When was unforgettable recorded

She was amazing. I like the 67 a lot, it seems to work well on vocals, and with her it worked really well.

When her father recorded 'Unforgettable', he used a 47, and the 67 matched up pretty well with that. You learned the song quickly, and where the artist got big you were able to pull back the level, while you'd increase it where the artist got softer.

Since I think this approach produces better results, I still work mostly that way — whereas a limiter can pull a voice back, when you're hand-limiting you know exactly how far to go and can attain much greater accuracy.

Nevertheless, I used a tiny amount of Summit limiter on Natalie's voice for the warmth of the tube, and, as she's got a fairly good microphone technique, that was easy to do. I check the piano mics, I check all the drum mics, I place the string and brass mics, and I always make sure that all of the musicians are comfortable. If you've got happy, comfortable musicians, you're gonna have a great day; if you've got guys who are unhappy and uncomfortable with the way they're set up, it's gonna be a little bit more difficult.

Working with a piece orchestra at Oceanway for the 'Unforgettable' sessions, Schmitt employed a setup similar to the Decca Tree: three omnidirectional Neumann M50 tube condensers positioned in a T-shaped formation, with the left and right microphones approximately six feet apart, the central mic about four feet in front of them, and the entire array a couple of feet behind the conductor and between eight to 10 feet above him, pointing towards the musicians.

In addition, Schmitt also miked the rhythm section. The layout of Oceanway Studios during the recording of the new elements for the duet. I've used it since I started, and it's very, very rare that I use anything else. Meanwhile, on the drums I used a couple of AKG s for overheads, s on the snare and hi-hat, s on the toms, and a D12 on the kick. Creating the illusion of a duet between Nat 'King' Cole and his daughter was made much easier than expected by the fact that Cole Sr's original performance of 'Unforgettable' had been recorded on three-track tape.

We had separate mics — we had the regular mics for the mono and then separate mics for the stereo, recording to a separate machine. Then, when I came to California in , we went to three-track.

In the case of 'Unforgettable', Al Schmitt was relieved to discover that, unlike the three-track projects with which he had been involved, Nat King Cole's vocal was alone on the centre track. So, I was very surprised to hear Nat's vocal by itself in the centre, and that was a blessing. We knew there might be some problems, but we'd figure out a way to overcome them.

Having Nat in the centre by himself on the three-track tape was totally unexpected, however — had that not been the case, we would have had to do a lot more filtering, and Johnny Mandel would have had to do a much, much more similar arrangement to the original. Back in the early '50s the studios didn't have isolation booths. Nat was in the room with the orchestra, so there was some bleeding from the orchestra into his mic, and we therefore tried to filter out as much of that as we could.

Still, there were spots where we just couldn't filter out the leakage, and so when Johnny Mandel did the arrangement for the new recording he compensated by way of writing similar instrumental parts to cover up the leakage in those particular areas.

Nat's vocal covered the entire song, and so we had the full orchestra play — and Natalie sing — to that, as well as to Sol's human click. One of Al Schmitt's areas of expertise is tracking orchestras and large ensembles — when he was six and seven years old, he would visit his uncle's studio, Harry Smith Recording in New York City, and watch big bands being recorded with just a single microphone, necessitating soloists to walk to where the mic was, play their parts and then return to their seats.

That was back in the early '40s, and when Schmitt himself began engineering during the next decade he soon learned about — and developed his own — multi-miking techniques. So, that's what I think I bring to a session. I remember back in the '50s, when I was in New York, I was working with a drummer by the name of Tiny Cahn on a small jazz date and he asked me to put a microphone on the kick drum.

Now, we'd use just one mic on the drums in those days, and since we were working with such a small section, I kinda looked at him as if he was strange, but I said, 'Sure, we'll give it a try,' and when I miked the kick it really made a difference.

So, from that point on, whenever I could and whenever I had the availability, I tried to put a mic on the kick drum, and a lot of guys then followed suit. I know that I don't have any secrets and I try to teach my assistants the things that I've learned: where to place microphones, what not to be afraid of — you know, a lot of guys are afraid of the leakage problems in the studio, and I try to explain that if you use good microphones and you get this leakage, sometimes it's your best friend in the studio, helping to make something sound much bigger than it really is.

When I ask Schmitt if his approach is notably different to that of his fellow engineers, he laughs. But what's happened is that a lot of the assistants with whom I've worked have gone on to work with other engineers on big string dates and big band dates, and the first thing these engineers will tell them is 'Set it up the way Al Schmitt sets it up.

The interim result was a spine-tingling duet featuring Nat Cole and his daughter, backed by an orchestra playing Johnny Mandel's adaption of Nelson Riddle's original arrangement. Several of the musicians, who had played on the original recording, were moved to tears, as was the lead singer, for as she would comment in the album's liner notes, the project was "a labour of love for myself and everyone that has worked on it".

David Foster produced this particular cut, and when we got into the mixing process he figured out where Nat and Natalie were each going to sing. This was helped by the fact that it was easier to mute Nat in certain spots and Natalie in others.

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