Beatles' Honey Pie Cover - Souzy part recorded in one take

[iiipopes]

Attached at the end of this post is a link to a cover of the Beatles' Honey Pie on which I played. The home-producer occasionally records covers of Beatles' songs to refine his recording/production skills. Through a friend of a friend I got invited to lay down the bass track. I suggested sousaphone, because that's what the bass would have been for a dance hall band in the 1920's, the style in which Sir Macca wrote it. After contemplating it, despite George having laid down the track originally with a Fender BassVI, he agreed. I played my Pan Am souzy with the replacement Cavalier bell, which dates from the mid-20's, with a Helleberg mouthpiece, the closest I could get to authenticity.

When I got there, we spent the usual time setting up, mic placement, position in the room so we didn't get false wall resonances, slapback, etc. I asked him to roll what he had for the basic piano track and turn my track on so we could record and analyze my track to see if I needed to do anything different. Heh, heh: that was a ruse because I had worked my &$$ off, including transcribing the part, making sure I was ready for the session. So he rolled tape (er, digital) and I played. At the end, I said confidently, "You have your track." Yes: one take. I then sat on the couch and had a couple of beers while my friend took several takes for his part.

The producer did, in 1920's style, have my friend play the rhythm track on a banjo-uke, roughly authentic to the time, keeping in mind early jazz utilizing a tenor banjo, crossed with the first ukulele craze of the 1920's.

No editing, maybe a touch of compression to set the level for the mix. Yes: ONE TAKE. I was taught to prepare beforehand so as not to waste anybody's time, especially the producer and the studio.

The only other suggestion I made, which he couldn't do, was have the horn players from Nashville play what is recorded as a lead guitar solo on the original record as a clarinet solo on an Albert-system clarinet, which would have been the last detail of authenticity. With all due respect, which could have been a combination of the digital recording being so present compared to early electronic recording straight to disc (think when tubes were first called "Fleming valves,") and that the original horn players on the Beatles' record played this style of music when it was a new genre, using period-correct microphones from the Abbey Road studios equipment closet (they never throw out anything); the sound could have been a little smoother.

Except for that, please Enjoy!
https://soundcloud.com/blackax/honey-pie

[travisd]

Any intel on the mic setup? I've started playing around with some home recording, so interested to hear what works for others...

[iiipopes]

Any intel on the mic setup? I've started playing around with some home recording, so interested to hear what works for others...

Thanks for your post. Please give me a few days. I'll email our producer and ask him what he used.

[iiipopes]

Any intel on the mic setup? I've started playing around with some home recording, so interested to hear what works for others...

My producer got back with me. He used a Shure PGA52 “Kick Drum” microphone on a boom a few inches in front of the bell after we settled on a physical position that eliminated slap back and false room resonances.

[arpthark]

One of my favorite Beatles tunes, and a pretty faithful cover! Nice playing.

[iiipopes]

I have to make one more comment: in the early days of electronic recording, the microphones were, of course, primitive by today's standards. But they were such an advance over the Edison system of acoustic recording. Many people think the vocals on these recordings are inherently nasal, and think the vocalist had something to do with that. No. The microphones were early versions of either moving coil, carbon crystal, like on the telephones of the day, or crystal, although those did come later. More than likely, carbon microphones. So the inherent limitations of the microphones translated to compressed bandwidth. This, along with the cutting limitations of 78 rpm records, compressed the bandwidth even further. The result was that vocals sounded artificially nasal. And if the vocalist was being recorded simultaneously with a band or orchestra accompaniment, even occasionally the vocalist would use a cone, much like a cheerleader would use on a football field for projection. Yes, even more bandwidth compression.

So don't take the nasal quality of period vocal 78 rpm records literally. Link: