Engineering:Recording studio as musical instrument

A Studer four-track tape recorder used at EMI Studios from 1965 to the 1970s

The use of recording studios as a compositional tool is a process in which music is produced around studio constructions, also referred to as "playing the studio". The concept is typically referenced to artists or producers who reject the more traditional method of capturing a live performance as is. Techniques include overdubbing, tape edits, non-musical sounds, electronic effects, and combining segmented performances into one whole.

Composers have been exploiting the potentials of multitrack recording since the technology was made available to them. Before the late 1940s, musical recordings were typically created with the idea of presenting a faithful rendition of a real-life performance. Following the advent of three-track tape in the mid 1950s, recording spaces became more accustomed for in-studio composition, and by the early 1970s, the "additive approach to recording" had become a common standard.

Despite the widespread changes that have led to more compact recording set-ups, individual components such as digital audio workstations are still referred to as "the studio". As of the 2010s, the "studio as instrument" idea remains ubiquitous in genres such as hip-hop, electronic music, and pop.

Definition

Phil Spector (center) at Gold Star Studios, where he developed his Wall of Sound methods, 1966

There is no consensus as to how to define the criterion of a musical instrument. It is also unclear whether the "studio as instrument" concept extends to using multi-track recording simply to facilitate the music writing process. Rock historian Doyle Greene defines "studio as compositional tool" as a process in which music is produced around studio constructions rather than the more traditional method of capturing a live performance as is. According to academic Adam Bell, some proposed definitions may be consistent with music produced in a recording studio, but not with music that relies heavily on digital audio workstations. He added, "There is no single instance in which the studio suddenly became recognized as an instrument, and even at present [2018] it may not have wide recognition as such. Nevertheless, there is a historical precedent of the studio—broadly defined—consciously being used to perform music."

Before the late 1940s, musical recordings were typically created with the idea of presenting a faithful rendition of a real-life performance. Initially, the practice of "studio as compositional tool" was evident mainly in the realms of pop music, as only a minuscule number of classical composers took to this form of music-making. Popular recording conventions changed profoundly in the mid 1950s as new possibilities were opened by three-track tape, and by the early 1960s, it was common for producers, songwriters, and engineers to freely experiment with musical form, orchestration, unnatural reverb, and other sound effects. Some of the best known examples are Phil Spector's Wall of Sound and Joe Meek's use of homemade electronic sound effects for acts like the Tornados. Music educators have written about or alluded to the "studio as instrument" concept since the late 1960s.

Development

1940s–1950s

Pioneers from the 1940s include Bill Putnam, Les Paul, and Tom Dowd, who each contributed to the development of common recording practices like reverb, tape delay, and overdubbing. Putnam was one of the first to recognize echo and reverb as elements to enhance a recording, rather than as natural byproducts of the recording space. He engineered the Harmonicats' 1947 novelty song "Peg o' My Heart", which was a significant chart hit and became the first popular recording to use artificial reverb for artistic effect. Although Les Paul was not the first to use overdubs, he popularized the technique in the 1950s.

Around the same time, French composers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry were developing musique concrete, a method of composition in which pieces of tape are rearranged and spliced together, and thus originated sampling. Meanwhile in England, Daphne Oram experimented heavily with electronic instruments during her tenure as a balancing engineer for the BBC. Written in 1949, Still Point is a 30-minute piece that combined pre-recorded acoustic orchestration with live electronic manipulation—one of the first ever to do so. However, Ophram's tape experiments were mostly unheard at the time. In 1957, she said recorded sounds were "a sort of modern magic. We think there’s something in it. Some musicians believe it may become an art form in its own right."

1950s–1960s

English producer Joe Meek is considered one of the most influential engineers of all time, being one of the first to exploit the use of recording studios as instruments, and one of the first producers to assert an individual identity as an artist. He got his start in 1955 at IBC Studio in London. One of Meek's signature techniques was to overload a signal with dynamic range compression, which was unorthodox at the time. Several of his "radical" techniques (such as close-miking instruments) later became part of normal recording practice. Discussing Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Adam Bell describes the songwriting duo's productions for the Coasters as "an excellent example of their pioneering practices in the emerging field of production," citing an account from Stoller in which he recalls "cutting esses off words, sticking the tape back together so you didn't notice. And sometimes if the first refrain on a take was good and the second one lousy, we'd tape another recording of the first one and stick it in place of the second one."

Phil Spector, sometimes regarded as Joe Meek's American counterpart, is also considered "important as the first star producer of popular music and its first 'auteur' ... Spector changed pop music from a performing art ... to an art which could sometimes exist only in the recording studio". His original production formula (dubbed the "Wall of Sound") called for large ensembles (including some instruments not generally used for ensemble playing, such as electric and acoustic guitars), with multiple instruments doubling and even tripling many of the parts to create a fuller, richer sound. The Wall of Sound was an evolution of Spector's mid-1950s work with Leiber and Stoller at a time they sought a fuller sound by the use of excessive instrumentation. Leiber and Stoller considered Spector's methods to be very distinct from what they were doing, stating: "Phil was the first one to use multiple drum kits, three pianos and so on. We went for much more clarity in terms of instrumental colors, and he deliberately blended everything into a kind of mulch. He definitely had a different point of view."

Mid–late 1960s

Abbey Road Studio Two, where most Beatles tracks were recorded

The Beatles' producer George Martin and the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson are generally credited with helping to popularize the idea of the recording studio as a musical instrument which could then be used to aid the process of composition, and music producers after the mid 1960s increasingly drew from their work. Wilson, who was mentored by Spector, was another early auteur of popular music; authors Jim Cogan and William Clark credit Wilson as the first rock producer to use the studio as a discrete instrument. According to author David Howard, Martin's work on the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", from the band's 1966 album Revolver, and Spector's production of "River Deep – Mountain High" from the same year were the two recordings that ensured that the studio "was now its own instrument". Author Mark Brend writes that, with Revolver, the Beatles advanced on Meek's approach, and employed the studio as "an environment for wide-ranging sonic research" that included experimentation with tape loops, reversed and speed-manipulated tape sounds, and backwards-recorded lead guitar parts. Citing composer and producer Virgil Moorefield's book The Producer as Composer, author Jay Hodgson highlights Revolver as representing a "dramatic turning point" in recording history through its dedication to studio exploration over the "performability" of the songs, as this and subsequent Beatles albums reshaped listeners' preconceptions of a pop recording.

Like Revolver, "Good Vibrations", which Wilson produced for the Beach Boys in 1966, was another prime proponent in revolutionizing rock from live concert performances into studio productions that could only exist on record. For the first time, Wilson limited himself to recording short interchangeable fragments (or "modules") rather than a complete song. Through the method of tape splicing, each fragment could then be assembled into a linear sequence – as Wilson explored on subsequent recordings from this period – allowing any number of larger structures and divergent moods to be produced at a later time. Musicologist Charlie Gillett called "Good Vibrations" "one of the first records to flaunt studio production as a quality in its own right, rather than as a means of presenting a performance", while rock critic Gene Sculatti called it the "ultimate in-studio production trip", adding that its influence was apparent in songs such as "A Day in the Life" from the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. According to author Olivier Julien, Sgt. Pepper represents the "epitome of the transformation of the recording studio into a compositional tool", marking the moment when "popular music entered the era of phonographic composition." Its lasting commercial success and critical impact are largely due to Martin and his engineers' creative use of studio equipment while originating new processes.

1970s–2010s

In-studio composition became standard practice by the late 1960s and early 1970s, and remained so into the 2010s. During the 1970s, the "studio as instrument" concept shifted from the studio's recording space to the studio's control room, where electronic instruments could be plugged directly into the mixing console. Adam Bell credits Eno with popularizing the concept of the studio as instrument, particularly that it "did not require previous experience, and in some ways, a lack of know-how might even be advantageous to creativity." He goes on to note:

While those of the ilk of Brian Wilson used the studio as an instrument by orchestrating everyone that worked within it, the turn to technology in the cases of Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Brian Eno signify a conceptual shift in which an alternative approach that might make using the studio as an instrument cheaper, easier, more convenient, or more creative, was increasingly sought after. Compared to the 1960s, using the studio as an instrument became less about working the system as it were, and working the systems.

Bell wrote that "such an approach was typified" by Kraftwerk, whose members proclaimed "we play the studio".

See also

• Dub music
• Experimental pop
• Lo-fi music
• Post-punk
• Psychedelic music
• Recording consciousness

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Ashby, Arved Mark, ed (2004). The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 978-1-58046-143-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=Pit6yL_Few4C. 
• Bannister, Matthew (2007). White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Indie Guitar Rock. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. ISBN 978-0-7546-8803-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=4ckLKGTXRwQC&pg=PA38. 
• Bell, Adam Patrick (2018). Dawn of the DAW: The Studio As Musical Instrument. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-029660-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZD9FDwAAQBAJ. 
• Blake, Andrew (2009). "Recording practices and the role of the producer". The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-82796-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=Xb0hAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA45. 
• Brend, Mark (2005). Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop. San Francisco, CA: Backbeat Books. ISBN 978-0-879308551. 
• Cogan, Jim; Clark, William (2003). Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios. Chronicle Books. ISBN 978-0-8118-3394-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=hO-KQ4o_B2MC. 
• Edmondson, Jacqueline, ed (2013). Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories that Shaped our Culture. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-39348-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=TQPXAQAAQBAJ. 
• Eno, Brian (2004). "The Studio as Compositional Tool". Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. A&C Black. ISBN 978-0-8264-1615-5. http://golancourses.net/2009ems1/pdf/sound_eno-the-studio-as-a-compositional-tool.pdf. 
• Gillett, Charlie (1984). The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll. Perseus Books Group. ISBN 978-0-306-80683-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=EzmhhXUwyt4C&pg=PA329. 
• Greene, Doyle (2016). Rock, Counterculture and the Avant-Garde, 1966–1970: How the Beatles, Frank Zappa and the Velvet Underground Defined an Era. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-2403-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=ELeaCwAAQBAJ. 
• Hannan, Michael (2008). "The sound design of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". in Julien, Olivier. Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-6708-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=vZ-SB57WBo8C. 
• Hodgson, Jay (2010). Understanding Records: A Field Guide to Recording Practice. New York, NY: Continuum. ISBN 978-1-4411-5607-5. 
• Howard, David N. (2004). Sonic Alchemy: Visionary Music Producers and Their Maverick Recordings. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard. ISBN 0-634-05560-7. 
• Julien, Oliver (2008). "'A lucky man who made the grade': Sgt. Pepper and the rise of a phonographic tradition in twentieth-century popular music". in Julien, Olivier. Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-6708-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=vZ-SB57WBo8C. 
• Martin, Bill (2015). Avant Rock: Experimental Music from the Beatles to Bjork. Open Court Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-8126-9939-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=CCLyCgAAQBAJ. 
• Ribowsky, Mark (1989). He's a Rebel. Dutton. ISBN 978-0-525-24727-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=1UQUAQAAIAAJ. 
• Siegel, Jules (2013). "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!". in Cateforis, Theo. The Rock History Reader. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-89212-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=F7o5Wj9-EGYC&pg=PA90. 
• Zak, Albin (2001). Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-92815-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=DJM6FgvlWw0C. 

Further reading

• Eller, Dylan (March 28, 2016). "Revisiting Brian Eno’s ‘The Studio as a Compositional Tool’". https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/revisiting-brian-enos-the-studio-as-a-compositional-tool/. 
• Moorefield, Virgil (2010). The Producer as Composer: Shaping the Sounds of Popular Music. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-13457-8. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Producer_as_Composer.html?id=PZ0R4_Oxr-4C&pg=PA18.