Modern Records, Maverick Methods

Technology and Process in Popular Music Record Production 1978-2000

Samantha Bennett

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781501344114
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Teoría y apreciación musicales

From the Fairlight CMI through MIDI to the digital audio workstations at the turn of the millennium, Modern Records, Maverick Methods examines a critical period in commercial popular music record production: the transformative digital age from the late 1970s until 2000. Drawing on a discography of more than 300 recordings across pop, rock, hip hop, dance and alternative musics from artists such as the Beastie Boys, Madonna, U2 and Fatboy Slim, and extensive and exclusive ethnographic work with many world-renowned recordists, Modern Records presents a fresh and insightful new perspective on one of the most significant eras in commercial music record production. The book traces the development of significant music technologies through the 1980s and 1990s, revealing how changing attitudes and innovative techniques of recording personnel reimagined recording processes and, finally, exemplifies the impact of these technologies and techniques via six comprehensive tech-processual analyses. This meticulously researched and timely book reveals the complexity of recordists' responses to a technological landscape in flux.

1

Constructing Records: Sound Recording and Production Technologies at the Turn of the 1980s

In The Poetics of Rock, Albin Zak stated:

British recordings of the early 1980s marked a turning point in terms of both sound and public awareness. With an abundance of sound processing, new electronic instruments, and resurgent experimental attitudes, the distance between the natural sound world and the sound of records increased markedly.¹

Zak makes a critical observation in terms of both the prevalence of non-‘natural’ sounding records and the period of time when such sonic characteristics became more noticeable. This chapter begins slightly earlier in the late 1970s, charting many significant digital music and recording technologies that emerged and discussing them in relation to commercially released records on which they featured. This is a key era in recorded popular music due to the influx and potential of digital recording, synthesis, sampling and carriers. Such technological development serves as important precedent to computer-based music recording and production and as such makes for an ideal starting point. Extending Zak’s observation, I assert that the late 1970s signified a musical ‘fork in the road’ between records featuring live, acoustic and electric instrument performances and those featuring music heavily ‘constructed’ from programmable devices. This may be interpreted as a generalization and of course records were made that featured both acoustic and electronic programmed instrumentation. However, if records in general sounded sonically opposed to the natural sound world in the early 1980s, some records were even further removed from that point, to the extent that they resembled nothing that had been heard before. Suffice to say this period of technological development was intense, political and resulted in major musical and cultural impact.² Technological development did not, however, occur only in the digital domain. Multiple developments in the analogue domain, including larger and more sophisticated mixing consoles, tape machines, drum machine development and programmable, analogue synthesis-based devices emerged and proliferated. The late 1970s is a good starting point for other reasons. Until then, recording technologies followed a ‘more of the same’ trajectory; recording to analogue tape was the only option, regardless of the number of available tracks. To that end, many recordists and recording houses assimilated increased track tape recorders as and when they were released; the technology, operational aspects and maintenance, whilst varying from machine to machine, remained largely the same throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In saying that, there was certainly a large degree of aesthetic choice as to how those technologies were implemented; historically, analogue tape machines have been used in ways other than intended to create extraordinary effects – such practice dates back to European musique concréte and, in particular, the work of Pierre Schaeffer.³ That the introduction of new, predominantly digital music technologies led to both utopian and pessimistic standpoints in the audio and music industries is well documented.⁴ However, whilst plenty of work exists on the music of the era and less so of the recording technology and workplace environments of the era,⁵ connections and synergies between these two domains have rarely been acknowledged. It is fair to say that concurrent to the Western economic boom, the 1980s was a time of technological and processual excess: professional audio and music recording technologies were more expensive than ever, technological development – particularly in the digital domain – increased markedly, competitiveness between manufacturers was rife and record company recording budgets ever increasing. Whilst the lines I am about to draw between technological change and impact on music could be interpreted as deterministic, I am not espousing technological determinism. Indeed, recordist agency is critical to this discussion and is considered in more detail later on. It is not possible to chart every technological development or record of the era, and this book does not attempt to do so. The aim of this chapter is to deal with some of the most significant developments in sound recording and music technology of the era and to consider the embodiment of such systems in popular music recordings.

The Fairlight CMI – technology and politics

In the pioneer field of sound sampling, the American loses ground to the Australian; Synclavier does not yet have the same capability. It has thus attracted a less favourable attention from the electronic music academics at the BBC, who have for instance tended to plump for the Fairlight.

Giles Dawson⁶

Developed in Sydney, Australia, during the early to mid-1970s, the Fairlight CMI (Computer Music Instrument) is one of the most influential music technologies in the history of music recording and production. A bold claim perhaps, but this groundbreaking device was – along with New England Digital’s Synclavier – at the very nexus of that sonically discernible ‘fork in the road’,⁷ as described in this chapter’s introduction. How could one machine have made such an impact?

During the early 1970s, Sydney-based electronics engineer and synthesis enthusiast Peter Vogel began experimenting with the potential of digital synthesis along with friend and analogue synthesist Kim Ryrie. Almost simultaneously, Motorola consultant Tony Furse began work on his Qasar M8 synthesizer, a hybrid analogue–digital synthesizer featuring an 8-bit microprocessor. After synergizing their respective expertise – and with a licensing deal from Furse – Vogel and Ryrie built the first computer-based digital synthesizer with on-board sampling capability. Released in 1979, the original Fairlight CMI I featured an 8-bit analogue-to-digital converter, dual 8ʺ floppy disk drives and pre-programmed sets of sound timbres, setting a global precedent for digital sampling, synthesis and sequencing capability, all contained within a single music production system. Initial take-up of the Fairlight CMI I was enthusiastic, particularly amongst artists associated to avant-garde and/or art rock musicalities including Mike Oldfield and Peter Gabriel, producers including Richard James Burgess and Trevor Horn and synthesists such as Iva Davies. The Fairlight consisted of a digital sampler with 1MB floppy drive for storage, a dedicated software sequencer and keyboard. Heavy, cumbersome and initially utilizing a basic 8-bit microprocessor, the Fairlight was the first sample-based synthesizer that brought the possibility of waveform editing to a generation of professional recordists. Of particular note was the ‘light pen’ attached to the side of the monitor, with which the user could ‘draw’ waveforms on the screen. At between $25,000 and $36,000, the Fairlight – like the Synclavier – was out of reach financially to the majority of musicians and recordists. In saying that, its sound is widely recognized across a wide range of synth-pop, new romantic and pop records throughout the 1980s, primarily due to the large number of commercial recording artists who accessed the few machines in existence. The original model was released in 1979 through 1980 and an updated series II (1983) incorporated MIDI ports. The last Fairlight model was released in 1985; the series III was priced at more than $70,000. At the turn of the 1980s, the updated Fairlight CMI II was the most sophisticated computer music instrument available, consisting of a computer, keyboard and monitor with the Fairlight’s unique ‘light pen’ attached. The Fairlight CMI II featured two 8ʺ floppy disk drives, one for hosting the system disk⁸ and the other for data disks containing sounds and storing sequences. The user interface – a low-resolution green colour displayed on the Fairlight’s video monitor – operated in ‘pages’. Each page allowed users to perform specific tasks: for example, Page 2 allowed for the management of disk files; Page 6 enabled users to draw or alter harmonic content in a waveform; Page 8 allowed for the recording of samples; and Page D displayed the voice waveform in a three-dimensional image. Perhaps the most groundbreaking feature was the Fairlight’s Page R: a ‘Real-Time Composer’ editing window displaying one bar of music programming on up to eight tracks. This visual representation of multitracked sound sources pioneered music programming and sequencing as we know it today. Thus, the Fairlight can be considered a forbearer of the DAW; the impact of screen-based waveform depiction on computer-based devices is fully realized in today’s production systems.

Whilst the Fairlight was used to sample original sounds, such as in Peter Gabriel’s ‘Shock the Monkey’ (1982), it could also be used to sample and programme instrument sounds, such as the drum patterns throughout Def Leppard’s Hysteria (1987). The Fairlight featured pre-programmed sound banks of standard instruments and effects. One of the most popular of these was a patch called ‘Sararr’ – a breathy, voice-like instrument that became a focal-point sound in the 1980s synth-pop genre. The patch can be heard across Jean Michel Jarre’s Zoolook (1984) and in Yazoo’s You and Me Both (1983), but perhaps features most prominently in Tears for Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair (1985) and is particularly foregrounded on the single ‘Shout’ (1984) – the effect is heard throughout the song and the instrument itself features prominently in the accompanying video. These pre-programmed sounds were also used to create memorable, atmospheric song introductions; perhaps the most famous of these was the synthesis-driven introduction to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday’ (1982) and the dark, percussive introductory loop to John Farnham’s ‘You’re the Voice’ (1986). The Fairlight was also used to create memorable television and movie themes, including ‘Theme From Miami Vice’ (1984) by Jan Hammer, thus integrating itself into the aural fabric of 1980s popular culture.

Timothy Warner’s book Pop Music, Technology and Creativity charts Trevor Horn’s use of the Fairlight on notable records, including Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ (1983) (Welcome to the Pleasuredome 1984), Grace Jones’ ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ (Slave to the Rhythm 1985) and The Art of Noise’s debut album (Who’s Afraid of?) The Art of Noise! (1984). This study illuminated common musical and technological motifs in Horn’s production, largely due to the sampling and sequencing methods he employed on the Fairlight CMI. One of the earliest of these was Horn’s production on Dollar’s ‘Give Me Back My Heart’ (1982), as Horn described:

One of the first really interesting things we did that blew me away, was we sampled Thereza Bazar going ‘aahhhh’ and ‘la! la!’ And we used that on Dollar’s ‘Give Me Back My Heart’ and it worked perfectly. What was clever about what we did, though, was that Thereza Bazar didn’t just sing into the machine, we made up the samples. We 16-tracked her for every note. This was still in the days of analogue tape, and we bounced it down so we had a beautiful bed that was 16 tracks of her, across the range of an octave or whatever.⁹

Here, the foregrounding of technological intervention on a musical performance is acutely evident, and it was precisely these techniques that situated Horn at the very forefront of 1980s music production. I do not wish to cover the same ground that Warner expertly dealt with in his book, but further uses of the Fairlight CMI series II are worth noting.

Emergent digital technologies were not always met with approval by members of the recording industry. On the contrary, as much as technologies could be embraced and celebrated, they could also be divisive and used to make powerful political statements. In early 1980, Kate Bush began work on her album The Dreaming (1982), incorporating the kind of ‘cut-and-paste’ recording techniques more in keeping with avant-garde composition. Bush took on the multiple roles of artist, producer and Fairlight CMI I programmer, having acquired the first incarnation of the instrument in 1980. The title track, ‘The Dreaming’ (1982), is particularly significant. Lyrically and conceptually, ‘The Dreaming’ deals with Indigenous Australian rights, referencing the plight of Indigenous Australians following British colonization. Bush has sampled a Digeridu¹⁰ and looped it within the Fairlight to form the underpinning of the entire record, thus utilizing and conflating Australia’s most ancient and cutting-edge musical instruments.

Let’s consider another The Art of Noise¹¹ track, that of ‘Close (To The Edit)’ (1984). In this track, the Fairlight has been used to sample various vocal and ‘found sound’ motifs, programme those samples and to create rhythmic and melodic sequences, which form the underpinning of the track. But the Fairlight’s presence is not simply technologically or sonically discernible. The song title itself features a reference to a key feature of the Fairlight, that being its editing functionality. The rhythmic underpinning has been created from a sampled motorbike sound. A synthesized pulse acts as the track’s bassline as other vocal and melodic samples are programmed in on top. The instrument’s ‘machine’ presence is further reinforced in the accompanying video, which is set in a disused, graffiti-covered, decaying railway passage as various acoustic instruments lay, apparently rotting, along with burned-out oil cans and other discarded debris. A ceramic bust of Mozart lies on the tracks, along with a corroded saxophone, cello, violin and piano. A young girl dressed in punk clothes gathers and then tosses large quantities of musical score, trampling over the paper strewn across the floor. Three members of The Art of Noise appear in the video alongside her; the beginning of the film has been edited so the musicians appear and disappear in time with the music. Whilst the Fairlight itself does not feature, its musical presence is replaced by power tools: that of a large, electric chainsaw, a jigsaw and a large pair of metal cutters, which are later replaced with a circular saw. The Art of Noise proceed to use these tools to destroy the acoustic musical instruments present in the scene: large serrations, sparks and strikes are synchronized to the music. This created a powerful, metaphorical commentary on the Fairlight’s sample-sequenced compositional potential as ‘destroying’: traditional musical instrumentation (as depicted by the decaying, later destroyed instruments); structure, arrangement and form (as depicted by the musical score); and Western Classicist music tradition and canon (as depicted by the Mozart bust). This aggressive situating of the Fairlight’s potential – as a musical, compositional and recording device – as the destroyer of traditional music was indicative of wider technological pessimism surrounding the machine (and other digital music devices) from some factions in the recording and music industries and well addressed in scholarly discourse.¹² The Art of Noise – and their satirical film that played on then rife technological pessimism – were unapologetic and carefree in their representation of such feeling, but others used the Fairlight not to suggest it was necessarily the future of music, but in answer to accusations of inauthenticity and the absence of live performance.¹³ The use of the Fairlight CMI was so controversial and divisive that it became the focus of a music industry backlash, particularly from the Musicians’ Union, who feared the proliferation of such an instrument would destroy the livelihoods of musicians. Whilst the Fairlight CMI was not the first electronic instrument the Musicians’ Union felt threatened by, it symbolized the proliferation of programmed – and programmable – digital music devices that threatened traditional modes of performativity. To that end, some musicians felt compelled to publicly confirm the absence of the instrument on their records. For example, Phil Collins’s No Jacket Required (1985) featured the liner note ‘There is no Fairlight on this record’,¹⁴ although this acknowledgement may have, at least in part, been due to Collins’s former band mate Peter Gabriel’s extensive use of the machine.

The Synclavier

The 80s was a decade of seemingly limitless possibilities in electronic music and sound production. It was the decade of the Superstar, synthesisers, computers, the CD and decadence. Wall Street, The Yuppie, Dallas, Dynasty.

Steve Hills¹⁵

Hills’s commentary on 1980s tech-utopianism is particularly relevant to this chapter. In situating professional audio and music technological developments in the wider, excess-celebrating popular culture of the era, he recognizes the Synclavier – and other digital technologies – as aspirational and as a status symbol. The technological similarities between the Fairlight CMI and Synclavier ensured the two systems remained at the forefront of computer-based music production system design between 1978 and 1986. This did, however, result in tension between the two companies; NED, for example, accused Fairlight of ‘gimmickery’ in regard to its ‘light pen’ technology.¹⁶

Hills’s conflation of 1980...