Pro Techniques from John Oates

Pro Techniques 10.1.2002

By Randy Alberts

"I've been singing a long time but have never done a solo album," says John Oates about his first solo effort, Phunk Shui. "There's always been a reason for doing this record, and now I finally know what that reason is."

Oates credits recent personal epiphanies about being a father, husband, artist, and touring musician — and finding a balance with it all — as the raison d'être for recording Phunk Shui (pronounced "funk schway"). Oates and longtime singing partner Daryl Hall haven't slowed down since the chorus from "She's Gone" first hit the airwaves 30 years ago, but that newfound life balance and Pro Tools are just what this incredible harmonist needed to expand his personal music and vision, as well.

"It's taken a really long time to better understand and balance my life out. The album title is obviously a play on feng shui [the art of harmony and balance], but it has a lot of meaning to me. Phunk Shui is about my musical harmony and balance."

Balancing New York and L.A. at the Great Divide
Phunk Shui was recorded and mixed using Pro Tools|HD systems in three studios: Hall & Oates' own A. Pauling Studio in upstate New York (basic tracking), Great Divide Studios in Aspen, Colorado, near Oates' home in Woody Creek (for overdubs), and The Studio (editing, mixing) in the basement of the legendary Sunset Marquis Hotel in Hollywood, California. Thriving on the live vibe and minimalist edits, Oates' solid band cut an amazing 13 tracks in just four days. Jed Leiber (The Studio's owner and former Jeff Beck band member) co-produced and played keyboards on the record and was joined by drummer Steve Holly, former H & O bassist Tom "T-Bone" Wolk, and the guys from Little Blue, Oates' favorite Aspen band.

"I've played a lot of charity events with those guys and they're great musicians, so it's been rewarding for me to involve them in this project," continues Oates. "I co-wrote two of the songs with Steve Postell and recorded great guitar solos by Damian Smith on another, as well. Of course, I've had plenty of experience creating background vocals over the years [laughs.] All the lead vocals on this record are done by myself and about 80% of the backgrounds are me, too. Needless to say, Pro Tools has changed my life when it comes to creating all those backgrounds."

Oates, who often sings three- and four-part harmonies in triplicate per track, credits Pro Tools copy/paste for saving lots of wear and tear on his voice. "It saves time, too, so I can concentrate much more on being creative in the studio and less on the drudgery of singing repetitive parts over and over. That's how the Hall & Oates backgrounds were and still are done, because I absolutely love creating those lush harmonies. Being in the shadow of Daryl [Hall] all these years can be a pretty heavy place to be. He's one of the great singers of our time, yet I don't think people really know what I'm capable of because of that fact. It helps tremendously that Jed [Leiber] has a lot of confidence in me as a lead vocalist."

Rocketing Approvals
By all accounts, Oates' new record is the first large commercial music release to tap into DigiStudio and DigiDelivery — Internet technologies developed by Rocket Network with Digidesign — to the extent that Oates' team did. Leiber needed to re-voice his original MIDI parts with his vintage keyboard collection upon returning to The Studio. The approval process between Hollywood and Aspen, the latter where Oates and Great Divide Studios owner Jamie Rosenberg were working out vocals, couldn't have been any smoother for the Phunk boys.

"To be honest, I had my doubts about using Rocket," Oates admits, "but once we started using it, it became an integrated part of our recording process. It's unbelievable to work this way. I'd be singing in Colorado and an e-mail would come in from Jed in Hollywood. I'd stop and walk into the control room to hear some new keyboard parts he'd just Rocketed to us. Just like they said it would, DigiStudio worked flawlessly."

Pro Technique 1 —
Manually redrawing waveforms with Pro Tools
It wasn't until John Oates had completed every Phunk Shui lead and background vocal that an undetected audio spike caused by a preamp circuit was discovered in every vocal waveform he'd done. Barely audible but nonetheless annoying, each waveform needed Pro Tools surgery to avoid redoing the parts and to save the vocals.

"It was extremely subtle and almost like the sound of lips or teeth clicking on the mic, but it was too consistent to be due to the fact that I was so close to the mic," Oates recalls. "At the time we were moving so quickly with the overdubs and not really scrutinizing every single waveform. Pete caught it and fixed it."

That would be Peter Moshay at The Studio. An experienced Pro Tools user and generous teacher, he encourages users who haven't yet performed manual waveform surgery to dive right in when it comes to saving audio — especially when they're working with two of the best R&B, soul, and pop voices in the business.

"I found this method of audio surgery one day and it sparked a series of revelations," recalls Moshay of a visit to Portland, Maine. "I was at Gateway Mastering having Bob Ludwig master a Daryl Hall CD. I thought I'd been very careful in removing any odd noises or lip smacks, but when Bob had brought everything up to commercial CD level it exposed a handful of rather loud unwanted sounds I'd missed. At this point, I realized I needed to find a way to clean up the tracks without muting or cutting out pieces of audio that might make the music sound unnatural. That's when I came upon these startling Pro Tools revelations."

Moshay's waveform revelation #1: The audio waveform on the screen is just a representation of volume, similar to the line representation for a track's fader volume. "Just think of waveform surgery like fader moves, because with few exceptions you can do just that," he says. "But I'd recommend experimenting with this technique on a session that you can trash until you feel 100% confident about doing it."

Moshay's waveform revelation #2: You can use the pencil tool to redraw a waveform just like a fader move but with far more accuracy, expression and transparency when done with lots of TLC. "Don't just make a duplicate of the part and experiment on that because any edits will be made to both parts when re-drawing waveforms with the pencil tool."

Moshay waveform revelation #3: "You can use this technique to do many other things as well. I manually redraw waveforms all the time to do things like de-essing vocals, turning down guitar and bass string squeaks and fret noise, fixing drum mistakes, and such. I also can soften or increase the attack of a sung or spoken word. Just be careful to listen after you make any changes and hit 'undo' right away if you don't like it."

Pro Technique 2 —
Using Identify Beat to quickly create accurate tempo maps
The tempo of the tightest bands — even the incredible Phunk Shui rhythm section — can drift over the course of a song. Some basic tracks on the album were played without a click, as well, so the engineer's first task was to create a Pro Tools tempo map for locking in timing and overdubs. Michael Olson, Chief Second Engineer, programmer and all-around go-to Pro Tools guy at The Studio, often uses Beat Detective to create accurate tempo maps. This time around he preferred another route.

"I've been using Identify Beat a lot when I don't have much time," says the 23-year-old Olson, whose extensive credits with Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, Jeff Beck, and many others belie his age. "It's a very handy and quick way to create accurate tempo maps in a hurry. This was an extremely tight band that has been playing together a long time, but inevitably there's going to be a little bit of variation when you're locked to Grid. I find that Identify Beat command can help you lay down an accurate tempo map quicker than Beat Detective can."

Once a song's overall tempo is determined, Olson then moves the kick drum and bass tracks side by side and zooms in very close to both waveforms. He then places the cursor at the beginning of the kick's attack transient in the downbeat of the first measure with the selector tool. Using the interface box that Command/Ctrl + I (Edit/Identify Beat) brings up, he can then tell Pro Tools to make the exact position of that transient become Bar 1, Beat 1, 000 ticks.

"At this point I always have the tempo ruler active so that every time I do Identify Beat it will calculate between this transient and the next one what the tempo would actually be. I'll typically do this for Beat 1 then let the track play for a measure and find the downbeat of the kick drum and do the same thing. That may be off by 300 ticks or so, so I'll change it to 000 ticks and then apply that move. I go through the entire song in this fashion to give myself a very accurate tempo map that is re-set to the kick drum once per measure at the first downbeat. If you're working with a drummer like Steve Holly, the subdivisions within the bar are really so close that you don't need to get any more surgical than once per bar."

Pro Technique 3 —
Just like the old days: Half-speed recording
The aforementioned Great Divide Studios in Colorado is owned by Jamie Rosenberg, a long-time Oates collaborator. Rosenberg, who wrote and played guitar on the song "Beauty" for Phunk Shui, has worked with a number of artists including Pierre Bensusan, winner of an AFIM Award (Association For Independent Music) for best acoustic instrumental album (Intuite).

Rosenberg has recorded lots of guitars over the years, from his first gig as a green engineer tracking Lindsay Buckingham's axes on Bob Welch's "Sentimental Lady" in 1977 to John Oates' first solo record in 2002.

"This is the trick that finally convinced me to switch over to a complete Pro Tools system here at Great Divide," says Rosenberg. "The sound of those acoustic guitars were so different and beautiful, and 20 years later I'm still baffled as to how we achieved that sound. I once asked Bob Welch how they did that and he said Lindsay spent a whole week recording those parts at half speed on his tape machine. It's an old trick with tape that when played back at normal speed it goes up an octave and creates a very unique sound. I instantly upgraded to a MIXplus system when I found out you can do that in Pro Tools. Sold!"

Rosenberg explains that he uses the following simple move in Pro Tools on almost any instrument or voice type. Check out some of the guitars on Phunk Shui and especially "Beauty" to hear what he means.

"It's as simple as Command/Ctrl + Shift + Space bar and you're recording and playing back at half speed. It has a distinct sound on playback. Tracking in half-time can be tough, but when the tempo is too fast for your chops this technique can be a life saver. It also works great with MIDI. I like to tune guitars really low so that when they shift up an octave they don't sound quite as 'half-tracked', just shimmering and beautiful."