Hitting that perfect beat

Playing no small part in Bronski Beat's recent chart success, Hit that Perfect Beat, is the ecstatic, eponymous chant that forms its backbone. The endlessly-permutated, perfect precision of "Beat Boy, Beat Boy, Hit that, Hit that perfect beat boy..." et al points obviously to some large scale sampling — but not the common or garden "N.. N.. Nineteen" variety we've all come to know and hate. This phrase bounces and bops all over the place, sometimes running from the middle, sometimes stopping there; more often than not taking in all points between. So how was it done? Millions of parallel tracks dropped in at just the right moment by an octopus-armed, neurotic engineer? Nothing so simple, as bespectacled Larry Steinbacek, technical whizz and 33% of the new-look band explains:

"First of all, even on the early eight-track demos using AMS, we didn't sample the phrase as it sounds on the record, but turned it round, and used the phrase "Beat Boy, Hit that Perfect", so retriggering to the start would give us "Beat Boy, Beat Boy, Hit that perfect Beat Boy..." and so on.

For the record, though, we ended up using three different machines, an Emulator, a Window sampler, and a thing called the Infernal Machine, by Publison. It's one of only two in the country at the moment, and can sample up to 26 seconds, full bandwidth, in stereo — you can store whole choruses on it... So each machine would have a different part, or arrangement, of the basic phrase, with the whole lot triggered just where we wanted from three separate cue tracks recorded onto a Yamaha QX1 sequencer — doing it this way meant we could do the whole thing without going up to 24-track."

See? It's easy when you know... when you... when you know how.

Tona Booked

Have you noticed that now we're living in the world of 9,000,000 track studios with infinite overdub facilities, banks of effects that make the flight deck of the Millenium Falcon seem simple and producers that out-rank God in the miracle stakes, a lot of singers can't sing. Now this is okay if you're incredibly rich and can afford to treat your vocals to the point where the voice itself is only a minor factor. If you're not and your vocals still ain't too hot, then £3.95 isn't that much to fork out to help improve them. Coincidentally that's the asking price of singing teacher Tona De Brett's first book. 'My Way'.

The first and probably most important point the book makes is that it can't teach you to sing but it can show you how to make the best of whatever kind of voice you have got. It's written in a friendly and easily readable style and explains things like vocal production basics such as posture, and actually tells you why these things are important instead of just saying this is the way you shall do it or else. This leads to an understanding and sight into what you are doing instead of merely learning the vocal exercises parrot-style from a book. As the book is so easy to follow, when you move onto the more advanced areas such as projection or hitting high notes you can progress a lot more quickly. Really, though, it's up to you, and if you follow the advice in the book and look after yourself in the way recommended then with luck your voice will improve.

The production of this book, unlike the content, is a bit rough but the information is solid and illustrations by Joanna Quinn are excellent, though the printing doesn't bring out their best.

Copies can be obtained directly from Tonal Publications, (Contact Details)