New Monday
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
New Monday #85
Happy Monday, all!
This started out differently, but then I went down a damn rabbit hole. For all of you who write me that it’s annoying that New Monday goes all over the place... I don't know what to tell ya. Good creativity is all over the place. Ideas are all over the place. There’s so much to know, so much to learn, so much to hear.
On a plane in 1975: Part 2
We’re back on the plane I was on in 1975, listening to the in-flight music and having my taste in music redesigned...
Love Will Keep Us Together was the biggest song of 1975, topping the charts and winning a 'Record of the Year' Grammy. It rocketed The Captain, keyboardist / producer, Daryl Dragon, and Tennille, singer / keyboardist, Toni Tennille, to worldwide recognition. They even had a network TV show for two years. It sucked, but Love Will Keep Us Together certainly didn’t.
The song was written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. In stark contrast to the simplistic chart-topping pop music these days, with the same four chords and a melody spanning a fifth, Love Will Keep Us Together had a playful, complex structure that skips from major to minor all over the place, with multiple breaks, a bridge in a different key and a modulation on the vamp out. All while remaining supremely memorable. Steal the bridge, or steal the wonderful moment where it switches from two measures of G major to two of G minor to a D and then a D augmented.
When was the last time there’s been bubblegum pop with an augmented chord?
The song was produced by The Captain, who played everything but the drums, which were handled by Hal Blaine. Dragon was a monster of a keyboardist and arranger. He met singer Toni Tennille while the two were on tour with The Beach Boys. The song was cut at Paramount Records, which was, and still is, a huge studio complex in Los Angeles.
Paramount was built by Brian Bruderlin, brother of actor James Brolin (father of Josh). It’s likely one of the first sessions done there was for Jimi Hendrix, and the studio has been continuously busy with tons of television and film work, as well as A-list musicians from Aerosmith, to The Jackson Five, to Alice in Chains, to Justin Timberlake. Best guess on the console is that it was a Bob Bushnell built API console, but it could have been a Neve. The Captain and Tennille built their own studio after their commercial breakthrough, Rumbo Recorders, and equipped it with a Neve. Rumbo became a major commercial studio. 'Appetite for Destruction' was cut at the studio that Love Will Keep Us Together built. By the way, Rumbo had 650 square foot control rooms. Jumbo!
Let’s listen, and bear in mind my catchphrase, “Unified in its diversity, diverse in its unity,” because for this song, that’s exactly how it works.
Love Will Keep Us Together
There’s a keyboard bass center, doubled with a farty horn patch to the right that's the main hook of the song. There’s also an octave-up double of the farty sound that's panned to center.
Check out the keyboard bass part. It’s awesome, the kind of part Paul McCartney would envy.
The barroom piano track is to the right. It sounds like a prepared piano—a tack piano (thumbtacks pounded into the felt of the hammers). There’s another piano on the left that’s more loose and improvised. At the very beginning, this part comes in with a flourish—listen for the click of a ring against a piano key at the end of it, right before the vocals kick in.
There are all kinds of fun squirps and squiggles—Moogs or ARPS. The song is DENSE with keyboards, panned all over the place. I originally thought this was a 16-track, but now I think it’s 24. There’s just too much going on.
Toni Tennille did all the vocals. The lead is doubled so frickin’ tightly it’s unbelievable. Her multiple background vocals weave in and out of the keyboard parts. Listen for vocoder/voice parts on the “Stop! 'Cause I really love you” moments, and again, listen for the panning and the handoff, as different parts rise and fall in the mix. It’s always interesting.
The drums, too, work in and out of the keyboards and vocals, fills leading your ear to a riff. Blaine thought he was cutting drums for a demo, so what was there for him to work with at those initial sessions? A guide vocal and a piano? Nothing and just putting the drums down first? I’m guessing Daryl Dragon had most of the song mapped out in his head and somehow communicated that to Hal Blaine, and at the same time, Hal Blaine was a supremely intuitive and musical player, hence why he was the session drummer at this time.
The drum sound... kinda sucks. It's dry, dead sound, with hazy stereo imaging. There’s no room on it. One can almost hear the 70s shag carpeting of the booth it was in. Stereo imaging, which is lopsided to the right, suggests kick, snare and spaced pair overhead mics. Most of the kit is to the right, except for a crash on the left, which is what a wide panned pair sounds like. There is a loud smack off to the left that sounds like a really dead tom. I think there’s a tambourine tucked in somewhere back right. And then there are the claps on the vamp out, which wander around—it sounds like a couple of people gathered around a stereo pair of mics and dicked around roughly on time, breaking into applause and cheering when Tennille sings, “Sedaka is back..."
Daryl and Toni were phenomenally talented people. Here’s a video of The Captain and Tennille live, dropping a killer version of the song with perhaps drummer Jim Gordon. Just the three of them. Playing live on television. Flawless.
Neil Sedaka’s Take
When the record company played Love Will Keep Us Together to Neil Sedaka, his jaw dropped. He was blown away. He recorded the song himself in 1973, but his version is... deeply odd.
He recorded it with the guys from 10cc, wonderfully imaginative writers and musicians from whom we’ll hear more soon enough. 10cc and Neil Sedaka both knew how to make hits, but they missed the ball on this one: they glommed up a pop tune with all sorts of strange string parts and percussion. The main bass part sounds like a string bass played high up the neck. Listen for a mandolin, tuned wood blocks, a guiro, and what sounds like a banjo. Not to mention organs, moments of operatic vocals, a couple of moments of half-time triplets. The overall effect is like a soundtrack from an animated movie. A bunch of beavers making toys for Santa Claus. And the topper: Neil Sedaka’s high-pitched, feminine vocals. Crazy stuff, and totally worth a listen.
Neil Sedaka’s Love Will Keep Us Together.
Sedaka recorded this marvelous mess at Strawberry Studios, which was owned by the guys in 10cc and was their home base. A lot of very creative work was done at Strawberry. Paul McCartney, the Smiths, the Ramones and... Joy Division.
Joy Division Tears Us Apart
Joy Division recorded, in 1980, at Strawberry Studios, the song that put them on the map, Love Will Tear Us Apart Again.
Hmmm... Love Will Keep Us Together, Love Will Tear Us Apart... hmmm...
There are rumours that one inspired the other, if not in lyrics or melody, perhaps as a fun, tongue-in-cheek goof with the title. But as long as we’re thinking about love keeping us together, let’s let it tear us apart.
Love Will Tear Us Apart Again
And that is that. No lesson this week, but I do urge you to listen to all the songs presented here a few times. Really squint down and HEAR. Take notes on what you’re hearing. This will do wonders for your critical hearing and add tons to your idea library.
Warm regards,
Luke
New Monday #84
Happy Monday, campers!
Actor Robert Redford died. I have a Robert Redford audio story. But first...
Sonny Curtis died yesterday at 88. He was a member of The Crickets (as in Buddy Holly) as a guitarist, joining them in 1958 and becoming their lead singer after Holly’s death.
Sonny Curtis
Mr. Curtis was also an accomplished songwriter. This forms the basis for the ultimate rock ’n’ roll trivia question:
What do I Fought the Law and The Mary Tyler Moore Show Theme (Love is All Around) have in common?
Both songs were written by Sonny Curtis.
Here’s Bobby Fuller’s demo of I Fought the Law, recorded in his home studio, Fuller himself doing the engineering. This single version sounds like a three-track recording to me—drums, bass, and a rhythm guitar to the right, vocals in the middle, lead guitar and really wet harmony vocals to the left.
Regarding the Mary Tyler Moore Theme, here’s Sonny Curtis playing it, and the backstory of how it was selected for the show. And that’s him singing on the TV version, through seven seasons and countless reruns.
Robbing Redford
It was the 90s. An acquaintance of mine was a major Studio Cat in New York City. One morning I met him at his apartment, in a swanky building in the West 50s, to go to breakfast. Me, him, and his assistant, who we will call Chuck, all went to the mailroom. In Studio Cat’s mailbox was a cardboard box addressed to Robert Redford, who also lived in the building. Studio Cat, being Studio Cat, opened it up and it turned out to be a Christmas gift for Robert Redford—a nutcracker and a bag of pistachios. There was a card. Well, screw that and let’s not worry about felony stealing someone's mail, thought Studio Cat, let’s take the box with us.
So we did.
At a diner, we had breakfast and ate all of Robert Redford’s pistachios. I had some, which makes me an accessory to whatever the crime might have been. And then Studio Cat, who was nothing if not imaginative, looked at the nutcracker and announced to Chuck: “Chuck, this would make a good gift for my girlfriend. Buy some more pistachios, rewrap the whole thing and I’ll give it to her next week.”
True story. Email me with your guess as to the real identity of Studio Cat. I am sure a bunch of you already know who it is.
On a plane in 1975: Part 1
My musical DNA was rewritten when I was 12 years old, flying home from a family trip to Italy on a plane. Some of you might remember the stereo headphones they gave you on planes back then. They weren’t electronic; they were pneumatic. There was a tiny speaker in the armrest. You plugged one end of your headset into it, and the sound travelled down hollow plastic tubes to your ears. Think of a stereo stethoscope. It sounded like ass, but the summer of 1975 had amazing music. 1975 is one of the great years for popular music.
I listened to a Billboard top hits for June 1975 playlist throughout the flight. Six hours of the same thing over and over again. I can recall the patter of the DJ between the songs.
I wasn’t yet playing guitar—I was farting around on the trombone and that’s pretty much what it sounded like because I sucked—but this stuff grabbed me. The music I heard is still some of my favorite, but more than that, my thinking and hearing were oriented towards great songs, songs with melodies and harmonies and hooks and grooves.
Sister Golden Hair
A number one hit for America, this is a killer song and recording. Written and sung by Gerry Beckley, it was produced by George Martin, engineered by Geoff Emerick, and recorded at The Record Plant, Sausalito. A ton of great records were cut there. It was a very innovative studio, not just technically but... socially. It had a house at which artists could stay, and the whole place was 70s excess in abundance, with hot tubs, waterbeds, and let’s party and make a record vibe. Um... it had a nitrous oxide gas system installed with fresh tanks delivered like clockwork. They pulled the system once someone asphyxiated from it. Sex and drugs and rock and roll? That’s the Record Plant Sausalito. Read about it here.
ANYWAY... Listen to this:
Sister Golden Hair
There’s a bunch of production techniques I want you to listen for. Often, parts are cut in mono, and then a delay is put on it and panned wide. You can recognize this because the sound seems to move from right to left, or left to right, depending on which way the delay is panned. But also, often parts are doubled, played twice and panned, and that can sound a lot like a part with a delay. What you have to do is listen for differences from one side to the other. Most often, those differences can be heard at breaks or transitions in the song.
Squint down and answer the questions:
1) Panning on the drums?
2) Lead vocal. Is it doubled or is that a delay?
3) How many acoustic guitar parts? 1 with a delay? 2? 3 including a 12-string? Or is it a 6-string capo’d up?
4) How many electric rhythm guitar parts?
5) How many lap steel (slide) guitar parts?
6) Background vocals - mono or stereo?
Fun thing to hear: on YouTube, listen at 3:05 to clearly hear someone count “One Two Three Four” to cue in the ending of the song. I can’t hear this on the Apple Music version. Different master? Different mix?
I’ll give you my full breakdown next week.
Hard to believe, with what is on the charts today, that Sister Golden Hair was a #1 hit, but it was 1975 and that was a magic year.
Kill Me (in the Garden)
Stumbled across this: A wonderful song by Hayley Williams, done acoustically, live. Cool, bluesy melody, thoughtful, poetic lyrics. A nice, simple recording.
Here’s an interesting thing to try: listen to it while watching it. Then close your eyes and listen. Hear a difference?
Her new album, 'Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party, is a really interesting record.
A Lesson
I came across some things on an audio engineering group page on Facebook, and SO MUCH INFORMATION WAS WRONG!
This week I ran into some things regarding saturation (aka adding harmonic distortion). I’ve written a lot on this topic, but what I wrote for you all this week is different, focusing on using saturation in a very analog console type manner.
That’s it for this week. A little history, some ear training, some new music, and a how-to. A pretty good start to the week.
Warm regards,
Luke
New Monday #83
Happy Monday -
#83! I find it hard to believe I’ve managed to write this thing for 83 weeks in a row. As you can probably tell from the all-over-the-place nature of New Monday, I am all over the place. There are days I feel like I’m doing a recall on a console that has all the numbers and markings worn off.
I’d bet that a lot of you are similar, struggling with that creative brain that likes to do everything and then take a nap after eating a bag of Cheetos. The buzz acronym these days is ADHD, but I prefer to think of it as easily bored... which explains why I am constantly tinkering with the format of NM and changing things, poking around for new things to write about.
Easily bored. I hope I don’t bore you lovely people.
ADHD, CHEETOS, and BOREDOM
Send this article to your significant other, boss, or co-worker the next time you get yelled at for leaving a hammer on the dining room table, forgetting to set the alarm system or working on a new project instead of finishing the one that’s three days overdue.
Screw reading the whole thing—too dull. Here are the juicy bits:
"Incredibly enough, however, among nomadic Ariaal, those with ADHD traits tended to be better fed and healthier than non-ADHD counterparts. He speculated that their fluid attention style would make them more vigilant to potential threats to their herd, to signs of disease or malnutrition, or to sources of food or water."
This explains the Cheetos.
"Chen found, based on genetic methods, that ADHD traits were overrepresented in these early migrants. People with ADHD traits likely spearheaded the move to populate the earth. It’s unclear whether that’s because people with those traits were more likely to initiate migration, or whether they were better able to adapt to new places."
"Perhaps ADHD traits were useful in environments involving nomadism and migration, but in modern society, with its demand on having to sit for hours a day and remain relatively stationary, it is a detriment."
This explains the boredom. Time to migrate the tribe to the Fertile Crescent, a Tigris and Euphrates Riverside gated community.
Less Boring Music
Some interesting stuff, with a decidedly Middle Eastern element to it.
Bab L’Bluz is what you get when a female vocalist from Morocco (Yousra Mansour) meets a multi-instrumentalist from France (Brice Bottin). Take Led Zeppelin, swap out the singer, trade the bass for the Gimbri, the guitars for the Awicha, wrap it in old school funk and record it live to tape. Well, no. I don’t think to tape: it was cut at Real World Studios in England.
Bab L’Bluz is Moroccan blues with a bit of Jorma Kaukonen psychedelia.
The new album is Swaken (well, a year old, but new to me); their first record is Nayda! Nayda is lighter on its feet. Swaken is some heavy stuff!
They can definitely put it down live.
Magnum Innominandum translates to something like, “The Great One Who is Not to Be Named.” So... like Voldemort but as chill trance/vaporwave. Evidently, the name refers back to HP Lovecraft and Cthulhu.
The album is called إمبراطورية مستحضر الأرواح. It translates to “Necromancer Empire."
The music is anything but scary: It’s what’s playing in the lounge before you get on the Star Ship that takes you to Fhloston Paradise. Vaporwave.
Magnum Innominandum is the brainchild of St Louis producer/multi-instrumentalist/beautiful maniac Jim Miles. You gotta love anyone who names their Insta partyfamine. They have a bunch of records out. Whatever Jim is up to, he’s incredibly prolific—an album out in March and an album out in May, each full of songs, grooves, slammed together with samples. Wonderful, interesting cover art. This guy has a lot of creative energy and a real willingness to do what he wants to do and to hell with the world. We need more of that in music.
A Lesson
This week, I break down heavy guitar sounds using our WOW Thing plug-in.
I use the WOW Thing for fixing bass and kick issues—my go-to fast fix for that. But the original reason we made the WOW Thing was to get classic metal guitar sounds. It doesn’t add distortion. It doesn’t add compression. But it does add some magic. And, of course, some WOW.
Listen
Great song, live to either 8 or 16 tracks. Cut at Western Recorders in 1969 on a United Audio 610, or perhaps a UA 2100, which is exceedingly rare. There are 2100 modules on Reverb. Check out the pictures — the last one is “Let me put my console movie shorts on, Eddie."
Back to the song: squint down on the verses. Just about dead center is a rhythmic clicking, on the 8th notes (the song is in 5/4). What the heck is it? Could be a drumstick on a ride or a hihat, but it has no ping to it. Can you hear it? It seems to cut when the drummer does a roll or a fill. My guess is a hihat but, man, is it loud, and once you hear it, it’s really hard not to hear it. I might have wrecked the song for myself!
And that is it for this week. A short one.
New Monday #82
Happy Monday, kiddos!
The world continues to go around and wobble like a damaged Leslie cabinet.
A Killer Mashup
Pull the vocals off this, put them on that—digital and DAWs have taken mashups to another level. Some are fun, some are funny, a few are transcendent.
DJ Cummerbund makes transcendent mashups. From Long Island (shout out to the hometown), he’s made hundreds of mashups and has won awards. He produces, he tours. He's like the Elvis, The Beatles, the Bowie of mashups. And I just discovered him. And now you get to discover him, if you haven’t already.
This came across my feed a few days ago and I’ve been listening to it on loop, as well as exploring his other offerings. It won a Webby for best mashup in 2020.
https://youtu.be/tcUB-3lud60?si=c0cRkRsgTUGCBer7
The legal machinations behind these I’ve not looked into. I suppose much of the appropriation of music and images is covered by Fair Use. But some of these seem to go beyond into something else. Hmmmm... Check out this one:
https://youtu.be/c8Upzye9Ctw?si=8_ds4uZrh46vwseK
A look at the credits on YouTube reveals links to the source recordings as well as a link for a streaming version. Interesting. But a search on Spotify of the title reveals links to the Rob Zombie source song, while searching DJ Cummerbund turns up a 'Love Shack' remix.
Clearly, deals were signed and handshakes made. But this strange stretching of Fair Use and the depositing of Streaming Royalties all over the place makes what’s happening to Rick Beato even harder to understand.
Beating Down Rick Beato
We all know Rick Beato for his wonderful interviews and videos on music. He has 5 million followers and rightly so. He asks great questions. He gets artists to open up. He knows his music theory, his audio engineering and his history. He has a kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm for what he does. There’s a reason he’s the top online music journalist. And he liked my sweater at NAMM last year.
But Universal Music Group isn’t happy with him and appears to have declared war on him, issuing a Copyright Strike against him on YouTube. Three strikes and his channel is shut down forever.
This is the kind of thing you need to know about, as it will become more of a problem in all our lives as AI muddies the line between creation and theft, record companies search for cigarette butts of revenue as they lose their empires to small creatives, everyone sues everyone else and no one makes money.
A good overview of Mr Beato’s situation, by Ted Gioia, is here. A quick read.
Ted Gioia, by the way, is a great guy to follow.
The Death of a Turtle
Mark Volman died on Sept. 5th. He was a member of The Turtles, was the "Flo" in "Flo and Eddie," sang on countless records. He was a big guy with frizzy hair and irresistible energy. Later in his life, he earned a degree in screenwriting and taught music business at Belmont College. By all accounts, he was a wonderful fellow.
How did he get the name Flo?
He and his partner in The Turtles, and friend/comrade for life, Howard Kaylan (Eddie), were signed as The Turtles to White Whale Records. It was such an utterly shitty record deal that when The Turtles broke up, Volman and Kaylan couldn't even use their real names commercially. Ya gotta love record companies.
The Turtles made a clutch of great records for White Whale, including perhaps the ultimate pop tune, 'Happy Together'.
More interesting to me, for New Monday purposes, is this: She's My Girl, from their 1968 The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands album.
Listen for spectacular vocals from Howard Kaylan, and listen for the compression kicking in on his vocals when he gets louder. Also dig the insane production on this: pianos, reverb, vocals, congas, a break with an orchestra! Mariachi trumpets! Tons of saturation as they overload the tape and the console! Utterly incredible.
The Turtles were innovative. The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, a concept album, is a loopy piece of psychedelia that's really worth a listen. These guys are way way underrated. One of the most innovative pop bands of the 60s.
Also this is worth a listen, not just for the production, which has heavily overdubbed drums and an out-of-nowhere ending, but again for the vocals, and really, just the quality of the song: We Ain't Gonna Party No More. What a fabulous song.
The Turtles eventually got the last laugh. White Whale went bankrupt—The Turtles were their only act that made money and the label couldn't milk them forever.
Flo and Eddie bought the rights to all of their own music.
Rest in peace, Flo.
A Reverb Lesson
The Turtles records used reverb and ambience very thoughtfully. Not everything was wet. There was space not only from left to right but from front to back.
Back in those days, a studio might only have one reverb to use, a vastly different situation than we have now, where you can slap a different reverb on every channel.
I used to use three reverbs when mixing, and I wrote about how to do that. It leads to an overall cleaner recording, and if you're new to mixing, this will give you a foundation for your thinking and process.
A Listening Session
Last week I tossed a recording of 'Lips Like Sugar' by Echo and the Bunnymen to listen to and ponder. It fits into the loose theme of, “Show us where the record company hurt you on the doll.” This week: an extended look and listen. You’ll never hear this recording the same way again.
And that is it for today, Monday September 8th. The magic of the fall is upon us.
Warm regards,
Luke
New Monday #81
Happy New Monday, or... Happy Labor Day.
As long as we’re laboring, about a year ago I wrote this: https://korneffaudio.com/new-monday-28/.
It covered Marvin Gaye and there was a chart on EQ’ing ideas. We’re kinda bumping into that EQ’ing thing this Episode.
Sinners
Sinners is a horror flick set in the American Deep South in 1933—the time of lynchings, the KKK, and, evidently, vampires that play bluegrass. And it’s kind of a musical! Definitely worth a watch, and definitely the soundtrack is worth a listen.
Composed by Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, and cut with a mixture of musicians and actors in a converted church in New Orleans, the music is rooted in delta blues but grows tendrils everywhere, into hip hop, R&B, with strange, dissonant string pads and keyboards, and rhythms pulled from Africa to Ireland.
Watch this scene. Aside from being a visual stunner, it’s a journey down the highway of black music in America. This is SPLENDID composing and filmmaking.
More Listening
The band hates this song and its production—lead singer Ian McCulloch said, "It [still] sounds crap.”
I dunno... I love it. It’s a bit lightweight as a song, but as a production, ay caramba! Amazing.
Lips Like Sugar
If we’re going to seriously listen to things, I want to find the best possible source. To my ears, nothing is beating Apple Music but Amazon Music is a close #2. They have the least signal compression and loudness compensation. This particular song is full of little production tidbits. They’re best heard on Apple or Amazon. Spotify and Tidal both sound overly compressed and bass-heavy. I can’t decide which one is more awful, and I am disappointed by Tidal. YouTube... eh.
ANYWAY, this one is mind-blowing on headphones. Stuff zinging around everywhere. Listen this week, I’ll tear it apart next week.
A Lesson
Some of you might have noticed that we’re putting out tips and tricks for our plug-ins on Instagram. Here, for instance.
This particular trick is on getting more presence out of bass and low-end sounds so they translate better to small speakers.
But in addition to the IG reel, I also wrote more on this particular trick, and you can find it by clicking here.
Short Stuff
Andy and Stewart are suing Sting for a share of the spoils from the royalties for 'Every Breath You Take'. Evidently, the Stingster makes $700,000 a year just from that one song, and the story is the band was going to chuck the song out when Sting said, “Andy, go do a guitar part.” The Andster popped into the studio and did the guitar part in one take, saving the song, and making Sting $700,000 a year. Not sure why Stewart is involved. Read more here.
Bang a gong? No! Rub it with a flumi! Get weird, voice-like sounds. Very cool. I might have to look into the physics of this.
Did you answer your survey yet and get 50% off of everything? No? What are you waiting for?
Have a great week.
Warm regards,
Luke
New Monday #80
Happy Monday -
Hopefully for you, not for me! My trusty Mac mini seems kinda dead this morning. I have it backed up, but locked inside it is today’s New Monday. Damnit. Usually I write them on a cloud app; this one was written in Apple Notes, and evidently the note didn’t get saved to the cloud.
Ah, well. Accidents will happen. I will reconstruct what I can.
This is all about listening, and things to listen to that will light up your ears in a good way.
Want to hear more? Listen with an open notebook. Write stuff down, draw pictures.
Accidents Will Happen
I gave you this song to listen to last week. Here are links to it:
This was recorded at Eden, which was a major studio in London until the mid-2000s. 24 tracks with a console designed and built by the staff, which included Roger Becherian, who engineered 'Armed Forces', Elvis Costello's third album.
'Armed Forces' was a very live-in-the-studio affair. Drums in the middle, everyone in a circle around it, everything cut live, including a guide vocal, which often became the lead vocal of choice. Producer Nick Lowe went for vibe not accuracy or perfection. The vocals were cut with a really cheap mic, a Beyer M400, also called a Soundstar 2. It's basically a German SM58. Becherian tried to use a U87 but Costello delivered his snarling vocals with so much spit the mic would short out. Really, the vocal sound is kind of awful—way compressed and midrange heavy, but it works and gives everything a spitty, in your face energy.
I made a map of what I'm hearing:
Drums
The drums seem to drift from hihat slightly right on the verses to slightly left on the choruses. On the verses, the snare is doubled with a rack tom hit. Because the hihat doesn't interrupt for that, I think the toms are an overdub and that Becherian moved the kit around in the chorus. On this other recording from the album, you get a better idea of the drums. And I found a picture from the session:
Note the tom out in front—more evidence of an overdub? Or it could be they removed drums that weren't used on a particular song to keep kit resonance down. Also note, only one crash cymbal! Pete Thomas is a hell of a player. He always seems ahead of the beat to me, which gives many Elvis Costello recordings a sense of a car going out of control down a hill.
Bass
Bruce Thomas' wonderful bass is the center of the song. Great part, very articulate sound. The choruses can be divided into four chunks, the "Accidents will happen" part and the "You used to be a victim" part, each repeated. Listen for a major change of bass sound on the fourth chunk, the last "I don't wanna hear it." It could be the way he's playing but it might also be a change in the mix. There are all sorts of subtle changes in level and parts on this recording. I think they were thinking that it should be slightly different at every moment. Another guy that thinks this way is Tchad Blake—he's always looking for something different, some little change to differentiate things.
Keys
Steve Nieve is responsible for the intricacies of this arrangement. His classically influenced keyboard parts also vary across the duration of the track. Listen for how one part is replaced by another—the verse is an organ, the 1st chunk of the chorus stabs on an organ, then a grand piano, wet and lush comes in, replacing the organ. His arrangements are things replacing rather than things layering.
Guitars
They seem almost non-existent, but they're there, played by Mr Costello, buried in the back and slightly left. Often his parts are lead lines that fit with the keyboards, not chords. The keys and guitar lines have a Beatle-esque vocal quality: two different parts that also seem harmonies, but they're not. Again, really interesting parts.
Vox
It's a very one-and-done vocal, doubled on the choruses. There is a three-part harmony that stacks up into the ending vamp. There's an interesting mix choice here. The vocals are all panned left, the reverb is mainly on the right. There's a substitution of left-to-right space for front-to-back space, which makes the vocals sound even more spacious than if the three parts were panned across left center right and the reverb then behind it. This is definitely something to experiment with on your own mixes.
On the version of this I lost, I wrote a bunch more on Costello's early recordings but that's not happening today. Schedules must be kept!
Bookmark This Video!
Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u2cFvLYv6s
The WDR Big Band is an amazing bunch of players in Germany. Why bookmark this video?
First of all, it is a superb recording. To pull off this level of clarity in a live situation is top flight engineering and mixing. Everything unfolds across the soundstage with such solidity. Close your eyes and you see the band. Kudos to the engineering staff.
Secondly, the video shows you exactly what mic to put where on each instrument. It's like a how-to video. Check out the interesting angling of the mics on the toms—a reason to love the small, weird shape of the AKG-C414—you can't do that with a MD 421. Ribbon mics on the trombones, condensers on the trumpets. You can see exactly what to do on just about everything other than the upright bass, the kick, and the piano.
But hang on: their YouTube channel is FULL of stuff like this, showing mic technique for everything. It's a masterclass / reference book on how to do it. Highly recommended.
Listen To This!
I watched 'Killers of the Flower Moon' Friday night and was blown away by the soundtrack. It lurks in the film like another character, perhaps the main character. It's moody and haunting, with Osage tribal rhythms, blues elements, and a rough texture that sounds like dust and decay. And it's a terrific recording.
Composed by Robbie Robertson as he was dying of cancer, played by him, along with a host of other musicians, this soundtrack is a spacious, sonic delight. Leave it on in the background while you cook dinner, or sit in front of it and drink it all in with your eyes closed. Hear it with headphones and fall asleep and have nightmares. Whatever: just listen to it.
Speaking of listening, please write in and tell me what streaming services you all use.
Phew! Done.
Warm regards,
Luke