If you’ve ever wanted to make your mixes sound more like the Fab Four’s, you can use this guide to do just that.
We’re huge, and I mean H-U-G-E, Beatles fans here at Blackbird (you can guess where the studio’s name comes from). And for this column, I’d like to give you some ways you can add some old-school Beatles sound to your mixes. Tighten up those belts, the Dojo is now open.
The Beatles’ recording process has been well-documented—instruments, mics, locations within the various studios, outboard gear, consoles used during the tracking and mixing process, etc. Recently, I had a Blackbird Academy student ask me how he could get more of a Beatles “vibe” while mixing his recent recording session. In the not-too-distant past, the best solution was to go to Abbey Road Studios. But now, today’s technology can get really impressive results with plugins that model the timbre and behavior of the original vintage outboard gear.
Original Recipe
On February 11, 1963, the Beatles recorded their first album. The 10 songs they recorded that day would be combined with their first singles to make up the U.K. LP Please Please Me. After you take into account the individual touch and feel that the Fab Four brought to their instruments—which I strongly believe is the biggest contributor to their sound—the remaining factors consist of the room acoustics (in Abbey Road Studio 2) and all the recording gear.
Just like the classic Coke flavor, the early 1963 recordings of the Beatles had a specific engineering recipe with a signal chain that was initially and most notably developed by Malcolm Addey and Norman Smith (Beatles aficionados will note that the legendary Geoff Emerick didn’t come on board until Revolver)—specifically, four pieces of outboard gear. The EMI-designed REDD.37 four-track mixing desk, the EMI RS114 limiter (a favorite of Smith’s), and two American compressors: the Altec 436B, which was so heavily modified by EMI it became the RS124, and the holy grail mono Fairchild 660.
The good news is that most of this gear has been faithfully modeled and recreated as plugins! Checkout Waves’ Abbey Road collection ($229 street) and Universal Audio’s Fairchild Tube Limiter Collection ($89 street). Chandler Limited has faithfully recreated the RS124 ($2,995 street) as well as other legendary EMI/Abbey Road gear for those who may want the analog experience.
Just like the classic Coke flavor, the early 1963 recordings of the Beatles had a specific engineering recipe.
The Process
During these early recording sessions, the REDD.37 desk’s four-track inputs were typically arranged in a consistent way. Track 1 was dedicated to the rhythm section with the Altec/RS124 compressing lightly. Track 2 was dedicated to rhythm instruments (acoustic and electric guitars) and compressed with the RS124 while tracks 3 and 4 were reserved for vocals and individually compressed with the Fairchild 660. Any bounced mixes (i.e. recording tracks 1–3 onto track 4 to free up the previous tracks and allow for additional recording) would also be processed through the RS124s. These compressors were also involved in mixing, mastering, and lathe cutting rooms at Abbey Road as well.
Your Turn
Let’s emulate this approach on a mix by taking a similar approach. Open one of your multi-track sessions on your DAW. Route all your drums, loops, and percussion outputs to a new aux bus and label it “Rhythm Section.” Place an RS124 on this bus and put your recovery on the fast side and try for around 3–10 dB of compression. Use your ears for this and don’t be afraid to go too far and then back off until it feels just right.
Repeat the process for all of your keys and guitars—route their outputs to a new aux bus labeled “KYZ-GTRS,” use an RS124 on this bus, another RS124 set for medium to slow release, and perhaps around 3–5 dB of compression for starters.
Create two other aux busses for your BGVs (background vocals or solos, or both) and one for your lead vocal (or main melodic instrument if there are no vocals). Use a Fairchild compressor for each of these busses. Set the time constant to position 2, and adjust the threshold until you get 2–5 dB of compression. At this point, you’ve reduced your mix to four main elements that you can control and automate as you see fit with broad use of specialized compression targeted for specific elements of your mix.
Finally, add a stereo version of an RS124 or use a Fairchild 670 (also stereo) on your main stereo bus as well as the REDD.37 mixing desk, and listen to the differences. Be sure to play around various subtle degrees of compression levels and reduction, and check out the drive knob on the REDD desks.
Until next time, namaste.
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How this simple sustain stomp helped me bring one of my favorite David Lynch scenes to life and took me across oceans.
There’s a scene in David Lynch’sMulholland Drivewhere Naomi Watts and Laura Harring’s characters find themselves in a darkened, mostly empty theater. Against a backdrop of spooky, synthy chords, they breathlessly watch the night’s oddball emcee deliver an intense, cryptic soliloquy on recorded sound. A trumpet player slowly walks onto the stage, the two characters clutching each other. They—and you—get fully drawn into his muted, jazzy lines. Suddenly, he pulls his instrument away from the mic, throwing his hands in the air. But the solo continues. The narrator looks to the audience: “It’s all recorded.”
Like the best Lynch moments, it’s a thoroughly dramatic moment that needs to be experienced with all applicable senses. Words alone won’t do. This scene is meant to stick with you.
I had that scene in mind as I first plugged into an Electro-Harmonix Freeze. I wanted to play a note and have it keep going … and going … until the audience would see that those notes were just lingering in the air, my strings no longer vibrating, unsure what the effect is. The Freeze could do just that.
“This wasn’t some new iteration of some other effect—a crazy fuzz or a weird flanger. This was a new category.”
If you’ve never played one, the Freeze elegantly holds whatever you give it—a note, a chord, a pick scrape, or whatever else. For such an obvious effect to come out when it did felt so refreshingly groundbreaking. It represented new possibilities. This wasn’t some new iteration of some other effect—a crazy fuzz or a weird flanger. This was a new category.
There had already been ways to fake drones and sustained notes with loopers and delay pedals, but those inevitably had their quirks that ruined the illusion. David Cockerell, the designer of the Freeze, explains that loopers capture short bits of sound, apply an amplitude envelope, and play it back repeatedly. This can work to make sustained notes if the passage includes a whole number of cycles of the sound's fundamental pitch, but in most cases, you’ll hear a click when it repeats.
Back in the ’70s, the EHX team had worked on the idea for a sustain pedal. “At that time, the best I could do was intelligent-splice-single-cycle-looping,” recalls Cockerell. “This looked for a waveform match in the same way that guitar tuning meters do, and then endlessly played one cycle. It worked reasonably well for saxophone or other instruments with strictly harmonic overtones, but it was hopeless for guitar.”
”The pedal only requires one knob for volume, one toggle for latching or fast/slow swell modes, and a footswitch.”
Fast-forward to the early ’00s when DSP chips became available that could reproduce more complex sounds and overtones. While he was working on the EHX Hog with John Pisani, the company’s current-day chief engineer, the idea for a sustain pedal reared its head once again. Cockerell used an algorithm with a special provision that avoids freezing on a pluck transient, thus eliminating the risk of that pesky click. And the Freeze was born.
Released in 2010, the Freeze has a simple beauty. The pedal only requires one knob for volume, one toggle for latching or fast/slow swell modes, and a footswitch. Within, there’s such a wide range of subtlety: How you hit the pedal after your attack greatly affects the response. With the level setting, you can create subtle drones, much like an electronic shruti box, meant to subtly fill space. Or you can set it more obviously as you change chords, freeing up your hands. At higher volume settings in fast momentary mode, you can create glitchy stutter effects. And the way it interacts with other pedals opens up entirely new worlds.
I threw myself into the pedal not long after it hit the market, learning its nuances and eventually buying a second one to create a stereo effect. With my retuned 12-string Strat, I blasted my amps with drones, blowing a few speakers with abandon. Soon, the Freeze changed my approach to the guitar, and I released a series of solo drone and noise albums that took me across the U.S. and Europe. When I recognized Bill Frisell using one during a solo set, I’d bonded with the pedal so much that it was like a friend was sitting in with my favorite guitar player.
“I blasted my amps with drones, blowing a few speakers with abandon.”
There are plenty of pedals that have followed, adding more functionality. EHX’s Pico Deep Freeze, most obviously, but also the Gamechanger Plus, TC Electronic Infinite Sample, and the Chase Bliss Onward—enough that guitar sustain pedals have become their own class of effect. As fabulous as those pedals are, I still cherish the simplicity of the Freeze, a rare thing that leaves all the creative decisions on our side of the pedalboard.
PG's host straps on a prototype Tele to unleash the Knife Drop's horror and heft only to dismantle Jack White's Triplecaster in one accidental Bigsby bomb.
Our columnist links a few memories together to lead us to another obscure guitar model—one he remembers from his childhood and came to acquire as an adult.
Do you have any “click and stick” movies that you love? Like when you are channel surfing and see a movie that you’ve watched a lot, and then just watch it again? Lately, for me, it’s been the 2015 movie The Revenant. It’s a truly brutal tale of survival set in 1820s frontier America. My gosh, that movie just draws me in every time. There’s one scene where the main character goes flying off a cliff while riding a horse! He just sort of falls/rolls through a pine tree and lands in the snow … and he still survives! It’s crazy!
It makes me think about an old childhood friend who lived up the street from me. Jerry and his parents lived in an old house on their grandparents’ large plot of land. On one part of the land there was an old orchard filled with all types of fruit trees and pines, and I remember how we would climb to the top of the pines and just roll ourselves down the side, Revenant style! If you fell the right way, the branches would kind of gently let you down to the next, but if you hit it wrong and got in between the branches, you’d be wrecked. It’s like we enjoyed getting hurt, and, of course, when you’re young, you can snap right back. Ah, the days when pain really didn’t hurt. Now I wake up with injuries, for real.
“The action was way high and the fret ends were sharp. It was basically a painful affair.”
So why am I talking about my click-and-stick movie and stupid childhood escapades? Well, let’s get back to memories of my old friend Jerry. First, the house he lived in was so old that it had real wooden siding, but it hadn’t been painted in forever so the exterior took on a worn, faded, haunted house vibe. Second, his carpet was so tattered that it was being held together with duct tape. Lastly, I remember his dad had a cool, old electric guitar in the living room. His dad would let me play it sometimes, and I remember that it actually hurt to play! The action was way high and the fret ends were sharp. It was basically a painful affair. Not falling-out-of-a-tree painful, but as bad as it comes with guitars. It had the label “Conrad,” and young Frank didn’t realize that he’d be looking for that guitar again one day. I mean, it did have four pickups and lots of knobs and switches!
Made at the old Japanese Matsumoko factory in the ’60s, this Conrad Bison 1233 has four pickups and a 27" scale.
Years later, I would discover that his was a Conrad Bison guitar. The model came in a few different configurations, but the four-pickup design was designated as the 1233. Primarily featuring a lovely sunburst, these Bisons were made at the amazing old Matsumoku factory in Japan and were imported by the David Wexler Company that was based in Chicago. Matsumoku always had a good supply of aged wood, and many of the guitars made there are resonant and built well. The Bisons first appeared around 1966 and had a rather good run into the early ’70s.
Simple volume/tone knobs are paired with preset solo/rhythm switches that power alnico magnets. There’s an on/off switch for each pickup, and the sound really covers all the bases. Thumpy lows and crisp highs are all there. And, the pickups handle fuzz and distortion with ease. The Bisons also came in one- and two-pickup configurations with a normal scale, but the four-pickup ones have a longer, 27" scale, which is common for Matsumoku-made electrics.
So there it is: pain, survival, American frontier, Bison, haunted houses. It all sticks together like a duct-taped carpet. Click and stick, baby!
A 1000-watt speaker cabinet crafted for musicians who demand power and precision. Sunn Amps intends to reinvent the standard 4x12 configuration with the introduction of this new cabinet.
The Sunn Amps DoomBox is built to accommodate both guitar and bass, offering an impressive 1000-watt handling capacity—making it the first commercially available 4x12 cabinet with such high power handling. With four specially designed 12” drivers rated at 250 watts each, this cabinet provides clean, unrestrained sound levels that can maintain power integrity across all frequencies, ideal for high-volume performances.
Inspired and developed using feedback from artists and bands who rely on the depth of lower tunings and high volume genres, the DoomBox was engineered to meet the unique demands of professional musicians looking for a robust, high-efficiency cab that can translate the raw power of their sound without compromise.
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With clear low-end punch, even sound response, and ample air movement, the Doom Box ensures that every note reaches the audience with clarity and power. This cabinet is a game-changer for musicians who need high-performance, road-ready equipment that enhances their unique sound.