As His Majesty said in the fascinating "Harp on Jack Flash" thread, "Working out parts and then trying to see who played them and what they may have used is one of my favourite past times". Mine too, although I'm not very good at it.

When I'm doing this, I feel safe to assume that in the very early days, what you hear on the record was effectively recorded "live": i.e. if Mick is singing then that must be Brian playing harp, and if there are two guitars then two different people are playing them.

By the time of Beggars Banquet and JJF I can take it for granted that there will be a pre-recorded backing track and probably several additional layers recorded later.

What I'm not sure of is when the change from one technique to the other happened (somewhere around Aftermath? Earlier?). What do you reckon are the earliest tracks where what you hear on record did NOT all happen in the studio at the same time?

I think there are overdubs as early as the first LP. But I too would like to see this clearly laid out. My understanding is that they would record as much as possible on the first "layer," but then had a track or two for overdubs. But these had to be combined & done at the same time. So they'd all sing back-ups together, for example. You can hear mick singing back-up as well as lead on "Tell Me."

one thing I wonder--are mick's lead vocals live, ie, done at the same time as the rest of the basic track, or were they already usually the first priority for overdubbing?

keep in mind that there wasn't just one mic hanging in the middle of the room. (er, I think) Even for a mono recording, I assume there would be a mixer into which several mics could feed. So the engineer would get a balance between these mics as they recorded the basic tracks. That's one of the reasons records were produced so quickly back then--there was almost nothing to remix. They had to get the mix right as it went to tape (or not get it right... see "I'm Free"!).

but yeah, within a couple of years, things really changed. I think the Stones were somewhat followers of the Beatles and Hendrix in considering the studio as a canvas. As I understand, they would get obsessive with layers of overdubs, but would still gravitate toward live basic tracking in a way that later bands would not--in the 70s, often different parts of the drum kit would be recorded separately!

There were no overdubs until they went to Chess Studios, Chicago, Illinois, 11-12 June 1964. None of the studios they recorded at in the UK didnt have overdubbing capabilities. All the early stuff in the UK was performed pretty much live.

JR

I'm afraid that ain't true JR, they've been overdubbing since the IBC demos in 1963.

Were they using 4-track technology? Its my understanding that the vocal could go on 1 track and the instr. on the others? And didnt they "bounce" multiple tracks down to less tracks on a seperate recorder to allow more overdubs? Hence the "hiss" from generational loss you hear on older recordings. Things started moving along quikly with the advent of 8,16 and then beyond tracks. Its crazy when you think that the beatles were recording sgt pepper on 4 track? or was it more?

I'm not sure they had 4-track in '63, or if they had access to it. If they had 4 tracks, you'd think there would have been more overdubbing, no? Unless the issue was lack of studio time, rather than technical capability. I know there's such a configuration as 3-track; maybe that's what IBC, Regent, etc. had?

in ALO's Stoned Roger Savage, the engineer who recorded their first single, says there were overdubs:
"tambourine and I think vocals". and on Tell Me Keith is on both electric guitar and acoustic 12-string.
obviously they didn't have a lot of leeway on the early stuff, though! On Tell Me for example
"Keith was playing 12-string and singing harmonies into the same microphone as the 12-string."
- Mick, 1995, quoted on [www.timeisonourside.com]

>> I'm not sure they had 4-track in '63 <<

they did - Roger Savage talks about that as well. ALO couldn't get his head around the concept at all at first.
he was a fast learner, though



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-29 18:57 by with sssoul.

hmm, all right, so it was 4-track. Then I wonder why they didn't overdub more. I guess it would be lack of studio time per song they needed to complete, but also maybe just a conceptual expectation that overdubs should be done minimally. Also they add tape hiss, as scott says--one of the reasons the belabored early 70s albums sound fairly grungy for such major productions--and at these cheap studios, you couldn't sacrifice any quality!

anyone know of a book chronicling the history of studio technology and techniques in a comprehensive way? man, I would like to have this laid out...

news flash: i've found the description of Regent Studios i knew i'd read somewhere!
the first single was of course recorded at Olympic, and as i noted above it was 4-track;
but the debut album was done at Regent. in Stoned ALO says: "Regent Sound ... was a mono studio
and, after our haphazard, unnerving experience in a four-track studio, everyone agreed that recording in mono
would be better. Mono had the element we needed; what you hear is what you get."

i guess i can picture how overdubs like the acoustic 12-string and harmony vocals on Tell Me
would be done in a mono studio - a minimalist version of the "bouncing" technique scottkeef mentioned?

that quote also partly addresses cc's question about the nonabundance of overdubs on their early stuff -
when neither the band nor their producer/manager know beans about making records, minimalism is a plus.

by the way, cc, ALO also mentions another element you were speculating about -
that "lack of studio time per song they needed to complete". he says that was definitely the case at the Decca studios,
since they'd schedule a band for a strictly limited timeframe just to do the songs that had been chosen,
and you got kicked out when your time was up because other artists were waiting to record.
but ALO had done that tape-lease deal with Decca, so they chose their studios themselves, and he writes:
"At Regent, on the other hand, because it was relatively cheap and they were glad to have us,
we could stretch out a bit, experiment and learn from our mistakes."

(sorry, that's a bit of a digression! but cc, maybe you should get ahold of ALO's books, especially the first one.)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-29 20:18 by with sssoul.

thanks! you're a much more dedicated student of things Stones than me... much as I find ALO amusing, I assumed his perspective on technical matters would be nil!

(I'm idealizing a history beyond the Stones, but one that might lay forth what was standard at different points in the history of recording, and where & when & by whom the innovations were made. But yeah for now I suppose the topic is best approached through individual histories.)

getting back to the Stones' recordings, I don't really know what a "mono studio" is. All stereo requires is 2 channels, while you could mix 48 tracks to mono if you wanted, if mono were still the standard. I mean clearly they still had at least a few extra tracks to work with, whether or not these were going to be mixed to mono or stereo. Unless "mono studio" really does mean it had only 1 track, and overdubs needed to be done by remixing the original track with the overdub onto a new mono recording, ie, bouncing the whole thing as scott says.

>> Unless "mono studio" really does mean it had only 1 track <<

right. i'm not sure either that ALO means they literally only had one track -
i hope someone who knows what they're talking about will come along and shed some light.

Theres a great book called"The Complete Beatle Chronicles" that gives alot if info about recording and mixing techniques in BRitain in the 60s. It says there were numerous mono mixes of each song using the 4 track masters and that stereo mixes mostly for US releases were done nearly as an afterthought up until 69. So I guess its just the idea of if your mixing the tapes to come out of just one speaker(so to speak) or utilizing two seperate sides of the spectrum?
When I was a wee lad in the early 70s I would "overdub" in a rudimentary way. I had two cheap cassette recorders with mics(one a console!). I would record the vocal and rythm guitar,play that tape on one and with the other taping play the drums. then do the same process back and forth until I had harp and lead guitar all on the same tape. Talk about gen. loss but it worked!!

What is this? "By the time of Beggars Banquet and JJF I can take it for granted that there will be a pre-recorded backing track and probably several additional layers recorded later."

A pre-recorded backing track? WTF? It's all RECORDED.

I havent read Andrew's book (guess I need to pick one up), but the other sessions books state how backwards those early UK studios were. From what I gleaned from that literature, was that the Stones were SO excited to get to Chess so they could record in stereo, AND do overdubs. But I stand corrected. Thanks, His Majesty.

JR

Well, I obviously have to allow for at least some multi-tracking at a much earlier date than I'd originally thought! I've just been listening to some tracks from the first album where timeisonourside shows people doing more than one thing simultaneously, and assuming that their "probable lineups" are correct, it does sound as though it could have been achieved by "bouncing the whole thing" just once, as scottkeef suggests. I think this is the way people used to "duet with themselves" back when this was an unheard-of technical novelty.

Allowing basic "live" recording, bounced, plus one additional overdub, I don't think there's anything that requires any one individual to do anything more complicated than singing while playing guitar or banging a tambourine.

There are tracks where Mick is doing both lead vocal and harp (King Bee, Little By Little, Honest I Do), and although there isn't any time when both harp and vocal are simultaneous, it does sound (once you allow for it to be possible) as though either one or the other has been added later (to my ears, harp on HID and vocal on LBL). And if the LBL vocal has been added to an earlier track, Mick's apparently spontaneous "come on, Keith's" and "Let's get out of here" become a piece of pre-planned acting...

By the way, is it my imagination or are there 2 harps together in parts of LBL (and also in Fanny Mae)? As I said, I'm very much a beginner at this, and I'm off to do a bit more re-listening.

Whew, guesss i have not been banned ... yet.

ban-test post.


p

Quote
skipstone
What is this? "By the time of Beggars Banquet and JJF I can take it for granted that there will be a pre-recorded backing track and probably several additional layers recorded later."

A pre-recorded backing track? WTF? It's all RECORDED.

OK, skipstone, I've obviously got something very wrong, but I'm not sure what. How should I have described it?

I thought it was more that Chess compared to the London studios "had a better sound" I think was mick or keith's phrase--not so much stereo vs. mono, because they still preferred to put the songS out in mono in the end, right? Rather I think it was a higher quality board, a nicer live room, a better tape machine. In other words, not an entirely different species of recording, but better results of the same process, because of higher quality components, not to mention engineers. Maybe not, but I haven't seen specifically what Chess had that UK studios didn't (there's also the pedigree).

yeah, scott, that's the Lewisohn book, right? That was sitting around a studio I was recording in once... man, I wasted a lot of time reading it! I think they've since come out with something even more detailed. Anyway, your understanding lines up with mine... now we just need someone who knows more than we do, or a similar book for the Stones!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-29 22:34 by cc.

... skipstone, we all understand what Green Lady is talking about, and she started an interesting thread.
picking on someone's phraseology when they're jerks might be fun sometimes, but Green Lady isn't one of those.

on with the thread ... maybe Norman Jopling will come back and tell us about "mono studios".

>> not to mention engineers <<

yeah - what i recall them saying about Chess is that the engineers there knew immediately
what kind of sound they wanted, and (naturally! since it was a "Chess sound" ) how to effect it.

>> Mick's apparently spontaneous "come on, Keith's" and "Let's get out of here" become a piece of pre-planned acting <<

smile: i love that "awright Keith come on" whether it's purely spontaneous or not.
(Robert Johnson did two takes of some tracks, and it turns out that his spontaneous-seeming asides and addenda
were all carefully planned. that's all right - it doesn't mean they aren't creative, effective, etc)

ahem - i digress again, pardon!

Quote
with sssoul
>> Mick's apparently spontaneous "come on, Keith's" and "Let's get out of here" become a piece of pre-planned acting <<

smile: i love that "awright Keith come on" whether it's purely spontaneous or not.
(Robert Johnson did two takes of some tracks, and it turns out that his spontaneous-seeming asides and addenda
were all carefully planned. that's all right - it doesn't mean they aren't creative, effective, etc)

ahem - i digress again, pardon!

Yes, I love it too - one of the things that gets me about Stones recordings is that it usually SOUNDS as if they're all together live in the room having a blast - even when you know for certain that different parts of the recording are separated by many months and many miles!

Yeah,cc thats the book. I nearly went cross eyed reading it!! Seems like I saw Keith on a dvd about Sun Records(or maybe I dreamed it!) where he talked about just setting up mics around the room but Sam Phillips had it down on WHERE to put them.

where he talked about just setting up mics around the room but Sam Phillips had it down on WHERE to put them.

No dream ole son ...
Bonus section of Elvis Presley - Elvis Preseley Classic Albums DVD...

Actually more Keith in bonus material than actual DVD ...



ROCKMAN

there's an interesting read over here:
[multimedia.utsa.edu]

"My own favorite early multitrack memory is an afternoon in 1964 at A&R studios, then on 47th Street next door to the original Manny's Music Shop. Another engineer burst into the control room where my group was working and declared, "It's here." Our own engineer (now a major producer) took us out to witness the unpacking of A&R's first 4-track Ampex. The entire staff was speechless, circling it as though a spacecraft had landed. Then our engineer, with genuine puzzlement, said, "What are we going to do withfour tracks?" Twenty years later I read an interview in which he discussed Ehe awful artistic limitations of working with 24 tracks!"

[recordist.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-30 18:02 by open-g.

Thanks, Rockman! My sanity is safe for one more day!

Just for some basic understanding...The technique of recording in stereo was developed in the 1920's and 30's in the US, and starting from the 40's, stereo was the basic technique for all Hollywoon motion pictures, as well as classical music, big bands etc. One of the main reasons stereo was possible in the US was due to the fact that US Broadcasting sytems had chosen FM as their standard.

In the UK, the BBC had the monopoly, and all broadcasts were on AM, meaning there was no use for stereo sound (AM is like mp3 -compressed to death, so you won't hear any frequency or stereo sound anyway).

This meant that in the early '60's US studio's had up to 8 tracks of stereo sound and engineers who knew how to work with it, while the UK had two track that all engineers mixed to mono anyway.

Further to this, any home recordist knows that all you need is two tracks for overdubbing. You record two channels, bounce both channels to one channel, and record another channel. You loose fidelity, but that can be arranged otherwise.

This basically is how all British bands recorded until '66, when the first American 4 and 8 tracks desks and tape recordeds were imported.

Mathijs

>> the UK had two track that all engineers mixed to mono anyway. <<

thank you Mathijs - so that's what ALO must mean when he calls Regent Sound "a mono studio"?
on the other hand, the Olympic engineer quoted in ALO's book is quite specific
about Olympic having 4-track technology when the Stones cut Come On there.
so i'm confused again ... i'm used to it, though :E

cool thread that i'm enjoying very much ty all.
if not too distracting, and do please excuse me as this is just an addendum and not a hijack...
...i'd just like to say that I listened to the TAMI show last night...totally live, screams beyond belief all through, 'fideltiy' questionable...a few guys totally live, and a few thousand kids out of their minds at the Santa Monica Civic...and it was ALL there. ALL there. i got goosebumps and a tear or two.
Those guys am pretty dang good.

sorry for the distraction...i continue to enjoy this thread and the evolution of their multi-tracking, and all the challenges as well as amazing victories, that process brought to their sound and vision.
most of my fave posters have already chimed in here. as usual, i learn encylopedias worth of perspective everytime Mathijs chimes in.

...helps me to see in perspective why the Stones were so excited to record in the USA...
(I've been to those RCA studios in Hollywood a few years ago when it had turned into Los Angeles Digital Film-making School, and there were some very cool b&W stills still on the walls, of the stones, and many other huge recording stars...)

i still gas on jack Nitsche bringing Brian Wilson to the Between The Buttons sessions. Wow, that's amazing support and respect and natural interest and encouragement all around. Amazing stuff...

And the stuff they did at Chess etc...altho i don't know if recording consoles and multi-tracks were as prevalent in Chicago as they were in L.A. at the time.

What I liked about 'the old' way of recording, (the more simple way of bouncing, or say, overdubbing some tracks in the early days) was that they wanted to get as much of the song down live on each take, and used the tracks very judiciously...you get the real live rhythm feeling often, because it wasn't seperated into a dozens of mikes on dozens of tracks...and people were playing together, at the same time, albeit with some gobos and seperation, pretty much in the same room, seeing and feeling each other totally in performance...
i think that's what makes the rhythm tracks on most of exoms so fascinatingly powerful also...the 'moments' have a better chance of being natural and real rather than in isolated 'performance' per se...element by element...as is the standard in multi track recording these many years...
to hook up a guy like charlie to sampled sounds and lock him into a computer is close to nuts, in my old school perspective...(tho i think they only did that to a large extent once on one album)

i do recall geoff emerick and/or one of the beatles remarking that they often added tamborine on the last takes because the snare from the original 'pre-bounced' track, had dimished so significantly...mothers of invention...they got it across...

the comments about Sun blew my mind...i love the way Elvis and Dion (and most others) recorded back in the fifties and earliest sixties...you just got everyone in the room and kept doing it until it clicked...moving people back and forth in relation to the mikes etc...every take a performance...

blows me away the stories of elvis going back during the early RCA days, listening to everything and barking out #38. and that was it...there's a charm to working that hard so many dozens and mega dozens of takes...
i think of a cut like 'runaround sue' or 'the wanderer' with all the flamming drums and expert rhythm cats...and lead sax, and Dion's scats...etc...
they just DID it for REAL, over and over, till it was THERE...
i think the best contemporary artists, from every generation still working, incorporates a little of that technique if they are at all going for something organic in the feeling of their records.

it's interesting to me; i heard Mariah Carey's 'touch my body' single and thought nothing of it...i heard her do it live with the band on SNL and it instantly became one of my all time favorite singles...yeh some of it was her legs and the dance routine...but she was really singing hard in front of a live band, and it had an entire different feel that the modern ultra sterile faux modernistic beat box kinda groove...it felt real.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-30 05:29 by Beelyboy.

Buddy Holly used the 'bouncing' technique to overdub vocals.

The Stones version of Not Fade Away has a clear overdub on the electric guitar solo riff, up till that point the only electric instrument in the song is Bills' bass. Brian is on harp & Keith (I assume) on acoustic guitar.

We also have the 2 trax recorded on 18 Aug 1963, Poison Ivy, which is available with & without the guiro (scraper), & Fortune Teller which is available with & without harmonica. Both these trax, then, have some form of overdub/bounce in the recording of them.