If, as Elvis Costello allegedly said, ‘writing about music is a bit like dancing about architecture’, then writing about music production certainly leads us down an even more surreal path, making the Chrysler Building as interpreted by the Charleston into a perfectly rational thought.
My own path into production started as a band member, through to an engineer, to studio owner and, now, producer. Crucially perhaps, I did begin my engineering career by studying at the SAE Institute in Glasgow, but I've always maintained that, however beneficial the course was, the practical experience afterwards was where I truly learned the craft. It's one thing to be told what mic to place on a snare drum but it's only until you've heard the impact of moving it, tuning the drum or even simply choosing a different mic that you notice the nuances and the multitude of options available. Surely that can't be taught? It's a creative decision as well as a practical one. These are issues for an engineer but if you're a producer who also engineers you will have other things to consider – such as the irritable drummer that hasn't had a coffee and wants their broken snare to sound like a gunshot going off in a cathedral, the manager who keeps looking at their watch because they think I've already spent too much time on this snare, the A&R team who are busy downloading the current number one to play me that snare sound on a phone speaker, etc.
The point is that, in my experience, the teaching of this field very rarely reflects the reality. I've always been protective about the art of production, and perhaps too quick to imply there's some kind of magical audio divining process going on, so I must admit to a certain amount of cynicism when I was approached to review this collection of essays. However, this book does a lot to convince me that the study of this subject can be sympathetic to both the creative and technical aspects of record production.
The book is divided into three sections, Historical Approaches, Theoretical Approaches and Case Studies, and I've chosen to highlight the chapters which most connected to me. One of these was ‘The Sounds of Space: Studio as Instrument in the Era of High Fidelity’ by Susan Schmidt-Horning. This is a fascinating study inspired partly by the experience of listening to original tapes of a few 1950s records quickly followed by a very modern pro-tools recording. This led to the astute observation that the sound of the room, which was very much a part of the 1950s recordings, simply didn't exist in the modern recording.
The chapter explores the history of recording and the use of the ‘studio as an instrument’. What started out as a desire to produce faithful recordings of performances in big band halls during the 1920s moved quickly through a period of increasing high fidelity and clarity and on to experimental multitrack and reverberation techniques pioneered in the late 1950s and early 1960s: ‘The sound of rock and roll emanating most often from lo-fi car and transistor radios, had more to do with energy and electronics than with fidelity or acoustical perfection’ (p. 40). The economics of using these large spaces and an ever increasing use of artificial reverb could be a very valid argument for the decline in size of recording studios over the last 60 years. Meanwhile in today's studios we have an arsenal of plug-in emulations that can help us to create the sound of any guitar amp, keyboard, drum machine or orchestra and then place them in any size room we can imagine. Are we at a point where even the idea of a live room is a bit ostentatious? I hope not, as for me the live room is the heart of my studio, not the desk or the compressors and certainly not the plug-ins.
In ‘The US vs. the UK Sound: Meaning in Music Production in the 1970's', Simon Zagorski-Thomas first puts forward the case that there are definite differences between the records being produced in the USA and the UK during the 1970s. After listing what he believes are the main differences, such as a tendency to use more ‘close miking’ techniques in the USA and clearer distinction between lead and backing vocals in the USA, the chapter goes on to explore why these differences occurred. This is where things are really interesting as the reasons go beyond preferred techniques and available tools, both of which are valid, but it's the social, cultural and historic factors that surprised me. Illustrated by anecdotes from producers and engineers working in that era, we find that cultural stereotypes may have been a factor. For instance the stuffy imperialist British attitudes prevalent in large institutional studios like Decca, Pye and EMI would certainly hold on to the classical form of recording (lots of ambient mics, nothing too close) for longer than their US counterparts. Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick backs this up in an anecdote where he describes being reprimanded for having the kick drum mic within 3 inches of the drum, and subsequently getting a letter granting him permission to do this – but only on Beatles records.
It's also argued that the tendency towards a clearer, brighter, bigger production in the USA may have been caused in part by the prevalence of higher fidelity audio equipment in the USA compared with the UK. There's even a theory put forward that the social stereotypes of US and UK people may have an impact on the way the records sounded. So did the slightly detached, standoffish, less intimate British public prefer their records to be presented in a similar way? Does the cliché of the US public being a little more personal and used to levels of social proximity lead to their records being closer and tighter? With the sole exception of U2's last, obligatory i-Tunes album, I've never felt a record has invaded my personal space. However, it's fascinating to think that this might have been the case and the audible differences are backed up by spectrographic analysis of a number of records.
One of the last points raised was about the typical differences in studio sizes between the USA and UK. From a table listing the area of a lot of the major studios, it is clear to see that the majority of American studios were smaller than the British ones. Again this might go back to the British classical tradition and the necessity to have a place big enough to comfortably house a large string section. I was particularly happy to note that Muscle Shoals's live room is the same size as the one I have in my studio.
Perhaps one of the chapters that closely links what I do every day in the studio to the academic world is ‘I'm Not Hearing What You're Hearing’ by Alan Williams. It focuses on the spaces or ‘audioscapes’ that are created in the studio through the use of isolation booths, screens and headphones, all of which remove the musician from what might be regarded as natural, that is to say, a band playing together in a room. Through the author's own studio observations as a musician, producer and student, he points out some of the common problems and frustrations that can be present in a typical session for all concerned. Vocals are a key problem and this chapter has helped me understand why I encounter this on almost a daily basis. I've often wondered why some singers just can't settle with a headphone mix, often complaining that it doesn't sound right or even that they don't sound like themselves. The truth is that they don't. Or, to be fair to them, we all don't sound the way we hear ourselves owing to the fact we are listening to ourselves within a resonant body and skull. Most people who have experienced the sound of their own speaking voice being played back to them will usually find it a bit disconcerting. Experience obviously helps get over this but the point remains that our own voice is possibly the only thing that we will never hear properly.
The chapter discusses many other points that I could really relate to from an engineer's point of view. For instance, the distaste that some people hold for wearing headphones owing to this ‘dislocation’ of the sound of their instrument usually results in them joining the engineer in the control room. That sounds fine in principle and my aim is always to make the performers feel comfortable but, as the author points out, ‘the control room “audioscape” is often modified to accommodate the musician's auditory preferences, that is, the guitar is louder in the control room mix than it would be if the musician remained in the recording room’. So true. Many times in that situation I've put on headphones in the control room to survive the onslaught of a guitarist who wants my monitors to go to 11. I propose a solution that we now need another control room, for the engineers and producers only. We want our control rooms back. I want to wear a lab-coat to work.
These are the chapters that have really turned my opinion round on the study of record production. Not all of the chapters had that effect on me but, overall, this book is a very welcome one both for practitioners such as myself and for those with an academic interest in music production. In both cases the book will help readers to think differently – and you can't ask for much more than that.
