RECORDIT TO YOUTUBE SOFTWARE

“Listen to the phrasing…the phrasing…he may have lost a little of his voice in his later years, but oh, the phrasing…” and one couldn’t help but realize that he had no idea what the word “phrasing” meant, but that he had read it somewhere. I remember once, decades ago, listening to Larry King going on and on about Sinatra’s phrasing. If only Mel Torme or Sara Vaughan or Joe Williams or Julie London or Ella Fitzgerald or Anita O’Day or Nat King Cole could have achieved such lofty heights of understanding to not pop their p’s. As if other vocalists of the time were filling records with popping p’s. I’m sorry, I honestly do respect this writer for much insight he has on many matters, but an example of this is devoting a paragraph to the supposedly sublime artistry Sinatra displays in avoiding popping his p’s. Pop culture has reached into the pre-rock world and pulled out particular heroes to slurp on–Miles, Coltrane, and Sinatra in particular–without any seeming interest in other artists from the pre-rock millieu. “I can’t entirely blame pop culture for turning him into background music…” Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. “The Girl from Ipanema” Turns 50 Hear Its Bossa Nova Sound Covered by Sinatra, Krall, Metheny & Others Watch Suddenly: Frank Sinatra Stars in a 1954 Noir Filmīob Dylan Releases a New Cover of Frank Sinatra’s “Full Moon and Empty Arms” As Sinatra shows us in this footage, great sound in the studio came from the professionalism and attentive technique of artists and engineers who got it right at the source. The answer: perhaps many of these things aren’t always improvements, but props.

RECORDIT TO YOUTUBE SOFTWARE

Young producers often wonder how people made great sounding records before improvements like pop filters, isolating monitoring systems, or software that allow a nearly infinite number of corrective techniques. Audio compression supplies the dynamics, performances get processed digitally and edited together from several takes. Some singers learn to handle a microphone well. Most vocal performances get recorded in booths, and certainly not in big open rooms with an orchestra and no headphones. You’d be hard pressed to find ANYONE who could do that today. The only thing the sound engineers had to do was adjust the eq levels a bit and that’s it. Think about it… this was a live studio recording. In fact, he backed away from the mic just a bit for that whole last verse because he was singing much stronger for the last statement of the song. Notice how he turned his head when he sang “it poured sweet and clear” to avoid the spike on the P. One commenter on YouTube pointed out Sinatra’s graceful mic technique: “I don’t thump,” he tells the recording engineer, “I’m a sneaky P popper.” Indeed. In the video at the top of the post from 1965, we see the consummate artist record “It Was a Very Good Year” in the studio, while smoking a cigarette and casually sipping what may be coffee from a paper cup in his other hand.Īt one point, he stops and banters with the engineer, asking him to stop for any “P popping,” the explosive sound resulting from singers putting too much force into their “p” sounds and distorting the microphone. Nowadays everyone uses what’s called a “pop filter” to catch these bursts of air, but Sinatra doesn’t have one, or seem to need one.

In addition to his keen melodic sensibility, Sinatra also set a high bar with his technique. These are just two of hundreds of male singers whose melodies have taken up immortal residence in our brains and who owe a tremendous debt to Frank Sinatra. McCartney thought so highly of it, he sent Sinatra one of his earliest compositions, an off-kilter lounge crooner called “Suicide” that he wrote at the age of 14. Treating Sinatra as mood music would not have sat well with some of the singers many of us grew up idolizing from a young age, like Paul McCartney and David Bowie, who both found his work formative.

But overuse of his voice as accompaniment to olive oil, cigars, and martinis has perhaps made us tune him out too often. I can’t entirely blame pop culture for turning him into background music-it happens to nearly every major star. It dramatically increased the quality of my pleasant associations with his music.

Sinatra poured from the speakers of Italian eateries and cigar and pastry shops. That is, until I lived for a short time near The Bronx’s Arthur Avenue, the best Little Italy in New York. I’ll be honest, for a long time when I thought of Frank Sinatra, I thought of Marilyn Monroe, ratpack films, and the Olive Garden.

Recordit to youtube