50 Fun Facts About Music Production

Which radio crooner ordered $50,000 of Ampex tape recorders so he could pre-record his shows?

Bing Crosby wanted to tape his radio show rather than perform it live, and his order let a six-man firm build a commercial recorder based on Germany's wartime Magnetophon.

Which software gave Cher's hit Believe its robotic vocal and later became the signature sound of T-Pain?

Auto-Tune was built to correct off-key singing, but Believe was the first commercial release to use it as an obvious stylistic effect. The trick became known as the Cher effect.

Which Roland drum machine flopped on release, then became the booming bass drum of hip-hop?

TR-808 sales stalled below 12,000 units because producers wanted realistic drums. Its deep bass drum later drove hits such as Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing.

Which producer, nicknamed the Fifth Beatle, made comedy records with Peter Sellers before signing the band?

George Martin ran EMI's Parlophone label, where comedy hits staved off corporate pressure. He had studied piano and oboe and once worked in the BBC's classical music department.

Which producer made Michael Jackson's Thriller after first working with him on Off the Wall?

Quincy Jones rose in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor, then scored films such as The Italian Job. Thriller went on to become the best-selling album of all time.

In which Apple music app did producer Tricky Stewart find the hi-hat beat for Rihanna's Umbrella?

GarageBand includes a stock loop, Vintage Funk Kit 03, that recreates the Umbrella beat. Stewart came across the hi-hat sound while messing around in the app.

Which Queen single stacked up to 180 overdubs, bounced across eight generations of tape?

Bohemian Rhapsody took three weeks to record. With only 24 tracks on tape, three band members sang the whole operatic choir themselves, layer on layer.

Which producer recorded his sister Billie Eilish's debut album in his own small bedroom?

Finneas chose his bedroom in Highland Park, Los Angeles, over a professional studio because the siblings liked how the homely room treated vocals. They also disliked studio costs.

Which London recording complex, opened by the Gramophone Company, hosted nearly every Beatles album?

Abbey Road Studios began as a nine-bedroom Georgian townhouse, and the recording rooms were built over its large back garden.

Which guitarist pioneered overdubbing and tape delay on 1950s hits recorded with wife Mary Ford?

Les Paul layered Mary Ford's voice on multiple tracks until one singer sounded like a vocal group. His solid-body prototype, the Log, also inspired a famous Gibson guitar.

Which Detroit record label cut its 1960s hits in a converted house nicknamed Hitsville U.S.A.?

Motown founder Berry Gordy turned a former photography studio at the back of the house into a recording room that stayed open 22 hours a day. His family lived upstairs.

Which Memphis producer recorded early singles by Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash at his own Sun label?

Sam Phillips opened his Memphis recording room in 1950, and it claims to be the birthplace of rock and roll. Rocket 88, reputedly the first rock and roll single, was cut there.

Which dense recording style did Phil Spector build at Gold Star Studios with about twenty-five session players?

Wall of Sound sessions drew on the players later called the Wrecking Crew, and Spector mixed the results only in mono. Gold Star's echo chambers were central to the effect.

Which producer shaped West Coast G-funk on The Chronic and later signed Eminem to Aftermath?

Dr. Dre built G-funk on a synthesizer foundation and slow, heavy grooves. He went on to co-found Beats Electronics, the headphone company.

Which Swedish producer, once a glam-metal singer, wrote and co-produced Britney Spears's debut single?

Max Martin fronted a glam-style metal band called It's Alive before turning to pop. As a writer he has since passed John Lennon's total of Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles.

Which producer co-founded Def Jam as an NYU student and later made Johnny Cash's American Recordings?

Rick Rubin was studying film at New York University when he started Def Jam. A decade on, he asked other songwriters to supply new material for Cash to record.

Which synthesizer did Wendy Carlos play on Switched-On Bach, a platinum-selling classical album?

Moog synthesizers of the day sounded only one note at a time, so Carlos assembled every track note by note. The instrument drifted off pitch so often that Carlos recalled hitting it with a hammer.

Which electronic instrument, invented by a Russian physicist, is played without the performer touching it?

Theremin players move their hands near two metal antennas, one sensing pitch and the other volume. Each hand forms half of a capacitor with its antenna.

Which inventor built the tinfoil phonograph, a by-product of his work on replaying telegraph messages?

Thomas Edison's phonograph could play its recordings back, which an earlier French sound-tracing device was never designed to do. Sound was pressed into tinfoil wrapped round a cylinder.

Which standard, devised by Roland and Sequential Circuits, lets synthesizers from rival makers control each other?

MIDI sends instructions such as a note's pitch, timing and velocity rather than sound itself. It was first demonstrated linking a Prophet 600 to a Roland synthesizer at the 1983 Winter NAMM Show.

Which Avid recording software was used start to finish on the chart-topping single Livin' la Vida Loca?

Pro Tools made editing vocals far easier than cutting tape, and Livin' la Vida Loca became the first Hot 100 number one recorded, edited and mixed entirely inside it.

Which Berlin-made software, created by members of techno act Monolake, pairs Session View with Arrangement View?

Ableton Live grew out of tools its creators wrote to perform techno on stage, so it works as an instrument for concerts as well as a recorder.

Which tape-playing keyboard supplies the flute sound that opens the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever?

Mellotron keys each pull a strip of magnetic tape across a playback head. Its famous flute blends an alto and a soprano flute, which explains the odd tuning when chords are played.

Which Yamaha FM synthesizer supplied the electric piano sound heard on countless power ballads?

DX7 sales passed 200,000, making it the first successful digital synthesizer. Its sound engine came from Stanford's John Chowning, who worked out how to build tones with FM.

Which Roland bass synthesizer flopped as a bass-guitar substitute, then became the foundation of acid house?

TB-303 units turned up cheap second-hand, and the Chicago group Phuture twisted one into Acid Tracks, often credited as the first acid house record.

Which Australian sampler, named after a Sydney Harbour ferry, counted Peter Gabriel as its first British owner?

Fairlight CMI machines came with a light pen for working on screen, and the instrument is credited with coining the term sampling in music.

Which sampler, designed with Roger Linn, put a four-by-four grid of rubber pads at the heart of hip-hop beatmaking?

Akai MPC pads let producers chop a record into short samples and trigger each one like a drum, where earlier artists had sampled long passages.

Which effect, made famous by Peter Frampton, sends a guitar's sound through a plastic tube into the player's mouth?

Talk box players shape the instrument's tone with their mouth while a microphone picks up the result. Frampton first heard one at sessions for George Harrison's All Things Must Pass.

Which rotating speaker cabinet, built for the Hammond organ, uses the Doppler effect to make notes swirl?

Leslie cabinets spin a baffle in front of the loudspeaker. Hammond had no interest in selling them, so inventor Donald Leslie marketed the add-on himself.

Which Phil Collins single, co-produced with Hugh Padgham, is famous for its gated reverb drum sound?

In the Air Tonight made the effect a staple of 1980s pop. Padgham said he found it by accident, when he opened a talkback microphone hanging above Collins's drums at a Peter Gabriel session.

Which seven-second drum solo from a Winstons B-side became one of the most sampled recordings in history?

Amen break drummer Gregory Coleman and his band received no royalties, even though the loop has been used in thousands of tracks across many genres.

Which final stage of record-making, the specialty of Grammy winner Bob Ludwig, readies a mix for duplication?

Mastering produces the master recording, the source from which every copy is pressed or duplicated. In the tape era that meant copying the final mix down to a single mono or stereo reel.

Which audio processor, whose classics include the 1176 and LA-2A, turns down peaks to even out a performance?

Compressor circuits reduce the volume of sounds above a set threshold. Radio DJs use the same idea for ducking, so the music dips automatically whenever they speak.

Which microphone supply was first run off the emergency-lighting circuit at Norwegian broadcaster NRK?

Phantom power runs down the same balanced cable that carries the sound, so studios could keep the leads they already used. It feeds condenser microphones, usually at 48 volts.

Which unit of sound level began as a measure of signal loss on early telephone lines?

Decibel means one tenth of a bel, a unit named in honor of Alexander Graham Bell. It replaced an older measure based on the loss over a mile of standard cable.

Which Metallica album was so loud on CD that buyers sought out its less squashed Guitar Hero version?

Death Magnetic drew mainstream attention to the loudness war, the industry race to make recordings as loud as possible. Fans even petitioned for a remix.

Which Jamaican genre grew from King Tubby stripping vocals off reggae tracks and reworking them at his mixer?

Dub pioneer King Tubby was a radio repairman who built his own studio gear and played the mixing desk like an instrument. He is often cited as the inventor of the remix.

Which Bronx DJ stretched drum breaks using two copies of a record, building on his Merry-Go-Round technique?

DJ Kool Herc was playing parties in the recreation room of his family's apartment building in 1973. His looped drum solos became the basis of hip hop.

Which producer swapped disco's usual orchestra for a borrowed synthesizer on Donna Summer's I Feel Love?

Giorgio Moroder wanted the song to evoke the future on an album where each track stood for a different decade. He also founded Munich's Musicland Studios, used by Queen and Led Zeppelin.

Which former Roxy Music keyboardist produced U2's The Joshua Tree and wrote the Windows 95 start-up sound?

Brian Eno also co-created Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards meant to help artists past creative problems. His album Music for Airports is credited with coining the term ambient music.

Which Beach Boy quit touring to produce Pet Sounds with session players while his bandmates were on the road?

Brian Wilson filled the album with bicycle horns, Coca-Cola cans and his own barking dogs. A bandmate nicknamed him dog ears for his sensitive hearing.

Which producer of Nirvana's Nevermind coaxed Kurt Cobain into double-tracking his vocals by citing John Lennon?

Butch Vig told the reluctant singer that Lennon had done the same thing. He went on to play drums in Garbage, a band that sold 17 million records in ten years.

Which Bruce Springsteen album consists of solo demos he taped at home on a four-track cassette recorder?

Nebraska was meant to be re-recorded with the E Street Band, but Springsteen found the full-band versions unsatisfactory and released his bedroom tapes instead.

Which nickname of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section is name-checked in Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama?

The Swampers were four session players from FAME Studios who opened their own studio in 1969. The Rolling Stones were recording there by December of that year.

Which Greenwich Village recording facility did Jimi Hendrix commission but use for only ten weeks before his death?

Electric Lady stands in a former nightclub that Hendrix had planned to reopen, until his advisers persuaded him to turn the space into a professional studio.

Which engineer of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon later formed a hit-making Project under his own name?

Alan Parsons earned his first Grammy nomination for the album, then turned down its follow-up, Wish You Were Here, to start his own group with Eric Woolfson.

Which German electronic band set up Kling Klang, its private studio, in Düsseldorf in 1970?

Kraftwerk named the studio after the first song on their second album, and the band regards setting it up as their real beginning. It started as an empty room in a workshop.

Which swirling tape effect is said to take its name from the rim of a reel that engineers pressed with a finger?

Flanging began with two tape machines playing the same recording while an engineer slowed one by touching its reel. Historian Mark Lewisohn credits John Lennon with the name.

Which producer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood first found fame with the Buggles on Video Killed the Radio Star?

Trevor Horn was 30 when that single reached number one in the UK. His grip on 1980s pop later earned him the tag of the man who invented the eighties.

Which half of production duo the Neptunes met partner Chad Hugo at a Virginia Beach summer camp?

Pharrell played drums at the camp for gifted students while Hugo played tenor saxophone. A local talent contest later got the pair noticed by producer Teddy Riley.