The mega-bonus to this track is that it features an actual Blackbird (I think) singing. I don't know how they did it or whether there was human intervention, but the bird's song is perfectly in tune. After the song stops the bird sings one more little line. It's brilliant. I love the song and back in the day bands would play it occasionally, and I always paid attention to how the singer handled it. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard people sing it- wrong.
The vocal part is the ticket though, and so many people who learn the song sing it wrong. How? They over-sing it. It's totally understandable because it's an amazing tune and it always gets a great response from the crowd, but let's just say that most people butcher it. It's not that they don't have good voices necessarily, but they just overcrank it. BLACKBIRD SINGING IN THE DEAD OF NIIIIIIIIIGHT. They add vibrato out the wazoo and they almost sound like opera singers. Sorry, wrong.
Many times they'll add extra notes and syllables to the words and slur them like a flavor-of-the-month Pop star singing God Bless America and singing five notes over each word, and it's about their careers and what great singers they are rather than the song itself. They could be singing Mary Had a Little Fucking Lamb for all they care as long as they can show their stuff to a huge audience. But I digress. And rant. That's not how it's done. People who do have good voices tend to want to show them off. So how should it be sung? Have a listen.
Paul sings the first part of the verses calmly, naturally and gently. It's almost a whisper at times. If anything he's not over-singing. It's very relaxed. Then when he sings the last half of the verse that goes "Blackbird fly into the light of the dark black night" (the hook) he belts it a little more. It takes the song to a whole different level, and if he hadn't sung the first half softly it couldn't have happened. He sings that part at the volume most people start the song at. When you do that there's nowhere else to go. You've already peaked. It's called dynamics, and I say it's what separates the men from the boys (with all due respect to women and the LGBTQ, etc. community) when it comes to music. As was typical of the day but generally done with machines today, he doubled that line, which means that he went back on another track and sang the same line as closely as possible to the first line. It makes it thickerer and just saturates the whole track.
For those keeping score, the way they do it today is copy/paste. They just digitally peel the line off and paste it over the first line. Since doing it naturally will result in a combined part that doesn't quite match perfectly, they simulate that effect by simply adding a tiny bit of delay; usually around 40 milliseconds, but if you compare the two methods it's a weak simulation really. There will be a tiny delay between the two takes done manually; in other words the singer will change notes and syllables at very slightly different times, because, well...we're human, and the digital delay simulates that part of it. But there's more variance than delay covers, such as pitch. There might be an almost imperceptible warble as the pitches of the two takes are slightly different. If you ever get a chance to compare the two methods you'll clearly hear the difference. The machine version sounds sterile, and what's more is they'll often take just one vocal line and use it every time it comes up in the song and it sounds the same every time. Doing it manually it's different every time. Some people still do it that way.
Well, there's your studio tech lesson for the day. And while I can't claim to be a great vocalist I can sure as hell tell a great one from the rest. McCartney can sing. I know this is an ancient tune and probably beyond "Oldies," but if you ever get to hear someone do it live, or on the off-chance you might actually sing it yourself one day, you'll be in the know. There's a difference. Listen to it. Relax.
Blackbird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Man4Xw8Xypo
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