MOTOWN ENGINEERING SERIES No. 1
By ROBERT DENNIS
The Motown Heritage Of Pre-Mastering The Multitrack
In a way you could accurately state that Lawrence T. Horn, Motown's Chief Recording Engineer mixed every Motown release between 1964 and 1967. Lawrence did this remarkable feat by implementing a recording "system" for Motown and by ingenious management of a staff of engineers. His claim to fame came from his system developed for 3-track recording in 1964:
1. Any staff engineer would record a basic session on three tracks. The engineer was strictly forbidden from using any eq, compression, or any other type of signal processing.
2. Lawrence Horn would mix together the three tracks into one track. To do this, he would play the multitrack master on a playback machine and record onto track one of the 3 track master recorder. Lawrence would use all of the processing gear to make this mix. He was basically doing a "final" mix of the rhythm track. This procedure made a "B" reel that could further be recorded on.
3. Any Staff engineer would cut the horns onto tracks 2 & 3 of the B reel. Brass instruments would be on one track and woodwinds would be recorded on the other track. Again the engineer wouldn't be allowed any signal processing.
4. Lawrence Horn would take the B reel and mix the horns with signal processing onto track 2 of a new 3 track tape, making a C reel to allow further recording. Track 1 [[final rhythm) would be copied to the new C reel at the same time.
5. A more experienced engineer would record the strings onto track 3 of the C reel. This job wouldn't be given to the greenest engineer on staff.
6. Lawrence horn would mix the stings and horns onto track 2 of a new, D reel, using, of course any signal processing he deemed necessary. Track 1 would again be copied to the new D reel at the same time.
7. Any staff engineer would record background vocals onto track 3 of the D reel without any signal processing.
8. A more experienced engineer would bounce the background vocals and add lead vocals, using signal processing to a new E reel on track 3.
The E-Reel had all of the final "mixed" elements and was the final multitrack reel used for mix down. All staff engineers would be invited to mix the production off of this reel and submit their mixes to the Quality Control Department. Quality Control would pick the best mix. Engineers would "compete" for the mix that was chosen for release.
Since Lawrence Horn did the transferring & mixing to make the multitrack, he actually did most of the mixing on the released version. Since he was good at mixing, he often would be the engineer that won the mixing competition.
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