music production techniques

Analysis of Production

Techniques

Miguel Rodrigues BSc Music Informatics Student Number: 11511645 Module: 2MUS414 – Recording & Technology: The Contemporary Mainstream

Miguel Rodrigues Student Number: 11511645 Course: BSc Music Informatics

Song: I Shot The Sheriff

Artist: Bob Marley and The Wailers

Label: Island

Year: 1973

Producers: Chris Blackwell, The Waillers

Engineers: Phill Brown, Tony Platt

Studios: Tuff Gong and Basing Street

“I Shot The Sheriff” melded the funky reggae beat with lyrics

about spirituality and the Jamaican struggle with poverty and

violence. Essentially, the recording was a call to arms. As written and

sung by Bob Marley, he admits that he did not plant a seed’ and gun

down head-hunting Sheriff John Brown in self-defense, but pleads

innocent to all charges of killing the deputy. The power on this song is

on the lyrics.

According to Brown, the studio on Basing Street consisted of a

24 in and 8 outs Helios desk. Its basic EQ was fantastic, fixed to

10KHz for the top end and 50Hz for the bass, with five mid-range

frequencies and it had mic preamps. Yet the mixer didn’t have loads

2MUS414 – Recording & Technology: The Contemporary Mainstream – Production Techniques Essay

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of effects: just two echo sends and two foldbacks (returns). Mixing in

those days was always about thinking ahead about what they wanted

to have on the record.

Along with the in-board EQ, Brown used the Urei 1176 for

compression on the vocals or any other recordings and EMT echo

plates as well as the Eventide digital delays. A lot of what they did

was about to miking technique and getting sounds in the room.

They used largely the same mics from session to session: AKG

D20s on guitar amps, Neumann U87s for backing vocals, Neumann

67s for lead vocals, D20s or Neumann FET 47s on amped

keyboards.

Prior to the sessions, the Wailers recorded their songs at

Marley’s own Tuff Gong eight-track studio. The tapes machines were

then transported to Basing Street studio and transferred to 16-track in

preparation for overdubs of extra guitars, keyboards, vocals, as well

as the mix. Everything was mono: two tracks for drums (one for the

bass drum and the other for the kit drum), a track for the bass, a track

of Hammond organ, a track of guitar and two tracks of vocals.


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In terms of editing and overdubs they had 3 versions on the

eight-track that were copied to the 16-track tape machine and most of

the overdubs were DI’d.

They were always concerned about frequencies and sound, so

they never wanted to mix down too much because of the loss in

quality. The mixing process was very simple since the tracks were

recorded clean on tape machine. The effects used on the mixing

stage were just an EMT echo plate, a bit of spring reverb,

compression and a bit of delay and ADT on the backing vocals. At

that time they had to be very creative to have the sound they wanted

for the fact of the limited resources they had.


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Song: Like a Virgin

Artist: Madonna

Label: Sire Records

Year: 1984

Producers: Nile Rodgers, Madonna, Stephen Bray

Engineer: Jason Corsaro

Studio: Power Station

Madonna had hits with her first album, even reaching the top

ten twice with “Borderline” and “Lucky Star”, but she did not become

a superstar, an icon, until her second album “Like a Virgin”. She saw

the opening for this kind of explosion and seized it, bringing in former

Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers in as a producer, to help her expand her

sound.

The song, as well as the whole album, was recorded digitally: a

Sony 3324 24-track digital tape recorder and a Sony F1 two-track for

the 12-bit mix. Yes, at that time the bit rate was 12-bit.

The song is quite simple in structure. Combining that simple

structure with good musicians and a good live room gives space on


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the recording and make the drums sound big. It is possible to hear on

the drums a lot of the room, as Jason Corsaro used a technique to

capture a better sound by putting the mics further back. Corsaro

miked the kick drum with a Shure SM58 with a pop shield, a

Neumann U47fet behind it and then about 10 feet further back in the

room a Beyerdynamic M160 dual ribbon. The toms, the snare and the

hi-hat were miked top and bottom with a Sennheiser MD421s, giving

Corsaro much more information. As room mics he used four

Neumann U47fet: two behind the kit drum and two in front.

With regards to the other instruments, the bass was DI’d and

the guitar was recorded through a Music Man amp, miked with two

Shure SM 57, one a little bit further back so they were out of phase

(when brought them even, this brings the mid range further dip) and

the guitar was also DI’d. On top of that Corsaro recorded the

keyboard part. Then he recorded the backing vocals of Frank and

George Simms, Brenda and Curtis King and also Madonna,

separately. Corsaro recorded Madonna’s lead parts with a stereo

AKG C24 tube microphone, with a Schoeps mic preamp and a Pultec

EQ.


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The mix took place towards the end of the project with an SSL

E-series console. The effects used on the mixing stage were effects

to fit certain spaces mainly reverbs, phasers and flangers.


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Song: Papua New Guinea

Artist: Future Sound of London

Label: EMI

Year: 1991

Producers: Garry Cobain, Brian Dougans

Engineer: Yage

Studio: Earthbeat

In 1991 The Future Sound of London brought their unique

brand of experimentalism to the dancefloor with the influential track

“Papua New Guinea”. The core of this song is the sampling of the

bass line from Meat Beat Manifesto’s “Radio Babylon” together with

Lisa Gerrard’s vocal from ‘Dawn of the Iconoclast’ by Dead Can

Dance.

The setup consisted of a 28-input Soundtracs desk, an Atari

1040 running Creator, DATs machines and recorders. In regards to

outboard gear the studio was equipped with Yamaha SPX90s,

Roland Space Echo, Roland D110 synth module, a Roland TR909

and TB303, drum machines and other analogue equipment. They ran


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several samplers, like an Akai S1000, a S950, a S900 and a S612.

They ran the samplers live onto DAT machines and on top of that had

various synth sounds, one of them the Roland JX3P. Sampling for

them was going through records, TV, getting a conga note and then

playing weird rhythms with it. It was very creative sampling and took

it to a new dimension. “Papua New Guinea” was the first time that

sampling really went there and it was a fusion of a lot of musical

material from the Smiths to dance culture, industrial funk and they

combined all that influences into the dance music scene.

Their production techniques consist of collecting a palette of

sounds that works in terms of the mix from the top, middle and bass

production level. Another important element on the song is the strings

and the effect they achieved through a process called gating. On top

of that they used some old break beats. The drums consist of four

drum loops, a fat bass drum that was jammed in a giant reverb and

the dubs sounds came from sounds that they recorded before and

playing it backwards. Then, with the bass sample of Meat Beat

Manifesto added to the song, they added a break halfway that comes


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with some tribal percussion as well as a flute that they had sampled.

They dropped the drums out and brought in some of the percussion.

At the end they added a JX3P sequenced line and a vocal that they

sampled from a male session singer.

At the mixing stage, they stuck the whole mix through a Fostex

3070 compressor and mixing the track at the same time. “Papua New

Guinea” is that: loads of experimental and loads of sampling.


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