Fan Questions: Tales from the Studio - Remember Those Analog Days?
Dear NU SHOOZ, can you talk about some difficult recording studio experiences?
Anthony
Tampa, FL
Hi there, Anthony,
You asked about difficult recording experiences. So here's a few.
1. This doesn't come under the category of 'difficult,' but it was formative. When we recorded the original 'American' mix of "I Can't Wait," the audio engineer Fritz Richmond said, "Is this going to be a single?"
And we were like, "Single? What's that?"
He ended up cutting the intros and verses and "middle-8s" in half and made some breakdowns without which the famous version of "ICW" wouldn't have been possible. He did this by cutting up the 2" master tape with a razor blade on an editing block. There was no digital audio back then, and that's how it was done.
Fritz Richmond was this incredible, super-humble guy. You'd never know he was part of the Greenwich Village folk scene and actually started the whole 'granny glasses' thing. He never brought any of that up while we were recording - that's just the kind of person he was.
He’s deserving of a whole blog post of his own. Someday soon, we’ll write it.
Fritz with his washtub bass and granny glasses.
2. We were down in L.A. at Sunset Sound Factory recording "Should I Say Yes." We couldn't get a vocal take that I liked better than the demo. Eventually we decided to use the vocal from the demo tape. The problem was, the demo vocal was on 1/4" four track and the master was 2" 24 track. Also, they were running at slightly different speeds. And there was no time code. So we had the demo FedExed down from Portland, set up a machine and 'flew in' the vocal one phrase at a time. To do this Jeff Lorber marked a place on the demo tape with a grease pencil, played the master and hit go on the other machine. It would take several attempts before it landed in the right place. We did the whole song like that.
Sunset Sound Factory
Jeff Lorber
3. At some point in the making of a record, we'd have to make a cassette and take it in to the A&R department at the Label. The problem was, the people at the label always had the crappiest stereos, and no two cassette players ran at the same speed. This was way before CDs or DATs. So we're sitting with whoever and the tape is either running too slow or too fast, quaaludes or helium, and everything sounds stupid.
image by Feodor Chistyakov
There you go. Thanks for the question. There are so many more. Like the all-nighter I pulled for a band I was producing. Next day, I found out it was the wrong tune!
Like the pet rabbit, Gary who liked to chew on the cables and eventually died for his bad lifestyle choices.
All the best,