Studio A Equipment

[Guest Dante]

Might be too techie for Soul Source, but does anyone know what kind of equipment they had in Studio A: I mean, how many tracks, any effects if at all, etc.

Also how they used to record ie in one take or every instrument / vocal sepparately, etc.

If you have info about any other 60s R&B studio it'll be great to know!!

Thanks in advance...

[Guest soulboy]

THEY HAD A 3 TRACK IN THE SNAKE PIT TO START WITH ,THAT WAS ALTERED BY THE MID SIXTYS TO A 8 TRACK,THEN 2 AMPEX 8 TRACK MACHINES , NOT SURE HOW THEY WERE SET UP BUT THEY HAD A 8 TRACK CONSOLE ,

[Eddie Hubbard]

My first job at Motown involved drafting. One of the first tasks I had was to complete a set of drawings for something they were building - an 8 track recorder! By 1963, the largest number of tracks that you could buy from a dealer was 4. An eight-track recorder had been built by Les Paul, but you couldn't order one from a dealer. Motown very much wanted an eight-track, so they were building one. It turned out to be fall, 1964 before the machine was installed.The eight-track project was not unusual by any means. Throughout my time at Motown, the company always had more technical engineers than recording engineers. The creative elements of the company (lead by Berry Gordy) and the recording engineers would want a certain effect or a certain function. Engineering head, Mike McLean, would get it designed and built for the company.

In many ways, this technical staff helped Motown establish a unique sound and saved them money to boot. But Technical Engineering wasn't always so efficient.

Motown used to mix every multitrack master several times. There was an average of twenty mixes done for each tune released. In 1964, a cost cutting Vice President, Ralph Seltzer noticed that each mixing session used a full reel of tape and usually only three minutes or so was cut out off the reel and kept. The Tape Librarian, Fran Heard, used to take the rest of the tape off of the reel and toss it, so that the metal reel could be salvaged.

Mr. Seltzer asked Mike, "Why can't the tape be re-used?" Mike's response was "If the splice was made poorly, the level would drop when the engineer tried to record over it." Pushing the issue, the penny-pinching executive wanted to know if Mike could build a machine that would detect bad splices. Mike, who never backed down from a technical challenge, agreed to do so.

Back at his desk, Mike figured that the splice would be silent if the dropout was less than 1 dB. Mike worked on the design for two weeks straight. He designed a tape transport with record and playback heads. The machine would record a tone on the tape, and then play it back; if there was a drop-out of more than 1 dB, the machine stopped so that the splice could be redone. After completing the design, he got his shop supervisor, John Windt, to get it built. Six months and 1300 man-hours later, it was done.

The machine worked exactly as planned, but Mike found out the rest of the story. It wound up that none of the recording engineers, no matter how careful they were, could make a splice in tape that didn't have a drop-out of more that 1 dB. Mike, and Berry, himself, tried with the same result. The machine went under the work bench to gather dust, until I left Motown in 1968.

Hope you find this interesting ....Best wishes ,Eddie

[Eddie Hubbard]

This is also interesting , these are taken from articles by Robert Dennis " Our Motown recording heritage "

Recently, I had a chat with Guy Gordon of Channel 7 in Detroit. He was in the studio taping an interview with Tom Gelardi, about the Beatles. Tom was a local Capital Records Representative when the Beatles hit. Guy wanted to get him on video tape for a special November broadcast regarding the Beatles.At the time the Beatles hit, Motown was establishing itself as the largest independent record company in the world. The world took notice as the Beatles had three records in the Top 10 in mid 1964 - an unheard of event. The World was shocked when the Motown Supremes busted though the Beatles, and replaced them with their #1 record, "Baby Love." The Beatles took notice also and began recording their own versions of some of the early Motown hits. By fall of 1964, Motown employees had Beatles key chains, T-Shirts, etc. A strong mutual respect developed between the Beatles, and Motown.

Guy was very interested in this because it tied into his Beatles story and, as a matter of fact, he asked me about it. The conversation shifted from Beatles to Motown. I related a Motown story that Engineer's Quarterly readers may well be interested in.

In the Spring of 1964, the 4 Tops had a number one hit - "I Can't Help Myself." Before coming to Motown, the "Tops" were signed to Columbia Records (Now CBS/Sony). Columbia went into the vaults in the Summer of 1964, and released a tune they had recorded on the Tops. They were trying to get the "recorders" off of Motown's hit record. Distributors put in standing orders with record companies that they will take a certain number of copies of ANY release by a certain artist who has a large hit. Knowing this, Columbia timed their release correctly to "fill" these reorders.

Berry was pissed! No, Berry was PISSED!

Immediately, all recording and production people were advised that everyone would be working on the next Tops release and it was to get out TODAY!

The writing & producing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, met chief engineer Lawrence Horn in the studio at 3PM. With the musicians and the Tops standing by, they wrote "It's The Same Old Song" on the spot. The musicians were running the tune down with Brian Holland and Lawrence, as Eddie Holland was finishing the lyrics and Lamont Dozier was finishing the melody at 3:30 PM. By 5 PM, I received the first mix from the hands of Robert Gordy, and he waited for me while I cut a reference disk on it. I immediately began cutting 7 inch records of this mix, and hand-stamping the hand-typed labels with "MOTOWN." At 5:40 PM, I got another mix from Robert, and he again waited for the test cut.

At 6:00 PM, I got a call to cut a master for a strike-off. A strike-off is a stamper to press out the records very quickly - you can only get about 1000 pressings from a strike-off, but the stamper can be made very fast.

At 6:05, I received a call to cut a second master and put it in the same box - I was slightly pissed because I had already started packing the first master. By 6:35 PM, someone (probably some "Gordy" person) was speeding toward Owosso, Michigan, to the American Record Pressing Plant. I was still hand cutting records.

Between 6 PM and Midnight, I received six more mixes of the tune, each time changing the tape I was using to hand-cut copies for DJ's. I got an engineer in at 10 PM and another to relive him at 9 AM. I made sure that the engineer knew exactly what to do and left around midnight. At 8 AM I was making sure all the hand-cut records were finished (some 300) and handing them off to Ester Gordy.

By 3 PM (24 hours after beginning), Motown managed to have 1500 records in the hands of the key DJ's in the country, and "It's The Same Old Song" became a hit literally overnight. The record eventually went #2, and "almost" went gold - not bad for a little company in three houses on West Grand Blvd. The Columbia release went to #39 and sold a lot of records.

Whenever I listened to the "Same Old Song" Motown release, it sounded "thrown-together" and sub-standard. I guess I was right to some degree because it only went to #2. I had the disadvantage of knowing how it was done. Most other people liked it and didn't notice any lack.

RETURN & FORWARD BUTTONS:

[Eddie Hubbard]

Motown was a hit record factory in the 1960's. Between 1961 and 1964, they grew to be the largest independent record company in the world. They had more hit records than any company - including the major labels.A big part of their formula was competition and central control. When a production was recorded (the multitrack recording done), any engineer could mix the production. The engineers would mix in 4 hour periods, and complete about 3 mixes. These mixes were submitted to the Disc Recording Department. The Disc Recording engineers would cut an acetate of the mix (a hand-cut record), and pass the acetates and tapes onto the Quality Control Department. Quality Control would listen only to the acetates and pick out the best mix or mixes. Quality Control would then have the engineer or engineer who did the best mixes, do another set of mixes. Q.C. would send instructions on the changes to be made to the original mix.

The producer was out of the loop. The producer wasn't present when the mix or re-mix was done. If a producer could also mix, the producer could submit mixes of the production. The producer's mixes were given no preference over other engineer's mix.

This whole process resulted in a tune being mixed 20 times before a final master was chosen. The idea was to get the last ounce of sound out of the production.

Until mid-1964, the master multitrack tapes were 3 track tapes. Track 1 had the rhythm instruments (drums, bass guitar, and piano). Track 2 had the "Sweetening" instruments (strings & horns). Track 3 had the vocals. The multitrack master was mixed down to a mono master tape.

When the engineer wanted to make an instrument louder or fuller, he reached to the equalizer, because the instruments were recorded onto one track. The engineer had equalizers, compressors and reverberation chambers to use to make the mix better (or even different) than the last mix plus only three channel faders for the main tracks!

[Guest soulboy]

Motown was a hit record factory in the 1960's. Between 1961 and 1964, they grew to be the largest independent record company in the world. They had more hit records than any company - including the major labels.A big part of their formula was competition and central control. When a production was recorded (the multitrack recording done), any engineer could mix the production. The engineers would mix in 4 hour periods, and complete about 3 mixes. These mixes were submitted to the Disc Recording Department. The Disc Recording engineers would cut an acetate of the mix (a hand-cut record), and pass the acetates and tapes onto the Quality Control Department. Quality Control would listen only to the acetates and pick out the best mix or mixes. Quality Control would then have the engineer or engineer who did the best mixes, do another set of mixes. Q.C. would send instructions on the changes to be made to the original mix.

The producer was out of the loop. The producer wasn't present when the mix or re-mix was done. If a producer could also mix, the producer could submit mixes of the production. The producer's mixes were given no preference over other engineer's mix.

This whole process resulted in a tune being mixed 20 times before a final master was chosen. The idea was to get the last ounce of sound out of the production.

Until mid-1964, the master multitrack tapes were 3 track tapes. Track 1 had the rhythm instruments (drums, bass guitar, and piano). Track 2 had the "Sweetening" instruments (strings & horns). Track 3 had the vocals. The multitrack master was mixed down to a mono master tape.

When the engineer wanted to make an instrument louder or fuller, he reached to the equalizer, because the instruments were recorded onto one track. The engineer had equalizers, compressors and reverberation chambers to use to make the mix better (or even different) than the last mix plus only three channel faders for the main tracks!

very interesting you put me right ! must have been great to have be there ,HISTORY IN THE MAKING

[kevinsoulman]

Motown was a hit record factory in the 1960's. Between 1961 and 1964, they grew to be the largest independent record company in the world. They had more hit records than any company - including the major labels.A big part of their formula was competition and central control. When a production was recorded (the multitrack recording done), any engineer could mix the production. The engineers would mix in 4 hour periods, and complete about 3 mixes. These mixes were submitted to the Disc Recording Department. The Disc Recording engineers would cut an acetate of the mix (a hand-cut record), and pass the acetates and tapes onto the Quality Control Department. Quality Control would listen only to the acetates and pick out the best mix or mixes. Quality Control would then have the engineer or engineer who did the best mixes, do another set of mixes. Q.C. would send instructions on the changes to be made to the original mix.

The producer was out of the loop. The producer wasn't present when the mix or re-mix was done. If a producer could also mix, the producer could submit mixes of the production. The producer's mixes were given no preference over other engineer's mix.

This whole process resulted in a tune being mixed 20 times before a final master was chosen. The idea was to get the last ounce of sound out of the production.

Until mid-1964, the master multitrack tapes were 3 track tapes. Track 1 had the rhythm instruments (drums, bass guitar, and piano). Track 2 had the "Sweetening" instruments (strings & horns). Track 3 had the vocals. The multitrack master was mixed down to a mono master tape.

When the engineer wanted to make an instrument louder or fuller, he reached to the equalizer, because the instruments were recorded onto one track. The engineer had equalizers, compressors and reverberation chambers to use to make the mix better (or even different) than the last mix plus only three channel faders for the main tracks!

WHAT A FABULOUS INSIGHT INTO MOTOWN GET A PUBLISHER AND WRITE A BOOK I AND MANY OTHERS WOULD BUY IT I'M SURE

KEV