When pop music became art
Neil in Australia
comment by a participant was that in 1965 if you had suggested to a
performer that pop music was art they would have laughed at you. By 1967
any suggestion that it wasn't would have upset a performer. How quickly
things changed.
A couple of curious assertions too -
1. Mitch Miller invented echo - along with a few other production
innovations. I didn't even know he produced anything other than his
wonderful <g> Mitch Miller Sing-a-longs - aah the memories, the memories.
2. You've Lost That Loving Feeling is the most played recording on radio.
3. Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote more million-sellers than anyone in the
history of recorded music - 59 in all.
Are these claims valid?
Neil
johnj
"Neil in Australia" <kcar...@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au> wrote in message
news:abppep$p9f$1...@sunb.ocs.mq.edu.au...
That show is good isn't it? These may be correct. It was certainly a
learning experience
the episode with Mitch Miller. The songs he produced with Frankie Lane and
that other one
with the female singer were certainly very unusual, and showed the concerns
of record production
for commercial reasons.
I was blown away by the demo version of 'We Gotta Get Out Of This Place'.
Is it possible
to get a copy of these demos? This one was done by Mann/Weill. It is
unfortunate
but you watch the show waiting for something you want to see but there so
much to cover.
I'm disappointed there hasn't been anything on the Shangri-Las and Shadow
Morton.
I didn't know Shel Talmy was American, and Mickie Most said The Animals were
better
than the Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I know I was certainly overcome by
boredom when
the Rolling Stones came on.
johnj
P A O'Neill
> A couple of curious assertions too -
> 1. Mitch Miller invented echo - along with a few other production
> innovations. I didn't even know he produced anything other than his
> wonderful <g> Mitch Miller Sing-a-longs - aah the memories, the memories.
> 2. You've Lost That Loving Feeling is the most played recording on radio.
> 3. Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote more million-sellers than anyone in the
> history of recorded music - 59 in all.
>
> Are these claims valid?
It all depend on who you ask, I guess. The assertion that rock and roll
would not have existed if MM hadn't pioneered some recording techniques is
laughable. I find it hard to believe that no-one else had thought up echo,
for instance - Les Paul is usually credited with inventing tape delay. HDH
may very well have written more million-sellers than anyone - they were in
the best place to do it.
Mister Charlie
"P A O'Neill" <paon...@idx.com.au> wrote in message
news:3ce322d5$1...@news1.idx.com.au...
1.) A Joke. Mitch hated rock n roll and because of him Columbia was a
moribund rock label until the late 60's when Clive Davis started signing
acts left and right.
Les Paul should indeed be credited with the largest contribution to
modern recorded music, i.e., the multitrack recording (amongst zillions
of other things).
2.) Yes, this is true.
3.) I would not be surprised if this were indeed true.
>
>
johnj
"Mister Charlie" <swam...@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:abv8oi$ll072$1...@ID-63206.news.dfncis.de...
His attitude to rock and roll doesn't seem to be relevant, it's more
a case of the recording of a song as a commercial product, which is a lot
to do with what rock and roll is. He didn't split the atom, someone
eventually
would have thought of these things, but he was probably right there at the
start.
The sounds of his recordings I heard on that show reminded me of sundry more
recent
ones, rock and roll or not.
johnj
Mister Charlie
"johnj" <fr...@labyrinth.NOnet.SPAMau> wrote in message
news:abvn61$27fq$1...@arachne.labyrinth.net.au...
irrelevant). He was the head of A&R, the one who signed acts and
assigned producers, etc.
Beyond layering 'rock' (read: pop) songs with his usual cheesy choral
background singers (ala the TV show) he was pretty uninvolved with the
sound.
Some of the finest engineers came out of Columbia though, and they did
indeed eventually get a chance to utilyze their talents.
Brett A. Pasternack
>
> Still watching Walk On By: The History of Popular Song. One interesting
> comment by a participant was that in 1965 if you had suggested to a
> performer that pop music was art they would have laughed at you. By 1967
> any suggestion that it wasn't would have upset a performer. How quickly
> things changed.
> A couple of curious assertions too -
> 1. Mitch Miller invented echo - along with a few other production
> innovations. I didn't even know he produced anything other than his
> wonderful <g> Mitch Miller Sing-a-longs - aah the memories, the memories.
> Are these claims valid?
While it is quite possible that Miller invented a method of applying
echo to recordings, I feel quite confident in saying that he did not, in
fact, invent echo itself. B^)
Joe Gillis
>Still watching Walk On By: The History of Popular Song.
Is this series available on VHS?
=================================================
"I don't mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy." -- Samuel Butler
Steve2000indeja
>While it is quite possible that Miller invented a method of applying
>echo to recordings, I feel quite confident in saying that he did not, in
>fact, invent echo itself. B^)
a nit...
I think you all are referring to Mitch Miller's use of 'reverb,' which he/his
engineers laid all over his 'sing along with mitch' sounding ..uh..hits (i
guess they were hits-his TV show was m.o.r. type huge, like Lawrence Welk's).
Tape 'echo' had been around for years. Check out early Elvis and many
rockabilly recordings.
Echo is a discreet repeat of something. Often it is fed back into itself,
resulting in muliple repeats, but is still basically a 'dry' sound.
Reverb is that (sometimes) cavernous sound that results when there are a whole
bunch of small echoes and repeats/feedback all blending together to give effect
of sound 'reverberating.' It creates a sonic illusion of space and is a 'wet'
sound.
The terms still get confused a lot. One of the reasons is that early engineers
- in attempts to give 'space'/reverberation to a recording, would run the audio
through what they called an 'echo chamber.'
This was a physical space where the sound was played through a speaker and
picked up via a mic placed a distance away (in this room or tube or whatever).
The sound the mic picked up had some natural delay and reverberation on it.
When mixed back in with the original audio, it would add a reverberant wet
sound.
Mitch Miller almost certainly did not come up with this sound. You can hear
crude echo chambers on 50s recordings and the better physical chambers of some
studios showed up on recordings well beyond then.
It was discovered you could create reverb by sending an audio impulse down a
spring, picking it up at the other end and returning/mixing it in with the
original. This resulted in cheap (but cool) 'spring reverbs'. This sound found
it's way onto some recordings (still does) and spring reverbs were added into
guitar amps-Fender being the most successful-circa the early 60s.
The big, long and clean reverb you hear on Mitch's records-and many records
from the late 50s, early 60s onwards is 'plate reverb.'
The EMT company designed the best of these units in which a long metal plate is
suspended in oil. The sound is introduced at one end of the plate and picked up
at the other. The resulting 'reverberated' sound can be glorious. Mitch Miller
expoited his version of this sound, coating the vocals of his chorus singers
with it.
The EMT plate units were somewhat tuneable for darkness or brightness, depth
etc. Engineers discovered that they could create the illusion of longer
reverb/bigger space by recording the output of a reverb chamber on a tape
machine - delaying it via that tape machine- and returning it 'later ' than
even the longest plate or biggest echo chamber could do. Ironically this is
basically using 'tape echo' to enhance 'reverb.'
You can hear a very nice example of tape delayed plate reverb on Tony Bennett's
vocal on "I Left My Heart In S.F"...
I think part of Phil Spector's wall of sound was based on tape delayed reverb
returns (i _think_ Phil liked to use real echo chambers, as opposed to plates.
could be wrong). Phil's production style is definitely about "big" and
spacer/reverb played a ...uh...big part in creating it:)
The echo/reverb confusion continued to be carried on for years by reverb
tanks/chambers still being referred to as 'echo chambers' and by reverb
controls on some audio devices being labeled as 'echo.'
Mitch Miller didn't invent the plate reverb, he just exploited it. Probably
tape delayed (echoed) reverb.
-this stuff is all from memory, from reading about audio for 30 years, and
personal experience, so it's imo- hopefully close. wish i had some names/dates
of breakthrough reverb technicians, recording engineers and sessions etc.
I do know as early as the late 50s Chet Atkins had a tape echo built into his
guitar amp. Scotty Moore was quick to follow...
-----
Until analog then digital delay devices were invented in the early/mid 70s,
even the best studios usually had maybe a couple or 3 different reverb sources.
Some studios became famous for their great sounding live reverb chambers. Tape
echo was available via portable devices, or simply by using a studio's
mastering deck for delay.
This all had an effect on the sound of recordings of the 50s, 60s and 70s, just
as the advent of ever more tracks available for recording-allowing doubling and
tripling a performance- via bigger multitrack tape recorders, did.
The pre digital early/mid 70s was generally a very 'dry' sounding time, unless
you were a crooner like Englebert, where the 60s big plate sound was dumped
on..:)
In the digital era all these reverb and echo sounds-from $20,000 EMT gold foil
plate reverb to cheap spring reverb, live rooms of any size, echoplex tape
echoes etc- are available to today's recording engineers via processors.
Effects processors have long been versatile and affordable enough that
engineers can-and do- put different reverbs/echoes/combinations of all types
and sizes and lengths on as many individual instruments on a recording as they
wish.
This - along with now unlimited recording tracks and other technology available
to today's engineers and artists- has a profound effect on sonics.
I am not sure this is such a good thing.
With the seemingly endless tonal, effects, recording possibilities available
today, so much current pop music comes out with a sameness.
The technical limitations earlier recording engineers, producers and artists
faced often resulted in magical recordings. The Beatles _could_ have gone to 8
and even 16 tracks years before they did. Thank god they didn't.
Today's technology is has evolved to where it is definitely in service of the
humans using it.
If there is something amiss in many of today's recordings- at least what we
hear on commercial hit radio -probably point your finger at the big labels and
big radio which are demanding and getting a certain kind of souless and
mechanical sounding music to play and to Market.
Steve
BigStar303
<< early engineers
- in attempts to give 'space'/reverberation to a recording, would run the audio
through what they called an 'echo chamber.'
This was a physical space where the sound was played through a speaker and
picked up via a mic placed a distance away (in this room or tube or whatever).
The sound the mic picked up had some natural delay and reverberation on it.
When mixed back in with the original audio, it would add a reverberant wet
sound. >>
I had a box set years ago of John Lee Hooker's earliest Detroit recordings.
IIRC, according to the liner notes the producer/engineer took the output of the
board, ran it into a speaker placed in an old toilet (empty, let's hope!) in
another room, then mixed a mic picking up that sound in, for a unique echo
effect. I'll have to find that set and see if my memory of this is correct.
johnj
You stick microphones in a bathroom and get an echoey sound.
I've tried it, it works.
johnj
"Steve2000indeja " <sslag...@aol.comnospam> wrote in message
news:20020517142003...@mb-cg.aol.com...
Steve2000indeja
>You stick microphones in a bathroom and get an echoey sound.
>I've tried it, it works.
>
>johnj
Nah, the word I wanted and used was reverb...which is often confused with
echo-as appeared to be happening again on the original question about Mitch
Miller.
You are talking about recording the performance in a specific room, using the
room's natural ambiance to color the recording. This has been done
intentionally, unintentionally or avoided through baffling- since the earliest
days of recording.
It remained a popular technique for decades, used a lot on vocals, drums and
solo instruments. Some folks still do it, especially on the rare occasions when
a real drummer plays on a recording.
I was talking about the difference between reverb and echo when they are used
as intentionally created sonic effects. The method varies, see the original
post. These effects are added the to recording. Not _naturally_ present.
Sometimes external echo and reverb are mixed in when the track is being cut
(recording 'wet') which was done more in earlier times due to technical
limitations.
These days adding reverb, delay (and many other effects) is usually done at
mixdown, so as to keep sonic options open till the final mix. In this case the
tracks are recorded 'dry' and effects are added later..or not.
On some early blues, rock and R+B recordings you can really hear the room
sound, as the whole thing was captured with a single mic on the band and maybe
another mic on the singer.
As recording techniques and technology progressed (including development of
sophisticated reverbs and delays), the "live room/reverb/sound" approach
eventually was used on recordings as a starting point.
The whiz bang processors of today can create an algorithm for 'a bathroom' to
an 'airplane hanger', a 'medium sized bright room' to a 'coliseum'...
------
Back to the original piece of topic: imo, Mitch Miller used a bunch of reverb
on the recorded vocals of his singers.
Not echo.
And he didn't stick em in a bathroom and record em in the shower to get that
long and bouncy reverb. Mostly likely he used an expensive plate reverb in
mixdown, possibly delaying it's return via tape (echo) to make it even longer,
and/or to put it in tempo with the tune.
Or his recording engineer thought of it, and did.
Steve
Mister Charlie
very well written, and explained. Thanks for posting this.
johnj
in a recording studio.
The point I was making is that the early reverb was actually
done using a bathroom, it does give reverb.
Mitch Miller in a present interview on that show, said how
he achieved his reverb using a bathroom and wondered what people
woud have thought if they knew. He may have been the first, certainly very
early.
My definitions:
reverb: sound reflections where they are so close in time to the
original sound they blend into 'reverb'
echo: sound reflections where there is an audible difference in time
between the original sound
echoey: reverb and echo in a mixture as in a bathroom
And my further point is that reverb is a massive part of a sound on record,
and using more and more artificial techniques to reproduce it gives
a less desirable sound, bring back the spring reverb units I say.
johnj
"Steve2000indeja " <sslag...@aol.comnospam> wrote in message
news:20020518131440...@mb-ch.aol.com...