After some of the posts above I've been looking at "Stoned" again, and finding some things I missed first time round:

Roger Savage makes the point that the 4-track Ampex used for Come On was "pretty unusual" technology for the time: one of the various reasons for moving to Regent was because the results from the 4-track Olympic studio sounded too clean: the band preferred the different instruments to "bleed" into each other's sound, as they did here:

"The Stones nailed the A-side, glued down by Keith's acoustic guitar. Spector's maracas and Charlie's back beat leaked nicely into everything. We had a perfect pre-mix and quickly added vocal, harp and electric guitar on the on-to-one pass and the record was ready for the nation's living rooms: a sure-fire hit."

(ALO on the recording of Not Fade Away at Regent Sound, the "mono studio": the "one-to-one pass" sounds like they had 2 tracks available.)

thanks for the further clarifications, Green Lady.
if i had a scanner ... the second single was cut at De Lane Lea Studios, and Gus Coral photographed the session;
one of his great shots in Black & White Blues shows the mixing board, and i reckon our technologically-educated cohorts
could say right away what it is. it looks like two tracks to me, but (as we've noticed!)
i am real far from knowing what i'm talking about.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-30 11:07 by with sssoul.

how interesting... can you describe, with sssoul, what makes you think the board has two tracks? Are there two VU meters (screens with moving needles)? Thing is, as I said I think the boards were capable of mixing--or pre-mixing, to use Loog's term--more than one channel onto one track. So the first pass, of the live band, might be 3 or 4 mics in the room, each of which would go into a board and have its own meter. If they had only one channel/one mic at a time... they were more limited than I thought!

and ladies, does Stoned give any sense of whether mick's vocal was done live with the band, or was that something they tended to overdub? It sounds as if it was live, that the overdubs tended to be guitar or percussion. That would certainly add to the live feel of the take... though unless they had mick "isolated," it would require the rest of the band to keep their volumes down. Which doesn't sound like the case on the first album.

EDIT: rereading Loog's quote, he says "vocal" was overdubbed, at least on "Not Fade Away." But that could be backing vocals, which I recall from elsewhere were often O/Ded.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-30 17:51 by cc.

Great topic.

I've wondered for years exactly how the Stones go about making their records. I'd imagine Keith sticks to his "everybody playing in the same room at the same" philosophy (which I completely agree with!), no matter who that 'everybody' consists of. How many of the basic tracks strart off with nothing but Keith and Charlie, with perhaps a guide vocal from Jagger? I understand Mick often does the vocals separately from the bands' musical tracks. I'd also venture to say that the majority of Ron Wood's parts are overdubbed (I don't think this started with AB. The inner sleeve of "Black And Blue" is probably a good indicator of the Stones working method. That said, I'd kill to have a book that is more or less The Rolling Stones' version of Lewisohn's "Beatles Complete Recording Sessions" book...that puppy is like a bible! As an aside, I know The Beatles were using 4 track from the "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" sessions onwards; only 'upgrading' to 8 track near the end of the "White Album" sessions. I'm guessing the Stones were using 8 track much, much earlier (RCA in Hollywood? Olympic?). Not to mention that for the most part their early stereo recordings don't have that annoying stereo picture -vocals and overdubs on one speaker, basic track on the other- which permeates The Beatles' mid-sixties recordings.

I've always loved the Stones' sense of 'production'; they tend to adhere to the 'less is more' style of arranging (well, Keith, at least.) As a guitar fan, I've always been surprised that, even in cases like the "Let It Bleed" LP where Keith Richards is playing all the parts, they don't go nuts with the guitar overdubs (i.e. Jimmy Page). There's a good question: which Stones song has the most guitars?

well JM, you're talking about more periods than probably can be discussed coherently in a thread, though I believe the Stones' methods have remained at least somewhat consistent, at least once they were able to produce themselves. But these early days are different in that they were more limited both by facilities and by their lack of stature to throw around and be wasteful with.

(but just to note a couple of things: the Black and Blue inner sleeve is a piece of art, not the actual tracking sheet from the sessions, as was discussed here in excruciating depth a while ago--it's an intriguing but incomplete guide to what's on the songs, done after the fact; I don't see any evidence for crediting keith with the "everybody in the same room" approach--he may express a preference for it in interviews, but clearly the rest of the band favored it too as early as the second single--they liked leakage! hilarious if you've ever dealt with a fastidious engineer; and mick is hardly unusual for doing his final vocal takes separately--that's standard practice, though I'm trying to figure out here when it began--as beely points out, it wasn't so on 50s rock records... now it's one of the first illusions to be dispelled when you record in a studio, the engineer tells you you'll be doing the vocals later... again the Stones are on the organic side for having mick sing during the tracking sessions and by often not caring that his guide vocal is audible on the final cut!)

but to return to the 60s, I actually thought the Stones did go fairly nuts with guitar overdubs at least by the late 60s. I've read keith quoted as saying his method--for his pop masterpieces like "Have You Seen Your Mother"--is to do layers and layers and select from them later, to the point where he's unsure by the end when each layer was done (is it any wonder they needed a more talented producer after '67?!).

Yeah, didnt Keith say something like "you have all these tracks and start to think you HAVE to use every one" or something to that effect? The inner sleeve is B & B is cool! Rons 70s album "Gimme Some Neck" had something like that and the inside of the "First Barbarians" cd booklet is kinda cool too. It shows how MT played all over Rons solo sessions!(different intruments)

RCA Hollywood was 4 track and updated to 8 track
im mid 1967, after the Stones no longer worked there.
Olympic Studios was 4 track in 1966-'68. I have a copy of an invoice Olympic sent to The BEatles regarding the recording of All You Need Is Love and and 4-track is mentioned. The book REcording The Beatles (highly recommended)
has a few pages on Olympic and say that they went 8 track in January 1970.
Something tells me that's a typo '{January 1969 maybe?) 'cause I have a copy of
another invoice sent to the Beatles for some Get Back mixing
dated mid-1969 that mentions 8 track. However, this was for mixing
and not recording. THese invoices can be found in Mark Lewishon's
The Complete Beatles Chronicles.

>> Are there two VU meters (screens with moving needles)? <<

nope, just one. as i've mentioned, i have no idea what i'm talking about,
so it's no doubt better to hope someone can post the photo.
page 41 of Black & White Blues, and page 5 of 40x20.

>> he says "vocal" was overdubbed, at least on "Not Fade Away." But that could be backing vocals,
which I recall from elsewhere were often O/Ded. <<

... are there backing vocals on Not Fade Away?
i've always assumed the vocals were usually overdubbed, so it's interesting to re-think that.

there's also that anecdote about Can I Get a Witness: it turned out Mick didn't know the words,
so ALO sent him out in the middle of the session to buy the sheet music,
and he was still out of breath from racing to/from the shop when he did the take.

and regarding the Stones always doing harmony vocals with everyone around the mic together:
i read somewhere that they call that "the gentlemen's way". i like that :E



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-31 12:05 by with sssoul.

De Lane Lea Studios London 1963 - Gus Carol ....

Five bags of horse feathers and a leather lassoo......FANKS......Crack!!!!



ROCKMAN

smile: thank you very kindly indeed, Rockman! feathers en route :E
october 7th 1963 is the exact date of that historic session

I respoting stuff about studio work...



[i305.photobucket.com][/IMG]
[IMG]

Keith is adorable huh..

Simon
myspace.com/koningsimon

The AMPEX 300 Full Track Mono
was the most widely used professional tape machine in the US from the 40's through sixties.
Studer, Scully and Presto were alternatives.


AMPEX 350


Rock'N Soul Museum. Sun Studio gear. AMPEX 350.

Now THATS the real rock n roll way to record!! IMO. All this digital stuff with endless tracks and no ambience recording are easier and more accurate I suppose but the sound just aint what it used to be.

[en.wikipedia.org]

der bingle thinking ahead of his time. meeting up with les paul. things developing from there. und the rest is history...a particularly interesting one methinks.

Just to add: vocals are never recorded live, it's just not possible to make vocals sound good with a full band playing. Vocals are recorded with highly sensitive membrane mics, you need to isolate it in a booth.

The way the Stones record is how all bands recorded until digital recording came along. You basically play and record a song until you have a real good take. This can mean that you literally record a song 50 to 100 times. When you have a good backing track (drums, bass, one or two guitar) you can start overdubbing, which basically is repairing mistakes and adding multiple parts and instruments. When all is done you record the vocals. Most big bands record in various studio's, as for example Olympics has a good room for recording backing tracks, bu Sunset is better in recording guitars, and the Hit factory is known for recording good vocals. Then you have additional mixing studio's, mastaring studio's etc.

Nowadays with digital recording you can record however you want. Start with vocals, add guitars, and last record the drums. Every track is truly isolated, there's no spill or leakage.

Mathijs

So Elvis and Carl Perkin's Sun tracks werent recorded live in the studio including vocals?

yeah, sorry Mathijs, but no way were the Sun, Chess, etc. classics are done with separate vocal tracks. Can you imagine asking Howlin' Wolf to overdub vocals?

I agree that overdubbed vocals are the rock template, but there are plenty of exceptions. Dylan didn't do a vocal overdub until possibly Planet Waves? I can check it in the Clinton Heylin book. It was well after the 60s.

and didn't the big pop singers--Sinatra, Tony Bennett, etc.--sing in front of their orchestras to tape? I think the most editing that would take place for that genre was splicing together different takes. The engineers focused on the "pre-mix," and most jazz & classical recordings are still done this way today, to my knowledge.

I believe the first Velvet Underground album has live vocals as well, at least on the rawer cuts.

it may have had something to do with the shite quality of the London studios' rooms. They were probably small and poorly soundproofed, whereas the sweet sounding studios in NYC and LA could be massaged for better balance.

Also, FWIW, the Beatles didn't use headphones for recording
until they started Revolver in 1966.
Vocals and overdubs were done with the track playing out of RLS-10 speaker
cabinets and the singers singing or the guitarists playing along
with the speakers blasting away (not blasting, but quietly).
Kind of like singing along with your favorite record.
THat's why you hear all that leakage on stereo Beatle records.
Run For Your Life is a good example.
What you're hearing is the RLS-10 playing the backing track and the band singing.
If you look at Beatle photos from 1963 to 1965, you won't see a headphone in sight. Same with the Stones. Do you see any headphones in the above shots?
I think when they got to America and RCA did they start to use headphones.
Also, not all bands used vocal booths back then. The Beatles did not use vocal booths while recording with engineer Norman Smith (he wanted the live atmosphere)
and was used on rare occasions from 1966 onwards.
As for the Stones, I've yet to see a picture of Jagger in a vocal booth
from, say, 1965 till the 70's. Mind you, vocal booths today are quite different
from what they were back then. There's a picture of the Beatles recording
the vocals for Hey Jude (and many other songs) and what you'll see is
a Nuemann mike just plopped down in the middle of a huge room, no screens around.
I don't think the Stones recoreded that much differently around this time.
BTW, the RLS-10 is a speaker designed and made for EMI-Abbey Road
and is just a huge monitor/playback speaker standing about 5-feet tall.

I don't think the number of tracks available for recording have anything to do with if the end result turned up in mono or in stereo. I think that more tracks
made it easier for the mixing engineer since he could balance the sound better. I don't think that there were something like "mono-studios" in the 60's. Overdubs have been made long before that. At least in the 50's. One gimmick from that time was when the vocalist sang in harmony with him/her self. That proves that overdubs could be done even that early, but the end result were mostly release in mono anyway.
Matt

Well I guess anyone with two seperate tape recorders could "overdub". On the Sun studio site it says Sam started with a one track Ampex(so I guess it had to be mono) but using two machines with a delay from one tape to the other plus the live sound is how he developed the echo effect?(without having to record in a huge room?) I dont know,it just seemed interesting to me!

>> I don't think the number of tracks available for recording have anything
to do with if the end result turned up in mono or in stereo. <<

right - i think we all grasp that, but ... yeah!
the term "mono studio" is the one ALO used to describe Regent Sound Studios,
and part of what we're trying to sort out is exactly what he meant by that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-09-01 20:32 by with sssoul.

I guess he just meant "a studio lacking a stereo tape machine," although as I've been saying, I think that was the least of Regent's limitations. He might as well have called it a "cardboard studio"!

and I think more tracks makes it "easier" for the engineer to get a mix only if he's capable of handling such complexity, which it sounds as if the crew for "Come On" was not! (or blame it on Loog as producer for not knowing what to tell them he wanted)

But just to play devils advocate here(if thats the correct term) IF there is only a single track MONO recorder that the original and subsequent "overdubs" are done on which would require playing the original tape and the live "addition" back to ANOTHER single track MONO machine, would you not still end up with a one track tape to transfer to vinyl. And how can you "mix" or bring one track up or down over the others if you only have one track. That may not make ANY sense so forgive(and ignore) me if I've finally succeeded at confusing myself!

Regent Sound had both mono and stereo Ampex machines.
They also had a Studer J37 4-track, but I don't know when they got it.
The J37 was introduced in 1964. EMI (Abbey Road) didn't get one until 1965.
It's possible Regent Sound got one before EMI did.
THe J37 was certainly there when the Beatles did Fixing A Hole at Regent in '67.
Some gear included Pultec EQP-1a EQ, Universal Audio LA-2A,
a custom stereo limiter, and a great echo chamber.
Also, Regent Sound had 2 rooms. The smaller one not having the superior
recording equpment than the larger one had.
I'm not sure which room the Stones used, though.
It also had a Trios board with 12 inputs and 4 outputs
and Tannoy monitors.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-09-01 21:15 by tomk.

Quote
cc
yeah, sorry Mathijs, but no way were the Sun, Chess, etc. classics are done with separate vocal tracks. Can you imagine asking Howlin' Wolf to overdub vocals?

I agree that overdubbed vocals are the rock template, but there are plenty of exceptions. Dylan didn't do a vocal overdub until possibly Planet Waves? I can check it in the Clinton Heylin book. It was well after the 60s.

and didn't the big pop singers--Sinatra, Tony Bennett, etc.--sing in front of their orchestras to tape? I think the most editing that would take place for that genre was splicing together different takes. The engineers focused on the "pre-mix," and most jazz & classical recordings are still done this way today, to my knowledge.

I believe the first Velvet Underground album has live vocals as well, at least on the rawer cuts.

it may have had something to do with the shite quality of the London studios' rooms. They were probably small and poorly soundproofed, whereas the sweet sounding studios in NYC and LA could be massaged for better balance.

I don't know exactly when they started recording vocals in a booth. I know around '55 the Elvis and Johnnie Cash sessions were completely live, but the '57/'58 Chuck Berry studio sessions had Berry playing live and then later overdubbing his vocals.

I know for sure that Dylan started overdubbing his vocals already at the time of Blonde on Blonde, there's many pictures of the sessions.

Concerning the Stones -there's many pictures of Jagger doing his vocals separate from the band, with headphones and a (huge!) membrane or condensor microphone. These pictures were taken both in the UK and the US in late '63 and early '64. Pictures of the first Chess sessions of the Stones already show the band wearing headphones for overdubs.

Mathijs
ps I don't make a distinction between a booth or just in the big room, with or without isolation.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-09-01 21:51 by Mathijs.

Quote
Mathijs

Quote
cc
yeah, sorry Mathijs, but no way were the Sun, Chess, etc. classics are done with separate vocal tracks. Can you imagine asking Howlin' Wolf to overdub vocals?

I agree that overdubbed vocals are the rock template, but there are plenty of exceptions. Dylan didn't do a vocal overdub until possibly Planet Waves? I can check it in the Clinton Heylin book. It was well after the 60s.

and didn't the big pop singers--Sinatra, Tony Bennett, etc.--sing in front of their orchestras to tape? I think the most editing that would take place for that genre was splicing together different takes. The engineers focused on the "pre-mix," and most jazz & classical recordings are still done this way today, to my knowledge.

I believe the first Velvet Underground album has live vocals as well, at least on the rawer cuts.

it may have had something to do with the shite quality of the London studios' rooms. They were probably small and poorly soundproofed, whereas the sweet sounding studios in NYC and LA could be massaged for better balance.

I don't know exactly when they started recording vocals in a booth. I know around '55 the Elvis and Johnnie Cash sessions were completely live, but the '57/'58 Chuck Berry studio sessions had Berry playing live and then later overdubbing his vocals.

I know for sure that Dylan started overdubbing his vocals already at the time of Blonde on Blonde, there's many pictures of the sessions.

Concerning the Stones -there's many pictures of Jagger doing his vocals separate from the band, with headphones and a (huge!) membrane or condensor microphone. These pictures were taken both in the UK and the US in late '63 and early '64. Pictures of the first Chess sessions of the Stones already show the band wearing headphones for overdubs.

Mathijs
ps I don't make a distinction between a booth or just in the big room, with or without isolation.

Of course not all bands recorded the way the Beatles did at EMI (re: no headphones). I know the Stones did use them at other studios, (RCA, etc).
At some early ones (Regent, De Lane Lea) they might not have.
All studios are (were) different.
I don't see any in the above photos. They could be there.
I'm not sure about Dylan overdubbing vocals around the Blonde On Blonde time.
Dylan did most of his stuff live.
I'll have to go back and check Clinton Heylin's Bob Dylan Recording Sessions
book to see. Indeed, Dylan spent very little time in the studio.
All of his studio albums up until 1976's Desire have just 90 studio days total.

this shot's supposed to be from their first Chess session - not one of the sessions we're currently wondering about,
but it's the best i can do for an illustration at the moment.


- supposedly june 10th 1964 by Peter Stuart (courtesy of BrownEyedGirll)

>>the term "mono studio" is the one ALO used to describe Regent Sound Studios,
and part of what we're trying to sort out is exactly what he meant by that.<<

It could mean that Regent was equiped with full-track-mono head(s) on their Ampex machines - instead of two-track-mono or even stereo.
could also mean the mixing console was wired for mono only.

Mick at Regent Sound:


Hulton Deutsch Picture Library: no photographer named

By the way, in 1964 I owned a home reel-to-reel tape recorder capable of recording 2 tracks (mono) per "side" of tape, and playing them back either separately or together - but without the sophistication to enable you to play back one track while recording the other. However, with careful timing you could do things that didn't need exact synchronisation, like adding words over background music. Wish I could remember the make but it's forty years ago...