Hammer Synth

I bought the the complete Hammer House of Horror first series on DVD today. The first episode I watched was about a film music composer who falls in love with a real live witch. The cool thing is that he has a studio set up at home with a giant Roland system 700 modular synth in it. Heaven

Holy Ground

I bought a little 8 channel mixer on ebay exactly a year ago and I've got it set up at home just in case I need to suddenly mix something. It sounds really cool this mixer, it's got a big edgy character and I like working with it's quirks and limitations. It came from the Holyground studio, one of england's seminal 1970s recording labels. I mixed all the new tracks on the Evidence album (see previous post) on it last week

Here is a picture of it in 1975 from it's previous owner:

Plank

Theres a really good article about one of my musical heroes Conny Plank HERE. There are some interesting contributions from Foxxy in there, and Eno tells of Plank's inventiveness - check out his solution to mixing desk Total Recall:
Plank also rigged a special system to take a photograph of the entire mixing console, to ‘save’ his work in the days before digital. ‘He was an inventor,’ says Eno. ‘When I was working there he’d developed an early automation system which consisted of a specially developed camera lens mounted above the console, so that you could take a picture at the end of the session of the state of the console. Then if you wanted to set the desk up in the same way at some point in the future, you’d project the picture you’d taken down through the same lens so that the image perfectly lined up with the desk. Thus you could move every knob back to its original position. It was an insane idea that probably only a German would have a) thought of and b) made work

Acton, Baby!

Me and Big Al drove over to Acton to pick up a Dolby noise reduction unit I bought cheap on eBay. The unit is going to be connected to my Soundcraft 16 track tape machine, and will hopefully impart a certain 70s flavour to the sound, something strangely overlooked by most vintage-heads I think

It was in a really nice studio called Heart of Gold which has the same console as me (Studer 900) - the only other one I've ever seen

The Dolby rack actually came from Sarm West studio, and this means it was used on some amazing albums, I'm guessing everything from Grace Jones to Frankie Goes To Hollywood...

Moog Studios Calendar

Brian Kehew sent me a link to the super new Moog Foundation "Moog Pioneers in the Studio" 2012 calendar. Its got really nice pictures of 12 original Moog Modular users, below are some examples (OK, so the last one isn't really featured in the calendar - ITS ME!, but I can dream...)

Recording The .....

So I just got back from my couple of weeks in LA, what a great time I had! I love that place more each time I go there. My main objective was to record vocals for a new top secret album project (more on that later) so I hooked up with the inimitable Brian Kehew and borrowed his studio. He is the co-author of the book Recording The Beatles which I have posted about before on this blog and is a total authority on all things vintage and lovely and wonky. He is also the archivist at the Bob Moog Foundation, and owner of a brand new super cool vintage studio in beautiful downtown Burbank, in fact we were his fist clients. Below are some pics I took. We had a great recording path, through some Altec compressors and EMI preamps, as used by Abbey Road in the 60s on practically everything. There were also some Helios channel strips from the actual console that came from The Who's studio in the early 70s, which sounded amazing. His desk is a stunning Quad Eight Pacifica. He also had some very interesting keyboards which I will mention in another post

Vintage British Studios

I grabbed these pictures from the website in the previous post. They are pictures of vintage british studios. Pictures. Studios. Vintage ones. Angles. Wood. Knobs. Swivel chairs

Tragic Magic

I recorded this from BBC4 last night on my phone so its pretty lo-fi, but you can just make out the Bee Gees having fun in (I think) Criteria Studios Miami in 1978

Ulrich's Place

Just saw this over on matrixsynth. One more in the series...

Baby Snakes

Wood

This is what I was thinking for the live room walls, made with american walnut planks...
This studio is Gilley's, built in 1978 in Pasadena, Texas, by country producer Bert Frilot. That looks like an MCI console, maybe a 400 series

20K

Saw this over on gearslutz - from a thread on 70s studios

Nono Yes

I have no idea what they are talking about, but it sounds really interesting:





Actually, the above film seems to have been directed and written by Giorgio Sancristoforo, the person in this very cool video:

Exercise for Buchla and Nagra from Giorgio Sancristoforo on Vimeo.

Basing Treat

Look at these super-cool pictures of studio one at Basing Street, as it was in the mid-70s. This is the studio set up by Chris Blackwell of Island records, and was home to some of the best recordings of the 70s - Led Zep 4 for example. It evolved into Sarm West at some point and 80s music was born. Here we can see the Helios [not neve as I originally thought] wraparound console that epitomized the big huge sound of the seventies, plus it was painted yellow

UPDATE: Using the magic of google image search, I discovered a scan of the original Basing Street studio brochure on this forum here, and now this post is complete

UPDATE TWO: OK so see the comms for something cool...

Strawberry Mixer

Here is an amazing clip of Martin Hannett in the studio in 1980. I saw this over on Member D's excellent blog and it made me very happy indeed

The mixing desk is a Helios wraparound affair, and is referred to as the '10CC console'. See this and this post over on my other blog, especially the comments in the last link. Note that the desk is now located at the Audities Foundation in Calgary Canada, who also have an incredible analog synth collection

Studibow[ie]

Here is a video of Bowie recording the amazing Sense of Doubt from Heroes. There seems to be some question about which studio this was shot at; Hansa [where the album was mixed]? Chateau d'Herouville [where it was tracked]? or some other studio? What a mystery! And what is that synth on top of the melotron? A Steelophon S900????

Fever Pitch

I met up with Peder from Fever Ray at the studio, I think he's into analog synths or something. He's super-cool and invited me to Sweden to play on a Buchla synth that is held in captivity at the EMS studio there. The last film below is a totally great tour of that facility made in the 70s. But first here is a video I made on the phone of the Fever Ray gig at Brixton Academy. Thanks for inviting me Peder it was amazing. The lasers were genius





Peder also records as The Subliminal Kid, as part of a project called Roll the Dice. Their debut album was one of my favorites of the year


Roll The Dice - The New Black from The Subliminal Kid on Vimeo.



And now, kick back, open a bottle of red wine, and enjoy being shown round a 1970s electronic music studio

We are the Music Makers

I was going through some old books from my parents house and I found a huge tome called The Music Makers, which I vaguely remember reading when I was a kid. It was published in the late 70s and focused primarily on classical music. It has this great picture of a studio in London where orchestras were recorded, and in the picture credits it refers to EMS studio, London*. They look very much like a couple of Neve consoles in there, and I'm sure I've seen pictures of this place before. Anyway, as I am just about to revamp my studio I find this extremely inspiring....

*UPDATE - I think it is Studio 3 at abbey road, according to this SOS article

New Studio?

Guess what I am currently the high bidder on a crazy auction for the Producers Workshop studio in Hollywood Boulevard in LA, with just a $100 bid. OK the reserve is not met, which isn't surprising considering that this is the studio where some of my favorite albums were recorded / mixed. I can't find much info online about the studio, it seems most of the interesting stuff happened in the 70's, but it lists amongst it's credits Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Pink Floyd's The Wall and Steely Dan's Aja

"The studio is equipped with a Trident 80 B console, Pro Tools HD with a Mac Pro, Neve mic pre’s, Neumann microphones, and 2 pristine multitrack tape machines, used these days for tape delay, giving you the option to track to Pro Tools and mix with strictly analog effects, for superior sound quality

We have our own reserved parking spaces for staff & clients

Lease is a triple net commercial lease at $2700.00 per month, the facility totals approximately 1800sq ft,  Live room is 23' X 38', one iso booth, one tape locker/ echo chamber, loading area, tech room, lounge, bathroom and separate office. Control room is 13'X 12' with a riser mounted console and  soffit mounted  mains. This amazing treatment provided the ingredients  for the groundbreaking mixes of Pink Floyd's album, The Wall, and Bad Religion's Struck a Nerve, along with Steely Dan Aja and many others

This sale is offered in any configuration you want, the entire studio with lease and equipment,  the equipment only or the studio without the gear"

Soundcraft in Cargo

I am a really big fan of Martin Hannett and the work he did with Joy Division, OMD, A Certain Ratio, et al. Mike gave me a book about him which I really enjoyed reading about 2 years ago. Well it turns out that his favorite studio was called Cargo in Rochdale and he recorded loads of amazing tracks there including the one below [Atmosphere by Joy Division]. Cargo was the epicenter of British post punk music, recording albums by, well EVERY BRITISH BAND EVER between 1977 and 1983: The Fall, Joy Division, ACR, The Teardrop Explodes, OMD, Gang of Four, Echo and the Bunnymen, etc.

The really cool thing about all this is the recording console they used was a Soundcraft Series Two, exactly the same as our one!

Which gives me a very warm feeling inside

UPDATE:
Here's our one