SeSSion diary Saturday Night’s Alright
Adam’s been emulating famous tones for some recent prime time tV work. He shares his secrets here...
Britain, it seems, does have some talent. Quite a lot of it in the recording studios, a more limited amount on your TV screens. As you may have guessed we have been recording some of the backing tracks for the ubiquitous ITV show Britain’s
Got Talent. I’ve been involved with recording guitars for this show for two or three years now, also doing some occasional tracks for the American Idol big band, (both being owned by the same people) which for some reason known to people higher up the food chain than a lowly guitar player, they sometimes record this side of the pond. It’s a great gig to do as one of my favourite aspects of studio recording is having to recreate classic guitar sounds as close as possible to the original. We usually record these at Angel Recording Studios in Islington, North London, under the able leadership of Musical Director Matt Brind and producer Graham Stack. Matt spends his time preparing charts and conducting (as well as playing the piano parts) for the various ensembles, which could be anything from a string quartet, a gospel choir or a full big band with a large orchestra.
What’s Going On?
For the first of two full days of sessions we had a rhythm section plus medium sized horn section. The rhythm section comprises Matt on piano and conducting (he usually overdubs the piano after the main session), Steve Pearce on electric or upright bass and James Powell on drums. The first day we encountered some Motown tracks, which, to retain the element of surprise for the show, will have to remain a secret for now, save for the original artists who were Marvin Gaye and Charles Bradley. I took my small studio amp of choice, a Fender Princeton with uprated speakers, and various effects. From my memory all I ended up using was the amp reverb and tremolo (nothing sounds like real Fender amp tremolo) and a touch of my J Rockett Archer pedal. For those of you that don’t know this is a recreation of the fabled and now overpriced Klon Centaur, mine was given to me over some brandy by Paul Stacey. He’s not getting it back.
The guitar sound on the Marvin Gaye track was slightly difficult to nail. It was quite a musically prominent part, but drenched in reverb and tape delay on the original, and had an acoustic quality, which proved quite difficult to replicate exactly. We got there in the end by bypassing the amp entirely and using the middle pickup of my ’67 335 directly into the desk, with a mic on the strings of the electric. This mic technique I learned off the late producer Phil Ramone who told me (funnily enough, in a conversation in the same studio) that’s how they got the guitar sound for the intro of Paul Simon’s Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard, which he produced. It can be a tricky one to spot but once you’ve heard it you’ll know for future reference.
This week we’ll be doing some big band tracks where the main emphasis will be on the brass and wind sections, however, there’s some Brian Setzer style rockabilly big band so I’m planning on taking my Setzer model Gretsch (with the string-thru Bigsby, which is a godsend in a quick fire studio situation, as anyone who has had to change strings on a Bigsby will no doubt testify) and possibly my old Watkins Copycat tape delay, which will of course instantly break and I’ll have to dig out a Boss pedal. Oh well, nice idea while it lasted!