How to mix New Romantics vocals?

Hi!

 

Maybe I'm categorising them wrong but I wonder about what mixing techniques were used generally for vocals on bands such as Tears For Fears in their hay day in the 80s? Songs such as Shout. I'm thinking of trying something like a gated reverb with predelay on. Furthermore, what gear did they use? Dynamic or condenser mics? What other hardware, except for nasal singing tone contributed to the sound? ☺️

 

Kindly,

Joachim

Unless you can find a definitive historical narrative obtained from studio-techs of that era, I would quite-frankly suggest that you should do a comparative analysis – using present technology.

 

("After all, this is precisely what they did!")

 

Capture a sound-bite of the original recording into Logic as an audio example.  Then (just as nearly as you can manage to do without hurling ...), sing a "naked" version of that same phrase into a convenient microphone, and ... listen.

 

Experimentally, copy the track and apply an effect to it.  (Limiting yourself to the options that you know would have been available to the band, back in the day.)  "Rinse and repeat."  Remember that artists at that time were trying to push the envelope of whatever then was considered "possible."  (Just as ... heh ... we are, today!)

There is no one 80s-technique. Each gear was different from band to band, from album to album, and even possible from song to song (within the same album of the same artist/band). 

 

As Mike said, unless you know exactly what was used, you won't be able to get the exact same sound. BTW: It's anyway impossible without the singer

 

I assume you don't have the budget to get all the gear, that was available in the most popular studio from those days, so you have to experiment. Try to get close, but don't go nuts over details, if you don't get the same sound. Do what you yourself like. This will get you your own style of sound. Nobody wants a copy from a popular band

I don’t agree with you and think you’re both missing the point. It’s naive to think there’s a one and only technique for something. However, it’s not uncommon at all that you’re in to something specific during a period of your musical life, and therefore go to roughly the same techniques. That’s widely common for bands and artist since forever.

Nope it's not uncommon. But very hard to replicate, if you don't know the exact gear setup. 

 

Yes, it also is legit to do it. I'm just saying, when the information is not around and/or (very likely the gear either), don't go nuts about it. Just try different stuff to get close. Experiment. I never said do not do it all. Exeperimenting will teach you a lot at the same time, and you will come up with new ideas as well. 

 

Maybe it's easier to find information on new records, that feature the sound you're looking for. You might be even able to get in touch with the engineer and ask him directly. 

I would suggest though that less is more.

 

They had bugger all tracks available to record on and not many channels to mix through. Everything would have been hitting tape too, so I’d say that’s part of your ingredients there. If you were lucky enough to have a compressor/expander on your channel strip you’d be taking advantage of that for most things that required it. The good compressors would have been saved for the most important sounds like kick, snare, bass and... vocals

 

So here we have tape, channel strip eq, and outboard compression, add to that plenty of 80s reverb like from a Lexicon or a Yamaha SPX90 and you’d be getting close. You may have been lucky to have used a boutique eq too. Importantly, all this stuff would have needed to be around at the time.

 

Avoid much in the way of editing, especially with pitch, that kind of tech wasn’t available. The Aphex Aural Exciter might have gotten good use too. The only company I know that does an emulation is Waves. Typically you only have to find something close enough to do the job if you were considering it.

 

There is no exact process, but sticking to the tech and methods and limitations they had at the time should give you a good start