Tony Visconti breaks down the multitrack recording of Bowie's 'Heroes'

steamabacus

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03g18sx?ns_mchannel=social&#38

A great example of how limited tracks led to creative solutions in the good old  days of analogue.

Cirrus

It's a brilliant track and such an interesting production/ development at basically every step of the way - seeing what each person brought to the table and how as the track built up it seemed to inspire the next stage.

spark240

Surprising ( or maybe not so) how much background noise there is on the takes, nowadays every one is paranoid about noise, and stripping silence etc.....Im not sure its a good thing, its seems to add life to tracks like this. 

Danny1969

Great clip. I had heard about the room mics coming into play when he went up the octave with more power and that's a trick we used on drums .... get to the chorus bring in the room mics. I always loved that effect on Knocked up by Kings of Leon

Listening to the finished mix of Heroes I'm always struck by how quiet the bass drum is, it's no worse for it but it intrigues me why that it so

not_the_dj

Winny_Pooh

That was interesting. Busy mix

Siejen

Thats a fascinating documentary, thanks for sharing. And listening to the final track, the vocal sounds completely different to how I 'remember' the Bowie original. 

Exactly like the Aphex Twin mix though, wierdly. I assumed it had been rerecorded for Philip Glass / AFX.  Great stuff

xSkarloey

What a brilliant vid. Thanks so much for posting that. 

There's a superb Sound on Sound 'Classic Tracks' article devoted to Heroes where TV goes over the same process, but actually seeing him and hearing the illustrations of how it was put together really brings that alive. 

Imagine being a young kid and seeing that for the first time. You could build a whole career on the information in that film! 

I might show it my son, to see if it plants some ideas...

. 

Cirrus

Danny1969 said:

Great clip. I had heard about the room mics coming into play when he went up the octave with more power and that's a trick we used on drums .... get to the chorus bring in the room mics. I always loved that effect on Knocked up by Kings of Leon

Listening to the finished mix of Heroes I'm always struck by how quiet the bass drum is, it's no worse for it but it intrigues me why that it so

Ha, I was just listening to Knocked Up/ Because of the Times on the drive into work this morning. It's one of those songs that I love but I'm not totally sure why - on paper it should be a bit of a dirge, just somehow really hits the spot.

Re; the bass drum on Heroes, it's covered in the SOS article - apparently they found that bringing the bass drum up to a typical decent audible level like, most would be inclined to, made the song sound too plodding - robbed it of energy. I can kind of see why - it's a mid tempo song with no real dynamic changes in the arrangement. Without the bass drum you almost don't notice the groove, it just kinda flows along. Very bold move, imagine trying to sell that to a band now with the drummer sat in the room - "What do you mean take out the bass drum!?"

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It's also a good example of how sometimes it's difficult to critique a mix - sometimes you'll hear something and say "I'd have done it differently" (Not saying you're doing that here of course!) but actually not realise that the production team probably tried it that way and it didn't work - they made those decisions for good reasons you're just not privy to.

benmurray85

Thanks for sharing, that was brilliant. I used to love those classic tracks/albums documentaries from a few years back.

I find studio trickery and processes fascinating (far more so than guitar if im honest!) but looking back to these makes me a little depressed at how modern recording has evolved.

PolarityMan

Not really a fan of that mix at all but I do really like the idea of setting up the gated mics so that Bowie could play the effect.

Cirrus

I don't think the vocal track actually sounds that good by the end with the distance mics on - kinda loses focus. BUT... Bowie would have been aware of the setup as he was singing, aware that he had to sing loud to open the gates on the distance mics and get the entire room filled with noise. That, I think, surely inspired him to give that compelling vocal performance. And I think it's that performance which means we're still talking about the song nearly 40 years later. 

xSkarloey

It's knowing he has to really reach that far mic that gives all the power.

I mean when it first kicks in it's a spine tingling moment.

It makes it more authentic to me, rather than a lot of other singers who are just belting it out and mistake shouting for emotion.

Danny1969

The committing to tape thing makes me smile, actually printing undo'able effects to the track. Nowadays's no one wants to commit anything until the last moment these days, including me ...... we got unlimited tracks and everything can be left to the final mixdown yet no one can make a decision anymore. 

Producer to me "what do you think of that ?"

Me "I dunno what do you think ? " 

When they do classic albums from these days in the future (if there is any ) they will need to extend the running time cos it will be something like "here's the 31st rhythm guitar track, similar to the 30 but re amped slightly different, now lets go through the 52 tracks of stacked vocals

Or there will be no machine capable of played a 20 year old Protools session and if  they do get it up it will moan about the missing plugins and disk allocations  

Siejen

20 years old? I can't manage 5 years in my own home studio

benmurray85

I heart you @Danny1969 so much wis