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How to avoid rock ‘n’ roll noise pollution

September 25th, 2008 by Derek

On my personal blog I’ve just raved about the new AC/DC single, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Train.” It’s the same kind of brilliant, mindless heavy song the band has been recording for 35 years (they know what they’re good at), but it’s also a good lesson in rock ‘n’ roll recording.

My friend Tara worked as an assistant engineer here in Vancouver on AC/DC’s previous release, the 2000 album Stiff Upper Lip. They recorded the new album, Black Ice, in the same studio (the Warehouse, built by Bryan Adams), so I expect little has changed in their recording process. Tara told me that, despite having all the money and time to use whatever technology they wanted, back in 2000 the band still brought in 24-track analog reel-to-reel tape machines. They laid down their bed tracks live, overdubbing only for vocals and guitar solos. They plugged straight into their amplifiers, adding no effects pedals at all.

Listen to “Rock ‘n’ Roll Train” and you can tell. Not a lot of Pro Tools there. Unlike most current rock tracks, the mix isn’t overcompressed or heavily limited, so it has room to breathe. The guitars aren’t even really especially overdriven, compared to the buzz-saw crunch coming out of many bands’ Mesa-Boogie amps today. (Angus Young apparently only turns up the volume to about 5 on his Marshall stack.)

If you track down the stereo mix (YouTube is mono), the guitars are panned pretty hard, with one Young brother on each side. Most of the rest of the mix, including the guitar solo, is largely front and centre. Yet all the instruments and voices are well separated in their frequency ranges, so you can hear each one. Listen in particular to subtle changes in the arrangement. The second verse is a perfect build of rock orchestration:

1. Start with only the drums.
2. Next, drums and one guitar on the right side.
3. Then drums and one guitar and lead vocal.
4. Followed by drums and two guitars (suddenly the left side comes to life) and the vocal.
5. As the verse progresses, the guitars alter their rhythm to a more staccato pattern (still matching each other), but otherwise nothing changes.
6. Next are the drums and both guitars and lead vocal, but we add background vocals.
7. Up to now, you don’t notice the lack of low end. Only when the verse is almost over does the bass come in, giving the whole mix extra oomph.
8. And that’s right before the chorus and the guitar solo.

That pattern never repeats itself exactly. Each verse combines the instruments a little differently. For instance, the intro of the song is one guitar (which you can tell is AC/DC within about two seconds, all by itself), a drum hit, then all the instruments at once. But the bass cuts out when the first verse begins, to make room for the lead vocal. The final verse and chorus, on the other hand, include some lead guitar.

Throughout the track, you can never quite predict when the bass guitar will play and when it won’t. As is often the case with AC/DC’s songs, pieces of the arrangement, like the pause after the solo, are slightly shorter than you might expect. Others, like the drum break right after that pause, are just a bit longer, so you’re regularly (if unconsciously) surprised. See, AC/DC isn’t as simple as you might think, is it?

Perhaps most important, it’s a fantastic performance. The rhythm is immensely solid and booty-shaking. The guitars and drums sound amazing. Brian Johnson is singing as well as he ever has, probably better. The guitar solo is wonderfully alive, and remarkably short. The band and producer Brendan O’Brien (best known for his work with Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots) focused not on editing the life out of every recorded track in post-production, but on getting it right, with great sound, at the beginning. The mixing and mastering don’t create the recording, they reveal it.

I suspect it probably didn’t take them very long either.

Entry Filed under: Blog