If Richard was truly brilliant, we would have heard more from him after she died. So I'm not sure. But, no one can dismiss the magic he created with that sound. He truly caught lightning in a bottle with her for those 10 years.
Yes they were, but so were many other artists of the time. The seventies, and even the sixties, was an incredibly sophisticated era musically. Try doing the same analysis to the Bee Gees, Abba, Queen, Steely Dan, The Eagles, Earth Wind & Fire, even Kook & the Game, KC and the SunShine band, even the Starland Vocal Band, really anyone of the era and you'll get amazing genius work, not to even mention the Beatles.
I love the sound of many many artists, many different genres and styles, etc. -- But for my personal taste, she had the most incredible voice. There was a calmness, a depth and a tone that I just haven't heard in any other artist. That's not taking away from other artists, but she truly was *different*, and one of the best.
She had an amazing "contralto" voice. It was in a magically low range. I see her as Cinderella. She came from humble beginnings and stayed humble as she quickly became the queen of the pop world.
Back in when "Close to You" was just released, my executive secretary told me when she went to Downey High School. Karen and Richard were her schoolmates. It was her opinion that they weren't so great as recording artists....I was stunned by her sentiment. To my ears, "Close to You" was an astonishing work of pop music. My secretary was more into the folk scene so I had to put it down to maybe some jealousy. In this video you can see that this producer found the Carpenters to be even more complex than what you think.
I love Folk. I love R&R. I don't much like Middle-of-the Road (MOR), which is what the Carpenters were. But the songs, the sound, her voice, and his arrangements are so incredibly good, genre doesn't matter. It's an incredible one-of-a-kind listening experience.
I read in a biography that Karen could usually nail each of those harmonies with one take. Though it was a lot of work, her precision enabled them to produce a very complex recording quite efficiently.
Very similar to ABBA when Michael Tretow would record multiple backing vocals at different speeds and using different phrases. Wasn't unusual if you unpacked an Abba track and should you have been able to 'un-bounce' everything it would have ended up with roughly 80-90 tracks total (the Moogs alone would be 16 tracks on some recordings, and vocals much more). Even more amazing when you consider they only had 16 tracks to play with!
@@pauljohnson4590 The carpenters were signed to A&M records - (herb) ALPERT & (Jerry) MOSS. I always thought it WAS Herb playing on this track, good to know it was Chuck Finley. Obviously mastered that Alpert "effortless" warmth.
Fascinating.. I wrote and recorded jingles back in the 80s using the Carpenters harmony style, and learned a tremendous respect for both Richard and his sister. Thanks for this modern interpretation. Interesting how you did the tempo track.❤️
Thank God that the Carpenter's started recording in the '70's. I don't think we would have gotten such great groups of harmonies with only a 4-track or 8-track recording equipment.
And also it shows the talent they had, as they recorded each stacked vocal going over and over the song, not in chunks. At least that is what is shown in an excerpt film of Hurting Each other. It's extremely time-consuming. I record stacked vocals for my music too, and I prefer to do it in small chunks as well.
The Carpenters took the art of song and vocal arrangement beyond anything else in popular music; sad to say we will probably never hear anything so emotionally evocative again, since this particular musical skill is fast approaching extinction.
They were my first musical influences at 9 and 10. I went on to prog rock and Mike Oldfield etc but I think it was the arrangement, though I didnt know at the time, that interested me. Listening now, and knowing what inspires me with music, its clear to me why they interested me above other bands around that time.
Hats off to the work involved here. Figuring out each individual bv, 20 tracks from what was said, is very commendable. I wonder if any of these famous hip hop/rap producers/engineers, would have the skill to reproduce something so intricate. I realize that style doesn't require it, but I believe that's what separates ability from true talent.
I think today's performers and producers have the talent to do this, but they don't have the "ear" for it. They simply have no interest in making this type of music - these beautiful melodic songs.
Thank you! A very good insight into how the Carpenter magic worked - and still works. Unlike a lot of magic, it only gets more impressive when you unpack it like this. Of course Les Paul and Mary Ford got it all going when they originated the technique of bouncing from one tape deck to another - a technique which the Dave Clark Five and others exploited to the max. later in the 1960s bands like The Association, the Beach Boys and the Beatles really starting expanding the technique of layering sound as four, then eight and later 16 track recorders came along. In the early 1970s Carpenters took up the baton and applied it to their lighter music and then of course came Steely Dan whose mid-late 1970s work is probably some of the most layered music made before studios went digital but around the turn of the 1980s a lot of people got into it. For me though, the one track of the 1960s which shows how to use the technique to build a song from a simple start to a tingling finish even if you only have four tracks is the Association hit "Windy". But the technique really reached full flower when used in the early 1970s by the Carpenters, Simon and Garfunkel (under Roy Hallee's genius production) and Steely Dan. A lot of people used layering just trying for massive soundscapes rather than any subtle build ("Mony Mony", the DC5 hits, almost any Slade hit) but I always preferred those who used it more subtley. Richard Carpenters production has a lot of tricks in it. For example, he filters voices so as to minimise any overlap with other production elements - he also emphasises some things such as the top end and sybillants on Karen's lead vocal track to make sure that the lyrics were easily understood over FM or AM radio - but he also takes out (or instructs Karen) to omit terminal sybillants on non-main vocal tracks so that you don't get the ragged endings to non-auto double tracked vocals which you can easily hear on a lot of records of the 1960s and even some 1970s (yes, even Beatles tracks have some of that). I'm sure he had a lot of other tricks too! Thanks again.
Hi there. I've just discovered your channel and found this video particularly fascinating, as I'm a huge fan of anything Carpenter-related! Thanks for sharing your techniques.
Such genius. And anyone interested in this needs to see Tori Holub singing this and all the harmony parts, she's as close to the late great Karen Carpenter as anyone could be.
@@pauljohnson4590 I don't know if she did a whole big production on this song, but her and another guy did a full reproduction of We've Only Just Begun. ua-cam.com/video/J95lfJqo9VY/v-deo.htmlsi=PzQkMO4oJOrLKhA-
@@jeffwolinski2659she did her parts in her home studio. Sent them to Jim and he did the final mix and production. This video came around again. I mentioned Tori earlier but WOJB wasn’t a thing yet. Other than her short videos. Jim had started the project 4 years earlier but the lead vocalist tragically passed away. It sat unfinished. UA-cam introduced Tori to Jim and the rest is history. I saw Tori at the 55th and she covered the song Karen never sang. Wasn’t happy with the resulting live audio and re-recorded it at home. “Something In Your Eyes” ua-cam.com/video/3JP9CNs9YV4/v-deo.htmlsi=tLlXV3YSlpCvzXH6 @PaulJohnson4590 this is a great example of Tori as a voice that can cover what Karen didn’t. Joe Edit: And Tori produced this 100% using Drew’s piano track.
Interesting indeed, happy to see someone working in this fashion ❤ I have an experience in attempting and frequently achieving similar replications not only for my favourite singer Karen's vocals but mostly in order to recreate the full orchestra when playing live; in my days there were no emulators and all I had was the double manual keyboard called "Eminent" (made by Solina) for the strings section and a mini moog which I had to tweak internally in order to obtain most wind instruments or a single violin and of course all this next to the obvious Piano and Hammond. One of my favourite was dissecting the parts from Ray Conniff music, males parts from trombones and female voices from trumpets 😍 Later I used to go to the Royal Albert Hall on my night off to listen to big orchestras in order to capture all the parts, first and second violins, violas, cellos etc . . . . it's much easier than doing it form a record, back in the 70s it was not common practice for generic musicians to "split the hear" of music so deeply. I am glad to have encountered this video as it reminds me of my hard work in the day, very time consuming but also very rewarding. Thank you for sharing your experience 🙏
You’re very welcome. We did enjoy breaking the whole thing down, and it was often three people all listening to the same two bars arguing about who was singing an F#!
I think I remember Rick Beato (or was it Adam Neely?) saying something about stacked vocals being duplicated in stereo for extra punch. I'm still too lazy to try it. Great breakdown of what the Carpenters did to spice up that otherwise pretty simple song structure. btw, I'm just discovering this cool channel of yours. Shoutout to Cubase!!
It can be useful to drop an old recording into Sony SPECTRALAYERS 9 and use their UNMIX STEMS function to tease out the vocals minus all the other instruments. It's also revealing to drop a 1960's recording into the software CAPSTAN and notice how many old song hits actually went to disc and international radio play (!) with loads of tape wow & flutter present, badly affecting the pitch of the song. CAPSTAN will remove the wow and flutter, and give you an amazing glimpse into the pure sound that must have been heard live in the studio back in the 60's...before it hit the medium of tape. Also fascinating to see how so many recordings of yesteryear have plenty of "rumble"... Noise below 30Hz that's mostly inaudible. You wonder: Where on earth did those low frequencies come from? And what source produced those sounds initially?
Fantastic exposition of how the Carpenters magic was made. 20 overdubs of harmony wow. If you like this you might like Wings of Pegasus analysis of Karen Carpenters pitch (not surprisingly it's perfect)
Such a shame the Carpenters just ended with a sudden stop - they were also really good at picking great songs to record. Things like the song, Sing - it was the Sesame Street song before they gave it the touch.
Heard somewhere that they copied the idea from Les Paul and his wife, But took the idea much further and made them way more lush! And LUSH their backing vocals were.
It's actually not "physically impossible" to recreate live onstage the sound the Carpenters used in their recordings, you just have to have some extra backing singers who are REALLY good at tight harmonies.
Karen's vocal range had a lot to do with the effectiveness of the harmonies. If memory serves she had a 4 1/2 octave range. That also helped make it appear that there were many background vocalists. In Australia we have a singer by the name of John Farnham. Aussies call him "The Voice" and for good reason.
4.5 octaves...no way. Richard quoted "Top of the World" as having an "incredible" range in the melody of an octave and a half. Phil Ramone tells a story of hearing Karen singing high notes and when he expressed surprise she told him she had a 3 octave range. Her Wikipedia entry says three octaves. A Google search I just did showed other sources as quoting three octaves. You might be able to say that her three octave range was "almost four octaves," LOL.
@@TheLarryBrown I did say "If Memory serves". I didn't bother looking it up. The memory was over 30+ years ago. I have looked it up and her range was a semitone under 3 octaves. The Aussie artist John Farmhan has a range just over 2 1/2 octaves.
Thank you so much for the video and all the work❤ We are trying to do Mr Guder which has beautiful harmonies (well, its just all beautiful, great song, so underrated) But there is no way to find choir sheet music for the track. We tried our best to find, even ordered vintage sheet music from ebay, hoping to find the SABTs there. No luck so far. Could you please tell what program you use for separating the vocals? Maybe you could do a video about the program?🙏
Sadly, no program.. two bars at a time with two people and a piano. We’d usually both hum the notes, but sometimes, one of us would say, there’s an A in there and we’d play the A on the piano and go back, and back and back. Some notes made no obvious musical sense, and others would be Karen singing an octave down, or Richard an octave up, but that’s how we picked it apart. Sometimes there would be gaps, where somebody was drawing breath ready for the next one. It took hours and hours, but once you start you do get more tuned in.
NOthing matches Karen Carpenter's voice sorry to say. Ellie sounds fine but Karen has something in her voice that you believe her when she sings. Richard said that about Karen. She was wise beyond her years and understood the lyrics. I think she was around 20 when she sang this. I think as time passes Karen's and the Carpenter's talents with Richard's arrangements are becoming more obvious and need to be put in the same category as the great American song writers and not just a "pop" group.
Totally agree - and so does Ellie. In fact, most of the Carpenter's tributes have the same problem. They sing the Carpenters songs, but nobody sounds like Karen Carpenter - some get close, but she was a very unique singer.
@@eastanglianradio One of the only people that I thought came close who you wouldn't expect was Donna Summer. There is a video of her singing a Carpenter's song with Richard playing the piano which is great.
Couldn’t agree more. One analogy might be how frequently visual artists’ works aren’t recognized for their genius until they pass away or become very old. I was not in to the Carpenters when they were popular. I now realize what a fool I was. Recently, I have watched so many videos about them and their private lives that I wish I would have watched them sooner. I agree about her voice being heavenly. A rare talent. Whitney Huston was amazing, but Karen had an out-worldly voice. She wasn’t a belter. In fact, without a mic and amplification, she would not been able to attain the popularity she received. Regarding Richard, he is a fantastic arranger, producer and composer. He rarely gets the credit for the success the Carpenters had. It truly was an incredible collaborative effort between Richard and Karen. Each had their talents, and when combined the sum of the two together was so much more than if they were solo acts. Then, there’s Karen’s drumming skills. She was a natural!
@@eastanglianradio One of the things that often gets missed is that Karen sang very quietly, as a result the engineers had to mic her very carefully, with her close to the mic - which would, of course, pick up a lot more of the lower frequencies (proximity effect for those new to this..), this affected the tone captured, which was then transformed by subtle compression. Many seeking to sing like her are unaware of how the tech captured her voice, and will seek to sing in a way more breathy than one would would have heard her naturally through air. Even engineers who didn't like The Carpenters were fascinated by how they got that sound - but it all starts with an astonishing voice.. I've always loved their use of reverb. Often, particularly in the earlier years, the lead vocal would be almost completely dry in the verses set against BVs soaked in reverb, then in the chorus the lead would have have the reverb applied, but not quite as much as the BVs. Consummate production to go with the fabulous arrangements.
That static tempo of DAWs is arguably the #1 enemy of good-sounding, natural-sounding music. As you say, most musical recordings ebb and flow in tempo... and it's not even a safe bet to simply assume that a faster tempo equals "more excitement".
I agree - I suspect that they just played and no click meant the tempo flowed naturally - often a slow down as the verses finished and a little push up for the chorus - which modern music doesn't do!
Just as with the Beatles' sheet music reductions, what's printed is often not exactly what the recordings are showing. (For example, no sheet music I've seen ever gets right the exact vocal chords heard on "Michelle"). It's like: Was the transcriptionist lazy? Or did he not hear the subtleties? Or maybe he did, but he figgered the end user wouldn't need to trouble himself with subtle features.....?
You are very, very skilled. One thing I noticed was you seem to use some very undercooked monitor speakers - are they the desktop Bose ones with a single "twiddler" cone of about 2.75 inches? If so, I'm kind of puzzled; they are very good compared to basic 2.0 desktop speakers - but just by their nature cramped in the bass. I'm just surprised I guess that you don't seem to be using even a modest pair of "near field" monitors.
There are usually a pair of adam 7’s. The video was done in a transition time and in later videos you can see the Adam’s. From memory the d as pace other side the big screen actually had a pair of 12”/1” pa speakers as the project before would be using them. That studio is really the video studio. The audio recordings are normally in the other studio which does change if I can avoid it. Sorry to confuse
Hi! I saw your video earlier but as UA-cam brought it back to me today, things have changed. I was introduced to an artist you need to see. I see all your equipment in front of you and I’m going to raise you a 19 year old girl, young woman, with a Tascam 24 and ProTools. Oh yeah, she can sing like crazy, too. Kinda sounds like, well, watch the video I’m going to recommend, actually 2 videos. Before and after now she’s 20. I got the goosebumps bad in October when algorithms introduced her to me. I’m going to use keywords so you actually see this. First is her doing a lesson to the camera for 3 minutes showing her prep a harmony from We’ve Only Just Begun. Then next will be her full length video she self produced, with a canned music backing track, of The Bacharach/David Medley from the Ed Sullivan Show. She will be ALL THE VOICES IN THAT, Karen and Richard. She is a “graduate” of the Carpenter/May School Of Overdubbing, I’d say she earned her Masters. Enjoy! Joe First the 3 minute class. Tori Holub How Did The Carpenters Get That Famous Harmony Sound Next is The Medley, 5.5 minutes, there are short versions. Masters Dissertation. Tori Holub Extreme Harmony Challenge Medley Bacharach
@@eastanglianradio awesome! Thank you for watching. To let you know you are not alone in that opinion. Some things I’ve learned since October. On her cover of Rainy Days and Mondays, Paul Williams dropped a beautiful comment on it giving her praises. Herb Alpert gave her a ❤️ on her cover of; This Girl’s In Love With You. Steve Eaton and Donnie Demers after seeing a Carpenters Short cover offered her a Christmas song (Christmas Again) which they had written and she accepted and recorded it. Steve had previously written All You Get From Love Is A Love Song, the last Top 40 hit Carpenters had. And lastly for now, Chris May, coauthor of Carpenters: The Musical Legacy, who she shouted out in the short video almost 2 years ago, arranged, produced and played piano on her rendition of Georgia On My Mind. Oh in case you don’t know but I think you must, his coauthors were Mike Cidoni Lennox and Richard Carpenter. You’re in great company. Oh and I’ll get to see her live in April as she’s one of the invited singers for the Carpenters 55th Anniversary Celebration in Downey, CA. Happy New Year! Joe
@@eastanglianradio I can’t believe I didn’t update you but UA-cam rolled this video in front of me today so better late then never. Tori and James released this last March 2nd, Karen’s birthday. It’s been on a roll since. “We’ve Only Just Begun” ua-cam.com/video/J95lfJqo9VY/v-deo.htmlsi=TYd53CP9ogod19ds .
Doing it with tape, I can totally imagine it. In fact, I can't imagine doing it on tape at all - just managing the track list would have been a nightmare.
Does anyone know if Richard and Karen did all the backing vocals or did they have a team of studio vocalists? That had to have been unimaginably tedious.
What I discovered doing these recordings was that it only works with the same voice as the lead - I did try to use some BVs I had done previously and it was like mixing two different things - Ellie had to record some BV tracks I'd already done, but she did at least have those to listen to - I cannot imagine the Carpenters could have used anybody else - it would become a sort of 'choir' if you did that.
Some of both. For the classic "Carpenters" sound, they did it all themselves, to spectacular results. Early on Richard was recording each vocal line in triplicate, and yes, it was tedious and time consuming, not to mention requiring amazing precision and talent to precisely match three takes in unison. Later he decided that just doubling each line, rather than triplicate, was enough to get the intended effect. However in the latter half of the 70s Richard's energy waned and he was looking to ease his workload, and so he resorted to using a generic chorale of professional singers, "The OK Chorale," and the result was absolute garbage and that abysmal quality product, equal to the typical Muzak of the era except with Karen's excellent lead vocal, is one reason that The Carpenters lost popularity.
Thanks for sharing this very interesting video,I often wondered is it possible to completely Isolate a piano track of The Beatles song Let It Be so I can hear the piano better and if so what’s the best software to use.
Not in any practical way. The way that's done is by getting access to the original multi-tracks so that you can solo the track of interest. In former times that would have been available only to major players that had connections, but nowadays everyone has access to ProTools (and Cubase, as here) and the leaked and pirated multi-tracks are often available.
Thanks again for the info I always loved the Let It Be piano intro I notice Paul doesn’t play it the same these days,I actually prefer his original Intro from back then.
Very interesting video. Just wondering why someone would need to do this? If you're a big touring band, say like Pink Floyd, they would hire back up singers and give us a fully live experience. If I wanted to have it note for not I'd stay home and listen to the original recording. Unless it's a cover band that can't afford it then I would prefer to hear a "new" version by the original band, as long as it doesn't stray too much.... cheers.
I think the problem here is they aren’t just BVs. We discovered that if you swap the singer, you cannot reuse the BVs. The Carpenters sound is her voice, lots of times. If you listen to some of their videos, you know they had the same problem live. Her voice works somebody else’s doesn’t. There are a few tributes on the circuit who have realised this and they’re quite nice, but a few others are using tracks with somebody else’s voices on harmonies and it is not nice. The tributes have fans that want as close to the original as possible, they wouldn’t go to see a new version.
Ellie Darnell is the singer. We recorded this track ua-cam.com/video/nKYNolnFjiM/v-deo.html (mainly because I liked it years back), and that took us to exploring the Carpenters.
How did they work that kind of magic, considering the track count limit on the tape the Carpenters used? Even if it was 8 track tape, how could they have done all those vocal tracks and instrmental tracks on tape that only has 8 tracks?
We were up to 16 tracks by the end of 69 and 24 appeared pretty quickly in the big studios in the 70’s. Their cleverness expanded as track count went up, and of course most big record company studios had more than one machine, making options even greater. Look at 10cc’s I’m not in love for examples of craftiness in recording.
We didn't. We did have a book originally with breakdowns but it had been simplified far too much so wasn't much use. As I mentioned, we simply played the Carpenters track in two bar chunks, and listened and listened and sometimes did it with three of us, until we worked out each line - and importantly, how they were singing it. So many words were mangled and pronounced differently to the lead vocal. We would gradually tease out each line, work out if it was Karen or Richard (and that is pretty tough sometimes) then record a quick one-take version of each two bar section. These would all then be re-recorded with the right voice once we had them all. Kind off a layer cake! There are some original isolated carpenters versions out there, but they're mainly stems in the Bus.
It works in Cubase for many things, but the Carpenters put lots of subtle push pulls all over the place, and worse, Karen frequenctly does not sing on the beat consistently - part of her style really, so the DAWs struggle to detect what is a tempo change and what is just a push on the first beat of the bar. You can auto detect and then edit that, but that often takes longer!
Well, you could - if you could afford the quantity! The Carpenters used tracks for most of their stage shows and TV appearances for that reason - plus, in those days you could not automate the faders, meaning it was very difficult live. With twenty plus 'Karens' - that's not going to work live, hence the tracks. All the decent tributes I have worked with have tracks - humans would be better, just impractical.
I have been and just left a detailed request to do so. For me it started in October and have been goosebumping since. I hope he gives her a look. Just for info really. But WOW.
Tori Holub is amazing. Her range, tone quality, phrasing, and nuance are as close to Karen as I’ve ever heard. Not bad for a kid who graduated from high school two years ago. If you think about it, she close to the age Karen was when Carpenters hit it big in 1970.
Thanks for posting - I enjoyed it...Karen Carpenter was pitch perfect! Unfortunately Ellie is off key from 7:29 - shame you have left this in as it spoils it a bit...
For one thing, few female vocalists have possessed that natural contralto range that Karen had... You can count them on your left hand from the Rock Era: Helen Shapiro, Cher, Gloria Estefan.... maybe Julie Driscoll... Marianne Faithfull basically smoked and drugged herself for years in order to have that low range...
It's not only about singing low.. Leila Hathaway can go lower.. But I don't know any other singer who sings F3, F#3 and E3 like Karen does. There are not only clarity and power, there is something divine in these notes of hers.. Like in And when he smiles the word "forest"❤
I remember when CD’s first came out in the 80’s and one of the first I bought was the Carpenters greatest hits…I remember how amazing the vocals were even more but when listening to We’ve Only Just Begun I still remember hearing Richard’s lisp for the first time. Despite that, I still get chills from Karen’s voice every time.
You got the wrong end of the stick - it's about recreating harmonies and is absolutely not Karen Carpenter! If you read the info, it explains what it is?
The Carpenters music was not incredibly complex; Bach and Charlie Parker yes but the carpenters were better musically than most pop because Richard was essentially a jazz musician
Pretty good attempt at duplicating the Carpenters harmonies, but without the MAGIC of Karen and Richard's vocal timbres, one can't really match their level of musical excellence.
After all this time . here's me thinking ,i`m the one in the 70s that stardust was scattered and I'm irresistible to girls to be told it was only a make up. Boy , did i waste my time...................
Thank you very much. This little analysis taught me absolutely "nothing." A guy sitting here saying what everyone obviously already knows. What was the point?
?Seems like a few unnecessary steps. If you had alrady chunked it out at two bars at a time, you couldn't otate or consolidate it for her to sing in full takes? Cubase has a problem with finding the tempo? Speed it up, Cubase will get it. Then slow down . The beat markers will stick. No quantizing? Really? For a Broadway show, you really took too much care with the tempo. No one will ever compare the 2 side by side. No studio notes from the original sessions? A liscensed production for Broadway and you didn't have access to those? The original tapes? Either bad lawyer , producer, or project manager. Wow. The Musical Box recreated Genesis and had full access for LIVE shows.
Sadly I’m not in the league of big budget broadway just UK touring so access as you suggest is impossible. Good ideas but what we have is the solution at the mo. Cubase tempo mapping works pretty well but not when the original has very gentle flows. It’s also critical for the workflow to be able to constantly compare to the original track. I agree that it would be good to do the entire recording as one continuous track for each voice but the subtle changes make constant reference for pitch, timing and phrasing important.
@@pauljohnson4590 I've done plenty of dance remixes where it's a classic disco song there's no need to adjust the tempo but instead move and stretch the vocals for what ever the song is and it works everytime
@@dj2bklyn me too, but it is not the right technique for the carpenters. It fixes a few less than perfect BV phrases, but the lead and BVs all move ahead or behind a tempo, so fixing that makes editing easier.
Thank you for the demonstration of how utterly brilliant Richard Carpenter is!
If Richard was truly brilliant, we would have heard more from him after she died. So I'm not sure. But, no one can dismiss the magic he created with that sound. He truly caught lightning in a bottle with her for those 10 years.
That song’s over 45 yrs old and it’s still complicated to break down. They were musical genius. Thank you for breaking it all down and explaining it.
Yes they were, but so were many other artists of the time. The seventies, and even the sixties, was an incredibly sophisticated era musically. Try doing the same analysis to the Bee Gees, Abba, Queen, Steely Dan, The Eagles, Earth Wind & Fire, even Kook & the Game, KC and the SunShine band, even the Starland Vocal Band, really anyone of the era and you'll get amazing genius work, not to even mention the Beatles.
Hats off to Richard! His arrangements were sublime and his idea to create an aural landscape with the Carpenter's harmonies was inspired.
So brilliant ❤❤❤❤
Karen Carpenter was and still is the most talented female vocalist in the world.
UNDisputed ‼
Barbara streisand also
@@carloslukather6658 Her voice timbre is ugly. No technique can save that.
I love karen immensely but I would argue that Streisand was and is the greatest.
Nobody replica karen Carpenter Voice. She have Angelic Pure Soul ..God bless !!!!
I love the sound of many many artists, many different genres and styles, etc. -- But for my personal taste, she had the most incredible voice. There was a calmness, a depth and a tone that I just haven't heard in any other artist. That's not taking away from other artists, but she truly was *different*, and one of the best.
She had an amazing "contralto" voice. It was in a magically low range. I see her as Cinderella. She came from humble beginnings and stayed humble as she quickly became the queen of the pop world.
Back in when "Close to You" was just released, my executive secretary told me when she went to Downey High School. Karen and Richard were her schoolmates. It was her opinion that they weren't so great as recording artists....I was stunned by her sentiment. To my ears, "Close to You" was an astonishing work of pop music. My secretary was more into the folk scene so I had to put it down to maybe some jealousy. In this video you can see that this producer found the Carpenters to be even more complex than what you think.
I love Folk. I love R&R. I don't much like Middle-of-the Road (MOR), which is what the Carpenters were. But the songs, the sound, her voice, and his arrangements are so incredibly good, genre doesn't matter. It's an incredible one-of-a-kind listening experience.
I read in a biography that Karen could usually nail each of those harmonies with one take. Though it was a lot of work, her precision enabled them to produce a very complex recording quite efficiently.
She did "Superstar" in one take. What's on the record is the first take.
Great job with this. I "well up" just about everytime I hear a Carpenter's tune. They were part of my formative years.
I know many people who have the same response. Best wishes
This is a superb effort at accomplishing the Carpenters sound....and it just shows how incredible Karen and Richard were in the studio.
One of the most beautiful voices in the history of music
Richard Carpenter was one of the all time great vocal arrangers, great arranger/producer in general.
Beautiful re-creation of the original harmonies!
Very similar to ABBA when Michael Tretow would record multiple backing vocals at different speeds and using different phrases. Wasn't unusual if you unpacked an Abba track and should you have been able to 'un-bounce' everything it would have ended up with roughly 80-90 tracks total (the Moogs alone would be 16 tracks on some recordings, and vocals much more). Even more amazing when you consider they only had 16 tracks to play with!
The greatness of Chuck Finley on trumpet matching the style of his boss, Herb Alpert
I didn’t know the link with Herp Albert, that make so much sense now, cheers!
@@pauljohnson4590 The carpenters were signed to A&M records - (herb) ALPERT & (Jerry) MOSS.
I always thought it WAS Herb playing on this track, good to know it was Chuck Finley. Obviously mastered that Alpert "effortless" warmth.
Fascinating.. I wrote and recorded jingles back in the 80s using the Carpenters harmony style, and learned a tremendous respect for both Richard and his sister. Thanks for this modern interpretation. Interesting how you did the tempo track.❤️
Very cool. Man did they make some great music. What a great breakdown!
Thank God that the Carpenter's started recording in the '70's. I don't think we would have gotten such great groups of harmonies with only a 4-track or 8-track recording equipment.
And also it shows the talent they had, as they recorded each stacked vocal going over and over the song, not in chunks. At least that is what is shown in an excerpt film of Hurting Each other. It's extremely time-consuming. I record stacked vocals for my music too, and I prefer to do it in small chunks as well.
just came across this channel . this guy is easy to watch and you tend to listen to the whole of his programmes no waffle . well presented
As a home recordist I really appreciate the complexity of the Carpenters superb musicians and music.
R.C. said in an interview that the Carpenters sound was "four part harmony, triple tracked".
Perhaps that was an average, I guess as technology allowed, he kept adding
@@pauljohnson4590 An average, or maybe just a basis or taking-off point. At any rate their music was among the finest in of that era.
The Carpenters took the art of song and vocal arrangement beyond anything else in popular music; sad to say we will probably never hear anything so emotionally evocative again, since this particular musical skill is fast approaching extinction.
Totally agree!
Your recreation just shows what a great voice Karen had. Still can't recreate the quality and uniqueness of her voice.
Yes, if there was a list of voices that were truly ‘special’ she’d be at the top
They were my first musical influences at 9 and 10. I went on to prog rock and Mike Oldfield etc but I think it was the arrangement, though I didnt know at the time, that interested me.
Listening now, and knowing what inspires me with music, its clear to me why they interested me above other bands around that time.
Hats off to the work involved here. Figuring out each individual bv, 20 tracks from what was said, is very commendable. I wonder if any of these famous hip hop/rap producers/engineers, would have the skill to reproduce something so intricate. I realize that style doesn't require it, but I believe that's what separates
ability from true talent.
That's very kind - there is often quite a lot of arguing - my colleague hears an Eb, and I'm sure it's a F - crazy stuff!
@@eastanglianradio I could only imagine. But you guys nailed it in the end. Bravo! Must be so fulfilling.
I think today's performers and producers have the talent to do this, but they don't have the "ear" for it. They simply have no interest in making this type of music - these beautiful melodic songs.
Thank you! A very good insight into how the Carpenter magic worked - and still works. Unlike a lot of magic, it only gets more impressive when you unpack it like this.
Of course Les Paul and Mary Ford got it all going when they originated the technique of bouncing from one tape deck to another - a technique which the Dave Clark Five and others exploited to the max. later in the 1960s bands like The Association, the Beach Boys and the Beatles really starting expanding the technique of layering sound as four, then eight and later 16 track recorders came along. In the early 1970s Carpenters took up the baton and applied it to their lighter music and then of course came Steely Dan whose mid-late 1970s work is probably some of the most layered music made before studios went digital but around the turn of the 1980s a lot of people got into it.
For me though, the one track of the 1960s which shows how to use the technique to build a song from a simple start to a tingling finish even if you only have four tracks is the Association hit "Windy". But the technique really reached full flower when used in the early 1970s by the Carpenters, Simon and Garfunkel (under Roy Hallee's genius production) and Steely Dan. A lot of people used layering just trying for massive soundscapes rather than any subtle build ("Mony Mony", the DC5 hits, almost any Slade hit) but I always preferred those who used it more subtley.
Richard Carpenters production has a lot of tricks in it. For example, he filters voices so as to minimise any overlap with other production elements - he also emphasises some things such as the top end and sybillants on Karen's lead vocal track to make sure that the lyrics were easily understood over FM or AM radio - but he also takes out (or instructs Karen) to omit terminal sybillants on non-main vocal tracks so that you don't get the ragged endings to non-auto double tracked vocals which you can easily hear on a lot of records of the 1960s and even some 1970s (yes, even Beatles tracks have some of that). I'm sure he had a lot of other tricks too!
Thanks again.
Hey man....great insight...thanks!
Hi there. I've just discovered your channel and found this video particularly fascinating, as I'm a huge fan of anything Carpenter-related! Thanks for sharing your techniques.
Such genius. And anyone interested in this needs to see Tori Holub singing this and all the harmony parts, she's as close to the late great Karen Carpenter as anyone could be.
I'll investigate this one - thanks. Paul
@@pauljohnson4590 I don't know if she did a whole big production on this song, but her and another guy did a full reproduction of We've Only Just Begun. ua-cam.com/video/J95lfJqo9VY/v-deo.htmlsi=PzQkMO4oJOrLKhA-
@@jeffwolinski2659she did her parts in her home studio. Sent them to Jim and he did the final mix and production. This video came around again. I mentioned Tori earlier but WOJB wasn’t a thing yet. Other than her short videos. Jim had started the project 4 years earlier but the lead vocalist tragically passed away. It sat unfinished. UA-cam introduced Tori to Jim and the rest is history.
I saw Tori at the 55th and she covered the song Karen never sang. Wasn’t happy with the resulting live audio and re-recorded it at home.
“Something In Your Eyes”
ua-cam.com/video/3JP9CNs9YV4/v-deo.htmlsi=tLlXV3YSlpCvzXH6
@PaulJohnson4590 this is a great example of Tori as a voice that can cover what Karen didn’t.
Joe
Edit:
And Tori produced this 100% using Drew’s piano track.
Karen Carpenter had an ANGELIC voice. Ellie is good but Karen was beyond gifted
Interesting indeed, happy to see someone working in this fashion ❤ I have an experience in attempting and frequently achieving similar replications not only for my favourite singer Karen's vocals but mostly in order to recreate the full orchestra when playing live; in my days there were no emulators and all I had was the double manual keyboard called "Eminent" (made by Solina) for the strings section and a mini moog which I had to tweak internally in order to obtain most wind instruments or a single violin and of course all this next to the obvious Piano and Hammond. One of my favourite was dissecting the parts from Ray Conniff music, males parts from trombones and female voices from trumpets 😍 Later I used to go to the Royal Albert Hall on my night off to listen to big orchestras in order to capture all the parts, first and second violins, violas, cellos etc . . . . it's much easier than doing it form a record, back in the 70s it was not common practice for generic musicians to "split the hear" of music so deeply. I am glad to have encountered this video as it reminds me of my hard work in the day, very time consuming but also very rewarding. Thank you for sharing your experience 🙏
You’re very welcome. We did enjoy breaking the whole thing down, and it was often three people all listening to the same two bars arguing about who was singing an F#!
Great Job
Wonderful example.
WOW that is ALLOT of work. 2 bar chunks.
Yup it went on forever
Thanks very much for sharing such nice, inspiring harmony though i can't understanding the theory 😂😂 Just show my utmost admiration ❤❤❤❤
I think I remember Rick Beato (or was it Adam Neely?) saying something about stacked vocals being duplicated in stereo for extra punch. I'm still too lazy to try it. Great breakdown of what the Carpenters did to spice up that otherwise pretty simple song structure. btw, I'm just discovering this cool channel of yours. Shoutout to Cubase!!
They probably tripled them. The Beach Boys would do that too, and it sounds huge.
It can be useful to drop an old recording into Sony SPECTRALAYERS 9 and use their UNMIX STEMS function to tease out the vocals minus all the other instruments. It's also revealing to drop a 1960's recording into the software CAPSTAN and notice how many old song hits actually went to disc and international radio play (!) with loads of tape wow & flutter present, badly affecting the pitch of the song. CAPSTAN will remove the wow and flutter, and give you an amazing glimpse into the pure sound that must have been heard live in the studio back in the 60's...before it hit the medium of tape.
Also fascinating to see how so many recordings of yesteryear have plenty of "rumble"... Noise below 30Hz that's mostly inaudible. You wonder: Where on earth did those low frequencies come from? And what source produced those sounds initially?
Thank you. I am working on the chorus in SUPERSTAR: "Don't you remember you told me you love me Baby...." to reproduce the sound.
Another tricky one!!
I wish I could have seen a cursor of some sort while the song was playing. I kept losing track of where I should be looking.
Fantastic exposition of how the Carpenters magic was made. 20 overdubs of harmony wow. If you like this you might like Wings of Pegasus analysis of Karen Carpenters pitch (not surprisingly it's perfect)
Such a shame the Carpenters just ended with a sudden stop - they were also really good at picking great songs to record. Things like the song, Sing - it was the Sesame Street song before they gave it the touch.
Fascinating...thank you!
Heard somewhere that they copied the idea from Les Paul and his wife, But took the idea much further and made them way more lush! And LUSH their backing vocals were.
Fascinating!
It's actually not "physically impossible" to recreate live onstage the sound the Carpenters used in their recordings, you just have to have some extra backing singers who are REALLY good at tight harmonies.
Very nicely done, Sir!
Awesome work with the recording. And the vocals are so darn close that I thought it was Karen for the first couple of lines.
informative and well presented top man .
WOW! Just wow!
Karen's vocal range had a lot to do with the effectiveness of the harmonies. If memory serves she had a 4 1/2 octave range. That also helped make it appear that there were many background vocalists. In Australia we have a singer by the name of John Farnham. Aussies call him "The Voice" and for good reason.
4.5 octaves...no way. Richard quoted "Top of the World" as having an "incredible" range in the melody of an octave and a half. Phil Ramone tells a story of hearing Karen singing high notes and when he expressed surprise she told him she had a 3 octave range. Her Wikipedia entry says three octaves. A Google search I just did showed other sources as quoting three octaves. You might be able to say that her three octave range was "almost four octaves," LOL.
@@TheLarryBrown I did say "If Memory serves". I didn't bother looking it up. The memory was over 30+ years ago. I have looked it up and her range was a semitone under 3 octaves. The Aussie artist John Farmhan has a range just over 2 1/2 octaves.
It was 3.5 range. There’s a video that documented where Karen sang what note.
Brilliant. Thank you. Mm..
Great video.. thx !
Stirling work Sir! 👋
Thank you so much for the video and all the work❤ We are trying to do Mr Guder which has beautiful harmonies (well, its just all beautiful, great song, so underrated) But there is no way to find choir sheet music for the track. We tried our best to find, even ordered vintage sheet music from ebay, hoping to find the SABTs there. No luck so far. Could you please tell what program you use for separating the vocals? Maybe you could do a video about the program?🙏
Sadly, no program.. two bars at a time with two people and a piano. We’d usually both hum the notes, but sometimes, one of us would say, there’s an A in there and we’d play the A on the piano and go back, and back and back. Some notes made no obvious musical sense, and others would be Karen singing an octave down, or Richard an octave up, but that’s how we picked it apart. Sometimes there would be gaps, where somebody was drawing breath ready for the next one. It took hours and hours, but once you start you do get more tuned in.
@pauljohnson4590 wow, that's impressive.. Huge work.. And so well done. Bravo👏👏👏
They often dont give the real music in the sold scores!
Well done! Glad I found your channel so I subscribed 🎉
NOthing matches Karen Carpenter's voice sorry to say. Ellie sounds fine but Karen has something in her voice that you believe her when she sings. Richard said that about Karen. She was wise beyond her years and understood the lyrics. I think she was around 20 when she sang this. I think as time passes Karen's and the Carpenter's talents with Richard's arrangements are becoming more obvious and need to be put in the same category as the great American song writers and not just a "pop" group.
Totally agree - and so does Ellie. In fact, most of the Carpenter's tributes have the same problem. They sing the Carpenters songs, but nobody sounds like Karen Carpenter - some get close, but she was a very unique singer.
@@eastanglianradio One of the only people that I thought came close who you wouldn't expect was Donna Summer. There is a video of her singing a Carpenter's song with Richard playing the piano which is great.
James, that’s a pretty daft thing to say, no one is trying to match Karen, just to get this close is a real achievement, well done Ellie
Couldn’t agree more. One analogy might be how frequently visual artists’ works aren’t recognized for their genius until they pass away or become very old. I was not in to the Carpenters when they were popular. I now realize what a fool I was. Recently, I have watched so many videos about them and their private lives that I wish I would have watched them sooner. I agree about her voice being heavenly. A rare talent. Whitney Huston was amazing, but Karen had an out-worldly voice. She wasn’t a belter. In fact, without a mic and amplification, she would not been able to attain the popularity she received. Regarding Richard, he is a fantastic arranger, producer and composer. He rarely gets the credit for the success the Carpenters had. It truly was an incredible collaborative effort between Richard and Karen. Each had their talents, and when combined the sum of the two together was so much more than if they were solo acts. Then, there’s Karen’s drumming skills. She was a natural!
@@eastanglianradio One of the things that often gets missed is that Karen sang very quietly, as a result the engineers had to mic her very carefully, with her close to the mic - which would, of course, pick up a lot more of the lower frequencies (proximity effect for those new to this..), this affected the tone captured, which was then transformed by subtle compression. Many seeking to sing like her are unaware of how the tech captured her voice, and will seek to sing in a way more breathy than one would would have heard her naturally through air. Even engineers who didn't like The Carpenters were fascinated by how they got that sound - but it all starts with an astonishing voice..
I've always loved their use of reverb. Often, particularly in the earlier years, the lead vocal would be almost completely dry in the verses set against BVs soaked in reverb, then in the chorus the lead would have have the reverb applied, but not quite as much as the BVs. Consummate production to go with the fabulous arrangements.
Very nice!
That static tempo of DAWs is arguably the #1 enemy of good-sounding, natural-sounding music. As you say, most musical recordings ebb and flow in tempo... and it's not even a safe bet to simply assume that a faster tempo equals "more excitement".
I agree - I suspect that they just played and no click meant the tempo flowed naturally - often a slow down as the verses finished and a little push up for the chorus - which modern music doesn't do!
Just as with the Beatles' sheet music reductions, what's printed is often not exactly what the recordings are showing. (For example, no sheet music I've seen ever gets right the exact vocal chords heard on "Michelle"). It's like: Was the transcriptionist lazy? Or did he not hear the subtleties? Or maybe he did, but he figgered the end user wouldn't need to trouble himself with subtle features.....?
You are very, very skilled. One thing I noticed was you seem to use some very undercooked monitor speakers - are they the desktop Bose ones with a single "twiddler" cone of about 2.75 inches? If so, I'm kind of puzzled; they are very good compared to basic 2.0 desktop speakers - but just by their nature cramped in the bass. I'm just surprised I guess that you don't seem to be using even a modest pair of "near field" monitors.
There are usually a pair of adam 7’s. The video was done in a transition time and in later videos you can see the Adam’s. From memory the d as pace other side the big screen actually had a pair of 12”/1” pa speakers as the project before would be using them. That studio is really the video studio. The audio recordings are normally in the other studio which does change if I can avoid it. Sorry to confuse
Like ABBA sopranos, Karen does something... To listen, and again... Who of the modern singers is at this level?
No kidding thats a lot of work
Hi!
I saw your video earlier but as UA-cam brought it back to me today, things have changed. I was introduced to an artist you need to see. I see all your equipment in front of you and I’m going to raise you a 19 year old girl, young woman, with a Tascam 24 and ProTools. Oh yeah, she can sing like crazy, too. Kinda sounds like, well, watch the video I’m going to recommend, actually 2 videos. Before and after now she’s 20. I got the goosebumps bad in October when algorithms introduced her to me. I’m going to use keywords so you actually see this. First is her doing a lesson to the camera for 3 minutes showing her prep a harmony from We’ve Only Just Begun.
Then next will be her full length video she self produced, with a canned music backing track, of The Bacharach/David Medley from the Ed Sullivan Show. She will be ALL THE VOICES IN THAT, Karen and Richard.
She is a “graduate” of the Carpenter/May School Of Overdubbing, I’d say she earned her Masters. Enjoy!
Joe
First the 3 minute class.
Tori Holub How Did The Carpenters Get That Famous Harmony Sound
Next is The Medley, 5.5 minutes, there are short versions. Masters Dissertation.
Tori Holub Extreme Harmony Challenge Medley Bacharach
I had a listen, really nice.
@@eastanglianradio awesome! Thank you for watching. To let you know you are not alone in that opinion. Some things I’ve learned since October. On her cover of Rainy Days and Mondays, Paul Williams dropped a beautiful comment on it giving her praises. Herb Alpert gave her a ❤️ on her cover of; This Girl’s In Love With You. Steve Eaton and Donnie Demers after seeing a Carpenters Short cover offered her a Christmas song (Christmas Again) which they had written and she accepted and recorded it. Steve had previously written All You Get From Love Is A Love Song, the last Top 40 hit Carpenters had. And lastly for now, Chris May, coauthor of Carpenters: The Musical Legacy, who she shouted out in the short video almost 2 years ago, arranged, produced and played piano on her rendition of Georgia On My Mind. Oh in case you don’t know but I think you must, his coauthors were Mike Cidoni Lennox and Richard Carpenter. You’re in great company. Oh and I’ll get to see her live in April as she’s one of the invited singers for the Carpenters 55th Anniversary Celebration in Downey, CA.
Happy New Year!
Joe
@@eastanglianradio I can’t believe I didn’t update you but UA-cam rolled this video in front of me today so better late then never. Tori and James released this last March 2nd, Karen’s birthday. It’s been on a roll since. “We’ve Only Just Begun”
ua-cam.com/video/J95lfJqo9VY/v-deo.htmlsi=TYd53CP9ogod19ds
.
@@jbs256 I watched the video a while back - nice,
Wow. Great job.
I read that he used 52 overdubs. Might be one song, might be all of them... I don't know.
Doing it with tape, I can totally imagine it. In fact, I can't imagine doing it on tape at all - just managing the track list would have been a nightmare.
Impressive.
Does anyone know if Richard and Karen did all the backing vocals or did they have a team of studio vocalists? That had to have been unimaginably tedious.
What I discovered doing these recordings was that it only works with the same voice as the lead - I did try to use some BVs I had done previously and it was like mixing two different things - Ellie had to record some BV tracks I'd already done, but she did at least have those to listen to - I cannot imagine the Carpenters could have used anybody else - it would become a sort of 'choir' if you did that.
Some of both. For the classic "Carpenters" sound, they did it all themselves, to spectacular results. Early on Richard was recording each vocal line in triplicate, and yes, it was tedious and time consuming, not to mention requiring amazing precision and talent to precisely match three takes in unison. Later he decided that just doubling each line, rather than triplicate, was enough to get the intended effect. However in the latter half of the 70s Richard's energy waned and he was looking to ease his workload, and so he resorted to using a generic chorale of professional singers, "The OK Chorale," and the result was absolute garbage and that abysmal quality product, equal to the typical Muzak of the era except with Karen's excellent lead vocal, is one reason that The Carpenters lost popularity.
Thanks for sharing this very interesting video,I often wondered is it possible to completely Isolate a piano track of The Beatles song Let It Be so I can hear the piano better and if so what’s the best software to use.
I rather like Steinberg's Spectral Layers - it can pull out all sorts of things from normal stereo recordings.
Thanks for the info.
Not in any practical way. The way that's done is by getting access to the original multi-tracks so that you can solo the track of interest. In former times that would have been available only to major players that had connections, but nowadays everyone has access to ProTools (and Cubase, as here) and the leaked and pirated multi-tracks are often available.
Thanks again for the info I always loved the Let It Be piano intro I notice Paul doesn’t play it the same these days,I actually prefer his original Intro from back then.
We are clever sometimes :). Ellie did a great job.
Very interesting video. Just wondering why someone would need to do this? If you're a big touring band, say like Pink Floyd, they would hire back up singers and give us a fully live experience. If I wanted to have it note for not I'd stay home and listen to the original recording. Unless it's a cover band that can't afford it then I would prefer to hear a "new" version by the original band, as long as it doesn't stray too much.... cheers.
I think the problem here is they aren’t just BVs. We discovered that if you swap the singer, you cannot reuse the BVs. The Carpenters sound is her voice, lots of times. If you listen to some of their videos, you know they had the same problem live. Her voice works somebody else’s doesn’t. There are a few tributes on the circuit who have realised this and they’re quite nice, but a few others are using tracks with somebody else’s voices on harmonies and it is not nice. The tributes have fans that want as close to the original as possible, they wouldn’t go to see a new version.
Nice job --- I instantly subscribed.
Subtitles would be appreciated, they captions are off? Great video, and thank you.
Who is the singer?
Ellie Darnell is the singer. We recorded this track ua-cam.com/video/nKYNolnFjiM/v-deo.html (mainly because I liked it years back), and that took us to exploring the Carpenters.
How did they work that kind of magic, considering the track count limit on the tape the Carpenters used? Even if it was 8 track tape, how could they have done all those vocal tracks and instrmental tracks on tape that only has 8 tracks?
Bouncing all of the tracks down to 1 or 2 tracks.
We were up to 16 tracks by the end of 69 and 24 appeared pretty quickly in the big studios in the 70’s. Their cleverness expanded as track count went up, and of course most big record company studios had more than one machine, making options even greater. Look at 10cc’s I’m not in love for examples of craftiness in recording.
Great analysis. Just curious about how you obtain the detailed audio files?
We didn't. We did have a book originally with breakdowns but it had been simplified far too much so wasn't much use. As I mentioned, we simply played the Carpenters track in two bar chunks, and listened and listened and sometimes did it with three of us, until we worked out each line - and importantly, how they were singing it. So many words were mangled and pronounced differently to the lead vocal. We would gradually tease out each line, work out if it was Karen or Richard (and that is pretty tough sometimes) then record a quick one-take version of each two bar section. These would all then be re-recorded with the right voice once we had them all. Kind off a layer cake! There are some original isolated carpenters versions out there, but they're mainly stems in the Bus.
Tempo detection in Logic Pro is flawless in my experience. That would be a lot less work?
It works in Cubase for many things, but the Carpenters put lots of subtle push pulls all over the place, and worse, Karen frequenctly does not sing on the beat consistently - part of her style really, so the DAWs struggle to detect what is a tempo change and what is just a push on the first beat of the bar. You can auto detect and then edit that, but that often takes longer!
What about Johnny rotten?
Now we know
Well, you could - if you could afford the quantity! The Carpenters used tracks for most of their stage shows and TV appearances for that reason - plus, in those days you could not automate the faders, meaning it was very difficult live. With twenty plus 'Karens' - that's not going to work live, hence the tracks. All the decent tributes I have worked with have tracks - humans would be better, just impractical.
Is it "Fair Use" that allows you to play portions of the original Carpenters recording... without getting tangled in copyright questions?
I love the carpenters, music lovers should listen to Tori doing the covers.
I have been and just left a detailed request to do so. For me it started in October and have been goosebumping since. I hope he gives her a look. Just for info really. But WOW.
Tori Holub is amazing. Her range, tone quality, phrasing, and nuance are as close to Karen as I’ve ever heard. Not bad for a kid who graduated from high school two years ago. If you think about it, she close to the age Karen was when Carpenters hit it big in 1970.
@@vkgarry she’s exactly Karen’s age for some of the songs she’s singing. The Medley and now We’ve Only … 20/20. Synergy.
Thanks for posting - I enjoyed it...Karen Carpenter was pitch perfect! Unfortunately Ellie is off key from 7:29 - shame you have left this in as it spoils it a bit...
She started being off key at 6:00.
Where is your singer from who put the main vocals in close to you from? She has a slight South African-esque accent.
Ellie is from Great Yarmouth, in Norfolk UK
For one thing, few female vocalists have possessed that natural contralto range that Karen had... You can count them on your left hand from the Rock Era: Helen Shapiro, Cher, Gloria Estefan.... maybe Julie Driscoll... Marianne Faithfull basically smoked and drugged herself for years in order to have that low range...
It's not only about singing low.. Leila Hathaway can go lower.. But I don't know any other singer who sings F3, F#3 and E3 like Karen does. There are not only clarity and power, there is something divine in these notes of hers.. Like in And when he smiles the word "forest"❤
@@veronikanadtochii2844 Lalah Hathaway was a friend of mine, way back at Berklee Boston. And yes, we all marvelled art her amazing contralto...
Karen and Richard did the harmonies.
I remember when CD’s first came out in the 80’s and one of the first I bought was the Carpenters greatest hits…I remember how amazing the vocals were even more but when listening to We’ve Only Just Begun I still remember hearing Richard’s lisp for the first time. Despite that, I still get chills from Karen’s voice every time.
Not all of them. In the latter half of the 1970s Richard used "The OK Chorale," to horrible effect.
That's not Karen Carpenter singing lead...Demo or not
You got the wrong end of the stick - it's about recreating harmonies and is absolutely not Karen Carpenter! If you read the info, it explains what it is?
The Carpenters music was not incredibly complex; Bach and Charlie Parker yes but the carpenters were better musically than most pop because Richard was essentially a jazz musician
No point in recreating perfection.
You can't create a Carpenters sound with no tenor vocal part. I certainly don't hear it.
They are there, quiet, but there!
Pretty good attempt at duplicating the Carpenters harmonies, but without the MAGIC of Karen and Richard's vocal timbres, one can't really match their level of musical excellence.
Yes absolutely - they're really not able to be compared with others - a unique sound.
After all this time . here's me thinking ,i`m the one in the 70s that stardust was scattered and I'm irresistible to girls to be told it was only a make up. Boy , did i waste my time...................
Not even close
Thank you very much. This little analysis taught me absolutely "nothing." A guy sitting here saying what everyone obviously already knows. What was the point?
Do you even know what Cubase is?
Glad he told me it was karen carpenter... 🤦♂️
er...... it's not it's a recreation - modern recording?
Carpenters used a 24 track recorder for their music.
Didn''t quite work, sorry
?Seems like a few unnecessary steps. If you had alrady chunked it out at two bars at a time, you couldn't otate or consolidate it for her to sing in full takes? Cubase has a problem with finding the tempo? Speed it up, Cubase will get it. Then slow down . The beat markers will stick. No quantizing? Really?
For a Broadway show, you really took too much care with the tempo. No one will ever compare the 2 side by side.
No studio notes from the original sessions? A liscensed production for Broadway and you didn't have access to those? The original tapes? Either bad lawyer , producer, or project manager. Wow. The Musical Box recreated Genesis and had full access for LIVE shows.
Sadly I’m not in the league of big budget broadway just UK touring so access as you suggest is impossible. Good ideas but what we have is the solution at the mo. Cubase tempo mapping works pretty well but not when the original has very gentle flows. It’s also critical for the workflow to be able to constantly compare to the original track. I agree that it would be good to do the entire recording as one continuous track for each voice but the subtle changes make constant reference for pitch, timing and phrasing important.
Nice singer but not even close to Karen
dumbest idea ever changing the tempo instead of time stretching the tracks one bar at a time
We’re NOT time stretching but following a tempo. Best get the flow right before you stretch as bars are critical.
@@pauljohnson4590 I've done plenty of dance remixes where it's a classic disco song there's no need to adjust the tempo but instead move and stretch the vocals for what ever the song is and it works everytime
@@dj2bklyn me too, but it is not the right technique for the carpenters. It fixes a few less than perfect BV phrases, but the lead and BVs all move ahead or behind a tempo, so fixing that makes editing easier.
yes, It sounds like there's hard transitions between each two-bar phrase. Thats not 'flow'. Got to admire the effort and work though,
first 5 minutes are just useless talking.
People dont' care if you can actually sing anymore.