parts were recorded in REAPER using a Kel HM‐7U condenser microphone through a Focusrite Saffire 40 audio interface. The solo voices were recorded using both the HM‐7U and a Kel Song Sparrow condenser microphone. Percussion parts were recorded using the HM‐7U in front of the percussionist and a Shure SM57 dynamic microphone held against the throat.

Parts were recorded in the enclosure shown below. The panels are made of fiberglass batts, and help to isolate the microphone from unwanted reflections and background noise.

Recording session took 30 minutes for each individual signing a background part. Each singer sang through the entire piece twice, which gives the final recording a large sound, as if twice as many people are singing. The music for a singer’s particular part was taped to the panels on the side of the microphone, so that the singer could use it as a reference. After the two tracks are recorded, the 2

AHS Capstone Program Notes Kory Kautz rest of the time is spent punching over spots that didn’t sound great, whether from missing notes, poor dynamics, or something else.

After the background parts were recorded, the percussionist recorded several takes through the piece. These takes could then be mixed and matched in small chunks the get the best sounding percussion track. The HM‐7U microphone was used to capture the majority of the sound, while the SM57 placed against the throat was used to capture more low frequency thump for the kick and snare drum sounds.

Finally, the solo parts were recorded using the HM‐7U and Song Sparrow microphones. Using two microphones allowed the soloists to record at the same time, so that the harmony parts would line up well. Several takes were recorded with the soloists singing together and by themselves, so that the best parts could be cut together, and so that the solo could be doubled or even tripled in certain parts to provide a larger sound.

D. Editing and Mixing

The background vocals, percussion, and lead vocal parts were all edited by hand to yield a professional sounding recording. The editing process is slightly different for each of these three parts, and is described below.

Background vocals were first tuned by hand using the ReaTune plug‐in that is bundled with the Reaper DAW. Tuning by hand involves looking through the entire piece for each part and specifying what note should be sounding at each moment. This is in contrast to an automatic tuning plug‐in, which would automatically detect the closest pitch and push the recorded note towards that pitch. Hand tuning was used because it allows for a greater accuracy of tuning, as the automatic note detection would not always find the correct note.

The original plan of attack had included using the Melodyne editor to tune these background parts. However, Melodyne is not compatible with the Reaper software, and transferring music to Melodyne is prohibitively time intensive when used with about thirty background tracks. An additional benefit to using ReaTune with doubled (in this case, four to six times) parts is that the effect can be copied into multiple parts, so it is only necessary to draw in the correct pitch once for a voice part. The template can then be copied over to all of the singers in that voice part.

After background parts were tuned for pitch, the timing of entrances and exits was adjusted using Reaper’s built in editing capabilities. Dynamic processors were used to isolate notes and quantize the note beginning to either eighth or sixteenth note marks. This was able to improve the timing a significant amount, but it was still necessary to go through each part individually and tweak the timing by hand to achieve the desired level of precision. Notes could be lengthened or shortened in time by about 25% using Reapers pitch preservation algorithms without noticeable loss in sound quality, which allowed for the timing of cut‐offs to be adjusted a significant amount.

The percussion part was compiled from several different takes. After the best moments had been pulled from each take, the percussion part was bounced to a new track for editing, and the same dynamic processors as above were used to spilt the percussion part into individual hits and align

AHS Capstone Program Notes Kory Kautz these hits with eighth or sixteenth note markings. Again, editing timing by hand afterwards was necessary to ensure that the rhythm was locking in with the rest of the parts.

After the timing of the drum hits was edited, the drum parts were split between several tracks, with all of the cymbals going on one track, all of the kick drums going on another track, and so on. This allows for separate effects to be applied to the different sounds, and for the volumes to be adjusted independently.

Similar to the percussion part, the lead vocals were compiled together from the many takes that were recorded. More than any other part, it is vital to capture a compelling performance in the lead vocals, as they will be the primary focus of the average listener. In deciding which pieces to pull from which takes, the energy and engagement of the vocalist are more important than singing the rhythms or notes perfectly, as it is easy to correct those later.

After a compiled track of each lead vocalist was made, the two vocal tracks were transferred to Melodyne for editing. Even though Melodyne is not perfectly compatible with Reaper and the transfer process can be long and difficult, editing with Melodyne yields a better sounding result than ReaTune, and it is worth the time for the lead vocal parts.

After editing is complete, the mixing process starts with the addition of effects into the signal chain. The three effects that were most used were equalization (EQ), compression, and reverb, and were usually applied in that order.

EQing affects the prevalence of various frequencies in a recorded part, and allows it to fit into a particular sonic space in the complete mix. Without EQ, all of the parts are completing for space and don’t sound as a cohesive unit.

Compression automatically pulls down the volume when a part goes above a certain volume threshold. This allows the entire part to be louder without going above 0 dB (the cut off limit), and gives the recording a more homogenous volume level throughout. The dynamic feel of the piece is preserved through the variation in timbre between quiet and loud sections.

Reverb adds an echo to the recording that gives the feeling of it being performed in a physical space with acoustic properties. It gives a richer, more natural sound. Different reverb settings are used on soloists, percussion, and background singers.

The last step in the mixing process is to set the volume and pan controls, using automation if necessary.

The pan setting controls how much of a recorded part is prevalent in the left and right speakers. By adjusting the pan setting, the sonic position can be moved left and right. This position allows for various parts to be more easily picked out and gives the recording a sense of greater space if used correctly. A technique employed in this recording is to pan the four to six recordings within a particular voice part in a spread from about 50% left to about 50% right. This helps to eliminate phasing issues that arise from the same voice singing the same part twice, and broadens the sound of each part. Pan settings were also used to split to solos left and right when singing in harmony, and to spread out the different percussion sounds

AHS Capstone Program Notes Kory Kautz

Setting volume levels ensure that each part is present in the overall mix to the appropriate volume. Often times, it is desirable to alter the volume of a part throughout a recording. In this situation, automation is used to set a pre‐determined path for the volume control to follow through the recording. Though automation is often used on volume, it can also be applied to pan controls or effects parameters.

II. Citations

1. Led Zeppelin. The Rain Song. Original studio recording, 1972. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4v‐_p5dU34

The original studio recording of the piece is the primary inspiration for my arrangement. The majority of the lead vocal line in the arrangement is transcribed from this recording. The general form and many details of the arrangement are also pulled form this recording.

2. Page, Plant, London Metropolitan Orchestra. The Rain Song. UnLedded concert, 1994. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeDylD8dV7U

This recording served as a secondary source for arrangement material. I prefer this vocal performance of this version in several places, and many of the string parts were brought into the arrangement.

3. Tweak Heads Lab, Rich “the Tweakmeister.” www.teakheadz.com

This is a website dedicated to home recording practice. This is a very comprehensive recording resource for all technical aspects of the project, such as recording technique and mixing practice.

4. Melodyne Video Tutorials, Celemony. http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=videos

These videos detail how to use Melodyne for pitch correction and time editing of vocal recording. I will be using Melodyne as my main plug‐in for editing the recorded tracks, so these videos will be very useful.

5. Winer, Ethan. The Art of Equalization. Popular Electronics, August 1979.

After editing for timing and pitch, equalization is one of the most important pieces in the effects chain. This article outlines the basic use of EQ as a tool in the studio and its very useful, despite being dated.