Being a bit of a recording nerd, I often wonder how the songs I have known and loved were recorded. I've read and heard lots of reports about the Beatles and how the mighty George Martin shaped their sound on 4-track tape machines..incredible really...The whole drum kit only had a single track and sometimes it was shared with other instruments too. I have also had the pleasure of playing around with the multi-track masters of some of the Sgt Peppers tracks and the magnum opus of Queens Bohemian Rhapsody..all 24 tracks of it. For those of you who don't know, these recordings were leaked onto the Internet as unmixed multi track recordings....(have a look on the torrent sites)...remixing them oneself feels like tinkering with the crown jewels or some other national treasure. Amazing to hear how the tunes were constructed and to hear all the little bits that didn't make it onto the final mix, realizing that John Deacons bass part has 3 whole tracks to itself and that the snare drum is doubled up on the heavy section..heehee.
Anyway, I'm writing this because I wanted to draw attention to a collection of excellent music geek articles written about the recording of classic tracks through the decades. The articles are from an excellent webzine called 'The Mix Online'.
Great stories and a wealth of info on microphone types and placements etc... I'll bet you can find a track that you love in there somewhere. Mine was David Crosby's 'Laughing'...wonderful stuff.
Check it out
http://mixonline.com/classic-tracks/
Inneresting
