![]() ![]() He would record a performance on multiple synchronised tapes as he’d grown convinced that each time a tape was played it sounded a little worse. Swedien used the technology to instigate his mysterious “Acusonic recording process”. Magic.īruce Swedien and Quincy Jones on 2015 (Image credit: Getty Images) Rewind on one machine and hit play and the other would do the same. The SMPTE box would listen to the code on both tapes and run them in perfect lockstep. Thus a 24-track tape machine, side by side with its ‘slave’, locked together, would effectively give you a 48-track machine. ‘Striping’ - as it was known - a track of tape with a digital code allowed two tape machines to lock together. At the time the hot new innovation in the best studios in the world was SMPTE. ![]() Soon Swedien reasoned that if it sounded good for drums, why not record vocals on it too? Placing Jackson on the platform and surrounding him with studio Tube Traps, Swedien would painstakingly position them to create the perfect soundfield before capturing his vocals with vintage mics.īut he was no slouch on the latest tech too. ![]() "By putting the drum set up on my drum platform those low sounds never have a chance of connection with the floor and creating off-mic, obscure, secondhand pick up.” “The reason I wanted the drums to be up off the floor is to keep the low-frequency drum sounds, such as the bass drum and tom-toms, from coupling with the surface of the floor and entering the sound pick-up area of the microphones of the other instruments in the session. The surface is natural wood and is unpainted,” he explains in his autobiography Make Mine Music. It is very heavily constructed, braced and counter-braced. The pair worked in slick partnership, always eager to work with new equipment and, between them, armed with decades of tricks and techniques.įor example, Swedien had built his own custom drum riser and would insist that all drums were recorded upon it. It’s worth taking a moment to convey just how seriously Jones and Swedien took the recording process around this time. It was so loud - I would never subject my hearing to that kind of volume level!" Engineer Bruce Swedien on the making of Michael Jackson's Thriller: "I went in when Eddie Van Halen was warming up and I left immediately. ![]()
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