Recording Techniques

Phil Spector – Wall of Sound
The key to this technique is the fact that each part was played by a multitude of musicians. Large numbers of bass players, pianists, guitarists and drummers would all play the same part simultaneously. Spector would send the recording through to speakers in an echo chamber, the signal was picked up by microphones in the chamber which would then transmit the sound back to the control room.
This video describe the technique and includes the track ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ by The Crystals on which the technique was employed.

Les Paul – Multi Tracking
Multitracking involves recorded one part of a track, playing the audio back whilst recording another track either alongside it or superimposing it onto the original recording (known as overdubbing).
Entire tracks can be recorded by a single musician playing all parts by using multitracking technology. Recording two (double tracking) seemingly identical takes of a part can create an effect similar to that of a chorus or unison, caused by small variations between the recordings. This is particularly effective on vocal recordings. Here is a video of Les Paul demonstrating the technique of multitracking in a live performance.

Ken Townsend – Automatic Double Tracking
Ken Townsend developed the technique to produce a similar effect, without having to re-record a part to produce the chorus effect. By playing back a recording with a very small delay on the signal, a ‘doubletracked’ effect is produced. Ken Townsend was using this technique whilst working with ‘The Beatles’ and it was used throughout the album ‘Revolver’ – The technique is well demonstrated on the track ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’.

A similar effect can be produced (using Protools) by applying a ‘medium delay (mono)’ insert on the desired track, adjusting delay, depth and rate parameters to the producers preferences.

George Martin – Sampling
George Martin and Geoffrey Emmerick created the brass band solo in ‘Yellow Submarine’ from a tape recording, cut into small sections then rearranged to produce the solo. This technique led to Martin using tape recordings of fairground organs, cut up and thrown in the air, then spliced together at random, to create a circus feel to the recording of ‘Being for the benefit of Mr Kite’.

Geoffrey Emmerick – Close Miking
Another audio engineer famous for working with ‘The Beatles’, whilst recording ‘Eleanor Rigby’ placed the microphones so close to the guitar that it was almost touching the strings. Following this the technique was used more regularly to produce a fuller sound.

James Jamerson – Direct Input
Although Jamerson didn’t pioneer the technique (Jamerson was a bass player on many Mowtown Records hits and Mowtown engineers were doing this in the 1950′s), most of his recordings were made using this technique. Simply put, the instrument is plugged directly into the mixing console, more commonly through an impedance matching DI box.

John Lennon – Reversing /Backwards tape
During the editing of ‘Rain’ Lennon mistakenly loaded the reel-to-reel tape in reverse and happened to like what he heard. The recording was of Lennon singing the first verse of the song and was overdubbed onto the track. This technique was used repeatedly throughout ‘The Beatles’ discography.

A nice twist on this technique is to reverse the audio, then apply a reverb or delay to the track, bounce it down to another audio track the reverse it again, the audio will play back as originally recorded but with an added reverse delay/reverb.

Frank Zappa – Xenochrony
This technique involves taking a recorded part from one track and placing it into a completely different song. In Zappa’s own words :
“A classic “Xenochrony” piece would be “Rubber Shirt“, which is a song on the Sheik Yerbouti album. It takes a drum set part that was added to a song at one tempo. The drummer was instructed to play along with this one particular thing in a certain time signature, eleven-four, and that drum set part was extracted like a little piece of DNA from that master tape and put over here into this little cubicle. And then the bass part, which was designed to play along with another song at another speed, another rate in another time signature, four-four, that was removed from that master tape and put over here, and then the two were sandwiched together. And so the musical result is the result of two musicians, who were never in the same room at the same time, playing at two different rates in two different moods for two different purposes, when blended together, yielding a third result which is musical and synchronizes in a strange way. That’s Xenochrony. And I’ve done that on a number of tracks. ” (taken from http://www.science.uva.nl/~robbert/zappa/interviews/Bob_Marshall/Part07.html)
This technique was used in the production of Zappas ‘Joes Garage’.

Frank Zappa – Reassembly
Quite simply put, this involves taking stereo mixes of different tracks, cutting up the tape, rearranging and splicing back together into a new track. A good example of this is ‘Inca Roads’ from the album ‘One size fits all’