I’ve never been a fan of X-factor, Pop Idol, Opportunity Knocks or any of the other cyclical talent shows that clog up peak-viewing hour on the goggle-box at weekends. I’m sure they have their place, but whatever or wherever this is, it ain’t in my place.

No one with half an ear would ever claim that these light entertainment shows have any great musical worth, being ground from the same karioki roots as ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ (albeit with less fun, less musicality and often less validity). They are blatant money making exercises – slap, snaffle and plop…a musical roulette wheel of fortune for this year’s sickly gaggle of puffed up impresarios.

The latest flavour of milli-vanilli autotunism was launched with much hype, claiming to be based upon a veneer of musical respectability. ‘The Voice’ claimed to be all about the music, not the image – a ‘credible’ alternative to the Callowed wishy-wash of wall-to-wall poppertune-ities. Auditions would be ‘blind’, with ‘mentors’ not judges, thereby ensuring that true talent would shine through the bluff of image and prettification.

Bullshit.

I’ve dipped in and out of the shows to date, in between trips to the loo to decorate the toilet with Technicolor yawns. Because from what I’ve seen, ‘The Voice’ is the most cynical affront to musicality of the bunch, if for no other reason that it takes itself seriously and pretends to be about more than $$$$.

The ‘mentors’ are qualified only insofar as they are recognisable to the viewer. Because let’s face it, those who know this industry would trust the talent-spotting instincts of a successful artist less than they would an office tea-boy. Look at all the artist-owned labels over the years, from Swansong (Led Zeppelin’s ill-fated dabble with labelism) to U2’s equally abortive effort. Recognising talent is an art in itself, best left to those with that rare skill rather than Joe Public on the one hand or Lady Wannagag-a, SmileyIrishEyes, Tom (‘I knew Elvis, Sinatra, Jesus’) or Dollar-Eyes-am on the other. At least Callow knows what’ll sell, and if he gets it wrong he has the muscle to manipulate the market.

From what I’ve seen, ‘The Voice’ betrays its pretentious claims from the outset. If any viewer believes that the last few standing will include more than one taken baldie/fattie/oldie/ugly, then they’re wallowing in Cloud Cuckoo land. The winner will be a twenty-something, photogenic, girl or boy next door type (with her or her signature already scratched into a contract in the producer’s lawyer’s safe). But what is so gut-wrenching is the competitive nature of the show, with contestants paired up in a boxing ring – a bloody boxing ring, for Christ’s sake – and metaphorically poked by the ‘mentors’ to outscream one another.

I’ve rarely, if ever, seen anything quite so tasteless since watching Hughie Green leer at Lena Zaveroni’s twelve-year-old cleavage.

Any self-respecting musician should be ashamed to participate in this sordid travesty of an entertainment show. In its own way, I find it as disgusting as the Black And White Minstrels show, which also justified its existence on the basis of mega viewing figures.

We’ll look back on this string of shoddy karioki competitions with embarrassment, recognising that they did more to damage the standing of pop and rock music than digital file-sharing or Eurovision.

Ten years ago, when Pop Idol sued X-factor and vice versa, Universal GAVE Battery Studios to the A+R man behind Pop Idol in settlement of a law suit bought for signing the winning act in contravention to the contractual conditions participants had agreed when entering the competition. Universal had acquired Battery within the context of their (forced) purchase of Zomba. They tossed it at an irritating litigant to resolve a talent show headache and he immediately flogged the studio to a property developer to cash in his ill-gotten gains, thereby proving that the major record company and the television talent-show mogul were at one in utterly disregarding (if not despising) the mechanics of true music.

A plague on all your houses.

On the other hand…

Huge congratulations to Kate Bush for winning this year’s South Bank Pop Awards in addition to nominations for just about every other award going. She has yet again proved an inspiration to aspiring artists determined to retain their individuality and identity despite the massive pressures to conform to the lowest common denominator applied by wall-to-wall television karioki shows.

It can be done, although it requires a determination and belief (not to mention a degree of talent) that is rare indeed.

At long last Phil English’s ‘Full English Podcast’ is here!

This brand new podcast runs for an amazing two and a half hours so make a flask of coffee or tea and settle down to the latest issue.

This month Phil joins new co-host Neil Morgan to look at monitoring and mastering.  After discussing the latest monitors Phil’s been trying out with Neil, Phil heads over to leading London mastering facility Fluid Mastering to talk with mastering engineers Tim Debney and Nick Watson about stem mastering, loudness, dynamic range and lot’s more .

Fluid Mastering Studios

Click here to get the podcast and catch up if this is the first time you’ve been here.

Snap, Crackle, Pop!

There is one simple aim when mastering -  make it sound like a record.

I’ve been working on a new single for a very well known, iconic 1960s band. The A side is a new live recording, and the B a hitherto unreleased track from many years ago, taken from an acetate.

For you younger readers, acetates were one off, one sided vinyl test pressings, with a very limited life; after a few plays, the thin plastic outer layer began to wear out,and the record got very scratchy and crackly.  This particular acetate has had its share of plays over the years, and before I even heard it, I knew I wouldn’t be able to restore it completely. No matter – the song is great, the performance full of energy, and the recording itself very well made. It’s the kind of track an A&R would hear and sign the band on the spot – that’s how good.

What struck me as I listened, was how the crackles and static and noise added a very distinct sense of time and place and atmosphere that would not be at all evident in an antiseptically clean, overly enhanced digitised remaster. This is certainly not true of most things dug up from the vaults….and it set me thinking; how best to reconcile this with the newly recorded A side song, when there’s such a huge sonic divide between them? How best to convey a sense of continuity and purpose between the band then and now?

It was obvious, and completely contrary to the precepts of mastering: -  add crackles and pops and scratches and static and noise to the CLEAN track! So I looped up some vinyl gubbins from the disc, shoved it onto the new song, and what do you know – it sounds like a record!

This is the kind of conceptually sound ,if technically insane idea which I come up with from time to time, and hope to get away with. I liked it, at any rate. However, the label told me that the single is a prequel for a new live album – so promotionally it’s ,er, not exactly ideal….

But I’m going to send them the scratchy one anyway!

Visit Fran Ashcroft’s website

Michael Johnson whose many credits include Blue Monday’s best-selling UK 12” record ever has experience not just of creating hit records, but also recording orchestral, jazz and folk music, as well as film soundtracks and TV commercials at many top studios.

Russell Cottier visited Michael with his camera to record a very interesting interview that contains many very interesting recording techniques and tips with some interesting history. Michael tells Russ about his experiments with mixing in a car and much more!

Click here to watch the video

Thank you for being a friend of RecordProduction.com! We’ve been really busy trying to modernise and improve the site and now offer full screen HD video features that can be embedded in to your blogs or FB pages. We hope that you like the new format and can spread the word by adding links to us on your blog etc but do let us know what improvements or features that you’d like to see.

Latest features

There are lot’s of new videos on RP, too many to list since the last newsletter but a few highlights include:

Stuart Bruce recalls the Live Aid session

Edd Hartwell started out as Trevor Horn’s apprentice and has now gone solo

Ken Scott talks at Abbey Road Studios about recording epic sounding drums

Tomás de Camino Beck is our first producer featured in Costa Rica

Andy Bell, Hannah James & Sam Sweeny talking recording folk with Russ Cottier

George Shilling interviews Parisian born and classically trained Dimitri Tikovoi

Jake Jackson talks about recording Dr Who scores at Air Studios

Stuart Hamilton raves about his new desk at Castle Sound in Edinburgh

Abbey Road engineer’s Sam Okell and Chris Bolster feature

Danton Supple’s latest interview talking about recording Coldplay

Simon Efemey talks about the challenges in recording Metal

Chestnut Studio’s Chris Young feature in a very Space Age studio

Click here to visit the full list of producers featured.

Be featured

Would you like to be featured? It’s free! Just ask us to visit and if you’re too far away get a friend to record a video to send us – or send us the bus fare!

We are looking for new contributors who can spend a day a month recording features or writing blogs in areas that we can’t get to – sadly we have very little money but will do our best to cover costs and will give you lots of exposure. Please get in touch if you’re interested.

Click here to look at the full newsletter

We met up with ex-SARM Studios engineer Edd Hartwell at George Shilling’s studio to chat about his recording methods and we were keen to find out how serving an apprenticeship under such legends as Trevor Horn and Steve Lipson has shaped his career so far.

Edd started his musical career playing guitar and saxophone in bands until a love of recording studios and sound engineering was discovered. Edd has worked with the likes of Tony Visconti, Guy Massey, Stephen Lipson, Jim Abbiss and Trevor Horn on a regular basis, racking up UK number 1 albums and a Grammy nomination for best engineered album. Credits include The Noisettes, Ed Sheeran, Jeff Beck, The Kooks, The Prodigy, Kt Tunstall and Yes, amongst others.

Click here to watch the video 

Photographs of Edd Hartwell are in this picture gallery

My first serious recording session was at 10cc’s Strawberry Studios in grimy old Stockport, at the tender age of 18. It was the first state of the art regional UK studio with a buzz about it that wasn’t a ground loop.

The band had a couple of hits – Rubber Bullets and Donna  – they were on the up and up. So I was surprised to walk in and see Eric Stewart manning reception, and Graham Gouldman showing us around. I didn’t think pop stars did that sort of thing.

This session was just demos – for Robert Stigwood, where the money was rolling in like I don’t know what…the A&R guy fancied himself as a producer, with his gold plated, all expenses paid trip Up North. He was under the impression I had a band, but the reality was I just wheeled in an odd local musician or three for one mic recordings in my front room, so I turned up armed with only my guitar, a drummer who looked about 12, and two teenage convent girls who played cellos. Interesting line up, eh?

None of us had ever used headphones before – much less iso booths, and I’d never actually overdubbed anything in my life, other than with a weird two-track arrangement cobbled together on my mono recorder, which necessitated monitoring through a tiny earpiece as used with old fashioned hearing aids. But one copes. The unexpected thing was being asked to do bass parts. I didn’t own a bass, or even knew anyone who had one, and bass lines were a complete mystery to me at the time. They said, just play some low notes on the 6 string, and we’ll sort it. But I don’t think they did!

This tale would not be complete without mention of my roadie for the day – Preston legend Mick Mather, he of frighteningly green teeth and national health specs held together with elastoplast, an unkempt gentle giant always willing to lend a helping hand – he could carry two 4 x 12s at once. Meeting him again 35 years on, he hadn’t changed a bit, though the teeth had been fixed. There was something of a reverse Dorian Gray about that…

Anyhow, back to the story. No record deal transpired from the recordings – but there was a publishing contract as a consolation prize, with sessions at London’s Gooseberry Studios (no relation!). Gooseberry was a demo studio, but with a brilliant Ampex 2″ 16 track, great mics and a lovely baby grand. The downside was a dreadful drum booth (literally,”can you play without cymbals?”) and fiberglass insulation stapled all over the walls and ceiling, much of which was loose and falling off.

By this time I had acquired a bass AND a drum kit, and rehearsed relentlessly, determined to make a real record in the alotted time, not the demos they expected. I did 3 songs start to finish in a day, doing all the dubs myself; everything was first take. It had to be. But the preparation paid off, and the tracks were deemed worthy of mixing at Abbey Road….

Subsequently, my publishers were instrumental in putting together my first major record deal.

That’s what effective pre production can do, people!

Visit Fran Ashcroft’s website

I had never made an album before but it couldn’t be that hard, could it? After all, surely it was just a matter of common sense? I knew my way around studios from my days as a session musician and the process seemed pretty straightforward.

Hmmm…

I was later to learn that logic and common sense are not in abundant supply in the music industry. That I achieved my goals, by and large, was not a matter of luck though. It was down to meticulous planning, careful thought and good fortune to work with some quite extraordinary talent.

We had twenty eight thousand pounds in the kitty, half of which was earmarked for the recording budget (which had to include payments to musicians) a few grand to keep the office going and the rest to promote the album. It sounded like a lot at the time, except…as I rooted through Roy’s accounts within the context of straightening out his convoluted tax affairs, it became clear that his last album for EMI (Unknown Soldier) had come in with the princely price tag of £160,000 – more than ten times as much as I had allocated for Work Of Heart (the title of the new album). Still…what did EMI know about making records? They’d only been doing it for an eternity (that’s not as tongue-in-cheek as it may sound. It remains my belief that most major record companies know naff-all about how to make good records, as my later production escapades were to confirm).

The first task was to find a producer. I had always been a big fan of the production on the early Peter Gabriel albums – Jeux Sans Frontiers, Biko, Salisbury Hill et al. The album covers credited Steve Lillywhite. He seemed a good choice. So I did what any sensible executive producer should do but I now know never in fact does – I rang the artist for a reference. I’d had occasional dealings with the talented Mr. Gabriel during my Buzz Music days, and he was extremely helpful. Rather than confirm Steve Lillywhite’s credentials, Peter raved on about an unknown producer/engineer with whom he was currently collaborating on his current – fourth – album (Shock The Monkey etc). This bloke lived in Peter’s neck of the woods – Bath – and was, according to the great man, a complete and utter musical and production genius, a former composer and classical musician called David Lord. If Roy was looking to the best producer in the business, I should call David.

So I did.

Disappointment followed. David was politeness itself, and said he would love to hear the demos but…he was far too busy mixing Peter Gabriel’s album to take on another project. Sorry – thanks but no thanks.

John Leckie wasn’t chosen as an alternative to David Lord. Quite the opposite. John had always been top of Roy’s short list, but had been tied up with a production in London. Until – suddenly John became available, and the production chair was filled.  Accordingly, I sent Chapel Lane Studios a fifty percent advance on studio time and the recordings commenced.

It turned out to be a fraught process. Roy proved pernickety in the studio to the point of infuriation. John Leckie knew how tight the budget and therefore the timescale was, and began to suffer increasing stress trying to push the album forwards, particularly as Roy was used to months and even years to make an album (unknown soldier had eaten almost eighteen months in Abbey Road). The musicians we’d found turned out to be sensational, whizzing through the backing tracks on schedule with world-class performances. Except…

We recorded the backing tracks to a drum programme, laid down on a brand new state of the art machine called an Oberheim DMX, programmed by a friend of Bob Wilson’s who flew the private plane for ELO (don’t ask…life is weird.) When the time came to replace these 8 bit samples with real drums, we hit problems. A friend of John Leckie’s recommended a young drummer (who’s name escapes me – fortunately so, perhaps) but the sessions turned out to be a disaster. Sadly, although talented, the youngster’s lack of studio experience let him down badly and ten days were lost desperately trying (and failing) to lay down drum tracks. All the while the stress grew, and Roy became ever more domineering in the control room. Maybe I can understand, as he really did have his life on the line. This was not merely a career saving album, but with the bank ready to pull the plug on his house and financial pressures closing in, the stakes could not have been higher.

John Leckie did an amazing job of shaping, tracking and tightening the backing tracks against all odds but eventually the pressure told and he cracked. He downed tools one day and high-tailed it for the sanity of the hills.. He was, after all, a human being and carried his own personal burdens. Thus it was that I was called to the studio half way through the project to salvage a crisis.

I found a set of excellent backing tracks, minus drums, almost ready to mix. John had engineered as well as produced, and had worked fourteen hours a day progressing the project in the face of Roy’s ever changing mind and more pressures than any producer should have to bear. But I was left with no engineer, no one to mix, no drummer and no track sheets.

Crisis? What crisis? This was my first album. Maybe all recording sessions were like this…

I’d always been a massive fan of a greatly underrated singer-songwriter called Judie Tzuke. Apart from a voice to die for, she wrote (sorry…she writes) intelligent, timeless songs and has always attracted top-flight musicians to her band. In particular, I’d always been impressed by her drummer, a guy called Charlie Morgan. So I found his number from the Musicians Union, rang him up and booked him for an eight-hour session. What I didn’t tell him (until he arrived with a drum kit and Dolby, the dog) was that I wanted him to overdub an entire album in that short day.

Hmmm…

John Leckie had left a well-managed set of tapes, complete with click tracks. Tom Oliver, the main live sound engineer I used for my tour productions, was drafted in to engineer and we sat in the control room with Charlie listening to a playback of the album. He loved the stuff. And he went for it.

I’ve worked with some great drummers in my time (Mannie Elias, Gavin Harrison, George Jackson Jr and many more) but never have I experienced such magic in the studio. Charlie’s energy didn’t flag, any more than his enthusiasm. And lest any of you drummers out there belittle the task of overdubbing forty minutes of music in less than eight hours, it should be pointed out that Roy’s songs aren’t easy. They bristle with time changes, dynamics, subtle extra bars here and there. The title track, Work Of Heart, is twenty minutes long and covers a vast range of light, shade and tempo. But Charlie rose to the task and achieved far more than could ever have been expected. Indeed, there are sparse licks and tight fills on that record that still send a shiver down my spine after a thousand listens. So hats of to Charlie Morgan – drummer supreme. Last I heard, he was a regular member of Elton John’s band. I’m not surprised.

So thanks to John Leckie, Charlie Morgan and Tom Oliver, we had our backing tracks. We were only slightly over budget and schedule, what’s more, although with such a tight budget ‘slightly over’ was a major consideration.

Now to work out how to get the damn thing mixed.

More in hope than expectation, I put in another call to David Lord in Bath. As good fortune would have it, he suddenly had time available (there are plenty of biographies detailing the falling out of David and Peter Gabriel, so I have no intention of touching on that here.) Moreover, David had his own studio in Bath – Crescent – and was prepared to provide his services to mix plus studio time for a week at a figure that precisely equated to my remaining budget, taking into account that I had hired a second engineer to assist with the mix – Paul Cobbold, one of the Rockfield crew and an old friend. A few economies had to be made, though, which meant I spent the week of the mix sleeping in the back of my Volvo estate rather than lavishing precious funds on a bed and breakfast.

Rock `n` Roll (oh my aching back…)

David Lord is a genius. Irrespective of any personal factors, I am happy – nay proud – to shout his musical, production and engineering credentials from the highest mountaintop. Peter Gabriel was right – the man is a musical genius.

David realised John Leckie’s production vision perfectly. He added various overdubs, including some keyboard parts of his own. I’d always imagined sax on a couple of the tracks, and contacted Dick Morrissey. What a geezer…inspiration in every breath, and a master of his instrument. He also knew a few tricks. For example, there was one particularly snappy solo on (yes, you guessed) a Gabriel album, and I wanted that vibe for one of Roy’s tracks. Dick explained that he’d cut the solo on tenor with the tape slowed down. When the track was replayed at normal speed, the sax sounded tighter, snappier and hovered between the ranges of alto and tenor. So that’s what we did and it worked like a dream. Like Charlie Morgan, Dick was the master of the first take. These guys were pros (unlike me) and it was such a privilege to work with them. As much as anything else it made me happy that I hadn’t pursued a career as a session musician. I was nowhere near these guys’ class.

And so Work Of Heart finally saw the light of day – a collection of great songs, faultlessly performed, beautifully recorded and mixed by a genius. I had made my first album on budget (a paltry fifteen grand) and pretty well on time. If I have one regret, it’s that John Leckie was never given the production credit that he so richly deserved, but then that’s Roy. He rang to compliment the finished product, and to say how much he liked David Lord’s mix. John was a true friend to Roy and modest to a fault.

And what happened next?

Well…I rewrote music bizz history a little. I negotiated the first ever commercial sponsorship for an album marketing campaign (Maxell Tapes gave me £35,000 to promote the record), negotiated heavy preorders with a couple of chain stores and charted the album. ‘Work Of Heart’ was voted album of the year by Derek Jewell in The Sunday Times and was also named one of the five albums of the year in Music Week. We shifted thirty five thousand albums through Pinnacle, an independent distributor (the equivalent of selling three hundred thousand on a major as I was later told by the publisher, Dick Leahy). The band toured and were great, with Tony Franklyn, Bob Wilson and George Jackson ably supported by Jackie Graham and Ruby Turner on backing vocals. On their night, they were dynamite – a million miles from the old-hat crustiness many associated with Roy Harper. And then, just as I had overseas licensing deals lined up with promised advances in excess of £60,000 I learned a bitter (but valuable) lesson about the music business.

Public Recordings numbered amongst its major shareholders Robert Plant, Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, David Gilmour, Robert Grayburn and me. However, in my innocence, the label had no formal agreement with the artist – he was merely a fifty per cent shareholders. One day, a contrite and embarrassed Roy appeared in my office with news that his accountant had advised him to liquidate the label and buy the master tapes back from the receiver for £100 (without his consent to release, they were worthless to anyone else). He could then release through a new label and use the proceeds to buy another house to replace that foreclosed upon by Barclays.

‘Sorry Mark,’ Roy mumbled, ‘but this is the only life I’ve got. I have to think about myself.’

I have no idea whether the business scam worked out for Roy. Possibly. Possibly not. I was left high and dry in Birmingham with the wreckage of the label and all the bad vibes associated with a bankrupt company.

David Gilmour and Paul McCartney had been right. Roy’s investors never saw their money back, let alone a profit. But I guess they knew that all along. I was the novice in the Harper stakes.

Apart from being a great learning curve, I take great pride in ‘Work Of Heart’. It was an album that should have been impossible to make. Even today it sounds fresh and stands beside any other album of its era in terms of quality and creativity. It is rated by most reviewers of Roy’s output as his second greatest album after Stormcock. Indeed, Roy personally rates the demos (released as Born In Captivity) as his favourite album, or one of them at least.

Born In Captivity cost four hundred pounds (my time was donated for nothing – a bounced cheque) and Work Of Heart cost a fraction of what the record companies I later worked with imagined. Indeed, after I came to London and joined the music mainstream, intent to learn from the major record companies I worked with, I was amused to find that they were more interested in discovering how I’d achieved the results and accolades represented by Work Of Heart rather than trying to teach me their tricks.

I could only offer one answer – always trust talent above cheque-book production.
That rule remains as true today as it was in 1980.

You better believe.

Roy Harper; Born In Captivity/Work Of Heart Science Friction HUCD008

Eccentric

Follow Eccentric every month here on the RP/Blog

Tom Rowland of the Chemical Brothers

Rock and metal music producer Simon Efemey at the Chapel Studios

Music Producer Danton Supple photographed in Alan Moulder’s Studio

Record producer Stuart Bruce

Browse our huge photo galleries here if you would like to see more!

WATCH PART FOUR OF THE INTERVIEW RECORDED AT ABBEY ROAD

Part Four of our exclusive video interview with legendary recording engineer and producer Ken Scott shot at Abbey Road Studios with Russell Cottier asking the questions.

In this fourth part we looked at Mastering, working with technology and working with limitations and how they can actually help. Come back soon for the next part of our interview!

All of the Ken Scott Features