Elvis Presley - The Story Behind Sun Studio's Famous "Slap Back" Echo
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2017
- A Boy From Tupelo: The Complete 1953-1955 Recordings:
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Available as a 3CD deluxe box set and a digital collection, A Boy From Tupelo - The Complete 1953-1955 Recordings is the most comprehensive collection of early Elvis recordings ever assembled, with many tracks becoming available for the first time as part of this package and one performance-a newly discovered recording of "I Forgot To Remember To Forget."
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even the tape recorders of the time for commercial use, the ones that anybody could purchase sounded great. in the studio, they did so much with so little. and that in itself was amazing.
But in reality they had worlds more than we have now. It's called SOUL.
Sam was more brilliant than I think he even knew at the time. I love that studio - it still gives me chills when I stand in that studio.
The magic created in that studio set the world on fire!
I did the same back in the 60's but I fed the echo back into the echo tape machine, It added a very long fade, could go on for almost forever. A lot of singers could benefit with a little echo. Nice bit of history, thanks.
THE BEST RECORDINGS WERE MADE HERE, ELVIS YOU'RE THE BEST
I’m more of a Jerry lee Lewis fan. Elvis is pretty good tho
Elvis sucked. Way too overrated
It is amazing. All this history associated with the King and the way they use to record music back then. It is all fascinating stuff. King ❤
MY HEART STILL ACHES AT HIS ABSENCE
Id rather listen to Elvis instead of listening to Justin Bieber or The back street boys I did like Boyz 11 men ,they reminded me of The Tempations
So now we know.
The interesting thing about Sun productions is after you've heard them a million times is then figuring out WHERE Sam placed the echo mike(as demoed here, an RCA "Varacoustic" ribbon type).
The trick is NOT ONLY tape speed alone but placement of the dedicated microphone.
Add to that, the idiosyncrasies if a room constructed from RCA plans for a radio studio, instrument placement, especially drums which seemed to be ever changing.
Most of the snare sound on the post-Truck Driver sessions is actually a cardboard box so as to pad down sharp attacks that were/are still unfriendly to ribbon microphones.
The sounds that were made in that room six decades ago are unique, not easy to replicate and not for nothing, legendary.
It’s believed that RCA engineers were tearing their hair out trying to replicate the Sun sound for Elvis’ first RCA record but couldn’t because their equipment and studio were too good lol
@@joe6096 What RCA didn't " get" was
that Phillips had mastered his tape echo effect, was using what by 1956 was the lowest level Ampex decks, a general purpose PA mike for the vocals, instructing his pressing plant on exactly the EQ curve he wanted and using the room itself as an instrument.
The combination of this imprecision created a perfect product at least as long as the song material was up to the task.
The closest any major label got to the Sun "sound " was Capitol Records on the earliest Gene Vincent sessions.
As it was, Capitol recorded Vincent at Bradley Studios in Nashville.
Owen Bradley operated independently of record labels
as a" for- hire" facility.
The facility could deliver squeaky clean sounds but at the same time, was utilizing tape echo, no secret by then even at the amateur level.
As for RCA, the time honored studio operations of major labels was the best equipment, rooms, staff and a strict 3songs in 4 hours time blocks.
The loose and mostly non union influenced Sun( and most other indie's) approach was more organic.
Phillips had to be consulted regarding why RCA and " the best of everything" couldn't get results at first.
While they never did capture the Sun sound, by letting Presley produce himself during sessions, things began to jell.
The last remnant of the tape echo effect on Presley records was the use of Scotty Moore's Butts Echosonic guitar amp which had a rudimentary single repeat echo function built in to it.
As for vocals, what RCA tried was a perfectly good and textbook correct method, that of feeding the vocal into a stairwell and then using a microphone at the bottom or top to pickup the reverberation caused by the stairwell.
In the original RCA Nashville facility which had been a church previously, the stairwell was the echo chamber.
What was different in the RCA approach was the contrast between natural reverberation and that of a mechanically induced "repeat" of the source as used by Phillips.
Again, part of the " trick" was exactly where to place the tape echo effect and given the studio's relatively small size, about 18'x36', the amount of " bleed" onto other instruments also was a factor.
In contrast, the Presley RCA product was going to be different in construction, feel, instrumentation.
Unlike Phillips who was looking for artist/writers from which he could coax a rawer, more primal performance, Presley under RCA was being steered slightly towards a more polished and broader based product which became evident as early as his first album.
Additionally, RCA had a larger pool of writers to choose from and had the services of the Bieinstock brothers to vet materials through.
In 1956, it was almost unheard of for a major label to use independent producers. A few had become known , the team of Lieber and Stoller being one.
For a short period they were associated with Presley, providing songs and piano before Colonel Parker closed ranks on them.
The no brainer really would have been for RCA to retain Sam Phillips, and the Sun studio as the production segment.
Technical issues could have been resolved by providing equipment and staff if needed.
But, much of the Presley story is often things that should have happened but for reasons known only to Parker and Presley, didn't.
While Presley more or less produced himself for the remainder of his recording career, doing all manner of songs, his records would never again sound nor feel as cutting edge as they had been at Sun.
@@pjriverdale8461 Holy crap dude! You want people to read your posts cut to the chase man lol….. I have no idea what you just said because it’s too damn long. Cliffs notes version please!
@@joe6096what kind of loser cant a minute and a half of text?
@@pjriverdale8461Awesome comment, thank you very much!
Amazing! So much inspiring
So cool
Sam Phillips y'all, give it up to the man who heard that sound in his head.
That’s freakin awesome I was at Sun in 1989 and it was truly amazing!
I wish they still used slap back echo it makes music sound 10 times better!
Cool! I always loved the Sun "echo" :)
Good times when recordings were made with all the musicians and singers performing together in the same room in just 1 take. Talent was needed.
Pretty awesome!
They used the time delay between sync and repro head, that´s the trick, not mentioned here...
All recorded in one take so can you imagine what he sounded like in person? It must have been mind blowing. I don't know how the hell E learned to sing like that. My best guess is he listened to a lot of Dean Martin
Thanks 4 this!
Notice the Westlake BBSM6 monitor in the back 🎶 🥇
Very cool.
wow I'm early. Love The King!
So cool was in Memphis went to Graceland but could not get inside sun records just saw the outside of it
that WAS way cool thanks
Cool
Thanks
yes
The ultimate magnetic
Amazing that they would think about echo effect in the 50’s
Traducir en español gracias el inglés no entiendo gracias somos mucho los fans de ❤ELVIS PRESLEY FOREVER GRACIAS POR COMPARTIR BENDICIONES
Hi, have you any idea how they got Elvis's voice so thick in his ballads? I wouldn't think they used to 'double track' in the early days. I can't imagine him singing the same lead vocal twice or even 3 times on seperate tracks.
The flip of that switch was the genesis of rock music as we know it today
Awesome explanation. I did record my single I wrote for Elvis called "Some Kind of Energy" there at Sun using that equipment and the slap back echo effect. It was the first time I had ever tried that and it actually wasn't too easy to adjust to the delay I was hearing on the headphones. It took me some 4 takes to adjust, but Daniel, the awesome sound engineer there at Sun, helped me get it right. Soooo...happy I managed to record something there and using that effect. Epic!!!! Thank you!!!
So if I got it right, the read head was reading what the write head recorded,
And the gap between the two heads created this delay
I went to sun studio and for me when they found out I was an Elvis fan it turned out to be free they were surprised about me
You went to record and they let you record for free?
@@KingRiverVlogs he never said he went to record
@@jokkergar oh, I just noticed that.
Interesting :)
Thanks for sharing the awesomeness of recording! Question’ for recording would I get a better recording if I purchase something like the TC Helicon and use that for slap back delay or would purchasing a plug-in like galaxy tape echo be a better way to go ?
Its not that complicated. Either will work.
Is that why Blue moon of Kentucky sounds echo?
So would Scotty's amp have had two mics on it, as demonstrated here with vocals, to get the slapback effect?
Where oh where did you get that amazing jacket your wearing ?
At a store. Not hard to find stores.
IMAKAMERA Lansky Brothers on Beale Street.
How cant I reproducte this écho on home studio ?
Do you know if it still possible to record there with this gear, or it turned to a kind of museum?
Sun is both a museum in the day and an active (and in demand) studio at night.
using another mic for echo is so clever.You alrdy get less of direct signal with less bass and highs.Wow
Could the band hear the echo while playing or could it only be heard on playback?
To my understand, no one had headphones or monitoring in these times.
About how many milliseconds would you say for the short and the long?
One of the engineers said the short is 133 ms, and the long is 266 ms.
This is great but wish you could spend more time demonstrating and explaining context.
Lol
Mr. Spang, no offense but I guess you got it partly wrong. Your demonstration sure shows a way of generating a sound source for effect purposes without having to deal with mic pops and stuff but I don´t believe that this is what happened at SUN. Two things: Something is wrong with your echo sound, it´s dark and dull sounding, something that wouldnt have happened with Phillips or Clement at SUN. They were for hi-fi. Secondly, Phillips wouldnt have wasted a precious microphone input for this.
The technique is much more simple and works like an ordinary "effect send and return" path. Somehow Phillips managed to modify one or more microphone channels and split their signal, one for the actual session recorder, one for the slave echo machine. Phillips had a reputation of being quite good with technical things… or maybe his RCA consolette had this feature built in anyway? To create the delay effect he simply made use of the time delay between recording head and playback head and fed the playback signal of the echo slave machine back to the desk. There he could blend the echo signal with the original dry signal. As simple as that, no additional microphone. Could you tell us where your theory comes from?
Sam Phillips may have found out about this accidentally before he made professional use of it and it sure happened to many engineers during sessions when they forgot to turn down or mute the tape playback channels on the desk after listening to a take very loud and hit the record button. Hell breaks loose, I´m telling you…
Matt’s demonstration absolutely occurred at Sun. Sam utilized two main techniques for echo pre mid 1956. The first was the “local mic” method demonstrated here by Matt. The second was the “feedback” method where the output of the RCA console is fed into the tape machine input and the tape machine output is fed back into the console. These techniques were both used during the Elvis sessions. Post mid 1956, Sam and Jack had a repeater coil sub mixer built which allowed each mic’d source to be sent to the echo producing tape machine. Variations of each technique (often combined) were used throughout the tenure at 706 Union Ave.
This is documented. A second mic was used, Sam called it the "local mic" method.
Documented where and when? Did Sam Phillips himself ever talk about using this technique? Did Elvis or Cash? I never saw any SUN-session pictures showing this amazing "local mic" method, it´s always only one vocal mic in the pictures that exist. What are your sources? @@Sunkenballs12
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All mono sound..