Fairlight-CMI

I think that's an excellent point, Scott — there probably used to be a
LOT more pre-production work done on records in general, but esp. for
people like Horn, who raised it (literally) to an art form.  

But in a way, I wonder if what you're saying actually reinforces the
point I was making.  Jeczalik seems like he would be what Laurence
referred to as one of the Fairlight "power users."  And it would seem
to make sense that he would be the type to use MCL.  

For instance, in a Sound On Sound feature on Horn
(http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar05/articles/trevorhorn.htm ), I
found this:

"When the Fairlight arrived there was no real way of locking it to my
little rig. It was very primitive. I realised almost straight away
that it was a full-time occupation for somebody, but luckily there was
a guy called JJ Jeczalik [co-founder of Art Of Noise, now occasionally
recording as Art Of Silence] who worked with Geoff Downes. He was
bored and looking for work, so I did a deal with him and I gave him
the Fairlight and he worked on it night and day.

"One of the first really interesting things we did that blew me away,
was we sampled Thereza Bazar going 'aahhhh' and 'la! la!' And we used
that on Dollar's 'Give Me Back My Heart' and it worked perfectly. What
was clever about what we did, though, was that Thereza Bazar didn't
just sing into the machine, we made up the samples. We 16-tracked her
for every note. This was still in the days of analogue tape, and we
bounced it down so we had a beautiful bed that was 16 tracks of her,
across the range of an octave or whatever. And JJ disappeared into the
back room and he spent weeks with her voice — f#*$&#* weeks! — and
finally he wheeled it out and we played her onto the track. It was one
of those fantastic evenings where I had to phone Thereza up and say
'Thereza, you won't believe it but we've put your backing vocals in
from the Fairlight.' She didn't really know what we were doing, but
when she heard it she loved it. How could you not love it? It was so
good!"

He's just talking about the sounds here, but you get the impression
that there was some hard-core programming going on.

--- In Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com, Scott Kozicki <flynn23@...> wrote:
>
> 
> On Oct 4, 2006, at 9:11 AM, matthew_weiner_2000 wrote:
> 
> > Lastly, I'm replying to this response of yours, as part of me wonders
> > how much of the artiest IIx stuff I've been hearing—JJ Jezcalik's work
> > with Trevor Horn comes to mind—was done on MCL as opposed to Page R.
> > There's just this hyperattentive level of detail on some of those  
> > records.
> 
> That's probably more to do with Trevor Horn being the producer than  
> the Fairlight. You are talking about a world renowned perfectionist.  
> Someone who would routinely re-record enter finished productions  
> because he didn't like something about one track in the completed  
> work. There are several books available which talk about the  
> production techniques and stories behind a lot of pop records, and  
> Horn's never cease to entertain. Compare Horn with someone like say  
> Tony Mansfield, and you'll see what I mean.
> 
> Oddly enough, this was back in the days where spending 9 months in a  
> high end studio to craft an album was common. The production costs  
> were enormous. If you were meticulous, it actually TOOK 9 MONTHS to  
> record and mix stuff back then because the tools were so primitive.  
> Ironically, with all of the power and sophistication of today's  
> tools, it's much more common to bang something out in your basement  
> these days and call it a tune.
> 
> Cheers,
> Scott
>