Studio Recording Observations, early 1980s

[SteveFord 1,060]

Here's a section from a Guitar Player Magazine interview with Frank Zappa. Some interesting comments about studio work using technology of the 1980s when this was written.

One thing that's not in this particular interview is that Zappa LOVED the coming of digitial, primarily because it got rid of tape hiss.

 

Steve Vai said that the "Peter Gunn" sounding guitar in "Teenage Prostitute" [Drowning Witch] sounded much different after it was mixed than when he recorded it.

 

We can change the sound of just about anything, because we have a lot of sound modifying tools in the studio. When you arrange something, the arrangement is always modified by what comes before it or after it on a side. If you want the side to play smoothly, you may equalize all the different parts of a tune to sound one way, but when you start mixing a whole side -- that's what we do: we start on song one and work through to the end -- to make the continuity work in terms of the tonal quality of the whole side, sometimes we have to change things around drastically.

 

Then you don't follow a brittle-sounding song with a mushy one.

 

Right, you want to smooth-out the whole spectrum so that when a person puts the needle down at the beginning of the record, they feel that there's a continuity through the whole side. It just makes it easier to listen to.

 

What's the biggest problem in creating a record from a final tape?

 

The biggest problem about making a record occurs when you go from the magnetic medium to the mechanical medium. Sound on tape has certain problems that you have to deal with, just because of the way the tape works. Sound on a disc has other types of problems that you have to correct because of the way a record works. A record is a mechanical medium; it's based on a little thing wiggling around in a groove. And it's a miracle that that stylus can actually produce music -- especially when you're talking about things that are drastically stereo-imaged. You get into situations with phase cancellation and all sorts of weird stuff that goes on when you try to put it onto a record. And there are always equalization changes when you finish your master tape and when you send it down and get a ref [reference copy]. It never sounds the same when it comes back from the disc cutting place. And so you have to take the time and tweeze it up. Sometimes there are problems on the tape that just can't be fixed.

 

What are some examples?

 

Those problems usually involve the letter "S" in a vocal part, a high-hat that's half open. Those things are sometimes really obnoxious on a record. And the remedies just to fix that kind of sound -- just to get it to tract correctly on a disc -- involve radical measures, such as using these things called acceleration limiters, which are built into the recording lathe. These are pretty drastic. Let's take a bad "S" in a word like surprise. It sounds okay on tape, but when it comes back on a record, it's all distorted, because it's difficult for the needle to track it. So you either have to use an outboard de-esser [an electronic device that senses powerful highs and selectively chops them out], which finds that frequency and suppresses it for an instant, or use the acceleration limiters on the lathe.

 

How do they work?

 

They function very drastically; they start at 4k [4,000 cycles per second], and at that point when an "S" appears, they dump the whole top end. So, when it's triggered, it takes the whole top off the tape, and not just the "S." So it's very critical to tweak those things. The guy who cuts the lacquers [the earliest disc in the mastering process] for us is very careful about leaving it on when it's time to get rid of the S's, and turning it off right afterwards. It makes for a lot of manual work, and in order to do it, he works from a sheep of paper with timing numbers. So he'll say, at one minute and twenty-eight seconds turn on the high-frequency limiter to "4," look at the timer, and turn it on at the right time. He doesn't listen to the music; he does it by the numbers. Just turns it on and off. The easy way to do it is to turn on the high-frequency limiter and leave it on. There won't be any S's on the record, but there won't be any top end on it either. We fuss with that type of stuff. We have 30 or 40 refs for the new album [The Man From Utopia] and most people don't do that; they do one, and that's it.

 

Do you prefer to have your records done with half-speed mastering?

 

The only album that we ever did with half-speed mastering was Joe's Garage. It helps your top end, but it ruins the low end. Let's examine the frequency spectrum of what we're putting on the record. The new album has a lot of information around, 30 cycles [Ed. Note: Low E on a bass guitar is 41.2 Hz], and there's a very full-sounding bottom on some of these tunes. If you were to master that at half-speed, you'd need an equalizer that would have to be looking at 15 cycles. So you get a crisper, but a thinner-sounding record if you master half-speed. On the Joe's Garage album, we used half-speed mastering on all three of those discs, and I'm not totally delighted with the results.

 

Do you have any examples?

 

Let me give you a very graphic one. We cut it at half-speed, and the stylus can carve very careful, perfect, little high-frequency wiggles on the record. That doesn't mean when it's turned into a stamper and goes onto that vinyl that those wiggles are necessarily going to be there. You may just be fooling yourself. You may hear it great coming off of a reference disc, but not off of a pressing. And that's what I think happened with Joe's Garage. It just didn't carry through all the manufacturing process. Recently, I've cut some normal-speed refs on the Jes's Garage album, and since the time of the original mastering there have been some advancements in normal-speed lathe technology. You can get more level on the record, and so forth. So the new refs sound fantastic. They have plenty of top end and plenty of bottom; they sound much more like the master tape than the half-speed version did.

 

In terms of stereo imaging, do you have to make trade-offs when mixing guitar or other parts in order to avoid phase cancellation when the music is played back in mono?

 

Who listens to it in mono?

 

Many engineers play music through small speakers in mono occasionally to hear what might sound like on a car radio.

 

But I don't have that problem, because nobody's ever going to be playing my stuff on an AM radio, so what's the difference? And besides, I believe that most of the people who buy my records have better-than-average reproduction equipment. They may not be in the audiophile class, but I don't believe they listen to them on Mono cheese-o equipment. So I try to go as stereo as possible and plan it for the end result of who's going to consume it. Nobody's going to take "Heavy Duty Judy" [shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar] and play it on mainstream AM radio.

 

The Drowning Witch album had a suggestion on it to the effect that it should be listened to on JBL 4311 speakers. Why so specific?

 

That album was mixed on 4311s, and it sounds better through 4311s than just about any other kind of speaker. It was the first time I've done that. I heard a lot of people own those kinds of speaker, and I thought, "Well, maybe we can optimize it for what is actually in their homes." One of the problems when you make a record is that you don't know actually what they're going to be playing it on. You don't know what the anomalies of the person's speakers are going to be -- or the cartridge, or the condition of the stylus, or whether they like to turn up the bass all the way. All these things. Everything that happens changes the sound of what you put onto the tape, and there's no way to make it perfect, unless the listener has some kind of scientifically flat reproduction system in their home. And That's just not going to happen.

 

 

[TNRabbit 370]

That was EXCELLENT! Thanks, Steve~

[stereo_dog 431]

Very nice, Steve, thanks for sharing.

[maddmaxxx 39]

-mensa...FZ

 

 

-elp did a super fine peter gunn, also...hehe