The Art Of Making Records – A Very Brief History
Making records, 40 years ago - When I first made the transition from Rock’n’Roll musician to Producer/Engineer - and sat behind a recording console, was entirely different from the way they are made today. The main, and most significant, difference was that in those days the recording engineer was documenting a performance - Today, he is creating a performance. This article will chart, briefly, some of the history of recording and offer some insight into the changing roles of the recording studio, the recording engineer, the musician nd mixing music as they all continue to evolve into the 21st. century.
We’ve come quite a long way since musicians were carefully arranged around (sometimes) a single microphone, being required to stay put, and play until they “got it right”! The volume and blend of the instruments was worked out by trial and error until the most effective arrangement of the musicians around the microphone was found. On some early jazz and blues recordings, you can hear the whole balance change as the microphone was moved to feature a soloing piano or other instrument. Up through the late fifties and into the sixties, music was still a live performance in the studio. Most recordings were monaural, two-track at most (Hi-fi). Machine to machine transfer of the recording, or “ping-ponging” as it was sometimes called, provided a way to add additional vocals or instruments to the performance as the transfer was being made. The classic recordings by Les Paul and Mary Ford represent the finest examples of this recording technique. Incidentally, we have the guitarist, Les Paul to thank for helping with the invention and development of Sel-Sync®, or Selective Synchronization, which makes today’s multi-track recording possible.
The art of the recording engineer
in those days was in bringing into the control room, and enhancing
if possible, the music being performed live in the studio. The experienced
engineer didn’t take for granted what he heard through the speakers
in the control room, he walked around the studio, listened to the
music, absorbing its energy in the room. Proof of this are the
unique qualities that allow the “oldies” to stand alongside the technically
superior recordings of today. Those qualities are the magic and excitement
that existed in the studio, as the music was played, captured on the
records. Indeed, you can actually hear the room on many of the recordings
of that era. The early Motown and
Recording continued relatively unchanged, even after the introduction of the four track tape machine with Sel-Sync®, in that the ability to overdub, in sync, didn’t really affect the way the basic performance was recorded. The basic, or rhythm, track was performed live, but now the vocals or additional instruments could be recorded on the adjacent tracks, either simultaneously, or later. Also, ping-ponging between two four track machines provided the option of recording the individual instruments of the rhythm section “live” onto separate tracks of one four track machine, then sub-mixing them down to one, or more, tracks of a second four track machine, leaving the remaining tracks open for vocals and additional instruments such as solos or string and/or horn arrangements. This sub-mixing procedure could go on almost indefinitely, being limited only by the buildup of tape-noise, and perhaps more importantly, by the ability to hold together a cohesive mix while continuously bouncing tracks backwards and forwards between tape machines.
Around the mid-sixties, the revolution in recording really started to gather momentum. There were many contributing factors: transistor and then more sophisticated solid-state devices began to replace the tube circuitry that had dominated every aspect of electronics; the eight track tape recorder - Interestingly, I believe that Atlantic Records had an eight track machine as early as 1958 ; primitive recording consoles were being replaced by consoles with multiple inputs, each having its own rudimental equalization, echo send and the ability to assign selectively, via output busses, to the individual tracks of the multi-track machine and finally the emergence of what we now call “out-board gear”, that is ‘stand-alone devices for echo/reverb, equalization, limiting/compression et cetera..
Perhaps a more significant metamorphosis was in the role of the musician. No longer content to stay on “the other side of the glass”, many musicians were venturing into the control room, experimenting and impacting the electronic, as well as the musical outcome of their music. The recording console had become, in effect, a musical instrument. The Beatles and George Martin’s creativity, using four track-to-four track (ping-pong) techniques, and utilizing the newly developed Dolby Noise Reduction®, set the benchmark for the sixties with their release, in England on June 1st. 1967, of “Sergeant Peppers Heart Club Band”. It remains one of the most influential popular music albums of all time.
The arrival of the 16 track, closely followed by the 24 track, in the early seventies, brought about another notable change. Up until this time, the studio itself had escaped critical attention. It was traditionally an environment in which music was performed “live” for purpose of recording. But now, with the capability of putting every instrument on an individual track, the existing studio acoustics presented quiet a dilemma - what could be done about the “bleed” between microphones? All of a sudden, the ambiance, the “liveness”, of the studio (the natural acoustic space between the instruments and the room) was now considered detrimental to this new recording procedure. Simply stated, the wonderful acoustical qualities of the studios that held together and enhanced the performance of musicians playing together - were in danger of being abandoned in an effort to further isolate the instruments on the tracks of the multi-track tape machine!