Donny Osmond
Those of you who remember Donny Osmond as the pint-sized heir apparent to Andy Williams may be surprised to find that the mature Mr. Osmond-he still answers to Donny, is a gear freak who's deeply involved with the engineering process on the records he makes.
Osmond records almost all of his own vocals. Many of these sessions take place in a small studio in the house he shares with his wife and four kids in Provo, Utah. With a full touring schedule, Osmond, who believes that rooms in major studios are sometimes tuned so perfectly that they sacrifice naturalness, also takes a laptop on the road so that he can track whenever and wherever an idea comes to him. A long time Pro Tools user, Osmond recently moved over to Nuendo. Mix caught up with Donny Osmond at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston, a day before he was to board a plane for England, where he and fellow producers Eliot Kennedy and Gary Barlow were scheduled to put the final touches on Osmond's new album, tentatively titled. Somewhere In Time.
Mix: What prompted your move from Pro Tools to Nuendo?
Donny Osmond: "I was working with Phil Ramone and Elliot Scheiner last year, and both of them were raving about Nuendo, so I went out and bought a copy. I immediately got deeply into it, although the first version had an enormous amount of bugs. Latency was a big issue, especially when you use firewire. I switched over to light pipe, which is better. But they're still some latency issues, and I know Steinberg is aware of them."
Mix: What do you like most about Nuendo?
Donny Osmond: "The editing. Most of the work I do is recording vocals, including big walls of background vocals, stacks of my own singing. I've found that Nuendo handles crossfades very easily, and that lets me manipulate multiple vocal files to get the exact blend I want. That's very important to me."
Mix: What can you tell us about the new album?
Donny Osmond: "It's an entire album of cover songs, including “I'm Not In Love,” originally recorded by 10CC, Neilson's “Without You,” the Charles and Eddie hit “Would I Lie To You,” and Stevie Wonder's “I Wish.”
"We're also covering the Earth, Wind and Fire hit, “After the Love Has Gone,” and I've got a connection to that song that you might find interesting. In the early 90's David Foster, Jay Graydon and I talked about me joining the band they were putting together called Airplay. The group had made one record, and it including that song, which David Foster had a hand in writing. They released the track before the Earth, Wind and Fire version, with almost the same arrangement.
"Getting back to this record, I'm a big fan of the UK music scene, and I've been aware of Eliot and Gary's work for some time. Eliot has worked with Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, the Spice Girls and others, and Gary was the lead singer in a band called Take That. He's also produced Blue, a huge English band. The three of us hit it off immediately. One thing we have in common is that we're all tech heads."
Mix: How have you dealt with the logistics of working with producers based on a different continent?
Donny Osmond: "Flying back and forth to England to track vocals is not something I wanted to be doing all the time. Plus, the budget we got from Universal Decca, the label that's releasing the project, had to be spent wisely.
"I proposed to the guys that we work through the Internet as much as possible. Rather than put the money into flights and hotel rooms we decided to hook up their Logic 5.0 room to my traveling Nuendo work station. At first we thought about using EdNet, but that's expensive.
"So we kept things simple. Eliot and Gary work up an arrangement and e mail me stereo MP3's of the backing tracks. I open up these AIFF files in Nuendo from wherever I happen to be at the time; at home, in a hotel, or on the Sony lot where I'm taping, as host, the new Pyramid series. I have a Mac in my studio and take a Blackberry on the road.
Mix: Do you record rough vocals only?
Donny Osmond: "No, these are finals. I'll monitor with some plug-in effects, and if I like something I may apply it to the vocal mix, but most of the eq'ing and effects is done in England. I send compressed files of my vocals for reference, and uncompressed versions of the ultimate keepers."
Mix: What equipment are you using to track your vocals?
Donny Osmond: "I recently hit on the greatest combination. The Blue mike, which does a great job of emulating the old Telefunken 251, is a fabulous mic.. I couple that with the new Apogee Track Two mike pre. The Apogee conversion is crystal clear; there's a clarity at the upper end that's achieved without sacrificing a natural sound. These two tools going straight into the computer, without any external mixing board, work perfectly for me."
Mix: Tell us about your home studio.
Donny Osmond: "It's very small, modest-not a studio that you'd cut an album in, although I did, the Christmas album I released in the mid-90's. I had an acoustician come in and design the room, but as I said, I've found over the years that you can make a room too perfect. I don't know if most Mix readers would agree with that statement, but I've had engineers tell me the same thing.
"My room's not the deadest in the world. I had a little bump around 80hZ that I've had to baffle down, but it's a real sounding room. I use speakers sometimes and no head phones. I'll put them out of phase where the mike converges. Yeah, there's some leakage, but not a whole lot, and sometimes the live sound works for a track! On the new example, for example, we recut a song called “Crazy Horses” that was a big hit for the Osmond Brothers in England back in '73. I brought all the brothers back into my studio and recorded them with the speakers on, and it sounds fantastic; the leakage really does add the perception of a live performance."
Mix: In addition to the new album, and your hosting of Pyramid, you're also active in music theater. Do you ever worry about diluting your image?
Donny Osmond: "I do consider that issue. The public can get tired of a performer if he or she is overexposed. But Pyramid is a completely different genre, it's not music based at all. And you've got to take advantage of a wave, and publicity, wherever it appears!
"Speaking of Pyramid, and the Sony lot where we record, I spend so much time there that I've set up a work station in my dressing room. One of the things I like about Gary and Eliot is their willingness to try different ideas. I've known Dave Koz since we worked together in the early 90's, and I wanted him to appear on the album. Gary and Eliot told me to go for it, so I brought Dave over to the Sony lot to work. I leave sound baffles in my dressing room, along with my Blue mike and the Apogee convertors and my powerbook, which has a copy of Nuendo on it. We got a great sound out of Dave!
"I hate to admit this, but if I'm in a hotel room and want to work I'll call up room service and ask them to bring me as many towels as possible! I'll drape them all over the room to break up parallel surfaces, turn off the phone, and start singing!
Mix: So, now that you're off guard--- do you use Autotune?
Donny Osmond: "Uh,,, yes! [laughs] Auto Tune 3, in particular, is great. I don't use it for solo parts all the time, but it can be especially helpful on backgrounds, depending on the style of music. If I'm cutting a stack of my own backing vocals on a gospel or RB track I'll leave the vibrato in, because that's natural to the style of music. Autone works against your needs in this kind of situation. But Autotune can add a great sheen to backing vocals in a pop tune. I use it to get a nice chorusing, rub effect going. But you have to be careful; over application on either solo or backing lines can leave a track sterile.
"In fact, we did a version of “I Can't Go For That” on the new album where I did use Autone on my lead. What a vocal Darryl Hall laid down on the original! He really set the bar on that one. I did three versions of the lead vocal. The guys kept sending back notes. The first time I tried too hard, the second time I auto tuned the track too much.
Mix: And the third one was just right?
Donny Osmond: "Well, it was relaxed and not overly reliant on Autotune! Also, I have to admit that I detuned the track a whole step to get it sitting in a register where I could relax my vocal cords enough to get the desired effect. Some of the recorded tracks, primarily the backing vocals they'd done over there had to be cut in the new key. Some other parts, keyboards mostly, survived the pitch shift."
Mix: Are there other plug-ins that you rely on?
Donny Osmond: "For one thing, the plug-ins that come with Nuendo are excellent. I monitor with their reverb and chorusing effects all the time. I recently got Steinberg's Voice Machine plug-in, and I'm having a lot of fun learning how to use it. It changes the timbre of a vocal, kind of like the old 949 Harmonizers. Obviously, building a wall out of one voice can get boring; the timbre's all the same. I'm experimenting to see how far I can push the Voice Machine, and just how it can be used on my records."
Mix: Finally, a non-musical question. Most people remember that you came out of the Mormon church. Although preaching was never part of the family act, the theological message of that tradition is thread into your public image. Does a desire to spread the word factor into your choice of material or performance practice in any way that you're aware of?
Donny Osmond: "Spirituality has nothing to do with my choice of material, but I appreciate the question. I don't like to shove my beliefs down anyone else's throat. Maybe I should modify my answer just a bit. There is no satan worshipping material in my act! That's just not me. Same for head banging stuff.
"But that's simply because the material doesn't reflect who I am, not because I want to impose my values on anyone else. Let's be realistic: I'm not going to compete with Eminem, or Nelly. Would I like to be compared to Brian McNight? Absolutely! It's hard to pinpoint where my music belongs, though-I've had to reinvent myself. My core audience is female, 25-50. I have to keep that base, and hopefully, bring along some of the younger audience as well."
Appeared in Mix, August 2002
