This is a guest post from Geoffrey Granka of Fresh Produce Productions. Find him online at www.freshaudio.ca and @gmgranka on Twitter.
The invention of reverb itself is impossible to pin-point in time. Gregorian monks knew it sounded great and so does anybody who sings in the shower. As soon as recording started, it was natural to record music in its most pleasing setting. Early recording engineers followed music wherever it went, frequently ending up in spacious churches and music halls. When electronic recording began to gain ground over the phonograph, interns started complaining about hauling tube tape machines to every church in the city. Subsequently, marking the first and last time anybody listened to an intern, dedicated recording studios started being built to house the gargantuan, over-heating recording equipment.
When it came down to live rooms, flexibility was the biggest concern. An 80-piece orchestra sounded great in a room with a lengthy reverberation, but it was hardly desirable for a rock band. Specially made reverb chambers were developed using a send (called an echo send) from a console, the engineer could adjust how much signal would be sent to that chamber and what channel would receive the treatment.
Note: Most audio engineering text books will refer to “echo” as a small number of repeats, each discernible. This is a misnomer in the case of “echo” chambers. Most echo chambers provide reverb, which is usually accepted as thousands of repeats that are unable to be individually picked out by the human ear.
A view inside an Echo (or Reverb) Chamber
How It Worked:
The rooms were not nearly as large as you would expect (or as they sounded). Studio architects used what little trickery they had at their disposal to exaggerate the acoustics of what was often little more than a large pantry. Echo chambers would have shellac or tile on all surfaces of the room, much like a shower. The loudspeaker (playing what was being sent from the echo send on the console) would usually be placed not facing the room, but facing a reflective wall. This increased the reflections in the room, and also decreased the amount of direct signal that would be picked up by the microphone(s). In the early days of recording the echo chambers would be mono send, mono return.
Famous Examples:
Gold Star Studios is arguably the most famous example of a reverb chamber. Phil Spector made Gold Star his home while recording the early hits of his career, and its reverb chamber played a key role in Phil’s infamous Wall of Sound. If other studios included reverb chambers as fringe benefits, Gold Star included it as a downright necessity. A cramped room where elbow room amongst musicians was a legitimate concern, the reverb chamber was the saving grace. In a Mix Magazine article, Larry Lavine testifies to the speaker in the chamber being a cheap 8-inch speaker being picked up by an equally cheap ribbon microphone (bi-directional). The chambers were a mere 2×3 feet, but the cement lining did wonders to enlarge that. You can hear this reverb on The Ronettes’ Be My Baby, parts of Pet Sounds, and other staples of that era in recording.
Try getting away with a fart in this room.
EMI Studios (later Abbey Road Studios) was a studio complex built by a record label at a time when it was hard to imagine a better business model than recorded music. There were 3 reverb chambers built inside the complex, one for every studio live floor.
Chamber One was built first for Studio Three (the smallest live floor in Abbey Road) and it made use of a single Tannoy speaker being heard by a Neumann KM53. It was approximately 11′ wide by 19′ long and was rectangular except for a diagonal reflective wall on which the speaker was focused.
Chamber Two was built to satisfy reverb needs for Studio Two (home of The Beatles). It likely made use of the same Tannoy and KM53. It’s dimensions were rather unflattering for an acoustic environment, featuring two pairs of parallel surfaces measuring 12′ x 21′. To make up for this, engineers pointed the Tannoy at one corner, and used sewer piping to diffuse standing waves in the room. Crude, but it hasn’t hurt sales of The Beatles catalogue.
Chamber Three was built for EMI’s classical studio work, mostly being done in the gigantic Studio One. It used staggered, nonparallel surfaces coated with the same reflective tiles as the other chambers. Measuring 17’8” by 12′, it was suitably the biggest chamber in the building.
Capitol Studios, located in the basement of Capitol Tower, was the frat house of Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys, and the equally charming Beastie Boys. Its four identical trapezoidal rooms were designed by musician cum technological-soothsayer Les Paul. The rooms were built using reinforced concrete and coated with metal lath and cement plaster on the interior. Even the ceilings were sloped to ofter flutter or standing waves.
Other Famous Reverb Chambers:
Motown Records’ Hitsville USA complex is rumored to have used a hole in the ceiling as a jerry-rigged echo chamber. This wasn’t a traditional reverb chamber, it wasn’t controlled from the board, adjusted by positioning mics to pick-up the desired amount of reverb.
Joe Meek, the English producer of the 1962 hit, Telstar was well-known for using cavities in his house, like beneath the stairs or in the bathroom, to supply the reverb he needed.
An example of a staircase reverb set-up
Build Your Own:
Dave Simons over at Electronic Musician wrote a great article on his experience building a reverb chamber in the basement of his home studio.
This is a guest post from Geoffrey Granka of Fresh Produce Productions. Find him online at www.freshaudio.ca and @gmgranka on Twitter.
Like previously covered pieces of gear (Shure SM57, Neve 1073), the TR808 has penetrated music to the point that most of us don’t even notice when we hear it anymore.
Its un-kick-drum-sounding kick drum; snappy, fast-attack snare; chorus-y handclaps and unusual cowbell have made it famous and loved. But it didn’t start out that way.
*flashback music*
Drum machines themselves started out in family home organs as soon as such things became common place (imagine that). Organs were popular in homes because they were crude synthesizers for the time, offering a cost-effective “one-man band” option for the living room. A rhythm generator was a logical addition. Wurlitzer made the Sideman in 1959 and many other organ makers followed suit.
Ace Tone was a relative latecomer to the drum machine game, but they gained ground quickly. By the time Ace Tone had changed their name to Roland and released their first TR series drum machines (standing for Transistor Rhythm), they had made a name for themselves as the electronic drum company. The TR series made themselves onto numerous recordings (Sly and the Family Stone and Phil Collins most notably). But they still had leeway to make in the user friendly side of things…
In 1980, the Linn LM-1 was released. The sounds were the closest to actual drums that synthesizers had ever gotten. It was fully programmable (no more corny “Latin rhythm” button). The LM-1 is $5000. That’s a good chunk of change now, but it was more than $13,000 in 1980. Roger Linn pimped the machines around to his famous friends and the LinnDrum became one of the more revered drum machines in history.
Around the same time, the Roland TR-808 burst onto the scene. It had more intuitive programming than the LM-1 and laughable, yet endearing, drum sounds. The Roland approximations were way off, to the point of being obvious. It went on to sell little more than 12,000 units and was discontinued in 1983 despite being brought to fame in Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” in 1982 and Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock”.
By the time you could find TR-808s in pawnshops, they had depreciated greatly from their original $1000 MSRP. Cash-strapped producers could cop a TR-808 for a hill of beans and start making beats. Coupled with its association to RnB and early Hip-Hop, the TR-808′s affordability made it a common element in fundamental hip-hop. It was used all over Beastie Boy’s License to Ill album and many other records. Outkast used it religiously: it’s the snappy snare in Lil Wayne song’s “Lollipop”, and featured most recently in Eminem’s “Not Afraid”. Its low, speaker-busting bass drum featured so prominently on Kanye West’s 808 & Heartbreak that it earned its way into the album title.
While relatively few actual machines exist today, I think it’s safe to say that 808 samples come with every DAW in some shape or form. Logic call its TR808 samples EXS808 and Vintage 08, ProTools’ has Eight-0 and Fat 8. Some of my favourite samples are made by Goldbaby, who specialize in tracking quirky drum machines and synths onto beautiful tape machines.
Computer drum sequencing also owes a lot to Roland, with its distinctive 16-button grid representing 16th notes being replicated as often as its sounds.
This is a guest post from Geoffrey Granka of Fresh Produce Productions. Find him online at www.freshaudio.ca and @gmgranka on Twitter.
Prior to the proliferation of independent recording studios that seem so familiar to us today, studios were owned by labels. EMI artists would record at EMI studios using equipment designed and manufactured privately by EMI engineers. The same went for Motown artists, Capitol records artists and so on. Some incredible equipment was designed this way (EMI TG consoles, Coles 4038s, Fairchild compressors, etc.) but as time progressed this vertically-integrated model began to make less sense. Recording artists were working stranger hours and desired more control over their recordings (old hat studios like EMI had strict rules for engineers). Independent studios began to pop up to fill this need.
Some of them (like London’s Trident Studios) had the budget and manpower to design their own equipment while others had to contract out to specialized engineers.
Like so many things in history, the legendary Neve 1073 preamp owes much of its fame to being in the right place at the right time. It was introduced in 1970 as a module in a console custom built for Wessex studios. In these days Rupert Neve ran around the independent studios of the world designing equipment for them on request. When Wessex was looking for a new console to satisfy it’s varied client’s needs, Mr Neve was asked to design what became the A88 console.
Rupert Neve designed a solid-state preamp with transformer balanced inputs and outputs (somewhat of a rarity for the time). This was done due to Neve’s history in broadcast and radio electronics where protecting the signal from degradation was critical. Also, because this was a console pre, the amp could not be source selective. It had to sound good on everything.
Wessex Studios was more than satisfied and news began to spread through the independent engineering world. Neve had developed a versatile console that was (brace yourself) affordable. The combination of versatile and cost-efficient resulted in Rupert Neve being a very busy man, installing consoles in virtually all of the independent studios. People began to connect the great sound they were hearing on records to the equipment that recorded them, and the 1073′s infamy grew.
Eventually Neve sold his company (which later merged with AMS) and started Focusrite (where he designed the ISA preamp). He seems to have settled for now at his own Rupert Neve Designs where he still designs extremely professional preamps. None of the amplifiers he has designed since the 1073 have been reached as much fame, except for maybe the 1081, which is a similar preamp to the 1073 with a more involved EQ section.
Recently Golden Age has issued a clone of the 1073 sans EQ (the PRE-73) which it sells for $299USD. Chameleon Labs makes a clone (7602) for it selling for $799USD. Brent Averill makes a clone for $3025USD (the 1028), while what became of the original Neve company (AMS-Neve) sells theirs for around $3000USD. Original Neve modules can cost upwards of $5000USD.
Even though they aren’t so inexpensive anymore, very few people will deny that Neve made an incredible pre that has outlasted its peers of the same era. The 1073 can usually be assumed to be apart of at least one vocal chain on any major label release. Worth $5000 or more? It’s debatable, but it’s legacy is undeniable.
This is a guest post from Geoffrey Granka of Fresh Produce Productions. Find him online at www.freshaudio.ca and @gmgranka on Twitter.
Wouldn’t it be lame if I said, “The history of the Shure SM57 is the history of rock and roll itself”? It’s a good thing I’m not saying that.
The Shure SM57 is one of the most popular (if not the most popular) microphones in the world. Virtually everybody that has heard a recording since 1965 has heard the sound of an SM57; on snare drums, on guitar cabinets, and on the Presidential Podium (that recording of Nixon saying “I am not crook.” was recorded by the SM57). So how did this cheap little microphone become so prolific? Let’s take a look at where it came from:
Before 1965, Shure had already made quite a name for itself in the audio industry. It was the most popular maker of cartridges for record players and had found microphone success in everything from securing the contract though making throat microphones for the US Air Force (allowing pilots to speak to each other over the roar of engines) to miking the man who brought rock and roll to mainstream America: Mr Elvis Presley.
The microphone that was often connected to Elvis was the Shure Model 55. This mic garnered acclaim because of it’s awesome-stupendous art-deco styling, its affordability (ribbons were the predominant microphone type at the time), and its excellent sounding capsule: the Unidyne (developed by Ben Bauer in 1939). Engineers at Shure continued to develop their successful Unidyne capsule to make it better and better as time went by. Eventually a grumpy/ingenious engineer named Ernie Seeler developed the Unidyne III capsule, the very one used in the modern SM57 today. This capsule first found itself in the Shure Model 545, a microphone that looked veeeeeery similar to the SM57.
The Model 545 was pretty successful because of its great sound and its ground-breaking end-address capsule. Prior to the 545, microphones were more prone to feedback and less accommodating to close-miking because the capsule didn’t get right up against the sound source. This allowed more ambient noise to enter the recording. The 545 found itself in a lot of US studios, again because of it’s low price and superior rejection. The Model 545 was most notably used on Brian Wilson’s voice on a little album called Pet Sounds to track his voice separately while recording vocals shoulder-to-shoulder with the Beach Boys.
Meanwhile, back at Shure Brothers Incorporated, the crazy engineers kept trying to improve upon the 545. Television was becoming a big thing, so they decided they would build a mic for this demographic.
They already had an excellent capsule, but they needed a microphone casing that would withstand the rigors of TV studios. So they did what any 11-year-old child would do and tried out their designs by cooking them, dropping them, and immersing them in salt water. Once they had a superhero microphone that survived the tests, they gave its body (same as 545) a non-reflective coating for the cameras, and removed the on-and-off switch (you don’t want pesky talent accidentally turning off their mics). In 1965, when the uncreative naming people at Shure affixed an SM to the model name to indicate that it was a studio microphone, they were referring to TV studios.
Eventually word of this microphone’s infamous durability traveled into the burgeoning live sound industry, and techs starting bring along these trusty little mics. Studio engineers loved them too, not only because they sounded good, but also because they had extremely high SPL ratings. This meant that they could use these mics to get the sound that was becoming increasingly popular: close miking.
There you have it: the indisputable history of the Shure SM57. Tell your friends.
The Shure SM57; the classiest thing in this photograph.
Sources:
Shure Incorporated Official Website
Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Beatles – Geoff Emerick
Wouldn’t It Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds – Charles L Granata
