Best Recording Engineers And Producers. Legendary
Albums. Absolutely best sounding recording consoles and mixing
desks.
PART One-The famous British Recording Consoles
What makes a recording an
icon and legendary part of music history?
The best sound is timeless
and becomes a legend early.
And perfect sound his
perhaps easier to be felt than to be described.
I believe there is a connection between the great sound and
a great recording. That belief dates back from Eighties when
I was listening to the great records of Led Zeppelin,
Beatles, Doors, Frank Zappa or Black Sabbath. I always
noticed, that there is something more to the great impact of
those recordings then just artistic performance or the
composition alone. It was the specific, very pleasing to the
ear sound that was both natural and somehow better then
nature at the same time. Then I started and developed the
interest in technical devices creating that sound. There
were several bands that I particularly liked. There was the
big trio of early hard rock: Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and
Led Zeppelin. I simply loved the Beatles. Those bands I
called the Extra Class of World's Music. There are several
more bands that can be counted into that class: The Doors,
Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes, Jethro Tull.
I learned to like The Rolling Stones a little bit later,
they did not impress me that much at first, although I liked
Brown Sugar. I have always thought that they did not have as
good sound as The Beatles, with the exception for the very
first albums, which are actually first class in terms of
good sound. I called them First League Bands. The sound of bands like Genesis, Soft Machine,
Free, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas
And Papas, Allman Brothers etc. was actually the same, I
simply enjoyed the artistic aspects of the Extra Class Bands
more than the First League Bands. I could hear it on really
small, oval speaker of my Thomson MK 125 cassette tape recorder
that I got as Santa Claus gift before Christmas from my father back in 1973.
The speaker could produce only around 1,5 watts rms, but
still I could hear the difference between the great Extra
Class recordings and anything not falling into that
category. I really
believe there's nothing better then this early classic sound
back from the breakthrough of Sixties and Seventies decades.
When it comes to Seventies I also liked the sound of Boney M
which was really good and also Bee Gees and Abba.
Later, during the Eighties I listened to new records by the same
groups and they were not close to the first original ones.
Instantly I recognized that it was the sound. The records were louder,
they had more even frequency spectrum, much brighter hi end but somehow
they did not sound convincing to me. For example I liked A
Momentary Lapse Of Reason much less then Wish You Were Here
for example, even if the record was much louder and clearer
from the first impression point of view. I simply did not
like the sound of newer equipment in comparison to the late
sixties early eighties recording and mixing gear. The
eighties equipment gave
more punch and treble, it was probably much better in terms
of noise and distortion, but it lost the beautiful
musicality and superb naturalness of the earlier gear. Maybe it
is the reason nobody listens to the music the way they
used to listen back in those days. I believe that inferior
gear (from
artistic point of view) was the major obstacle for artists
like Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath Led Zeppelin etc. from making better
records than their first ones and repeating their incredible
success. People back then enjoyed the
fusion between the sound and art now is only more like the sound and
less art. In this article we will analyze what was the
famous legendary studio equipment that made those beautiful
records and who was working on those recording sessions.
There is three main
ingredients that contribute to a great recording: the sound,
the artists-performers, the mixing engineer and producer.
All of those three ingredients will then give something that
actually enables the making a great recording-a great and
inspiring atmosphere. Recording music is actually recording
human emotions and feel, and if these are not present during
the recording session there is no way to produce a great
recording. Let's start from the gear. The best
sounding recording consoles\mixing desks originate from
early Sixties. Until this day there is nothing that sounds
better. The whole music gear industry still makes money
trying to emulate this gear, making statements about tubes
use and "vintage sound", just because that vintage sound is
something people appreciate the most. The music software
industry continually makes digital recreations of vintage
analog gear, simply because there is still great need and
love for that kind of sound. Probably the best sounding and
most representative recording console of that era is the
console used by EMI recording studios in London, so called
REDD 37. All but one (The Abbey Road) Beatles albums
were made using this recording console. It was all tube
design that sounded absolutely gorgeous. Only one possible
description of that sound is the absolute naturalness with
very broad dynamic range, full bodied mids, sharp but smooth
treble and great openness. How does a musician perform when
using such console? He climbs to the top of his
musical abilities and that is what The Beatles did when
recording in EMI Studios. They recorded all but one of their
albums using the
REDD 37 recording desk. Up to this day the
sound of The Beatles from those early recordings is
considered as probably the best in all the history of music
recording industry. The tube properties of that greatly
sounding console in conjunction with tape reel to reel
machines gave absolutely outstanding, actually never
repeated results. Here is the picture of that
recording\mixing desk:
Another incredibly famous
console is the first transistorized recording console used
by EMI Studios, called the TG 12345. A great number of top
albums in recording history was made using this console
including The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd, The
Beatles Abbey Road and many others. The sound was different
to the
Redd 37 desk-more powerful in bass and less trebly,
with very rich lower middle spectrum, a very musical sound
that was true inspiration to some of the best musicians in
the history. Here is how the
EMI TG 12345 looked like:
The magical component of the sound of those consoles is that
recordings made on them, such as Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side
Of the Moon", "Wish You Were Here" or The Beatles'
"Let It Be" album have some very characteristic feature of
making the artists sounding like they are present right here
between the speakers of our stereo system or headphones
creating illusion that the sounds produced by them are
actually alive or true. This particular feature makes
recordings made with use of those consoles particularly
convincing and different from other recordings. To me, the
whole essence and objective of hi fi was always creating an
impression that the sounds coming from speakers are not fake
or artificial but real. This does not have much to do with
frequency response, level or dynamic range- there are
millions of recordings that sound much louder and more
powerful in terms of frequency content, but do not create
that effect of complete illusion of reality. This quality of
those consoles not only has great significance regarding the
final sound of records created with their use. It was
essential in the very moment of recording, inspiring artists
and making them feeling what they did much better. It was
the whole secret of the magic behind those legendary
performances back from the late Sixties\early Seventies. It
worked liked a feedback- the musicians and singers felt and
heard themselves better and natural, and gave better, more
natural performances that were very musical. And the mixing
engineer\producer heard what they did in the same way and
was able to participate in the whole audio spectacle almost
as a band member and create timeless recording. This has
great influence on the way the listener perceived the music
then and perceives it today-after all those years the
artists sound convincingly true. This is all the magic of
recording music. Those two recording consoles made
probably the biggest studio albums ever recorded, such as
"Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" by The Beatles or
The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd. Although worth
noting are the "Alan Parsons Project" albums, which were
mainly recorded in Studio2.
TG consoles in various configurations were in
Studio 3 from 1970 to the end of 1974, Studio 2 from 1969 to
mid 1983 and Studio 1 from 1970 to March 1984.
During these periods they were used on everything
that came out of the Abbey Road studios.
The same TG
12345 console was used for mixing The Beatles "Anthology"
series, because George Martin, The Beatles' producer could
not think of any other console to give the archival
recordings better sound.
During the early Seventies a very fast evolution in the
recording business took place, there was need for bigger and
bigger recording consoles and the number of tracks rapidly
increased from 8 to 16 and then to 24 in a very short time.
The TG12345 console grew to 16 track but around this time
EMI decided they no longer wished to be in the recording
console business and further development of the TG console
was abandoned. Although the EMI usually produced all the
gear needed for own recordings, including even tape decks,
the decision was made, for the first time, to purchase a
console from
an outside manufacturer for use at Abbey Road.
The
studio management agreed to purchase a Neve console, with a
number of
EMI modifications incorporated. These mods included an EMI
designed Phase meter and low-level
meters, and the incorporation of input meters on every
channel, as a "signal present" indication.
The
console was designed as 36 input 24 track, with the monitor
section in a separate wing on the left
making the overall configuration L-Shaped. The desk also
featured the original "Necam" moving-
fader automation system. The tape machines were Abbey Road's
trusty Studer A80's, often in a
24 tk + 16 tk arrangement, synchronization being Studer's
own TLS2000 system. The monitor section
could handle an additional 24 inputs on mixdown (although
these were non-automated). Here is how this console looked
like:
The sound was good, bud not as good as former
consoles. Rupert Neve's design was characterized by very
good technical specifications like dynamic range, low noise
and frequency response, but musically was somewhat less
convincing then the Redd 37 or the REDD 51, which was the
newer version of the 37. The sound of Neve-EMI console can
be described as extremely clean and silk-like, with soft
quality to it and with very broad frequency spectrum.
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