Bruce Swedien’s SM7
Shure brought out the SM7 in 1973 as a broadcast mic. A decade later Bruce Swedien was using one on most of Michael Jackson’s lead vocals, including “Billie Jean” and “The Way You Make Me Feel.” He told Sound On Sound the choice raised some eyebrows at the time. He owned six of them.
The part worth stealing is less about the mic and more about the habit. Swedien said he used the same mic and the same preamp for Jackson’s vocals throughout the album. Every song was sung into one chain, so the voice sounds like the same person in the same room from the first track to the last. On a self-recorded EP, that kind of consistency usually matters more than which mic you buy.
The SM7 is on plenty of other records too. Bruce Dickinson on The Number of the Beast, Anthony Kiedis on Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and Jack White’s vocals from Icky Thump on. The current model is the SM7B. Close relative, not the identical early-’80s mic.
Tracking with one
It’s a quiet mic and it needs a lot of clean gain, somewhere around 60 dB for a normal singer, which is why people pair it with a Cloudlifter or another inline booster. Sing close. It forgives a bad room better than most condensers, which is probably how podcasters found it.
Watch and read
- Sound On Sound: Bruce Swedien: Recording Michael Jackson
- MusicRadar: Swedien on the making of Thriller, track by track
- Reverb: Swedien on how he captured Jackson’s voice
- YouTube: Bruce Swedien on vocal mic placement
- Wikipedia: Shure SM7
Gear in this post: Shure SM7, Shure SM7B, Shure SM57, Cloudlifter CL-1
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