The Honeyz (l‑r): Naima, Célena, Heavenli.
The Honeyz are a new R&B act, but behind the smash success of their debut single 'Finally Found' sits a familiar figure — Culture Club producer Steve Levine. Matt Bell dissects the track, and finds out how it was put together in Steve's compact digital home studio.
What price chart longevity? These days, even singles by established groups seem to rocket into the top 40 chart, say into the top 10 or 20, hover in geostationary orbit for a week or so, and then drop off the chart like a dysfunctional Soviet space station. This current trend makes the stellar achievement of 'Finally Found', the recent single by all‑female R&B act The Honeyz, all the more remarkable; particularly so if you consider that it was their debut single. A smooth gospel‑tinged ballad decked out with crystalline multitracked block harmonies, 'Finally Found' shot into the singles chart at a very respectable number five in the last days of August, reached number four two weeks later, and finally dropped out of the top 40 in early November, having clocked up 10 weeks on the chart, half of those inside the top 10.
However, train the investigative SOS radio telescope on the story of the single's creation, and its subsequent success becomes far less of a surprise. The Honeyz (comprising lead singer Célena Cherry, London‑born German speaker Heavenli Abdi, and the French‑born Naima Belkhaiti) may be a bright new act, but they have some well‑known music business figures directing their fates. Management is provided by 1st Avenue, the company responsible for that other reasonably successful R&B female collective, Eternal, and their solo spin‑off Louise. And in the studio, The Honeyz' producer is none other than regular SOS interviewee and digital evangelist Steve Levine, who has been responsible for the recording of the group's debut album, Wonder No. 8, due out at the end of November.
A Bedroom Studio With A Difference
Steve Levine declares himself 'pleasantly surprised' with the relatively long‑lasting chart impact of the debut Honeyz single. It's important to realise that the track, and indeed the majority of the forthcoming Honeyz album, was crafted and recorded in Steve's home studio.
SOS has visited Steve's studio before (see the December '96 issue), but it's worth recapping some of the details. Long a fan of digital equipment, Steve tries to keep as much of his recording chain digital as he can, but feels that you can only get the best out of such a system if analogue signals entering the digital domain (for example vocals and acoustic instruments) are recorded to as high a spec as possible. Consequently, although his setup is based around four Alesis ADAT XT digital multitracks, an Emu EIV and Yamaha 02R and 01V digital desks, the mics and preamps at his disposal comprise some of the finest (and most expensive) analogue gear around — of which more later. Steve: "That's the kind of signal path I like; you go straight from this very expensive analogue input stage into the 02R, and then digitally on to the ADATs."
So, why the preference for digital gear? As Steve explains, it's all to do with getting jobs done quickly and efficiently. "I've always had leading‑edge equipment like this, but it's just so that I can concentrate on the real work. Non‑technical people look around and say to me 'You're running some kind of science lab here' — but in fact it's completely the opposite. If you like, I've got the very latest technology to ensure that technology doesn't get in the way. Take the 02R, for example. When you're working on a project like The Honeyz album, with multiple songs in various stages of completion at any one time, that desk's project snapshots are invaluable. One time, I was doing a bass overdub on one track when the girls turned up unexpectedly to do vocals on another track. I was up and running in seconds, ready to record. And so we got the start of something."
In The Beginning
Steve Levine at home with his cherished 02R.
It's nearly a year and a half since 1st Avenue initially approached Steve offering work with The Honeyz. Without a recording deal at that point, the girls had already worked with several producers, but the results had been largely unproductive. Steve picks up the story: "Despite all their previous work, they didn't really have any proper studio vocal experience; it felt like they'd only been given the odd half an hour here and there to put down their lead vocals on pre‑recorded backing tracks. Fortunately, we all hit it off immediately, and began working on some tracks; some we co‑wrote together, and some were rearrangements of existing material."
Amongst the existing songs were the rudiments of what later became 'Finally Found'. The girls had attempted to record the number with one of their previous producers, but with little success. According to Steve, he never heard that recording, but was treated to a live vocal‑only demo of the unpolished song in his studio — in other words, Célena and Heavenli sang the basic idea to him. "From that, we worked out chords and an arrangement, and the song took shape. We eventually returned to it several times while making the album, re‑recording Heavenli and Célena's lead vocals, because they changed the lyrics and the melody after we had recorded the track. That's another great freedom of the home setup, of course."
Track Building
First of all, Steve recorded a basic piano backing track, bringing in crack session keyboardist Darius Zickus to play a set of Steve's own Fazioli piano samples from his Emulator IV. This performance was recorded over MIDI into Steve's Mac‑based sequencer. At the same time, Célena sang a guide vocal into the hard disk recorder he had at the time, a 4‑track Yamaha CBX (he has since upgraded to a Mac system based around an Emagic Audiowerk8). When the piano chords were later altered, it was a simple matter to re‑record a section of the original piano MIDI file while keeping the majority of the track the same. Likewise, as the ideas for the vocal line changed, so sections in the hard disk recorder were replaced by new group vocals.
Steve: "We always had the piano and vocal to work with, so we were always working to melody — although that's rare these days, and I certainly didn't do it with all the tracks on this album.
"We then did a rough take all the way, recording the vocals onto ADAT and on into the computer, and Darius spent perhaps half a day refining his piano part in the sequencer. I then put a lovely room reverb on the piano from the under‑rated Yamaha ProR3 on board my 02R."
With the basic chordal backing complete, Steve brought in his regular drummer and percussionist, Terl Bryant, to add rhythm parts. Terl played in a MIDI drum part from a drumKAT percussion controller, and Steve used this to trigger drum samples Terl had made on a previous visit. "The hi‑hats and ride cymbal were recorded here, while the snare was a combination of one Terl recorded here and a few other samples from my CD‑ROM [the East West's CD‑ROM of Steve's personally collected samples] which I had manipulated in the EIV. There's also a Novation Drumstation with an internally distorted snare and a bongo. But the essence of the groove came from Terl's drumKAT performance. On top, Terl then layered real percussion — congas — which I chopped up and made into loops in my EIV. Finally, there are some real fingersnaps going through the distortion algorithm on a Zoom 1204, which I really like.
"Next, we overdubbed the bass. That was interesting, as everybody fiddled around with it! I had some initial discussions with the bassistI use, Francis Hylton, and we decided to go for a bass line with a dub feel. We tried electric bass, but it just didn't fit sonically. So Francis played a dub bass line into the sequencer from my Novation BassStation, using a custom patch. There's quite a lot of real‑time performance on that; bends and sliding notes.
"Subsequently, Darius and I, along with the girls, edited what Francis had done in the sequencer, trying different notes in a couple of places. That's the great flexibility of having real performances as MIDI files, of course. Finally, right at the end, Paul Meehan, who did the programming on the album, changed some more notes, and so did I. So the bass line was really a case of 'all hands on deck'! But the essence of the bass, its basic rhythmic feel, is what Francis played."
With the bass line in place, the backing track was completed with the addition of a filtered synth wash from Steve's Korg Wavestation, and an acoustic guitar track.
Honeyed Vocals
Steve Levine has built much of his reputation as a producer on his ability to extract stunning vocal performances from artists. "The vocal is so incredibly important on a track. In engineering terms, I can get the sound in a few seconds, because I set up mics for vocal recording all the time. I have three or four mics and I know fairly quickly which one I'm going to use, and where. It's not just all about sound though; it's getting a good performance. I think I know now how to get good results from people, and I can instinctively tell when a vocal is right. The irony is, I'm not a singer myself — I can't sing to save my life!
"With The Honeyz, my mic of choice was the Neumann TLM170. It was either that or the Sanken CU41, but I think that suits male voices or lower‑range female voices better — that was what I used to record Boy George and The Beach Boys in the '80s. Anyway, for The Honeyz, I put the TLM170 straight into my Focusrite 215, then my Summit Tube EQ or my custom‑modified dbx 165A compressor. Occasionally, I used a bit of George Massenberg EQ as well. As I said, it's an expensive chain, but I think that's what gets results.
"There were quite a lot of vocals, because apart from the 'Finally Found' vocal hook, there is a whole block of 'oohs' in the background. Célena did those all herself; it's four‑part harmony, tracked many times. However, if you listen, you can hear all their voices at different times. Célena did the verses, and Heavenli did the little bridge that goes into the chorus, the second half of the verse. The very high voice on the chorus, in the harmony block, is Naima. We tried everyone out on the different sections, and would decide who got to do the different vocal parts depending on who had the most suitable tone for a given part."
At The Mix
When it came to mixing 'Finally Found', Steve had built up a total of 72 instrumental and vocal tracks. To simplify matters, he transferred 48 tracks to a Sony 3348 digital multitrack and retained 24 vocal tracks on his ADATs, with the lyrics and background 'oohs' separate for greater mixing control. Few out‑and‑out effects processors were used at the mix, Steve being a fan of printing tracks to ADAT complete with effects as recording proceeds, although a lot of Focusrite outboard — compression and EQ — was used at the mastering stage. Reverb and delay (from an Eventide H3000 and TC Electronic 2290) were therefore added to the vocal tracks as they were recorded, as was some processing courtesy of the Mac‑based Waves TrueVerb plug‑in: "I like my ADATs to be pretty much ready for the mix; I prefer to get a picture of how the finished track's going to sound. And I still believe that sequencing everything live to the master is not as tight as having it printed to tape first. I've got Emagic's latest Unitor8s with Active MIDI Sensing, but it's still tighter to print it."
Please Let Me Wonder
Following the major success of 'Finally Found', Steve is looking forward to the release of The Honeyz album in late November, believing it will put The Honeyz on the map as artists with plenty of scope for development. "They're all very attractive girls, very bright and articulate, and they now have an awareness of the record‑making process that they quite clearly didn't before. Towards the end of the recording, Célena was here with me doing the vocal comping, and commenting on what was technically wrong with each take.
"I really think we're still only scratching the surface of what they're capable of. Having said that, I have to say that the album contains some of the best work I've ever done."
A Hard Drive's Gonna Fall
Steve has stuck with his ADAT XTs for many years, and despite the ever‑falling prices of hard drives, shows no sign of abandoning digital tape yet. But surely, for a man so in love with random access recording, this is the logical next step?
"I know everyone's going over to hard disk — and I am as well to an extent — but I still believe that when you're working with singers, the BRC with ADATs is a very hands‑on system. They're very portable — and if you run out of tracks, you just put in another tape and you've got eight more! With hard disk and a computer, you end up with billions of files — and I still don't think computers drop in and out properly. You can set up a program to punch in on a certain bar and then out again, but that takes a few seconds to do. If you've got someone raring to sing, you need to punch in and go! With the BRC, I always have every bar on a locator, so I can go back to any song section instantly."
Auto‑Tune, Not Auto‑Pilot
Steve is a big fan of software plug‑ins, particularly Waves processors. One of his other favourites is Antares' Auto‑Tune pitch correction utility. However, he believes many people are seriously over‑estimating its abilities.
"When I first got a Fairlight, some people seemed to think it was a kind of magic box — as if you just pressed a button and out came a smash hit. In reality, you had a few megabytes of sample RAM, 8‑bit quality, and you still had to play the bloody thing! Those same people now seem to think that Auto‑Tune will polish a turd. It won't. If the vocal is slightly out in places, you can go in and fix it, but you still have to tweak it manually. It does have an Automatic mode, but I don't think it's that great, to be honest. And if something is more than a semitone out of tune to start with, it will sound terrible. But some record company people seem to think you can just haul in any Herbert off the street and use Auto‑Tune to turn him into Luther Vandross.
"Another thing about Auto‑Tune is that if you use it on everything, great things like double‑tracking stop working, because both the tracks are too similar. Finally, mere mention of it sends shudders down an artist's spine; they think they're not professional. That ad with the vocalist with the bag on their head is actually pretty accurate... If I'm going to use it, I'd much rather do it with an artist present, so they can see exactly what I do with it. I use it to enhance, but I don't spend hours with it, because it's actually much quicker to just sing it again!"