Marvin Gaye's isolated vocal track for "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"

By Jack Brummet, Music Ed.



I have been amazed at the a cappella (actually, isolated) vocal tracks coming out from classic albums the last couple of years—especially Abbey Road, Queen, a bunch of Karen Carpenter songs, and this, which I just heard tonight.  Wow.

   

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a capella November at The Balefire with The Uptown 4 and 5bit

By Jack Brummet, NW Music Editor

If you're over Rocktober, it's time to plan ahead for November. 

A couple of friends of mine--Trevor and Cam Handyside recently bought the bar Balefire in Everett.  They will be hosting two local vocal groups on November 18th, from 9-11pm (no cover, 21+).   Good music, good bar.  What more do you really need, or want? 

Check out Balefire here.    The Uptown 4 here.  And, 5bit here.  I work with 4/5 of 5bit.  They are all great guys, and while I've never seen them live, I've seen YouTubes and listened to their music, both of which compel me to make this trip up I-5 to Everett.  Come out, come out, wherever you are!

 

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One of the best a capella songs ever: Thriller by François Macré - massively multitracked a capella

Nice! François Macré performs Jacko's thriller (written by Rod Templeton) using only his voice (with a little bit of digital chorus and reverb). He used 64 tracks to layer the sounds. I remember Brian Wilson's Imagination, where he also used a bazillion tracks. . .but he only did the voices, not the rhythm and melody tracks.

Here is Macré 's commentary from YouTube on the song:

Here is a remake of the "Thriller" song that I've entirely recorded with my own voice, using 64 A'cappella tracks. There is therefore no instrument, synthetizer, beatbox, or even to sampler, but only the sound of my voice livened up with Reverb and slight Chorus on certain tracks.

Regarding looping parts, I've simply used the "looping" technique. Moreover, in the whole piece (which contains several thousand notes), I transposed 8 notes, which were impossible for me to sing in high-pitched. Because of my tessiture, I also must have resigned myself to sing certain parts in head voice, more particularly on the track corresponding to Michael Jackson's solo vocal.

I've accomplished this non-commercial project at home, only with a mobile PC, microphone, headphones and webcam - in nearly 350 hours. It's just an artistic challenge, accomplished during my hours of free time, whose purpose is to make smile my close circle and net surfers. Nonetheless, I'll be happy to record in professional studio, original songs with this technique, if a label was interested to work with me on a SP or LP entirely based on this innovative concept of "Massively Multitracks A'cappella".I hope you'll have as much pleasure to hear and watch it as I had to accomplish. Don't hesitate to leave me your comments or, for labels and composers, to contact me through my MySpace profile : http://www.myspace.com/francoismacre