Phil Spector: ~1962. New York composer and producer. Famous for ‘all of sound’ technique in creating fullness in productions, which “usually comprised of three drummers, three bassists, numerous guitarists or keyboard players, a three or four piece horn section and a few percussionists” ¬The producer as Composer, Virgil Moorefield, Pg 32
This was achieved by getting players to perform in unison, adding musical arrangements for large groups of musicians up to the size of orchestras, then recording the sound using an echo chamber. Songwriter Jeff Barry, who worked extensively with Spector, described the Wall of Sound “by and large…a formula arrangement” with “four or five guitars…two basses in fifths, with the same type of line…strings…six or seven horns adding the little punches…[and] percussion instruments—the little bells, the shakers, the tambourines”
Leiber and Stoller consider to be very distinct from what they were doing, stating: “Phil was the first one to use multiple drum kits, three pianos and so on. We went for much more clarity in terms of instrumental colors, and he deliberately blended everything into a kind of mulch.
Multiple instruments playing the same notes in tandem resulting in an inseparable blend of sonority was often emphasized via the utilization of post-processing effects such as reverb, tape delay, or dynamic range compression.
session musician Barney Kessel recalled:
“[T]here was a lot of weight on each part.…The three pianos were different, one electric, one not, one harpsichord, and they would all play the same thing and it would all be swimming around like it was all down a well. Musically, it was terribly simple, but the way he recorded and miked it, they’d diffuse it so that you couldn’t pick any one instrument out. Techniques like distortion and echo were not new, but Phil came along and took these to make sounds that had not been used in the past. I thought it was ingenious.”
Microphones in the recording studio captured the musicians’ performance, which was then transmitted to an echo chamber—a basement room fitted with speakers and microphones. The signal from the studio was played through the speakers and reverberated throughout the room before being picked up by the microphones. The echo-laden sound was then channeled back to the control room, where it was recorded on tape.
Despite the trend towards multi-channel recording, Spector was vehemently opposed to stereo releases, claiming that it took control of the record’s sound away from the producer in favor of the listener, resulting in an infringement of the Wall of Sound’s carefully balanced combination of sonic textures as they were meant to be heard.[14] Brian Wilson agreed, stating: “I look at sound like a painting, you have a balance and the balance is conceived in your mind. You finish the sound, dub it down, and you’ve stamped out a picture of your balance with the mono dubdown. But in stereo, you leave that dubdown to the listener—to his speaker placement and speaker balance. It just doesn’t seem complete to me.”
Pg 56;
Recording Techniques 