OG Motown Engineer Reveals Secret To Motown Sound
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
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This is a CUT DOWN VERSION of the full interview I did with Bob Olhsson, legendary recording and mastering engineer who famously worked at Motown Hitsville studios. We discuss recording techniques, analogue sound, tubes, Fairchild limiters and lots of cool stuff.
The full length version will be uploaded at the same time.
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The secret to motowns sound - the musicians
yes
And the songs!
@@mcpribs exactly. hilarious to the bass snobs that they just plugged the bass straight in
Jamerson could play any bass through any rig…or no rig at all, and make it a hit. I always love hearing his playing in other players.
@@mcpribs Please remake the songs with your band. Its already been tried .FAILED!
here are my tips for the motown sound: severe dips in 200hz on everything except the bass guitar. Long plate reverb 2-3 seconds but rolloff everything under 600hz, record vocals from a position of 3-6 feet with a dynamic mic. Then turn down most of the 'air' on vocals, really trim back the high end, focusing on mid-tone saturation. But a lot of it is performance styling that gets captured in live takes. Electronic drums are never going to sound motown etc.
Another thing you want to do is simply recording to tape. That's the majority of the sound to be honest.
@NoahHornberger I think these things may or may not get further in the direction of the kind of sound they had at the time, although I'm not sure why you'd need a dynamic mic and be that far away seeing as they had neumann condensers and were not so far away. I think the sound of Motown is in the artists.
@michaelcaplin8969 tape isnt as big a factor as you might think, but that was the main source of distortion in mixing, so it depends how hard you hit it.
@@APMastering Actually, regarding tape, it really is THE factor in getting the sound if you want to go all the way there. Especially if you start going deeper into the rabbit hole than most audio engineers do in regards to sonics, and truly become a feinschmecker on the subject.
I've got more vintage audio gear than I think is healthy. I've got all the v72 and v76's, vintage Sta-Levels, 50's and 60's Neumann tube mics and both German and American microphones, compressors, preamps and EQs you could ever dream of as a professional audio engineer. Add to that a pretty long career in the field, and working only in the big commercial places in Northern Europe and having free acesss to several of these studios, so you can understand that I have quite the experience, gear and potential to nail a sound.
But it is only when you record though tape that everything truly falls into place in regards to achieving this particular sound. Sure, you can get 95% there without, but I have no respect for any audio engineer who settles for 95%, or even 98% for that matter. In my experience, people nail most of the elements, but forget what tape does to both background noise (important!!!! Even if you're not actually conciously hearing it as the music is playing) L/R stereo relation, track seating in the mix (important!), harmonic distortion, compression and high frequency attenuation and other frequency alterations, among other important factors. And still to this day, there is no plugin that does this to a satisfactory degree, although I'm sure there will be eventually.
Until then, tape is the only way to do it if you really want to do it properly and have it sound 100% right, and not settle for less.
If you want to do it, then do it properly is my thinking on this. Cutting corners is the best way to never go beyond 95%.
@@michaelcaplin8969 opinion on airwindows? I'm an amateur but it has the "3d" ness that I think tape has (shrugs)
@@michaelcaplin8969I am willing to bet the house of the simple fact that you would not be able to recognize a great vintage recording made on a computer vs one done 100% analog. 😂✌🏽
I don’t even mix four piece bands and I could listen to you two talk for at *least* an hour, love listening to two people that actually know what they’re talking about talk!
This is the kind of insight people need. On why a certain gear was used. Great work brother.
thanks, yeah was very insightful, especially his stories about musicians and technique
Bob! Bob's amazing; so good to see him here.
Bob Olhsson is one great guy. A font of information, and a willingly open book. Thanks again Bob, for all you have done, all you do, and all you are willing to share!
Glad you could get together with Bob. He's a treasure.
yeah, was well worth it, i hope people get value from the content
@@APMastering Glad I could help put you together.
@@EdPettersen thanks!
@@APMastering My pleasure!
Most of those musicians recorded at other studios and it did not sound the same. The secret to the Motown sound is everything.
the singers did. but did the same lineup record the same music at different studios? the problem is, the musicians were often not credited
I learned from Bob at NSCC in 05 and he dropped the biggest mastering gem of all time: 500hz low shelf. +/- 0.5 dB increments, volume match the power 🔥
Wow i currently been doing increments of +/- 0.4. It really is a helpful aha moment when you realise +0.4 is too much or -0.4 is not enough so you go to the middle and find the sweetspot by abandoning the increments and splitting the difference basically
TALENT and ANALOG GEAR.
A potent mix that has manifested some of the best music ever produced.
Marvin Gaye whats going on. WOW. That is something.
Even with less dynamic range it dont matter as shown here.
Its about the song, the music overall.
Harmonic distortion. Yummy.
The simplicity of analog gear as well. Turning knobs and sliders, been hands on with the analog console must make a difference and also vibing together in the studio.
Using your ears instead of looking at a screen.
this is bombastic!❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥🔥🔥
If I could put Motown sound in a bottle what a pile of dough I could make😁
this kind of reaffirms my thought, that these modern less expensive condenser mics with their little bumps around 10k are just not well thought out. I don't think they had de essers back it the day, but if you had a smooth Neumann mic going through some tubes or transistors you would just naturally end up without that sibilance, it really makes sense
yeah i don't understand the peaks, makes no sense to me
'Instruments and Analogue and Tape and wooden walls with a 1 inch gap between the flooring and wall on 2 sides'
BTW-The bass was never, ever recorded using that "Motown" DI that's been marketed for several years. It's a big con. Bob will tell you.
theres many claimed things.... the musicians didn't even get credits! so anyone can make up anything pretty much unfortunately. i trust what bob says
@@APMastering The "Motown" DI that's claimed on the market was something that was given to a single engineer at Motown but that engineer left before it was ever used! Like Bob says, they went direct but ever since the guy who made the DI claimed it was the "Motown sound". Complete and utter bollocks. All marketing and ego. Mike McLean made most of the gear in-house that wasn't commercially bought at Motown. Bob taught me all of this.
Thanks for this fella,.
Very interesting.
AP Mastering remake make a few motown songs LIVE! PLEASE! Then mix it !LIVE !
huh?
Gotta love the idea they had a console, homemade preamps, an ampex mixer, and an altec with their own inputs. That's some secret sauce. Each of those had their own coloring, intentionally or not - that's some cool stuff.
sure but it was still mostly the artists
@@APMastering You were interviewing the engineer, which is an artist.
@@dpalaoro not really
Amazing !!
Fascinating! Is this the guy who landed a job at Motown after he precisely calculated the dimensions of their echo chamber just from listening to the records?
not sure about that
Damn, that'd be pretty cool if it was this guy
A Fairchild is now $300,000!!!! Jeez
there's a remake for something like 30k but yeah prices are very silly
Adjusted for inflation that’s maybe not more than they cost when new
yeah similar to new price in the 60s but with no more rnd costs and with 60 years of technological development and falling manufacturing costs
What really makes Bob laugh is when they advertise them "with original tubes!". Hilarious.
Yeah, it's ridiculously stupid. I can't even imagine anyone paying that sort of price for something that should realistically sell for around 1-2k maximum considering you have to have literally thousands of tubes at home if you want the thing to actually work well for decades. And the worst part is that once the transformers goes and you have to use modern drop in alternatives, the sound is completely wrecked, nevermind having to change the tubes constantly, with the tubes being INSANELY expensive.
Nice!
Funny how the Fairchild was frowned upon. Not really what it should be used for.
Can you post the complete interview ?
it's already up
I've never liked the 670 comp, never understood the hype
"Never understood the hype" is genuinely one of the dumbest phrases ever used in any context.
Seriously, "the hype" is 100000% meaningless to getting a sound you want. You like something and it works for you? Cool, use it. Don't like how something sounds? Cool, don't use it. What other people like makes zero difference.
@@ParanormalArson lol what an extremely online response...
Yeh, I've used it in many contexts and just the shadow hills comp it just doesn't do anything worthy of the hype. It doesn't even do anything that would make it worth the parts it is built with tbh.
💯💯
no love for the rac tom at motown. while slagging other drum mix techniques that may work well in other styles. "we thought the kick was important" ... it is all important. Nobody is ahead of anyone else. recording is fluid. all things work.
there are schools of thought. Not everything can be totally fluid because this is the antithesis of specialisation.
@@APMastering it begs the question if this "school of thought" has nothing to do with any belief system and more with the limitations of the equipment of that time. Because the Beatles also had drums and bass mixed together as well. And I'm pretty sure there was no Motown in Europe.
Although there was no Motown in Europe, Bob said (I think it might have been off camera) how he was surprised when he visited abbey road how similar the approaches were between UK and US at the time. More importantly, the school of thought I'm referring to is not technologically limited. Check out, for example, how Steve Albini approached recording drums.
@@APMastering Sure, but let's not forget Steve Albini was an analog advocate and that plays into his recording approach, since his way of printing processed tracks into tape limits him in the technical sense. Albini was largely influenced by John Loder which was known for recording the early punk bands quickly and cheaply.
🙏🏻🙏🏻✨✨
Wow never encountered Bob outside of gearslutz, that's right, gearspace isn't a real thing to me!
Im a slut as well.
Thank you for doing this! I used to stay up all night on the gearsl*ts forums reading his responses debunking people's motown disinformation 🥰
same-cool to put a face to the posts-living legend
@jimmydeer demystification of the near mystical status of the gear at Motown was hella formative in validating certain things I'd already learned out of necessity while engineering and operating sessions. You're 1000% correct about your drum micing approach, honestly two ribbons, a dynamic or subwoofer modded for kick, and a snare mic, and you're more than good.
Great interview.
You say “people” a lot. But tbh you should say “hobbyists”. Professionals engineers/producers are much less prone to what you described here.
At least from my experience working in a pro studio everyday (with 90% of the artists being signed to big labels or majors).
That’s why most gear manufacturers are targeting hobbyists a lot (with name dropping and marketing hyperboles).
yes and no. one of the best engineers i know believes in unscientific audiophile blah for example
Awkward.
what is?
💙
The great Motown sound. Sigh. 🥲😋❤🩹❤💯👍🎤🎷🎸🎹🎵🎶