STUDIO

THE RECORDING STUDIO AS COMPOSITIONAL TOOL

I think a lot about recording technology — and the studio itself — as a compositional tool.

From Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, to the Abbey Road reverbs that gave Wish You Were Here its atmosphere; through to the peak of analog recording in the 1980s with tape, large format consoles and albums like Thriller.

The sonic character of these records was an integral part of the music created.

The same is true of early 1990s bedroom producers. Their limitations became signatures: the affordable yet magical Alesis Quadraverb in Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works; the grain of Akai samplers in early Jungle.

I find myself drawn to the the synths and processors that existed before the plugin era — the unstable yet characterful oscillators of 1970s synthesisers — the vast, other-worldly spaces created by the early Lexicon reverbs.

I occasionally share these explorations on YouTube. Below you’ll find examples and links to the machines I’ve spent time with.