Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP

7. Channeling Sound: Technology, Control, and Fixing It in the Mix

7 Channeling Sound Technology, Control, and Fixing It in the Mix D uring the 1950s, recording engineers balanced, or mixed, the relative volumes of instruments during recording based on what they heard coming out of a single control room monitor. With stereo, engineers had to approach their art in a completely new way. Rather than one or two microphones being fed into a single channel to be reproduced by a single speaker, by1960asmanyastenormoremicrophoneswerefedintothreechannelswhich in turn had to be mixed to come out of two speakers. Mixing became more complex as engineers placed instruments on the left, right, center, or anywhere in between using pan pots on the mixing console.1 Monaural mixing was one dimensional —like listening with one ear. Stereo mixing, by contrast, became a kind of aural architecture as recording engineers worked with sound in three dimensions, envisioning how the overall song should sound and how the instruments and voices should be built into the overall mix.2 By 1960, the recording engineer was considered “the sound-man artist” who was “fast approaching the importance of the orchestra director in attaining artistic results.”3 Renowned conductor Leopold Stokowski, who recognized the audio engineer ’s vital role in the sound of his 1930s radio broadcasts, attributed equally transformative powers to recording engineers: “The first step is to make recorded music exactly like the original,” he declared. “The next is to surpass the original.”4 How better to accomplish that feat than through skillful engineering ? At the height of the era of “high fidelity” when many professionals felt the pinnacle of recording technique had been reached, faithfulness to an original 172 c h a s i n g s o u n d performance had long since given way to splicing, editing, re-recording, and multiple miking, leading classical music director David Hall to observe, “Of some recordings . . . it is often difficult to say how much credit goes to the performing artist and how much to the combined efforts of the recording director, recording engineers and tape editor.”5 In classical recording, technology made it possible to improve, to polish, and to recast a performance, transforming the age-old quest for fidelity into a modern quest for perfection. Popular music recording , however, exploited the creative potential of new recording technology in a quest for new and unique sounds. As early as 1954, inventor Norman Pickering had observed that “there is no attempt to reproduce anything that may have existed before, but rather to invent new sounds and synthesize new combinations .”6 This trend escalated in the 1960s with the introduction of multi-track recording and the use of studio techniques to shape sound. The new controls at engineers’ fingertips set the stage for imaginative uses of studio technology and a reconsideration of the methods and objectives of studio recording. By the mid-1960s, most popular recording had rejected any notion of fidelity to live ensemble performances in favor of studio creations or, what one producer called, “the sound that never was.”7 What made all of this possible was the rapid adoption of multi-track recording . Beginning with 2-channel stereo in the 1950s and then 3-channel stereo recording in the early 1960s, it became possible to bounce tracks, layering and overdubbingadditionalparts.With4-trackrecordingthepossibilitiesincreased; they began to multiply, from 4-track to 8-track, 12-track, 16-track, and, by the end of the decade, 24-track recording. More channels required more complex mixing consoles, additional signal-processing devices, and a host of new audio equipment innovations. While multi-track recording simplified and streamlined previous methods of overdubbing, it led to increased time spent at every stage of the process—recording, mixing, and even into the mastering stage—as producers and performers sought to create “artistic triumphs as well as commercial success.”8 Ultimately, multi-track recording changed the way artists, producers, and engineers worked together in the studio and triggered sweeping changes in the recording industry with broader long-term consequences for studios and for the direction of popular music. Recording in Layers Asked to describe the most significant change in studio recording since the late 1950s, record producer Phil Ramone said “the biggest change ever is the c h a n n e l i n g s o u n d 173 fact that you could control elements [and] control is the name of the game.” He cited the multi...