Replicating The Recording Revolution – BBC4
In a great new 3 part BBC4 series, Sound Of Song, Neil Brand looks at every recorded moment in the life cycle of a song and the changing ways we have listened to them. He reveals the wonderful alchemy recording elements that makes songs sound so special to us.
Part One – The Recording Revolution
To open the series, Neil investigates how songs were recorded for the first time, the listening revolution in the home that followed and the birth of a new style of singing that came with the arrival of the microphone – crooning.
Pioneering, an early Edison Phonograph
A technical exploration into the magical elements that come together to create great songs by recreating some of the most memorable and innovative recording sessions in music history – from Sun Studios & Elvis’s slapback echo in Memphis and the Beatles’ tape loops at Abbey Road to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound and the Beach Boys’ pop symphonies at Sunset Studios.
He shows that all this was made possible by the discovery of Ampex magnetic tape by an American soldier in the ruins of WWII Germany, the invention that, more than any other, drove the emergence of the music studio as a compositional tool and the rise of the producer as a new creative force shaping the sound of song.
Did you know? Brian Wilson was originally a recording assistant to Phil Spectre.. and Good Vibrations took over 90 hours to record!
