Boogie Down Bronx [rare, cool remix] youtu.be/F5wPpffojfU Some guys on a thread asked me how the record was made. Thought Id share: Thanx Guys ! It was done in my bedroom studio back in 1983. It went on to sell millions of records. Just goes to show you dont need a major setup to make a million seller. The keyboards were the Prophet 5, and the Pro 1. I think I had a Roland synth by then, but not sure [30+ years ago!] I do remember I bought one of the first Emulator One samplers [google it] It weighed like 50lbs ! And you could sample a whopping 2 seconds ! Thats all the crazy sounds on the record. it was one of the first samplers. It was all recorded to an 8 track 1/2 tape and mixed to a 1/4 tape and hand edited with razor blades and special adhesive tape [Hip Hop Be Bop too!] ...This was BEFORE computers and MIDI. The Vocoder was an EMS 2000. We did it the old skool way, by hand ! You guys dont even know how easy you got it today.. lol Ok... let me answer some of the specific studio questions.. That was a track I just did. In other words, I started early in the morning, and by evening it was done and mixed. I did write it so it should be played all the way thru, but the dub side was intended to be taken apart by djs for extended beats and remixes. As far as the recording, it was back in 1983, so there weent many mixer effects. I basically had a Tascam 8 track, 1/2 in tape machine and the 8 track mixer that was designed for it. It was very basic and simple. In fact, it attribute the reason the track sounds great, is because the signal path from they synthesizer to your ears, was very short. In other words, it didnt go thru many other pieces of equipment, so the signal didnt degrade and stayed pure. No digital back then. I had a spring reverb, and a Roland Tape Space Echo [cutting edge technology back then.. lol] and thats basically it. All those effects were either samples played by hand [out of their normal range eqd or passed thrut he reverb or echo.] Remember, this was BEFORE computers and midi, so there were no EFX boxes and plugins like we have today. We had to CREATE and use our brains to come up with sounds and PROGRAM our synths. No presets. My sampler was one of the very first Emulator One samplers. No midi.. Ok lets talk about the vocoder.. it was an EMS 2000 vocoder I bought off the rock group Electric Light Orchestra [ELO]. They had just used it for their song Mr. Blue Sky in the studio and was basically done with it. I used it on all my records, because back then, it was the clearest Vocoder available. Today thats different. [Check out my remake of Yazoo Situation on iTunes]. Remember, I only had 8 tracks to record on, so doubling the vocal with the vocoder was a big choice, as it took up an extra track, and left me with only 6 tracks for the rest of the music. John Carter did his rhyme on the track. I then played it back, and fed his vocal thru the vocoder, while playing notest on the keyboard, and recording the result on that extra track. Thats why it follows so perfectly. I mixed it to 2 track tape [15ips speed] and we took it to Herbie Powers in NYC to Master to for record. Herbie is amazing. He loved my stuff and would let us sit in on the vinyl master cutting session. Id drive him more crazy and say more bass !. When you add to much bass on a record, you can actually make the needle jump off the vinyl, because neighboring record grooves touch, and theres no more room for the needle in the groove. We went thru a few test records before we found the sweet spot, and hed have to always check the master record under a microscope to see if the grooves were wide enough for the needle to go thru. We had to learn all this stuff, to make better records. So, learn whatever you can about what you do. It only makes you better... cool? Thanx again - Man Parrish [you can probably google some of the mentioned equipment for photos]
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 12:39:49 +0000
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