50's recording tecniques

luckybastard · Post by **luckybastard** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 8:27 am

i have been listening to an album by a band called antony and the johnsons that has struck me pretty hard. besides the great performances, it has this very distinct sound that i associate with fifties jazz recording and early sixties stax stuff. the drums sound decent, the piano and vocals have very little presence and are very "warm" (i hate esoteric terms to describe sounds but bear with me).overall it is a very "unhyped" record. it sounds very warm and the sounds kind of just melt together into this smeary collageof sound. is anyone else familiar with this album or the aformentioned references and ways that they achieved this sound.

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 8:30 am

So funny,
My good pal did that record.Doug Henderson.
He actually won a mercury (british grammy) for that record.

His studio is about 125 steps away from my studio.

He actually does a lot of mastering these days, but has worked on many, many records as a mix engineer/producer.

Doug is a great engineer.

What specifically do you want to know?

luckybastard · Post by **luckybastard** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 9:03 am

everything, joel... everything...

particularly... what kinds of audio chains were used. i'm assuming ribbon mics into tube pres? and how did they get those drum sounds... it sounds like the sounds that al jackson used to get back in stax heyday. like u "feel" the drums more than hear them.

tell your friend that that record is magical. it literally gives me chills. kind of like the first time i heard ok computer...

trashy · Post by **trashy** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 9:06 am

*puts "antony and the johnsons" on wish list*

trashy · Post by **trashy** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 9:09 am

Holy cripes! I just listen to it on itunes. Fuck the wish list, I'm buying it today.

luckybastard · Post by **luckybastard** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 9:19 am

yeah... that was my response after i heard it on realplayer... it's frikkin amazing... dude is an interesting fellow http://pitchforkmedia.com/interviews/a/ ... hnsons-05/

wedge · Post by **wedge** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 9:41 am

It's like Rocky Horror Picture Show crossed with Norah Jones... Who knew?!?

I'm Painting Again · Post by **I'm Painting Again** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 9:50 am

Joel do you think you could get him on here to talk about it and have a Q+A session?

that would be sweet..

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:06 am

BEARD_OF_BEES wrote:Joel do you think you could get him on here to talk about it and have a Q+A session?

that would be sweet..

Probably. i got him to post in the federal compressors thread, as he is the person responsible for making mine rock.

He is a wizard of many colors...

I emailed him about this thread already.

dhenderson · Post by **dhenderson** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:51 am

Hmmmm, it is a large question, but I can answer some of it. I didn't do the tracking -- most was done at ye olde Sorcerer, now defunct, and some bits at a place called Dubway, both in NYC. The Sorcerer stuff sounded the best coming in, not sure what the mics were though they had a nice collection of old german things. My guess, since the budget was tiny, was that most of it went through their Neve desk, an 8068 if I am not mistaken, with some pretty peculiar mods. What really made the record was that most of it was tracked live, sometimes in the same room, with boatloads of bleed in every mic, and the majority of the vocal tracks were the originals, intended as scratch tracks but reasonably well recorded via Neumann U87 and by far the best performances. I managed to talk Antony into scrapping most of the overdubs, and I pretty much refused to do any tuning (which would have screwed up the mic bleed that I was enjoying so much). As with most high pressure tracking situations there were a zillion mics on the drums which I muted, leaning mainly on a nice mono room and the overheads. The lead vocal went through a bunch of stuff to try to make it sound like a ribbon through a V72 (good call!). We did retrack a couple of leads and some backing vocals in my shoebox with a Manley ref cardioid, Studer 089 mic pres and a Gates Sta-level. The mix went out in stereo subgroups to the 089 and returned via Manley Massive Passive and Tubetech LCA2B for a digital print (not by choice, I just don't have room for a 1/2" deck). I mastered the thing as well, much against my advice and better judgement, but there it was. The best part of this project was that I got to mix it exactly as I wanted -- I love those old Chet Baker recordings and in the right circumstances it is possible to have that sound. I don't think they're vintage-sounding, they just sound good, inviting, something I want to hear again. The sound is intimate, with lots of air in the midrange. Air is not something you add by cranking up 8kHz -- air is the stuff between the mic and the source, it's all over the spectrum, so you choose which air you want. Mine is usually kind of liquid...

luckybastard · Post by **luckybastard** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:21 am

those critical choices of using a mostly room mics on the drums, making the vocals sound as they did and having all that "air", definitely made it an amazing record to listen to. ummm... i think i will stop going around saying that u87's suck now...

GrimmBrotherScott · Post by **GrimmBrotherScott** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:22 am

I hope it's ok to ask a question or two. I just listened to several tracks off the album, and even via MP3, the sense of space and air is beautiful.

My question is not very technical and I ask because I am was guilty of this until very recently ; do you think a common mistake a lot of home/project studio engineers make (and hell, most "pro" too) is the tendency to close mic, isolate and sterilize their recordings from the get go? I call it the Steely Danization of the recording process.

luckybastard · Post by **luckybastard** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:22 am

btw, is that "smeary" characteristic i refer to a result of the mic bleed?

dhenderson · Post by **dhenderson** » Wed Nov 09, 2005 4:18 am

Re: smeary (am I liking this word?) -- the mic bleed probably has a lot to do with it -- especially on the songs with strings, which had some isolation (maybe gobo's?), but not much. Like I said, I didn't track it (and of course I wish I had), and I would have kept mics a bit farther off the piano as well as the strings (spent a lot of time with de-essers nibbling at the bow hair to get it to sound real). On the other hand whatever the process the record came off well. I would have preferred to have a DX77 or something like that for the vocal, but then I probably would have gotten tripped up there, as Antony was playing piano at the same time and there was a LOT of piano in the vocal mic already. A U87 would not have been my second choice however -- I spent the most time sorting out the vocal sound since it's a vocal record, and I pulled out most of my tricks to get it right. The signal chain was not economical shall we say.

In general I like to get mics away from instruments if I can. It is a rare event indeed that I should stick my ear into the bell of a trumpet -- so I am somewhat mystified at the idea of recording a trumpet with a mic stuffed into the bell. Then again sometimes the room you're working in is just too godawful and you have to hope you can save things in the mix. The obvious solution of finding a better room is sometimes not possible.

luckybastard · Post by **luckybastard** » Wed Nov 09, 2005 6:43 am

thanks so much for all the information... this record has been on constant rotation for the last week and a half.

ps when i say smeary, i don't mean it in a negative sense. i mean it in the sense that i feel i am in a big room and the sounds are bouncing off of the walls and washing into each other into this wonderful homogenous mix where at times i can't tell where the horns and strings begin and end. fistful of love is definitely the track that brings this to mind the most... lou reed spoken word is awesome on it too:)

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50's recording tecniques

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