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Here's a image from this week's edition of the free HC Confidential newsletter - FAME Studios at 603 East Avalon in Muscle Shoals Alabama:

 

MuscleShoals.jpg

 

Here's the exterior:

 

800px-FAME_Recording_Studios_Muscle_Shoa

 

And the control room - pretty cozy...

 

ms-studio-panel.jpg

 

It's apparently still a working studio, which warms my heart no end. :)

 

Muscle Shoals has a very rich and interesting musical history, and FAME was one of the biggest studios in town, and the original home of The Swampers - the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. They left in '69 and started their own studio, which they named Muscle Shoals Sound. Here is an exterior shot of their famous studio:

 

800px-3614_Jackson_Highway_September_200

 

It's on the National Register of Historic Places.

 

Here's the cozy interior:

 

MuscleShoalsSoundStudio.jpg

 

And the control room:

 

muscle-shoals-inside.jpg

 

In 1978, Muscle Shoals Sound moved down closer to the Tennessee river on Alabama Ave. in Sheffield and into a new, larger facility - here's the exterior:

 

Muscle_Shoals_Sound_-_New_Location.jpg

 

One (of the two) of the control rooms:

 

3.jpg

 

and a tracking room:

 

Cypress-Moon-Studios-formally-Muscle-Sho

 

The original guys sold the studio in 1985. I believe this later facility was most recently purchased by a film company (Cypress Moon Productions) in 2005.

 

The list of music that was recorded at these facilities is pretty darned impressive...

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I shudder just looking at those MCI JH-24s... I've spent way too many hours of my life aligning those. They have pullout drawers for each bucket of 8 tracks. You pull them out, tweak them, align them perfectly, then push the drawer closed and BAM! There goes the alignment! :lol:

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You know what I see in those pics? I see spaces where a core group of musicians would be very comfortable working out feels and arrangements and ultimately laying down tracks together. The highish ceiling, the simple acoustic treatment. Enough floor space to have room and work but not too much to feel like you're lost in a hanger.

 

No go and listen to the opening bars of Respect Yourself or Kodachrome above and picture those spaces in the pics. It all makes sense to me.

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Yeah, they really are nice sized rooms - big enough to sound good, but small enough to be workable and intimate without being overwhelmingly huge. The problem is, too many rooms in that size range are disappearing. Many of the surviving "big boy rooms" are noticeably larger than the Muscle Shoals Sound and FAME studios tracking rooms. Most modern control rooms tend to be larger too, but I think you really hear it in the tracking rooms. Today, the trend is to close mic and add in the ambience later via plugins or rack units... large, unique sounding dedicated recording spaces are kind of a disappearing breed. :(

 

I am definitely a fan of tracking "together" whenever possible -- at the very minimum, I want to get the rhythm section captured as a unit. It definitely has an effect on the overall vibe and feel of the track.

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I am definitely a fan of tracking "together" whenever possible -- at the very minimum, I want to get the rhythm section captured as a unit. It definitely has an effect on the overall vibe and feel of the track.

 

 

The wonderful thing about immersing yourself in the Muscle Shoals sound is that... it so attainable. There were no virtuosoes in the line up. What they had was the ability to think of parts that interlocked in such a cool inevitable way. So, by listening to say The Staple Singers album "Be Altitude: Respect Yourself" (Stax), over and over again, it just makes so much pure and simple sense. The interplay of keys player Barry Beckett (frequently on a Wurly), drummer Roger Hawkins, and bassist David Hood... that core trio created the record.

 

It can be daunting tracking a few guys at once and making it work, but when you start soaking up the way that trio of guys did it, well, for me, it just pointed to how simple things can be and yet so right. And so cool. Then it's more a matter of what's happening on the floor, and what we can take out of each part to make it lock. Simple motifs made of 1/4s and 1/8's. Listen to how Respect Yourself's bass part sets up Beckett's Wurly answer and Hawkins gets a little + 4 at each cycle of the riff. It's awesome.

 

Now go listen to Kodachrome, it is so freaking cool, their use of simple motifs put together in a simple yet very well thought out way. Just listen to those three work off of Simon's melody line. The rhythm of it. And how they interplay around his line. It's... simple and perfect. It's gospel without any cliches. Amazing.

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Kodachrome really is just an amazing track... I love the feel of it. Same with The Staples stuff - the parts may be simple, but it just has a great groove. And see, that's the thing - a lot of the best pop, rock, soul, etc. is made up of relatively simple parts, arranged in cool ways. The virtuoso parts are flashy and attention getting, but they often don't serve the song - they tend to draw attention to themselves and not to the song. Anyway, that's kind of how I see it sometimes. Keep it simple, clever and catchy. There's no need to over-complicate it if you have a few really good parts that work well together.

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The old MCI console with the red assign buttons is a copy of the board that I used at Pickwick Records as "remastering engineer". Actually, the one I used was a copy of the one in the picture above most likely. The board I used was very small, about 8 channels in total, which didn't matter since I only used 2-4 channels. I believe the one with the red assign buttons shown above (I forgot the model number) was MCI's first "mass" produced mixing console. I used it in about 1975/6 or so at Pickwick. I wish I had some pix.

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Ive been there many times over the years. I used to live 45 minutes from the tri cities area.

 

 

I live 45 minutes from there now, in Decatur. I spent three and a half years in the Florence/Muscle Shoals area going to school at UNA working on a commercial music degree (before I realized how many guys with commercial music degrees were working in restaurants with me, at which point I went back to UAH and got my electrical engineering degree instead).

 

I'm way out on the fringes of the local recording scene, since I'm more of a dedicated home studio hobbyist - I don't make my living with it. But there are a lot of guys around here with a lot of history behind them.

 

The original Muscle Shoals Sound studio building is still open for business. Noel Webster owns it now. I've never met Noel, but we have a couple of mutual friends and last I heard he was still tracking bands to tape there.

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