R
Rocksoff
New member
I think I could just about write a book on EVH, but I'm not going to.
There is a book coming out soon called Van Halen Rising or something like that, and the author (who is a PhD in something) seems like they might not fill the book up with just fanboy BS, and it might be interesting.
Some interesting things from Ted and Donn about reverb etc
Basically, VH wanted Ted and Donn to produce the first album like the Montrose album, and it's isolated amps and the echo chamber etc and that's what gives it a unique sort of sound.
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Ted: Van Halen wanted me to produce their albums because they liked the way Ronnie Montrose sounded on the two albums I did with them.
Q: Do you like to keep all the players and instruments in the same room?
Ted: It depends. For "Rock Candy" on Montrose's first album, the drums were the only instrument in the room.
The players were all in there with headphones on, but all the amps were in other rooms.
I had the drums miked normally, and I also had two mikes about five feet out from the drums, limited very heavily.
I couldn't have used that amount of limiting if I'd had guitar amps in the room.
Q: What about signal processing?
Ted: I like a real good live echo chamber.
Sunset Sound has a great one.
EMT's (plate reverb) have to be adjusted right, and worked on or they can sound terrible.
The humidity can change a lot of things from day to day, but it's only critical in certain situations.
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Ted Templeman talking about Donn Landee and the Running With The Devil echo.
Ted: And as far as his sound, it was great with that rig of his, patched together out of cheap little pieces as it was. To me, actually, the sound was better in the earlier days. As Eddie got more money-he probably wouldn't want me to say this-he lost a little rawness.
But Donn Landee is such a great engineer, he really took a major part in capturing that raw guitar sound. See, certain guitar players no matter how well they play, just don't have a sense of how to make their instrument sound distinct. I mean, Donn would get a great echo sound on something like "Running With The Devil", which could really help with the echo return on the guitar. And donn had a lot to with the sound on "Beat It" that he didn't get credit for-you can quote me on that. I know that he went down there and got Edward sounding, and even made suggestions for the whole track. See that was harder, because when you're working in the context of a band its one thing, but when you take Eddie and put him in another context, and then have to get his guitar to blend into that track-well, that's what Donn Landee did.
But Edward pretty much had that sound of his at the Starwood. As far as I was concerned-and Donn would probably tell you the same thing-recording him was pretty much a queston of sticking a mike in front of his amp.
When I was recording Van Halen's debut, my strategy was just to take the guitar and blow it up all over the face of the damn map, because I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. In order to do that I had to sacrifice some of the bottom end.
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Donn Landee
Despite the extraordinary results, Landee’s miking set-up was pretty much the same as he’d used on previous clients such as Captain Beefheart and the Doobie Brothers. “For instance, on Alex, it was U47 for the overhead, Sennheiser 421 on the toms, SM57 on the snare. Plus whatever treatment was added to the recordings afterwards.
To compensate for the band’s one-guitar approach, Landee placed Edward’s guitar track slightly off-center in the mix, with a splash of delayed echo from Sunset Sound’s extraordinary live chamber filling up the opposite channel. “It made sense, because we didn’t want to overdub guitars,” says Landee. “If you put the guitar right down the middle with everything else, you’d wind up with the whole band in mono! So it seemed like a reasonable idea.”
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Ronnie Montrose talking about Sunset Sounds Echo Chamber.
SE: So, Ted Templeman is responsible for that big thunder rock sound you guys go on that record?
RM: Yeah. I mean literally we told him...I mean it's a real simple equation,..we told Ted that we liked Zeppelin and Deep Purple and Ted ,you know, he was in a band called...what was their name uh...
SE: Uh...Harpers Bizz...
RM: Harpers Bizzare. They did a recut of Simon and Garfunkel's "Feelin Groovy" and he had just started working as an A&R guy with Warner Bros. and was doin' staff production stuff and he produced Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey" which is how I met him. And when I had left Edgar's group I had my options of between going with Warner Brothers and going with Epic Records.
The head of Epic flew out to California to my house and wanted me on the label, and Ted flew me down to L.A. and wanted me on their label. And I went with Ted because I had more of a camaraderie with him because I'd worked with him with Van. And we told him what we liked and I'm sure he went out and got Don Landee and I'm sure that he and Done Landee went out and got Zeppelin records and Deep Purple records and said let's get these guys this sound.
I mean I have memories of Don Landee crawling around...you've got to remember this is 1973, and there wasn't any such thing as digital reverb. There were live echo chambers...live rooms that had speakers and microphones in them and they were called you know, live rooms. And I have memories of Don crawling up in the attic, crawling around in the room and spreading out packing blankets to dampen it just the way he wanted it. So that was the fine tuning of the live reverb room...to dampen the room physically with packing blankets.
There is a book coming out soon called Van Halen Rising or something like that, and the author (who is a PhD in something) seems like they might not fill the book up with just fanboy BS, and it might be interesting.
Some interesting things from Ted and Donn about reverb etc
Basically, VH wanted Ted and Donn to produce the first album like the Montrose album, and it's isolated amps and the echo chamber etc and that's what gives it a unique sort of sound.
------------------------------------
Ted: Van Halen wanted me to produce their albums because they liked the way Ronnie Montrose sounded on the two albums I did with them.
Q: Do you like to keep all the players and instruments in the same room?
Ted: It depends. For "Rock Candy" on Montrose's first album, the drums were the only instrument in the room.
The players were all in there with headphones on, but all the amps were in other rooms.
I had the drums miked normally, and I also had two mikes about five feet out from the drums, limited very heavily.
I couldn't have used that amount of limiting if I'd had guitar amps in the room.
Q: What about signal processing?
Ted: I like a real good live echo chamber.
Sunset Sound has a great one.
EMT's (plate reverb) have to be adjusted right, and worked on or they can sound terrible.
The humidity can change a lot of things from day to day, but it's only critical in certain situations.
-------------------------
Ted Templeman talking about Donn Landee and the Running With The Devil echo.
Ted: And as far as his sound, it was great with that rig of his, patched together out of cheap little pieces as it was. To me, actually, the sound was better in the earlier days. As Eddie got more money-he probably wouldn't want me to say this-he lost a little rawness.
But Donn Landee is such a great engineer, he really took a major part in capturing that raw guitar sound. See, certain guitar players no matter how well they play, just don't have a sense of how to make their instrument sound distinct. I mean, Donn would get a great echo sound on something like "Running With The Devil", which could really help with the echo return on the guitar. And donn had a lot to with the sound on "Beat It" that he didn't get credit for-you can quote me on that. I know that he went down there and got Edward sounding, and even made suggestions for the whole track. See that was harder, because when you're working in the context of a band its one thing, but when you take Eddie and put him in another context, and then have to get his guitar to blend into that track-well, that's what Donn Landee did.
But Edward pretty much had that sound of his at the Starwood. As far as I was concerned-and Donn would probably tell you the same thing-recording him was pretty much a queston of sticking a mike in front of his amp.
When I was recording Van Halen's debut, my strategy was just to take the guitar and blow it up all over the face of the damn map, because I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. In order to do that I had to sacrifice some of the bottom end.
-------------------------
Donn Landee
Despite the extraordinary results, Landee’s miking set-up was pretty much the same as he’d used on previous clients such as Captain Beefheart and the Doobie Brothers. “For instance, on Alex, it was U47 for the overhead, Sennheiser 421 on the toms, SM57 on the snare. Plus whatever treatment was added to the recordings afterwards.
To compensate for the band’s one-guitar approach, Landee placed Edward’s guitar track slightly off-center in the mix, with a splash of delayed echo from Sunset Sound’s extraordinary live chamber filling up the opposite channel. “It made sense, because we didn’t want to overdub guitars,” says Landee. “If you put the guitar right down the middle with everything else, you’d wind up with the whole band in mono! So it seemed like a reasonable idea.”
-----------------
Ronnie Montrose talking about Sunset Sounds Echo Chamber.
SE: So, Ted Templeman is responsible for that big thunder rock sound you guys go on that record?
RM: Yeah. I mean literally we told him...I mean it's a real simple equation,..we told Ted that we liked Zeppelin and Deep Purple and Ted ,you know, he was in a band called...what was their name uh...
SE: Uh...Harpers Bizz...
RM: Harpers Bizzare. They did a recut of Simon and Garfunkel's "Feelin Groovy" and he had just started working as an A&R guy with Warner Bros. and was doin' staff production stuff and he produced Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey" which is how I met him. And when I had left Edgar's group I had my options of between going with Warner Brothers and going with Epic Records.
The head of Epic flew out to California to my house and wanted me on the label, and Ted flew me down to L.A. and wanted me on their label. And I went with Ted because I had more of a camaraderie with him because I'd worked with him with Van. And we told him what we liked and I'm sure he went out and got Don Landee and I'm sure that he and Done Landee went out and got Zeppelin records and Deep Purple records and said let's get these guys this sound.
I mean I have memories of Don Landee crawling around...you've got to remember this is 1973, and there wasn't any such thing as digital reverb. There were live echo chambers...live rooms that had speakers and microphones in them and they were called you know, live rooms. And I have memories of Don crawling up in the attic, crawling around in the room and spreading out packing blankets to dampen it just the way he wanted it. So that was the fine tuning of the live reverb room...to dampen the room physically with packing blankets.
