Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio
tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more available tracks of a
digital audio workstation
A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...
(DAW) or
tape recorder
An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present- ...
. The overdub process can be repeated multiple times. This technique is often used with singers, as well as with instruments, or ensembles/orchestras. Overdubbing is typically done for the purpose of adding richness and complexity to the original recording. For example, if there are only one or two artists involved in the recording process, overdubbing can give the effect of sounding like many performers.
In vocal performances, the performer usually listens to an existing recorded performance (usually through
headphones
Headphones are a pair of small loudspeaker drivers worn on or around the head over a user's ears. They are electroacoustic transducers, which convert an electrical signal to a corresponding sound. Headphones let a single user listen to an au ...
in a
recording studio
A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enoug ...
) and simultaneously plays a new performance along with it, which is also recorded. The intention is that the final
mix
Mix, mixes or mixing may refer to:
Persons & places
* Mix (surname)
** Tom Mix (1880-1940), American film star
* nickname of Mix Diskerud (born Mikkel, 1990), Norwegian-American soccer player
* Mix camp, an informal settlement in Namibia
* Mix ...
will contain a combination of these "
dubs".
Another kind of overdubbing is the so called "
tracking
Tracking may refer to:
Science and technology Computing
* Tracking, in computer graphics, in match moving (insertion of graphics into footage)
* Tracking, composing music with music tracker software
* Eye tracking, measuring the position of t ...
" (or "laying the basic tracks"), where tracks containing the
rhythm section
A rhythm section is a group of musicians within a music ensemble or band that provides the underlying rhythm, harmony and pulse of the accompaniment, providing a rhythmic and harmonic reference and "beat" for the rest of the band.
The rhythm sec ...
(usually including drums) are recorded first, then following up with overdubs (solo instruments, such as
keyboards
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
or
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
, then finally vocals). This method has been the standard technique for recording
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
since the early 1960s. Today, overdubbing can be accomplished even on basic recording equipment, or a typical
PC equipped with a
sound card
A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio i ...
,
using
digital audio workstation
A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...
software.
Because the process of overdubbing involves working with pre-recorded material, the performers involved do not have to ever have physically met each other, nor even still be alive. In 1991, decades after her father
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's music career began after he dropped out of school at the age of 15, and continued f ...
had died,
Natalie Cole
Natalie Maria Cole (February 6, 1950 – December 31, 2015) was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She was the daughter of American singer and jazz pianist Nat King Cole. She rose to success in the mid-1970s as an R&B singer with the h ...
released a "virtual duet" recording of "
Unforgettable
Unforgettable may refer to:
Film
* ''Unforgettable'' (1996 film), a thriller starring Ray Liotta
* ''Unforgettable'' (2014 film), a Bollywood film
* ''Unforgettable'' (2016 film), a South Korean film
* ''Unforgettable'' (2017 film), an America ...
" where she overdubbed her vocals onto her father's original recording from the 1960s. As there is no limit in timespan with overdubbing, there is likewise no limit in distance, nor in the number of overdubbed layers. Perhaps the most wide-reaching collaborative overdub recording was accomplished by
Eric Whitacre
Eric Edward Whitacre (born January2, 1970) is an American composer, conductor, and speaker best known for his choral music. In March2016, he was appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale's first artist-in-residence at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. ...
in 2013, where he edited together a "
Virtual Choir" of 8,409 audio tracks from 5,905 people from 101 countries.
History
Perhaps the earliest commercial issue of recordings with overdubs was by
RCA Victor
RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Aris ...
in the late 1920s, not long after the introduction of electric
microphone
A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public ...
s into the recording studio. Recordings by the late
Enrico Caruso
Enrico Caruso (, , ; 25 February 1873 – 2 August 1921) was an Italian operatic first lyrical tenor then dramatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles (74) ...
still sold well, so RCA took some of his early records made with only piano accompaniment, added a studio orchestra, and reissued the recordings.
A foreshadow of overdubbing can be seen with
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz, and first recorded several months before trumpeter Louis Armstrong. His erratic temp ...
, an American jazz musician who made a pair of famous overdubbed sides in 1941 entitled "
The Sheik of Araby
"The Sheik of Araby" is a song that was written in 1921 by Harry B. Smith and Francis Wheeler, with music by Ted Snyder. It was composed in response to the popularity of the Rudolph Valentino feature film '' The Sheik''.
"The Sheik of Araby" wa ...
" and "Blues of Bechet". The multi-instrumentalist recorded the clarinet, soprano, tenor saxophone, piano and the bass and drum parts for both songs, and then he recorded each track separately on top of one another to create two single tracks. The recordings were then issued as "Sidney Bechet's One Man Band".
The 1946
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
animated film ''
Make Mine Music
''Make Mine Music'' is a 1946 American animated musical anthology film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is the eighth Disney feature animated film, released on April 20, 1946.
During World War II, much of Walt Disn ...
'' includes overdubbed duo and trio performances by
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy (June 29, 1901 – March 6, 1967) was an American actor and baritone singer who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclub ...
as an opera singing whale. The 1950 Disney film ''
Cinderella
"Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsi ...
'' used multiple tracks for vocals for the song "Sing, Sweet Nightingale".
In 1948, experiments mixing sound effects and musical instruments made by
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: , ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His innov ...
at the Radio Télédiffusion Française experimental studio in Paris led to ''Étude aux Tourniquets'', the first avant-garde composition using recording as a composition technique, recorded, and mixed directly on
acetate record
An acetate disc (also known as a ''lacquer'', ''test acetate'', ''dubplate'', or ''transcription disc'') is a type of phonograph record generally used from the 1930s to the late 1950s for recording and broadcast purposes and still in limited use t ...
s as tape recorders were not yet available. Similar
sound collage
In music, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where newly branded sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage. This is often done throug ...
experiments had been made by
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coined ...
in the 1920s, but Varèse, also a French composer, wrote scores later played live by musicians. As from 1949, Schaeffer composed and recorded on acetates with
Pierre Henry
Henry at his home (January 2008)
Pierre Georges Albert François Henry (; 9 December 1927 – 5 July 2017) was a French composer and pioneer of musique concrète.
Biography
Henry was born in Paris, France, and began experimenting at the age of ...
(''Symphonie pour un homme seul'', 1950), who also recorded with Varèse in 1954. Together, they used some of the earliest tape recorders available in the early 1950s.
The invention of
magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...
opened up new possibilities for overdubbing, particularly with the development of
multitrack recording
Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking or tracking, is a method of sound recording developed in 1955 that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources or of sound sources recorded at different times to create a ...
with
sel-sync Sel-Sync or Selective Synchronous recording is the process of selectively using audio tape record heads as play back heads so that new signals can be recorded on other tracks in perfect sync with the existing tracks. Sel-sync recording dramaticall ...
. One of the first known commercially released overdubbed recordings was "Confess" for
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. In the United States, it is ...
by
Patti Page
Clara Ann Fowler (November 8, 1927 – January 1, 2013), known professionally as Patti Page, was an American singer and actress. Primarily known for pop and country music, she was the top-charting female vocalist and best-selling female ar ...
in 1948, although this overdubbing was done with acetate. With the popularity of this recording, Page recorded "With My Eyes Wide Open I'm Dreaming" using the same overdubbing technique. The vocals were listed as "Voices by: Patti Page, Patti Page, Patti Page, Patti Page".
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul, was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype ...
was an early innovator of overdubbing, and began to experiment with it around 1930.
He originally created multi-track recordings by using a modified
disk lathe to record several generations of sound on a single disk, before later using tape technology, having been given one of the first
Ampex
Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe History ...
300 series tape recorders as a gift from
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...
. His 1950 #1 hit, "
How High The Moon
"How High the Moon" is a jazz standard with lyrics by Nancy Hamilton and music by Morgan Lewis. It was first featured in the 1940 Broadway revue '' Two for the Show'', where it was sung by Alfred Drake and Frances Comstock. In ''Two for the Sh ...
", performed with his then-wife
Mary Ford
Mary Ford (born Iris Colleen Summers; July 7, 1924 – September 30, 1977) was an American vocalist and guitarist, comprising half of the husband-and-wife musical team Les Paul and Mary Ford. Between 1950 and 1954, the couple had 16 top-ten hi ...
, featured a then-significant amount of overdubbing, along with other studio techniques such as
flanging
Flanging is an audio effect produced by mixing two identical signals together, one signal delayed by a small and (usually) gradually changing period, usually smaller than 20 milliseconds. This produces a swept comb filter effect: peaks and not ...
,
delay
Delay (from Latin: dilatio) may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Delay 1968'', a 1981 album by German experimental rock band Can
* ''The Delay'', a 2012 Uruguayan film
People
* B. H. DeLay (1891–1923), American aviator and acto ...
,
phasing
A phaser is an electronic sound processor used to filter a signal, and it has a series of troughs in its frequency-attenutation graph. The position (in Hz) of the peaks and troughs are typically modulated by an internal low-frequency oscillat ...
and
vari-speed
A variable speed pitch control (or vari-speed) is a control on an audio device such as a turntable, tape recorder, or CD player that allows the operator to deviate from a standard speed (such as 33, 45 or even 78 rpm on a turntable), resulting i ...
.
Les Paul's advancements in recording were seen in the adoption of his techniques by artists like
Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer and songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas ...
. In 1958, Holly released "
Words of Love
"Words of Love" is a song written by Buddy Holly and released as a single in 1957.
Original version
Holly recorded the song on April 8, 1957. Holly harmonized with himself, by combining tape recordings of each part. The song was not a notable h ...
" and "Listen to Me," which were composed with overdubbing for added instrumentation and harmonies.
Peter Ustinov
Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov (born Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinov ; 16 April 192128 March 2004) was a British actor, filmmaker and writer. An internationally known raconteur, he was a fixture on television talk shows and lecture circuits ...
performed multiple voices on "Mock
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
", in a recording produced by
George Martin
Sir George Henry Martin (3 January 1926 – 8 March 2016) was an English record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, and musician. He was commonly referred to as the "Fifth Beatle" because of his extensive involvement in each of the B ...
.
Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios (formerly EMI Recording Studios) is a recording studio at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music c ...
had no multitrack recorders at the time, so a pair of mono machines were used. Martin used the same process later for a
Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers (born Richard Henry Sellers; 8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980) was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series ''The Goon Show'', featured on a number of hit comic songs ...
comedy record, this time using stereo machines and
panning.
Examples
Overdubs can be made for a variety of reasons. One of the most obvious is for convenience; for example, if a
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
ist were temporarily unavailable, the recording can be made and the bass track added later. Similarly, if only one or two guitarists are available, but a song calls for multiple guitar parts, a guitarist can play both lead and rhythm
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
. Overdubbing is also used to solidify a weak singer;
double tracking
Double tracking or doubling is an audio recording technique in which a performer sings or plays along with their own prerecorded performance, usually to produce a stronger or bigger sound than can be obtained with a single voice or instrument. ...
allows a singer with poor intonation to sound more in tune. (The opposite of this is often used with
sampled instruments; detuning the sample slightly can make the sound more lifelike.) The effect is used to give one singer a fuller sound. They would effectively
harmonize
In music, harmonization is the chordal accompaniment to a line or melody: "Using chords and melodies together, making harmony by stacking scale tones as triads".
A harmonized scale can be created by using each note of a musical scale as a ...
with their own vocals, like a
choir
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which ...
but with just one voice.
Overdubbing has sometimes been viewed negatively, when it is seen as being used to artificially enhance the musical skills of an artist or group, such as with studio-recorded inserts to live recordings, or backing tracks created by
session musician
Session musicians, studio musicians, or backing musicians are musicians hired to perform in recording sessions or live performances. The term sideman is also used in the case of live performances, such as accompanying a recording artist on a ...
s instead of the credited performers. The early records of
the Monkees
The Monkees were an American rock and pop band, formed in Los Angeles in 1966, whose lineup consisted of the American actor/musicians Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork alongside English actor/singer Davy Jones. The group was conc ...
were made by groups of studio musicians pre-recording songs (often in a different studio, and some before the band was even formed), which were later overdubbed with the Monkees' vocals. While the songs became hits, this practice drew criticism.
Michael Nesmith
Robert Michael Nesmith or Mike Nesmith, (December 30, 1942 – December 10, 2021) was an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He was best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series ''The Monkees'' (1966 ...
in particular disliked what overdubbing did to the integrity of the band's music. Additionally, in working with producer
Butch Vig
Bryan David "Butch" Vig (born August 2, 1955) is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, best known as the drummer and co-producer of the alternative rock band Garbage and the producer of the diamond-selling Nirvana album ''Neve ...
,
Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – April 5, 1994) was an American musician who served as the lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter of the rock band Nirvana. Through his angst-fueled songwriting and anti-establishment persona ...
had expressed a disdain for double-track recording. Vig had to reportedly convince Cobain to use the recording technique by saying, "The Beatles did it on everything. John Lennon loved the sound of his voice double-tracked."
Paulinho da Costa's song "Ritmo Number One" from his 1977 album "
Agora
The agora (; grc, ἀγορά, romanized: ', meaning "market" in Modern Greek) was a central public space in ancient Greek city-states. It is the best representation of a city-state's response to accommodate the social and political order of t ...
" uses a base track with
surdo
The surdo is a large bass drum used in many kinds of Brazilian music, such as Axé/Samba-reggae and samba, where it plays the lower parts from a percussion section. It is also notable for its association with the cucumbi genre of the Ancient Near ...
(big bass drum) and percussion, overdubbed with 8 percussion tracks (
repique
A repinique is a two-headed German drum used in samba '' baterias'' (percussion ensembles). It is used in the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo Carnival baterias and in the baterias of Bahia, where it is known as ''repique''. It is equivalent t ...
,
pandeiro
The pandeiro () is a type of hand frame drum popular in Brazil. The pandeiro is used in a number of Brazilian music forms, such as samba, choro, coco, and capoeira music.
The drumhead is tunable, and the rim holds metal jingles (''platinelas'') ...
,
conga
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...
s,
tamborim
A ''tamborim'' ( or ) is a small, round Brazilian frame drum of Portuguese and African origin.
The frame is 6" in width and may be made of metal, plastic, or wood. The head is typically made of nylon and is normally very tightly tuned in order ...
s,
a-go-go,
cuíca
The cuíca () is a Brazilian friction drum with a large pitch range, produced by changing tension on the head of the drum. ''Cuíca'' is Portuguese for the gray four-eyed opossum (''Philander opossum'') which is known for its high-pitched cry. I ...
,
bell tree
A bell tree, also known as tree bellsBeck, John. ''Encyclopedia of Percussion.'' Taylor and Francis, 1995. or Chinese bell tree (often confused with the mark tree), is a percussion instrument, consisting of vertically nested inverted metal bowl ...
,
reco-reco
The reco-reco (also called the raspador, caracaxá or querequexé) is a scraper of African origin used as a percussion instrument in Brazilian music,ROCCA, Edgar Nunes "Bituca", ''Escola Brasileira de Música: Uma visão Brasileira no ensino da mú ...
).
See also
*
AMPEX
Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe History ...
*
Auto-Tune
Auto-Tune (or autotune) is an audio processor introduced in 1996 by American company Antares Audio Technologies. Auto-Tune uses a proprietary device to measure and alter pitch in vocal and instrumental music recording and performances.
Auto-Tu ...
*
Dub (disambiguation)
*
Dubbing (music)
In sound recording, dubbing is the transfer or copying of previously recorded audio material from one medium to another of the same or a different type. It may be done with a machine designed for this purpose, or by connecting two different machine ...
*
Dubbing (filmmaking)
Dubbing (re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and video production, often in concert with sound design, in which additional or supplementary recordings are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production sou ...
*
Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking or tracking, is a method of sound recording developed in 1955 that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources or of sound sources recorded at different times to create a ...
*
Punch in/out
Punch in/out is an audio and video term that originated as a recording technique used on early multitrack recordings whereby a portion of the performance was recorded onto a previously recorded tape, usually overwriting any sound that had previous ...
*
Recording studio as an instrument
In music production, the recording studio is often treated as a musical instrument when it plays a significant role in the composition of music. Sometimes called "playing the studio", the approach is typically embodied by artists or producers wh ...
*
Music tracker
A music tracker (sometimes referred to as just tracker for short) is a type of music sequencer software for creating music. The music is represented as discrete musical notes positioned in several channels at discrete chronological positions on a ...
References
Further reading
*''Modern Recording Techniques'', by David Miles Huber and Robert E. Runstein. October 1, 2009 0240810694
External links
{{Music production
Music production
Musical terminology
cs:Playback