Space Audio

Space Audio. This is lovely, and so like a Dr Who special effect. You realise how ahead-of-their-time the radiophonic workshop were. Mysterious noises from the cosmos abound. Might be more aurora tonight.

And talking about being ahead of time, interesting article in Sound on Sound about the recording of Cliff Richard's "Move It" in 1958. He talks about the singer's voice, and how great it sounded through the Neumann U47. Then he says,

"During the past 20 years or so I've been disappointed to hear it sounding way, way thinner due to all of the effects being employed. They EQ things out of existence now, whereas back then everything was straight to mono with nothing in between. The record simply consisted of whatever was on the tape."

Now, I love my home recording set-up, and it's enabled me to do things I could never have dreamed of doing even five years ago, and I've discussed before the digital/analogue debate, but I've had a concurrent feeling that, with the widespread acceptance of stereo and onwards, everything has been going downhill.

Out of necessity, they used to keep things really basic in the studio. While some producers, like Joe Meek and that charlatan Spector used to invent strange techniques and get unique sounds, in the conservative environment of Abbey Road Studio 2, they just kept the cable runs short and kept things simple. I think "straight to mono with nothing in between" is going to become my watchword with recording. If I get things sounding good in mono, I can use the luxury of pan to open things out a bit.