Les Paul

In 1947, Capitol Records released a recording that had begun as an experiment in Les Paul's garage, entitled "Lover (When You're Near Me)", which featured Paul playing eight different parts on electric guitar, some of them recorded at half-speed, hence "double-fast" when played back at normal speed for the master. This was the first time that multi-tracking had been used in a recording. Amazingly, these recordings were made, not with magnetic tape, but with wax disks. Paul would record a track onto a disk, then record himself playing another part with the first. He built the multi-track recording with overlaid tracks, rather than parallel ones as he did later. These tracks also contain examples of disc delay, echo and phasing.

Les Paul

This was the first ever 'sound on sound' recording incorporating tape delay (No. 1 for 9 weeks). This and other recordings were unique for their heavy use of overdubbing, which was technically impossible before Paul's invention of multitrack recording. He often experimented with up to 30 overdubs. Paul's multitracking system was made possible by the introduction of reel-to-reel audio tape recording, developed by Jack Mullin and the Ampex company in the late 1940s, with the backing of radio, film and recording star Bing Crosby. Crosby gave Les Paul what was only the second of the now-famous Ampex Model 300 recorder, which was the world's first commercially-produced reel-to-reel tape recorder. Using this machine, Paul developed his tape multitrack system by adding an additional recording head and extra circuitry, allowing multiple tracks to be recorded separately and asynchronously on the same tape. Paul's invention was quickly developed by Ampex into commercially-produced 2-track and 3-track recorders, and these machines were the backbone of the professional recording studio, radio and TV industry in the 1950s and early 1960s. 

Johnny London

Sam Phillips of Sun Records experimented with different tools (partly through financial constraints) - this recording conjured the sound from London's saxophone by suspending a large booth-like object above his head. Part of the dark, raw, ethereal often eerie Sun sound.

Elvis Presley

Still with Phillips, this was originally a B side, and originally a bluegrass number. It was on this session Phillips introduced the slapback delay  sound, used on other sessions with Sun Records by Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins.

Bill Haley

Arguably the one of the first 'Rock 'n' Roll' recordings. It was done in one take. The recording studio was a former dance club, with performers told to arrange themselves as if playing live, and let the acoustics take care of the big sound. During the session the engineers were concerned about the meters 'peaking' into the red (probably, they had never had to deal with this kind of sound level before)

Elvis Presely

Presley was now with RCA (producer Steve Sholes). Sholes insisted the Sun sound be adhered to, so the recording was done in a converted church, relying on ambience to recreate the tape delay effect. 3 mics were positioned around Presley because of his tendency to stray.

Gene Vincent

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Gene Vincent, the Rockabilly pioneer recorded this at 'Bradley's Barn'. Owen Bradley's Nashville studio (which later pioneered the 'Nashville Sound') used a separate tape machine for delay but also fed the signal into a live room before it came back onto tape.

Buddy Holly

Producer and engineer Norman Petty was frustrated with the 'conveyer belt' attitude of other studios and engineers. At his studio in Clovis, he took time and attention to detail working with artists. He used Les Paul's overdubbing techniques although 8-track machines were now available. He used 2 Ampex machines, recording in mono on to one, then playing back on to one the music that had just been recorded while recording a new part. The 'pick' sound was overdubbed, 2 mics on a fender tweed-covered amp, and another on the strings - attention to detail for this period. Petty often used acoustic screens, but on these recordings the drum kit was set up in a completely different room. The ceramic tiled echo chamber was in the garage attic! In "I'm gonna love you too" Listen out for the 4 cricket chirps at the end, in tempo with the song. They got into the echo chamber during the recording.

Cliff Richard

The Coasters

Ray Charles

These two songs were at Atlantic Studios (New York), and probably engineered by Tom Dowd, a famous engineer credited with being one of the pioneers of 8-track recording (when most other major American studios were considering whether or not to go over to 4-track). Atlantic Studios boasted a famous echo chamber, consisting of fractured left over tiles, arranged to make a totally non-symmetrical room. Drums were always recorded in the same spot - in a reserved space that Dowd built. This helped to create the consistent Atlantic sound.

The Tornados

The Tornados  acted as the in-house back-up group for many of Joe Meek's productions. Joe Meek is viewed today as an enigmatic visionary engineer and producer, years ahead of his time. His studio consisted of some rooms above a shop in North London, the control room looking like an electronics nerd's den. 'Telstar' (named after a satellite) merges strange sound effects with simple melodies, using unorthodox instruments such as the 'clavioline'. Meek created an otherworldly concoction of echo, reverb (the 4th floor attic was used as a reverb chamber), and severe limiting. A story common when the number was first a hit said that the distortions and background noise on the record was from sending the signal up to the Telstar satellite and then re-recording it back on earth.  More plausible stories say that the sounds intended to symbolize radio signals were actually produced by Meek by running a pen around the rim of an ashtray, and the "rocket blastoff" was a flushing a toilet, in both cases the recordings of mundane sounds made to sound exotic by playing the tape backwards and at various speeds.

The Beatles

I Want To Hold Your Hand (1963)

The Beatles

Otis Redding

The Righteous Brothers

The Rolling Stones

Ike & Tina Turner

The Beatles

Revolver was The Beatles' 7th album in three years, released on August 5, 1966. The album showcased a number of new stylistic developments which would become more pronounced on later albums. It reached #1 on both the UK and US charts. One of Paul McCartney's more notable songs from this album is "Eleanor Rigby (inspired by the Bernard Herrmann score for François Truffaut's film Fahrenheit 451). The strings were recorded dry and compressed, giving a stark, urgent sound. Engineer Geoff Emerick placed the microphones right up against the two cellos, a very unusual practice for the time.

In Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping" George Harrison played the notes for the lead guitar (and for the second guitar in the solo) in reverse order, then reversed the tape and mixed it in. The backwards guitar sound builds the sleepy, ominous, and weeping tone of the song. This (along with backwards vocals used on the single "Rain") was the first recorded instance of backmasking, which Lennon discovered after mistakenly loading a reel-to-reel tape backwards under the influence of marijuana. Another key production technique used for the first time on this album was Automatic Double Tracking (ADT), invented by engineer Ken Townsend. This technique used two linked tape recorders to automatically create a doubled vocal track, replacing the standard method, which was to double the vocal by singing the same piece twice onto a multitrack tape, a task Lennon particularly disliked. The Beatles were reportedly delighted with the invention and used it extensively on Revolver. ADT quickly became a standard pop production technique.

The Blues Breakers
(featuring Eric Clapton)

The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys

Pink Floyd

The Spencer Davies Group

The Small Faces

Experience

Pink Floyd

"Strawberry Fields Forever" was recorded in 1967, the same release year as Sgt. Pepper, although it was only released as a single.. Widely considered to be one of the group's best recordings, it is also one of the defining works of the psychedelic rock genre.

The song's groundbreaking production and complex arrangement gave clear evidence of the band's near-total mastery in the studio and their increasingly avant-garde approach to their music. It featured extensive overdubbing, the prominent use of reverse tape effects and tape loops, and extensive audio compression and equalisation. It is famous for its Mellotron solo, and also features slide guitar, trumpets, cellos and some unusual instruments including the swarmandel, an Indian stringed instrument which provided the sitar-like sound at the end of each chorus.

The released version of the song is actually an edit of two different performances. The band recorded multiple takes of two quite distinct versions of the song. The first version was (reputedly) an attempt to emulate the acid rock sound of American bands like Jefferson Airplane, and it featured a relatively basic instrumentation including Mellotron, guitars, bass and drums. For the second version, recorded some weeks later, Lennon had opted for a much more complex arrangement (scored by George Martin) that included trumpets and cellos, along with the prominent sound of backwards cymbals during the verses.

Reviewing the various takes, Lennon decided that he liked the first minute of Take 7 (the "acid rock" version), and the ending of Take 26 (the "orchestral" version). He wanted the finished master to combine these sections from the two versions, so he nonchalantly gave producer George Martin the task of somehow joining them together.

The problem was that the two versions were played in different keys and tempos. Fortunately for Martin and his engineers, the faster version was also in the higher key, and so the two were reasonably easy to combine. The edit is subtle but detectable, at one minute into the song, though some CDs may show the edit at 59 seconds. (The widely-repeated story is that the first version had to be speeded up and the second had to be slowed down. Comparison of the original versions with the final one shows that both of the original versions were slowed down, the second by more than the first.) The pitch-shifting used in joining the versions also gave Lennon's lead vocal a subtle "off-kilter" quality.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the 8th album by The Beatles. It is often cited as the most influential rock album of all time. Innovative in every sense, from structure to recording techniques to the cover artwork, the artistic effect was felt immediately and influenced nearly every pop-rock album that came after it.

All of the Sgt. Pepper tracks were recorded at Abbey Road using mono, stereo and 4-track recorders. Like its predecessors, the recording made extensive use overdubbing and bouncing. Magnetic tape had also led to innovative use of instruments and production effects, notably the tape-based keyboard sampler, the Mellotron, and effects like flanging and phasing, and a greatly improved system for creating echo and reverberation.

"Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite" is another example of the album's unusual production. The flowing sound collage was created by recording of calliopes and fairground organs, which were then cut into strips of various lengths, thrown into a box, mixed up and edited together in random order, creating a long loop which was mixed in during final production.

"A Day In The Life" started out being two separate songs, one by Lennon and one by McCartney, separated by 24 bars of nothing. The original backing tracks were recorded in the normal manner on a 4-track machine, then bounced down with additional overdubs. To fill the void McCartney had the idea of bringing in a full orchestra and having them "freak out" for the 24-bar middle section.

The orchestral part for the song was recorded with McCartney and Martin conducting a 40-piece orchestra. Martin later described explaining his improvised score to the puzzled orchestra: "What I did there was to write, at the beginning of the twenty-four bars, the lowest possible note for each of the instruments in the orchestra. At the end of the twenty-four bars, I wrote the highest note each instrument could reach that was near a chord of E major. Then I put a squiggly line right through the twenty-four bars, with reference points to tell them roughly what note they should have reached during each bar... Of course, they all looked at me as though I were completely mad."

Abbey Road's ambiophonics system (which used 100 loudspeakers around the studio to feed delayed signals of the orchestra into the studio and back into the control room) was used to simulate a larger sound. Not only this, but two 4-track machines were joined together to effectively quadruple the number of takes.

Following the final orchestral crescendo, the song ends with one of the most famous final chords in music history: John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Evans, simultaneously playing an C-major chord on three different pianos. The sound of the final chord was manipulated to ring out for as long as possible (nearly a minute) by increasing the sound level to the tape as the vibration faded out (near the end of the chord the recording levels were turned so high that the sound of papers rustling, a chair squeaking, and someone saying "Shhh!" as if they are advising the band members or production staff to keep quiet can all be heard. Some claim that the hum of the Abbey Road studios air conditioning can be heard, despite the fact that the chord was recorded in February).

This noise is interrupted by a loop of incomprehensible Beatles studio chatter, spliced together randomly so that some sections would play forward and others backward. This noise was placed in the concentric run-out groove of the vinyl LP. If the listener's record player had an auto return mechanism, a short burst of noise would be heard before the needle was lifted and moved back into place. Otherwise, the sound would loop infinitely, leading the listener to wonder if something had gone wrong with the record or the record player.

The Doors

From the L. A. Woman Album this song (loosely based on the notorious spree killer Billy Cook who posed as a hitchhiker and murdered an entire family) is notable for its thunder and rain sound effects and Ray Manzarek's Fender Rhodes electric piano playing which emulated the sound of rain The song was recorded at the Doors Workshop in December 1970 with the assistance of Bruce Botnick, their longtime engineer who was co producing the recording sessions. Jim Morrison recorded his main vocals and then whispered the lyrics over it to create the haunting effect.

T-Rex

Electric Warrior (1971)

Genesis

Yes

The Righteous Brothers

Pink Floyd

This 25-minute track features Pink Floyd's first convincing use of sound effects and also features a piano played through a leslie speaker.

From about 7'00" (the start of the funky drum and bass type groove, with Hammond organ) the track becomes particularly interesting from a technical-musical point of view.

The distinctive muted guitar part of this section was reportedly inspired by the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations". The third guitar solo begins over this with a less controlled feel and more prominent improvisation. Then, a distant second guitar starts accompanying the first with distortion, feedback, wah pedal and whammy bar effects (approx. 9' 00"). These organ fills, along with the bass and drum groove, begin fading away as the lead guitar gradually becomes more distant. A throbbing wind-like sound is introduced (approx. 10' 40") created by Waters vibrating the strings of his bass guitar with a steel slide and feeding the signal through an Italian tape echo machine called the Binson Echorec. This starts increasing in volume as high pitched guitar 'screams' enter, resembling distorted whale song. They were actually created when Gilmour discovered the sound by accidentally reversing the cables to his wah pedal. In the second half of the "Echoes" interlude, the screams die down to become background noises under the sound of rooks (approx 13' 35"), which were added to the music from a tape archive recording. Eventually, the entire ensemble is faded into a sustained Farfisa organ chord (approx. 14' 45"). Eventually, a glissando guitar riff with echo and distortion create a massive buildup of melodic tension (approx. 18' 14"), giving way to the soft vocal strains of the third verse. The song recedes into another wind-like noise: a tape loop of multi-tracked ascending male voice glissandos (approx. 22' 08").

Carly Simon

Stevie Wonder

Pink Floyd

Recorded at Abbey Road Studios between June 1972 and January 1973, the album sessions made use of the most advanced techniques available for recording instruments and sound effects in rock music at that time. The introductory heartbeat was created from a bass drum (tape) loop fed through a noise gate.

"On The Run" makes extensive use of the EMS Synthi A synthesiser/sequencer, even the hi-hat was created with it. It was 'modulated' in real time and provided the timing reference for the rest of the track. This track also features the assistant engineer running around the studio's echo chamber.

"Time" features a myriad of clocks that had been recorded separately by Alan Parsons, the engineer, on separate tape, and the 'rototoms' were re-tuned and dropped in for each chord change.

The cash-register loop in "Money" was made by editing sounds together into a tape loop, which provided the 7/4 time and tempo. Listen out for the double tracked descending guitar riff at the end of the solo section.

By the time the mixdown process had been reached, many of the tracks had been bounced down and completed, with only a few tracks of drums and guitars. The workflow and recording procedure was very efficient. The completed tracks were seamlessly crossfaded from one to the next.

In this album Pink Floyd perfected the use of other studio techniques such as the double tracking of vocals and guitars (allowing David Gilmour to harmonise flawlessly with himself), flanging effects, odd trickery with reverb and the panning of sounds between channels.

Queen

Queen

Queen

10CC

The Small Faces

ABBA

ELO

Producer Chris Thomas took a different approach to recording Never Mind the Bollocks than was to become the norm on most later punk albums. Instead of capturing a "raw" or "live" sound, Thomas achieved a very clear, broad, and layered sonic palette via multiple guitar overdubs, and extremely tight musicianship. He said: "Anarchy has something like a dozen guitars on it; I sort of orchestrated it, double-tracking some bits and separating the parts and adding them, et cetera . It was quite labored. The vocals were labored, as well." The snare drum was made to sound trashy by feeding through some PA Speakers. Lots of compression and limiting was used too on the guitars and drums. Because of the many tracks that were recorded for each song mixing was quite difficult. "Holidays In The Sun" had a cue every 2 seconds. This track also features the sound of goosesteps, a tape loop triggered off the bass drum

From 'Good Vibrations'

Ultravox

This album (their 4th) marked Ultravox's newly honed lined up aimed at the electro-pop market. This track features the Roland CR-78, the world's first programmable computer drum machine. Nevertheless, it could only hold two drum patterns, which is why there are only two patterns in the song (some synth drum pads were added on the verses). The sped up middle section was recorded separately and then spliced as a 24-track edit. The acoustic piano was recorded with some EQ and echo effects, and the violin was recorded in the marbled reception hall. 

The Human League

The synthetic brass section in this track was actually recorded at half speed, because the keyboard player couldn't play it that fast!

Kate Bush

This was the third of Kate Bush's albums and the first female album to top the British UK chart. This track features samples of Ethnic instruments and rifles, that were recorded into a Fairlight CMI. It was the first time such a technique had been used in a recording.

Steely Dan

This track contains a good example of the Dyno-My-Piano Rhodes sound that has become similarly as famous as the standard Rhodes sound.

Phil Collins

This track set the benchmark ambient gated drum sound that reigned throughout the 80s (outside of the electro-pop world at least). The sound the Collins and his engineer High Padgham designed was arrived at by accident in the studio (whilst Padgham was working on a Peter Gabriel album) through using the 'talk-back' facility 'improperly'. The technique that they developed out of this involved two-tier mic'ing technique: the main sound originating from a room mic with its signal heavily compressed, while the close-mic'd signals from individual drums were added subtly in the overall mix to act as a pin-point. The other vital ingredient is being in a 'stone-walled' room (the one in question being the famous stoneroom at the Townhouse studios)

Kim Carnes

Landscape

Spandau Ballet

Yellow Magic Orchestra

Heaven 17

Gary Numan

Duran Duran

The Art Of Noise

Dire Straits

Paul Hardcastle

Whitney Houston

Pnik Floyd

Swing Out Sister

Phuture