Greatest Innovations in Music Recording & their Lessons

I believe that the biggest factor preventing you from being successful in recording are not the technical skills and talents but the lack of innovation and experimentation. We only think of standards, best industry practices and imitate what pros are doing and buying for their studio.

Yet we forgot the most important aspect of success – Innovation, creativity and originality. In the recording studio and music production, it’s important you have these qualities. It’s highly essential in getting the best sound out of your projects.

To get you more inspired, let me tell you some about the three greatest innovations in music production I remember which are discovered by experimentation and even as an accident.

Gated Reverb Drums

If you have listened to Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight” from 80’s; you would be amazed at how unique the drum sound was. In fact, the gated drum reverb style was a product of accidental experimentation in the studio.

This technique was discovered using a reverse talk back, a technique used by engineers to listen to the musicians in the live room. Take note the control room and the recording/live rooms are isolated, so there is method for them to communicate and it is called talk back feature on the mixing console.

While they pressed reverse talk back, Phil Collins played the drums on the live room and the engineers are surprised about the resulting sound of the drums from the talk back. Later they improve this and finally incorporate this production technique on recording drums for Phil Collins album and the Genesis band.

With the release of Phil Collins albums and the success of their singles, the gated reverb drum technique becomes well known as a signature sound. Later it has been adopted by a lot of artists and engineers in the 80’s new wave phenomenon.

Lesson: To produce a signature sound for your artist or for your album, do not afraid to go against industry recording practices; think outside the box and experiment. Sometimes great sound comes from this. If it sounds great, stick to it and love it. It would become your signature sound that people and fans would remember and even follow.

Re-amping on Guitars

Another great innovation is re-amping, which was designed to give music producers and engineers’ maximum flexibility and control over the quality of the guitar tracks recording. Re-amping works like the one illustrated below:

First, the engineer would be recording the guitar tracks clean and without any effects. It is bounced to a hard disk drive for a digital recording using any DAW.

Second, the producer/engineer would route the recorded clean guitar tracks back out of the computer and into the analog world with guitar effects processor applied on the signal chain (such as ZOOM).

Third, the producer/engineer would decide which effects would sound best for that particular re-amped guitar tracks. Thus the guitarist did not need to record over and over again if the producer is not satisfied with the guitar tones, etc because effects can be applied to a guitar tracks without needing the guitarist performance. This saves time and resources.

Fourth, the final guitar tone (with effects) would be routed to an amplifier cabinet such as Laney, Marshall or Fender amplifiers which have microphones on them.

Fifth, the microphones would capture the sound coming from the guitar amplifier cabinets which would be the final/processed guitar sound.

Even after recording, if the producer decides to change it again, the guitarist would not need to re-record; instead the digital recording would be routed back to analog and then re-amped with effects to get the desired sound.

Lesson: Always find ways to improve your current workflow. Sometimes what you have learned in music production schools are not the most efficient method. Be innovative and creative in your approach in recording and you would be successful in the near future.

Kick Drum Tunnel

If you are not familiar with kick drum tunnel, look at the picture below for this setup:

Photo credits:
Sound on Sound
Drum Magazine

So you see a tunnel on the kick drum? The main purpose of the kick drum tunnel is to extend the low end bass of the kick drums during recording. This will capture the natural fat sounding bass of the kick drum without the need to add bass enhancing effects on the mix.

As you see the concept is very simple but very innovative. I do not know who is the inventor of this but this technique are started to come out from the 80’s.

Lesson: As a recording engineer, use your common sense. Kick drum tunnel teaches you illustrate basic principles of audio that if a microphone is placed in an isolated tunnel at a several feet away from the kick drum; it would achieve tight and fat kick sound (with natural ambiance and dryness) because the sound vibrations are restricted within the tunnel space.

Overall summary: As you can see, I have listed the top 3 recording innovations I know. Other engineers and producers that have vast experiences can even provide and describe more than 3 innovations in recording.

If you are just started in recording; do not afraid to experiment and come up with innovations. Experiment to get the sound you want by not restricting yourself with existing and current working methods. Every song is different. It is why you should be creative and innovative to know what’s best for the song (whether it’s an EQ, compression, reverb, etc other settings). There are still a lot of innovations waiting to be discovered. It is your job to discover what’s next.

Content last updated on July 29, 2012