New Monday #86
To set the scene: We’re 32,000 feet above the Atlantic. I’m probably sitting beside my brother, who is seven. My parents and sister are further down the row. We’re in a 747.
The inflight music program is probably about an hour loop. I imagine they have a multitrack continuous loop tape deck somewhere in the plane, like a giant 8-track cartridge system in your cousin’s Camaro.
A song ends, the DJ is a little smarmy and he starts talking about the next song. How the band got their name. Evidently somebody walked into the studio and said, “Hey Ace!” And that was how they got their name.
Ace had a few decent hits, the biggest being How Long (Has This Been Going On).
The song was written by Paul Carrack, Ace’s lead singer and keyboardist. After Ace broke up, Carrack went on to play with Squeeze – he sang (but didn’t write) their biggest song, Tempted. He also was the lead singer of Genesis spin-off Mike and the Mechanics — he sang Silent Running—toured with Roxy Music, Roger Waters, Eric Clapton, Elton John, and added keyboards to The Smith’s records. A very talented dude.
How Long suggests the song is about an affair. Carrack had a steady girlfriend whom he married and is still married to—it’s not about their relationship. Ace’s bassist, Terry "Tex" Comer, was playing for a bunch of other groups on the sly. The song's impetus was that. In keeping with the sneaky nature of the tune, Carrack stole the baseline from another song, Traveling Song, by the English folk group Pentangle.
It’s a really catchy baseline—basically one note but it works!
How Long was cut at Rockfield Studios in Wales, an early residential studio, perhaps on an MCI 500 series console, and mixed at Trident Studios on a Trident Console, most likely. I say most likely because… we will be digging into the shenanigans and games surrounding Trident Consoles later this year…
Rockfield is still in business. It's the coolest studio you've never heard of. In business since 1961, it has an amazing client list: Queen, George Michael, Oasis, Coldplay, Del Amitri, Big Country, Aztec Camera, Julian Lennon, The Stone Roses, and on and on. Here's a promo video on the studio. Cool beans.
How Long was produced by John Anthony, who did Queen’s first album, Genesis (Nursery Cryme), Al Stewart, and The Tubes.
How Long
Apple Music
Spotify
YouTube
I’m hearing bass, played with a pick, dead center. Great sound. Articulate but with a little bit of slop on the bottom.
There’s a Fender Rhodes off to the right, a rhythm guitar to the left. The two parts work off each other. Again, this sounds live in the studio to me.
Drum sounds: cut dry and then they added a ton of plate reverb. Tip for hearing plate reverb: it sounds bright and it has almost a "cannoning" effect, like a slapback sense to it. The reverb seems to stutter, kind of. Can you hear what I'm hearing?
Listen to that kick: that’s what an AKG D12 mic on the kick sounds like. Low, bassy, but there’s a distinct kind of “boing” to it. There is very weird separation to the entire drum set. Nothing sounds attached to the other. The hihat is in its own tiny little place off the to right, playing 16th notes that don’t sound particularly on time or part of the whole kit. There are no tom toms. The whole kit sounds disjointed. They might have cut this part in pieces—kick and snare, then the hihat and cymbal overdubbed. Listen. What do you think?
There’s an afuche/cabasa overdub on the left on the solo.
The lead vocal is Paul Carrack. Dead center. I hear two backing vocals, and they sound like men singing in falsetto, especially the vocal that’s to the left.
I love the guitar solo. It’s a lot uglier than one might expect on a soft rock tune. Ugly, but not as ugly as Jeff Beck’s solo on Tina Turner’s Private Dancer. That's a really ugly solo. Mark Knopfler, who wrote Private Dancer, hates it.
The guitarist, Phil Harris, sounds like he’s using a Uni-vibe to get that throaty hacking up phlegm sort of guitar sound. Ugly. Weird. But a nice contrast from the let’s-not-offend-anybody nature of the rest of the production. Really, the guitar presents the only sonic challenge. Original Uni-Vibes are pricey. Basically, it's a phase shifter, but the sweep is controlled by varying the brightness of a light bulb, similar to the idea behind an Opto compressor. It is a strange sound. Phasey, but more mechanical, like a Leslie Speaker Cabinet.
How Long's a great song, and it shows just how simple things can be—a nice contrast from last week's Love Will Keep Us Together, which had so much going on.
To think there was a time when you basically had the same number of parts as you had players. To think there was a time when you actually had to have players to make a record. Alas, slowly, we descend to the point where music production is akin to cooking with a microwave oven.
Lesson
Occasionally, I try to track what we have going on on Instagram. We looked at distorted drum sounds, principally those found on Tame Impala records.
I wrote a detailed lesson on using our Shure Level-Loc to get a Tame Impala sound. Personally, I find Tame Impala too tame – I much prefer the distorted drum sounds on mid-career Radiohead records like The Bends and OK Computer.
AI Scaling vs. Influences
Music journalist Craig Anderton wrote this extended piece about AI, looking at the differences between AI scraping the internet for songs and human artists having influence.
I have to do a shout out to Mr. Anderton. He’s a huge part of why I became a recording engineer. For most of high school, I fell asleep, reading his book 'Home Recording for Musicians'. I couldn’t afford any of the equipment he talked about, like a TEAC 4 track tape deck. I couldn’t make the recording console that he supplied schematics for. But I read every damn word in that book and I dreamed and dreamed.
I finally got in a proper recording studio as a sophomore in College. From reading his book, I knew how to do things in that studio without having been in a studio. I knew more than the grad school assistant who was assigned to help me. Eventually they left me alone to mess around for hours. I'd go nuts, overdubbing things, setting up a two track as a tape delay, bouncing tracks. They had no idea what I was doing. I did. I knew exactly what I was doing.
Years later, I ran into Craig Anderton at an AES convention in New York City. I totally fanboyed over him, he sort of backed away like I was a nut! I suppose I was. Still, I owe Mr. Anderton a debt I cannot pay.
And he's a big reason I insist on writing stuff out rather than just making videos. I think you learn more deeply when you have to read.
Have a great week in the studio, or dreaming about it.
Warm regards,
Luke