Sun Studio & Muscle Shoals
September 24, 2017 6:24 PM Subscribe
There are two instantly recognizable recording studio sounds: Sun & Muscle Shoals. This first link is a playlist from the manager of Sun Studios of the most important songs recorded there. Then there's a CMT series about the nascent days of Sun Studio CMT series, showcasing the glory days with Presley, Perkins, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and more.
Then there's the Muscle Shoals studio that drew all sorts of musicians from all the world and now (2013) there a documentary about it Muscle Shoals
All music and people I grew up with and still love.
That said, Muscle Shoals is indeed a superb documentary.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:54 PM on September 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:54 PM on September 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Made a quick playlist from the Muscle Shoal's song list on Spotify.
I think I did that right.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:58 PM on September 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
I think I did that right.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:58 PM on September 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
One of the most surprising things I've ever seen is what the Swampers looked like in person.
posted by fshgrl at 7:02 PM on September 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by fshgrl at 7:02 PM on September 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
And then Old Abehammerb noticed a Spotify link to those same songs in the article. Whoops.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:13 PM on September 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:13 PM on September 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
The documentary about Muscle Shoals is great. I'm not entirely sure why Bono is in it so much, but, hey.
There are two instantly recognizable recording studio sounds: Sun & Muscle Shoals.
No Gold Star for you!
posted by Sys Rq at 7:35 PM on September 24, 2017 [4 favorites]
There are two instantly recognizable recording studio sounds: Sun & Muscle Shoals.
No Gold Star for you!
posted by Sys Rq at 7:35 PM on September 24, 2017 [4 favorites]
Hey! I didn't say there were only two (this is me trying to weasle out). And besides, I was doing links to those two so . . . a little hyperbole never hurt anybody. Right?
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:54 PM on September 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:54 PM on September 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
Stax
Another important factor in Stax's success was the studio itself. The recording studio, located at 926 E McLemore Ave, in Memphis was a converted movie theater still had the sloped floor where the seats had once been. Because the room was imbalanced, it created an acoustic anomaly that was audible on recordings, often giving them a big, deep yet raw sound. Soul music historian Rob Bowman notes that because of the distinctive sound, soul music fans can tell often within the first few notes if a song was recorded at Stax.posted by ovvl at 8:27 PM on September 24, 2017 [11 favorites]
On hearing the session, people at Pickett's label (Atlantic Records) asked who had played the guitar solos. Hall responded with a hand-written note that read "some hippie cat who's been living in our parking lot."
posted by thelonius at 8:30 PM on September 24, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 8:30 PM on September 24, 2017 [11 favorites]
More recently, Alabama Shakes and St Paul and the Broken Bones have both recorded in Muscle Shoals. OK, it's not the same core of musicians driving things but still, solid music.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:03 AM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by From Bklyn at 1:03 AM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
> There are two instantly recognizable recordingYeah.. One of the interesting bits of the Motown tour (which I totally recommend) was having the guide explain (and then demonstrate) how some of the physical characteristics of the building were key to achieving the sounds that they recorded -- a hollow attic space, for example, that produced a distinctive echo (and once you've been there and heard it in person you recognize it in so many classic recordings..)
> studio sounds: Sun & Muscle Shoals.
*cough*
You could actually build quite a list of famous recording studios and the vital (and in many cases unique) ingredients that each provided. (my suggested contribution to that list would be Studio One in Kingston but really there are many worthy choices.)
What I wonder, though, is whether the distinctiveness of any given studio is (or will soon be) a thing of the past. Easy availability of recording and editing technology seems to me like it will have a homogenizing effect -- in the future you're probably not often going to hear the audio artifacts caused by some studio's homebrew equipment or oddball architecture.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:23 AM on September 25, 2017 [6 favorites]
-- in the future you're probably not often going to hear the audio artifacts caused by some studio's homebrew equipment or oddball architecture.
The descent into hell of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor is more chilling in a cathedral.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 2:27 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
The descent into hell of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor is more chilling in a cathedral.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 2:27 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
Maybe I've missed something, but I thought it was agreed that it was "mussel" not "muscle."
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 3:36 AM on September 25, 2017
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 3:36 AM on September 25, 2017
in the future you're probably not often going to hear the audio artifacts caused by some studio's homebrew equipment or oddball architecture.
Unless they want you to hear them. Two simple examples:
Unless they want you to hear them. Two simple examples:
- Neil Young's A Letter Home was "recorded in a refurbished 1947 Voice-o-Graph vinyl recording booth at Jack White's Third Man Records recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee. "
- Deep Listening Band "specializes in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as cathedrals and huge underground cisterns including the 2-million-US-gallon (7,600 m3) Fort Worden Cistern which has a 45-second reverberation time."
I saw the Muscle Shoals doc on Netflix a few years ago and it was excellent.
Re: "Mussel" vs "Muscle", I thought the same and googled it and damned if it isn't actually "Muscle".
posted by hwestiii at 3:47 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
Re: "Mussel" vs "Muscle", I thought the same and googled it and damned if it isn't actually "Muscle".
posted by hwestiii at 3:47 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
I remember seeing Sun Studio on my first visit to Memphis; I'm driving along Union Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares, and boom, there it was, a funny little wedge-shaped building. (Even though the address is on Union, it fronts onto Marshall Avenue, a little street that veers off of Union at an angle.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:58 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:58 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
Patterson Hood, from Drive By Truckers, is the son of David Hood, legendary Muscle Shoals session bassist.
posted by thelonius at 7:45 AM on September 25, 2017
posted by thelonius at 7:45 AM on September 25, 2017
What I wonder, though, is whether the distinctiveness of any given studio is (or will soon be) a thing of the past. Easy availability of recording and editing technology seems to me like it will have a homogenizing effect -- in the future you're probably not often going to hear the audio artifacts caused by some studio's homebrew equipment or oddball architecture.
Actually, it's the opposite, and the future is now. Well, the future was here many years ago, really. Allow me to introduce you to Altiverb.
Much of the unique and oddball acoustical architecture of many world famous studios, performance spaces, reverb tanks have already been captured and recorded by convolution mapping reverb tech like Altiverb. And many highly unusual reverb spaces have been recorded/mapped as well, places where it would be impossible to record on a regular basis.
Further, you can create reverb convolution models that simply do not exist. You could, in theory, turn the inside surface of a fractal or Sierpinski foam into a reverb tank. Or use the data from an MRI scan to recreate your own skull as a virtual 60 foot tall concrete or metal sculpture to use as a reverb tank. Heck, you could use a Quake map as a reverb tank.
We're actually in a golden age of reverb and reverb processing. People have more access to reverb spaces than they ever did before, both with and without virtual reverb mapping like Altiverb.
Thanks to high definition portable field recorders, microphones and speakers any given home/indie producer can take any given sound to almost any given location they can physically/legally get access to and use it as a reverb tank to rerecord reverb on any track or set of tracks.
And recording artists are doing this kind of thing, and you probably haven't noticed because its so common - because so much new music is so acoustically rich (and even overprocessed) that our ears are getting a bit jaded.
Seriously, compare any pop track produced today - pick a Beyonce track, or Rihanna - and compare the recording values of it to any R&B/pop track produced in the 70s or 80s. The differences in production values between a modern Beyonce track and, say, a Diana Ross track from the 80s is utterly profound. Even Michael Jackson sounds a bit thin and anemic when you're comparing production values. There's entire orchestras of virtual and real instrumentation getting crammed into a modern pop track.
And there really isn't any black magic to a reverb tank. It's just a box with a speaker at one end and a microphone at the other. You're intentionally losing sonic clarity by using reverb, so re-recording something is kind of part of the "magic" of a reverb tank, and you've been hearing it in pop music for something like 70 years, now.
Reverb actually covers up a lot of flaws and sins, btw, kind of like smoothing out the pigments of a watercolor or gauche painting with water. There's a reason why pop music uses it and classical (and often jazz) music recordings do not. Much of the history of modern studio production and recording is just as much about as using tricks like reverb to cover/hide production flaws as it is about "hey, that sounds cool". There are many, many famous albums with lackluster performances that were hidden, fixed or corrected with audio effects and production tricks.
And the portable speakers and microphones available today vastly exceed the audio clarity of 50s and 60s era loudspeakers and microphones. Well, short of a handful of large diaphragm or ribbon mics, but even those are better today.
Point is is that it's now pretty trivial to use anything as a reverb tank. You're not limited to a live performance in a physical room. You're not limited by booking/scheduling conflicts. You're not even limited by having access to electricity at the site of the reverb tank. In fact, if someone has already mapped the site in question in Altiverb, or you go out and map it yourself, you don't even have to go to the site at all once you have the convolution map.
You can sit on a beach or in a forest with a laptop and a pair of headphones on and have full access to every major reverb tank and recording studio acoustics ever known to exist.
The age of the physical recording studio is ending - or long gone. The ones that are left today still exist because they have a collection of tools, resources and services that a recording artist just can't afford to buy or own themselves. Or they have plain old expertise on mastering and recording.
If you look through a good recording industry mag like Tape Op, you'll see that many of the existing studios for hire today are destination studios. Few studios brag about their equipment or reverb tanks these days, they brag about their remote, quiet locations and beautiful views where a group or project could spend a month in isolation recording an album.
And yet there has never been a better time to want to record and produce music. Short of noise complaints from the neighbors, you don't really even need a studio any more. There's random bedroom producers out there with more access to reverb tanks and acoustically modeled spaces than all of the major recording studios of the 60s combined.
If anything, studios like Sun and Motown are the homogeneity! They had that unique but self-homogeneous sound because they had a virtual monopoly on the physical recording space as well as the label that released the products of that studio. It was an integrated commercial production chain from A&R to songwriting to performance to production and recording.
If today's sounds are homogeneous, it's because of how fast production techniques are shared and standardized, and how quickly producers now can recreate specific sounds and sound stages - and how quickly trends spread.
It is definitely not due to a lack of tools or unique acoustical spaces.
posted by loquacious at 9:00 AM on September 25, 2017 [10 favorites]
Actually, it's the opposite, and the future is now. Well, the future was here many years ago, really. Allow me to introduce you to Altiverb.
Much of the unique and oddball acoustical architecture of many world famous studios, performance spaces, reverb tanks have already been captured and recorded by convolution mapping reverb tech like Altiverb. And many highly unusual reverb spaces have been recorded/mapped as well, places where it would be impossible to record on a regular basis.
Further, you can create reverb convolution models that simply do not exist. You could, in theory, turn the inside surface of a fractal or Sierpinski foam into a reverb tank. Or use the data from an MRI scan to recreate your own skull as a virtual 60 foot tall concrete or metal sculpture to use as a reverb tank. Heck, you could use a Quake map as a reverb tank.
We're actually in a golden age of reverb and reverb processing. People have more access to reverb spaces than they ever did before, both with and without virtual reverb mapping like Altiverb.
Thanks to high definition portable field recorders, microphones and speakers any given home/indie producer can take any given sound to almost any given location they can physically/legally get access to and use it as a reverb tank to rerecord reverb on any track or set of tracks.
And recording artists are doing this kind of thing, and you probably haven't noticed because its so common - because so much new music is so acoustically rich (and even overprocessed) that our ears are getting a bit jaded.
Seriously, compare any pop track produced today - pick a Beyonce track, or Rihanna - and compare the recording values of it to any R&B/pop track produced in the 70s or 80s. The differences in production values between a modern Beyonce track and, say, a Diana Ross track from the 80s is utterly profound. Even Michael Jackson sounds a bit thin and anemic when you're comparing production values. There's entire orchestras of virtual and real instrumentation getting crammed into a modern pop track.
And there really isn't any black magic to a reverb tank. It's just a box with a speaker at one end and a microphone at the other. You're intentionally losing sonic clarity by using reverb, so re-recording something is kind of part of the "magic" of a reverb tank, and you've been hearing it in pop music for something like 70 years, now.
Reverb actually covers up a lot of flaws and sins, btw, kind of like smoothing out the pigments of a watercolor or gauche painting with water. There's a reason why pop music uses it and classical (and often jazz) music recordings do not. Much of the history of modern studio production and recording is just as much about as using tricks like reverb to cover/hide production flaws as it is about "hey, that sounds cool". There are many, many famous albums with lackluster performances that were hidden, fixed or corrected with audio effects and production tricks.
And the portable speakers and microphones available today vastly exceed the audio clarity of 50s and 60s era loudspeakers and microphones. Well, short of a handful of large diaphragm or ribbon mics, but even those are better today.
Point is is that it's now pretty trivial to use anything as a reverb tank. You're not limited to a live performance in a physical room. You're not limited by booking/scheduling conflicts. You're not even limited by having access to electricity at the site of the reverb tank. In fact, if someone has already mapped the site in question in Altiverb, or you go out and map it yourself, you don't even have to go to the site at all once you have the convolution map.
You can sit on a beach or in a forest with a laptop and a pair of headphones on and have full access to every major reverb tank and recording studio acoustics ever known to exist.
The age of the physical recording studio is ending - or long gone. The ones that are left today still exist because they have a collection of tools, resources and services that a recording artist just can't afford to buy or own themselves. Or they have plain old expertise on mastering and recording.
If you look through a good recording industry mag like Tape Op, you'll see that many of the existing studios for hire today are destination studios. Few studios brag about their equipment or reverb tanks these days, they brag about their remote, quiet locations and beautiful views where a group or project could spend a month in isolation recording an album.
And yet there has never been a better time to want to record and produce music. Short of noise complaints from the neighbors, you don't really even need a studio any more. There's random bedroom producers out there with more access to reverb tanks and acoustically modeled spaces than all of the major recording studios of the 60s combined.
If anything, studios like Sun and Motown are the homogeneity! They had that unique but self-homogeneous sound because they had a virtual monopoly on the physical recording space as well as the label that released the products of that studio. It was an integrated commercial production chain from A&R to songwriting to performance to production and recording.
If today's sounds are homogeneous, it's because of how fast production techniques are shared and standardized, and how quickly producers now can recreate specific sounds and sound stages - and how quickly trends spread.
It is definitely not due to a lack of tools or unique acoustical spaces.
posted by loquacious at 9:00 AM on September 25, 2017 [10 favorites]
Somewhat off topic but we just visited Stax studios in Memphis. Hell of a legacy and a damned fine museum.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 9:10 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by jeff-o-matic at 9:10 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
> One of the interesting bits of the Motown tour (which I totally recommend) was having the guide explain (and then demonstrate) how some of the physical characteristics of the building were key to achieving the sounds that they recorded
I realize we're discussing the physical characteristics of studios here, but I can't let this pass without mentioning an even more important key to achieving the sounds that they recorded.
posted by languagehat at 9:17 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
I realize we're discussing the physical characteristics of studios here, but I can't let this pass without mentioning an even more important key to achieving the sounds that they recorded.
posted by languagehat at 9:17 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
About three years ago, I got to actually record at Sun Studios. I've lived in Memphis a long time, and once shot a scene for a film at Sun, but this was the first time I actually got to actually play in that room. We did four songs live to tape, and I got to play through a sweet vintage Ampeg bass rig. At first I was kind of in awe, but we had limited time and we had to work fast, so I started concentrating on the task at hand. After one good take, I turned to the guitarist and said, "Wow! This room sounds amazing!"
Then the engineer came over the intercom. "Yeah, it's Sun."
posted by vibrotronica at 9:31 AM on September 25, 2017 [12 favorites]
Then the engineer came over the intercom. "Yeah, it's Sun."
posted by vibrotronica at 9:31 AM on September 25, 2017 [12 favorites]
I realize we're discussing the physical characteristics of studios here, but I can't let this pass without mentioning an even more important key to achieving the sounds that they recorded.
LanguageHat: I read that whole thread and realized a related episode of PBS' History Detectives isn't mentioned. Motown Amp is about a guy who thinks he has Jamerson's amp so they set out to find folk who might know. Several members of the Funk line are in it and even play. It's a fascinating episode.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:32 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
LanguageHat: I read that whole thread and realized a related episode of PBS' History Detectives isn't mentioned. Motown Amp is about a guy who thinks he has Jamerson's amp so they set out to find folk who might know. Several members of the Funk line are in it and even play. It's a fascinating episode.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:32 AM on September 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
vibrotronica, what a wonderful experience.
posted by thelonius at 10:34 AM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 10:34 AM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'm continually amazed by how much new music I hear that sounds - in terms of the production - indistinguishable from '90s grunge or '70s Philly soul or whichever genre or sound is being emulated. More than once I've lost a bet over the age of a song; three weeks old, or thirty years old?
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:38 AM on September 25, 2017
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:38 AM on September 25, 2017
re: mussel/muscle
Interestingly, the studio is named for the city in AL, and according to their own website it may have got its name from mussel shells on the bank of the TN river (being misspelled from the beginning, in that case), or it may be from the crook of the river looking like a muscle, or it may have referred to the level of effort needed to paddle that part of the river...
(caution: average municipal website link)
posted by randomkeystrike at 1:33 PM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
Interestingly, the studio is named for the city in AL, and according to their own website it may have got its name from mussel shells on the bank of the TN river (being misspelled from the beginning, in that case), or it may be from the crook of the river looking like a muscle, or it may have referred to the level of effort needed to paddle that part of the river...
(caution: average municipal website link)
posted by randomkeystrike at 1:33 PM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
You know what all these iconic studios prove?
That music IS "dancing about architecture."
posted by spitbull at 6:18 PM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
That music IS "dancing about architecture."
posted by spitbull at 6:18 PM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
And Muscle Shoals is still an ongoing concern. This album by Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls -- "a project brimming with images of killing and hope, Faulkner, the Natchez Trace, and the sea." -- was recorded by and with the Swampers, and released just last week: https://www.bloodshotrecords.com/album/four-lost-souls
posted by MrJM at 7:47 AM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by MrJM at 7:47 AM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
I grew up in Sheffield, across the river from Florence and Muscle Shoals. The music studio was a huge point of pride for the community. I was best friends with the daughter of Mac McAnally, who moved to Muscle Shoals for the studio. His Live in Muscle Shoals album from 2011 is awesome.
FWIW, we know how to spell Mussel. It's just the case that the name of the city if Muscle Shoals. Sorry y'all.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 10:41 AM on September 26, 2017
FWIW, we know how to spell Mussel. It's just the case that the name of the city if Muscle Shoals. Sorry y'all.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 10:41 AM on September 26, 2017
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*cough*
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:43 PM on September 24, 2017 [36 favorites]