David Bowie’s vocal on "Heroes" begins close and intimate, then expands until it seems to fill an enormous space. The secret wasn’t simply reverb—it was a set of room mics designed to respond to the intensity of Bowie’s performance.
For the original recording, producer Tony Visconti positioned three microphones at increasing distances from Bowie. Noise gates kept the distant mics out of the mix while he sang quietly, then opened as his voice grew louder. The harder he pushed, the bigger the room became.
In our latest episode of Steal It From the Pros, Noam Wallenberg recreates the effect in a much smaller studio. After turning the room’s baffles reflective-side-out, he places mics at several distances—then adds the studio’s live vocal booth and even its bathroom as makeshift reverb chambers.
The experiment reveals that the gates contribute more than an on-and-off effect. Their slow attack lets the direct vocal cut through before the room sound arrives, while their abrupt closing collapses the space around the singer.
The team also builds a stereo version using multiple room mics. It sounds wider and even more dramatic, but makes the mechanics of the effect easier to hear. For "Heroes," the mysterious, hard-to-decipher mono version ultimately wins.
You can approximate the technique in the box with reverbs and noise gates—or Eventide’s Tverb plugin—but if you have a live room and a few microphones, its unpredictability can become part of the performance itself.