New Monday #135
Happy Monday!
Is he going to drone on about Sound Techniques AGAIN??!! This has been going on for MONTHS...
Well, since January, but not without respite. And those of you who have been using the Sound Techniques Alpha Range Channel know that all the hype is justified.
I'm a bit written out. We're putting up a new website, we released the Alpha and there was a manual, there's New Mondays, I've been writing courses and my hands actually hurt from typing. So, perhaps this New Monday will be mercifully short or something will strike my fancy and I'll write WAY TOO much.
Ken Scott
Now there's a name you should know. Like so many great British Recording Luminaries (there's a book title), he got his start at EMI Abbey Road. His first session as a second engineer was working on A Hard Day's Night. Jeez. He worked on all the Beatles records after that, becoming their main engineer for Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album. He eventually left EMI and went to Trident, where they had... a Sound... Techniques... say it with me... A-Range Console.
Which Ken loved! Ken recorded The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, amongst other things. He was by then producing, and went on to work with Supertramp, Missing Persons. Ken, do you get tired of working with EVERYONE? I get tired of writing their names.
Ken Scott is still working, and he's a fabulous engineer and a lovely fellow. And here is a video of Ken Scott setting the record straight about Trident Studios and the Sound Techniques Console. This is a video I should have linked to last week, but I was insane and sleepless.
https://youtu.be/0kI07bhH2cg?si=qEiS1QU-8_Qo1Zeo
If you look to the left, you'll see a bunch of videos about the Sound Techniques. And they're all really recent. What the HECK is going on??
What's going on is that, well, we released the Alpha Range Channel with Sound Techniques, and Warm Audio has released the JUDE preamp, which is a preamp that's dead on the original Sound Techniques preamps. And we timed these releases. SO, some videos are ours, some are Warm Audio, but there's something more.
There's a team of people that have been working on a book and a movie about Sound Techniques, and especially Sound Techniques Studio in Chelsea, London. I wrote a bit on Sound Techniques Studio here.
The Parts You Don't Hear
The movie and the book are the passion project of filmmakers Nick Turner and Neil Innes. Fascinated by the Sound Techniques story, and the amazing talent that worked at the studio, the two started their documentary, The Parts You Don't Hear: The Untold Story of Sound Techniques, in 2014. The more they did pre-production, the deeper and wider the project got. They interviewed everyone, from designer Geoff Frost and engineer John Wood, the founders, to artists like uber-guitarist Richard Thompson, engineers like Ken Scott and Bruce Botnick.
Progress on the movie was slowed down by the pandemic. The book is in printing and preorders are available. Here's a link to preorder the book, Sound Techniques Recording Studio. And here is a link to donate to the film's funding.
The talent that worked out of Sound Techniques Studio was superb. The studio became the epicenter of the English Folk Rock movement. We made a playlist here. It's great music and wonderful recordings.
The history of recording is pretty niche. The history of a particular recording studio and a now obscure console maker is even more niche. But if you go down the rabbit hole, it's fascinating. Nick Turner and Neil Innes, Danny White, and Dan Korneff and I, are dragging you down the rabbit hole with us. It is a weird sensation to hear a song like "Fire and Rain" and think: Sunset Sound Studio 2. Sound Techniques, and then be able to hear the sound of that console, and then bring it up on my DAW... god, that is COOOOOOL.
A Lesson
Last week's TIP #9 was really a lesson on the Alpha Range Channel's signal flow. This week, I wrote a lot on preamp. The A-Range had a unique impedance matching system that couples into the preamp. We've modeled all of that because it is essential to the sound of the console. I've written a lesson that combines modes on the channel strip with some of the electronics involved. It's explained clearly and if you're new to this stuff, give it a read and apply it to not only the Alpha Range, but to all the recording you're working on. We want you to become a master at this stuff.
Setting Gain, Impedance and Saturation with the Sound Techniques Alpha Range Channel
A very warm thank you to Nick Turner, who has been so generous with his resources. Please check out the book and the movie, and if you can, spread the word a bit.
Warm regards,
Luke