“A lot of times they won’t redo it. You could be like ‘oh, that clipped a little bit’, and they’re just gonna look at you like, ‘tough’”: How Beyoncé’s clipped vocal recordings ended up on the Queens Remix of Break My Soul

If you make a vocal recording and find that the level was too hot and it clipped, the sensible thing to do - particularly in the digital realm - is simply go for another take. Prevention is better than cure and all that.

In the case of the Queens Remix of Beyoncé’s Break My Soul, however, mixing engineer Stuart White has revealed that, when the star was recording her vocal parts, she was working at such speed that several clipped recordings made it onto the final track. In fact, he says, with time always of the essence when working in the studio with major artists, this isn’t uncommon.

Speaking in his new Mix with the Masters course about the vocalists he works with, White says: “[If you] clip something, distort something… a lot of times they won’t redo it. You could be like ‘oh, that clipped a little bit’, and they’re just gonna look at you like, ‘tough shit’. And not because they don’t care - they very much care about their sound - but the thing is, you gotta be fast.”

Turning to the Pro Tools session of the track, and Beyoncé’s vocals in particular, White says: “I can tell that one got clipped a little bit because of just the speed at which we’re doing everything.”

Addressing another vocal ad-lib that he says he had to fix, White says of Beyoncé: “She probably did it real quick and it was like, ‘oh, cool. It doesn’t sound bad.’ But it worked out. It’s OK.”

It’s probably fair to say that no one noticed these recording ‘mistakes’ in the finished remix, which interpolates elements of Madonna’s Vogue and features Beyoncé name-checking many of the female artists who’ve inspired her. And if clipped vocals are good enough for Queen Bey, maybe there are times when you can afford to let them slip through the net, too.

BREAK MY SOUL (THE QUEENS Remix) - YouTube

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