The Sounds of the Studio

by Pete Holly


In the old day's of Music Recording every studio had it's own unique
sound markings-much of the unique sound of an individual studio came from
the room where the musicians played and it's unique sound qualitys.Allmost all
of these rooms were constructed with wood because wood seemed to produce a
very warm sound that engineers and producers of the day found to thier liking.
If you've never seen or been in one of these old recording rooms i'd recomend
any budding or aspiring musical proffessional to expierience at least one of these
rooms.There's one in Nashville that i recorded at called studio 19.At one time in
the 1950's and 1960's it was one of the busiest studio's in Nashville who's list
of users is like a who's who of Rock 'n Roll and country music.The room is huge
and the acoustics of it have to be heard to be believed !
The studio in Muscle Shoals Alabama where many of the Stax/Volt records
were recorded had an incredibly huge bass response.You can hear this bass
sound on the records of Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett.The Muscle Shoals
house band also had alot to do with the unique and amazing sound that many
artists got on thier records .The Motown House studio also had it's unique sound
markings and not only did they have thier own house band,but they also had
thier own staff song writer's-Holland-Dozier-Holland who wrote most of The
Supremes hit songs and Smokey Robinson who not only wrote a tremedous
amount of the song's recorded by Motowns artists{including his own with the
Miracles}but he also produced a huge percentage of Motowns long list of top-
ten records.Abbey Road in London,where The Beatles recorded,also had it own
unique sound qualitys.When George Martin first got E.M.I. to sign "The Beatles"
to thier affilate label Parlaphone which Martin was the head of,as well as being the label's primary Producer{E.M.I. proper had allready turned down
"The Beatle's}they still were basically recording live on two tracks but sometimes
they would use another recorder to record background vocals and to double
John Lennon's vocals{John was very insecure about his vocals}.Paul,on the other hand,was full of vocal confidence,and rightly so,so he didn't double his vocals.Wheither
Lennon's insecuretry was justified or not is an open question-but it did give the songs he sang
lead vocals on a very unique sound-simliar to "The Everly Brothers" and "Buddy Holly" who
was the very first recording artist ever to double his vocals.The Beatles were big fans of both
of these artists.
When 4,8,12,24,and then 48 track recording decks became available it became increasingly difficult for each studio to have it's own unique sound.The once unique sound of each studio
was changed to a more homoginized sound and it became difficult if not impossible to tell where
a record had been recorded without looking at the album credits.
Thirty three years ago the first inexpensive home recording devices were released upon an unsuspecting public.I purchased one of the very first.It was called-"The Teac
-124 sync-caset".I paid $239.00 for it from a discount warehouse in N.Y.C..The Recordings
i made on this machine had incredibly great sound quality.In fact at times we{The Look's} listened in dis-belief ! Is that really us playing and singing on that tape .It was hard for us to believe we could make recordings that sounded as great as the one's we heard played back
to our ears on headphones.I had a strong feeling that something else was going on.I worked extremly hard to get the best and most powerful sound you could possibly get From this simple,but at the time,revoulutionary piece of recording equipment-But it was more than that that made all the recordings that i ever made on this machine sound as great as they did.I can only explain it in one word-Magic !

Written by Pete Holly-Copyright-2010-All Rights Reserved