Recreating Motown sounds

[crumpart]

The YouTube algorithm delivered this morning.

25 minute video going into how Motown was recorded, with an experiment into whether the people making the video could recreate the sound. Super interesting and fun to watch.

https://youtu.be/TysRGMSjtpQ

[Æpplês&vØdkã]

This is fantastic!

I would not have guessed that the guitar sounds were just a direct line in. I'm most impressed with the drum sound that they got more than anything else.

[fluffy]

Yeah this was a great watch, and also cleared up some misconceptions I had. My college "introduction to American music" professor insisted that the tambourine was people dropping chains on the ground, for example.

I've long been trying to get the motown guitar sound and was trying all sorts of different amp models to get that. So, turns out it's just direct line in to a studio monitor? I bet I have an impulse response for that!

[irwin]

Wonderful watch.

My takeaway was fuck the gear, it’s all about having phenomenal musicians. Seriously those dudes are on another level.

[fluffy]

Oh yeah knowing the specific mics/amps/etc. that they're using seems like a bunch of wank. But at least knowing what the general signal chain (and production pipeline!) is like makes a big difference.

[crumpart]

One of the things that is searingly obvious to me in retrospect is something that someone mentioned in the comments. They said they'd done a tour of the building years ago, went up into the attic where a bunch of vocals were recorded, and mentioned all the sheet metal on the walls up there. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me that "plate reverb" is literally sound bouncing off metal plate. As someone just learning how to record and mix (and, tbh, play my instruments), that was a good kick in the pants visualisation moment. Like, "oh, that's how this works". Just throwing shit together and using what you have to make something.

[fluffy]

Yeah, same goes for spring and hall reverb. Sometimes the name means something.

[Smalltown Mike]

That was really quite fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

[AJOwens]

One of the things that is searingly obvious to me in retrospect is something that someone mentioned in the comments. They said they'd done a tour of the building years ago, went up into the attic where a bunch of vocals were recorded, and mentioned all the sheet metal on the walls up there. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me that "plate reverb" is literally sound bouncing off metal plate. As someone just learning how to record and mix (and, tbh, play my instruments), that was a good kick in the pants visualisation moment. Like, "oh, that's how this works". Just throwing shit together and using what you have to make something.

A room lined with sheet metal would probably produce interesting reverberations, but a plate reverb is actually a large metal plate, suspended so that it can vibrate, with a small speaker attached to send the sound into it, and one or more pickups attached to record the resulting vibrations. I guess the sound ricochets around the plate without much loss, and this is what the pickups pick up. There are some DIY sites that explain how to build your own.

[Caravan Ray]

Cool video. Is there a thread for videos like this?

[fluffy]

I mean, sure, but sometimes it's nice to have a spot to discuss a video in detail though, so people who are following a thread don't get annoyed about an ongoing conversation.