I need to add in the information relating to the song such as timing.
In 1984 Bruce Springsteen released
his most successful album Born in the
USA. Out of this album came 7 top ten hits along which was enough to tie
Thriller and Rhythm Nation 1814 for most top 10’s (Buskin 2010) . Toby Scott
who was the primary recording engineer recalls “Born in the USA didn’t sound
like the Bruce Springsteen that I had mixed on his previous two records.” This
was a major step away from his previous 6 albums but became his most recognizable
work. The recording was done at The Power Station Studio A. Springsteen
recorded The River at the Power
Station and he said he liked the room tone. The problem that Toby Scott ran
into when mixing it was the fact that the control room was so much different
then the rooms he was use to recording with in LA. In LA all the rooms he had
used were set up to be live at the front by the speakers and dead in the back.
This was completely different from the Power Station where the whole room was
wood. The room was rectangular and had Altech 604E monitors hanging from the
ceiling. The standard setup at the time was to focus the room like a giant
speaker cone and direct all the sound at the engineer. The first day recording
was not smooth and Scott went through and reevaluated the room so that day two
sounded much more together. They put the Bass in the main room with the Drum
set but the Saxophone, Bruce, Keyboard, Grand Piano and the Guitar were all
isolated in there own spaces. The whole band performed everything live so there
was pretty much no redubbing.
It took trial and error to figure
out which microphone would work best for Bruce’s vocals, they started with a
U87 then went to the U67 that sounded smoother but it was not clear enough.
Finally they settled on a Dual Capsule Sanken CU41. I found this especially
interesting because even a premier recording engineer who had recorded with
Bruce twice before had to try different mics until he found the one that
sounded right. When looking into this album it amazed me the number of tracks
that were laid down and finished for this album. The number seems to be between 58 and 80
tracks that were recorded during the Born in the USA sessions. (Peteadmin 2012) The sessions took over 2 years,
1982 until the record was released in 1984, I do not know if the number of
tracks more a product of the times or the producer artist combo.
I found the part about the reverb being broken
because the motor for the decay was not working. I guess I had never thought
about the fact that the reverb would have motors controlling things. I have
always figured you had two options for reverb, digital and using a space to get
reverb from. Another part that was different from what other bands seem to do
is the way that Bruce would teach the songs to his band members. He would teach
the song out of order, Scott explained that this method was used so that the
band would not have made up their minds on transitions between different parts
of the songs before they stated playing, it allowed for more creativity.
Overall this album seemed to be the
perfect storm of a recording engineer and an artist who were both looking to
try new approaches to get the right sound for the album.
Bibliography
Buskin,
Richard. Sound On Sound. 01 01, 2010.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar10/articles/classictracks_0310.htm?print=yes
(accessed 01 11, 2013).
Peteadmin. Brucebase Wiki. 01 01, 2012.
http://brucebase.wikispaces.com/Born+In+The+USA+-+Studio+Sessions (accessed
01 11, 2013).
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