In the second half of the twentieth century the process of recording music became both more complex and progressively cheaper. More and more people had the opportunity to try out novel musical approaches to recorded music

The guitarist and inventor, Les Paul, working in New York, discovered multitracking just after the second world war but it took quite a while for this approach to become commonplace.

In the next two decades recording techniques were developed by a set of classically educated producers and arrangers who chose to work in "non serious" music.

Two key figures also came - from New York - Teo Macero (see www.furious.com/perfect/teomacero.html) who produced Miles Davis at CBS and who was mentored by the electronic music pioneer Edgar Varese and Burt Bacharach (see www.bacharachonline.com).

photo by Catherine Rankovic

Some of the classic recordings that these two produced at the start of their careers were made in very demanding conditions - expensive studios filled with expensive musicians playing complex arrangements with highly gifted soloists. The Miles Davis-Gil Evans recordings, Porgy and Bess and Miles Ahead, fit this description as do the early Bacharach/Dionne Warwick recordings. It seems incredible but Walk On By and Anyone who Had a Heart were both recorded in the same three hour recording session.

Les Paul .....

"when a fellow sang in 1928 he had his face in the microphone and the guitar had to come from where it was hanging by this belt and he had to play that guitar which was actually under the microphone and he's down there just clear enough away that he's not hitting the stand and so how does that sound travel up? You know the bass response is exaggerated on the flat dreadnoughts and the guitars were just excellent so every guy that was in the place was using a Martin guitar because you could get that excess bass, but by the time it got to your microphone, boy it was just right. Then you get a guitar that sound right in the room and then you hang it underneath the microphone. Gene Autrey and all those guitar players back there at WLS in Chicago, I was there and I don't know that they all did their analysis on it, but it was just my nature to figure out just how that Martin sounded so good when the country guy strummed it and played it."

and...

Bill Wyman says, "Can I talk to you privately?" I said, "come on up to the room hon." (laughs) So I took him upstairs and that's where it started. He was one of many who asked my advice. A lot of people ask me for my advice. Many important people. I gave him my advice and I guess they've been grateful for it ever since. I told them where to bury their money!

See interview by Bob Goldman www.musicianshotline.com/archive/interviews/lespaul1.htm

At about this time George Martin began to work with the Beatles and famously moved through ever more complex recording and production techniques. Teo Macero went on a similar journey of discovery with Miles Davis in the studio up to Miles' retirement in 1975 using the kind of innovations that Les Paul had first devised.

The agenda was set for all kinds of experimentation and indeed the Velvet Underground also working in New York had been inspired by the sonic innovations of Phil Spector and Lamont Young to develop a new approach to sound.

Indeed by 1975 he had moved to New York along with other avant garde sonic pioneers like Eno and Fripp to join in the fun (see www.fredfrith.com).

Fred Frith

Obviously this kind of experiment makes a fair old racket and a studio type environment makes things easier. Frith had tenancy of No 1 Victoria St in Cambridge which had two rooms in the basement and was on a corner opposite a pub. It was here that his band Henry Cow developed their novel music. That little corner of Cambridge is not so different from Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side where the Velvets made their sonic experiments.

When Henry Cow moved out I took over the tenancy for a year and had a band which included Dag Small, the keyboard player who went on to work with Jon Cole and Greg Lake in the Movies. In my previous band, with Richard Jones, we had been lucky enough to meet George Martin who showed his then new state of the art recording facilities at Air Studios. Indeed my first experience in a studio had been with Jon Cole's band - thanks to an introduction from Fairport Convention - a few years earlier. At this stage getting into a studio was still a very big thing.

When I moved out the basement became Spaceward Studios. By this time the cost of recording equipment had fallen so that innovative recordings good be created away from the major centres like London and New York. Spaceward pioneered this new more democratic approach to recording. Their story has been told by Mark Graham at www.spacewardstudios.ukf.net where he sets out how Spaceward help with the next generation of sonic experimentation.

Nowadays you can get a whole studio in software for about £30 and produced your own CDs on a £700 computer. The world of recording is now truly democratic and everyone can be their own Teo Macero or George Martin - its imagination not money which is the constraint.