Favourite analog producers/engineers?

[SteveM]

Bruce Dickinson

Not enough cow bell in his productions.

 

[moresound]

He puts his pants on just like everyone else - one leg at a time. Except when he has his pants on he makes gold records.

 

[jpmorris]

Okay, in case anyone is interested, here's what I got from Mr. Howell, regarding the Ithaca album 'A Game for All Who Know' (recorded 1972/1973):

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> However, if you can spare the time to answer, I would be fascinated to know how the album
> was engineered and what equipment was used. I understand it was done by tape-to-tape
> copying, presumably with the overdub being performed during the copy?
> In particular I'm curious as to how the incidental sounds such as the rising tone in the opening
> track were generated. There's a lot of tape echo, but was the underlying tone produced with
> a test oscillator or some kind of feedback effect? It rather reminds me of 'An Electric Storm'
> by White Noise.

Yes that was a test oscillator (well spotted), a home made one built by our
occasional engineer, Brian Croney. Yes all the layering was done copying
and adding, although by the time we did John's album, it was copying in
stereo between two Revox's. We had evolved quite a technique by then,
laying down a reference acoustic guitar, which we listened to but did not
copy, and then recorded bass and drums to that. Then the rhythm guitar and
top parts were added. This allowed stuff further back in the mix to have
more tape hiss (which built up on each layer), meaning that the final track
was better quality.

Quite an effort, but when it worked, it was very rewarding.

All the best,
Peter Howell

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[grimtraveller]

Bruce Dickinson

Moresound is the most sound !

I didn't notice the jump cut on 'Matilda mother' until you mentioned it

I've been listening to the album for 33 years and there were bits like that that always sounded a bit funny to me but I never thought about it consciously. To my 16 year old ears in the late 70s, Floyd's music was unlike any I'd ever heard. Their first two albums quite simply changed my musical headspace and to a large extent, provided the final nudge for me in terms of the kind of music I was prepared to accept. So anything weird, I just thought was part of the songs. It wasn't until I read the late Nicholas Schaffner's book "A saucerful of secrets", that I realized how much editing was done. Last year, a guy I know gave me a Syd Barrett CD {it's awful} and on it is the unedited version of "Matilda mother". It's interesting but I can't see beyond the edited version I know and love, even if the editing is lame.

I can't honestly see a problem with 'Baron Saturday'. I thought the production was pretty decent on that one, personally.

For most of the song, yes. But listen to the part where there's that percussion melange. There's a slowdown and a drop in level that sticks out like a sore thumb. On their next LP, "Parachute", the song "Sickle clowns" has a similar kind of middle percussion part. It's much better and no editing mishaps this time. But I'm being picky because I love that song. Actually, I love them both !
Listening to it, I noticed two Beatle related things ~ firstly, on the chorus after they sing all the "Baron Saturday" bits, the next bit of vocal sounds just like John Lennon to me. And at the end of the percussion bit, just as the mellotron flute and guitar play their little figure, the drums come in. It's an absolutely identical figure to the one Ringo Starr plays on his first recorded composition for the Beatles, "Don't pass me by". Interestingly, it also appears after a notable gap in the music and in 1968.

'Defecting Grey' was edited down from something like 5:45, it still ended up 4:30 long. It makes me wonder if the cut in Matilda was a symptom of the same process ("Make it shorter!" "But...")

I would totally agree with you. There still were people in record companies that believed in songs being 3 minutes for radio play, despite the fact that songs were getting longer and disc jockeys were playing those longer tracks.
"Defecting grey" was a wonderful track for the time. On the CD I have of "SF Sorrow", both the edited and unedited versions are included. I didn't like it at first but it really grew on me. It's about a normal man reflecting on whether or not being a normal, everyday 9 to 5 man hasn't actually been a waste of time. Very much in keeping with the kinds of themes people were writing about after having their psyches expanded on LSD. Musically, there's few tracks from the 60s that have as many musical changes.

 

[spacefactory]

I have to say my favorites are:
John Fernandez & Will Cullen Hart from the Elephant six collective who have recorded my favorite albums of all time ,
Phil Elverum who has made some great analog recordings and he recorded one of my all time favorite albums by Adrian Orange and Her band, And also Nicholas Wilbur and Paul Benson from Fontee Fount Recordings (Hungry Cloud Darkening, The Motorbikes)