In this article Grammy award winning engineer Dom Morley shares his approach to recording some vintage sounding string, brass and percussion parts on Amy Winehouse’s classic album Back To Black
In most sessions, as a recording engineer, you should be given a rough brief on what sound your client is looking for. Be it a genre or a specific album, they should let you know what they want, and then that will inform your choices on microphones, mic positioning, and so on. A few years ago, I was the London-based recording engineer for producer Mark Ronson (he’s a pretty trans-Atlantic kind of person and I was the guy he called when he was on this side of the pond) which meant I worked on some fairly cool projects - one of them being Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’ album. Although I didn’t record all of the album – Mark produced roughly half the tracks on the album, and a lot of it was recorded in New York with other engineers – I thought an insight into my involvement could be useful.
I recorded a lot of the string sessions, brass sessions, and orchestral percussion on the album (I’m pretty sure it was all the of the work by genius arranger Chris Elliot), and the brief I was given by Mark was to aim for something like the Shangri-Las and the American girl group sounds of the 1960’s (Phil Spector sprang to my mind at this point, and I knew quite a bit about how he recorded).
Strings Session Sixties Style
The first session I recorded on the album was a string section (24-piece I think), so if this session worked, I figured it would probably set the tone for any future recording on the album that I did. If it didn’t work, then I probably wouldn’t be asked to record any more! If I were being absolutely purist about this approach, then I would have put one mic up in the middle of the room in front of the string players and then moved it around for an optimal sound. I knew the mixer would want more control than this, so I went with a hybrid plan. I close mic’ed all the players as you would with a modern pop session, but took every opportunity to use valve or ribbon mics, as those would have been the only choices back in the 1960’s. Although this gave the close mics a slightly more classic feel, the room we used to record in was quite a bright, verging on ‘hard’ sounding room (lots of glass and plastered walls) – good for an upfront pop sound, but less authentic for what I was aiming for. I put up a stereo pair of valve mics in front of the section roughly above the head of the conductor, so this sounded good, but again, not too authentic. I looked around for something that I could add to the mix that might deliver more what Mark was looking for. In the top corner of the room that we were recording in was a shell-like wooden structure that smoothed out the shape of the room and gave me a spot away from all the harder surfaces. I put one ribbon mic up there as an ambient mic that would be more reminiscent of the early days of one-mic-in-a-room style recording. This one ended up sounding pretty good. It was a Coles 4038 – a design from 1953 with a figure-of-eight pick up pattern catching the string section from a distance as well as the warmer reflections from the wooden panels behind the mic. The result was, although not exactly like a Phil Spector recording, but much closer than I was expecting in the room that I was in, and I hoped represented a modern take on that classic sound.
Much later I spoke to the mix engineer on the album, Tom Elmhirst (then an up-and-coming mix engineer, now the owner of 15 Grammys), and he told me he tended to start with this ‘ambient’ ribbon mic that I’d put in the corner of the room for the string sound when he was mixing, and then fed into that with the other mics where he needed more detail or presence.
Brass And Percussion
When it came to the brass recording it was a similar approach. The Coles 4038 in the top corner of the room, a stereo pair of valve mics roughly above the conductor’s head, and then ribbon or valve mics on the individual instruments.
The orchestral percussion sessions were probably the biggest challenge to set up. I’ve never before or since seen so much percussion delivered to a studio – I think it was four timpani, a bell tree and a mark tree, and every possible collection of wooden and metal items that you could hit or knock into each other. We settled on a variety of ‘stations’, based around one or more instruments at each one, and stereo pairs of mics on every one. The ribbon mic remained in the top corner of the room, so as the percussionist moved around the instruments, they were each recorded with their own stereo pair, plus the room ambience.
Do Your Homework
If there’s a moral to this story, it’s obviously not that a ribbon mic in the corner saves the day (I wish life were that simple). It’s really about doing your homework. If you’re tasked with getting a specific sound, then you can make your job a lot easier by researching how that album (or those albums) were recorded and following a similar process. There are many, many articles (and videos) like this one that will give you an insight into equipment and techniques used on so many records that you’d be crazy not to dive into Google (other search engines are available) for a while and see what you can learn. And with a bit of luck, you won’t be able to exactly repeat the original process, and you’ll end up creating something new.
More Recording Resources From Dom Morley
Dom is the founder of the Mix Consultancy, a zero risk (money back guarantee) way to get notes on your tracks to help improve the sound. Whether you're an artist who likes to mix all their own work, a composer putting together a pitch on a limited budget, or an engineer who wants a discreet second opinion before sending a mix off to a client - we're here to help.
“I just completed a mix with the help of Dom Morley & The Mix Consultancy. The mix we turned over was qualitatively better than the one I would have gone with on my own.
It's been said that "a mix is never done, it's just abandoned", but the truth is, you *really* do feel a sense of completion and closure having worked with Dom because you know in your heart that you did everything you possibly could to get the best result possible for the client.
The beauty behind the process is that not only do you get a better mix for your client, but Dom's advice contains all kinds of gold that you can borrow and deploy in future mixes.”
Geoff Manchester
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In addition to the one-to-one advice Dom has produced some excellent online courses;
Everything You Need To Know About Recording Vocals
Preproduction, DAW set-up, preparing the studio, psychology, equipment. Literally everything you need to know.This is a short, free, mini-course on the four things that you really need to know in order to get great mixes, and the four things that you really don't!