Recording in digital marks a great leap forward, no doubt. The same band that might've invested $10,000 in an album a generation ago can buy a tricked-out Pro Tools rig and plug-in suite today, and record as many songs and albums as they want.
Digital has also proven a boon for studio owners, including yours truly. Many of us could never afford a Neve or API console or a 24-track Studer machine without a second mortgage.
Now, we have an army of plug-ins — including those licensed by Neve, API and Studer — and far, far more than 24 tracks at our disposal.
But it's true that the convenience and ease of digital have marginalized the best recording methods of the past half century, some to the point where they're on the verge of disappearing.
We should cover up the bloody computer screen and spend more time listening.”
One of the things I see more and more these days is that the recording process is done by looking at the computer screen as opposed to listening,” says Ken Scott, the legendary producer-engineer who has worked closely with The Beatles, David Bowie and Supertramp, to name just a few. We should cover up the bloody computer screen and spend more time listening.”
So listen” to these vintage recording techniques in your head as you read on. Try them out at home, or in a big studio, or the next time you see the bloody computer screen.” A very special thanks to Scott, who provided valuable background for this piece.
1. Tune in to out-of-tune guitars
It's never a bad idea to make sure instruments start out in the ballpark. But if you listen to Bob Dylan's classic Queen Jane Approximately,” guitar tuning wobbles all over the place—as in waaaaay all over the place. Now: Who'd dare fix that song today? Back in the day, tuning was done by ear to a piano, or with bulky strobe tuners weighing more than 30 pounds. If a band went from take-to-take or take-to-overdub without stopping to retune, this produced a chorus effect where guitar parts thickened the overall sound.
2. Stitch up A&B mixes
While working with Bowie, Scott developed a technique where a completed track was mixed in sections that shifted in sonic character. One way to think of this today is splicing” pieces of two separate mixes. Or three. Or four. Try not to automate your every move; approach each mix change separately, and organically, to close in on that way-back feeling.
3. Use Tape Speed for Octave and Key Changes
Scott says this technique is clearly heard on George Martin's piano solo on In My Life.” He recorded a half-speed piano, where you set the tape to 7 1/2 inches per second, play the part slowly, and play the tape back at normal speed.” Not only do timing differences get ironed out: When it plays back at the normal octave, it plays in a different timbre as well,” he says.
4. Mix at a Different Studio
Studio hopping was fairly common in late '60s London. When you go to a new locale to mix and/or master, you get a fresh perspective. It's especially wise to mix at a place that can upgrade your tracks with a leap in gear power. Be careful, though: Many a bonehead tries to fly a supersonic jet. Enlist a gifted engineer with fresh ears — one hearing the song for perhaps the first time.
5. Let it bleed
Track isolation took off in the 1970s, but many sterile recordings resulted. An overall rounded tone results when drums bleed a touch into guitar mics, for example. As you prep a mix with bleed, examine all the instruments as a unit first. The late Doug Fieger of The Knack related to me in an interview that tasty bleed helped the band mix My Sharona” in less than half an hour. And another factor for nailing that song was …
6. Do it Live
Too many Frankensteined” recordings have enough airbrushing to suggest an army of engineer-surgeons. When a band comes to your studio, have the courage to send the troops home for more rehearsal. On their return, cut multiple takes instead of one that you'll Pro Tool to death. As in days of old, the goal is to knit together an overall track that bristles with energy and even encourages you to leave in mistakes. What would Louie Louie” be without the frustrated drummer dropping his drumstick, and the f-bomb, at the 54-second mark?
7. Make Your Own Sound Effects and Landscapes
For the Supertramp song ”School,” Scott made field recordings of kids playing outside. Approach soundscapes with an idea of what you hope to capture musically. Kids playing have their own rhythm and abstract melody.
8. The Room is Everything
There's your Mystery Beatle, folks: the cutting room. Your extra musician” could even be your living room if it's ambient and makes the musicians feel great. A great recording rig, I would argue, comes second to a room that makes a performance pop and a band soar. Note that hardwood floors and high ceilings will add heft to your drums.
9. Create limitations
When four-track space was limited, engineers and producers made a reduction mix,” where three filled tracks were bounced onto one, and sometimes bounced again when the two freed-up tracks were used. This forced resourceful decisions. In an age of unlimited tracks, there's every temptation to think of recording without limits. But is that a good thing? To get extreme, would you rather record a guitar amp with one mic or 10? Think about how you can streamline, simplify and stimulate. Circling the band members around one mic worked for Bill Haley and the Comets, then decades later for the Cowboy Junkies.
10. Use a Sound's Qualities Over Sound Quality
Many of today's blues records, for example, take advantage” of digital by making squeaky-clean products worthy of a yuppie barbecue. Listen to classic records with buried snare drums (Otis Redding), distorted horns (James Brown), and overall lower fidelity ('60s Motown all the way back to Django Reinhardt). That doesn't mean to abandon clean recordings—just consider when a little bit of sonic sepia-tone can create a whole lotta character.
All music should touch your soul, your insides, and that's what we're not hearing today”
Make no mistake: High tech isn't the end of historical recording techniques: It's making creative history in its own right. But as we look ahead, it pays to look back and see what we've abandoned by the musical roadside.
All music should touch your soul, your insides, and that's what we're not hearing today,” Scott says. It should be loud and soft, and not all blasting your face. If it's a little off pitch or out of time, then that moves you — as opposed to singers going into the studio and saying, ‘I'll sing it once; you fix it with Auto-Tune and move it around so it's in time.'”
In other words, a heart-rending studio vocal or performance — even with its blemishes — has a better shot at being timeless.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lou Carlozo
Lou Carlozo is a studio musician, engineer and producer based in Chicago and a former Chicago Tribune music editor and writer. In 2013 he scored and performed the soundtrack for the independent comedy We've Got Balls,” which won multiple awards on nationwide festival circuits.
Saturday 15 July 2017
Monday 10 July 2017
15 Of The Worlds Most Legendary Recording Studios
I was visiting London a few weeks ago and on a slow day decided to do the Beatles walking tour (which was inevitably called the Magical Mystery Tour”). The tour of course ended at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in northwest London, and I got to see no fewer than six tourists nearly get killed stepping directly into oncoming traffic while trying to catch the iconic crosswalk photo.
Modern music fans usually don't listen to music live, unlike our ancestors, who listened to live music exclusively. As I stood outside Abbey Road Studios and watched a 16-year-old Colombian girl weep at the site where the likes of Golden Slumbers,” A Day in the Life,” and All You Need Is Love” were recorded, I realized that a musical tour of the world — a tour of the songs that moved you to tears, or helped you through a hard time, or amped you up for a big moment — would actually be a tour of the studios, these often nondescript buildings that are typically hidden in plain sight in our cities. Here are some of the world's greatest studios.
Abbey Road Studios
The studio itself doesn't stand out particularly from the rest of the buildings around it, and it sits in a fairly quiet posh northwestern London suburb. If it weren't for the tourists crowding the crosswalk and the Beatles-related graffiti covering its outer gate, one might pass and never notice it. The most famous image of Abbey Road is of course the crosswalk right outside the studio. Vehicles in London are legally required to wait at so-called zebra crossings” as long as you physically stay in motion, so you can take as long as you like taking your picture, as long as you move in slow motion.
Aside from most of the Beatles albums, Abbey Road (formerly EMI Studios) is also the recording site of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Duran Duran's eponymous debut album (1981), parts of Radiohead's The Bends (1995) and OK Computer (1997), and Lady Gaga's Born This Way (2011).
The Dungeon
The Dungeon is probably better known for the hip-hop collective that was born out of it, the Dungeon Family. The Dungeon itself was a studio in producer Rico Wade's mother's basement in Atlanta, Georgia, but the collective has included some of the greatest hip-hop acts of the South and, consequently, of all time.
At the top left is the only picture I've been able to find of the Dungeon — pictured in it are the Dungeon Family and production-company founders of Organized Noize, Sleepy Brown, Ray Murray, and Rico Wade (from left to right). Probably the most famous members of the Dungeon Family are Big Boi and Andre 3000 (bottom left). Virtually all of Outkast's albums were recorded with the Dungeon Family. It's also the home of Gnarls Barkley, Cee-Lo Green, Bubba Sparxxx, Janelle Monae, and Future (pictured to the right with a Dungeon Family tattoo on his forearms).
Muscle Shoals may be best known for a song that wasn't recorded at Muscle Shoals: Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama.” One of the lines is Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers / And they been known to pick a song or two.” Muscle Shoals was formed when a band, the Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section (nicknamed the Swampers) broke away from the great FAME Studios nearby and formed their own. While they've got a slightly bigger studio these days, it's still in the tiny town of Muscle Shoals, way off the beaten path in northwestern Alabama.
Even though the original studio looked like a roadside mechanic's garage, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio would go on to record tracks for the likes of the Rolling Stones (Brown Sugar” and Wild Horses” from Sticky Fingers in 1971), Paul Simon's Kodachrome” (1973), Bob Seger's Night Moves (1976), the Black Keys' awesome Brothers (2009, at the new studio), and, of course, Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album (but not released till much later), Skynyrd's First (1978).
Trident Studios
It's hard to understate how important London studios were to rock ‘n' roll in the '60s and '70s, and high among those studios was Trident. Tucked back in an alley in London's posh Soho neighborhood, Trident is barely noticeable from the street, and it takes a little bit of searching to even realize it's a studio.
Relative anonymity aside, Trident Studios were responsible for the discovery of Queen and their first four albums, Queen (1973), Queen II (1974), Sheer Heart Attack (1974), and A Night at the Opera (1975), as well as James Taylor's eponymous debut album (1968), the Rolling Stones' Let it Bleed (1969), David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars (1972), and Lou Reed's Transformer (1972).
On the other side of the world, we have Sunset Sound Recorders, on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. It was originally built for recording the music to Walt Disney movies, and you can thank them for Mary Poppins, Bambi, and 101 Dalmatians, but they went on to much greater rock heights.
Probably the most famous album recorded here was the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street (1972, and pictured above), generally believed to be their best ever, but it was also the home of the Beach Boys' best album, Pet Sounds (1966). My personal favorites, however, are Led Zeppelin's albums Led Zeppelin II (1969) and Led Zeppelin IV (1972), both of which were partially recorded and mixed here. Other famous ones include the Doors' The Doors (1967) and Strange Days (1967), Jet's Get Born (2003), the Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, and, of course, Macy Gray's On How Life Is (2000).
Headley Grange
Headley Grange is a former poorhouse in Headley, England, and it gets on this list for a single reason: its stairwell. During a recording session in the room next door, Jimmy Page was trying out the riff to When the Levee Breaks,” when the crew started setting up John Bonham's drum kit in the hall. He went out, start playing, and they recorded it from the stairwell.
The result is one of rock's best ever sounds. Bad Company, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, and Peter Frampton recorded here as well.
Motown
Of course Motown is on here. Technically, the studio itself is called Hitsville, U.S.A.” (now a museum, pictured at the bottom), but the site was also the home of Motown's headquarters in Detroit, and as such I'm calling it Motown. It was without a doubt one of the most important recording studios of all time, and if you say the name Motown” now, it evokes an entire genre of music put out by Berry Gordy's Motown label.
Among the many great albums recorded at Hitsville are Marvin Gaye's What's Going On (1971) and Let's Get it On (1973), the Jackson 5's debut Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5 (1969 — Ross and the Supremes are pictured at the top left with Berry Gordy), the Marvelettes' Please Mr. Postman (1961), and Stevie Wonder's debut, The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie (1962).
Electric Lady Studios
Electric Lady Studios (as you've probably guessed) was founded by Jimi Hendrix after how much it cost him to record his epic album Electric Ladyland. Hendrix was only able to use the studio for four weeks before he died, but the studio, in New York's Greenwich Village, is still very much in use.
We can thank Electric Lady Studios for Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy (1973) and Physical Graffiti (1975), Patti Smith's Horses (1975) The Clash's Combat Rock (1982), Billy Idol's Rebel Yell (1983) Weezer's eponymous 1995 album, Santana's Supernatural (1999), the White Stripes' De Stijl (2000), the Roots' Game Theory (2006), as well as a ton of Kiss albums.
Sun Studio
We've been focusing a lot on rock, so let's just get this out of our system: Sun Studio, in Memphis, Tennessee, was originally more of a blues outfit. But blues begat rock, and it begat it right in Sun Studios in the form of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash, all of whom recorded albums here.
Aside from the founders of rock, Sun Studio also recorded albums for blues greats B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and Junior Parker. It closed for a while but then reopened in 1987, where, probably most notably, it recorded U2's Rattle and Hum (1988).
Studio One
It's called the Motown of Jamaica,” but really, it should just be called Studio One. Because Studio One is the home of reggae, and it doesn't need the Motown qualifier.
Founded by Clement Coxsone” Dodd (the man with the microphone) back in 1963, Studio One recorded albums for Bob Marley and the Wailers, Lee Scratch Perry, Burning Spear, and Toots and the Maytals. You're welcome, world.
Rolling Stones Mobile Studio
This one could get on here just for the novelty of having what's basically a truck with a recording studio in it, but it's actually been the site of a number of insanely good recordings. It was set up by Mick Jagger when he got sick of all the problems of using regular recording studios. They set up a studio in his home and then, so they could move it around, put a control room into this van.
We can thank the mobile studio for songs like Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water,” and — because it's mobile — for the most famous live recording of Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry” — the one appearing on the posthumous Legend (1984). It also recorded parts of a number of Stones and Zeppelin albums, as well as Simple Minds' 1979 debut album, Life in a Day, and live performances by Patti Smith and the Ramones.
Capitol Studios
The home of Capitol Records, Capitol Studios gets on this list for the sheer breadth of the artists they've recorded here. All major record labels are going to have crazy amounts of awesome musical artists recording in their studios, but Capitol Records is best known for its echo chambers,” which are part of an underground concrete bunker designed by legendary guitarist and sound engineer Les Paul to get a better reverb sound.
The studios are most famous for being the place where Frank Sinatra did a lot of his recordings — his microphone is still here, and the band Bastille recently recorded on it — as well as being a home to Nat King Cole and the Beach Boys. But it wasn't just older music: Oasis, Daft Punk, Aaliyah, Outkast, and fun. have all recorded here.
Lee Scratch” Perry's Black Ark
Easily the most fascinating studio on this list is Lee Scratch” Perry's Black Ark Studio in Kingston, Jamaica. While not quite as mainstream, and definitely more low-tech than nearby Studio One, the Black Ark was known for Perry's innovative producing techniques, and also for his incredibly strange behavior. He was known for blowing ganja smoke into the tape decks, burying tapes, and spraying the unprotected tapes with blood, urine, and whiskey to bless” them. Eventually, after a few rough years of being extorted by gangsters, Perry covered the entire building in magic-marker drawings and then burned it to the ground to get rid of ‘bad spirits.' Other than producing many of Perry's own records (and basically inventing the ‘dub' genre), Black Ark gave us recordings from Bob Marley, Paul McCartney and Wings, the Clash, and Junior Murvin.
Hans Zimmer's Music Lair
You may not have heard of Hans Zimmer, but you've definitely listened to him. Zimmer is the German composer known for writing the scores to movies like Gladiator, The Dark Knight, Inception, and The Lion King. I've always been a fan of his music — try listening to The Dark Knight when you're trying to get some work done, it's second only to Daft Punk's Alive — but I never knew he had an awesome pad like this. It looks like what I imagined Hogwarts looking like. Yes, those are skull lamps, and those aren't bookshelves in the back — that's a synthesizer.
Chase Park Transduction
Athens, Georgia, has become synonymous with awesome music, and one of its most prolific studios is Chase Park Transduction. It's recorded the granddaddy of Athens rock bands, REM, as well as acts like Bright Eyes, Deerhunter, Animal Collective, and Queens of the Stone Age.
Modern music fans usually don't listen to music live, unlike our ancestors, who listened to live music exclusively. As I stood outside Abbey Road Studios and watched a 16-year-old Colombian girl weep at the site where the likes of Golden Slumbers,” A Day in the Life,” and All You Need Is Love” were recorded, I realized that a musical tour of the world — a tour of the songs that moved you to tears, or helped you through a hard time, or amped you up for a big moment — would actually be a tour of the studios, these often nondescript buildings that are typically hidden in plain sight in our cities. Here are some of the world's greatest studios.
Abbey Road Studios
The studio itself doesn't stand out particularly from the rest of the buildings around it, and it sits in a fairly quiet posh northwestern London suburb. If it weren't for the tourists crowding the crosswalk and the Beatles-related graffiti covering its outer gate, one might pass and never notice it. The most famous image of Abbey Road is of course the crosswalk right outside the studio. Vehicles in London are legally required to wait at so-called zebra crossings” as long as you physically stay in motion, so you can take as long as you like taking your picture, as long as you move in slow motion.
Aside from most of the Beatles albums, Abbey Road (formerly EMI Studios) is also the recording site of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Duran Duran's eponymous debut album (1981), parts of Radiohead's The Bends (1995) and OK Computer (1997), and Lady Gaga's Born This Way (2011).
The Dungeon
The Dungeon is probably better known for the hip-hop collective that was born out of it, the Dungeon Family. The Dungeon itself was a studio in producer Rico Wade's mother's basement in Atlanta, Georgia, but the collective has included some of the greatest hip-hop acts of the South and, consequently, of all time.
At the top left is the only picture I've been able to find of the Dungeon — pictured in it are the Dungeon Family and production-company founders of Organized Noize, Sleepy Brown, Ray Murray, and Rico Wade (from left to right). Probably the most famous members of the Dungeon Family are Big Boi and Andre 3000 (bottom left). Virtually all of Outkast's albums were recorded with the Dungeon Family. It's also the home of Gnarls Barkley, Cee-Lo Green, Bubba Sparxxx, Janelle Monae, and Future (pictured to the right with a Dungeon Family tattoo on his forearms).
Muscle Shoals may be best known for a song that wasn't recorded at Muscle Shoals: Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama.” One of the lines is Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers / And they been known to pick a song or two.” Muscle Shoals was formed when a band, the Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section (nicknamed the Swampers) broke away from the great FAME Studios nearby and formed their own. While they've got a slightly bigger studio these days, it's still in the tiny town of Muscle Shoals, way off the beaten path in northwestern Alabama.
Even though the original studio looked like a roadside mechanic's garage, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio would go on to record tracks for the likes of the Rolling Stones (Brown Sugar” and Wild Horses” from Sticky Fingers in 1971), Paul Simon's Kodachrome” (1973), Bob Seger's Night Moves (1976), the Black Keys' awesome Brothers (2009, at the new studio), and, of course, Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album (but not released till much later), Skynyrd's First (1978).
Trident Studios
It's hard to understate how important London studios were to rock ‘n' roll in the '60s and '70s, and high among those studios was Trident. Tucked back in an alley in London's posh Soho neighborhood, Trident is barely noticeable from the street, and it takes a little bit of searching to even realize it's a studio.
Relative anonymity aside, Trident Studios were responsible for the discovery of Queen and their first four albums, Queen (1973), Queen II (1974), Sheer Heart Attack (1974), and A Night at the Opera (1975), as well as James Taylor's eponymous debut album (1968), the Rolling Stones' Let it Bleed (1969), David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars (1972), and Lou Reed's Transformer (1972).
On the other side of the world, we have Sunset Sound Recorders, on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. It was originally built for recording the music to Walt Disney movies, and you can thank them for Mary Poppins, Bambi, and 101 Dalmatians, but they went on to much greater rock heights.
Probably the most famous album recorded here was the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street (1972, and pictured above), generally believed to be their best ever, but it was also the home of the Beach Boys' best album, Pet Sounds (1966). My personal favorites, however, are Led Zeppelin's albums Led Zeppelin II (1969) and Led Zeppelin IV (1972), both of which were partially recorded and mixed here. Other famous ones include the Doors' The Doors (1967) and Strange Days (1967), Jet's Get Born (2003), the Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, and, of course, Macy Gray's On How Life Is (2000).
Headley Grange
Headley Grange is a former poorhouse in Headley, England, and it gets on this list for a single reason: its stairwell. During a recording session in the room next door, Jimmy Page was trying out the riff to When the Levee Breaks,” when the crew started setting up John Bonham's drum kit in the hall. He went out, start playing, and they recorded it from the stairwell.
The result is one of rock's best ever sounds. Bad Company, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, and Peter Frampton recorded here as well.
Motown
Of course Motown is on here. Technically, the studio itself is called Hitsville, U.S.A.” (now a museum, pictured at the bottom), but the site was also the home of Motown's headquarters in Detroit, and as such I'm calling it Motown. It was without a doubt one of the most important recording studios of all time, and if you say the name Motown” now, it evokes an entire genre of music put out by Berry Gordy's Motown label.
Among the many great albums recorded at Hitsville are Marvin Gaye's What's Going On (1971) and Let's Get it On (1973), the Jackson 5's debut Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5 (1969 — Ross and the Supremes are pictured at the top left with Berry Gordy), the Marvelettes' Please Mr. Postman (1961), and Stevie Wonder's debut, The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie (1962).
Electric Lady Studios
Electric Lady Studios (as you've probably guessed) was founded by Jimi Hendrix after how much it cost him to record his epic album Electric Ladyland. Hendrix was only able to use the studio for four weeks before he died, but the studio, in New York's Greenwich Village, is still very much in use.
We can thank Electric Lady Studios for Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy (1973) and Physical Graffiti (1975), Patti Smith's Horses (1975) The Clash's Combat Rock (1982), Billy Idol's Rebel Yell (1983) Weezer's eponymous 1995 album, Santana's Supernatural (1999), the White Stripes' De Stijl (2000), the Roots' Game Theory (2006), as well as a ton of Kiss albums.
Sun Studio
We've been focusing a lot on rock, so let's just get this out of our system: Sun Studio, in Memphis, Tennessee, was originally more of a blues outfit. But blues begat rock, and it begat it right in Sun Studios in the form of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash, all of whom recorded albums here.
Aside from the founders of rock, Sun Studio also recorded albums for blues greats B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and Junior Parker. It closed for a while but then reopened in 1987, where, probably most notably, it recorded U2's Rattle and Hum (1988).
Studio One
It's called the Motown of Jamaica,” but really, it should just be called Studio One. Because Studio One is the home of reggae, and it doesn't need the Motown qualifier.
Founded by Clement Coxsone” Dodd (the man with the microphone) back in 1963, Studio One recorded albums for Bob Marley and the Wailers, Lee Scratch Perry, Burning Spear, and Toots and the Maytals. You're welcome, world.
Rolling Stones Mobile Studio
This one could get on here just for the novelty of having what's basically a truck with a recording studio in it, but it's actually been the site of a number of insanely good recordings. It was set up by Mick Jagger when he got sick of all the problems of using regular recording studios. They set up a studio in his home and then, so they could move it around, put a control room into this van.
We can thank the mobile studio for songs like Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water,” and — because it's mobile — for the most famous live recording of Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry” — the one appearing on the posthumous Legend (1984). It also recorded parts of a number of Stones and Zeppelin albums, as well as Simple Minds' 1979 debut album, Life in a Day, and live performances by Patti Smith and the Ramones.
Capitol Studios
The home of Capitol Records, Capitol Studios gets on this list for the sheer breadth of the artists they've recorded here. All major record labels are going to have crazy amounts of awesome musical artists recording in their studios, but Capitol Records is best known for its echo chambers,” which are part of an underground concrete bunker designed by legendary guitarist and sound engineer Les Paul to get a better reverb sound.
The studios are most famous for being the place where Frank Sinatra did a lot of his recordings — his microphone is still here, and the band Bastille recently recorded on it — as well as being a home to Nat King Cole and the Beach Boys. But it wasn't just older music: Oasis, Daft Punk, Aaliyah, Outkast, and fun. have all recorded here.
Lee Scratch” Perry's Black Ark
Easily the most fascinating studio on this list is Lee Scratch” Perry's Black Ark Studio in Kingston, Jamaica. While not quite as mainstream, and definitely more low-tech than nearby Studio One, the Black Ark was known for Perry's innovative producing techniques, and also for his incredibly strange behavior. He was known for blowing ganja smoke into the tape decks, burying tapes, and spraying the unprotected tapes with blood, urine, and whiskey to bless” them. Eventually, after a few rough years of being extorted by gangsters, Perry covered the entire building in magic-marker drawings and then burned it to the ground to get rid of ‘bad spirits.' Other than producing many of Perry's own records (and basically inventing the ‘dub' genre), Black Ark gave us recordings from Bob Marley, Paul McCartney and Wings, the Clash, and Junior Murvin.
Hans Zimmer's Music Lair
You may not have heard of Hans Zimmer, but you've definitely listened to him. Zimmer is the German composer known for writing the scores to movies like Gladiator, The Dark Knight, Inception, and The Lion King. I've always been a fan of his music — try listening to The Dark Knight when you're trying to get some work done, it's second only to Daft Punk's Alive — but I never knew he had an awesome pad like this. It looks like what I imagined Hogwarts looking like. Yes, those are skull lamps, and those aren't bookshelves in the back — that's a synthesizer.
Chase Park Transduction
Athens, Georgia, has become synonymous with awesome music, and one of its most prolific studios is Chase Park Transduction. It's recorded the granddaddy of Athens rock bands, REM, as well as acts like Bright Eyes, Deerhunter, Animal Collective, and Queens of the Stone Age.
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