The Secret of that Capitol Studios Sound.

acontinuouslean.com ^ | Dec 2nd, 2013 | by John Peabody

[virgil283]

"There are a few magical studios with such amazing sound that they have become sort of sonic temples for musicians who dream of making musical pilgrimages to them. There’s Hitsville U.S.A. in Detroit, home to the Motown sound. There’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama where artists like Wilson Picket and Otis Redding honed the 60’s southern soul sound.

And then there’s Capitol Records studios in Los Angeles. Housed in the iconic circular building on Hollywood and Vine, it’s uniquely famous as much for what it looks like on the outside, as what’s been created on the inside........"

.....Designed in 1956

[virgil283]

"....Designed in 1956, the building was actually not meant to resemble a stack of records but well…happy coincidence. A red light, like a beacon, atop the tower flashes “Hollywood” in morse code. And inside the building artists like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, The Beach Boys, The Beastie Boys and so many more have laid down countless hits.,p>But what gives Capitol Studios its great sound qualities? Why do artists dream of recording there? At Capitol, much of this magic is attributed to a curious design element that was created by Les Paul, the guitarist and inventor of the famous Gibson Les Paul guitar. Paul was commissioned to give the studios reverb, the sonic quality of echo and delay, or reverberation.

Today, musicians use reverb pedals attached to amps to easily achieve this, but in the 1950’s it apparently wasn’t so easy and thus was Paul’s challenge.

To create reverb, Les Paul built a series of eight cavernous trapezoidal echo chambers dug 30 feet below the Capitol Records building. The sparse concrete chambers, each with there own unique characteristics, have speakers on one side and microphones on the other. Sound engineers working in the studios above can pipe audio into the reverb chambers and re-record the sound, adding as much as a five second delay, giving singers a booming vocal quality that makes it sound more like the track was recorded in a cathedral, not a sound studio in L.A. The difference is huge.

You can fast forward to the 6:30 minute mark in this American Roots segment to hear recordings with and without the echo chamber effect but really, listen to the whole thing. You can also see YouTube clips of the reverb chambers here and here. A look inside the building as it looks now can be found here.

Now there are plans to develop the area around the Capitol Records building. Some are concerned that could threaten the reverb chambers, Here’s hoping some things don’t ever change. —JP

[virgil283]

“It might sound like a laughing matter to some, but it’s not. Before it was possible to alter any and every song digitally with plug-in’s and external gear, one way to make a vocal or guitar in the recording studio have a distinct sound would be to run it through an echo chamber. EMI Recording Studios, now known as Abbey Road, had their own echo chambers that helped The Beatles a number of times throughout their recorded history. Phil Spector is of course known for his “Wall Of Sound”. But if one is to think of Pet Sounds or some of David Axelrod’s productions in the mid to late 60’s, then one has to think about how those songs and albums were done, and most likely they were run through Capitol’s echo chambers, created by legendary guitarist Les Paul.

Back then, every recording studio had their own way of recording and documenting sound, some of it was secret until recording nerds were curious and made it possible to share the secrets with the world. Due to a developer who plans on building a high rise right next door to Capitol (dollar dollar bill, y’all), the record label feels that those cherished underground echo chambers will be damaged. There’s an argument which claims that one can digitally simulate any form of echo and reverb, so even if the echo chambers were damaged, it would not be that much of a deal.

Unfortunately, the world of audio gets the shaft once again, and yet if this had something to do with the archiving of Hollywood’s motion picture industry, one phone call from George Clooney would stop the building from being erected. This is music history, recorded history, and the threat of the echo chambers is not to be ignored. To read the full article, head on over to the L.A. Times:...”

http://therunoffgroove.blogspot.com/2008/04/some-stuffs-echo-chambers-at-capitol.html

[Gay State Conservative]

Somehow I think that Abbey Road played a bit of a role in the music biz over the last 40+ years.

[Dalberg-Acton]

>Voice of the Gods Plate Reverb

[doorgunner69]

If you lived in the Los Angeles basin back then, you have to love that olde time smog seen in the photos. That was the stuff that could stop you from taking a full breath.

So much of L.A. is so much worse, but the smog is not that bad at least.

[Paladin2]

Thanx for posting.

Les Paul was a genius.

[smokingfrog]

[VerySadAmerican]

I guess the author never heard of Stax Records.

[Paladin2]

[virgil283]

Hey that's a neat ad...

It seems funny now that a record club now would have such a diverse selection that included Joey Bishop and Chopin.......back then it was OK to enjoy different types of music.......

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

No one’s making a pilgrimage to the Stax studio. It was torn down almost 25 years ago.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Very interesting - I’m old enough to have sort of grown up with the sound recording art and always been interesting in it - my parents had an old Silvertone (Sears) console radio/record player from the WWII era which included a disk-record recording capability - the kind where you would end up with a three minute recording and a ball of fuzz from the recording head literally cutting the groves into the blank platter - from there we went to wire recorders and then tape recorders - my favorite recording spectacular has to be the Jane Parker-Smith rendition of Saint-Saens Third Symphony, where she was playing the organ in some chapel while the orchestra was accompanying her in a hall miles removed - turned out to be about the best recording of that piece ever made IMHO.....

[dfwgator]

Stax was awesome, better than Motown IMHO.

[TalBlack]

“There’s an argument which claims that one can digitally simulate any form of echo and reverb, so even if the echo chambers were damaged, it would not be that much of a deal.”

Yeah, right, digitally simulate. The bad thing about digital is also the good thing about digital and that is that it IS digital.

There were other ways of simulating echo, ie EMT Plate, spring reverb, but all of those were distinct colors and not at all a drop in replacement for the echo chambers (or vice versa).

This article is more about a unique special effect Capitol built and had access to. Other HUGE factors in the Capitol sound were the audio engineers and the rooms that the sound was actually recorded initially .

[Fresh Wind]

You can fast forward to the 6:30 minute mark in this American Roots segment...

Actually, the name of the program is "American Routes".

[Fresh Wind]

For anyone interested in the history of sound recording and reproduction, visit this site:

http://www.preservationsound.com/

If you’re interested in tape recording specifically, try this one:

http://reel2reeltexas.com/PPIMuseum.html

And if you like microphones, this one is the best ever:

http://www.coutant.org/

[virgil283]

thanks for the links..........That made me remember finding a wire recorder at a thrift shop years ago. It seemed strange that a signal could be magnetized on a wire...I gave it to someone. maybe should of kept it...

[virgil283]

Thanks , wasn’t familiar with ‘Saint-Saens Third Symphony’...thanks again

[Yardstick]

Fascinating post. I didn't realize Les Paul had designed sound chambers for Capitol. They should preserve them if they possibly can. I wonder if they ever get used on modern recordings?

And how did Les Paul know what size and shape to make the chambers to get a good reverb sound? Did he base it on existing acoustical spaces or did he build a prototype somewhere and test it, or did he just use his best judgment and got it right?

I wonder if that blue Thunderbird still exists.

[Yardstick]

Some video of the chambers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H84H78jeT8