There is no greater truth in making records than this: "The recording is governed by the performance." This may seem obvious, but many times the implications of this are not. There are two main areas where this truth manifests itself. The first is in the emotional impact of the music and the second is in the sonic signature or sonic possibilities of a recording.
Even with the best gear in the world or fancy recording techniques, the heart and soul of a recording is the emotion and the feel of a performance, and of course the songs. When I have discussions with musicians about production and they begin to confuse production with "great drums sounds", I tell them that good production is about getting the songs and the performances to a point where the drum sound does not matter, and then getting great drum sounds. Many of the recordings that are classics in the history of rock, pop and jazz actually sound quite bad when compared to other records of the same era or many records of today. Some of these recording are marred by unintentional distortion, poor mic technique and downright awful drum sounds, but these classics still stand up on the radio next to modern multimillion dollar productions because the songs and the performances are great. A great song and a great performance will transcend any limitations of "sound quality".
In my career I have had the pleasure of working with many performers that I consider brilliant and monumental. I will often get compliments on the sound of these recordings. While I am grateful for the appreciation, I always know that with some of these performers, I could have hit record on a boom box in the middle of a room and it would have been a great recording.
Much of being a producer is like being a cheerleader and a coach at a basketball game. My job is to find ways to inspire the team and help develop strategies to reach the end goal, but ultimately it is the players on the field that are going to win or loose the game. Fancy editing or postproduction tricks can make the game look more slick on TV, but it won't change the fact that it was a dull game and pur team lost. Jimi Hendrix was like Muhammad Ali at his prime: a fantastic athlete full of style and charisma. If you look at old TV footage from the 60s or 70's of Ali, with production values that pale by today's television standards, its still exciting. The same is true for Hendrix. Listen to a poorly recorded live concert and its him! Its Hendrix with all the fire and passion that is his legacy. All the trickery and experimentation on the studio albums only gives us new insight into his vision, but the heart of records is great songs and great "left hook" performances.
I was recently mixing some back catalog material from the 70's for the band, King Crimson. The task at hand, in addition to presenting unedited versions of songs that had been previously edited to fit on vinyl, was to improve the sound quality of the previous mixes. While I was able to make mixes stand up next to a more current sonic standards and give the listener a new perspective on this classic music, the real heart, soul and validity of the records was in the energy and passion that the musicians brought to great songs. Mixing the records for the King Crimson "ProjeKcts" was another interesting example of this. Engineer, Ken Latchney, approached the recording of the tours in a way that from night to night, the sounds on tape were very consistent, almost identical, so that when we mixed the live album we could combine performances from different nights into one cohesive album. When it came time to mix the album, some nights would sound fantastic and almost mix themselves and other nights just did not sound so good and took a lot of effort to mix. The actual sounds on tape from night to night were consistent, but the performances of the band from night to night made all the difference in the world. When the band was hot, the sound jumped out of the speakers and on an off night, all the studio tricks in the book could not make it "sound good".
As a young self-taught producer, I had not fully grasped how much recordings were governed by performance. The sound quality of my recordings were inconsistent, and I could not figure out why some sessions "I" managed to get it right and other sessions "I" got it so wrong. Why did some records sound really good and others not when I was using my same bag of tricks and the same equipment in the same studio. What experience finally taught me was that on some sessions I got lucky and had great players, and other sessions I failed to recognize what I needed to draw out of the players to make a great sounding record. I began to learn this when I would be mixing a record and the drummer would say to me that he wanted the drums to sound like AC/DC or some other great rock band. Try as I might, I could not get the drums to sound like AC/DC and finally I realized the obvious. Beyond the differences in recording techniques, I had the wrong materials to build the house the drummer was looking for. The building blocks of the AC/DC sound are Phil Rudd hitting straight, simple, hard and right in the pocket. The records in question I was doing had a drummer playing much more like a jazz drummer than Phil Rudd. I was trying to build a brick house out of crystal. Crystal will make you a fine jazz chandelier, but it won't build you an AC/DC style brick house.
Many of the recording or mix techniques you use in the studio to capture the spirit and energy of one style of playing will actually work against another style of playing. If a musician or producer is going for a particular sound on a record, that sound is built on the performance. If the performance is wrong there is nothing that will get you to where you want to go.
You could never take a performance by Tommy Lee on a Motley Crue record and make it sound like Elvin Jones on a Coltrane record or visa versa. The sound of a record is governed by the performance.
Over the years I have produced a lot of rock records where the comment has inevitably come up that the "drums should sound like John Bonham". I worked on several of these albums and tried to bring to the records some of the elements I understood to be "Bonham-esque": the deep kick drum, and the big sounding compressed room mics and in almost every case this approach did not serve the records as we hoped and we ending up going for a different approach. So I decided to set out and do some academic research. What exactly was the Bonham drums sound and what was the secret to making that drum sound work on records. The result of my research, published here for the first time in Fuse magazine.... drum roll please..... John Bonham plays drums on those records!
As I type this column, disc three of the Zeppelin box set is on the CD player and "achilles last stand", my favorite Zep song of all time is blasting away in the background. The recording of the drums sound very different from "when the levee breaks", which proceeded it or "Dancing Days" which proceeded that. And everything on the disc sounds very different from my bad VHS copy of the film "the song remains the same" which I taped off VH1 in 1989. Different locations, different engineers, different years, and completely different mix styles, but the interesting thing is that they all have that "Bonham drum sound". The credit for a catalog of beautiful sounding records certainly goes to Jimmy Page's production and the great engineers that found ways to capture the power and beauty of Bonham's playing on those albums, but the credit for the Bonham drum sound ultimately goes to Bonham.
The only reason I have chosen drummers to pick on, is because they are the most clear example of how performances affect the sound, but they are certainly not the only ones. I recently did a record where the guitarist was wondering why his guitars did not sound like the guitars on a Tool or Metallica record in the mix. The answer was simple: He was playing more like Neil Young than James Hetfield.
All other factors being equal, better performances will always "sound" better, and bad performances will never sound all that good. When a drummer and bass player finally lock into a groove, the kick drum sounds better. When a singer really gets the emotion of a song, the vocals sound better. When an orchestra gets the feel of composition, the whole group sounds better. Music is ultimately about communication. Regardless of the stationary we write a letter on, its what we write and how we say it that matters. Shakespeare on a paper bag is still great literature, and leather bound pulp fiction is still just pulp fiction. But a leather-bound collection of Shakespeare, now that's something!
Thursday 27 April 2017
Wednesday 26 April 2017
Vocal 60s 70s Narrow Filtering
Martin - and his engineers, like Geoff Emerick and Phil McDonald, were indeed fans of hpf. They - along with other engineers who followed suite at the time, realized that there wasn't much point in adding frequencies below that which the particular instrument - namely vocals but not limited to just these - could reproduce.
Keep in mind that they were also using some very nice OB processing - Fairchilds, UA's, etc., and common mics used were Telefunkens, Neumanns, AKG's and other hi end condenser, dynamic and ribbon models...and then adding to this quality chain the console electronics.... beefy, warm pres and electronics by manufacturers like API, and well, you've got some serious game.
Many engineers at the time were also innovators of processing. There was a process named "ADT" or, automatic double tracking, that rumor says was invented by the cats at Abbey Road. These guys were very smart, and in many cases, if a particular processor or filter was wanted or needed and not available, they would actually design and build what they needed.
I'm not quite sure I get your question.
There's no specific recipe for sounding like somebody else.. You can't transform your voice to sound like an other.
I mean, creating a sound is a lot more complex than what EQ setting I'll use !!
It starts with how the room sound and how the singer's vocal cords actually sound. Then the choice of mic/preamp, wires, recording unit (analog/digital tape or converters/computers).
All those steps between the creation of the sound/signal and final cut will change or forge how the vocal track sounds. So no EQ setting will be the same. If it's recorded properly, maybe no EQ will be needed!
The best investment we can do as audio engineer is to train our ears.
Being able to recognize what needs to be done to get the sound we want with the gear at hand is the most important thing. And your ears should be the first tool to use. You can turn knobs all day, but your ears need to recognize when it sounds right!
As for a phase trick try this one :
As stated, HPF is your friend. The top end "softness", and some of the compression you alluded to, was the result of the medium -tape
I believe that the bandwidth (800-1.5K) you stated was a bit wider than that, though. Consoles varied a lot, but the EQ was , in most cases, a simpler affair,
Universal Audio has now released the "Abbey Road" emulations of some of the 'special' boxes used in their production chains. while this may not get you any closer to what you want to hear, they are examples of the tools used. One of the special things about EMI and Abbey Road was the presence of an on-site engineering staff who could build devices for specific needs. How many secret little filters, limiters, types of compressors, bandwidth dependent thingys they had will always haunt the minds of engineers and producers seeking that sound. The fact that you can only get close, if even that much, is the barrier. The brilliance of ALL of the factors representing the recording and production of Beatles and others from those studios continues to this day. There simply was nothing that sounded like those rooms. Some would point out the negatives of this sound but in reality we were then, as now, listening to the opening salvos of what became modern recording techniques for rock and pop music which continues to this day. Without the ground breaking done there producing the Beatles, who knows where the business would have gone.
Lenn Page started EMI's Recording Engineer Development Department (REDD) in 1955. in 1958 they developed the REDD37 to accommodate 4 track recording.
the37 was powered exclusively by Siemins V72 tube amps. soon after (within a year) the REDD51 was introduced which used lower noise REDD47 amps. Abbey Road acquired their first REDD51' in 1963. this leaves the question was it a REDD37 or a REDD51 which they used for most of their recordings post 1963?
four51's were built and they were used until 1968 when Abbey Road phased them out in favor of the newer solid state 8 and 16 track TG series consoles. the album "Abbey Road" was recorded using the TG console. Geoff Emrik said he had trouble getting the same tone for Pauls bass using the TG.
the Beatles also recorded at Trident on a Trident A Range and Olympic studios on a Helios board on some recordings they released. They also had two green Helois boards at Apple Studios so it can be said they recorded with Trident and a Helios boards also.
Keep in mind that they were also using some very nice OB processing - Fairchilds, UA's, etc., and common mics used were Telefunkens, Neumanns, AKG's and other hi end condenser, dynamic and ribbon models...and then adding to this quality chain the console electronics.... beefy, warm pres and electronics by manufacturers like API, and well, you've got some serious game.
Many engineers at the time were also innovators of processing. There was a process named "ADT" or, automatic double tracking, that rumor says was invented by the cats at Abbey Road. These guys were very smart, and in many cases, if a particular processor or filter was wanted or needed and not available, they would actually design and build what they needed.
I'm not quite sure I get your question.
There's no specific recipe for sounding like somebody else.. You can't transform your voice to sound like an other.
I mean, creating a sound is a lot more complex than what EQ setting I'll use !!
It starts with how the room sound and how the singer's vocal cords actually sound. Then the choice of mic/preamp, wires, recording unit (analog/digital tape or converters/computers).
All those steps between the creation of the sound/signal and final cut will change or forge how the vocal track sounds. So no EQ setting will be the same. If it's recorded properly, maybe no EQ will be needed!
The best investment we can do as audio engineer is to train our ears.
Being able to recognize what needs to be done to get the sound we want with the gear at hand is the most important thing. And your ears should be the first tool to use. You can turn knobs all day, but your ears need to recognize when it sounds right!
As for a phase trick try this one :
As stated, HPF is your friend. The top end "softness", and some of the compression you alluded to, was the result of the medium -tape
I believe that the bandwidth (800-1.5K) you stated was a bit wider than that, though. Consoles varied a lot, but the EQ was , in most cases, a simpler affair,
Universal Audio has now released the "Abbey Road" emulations of some of the 'special' boxes used in their production chains. while this may not get you any closer to what you want to hear, they are examples of the tools used. One of the special things about EMI and Abbey Road was the presence of an on-site engineering staff who could build devices for specific needs. How many secret little filters, limiters, types of compressors, bandwidth dependent thingys they had will always haunt the minds of engineers and producers seeking that sound. The fact that you can only get close, if even that much, is the barrier. The brilliance of ALL of the factors representing the recording and production of Beatles and others from those studios continues to this day. There simply was nothing that sounded like those rooms. Some would point out the negatives of this sound but in reality we were then, as now, listening to the opening salvos of what became modern recording techniques for rock and pop music which continues to this day. Without the ground breaking done there producing the Beatles, who knows where the business would have gone.
Lenn Page started EMI's Recording Engineer Development Department (REDD) in 1955. in 1958 they developed the REDD37 to accommodate 4 track recording.
the37 was powered exclusively by Siemins V72 tube amps. soon after (within a year) the REDD51 was introduced which used lower noise REDD47 amps. Abbey Road acquired their first REDD51' in 1963. this leaves the question was it a REDD37 or a REDD51 which they used for most of their recordings post 1963?
four51's were built and they were used until 1968 when Abbey Road phased them out in favor of the newer solid state 8 and 16 track TG series consoles. the album "Abbey Road" was recorded using the TG console. Geoff Emrik said he had trouble getting the same tone for Pauls bass using the TG.
the Beatles also recorded at Trident on a Trident A Range and Olympic studios on a Helios board on some recordings they released. They also had two green Helois boards at Apple Studios so it can be said they recorded with Trident and a Helios boards also.
Sunday 9 April 2017
Recording Nick Drake.
Nick Drake recorded barely two hours worth of music in his career and sold fewer than 30,000 records when he was alive. Yet since his death in 1974 of an accidental prescription drug overdose his songs have kept circulating via soundtracks, covers and the Internet and gradually gained the success, influence and acclaim that eluded him in his short lifetime.
Some of his earliest recordings stem from his time at Cambridge University when fellow student Robert Kirby recorded several of Nick's songs onto a stereo tape recorder in the Spring of 1968. Robert would use these tapes to write arrangements for the songs with strings and woodwind to be performed in College. A four track demo recorded in a college room in the spring of 1968, was played to Joe Boyd, who had the Witchseason Label, licensed through Island records and Joe offered him a management, publishing, and production contract on the strength of these demos.
"Of all the albums I ever made, the two I produced by Nick are the ones I'm most proud of. I listen to them often because he was extraordinarily good - nothing he ever did was less than striking, and he had the gift of writing melodies of incredible beauty". Joe Boyd
The recording of his first album, Five Leaves Left had began while Nick was still in college, skipping lectures to attend the studio sessions in London. One session was in Morgan but the rest of his recordings would be produced at Sound Techniques Studio in Chelsea. He soon left Cambridge, nine months before graduation, and in the autumn of 1969 moved to London to concentrate on his career as a musician.
Sound Techniques Studio
Sound Techniques Studio was situated near to Chelsea's King's Road at the end of a small alley on 46a Old Church Street. It was originally part of an early 18th-century dairy and opened in the summer of 1965.
Although the studio started by recording a wide variety of musical genres it has become renowned for a catalogue of English folk rock from the late 60s to the mid 70s. This includes all three of the Nick Drake albums, Sandy Denny, Fairport Convention, Jethro Tull, Steeleye Span, Incredible String Band, The Pentangle, John and Beverley Martyn, Richard Thompson, Martin Carthy and Judy Collins. It was also the place that produced the early Pink Floyd records and albums and singles for John Cale, The Yardbirds, Focus and The Who.
So how did they achieve the Nick Drake sound?
According to engineer John Wood they just put a mic in front of him and let him play. Although there may be a lot of truth in this statement there are other factors involved. Let's look at the recording chain for River Man.
Producer - Joe Boyd. Engineer - John Wood.
It's starts off with a great player with a precise style and technique. There seems to be much speculation about what guitar he actually used for recordings but the general consensus is that he used a Guild M-20 but others seem to remember him playing a Martin
The next part is the acoustic space. Sound Techniques Studio had a high ceiling in the centre section and two lower ceiling sections either side beneath the control room and the workshop. This provided a large diffuse and varied acoustic space. The fifteen string players used on the track sat in a semicircle around Nick Drake and the track was recorded live with no over dubs.
A lot of studios of the time were very dead, but Sound Techniques wasn't and that made it quite special. The artists were very organic - there was nothing remotely manufactured about any of them - and it had a character that suited their work"- Jerry Boys
A Neumann U67 was used for the vocal and placed close to the singer's mouth. The guitar was close mic'ed in front of the sound hole using a Neumann KM56.
Neumann KM56
Neumann U67
Fairchild 660
The mics went through the Sound Techniques desk to an Ampex 4-track half inch tape machine. The desk circuits were transformer coupled, discrete transistor with inductor based eq. The vocal was compressed through a Fairchild 660 limiter. Delay would be added using an Ampex 2 track and reverberation with an EMT plate.
In early studio sessions Nick used Richard Hewson as an orchestrator, but his unhappiness with the results led him back to colleague Robert Kirby for most future arrangements. The one exception on Five Leaves was River Man, arranged by veteran composer Harry Robinson.
'Five Leaves Left' was recorded to Ampex 4- track,
'Bryter Layter' was 8- track. 3M Series 400
'Pink Moon' was 16-track Studer (although only four-to-five tracks were utilised)
Pink Moon
He arrived at midnight and we started. It was done very quickly. After we had finished I asked him what I should keep, and he said all of it, which was a complete contrast to his former stance. He came in for another evening and that was it. It took hardly any time to mix, since it was only his voice and guitar, with one overdub only. Nick was adamant about what he wanted. He wanted it to be spare and stark, and he wanted it to be spontaneously recorded." John Wood
Some of his earliest recordings stem from his time at Cambridge University when fellow student Robert Kirby recorded several of Nick's songs onto a stereo tape recorder in the Spring of 1968. Robert would use these tapes to write arrangements for the songs with strings and woodwind to be performed in College. A four track demo recorded in a college room in the spring of 1968, was played to Joe Boyd, who had the Witchseason Label, licensed through Island records and Joe offered him a management, publishing, and production contract on the strength of these demos.
"Of all the albums I ever made, the two I produced by Nick are the ones I'm most proud of. I listen to them often because he was extraordinarily good - nothing he ever did was less than striking, and he had the gift of writing melodies of incredible beauty". Joe Boyd
The recording of his first album, Five Leaves Left had began while Nick was still in college, skipping lectures to attend the studio sessions in London. One session was in Morgan but the rest of his recordings would be produced at Sound Techniques Studio in Chelsea. He soon left Cambridge, nine months before graduation, and in the autumn of 1969 moved to London to concentrate on his career as a musician.
Sound Techniques Studio
Sound Techniques Studio was situated near to Chelsea's King's Road at the end of a small alley on 46a Old Church Street. It was originally part of an early 18th-century dairy and opened in the summer of 1965.
Although the studio started by recording a wide variety of musical genres it has become renowned for a catalogue of English folk rock from the late 60s to the mid 70s. This includes all three of the Nick Drake albums, Sandy Denny, Fairport Convention, Jethro Tull, Steeleye Span, Incredible String Band, The Pentangle, John and Beverley Martyn, Richard Thompson, Martin Carthy and Judy Collins. It was also the place that produced the early Pink Floyd records and albums and singles for John Cale, The Yardbirds, Focus and The Who.
So how did they achieve the Nick Drake sound?
According to engineer John Wood they just put a mic in front of him and let him play. Although there may be a lot of truth in this statement there are other factors involved. Let's look at the recording chain for River Man.
Producer - Joe Boyd. Engineer - John Wood.
It's starts off with a great player with a precise style and technique. There seems to be much speculation about what guitar he actually used for recordings but the general consensus is that he used a Guild M-20 but others seem to remember him playing a Martin
The next part is the acoustic space. Sound Techniques Studio had a high ceiling in the centre section and two lower ceiling sections either side beneath the control room and the workshop. This provided a large diffuse and varied acoustic space. The fifteen string players used on the track sat in a semicircle around Nick Drake and the track was recorded live with no over dubs.
A lot of studios of the time were very dead, but Sound Techniques wasn't and that made it quite special. The artists were very organic - there was nothing remotely manufactured about any of them - and it had a character that suited their work"- Jerry Boys
A Neumann U67 was used for the vocal and placed close to the singer's mouth. The guitar was close mic'ed in front of the sound hole using a Neumann KM56.
Neumann KM56
Neumann U67
Fairchild 660
The mics went through the Sound Techniques desk to an Ampex 4-track half inch tape machine. The desk circuits were transformer coupled, discrete transistor with inductor based eq. The vocal was compressed through a Fairchild 660 limiter. Delay would be added using an Ampex 2 track and reverberation with an EMT plate.
In early studio sessions Nick used Richard Hewson as an orchestrator, but his unhappiness with the results led him back to colleague Robert Kirby for most future arrangements. The one exception on Five Leaves was River Man, arranged by veteran composer Harry Robinson.
'Five Leaves Left' was recorded to Ampex 4- track,
'Bryter Layter' was 8- track. 3M Series 400
'Pink Moon' was 16-track Studer (although only four-to-five tracks were utilised)
Pink Moon
He arrived at midnight and we started. It was done very quickly. After we had finished I asked him what I should keep, and he said all of it, which was a complete contrast to his former stance. He came in for another evening and that was it. It took hardly any time to mix, since it was only his voice and guitar, with one overdub only. Nick was adamant about what he wanted. He wanted it to be spare and stark, and he wanted it to be spontaneously recorded." John Wood
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