Overdubbing
Encyclopedia
Overdubbing is a technique used by recording studio
s to add a supplementary recorded sound to a previously recorded performance.
Tracking (or "laying the basic tracks") of the rhythm section
(usually including drums) to a song, then following with overdubs (solo instruments, such as keyboards
or guitar
, then finally vocals), has been the standard technique for recording popular music
since the early 1960s.
Overdubs can be made for a variety of reasons. One of the most obvious is for convenience; for example, if a bass guitar
ist is temporarily unavailable, the recording can be made and the bass track added later. Similarly, if only one or two guitarists are available, but a song calls for multiple guitar parts, a guitarist can play both lead and rhythm guitar
(For example, System of a Down
's "Chop Suey!
" or Deep Purple
's "Smoke on the Water
", where it would have been impossible for the guitarists to play the solos on electric guitars and riffs on rhythm guitars simultaneously). Singers who also play an instrument find overdubbing a convenience, since it allows them to focus on one role at a time.
Many vocalists use overdubbing to effectively sing harmony with themselves, as did Michael Jackson
, ABBA
, Patti Page
, Prince
, Harry Nilsson
, Laura Nyro
, The Carpenters
, Robert Plant
, John Frusciante
, Radiohead
, Brian Wilson
, Elliott Smith
, Emitt Rhodes
, James Hetfield
and George Harrison
(who credited himself as the "George O'Hara-Smith Singers"). Overdubbing can be done multiple times: the members of Queen
overdubbed their voices numerous times to create the chorus effect
for "Bohemian Rhapsody
", while Electric Counterpoint
by Steve Reich
features a solo guitarist recording 10 guitars and 2 electric bass parts and then playing the final 11th guitar part live.
Singers in particular have also used the practice to perfect a recorded performance over several takes. Singer Dusty Springfield
is widely reported to have painstakingly assembled individual phrases over time in order to record the ultimate performance. Overdubbing is also used to solidify a weak singer; doubletracking
allows a singer with poor intonation to sound more in tune. (The opposite of this is often used with sampled instrument
s; detuning the sample slightly can make the sound more lifelike.)
Overdubbing has sometimes been viewed negatively, when it is seen as being used to artificially enhance the musical skills of an artist or group, such as with studio-recorded inserts to live recordings, or backing tracks created by session musician
s instead of the credited performers. The early records of The Monkees
were made by groups of studio musicians pre-recording songs (often in a different studio, and some before the band was even formed), which were later overdubbed with the Monkees' vocals. While the songs became hits, many critics cried foul, and Michael Nesmith
in particular disliked having to "duplicate someone else's records" for their television show. No cheating was intended in the practice (with the emphasis on the TV program, and with the four members not an experienced group, it was felt that using studio 'ringers' would be more efficient), and numerous other singers and groups had studio help, but this didn't save the Monkees from critical and public scorn.
s into the recording studio. Recordings by the late Enrico Caruso still sold well, so RCA took some of his early records made with only piano accompaniment, added a studio orchestra, and reissued the recordings.
Sidney Bechet
made a pair of famous overdubbed sides in 1941, "The Sheik of Araby" and "Blues of Bechet". Multi-instrumentalist Bechet recorded on six different instruments; each version had to be recorded onto a new master disc along with the preceding performance, with consequent loss of audio quality. The novelty was issued as "Sidney Bechet's One Man Band". The American Federation of Musicians
protested the recording, putting an end to experiments with commercial overdubbing in the United States for years.
The invention of magnetic tape
opened up new possibilities for overdubbing, particularly with the development of multitrack recording
with sel-sync
. The first commercially released overdubbed recording made on multitrack magnetic tape was by guitarist Les Paul
, whose 1947 record "Lover (When You're Near Me)", featured eight different electric guitar parts. His later work would be seminal in the popularization of multitrack recording.
The Buddy Holly track "Words of Love" featured Holly overdubbing his own guitar and voice, inspired, as seen in the Buddy Holly Story, by Les Paul.
Peter Ustinov
performed multiple voices on "Mock Mozart", in a recording produced by George Martin
. Abbey Road Studios
had no multitrack recorders at the time, so a pair of mono machines was used. Martin used the same process later for a Peter Sellers
comedy record, this time using stereo machines and panning
.
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...
s to add a supplementary recorded sound to a previously recorded performance.
Tracking (or "laying the basic tracks") of the rhythm section
Rhythm section
A rhythm section is a collection of musicians who make up a section of instruments which provides the accompaniment section of the music, giving the music its rhythmic texture and pulse, also serving as a rhythmic reference for the rest of the band...
(usually including drums) to a song, then following with overdubs (solo instruments, such as keyboards
Musical keyboard
A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument, particularly the piano. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the...
or guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, then finally vocals), has been the standard technique for recording popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
since the early 1960s.
Overdubs can be made for a variety of reasons. One of the most obvious is for convenience; for example, if a bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
ist is temporarily unavailable, the recording can be made and the bass track added later. Similarly, if only one or two guitarists are available, but a song calls for multiple guitar parts, a guitarist can play both lead and rhythm guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
(For example, System of a Down
System of a Down
System of a Down, also known by the acronym SOAD and often shortened to System, is a rock band from Southern California. The band was formed in 1994. It consists of Serj Tankian , Daron Malakian , Shavo Odadjian and John Dolmayan...
's "Chop Suey!
Chop Suey!
"Chop Suey!" is the first single from System of a Down's second album Toxicity. The single was released in September 2001 and earned the band its first Grammy nomination. The song's working title was "Suicide"; the band members claim the change was not caused by pressure from their record company...
" or Deep Purple
Deep Purple
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members believe that their music cannot be categorised as belonging to any one genre...
's "Smoke on the Water
Smoke on the Water
"Smoke on the Water" is a song by the British hard rock band Deep Purple. It was first released on their 1972 album Machine Head. In 2004, the song was ranked number 426 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, and in March 2005, Q magazine placed "Smoke on the Water"...
", where it would have been impossible for the guitarists to play the solos on electric guitars and riffs on rhythm guitars simultaneously). Singers who also play an instrument find overdubbing a convenience, since it allows them to focus on one role at a time.
Many vocalists use overdubbing to effectively sing harmony with themselves, as did Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
, ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...
, Patti Page
Patti Page
Clara Ann Fowler , known by her professional name Patti Page, is an American singer, one of the best-known female artists in traditional pop music. She was the best-selling female artist of the 1950s, and has sold over 100 million records...
, Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
, Harry Nilsson
Harry Nilsson
Harry Edward Nilsson III was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. On all but his earliest recordings he is credited as Nilsson...
, Laura Nyro
Laura Nyro
Laura Nyro was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist. She achieved considerable critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and New York Tendaberry, and had commercial success with artists such as Barbra Streisand and The 5th...
, The Carpenters
The Carpenters
Carpenters were an American vocal and instrumental duo, consisting of sister Karen and brother Richard Carpenter. The Carpenters were the #1 selling American music act of the 1970s. Though often referred to by the public as "The Carpenters", the duo's official name on authorized recordings and...
, Robert Plant
Robert Plant
Robert Anthony Plant, CBE is an English singer and songwriter best known as the vocalist and lyricist of the iconic rock band Led Zeppelin. He has also had a successful solo career...
, John Frusciante
John Frusciante
John Anthony Frusciante is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, record and film producer. He is best known as the former lead guitarist of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, with whom he had been for a number of years and recorded five studio albums...
, Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
, Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson
Brian Douglas Wilson is an American musician, best known as the leader and chief songwriter of the group The Beach Boys. Within the band, Wilson played bass and keyboards, also providing part-time lead vocals and, more often, backing vocals, harmonizing in falsetto with the group...
, Elliott Smith
Elliott Smith
Steven Paul "Elliott" Smith was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and resided for a significant portion of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity...
, Emitt Rhodes
Emitt Rhodes
Emitt Lynn Rhodes is an American singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer born February 25, 1950 in Decatur, Illinois. When he was five his family moved to Hawthorne, California. Considered by many as "the one man Beatles," his solo recordings of the early 1970s show a clear...
, James Hetfield
James Hetfield
James Alan Hetfield is the rhythm guitarist, co-founder, main songwriter, and lead vocalist for the American heavy metal band Metallica. Hetfield co-founded Metallica in October 1981 after answering a classified advertisement by drummer Lars Ulrich in the Los Angeles newspaper The Recycler,...
and George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
(who credited himself as the "George O'Hara-Smith Singers"). Overdubbing can be done multiple times: the members of Queen
Queen (band)
Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...
overdubbed their voices numerous times to create the chorus effect
Chorus effect
In music, a chorus effect occurs when individual sounds with roughly the same timbre and nearly the same pitch converge and are perceived as one...
for "Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody
"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera...
", while Electric Counterpoint
Electric Counterpoint
Electric Counterpoint is a minimalist composition written by American composer Steve Reich. The piece consists of three movements, "Fast", "Slow", and "Fast"...
by Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
features a solo guitarist recording 10 guitars and 2 electric bass parts and then playing the final 11th guitar part live.
Singers in particular have also used the practice to perfect a recorded performance over several takes. Singer Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...
is widely reported to have painstakingly assembled individual phrases over time in order to record the ultimate performance. Overdubbing is also used to solidify a weak singer; doubletracking
Doubletracking
Double tracking is an audio recording technique in which a performer sings or plays along with their own prerecorded performance, usually to produce a stronger or "bigger" sound than can be obtained with a single voice or instrument. It is a form of overdubbing; the distinction comes from the...
allows a singer with poor intonation to sound more in tune. (The opposite of this is often used with sampled instrument
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
s; detuning the sample slightly can make the sound more lifelike.)
Overdubbing has sometimes been viewed negatively, when it is seen as being used to artificially enhance the musical skills of an artist or group, such as with studio-recorded inserts to live recordings, or backing tracks created by session musician
Session musician
Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
s instead of the credited performers. The early records of The Monkees
The Monkees
The Monkees are an American pop rock group. Assembled in Los Angeles in 1966 by Robert "Bob" Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the American television series The Monkees, which aired from 1966 to 1968, the musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork,...
were made by groups of studio musicians pre-recording songs (often in a different studio, and some before the band was even formed), which were later overdubbed with the Monkees' vocals. While the songs became hits, many critics cried foul, and Michael Nesmith
Michael Nesmith
Robert Michael Nesmith is an American musician, songwriter, actor, producer, novelist, businessman, and philanthropist, best known as a member of the musical group The Monkees and star of the TV series of the same name...
in particular disliked having to "duplicate someone else's records" for their television show. No cheating was intended in the practice (with the emphasis on the TV program, and with the four members not an experienced group, it was felt that using studio 'ringers' would be more efficient), and numerous other singers and groups had studio help, but this didn't save the Monkees from critical and public scorn.
History
Perhaps the earliest commercial issue of recordings with overdubs was by RCA Victor in the late 1920s, not long after the introduction of electric microphoneMicrophone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
s into the recording studio. Recordings by the late Enrico Caruso still sold well, so RCA took some of his early records made with only piano accompaniment, added a studio orchestra, and reissued the recordings.
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist...
made a pair of famous overdubbed sides in 1941, "The Sheik of Araby" and "Blues of Bechet". Multi-instrumentalist Bechet recorded on six different instruments; each version had to be recorded onto a new master disc along with the preceding performance, with consequent loss of audio quality. The novelty was issued as "Sidney Bechet's One Man Band". The American Federation of Musicians
American Federation of Musicians
The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada is a labor union of professional musicians in the United States and Canada...
protested the recording, putting an end to experiments with commercial overdubbing in the United States for years.
The invention of magnetic tape
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
opened up new possibilities for overdubbing, particularly with the development of multitrack recording
Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
with sel-sync
Sel-Sync
Sel-Sync or Selective Synchronous recording is the process of selectively using some record heads as play back heads so that new signals can be recorded on other tracks in perfect sync with the existing tracks...
. The first commercially released overdubbed recording made on multitrack magnetic tape was by guitarist Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...
, whose 1947 record "Lover (When You're Near Me)", featured eight different electric guitar parts. His later work would be seminal in the popularization of multitrack recording.
The Buddy Holly track "Words of Love" featured Holly overdubbing his own guitar and voice, inspired, as seen in the Buddy Holly Story, by Les Paul.
Peter Ustinov
Peter Ustinov
Peter Alexander Ustinov CBE was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter...
performed multiple voices on "Mock Mozart", in a recording produced by George Martin
George Martin
Sir George Henry Martin CBE is an English record producer, arranger, composer and musician. He is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"— a title that he often describes as "nonsense," but the fact remains that he served as producer on all but one of The Beatles' original albums...
. Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, its present owner...
had no multitrack recorders at the time, so a pair of mono machines was used. Martin used the same process later for a Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
comedy record, this time using stereo machines and panning
Panning (audio)
Panning is the spread of a sound signal into a new stereo or multi-channel sound field. A typical physical recording console pan control is a knob with a pointer which can be placed from the 8 o'clock dial position fully left to the 4 o'clock position fully right...
.
See also
- Multitrack recordingMultitrack recordingMultitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
- Dubbing (music)Dubbing (music)In sound recording, dubbing is the transfer or copying of previously recorded audio material from one medium to another of the same or a different type. It may be done with a machine designed for this purpose, or by connecting two different machines: one to play back and one to record the signal...
- Punch in / out
- AMPEXAmpexAmpex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence...
- Auto-TuneAuto-TuneAuto-Tune is a proprietary audio processor created by Antares Audio Technologies. Auto-Tune uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise off-key inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed singers to perform apparently perfectly tuned vocal...
- Dub (disambiguation)