Recording with Mariah
David Gleeson is a Grammy award-winning engineer whose list of credits includes Celine Dion and Mariah Carey. On his working with the two divas, Carey being his first choice of topic, he says the way that his work on Carey's 1993 album "Music Box" was brought together in the following process.
"Generally the way that Walter Afanasieff, Mariah, and Dana Jon Chapelle [her main vocal engineer] work is to sit down at the piano, knock out some ideas and put them down very loosely onto tape; probably just a cassette, which each of them will then take a copy of and work on. Usually, Walter will put the cassette up and, together with a programmer, start working on a basic sequence for it. He'll send various drafts of that to Mariah, she'll work on the lyrics and they'll bounce ideas back and forth. Once the programming mix is ready to put down, with all of the various different synths, samplers, drum machines and everything else balanced correctly, a 48-track reel is created to cut vocals to. At that point Dana and Mariah will work alone on the vocals for however long it takes, and then those reels will get sent back for additional guitar and keyboard overdubs at Walter's studio, the Record Plant in L.A. or somewhere like that."
Gleeson's work with Walter often comprised tracking everything but the vocals. "That's where most of my credits come from on projects with Mariah and Celine. They already have their engineers for the vocals, and they don't really get involved in the tracking sessions, which are Walter's forté. There again, in some cases I will record Mariah's guide vocals when Dana's not around. For instance, with the track 'Butterfly' itself, I remember Mariah coming into the studio and the song being written - maybe some writing had already been done beforehand - and we put a microphone up for her in the control room. She sang along while Walter played the piano for her and we recorded that 48-track, but she then re-tracked the vocals later on. Nevertheless, the real feel of the song was worked out when she and Walter routined it in the studio on that day."
Moving on to fellow diva Celine Dion, Gleeson says the process is quite similar, though the singers' styles differ from one another. Gleeson said "It's pretty much Walter's style to work out the track on a one-to-one basis with a cassette recorder sitting on the piano. To a large extent he'll then take that basic recording and combine it with the elaborate ideas that he has in his head to create the song as he visualizes it. He'll get a performance on tape, largely featuring himself as well as some session musicians, and after a great amount of production has gone on in the studio the artist will then come back and do the vocal. It's at that point that the preferred vocal engineer will step in, and in Celine's case that means Humberto Gatica."
In regards to Walter's piecemeal-styled recording process, Gleeson says "It's obviously great when you have a really together band clicking on a hot take, but there again it's also good to be able to put something down for a while and then come back to it later with more objectivity. The technology that we have enables that, it's not difficult to do and often it can really help creatively." (Fairlight Online) Many thanks to Mariah Land.
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