Tom Petty

“We use the Neumann M150 to record Tom’s vocals at the Clubhouse, because it has a tight pattern which diminishes the amount of bleed. You can see the verse lead vocal track, and immediately below it two vocal fix overdubs, because Tom changed a couple of lines, and below that the ‘Voc Amb’ track, which is the ambient mic that I always have set up close to Tom, pointed away from him. If I have to drop in a line, I can add some of the ambience that was on the original vocal mic. I also put that ambience at the beginning of the song before the vocal comes in. The verse vocal has a substantial effect on it, coming from the Decapitator, set on the ‘Old Radio Voice’ preset. Tom has this character in his lyrics, and he felt that it enhanced it to make it more lo-fi. It also meant that his voice sounds bigger in the choruses, when the effect disappears. The verse vocal goes through the 1176 and the MDW, with which I’m just rolling off some low end and adding at 8kHz.

“The chorus vocal is from the same live take, moved to a different track because I applied different processing. It also had the 1176 and MDW. I pushed a lot of 3kHz, to get it to cut through more. Tom sang the chorus part rather softly, because it fit his character, so it needed EQ to come out more in the track. All the vocal harmonies in the track were recorded at Tom’s place. Below the vocals there’s the ‘Vox slap delay’ aux track, which has the Digi Long Delay set at 150ms, and I ran it through the Decapitator, at the same setting as the snare drum.”

“We use the Neumann M150 to record Tom’s vocals at the Clubhouse, because it has a tight pattern which diminishes the amount of bleed. You can see the verse lead vocal track, and immediately below it two vocal fix overdubs, because Tom changed a couple of lines, and below that the ‘Voc Amb’ track, which is the ambient mic that I always have set up close to Tom, pointed away from him. If I have to drop in a line, I can add some of the ambience that was on the original vocal mic. I also put that ambience at the beginning of the song before the vocal comes in. The verse vocal has a substantial effect on it, coming from the Decapitator, set on the ‘Old Radio Voice’ preset. Tom has this character in his lyrics, and he felt that it enhanced it to make it more lo-fi. It also meant that his voice sounds bigger in the choruses, when the effect disappears. The verse vocal goes through the 1176 and the MDW, with which I’m just rolling off some low end and adding at 8kHz.

“The chorus vocal is from the same live take, moved to a different track because I applied different processing. It also had the 1176 and MDW. I pushed a lot of 3kHz, to get it to cut through more. Tom sang the chorus part rather softly, because it fit his character, so it needed EQ to come out more in the track. All the vocal harmonies in the track were recorded at Tom’s place. Below the vocals there’s the ‘Vox slap delay’ aux track, which has the Digi Long Delay set at 150ms, and I ran it through the Decapitator, at the same setting as the snare drum.”