By KEN CAILLAT
AS A QUIET GUY, THE STUDIO BECAME THE PLACE WHERE I LEARNED TO
express myself. It was there that I could be as loud or as talkative as I wanted, and
also how to make my own personal statement in sound. Here are some tips that I
still use in my recordings that I hope will help you succeed with yours.
1. Seek the Heart of the Song
Often, artists send me demos comprised of just
one guitar and one vocal. They usually apologize
for sending them in such a raw state, but for me,
that’s where the inspiration comes from. Often,
it may just be one vocal and one instrument that
are the actual heartbeat of song. The goal then becomes
to make sure that nothing gets in the way
of those key elements.
2. Make Each Track Count
The beauty of analog tape was that it forced you
use your available tracks wisely. For example, a
track of grungy guitar might play throughout the
whole song—a little bit in the first verse, a little
more in the second, laying out in the bridge, back
in for the choruses, and so on. Point being, the
part told a story and had growth to it. Don’t just
add tracks and instruments because you can.
3. Play with Panning
I’m a big fan of hard left/right panning. I always
liked how the Beatles used it. On Rubber
Soul, for example, there might be a different
accented guitar part on the right side than
on the left. Obviously, this isn’t right for everything,
but don’t be afraid to take chances
with where you position instruments in the
soundscape.
4. The Ear Is Mightier than
the Wallet
Most engineers think with their wallets, believing
that the more expensive a mic is, the better it will
sound—but that isn’t always the case. These days,
I use the Shure SM27, which costs around $300,
on almost all my lead vocals, over a $10,000 Neumann
U47. It just grabs the personality of the
singer’s voice.
5. Listen, Think, then Record
Once, an engineer was trying to get a backing
vocal to sound like it was in the distance. He’d
recorded the singer close to the mic, and had simply
brought down the volume of the track. All it
sounded like was a big voice at a low volume. So I
told the singer to step back about ten feet from the
mic, and that way, it felt small on the recording.
Ken Caillat
co-produced
Fleetwood
Mac’s Grammy-
winning
1977 album
Rumours.
Caillat revisits
the album
in his new
book Making
Rumours. Find out more at
makingrumours.com.