The Trevor Horn Sound

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blissblogger

Well-known member
Classic example of the Superproducer where every record - regardless of the band - sounds exactly the same.

He just has his sound and imposes it. The only way to differentiate the groups at all is by the vocalist.

One of his particular hallmarks is a kind of chiming rhythmic guitar sound - sort of a "ca-ching" - haloed in reverb. It's like something glinting when it catches the light. Not really rhythm guitar though, as it's not a pulse but like a single ringing ca-ching.

Presumably it's a particular session player he keeps using.
 
V

version

Well-known member
blissblogger said:
Classic example of the Superproducer where every record - regardless of the band - sounds exactly the same.

He just has his sound and imposes it. The only way to differentiate the groups at all is by the vocalist.
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Yeah, the opening of Date Stamp when the bass comes in sounds so much like Relax.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I mean Derrick May needless to say is hardly the most reliable narrator, kinda what happens when you're that horney on the job.

i found this funny though

TORSTEN SCHMIDT
I just remember you saying that at the beginning of the early ‘90s, “I’m just not doing any records anymore because I feel like I don’t have anything musically to add to what I’ve already said.” And it was like really mixed emotions towards it because like, some of the people said like, “Hey, that’s a really brave thing to say.”
DERRICK MAY
It’s kind of stupid, too.
TORSTEN SCHMIDT
Or coward-ish, maybe.
DERRICK MAY
It could be considered that.
TORSTEN SCHMIDT
But there’s nothing sadder than, if you look at what Paul Weller is doing to himself these days.
DERRICK MAY
What is he doing?
TORSTEN SCHMIDT
He’s just doing the kind of music that thirty years ago he wouldn’t have had the energy to hate the people who do it.
DERRICK MAY
Right, I see. You know, I don’t... Man. The reason I said that is because I had a meeting with some pretty major people about 15 years ago. It was a pretty big deal on the table. It was a major, major, major record deal. And I don’t know how many artists get the chance to have a record, to get a record deal without any demos. I did no demos. So the deal was on the table for Warner Brothers. It was a serious deal, I had no demos, it was six months into the deal negotiations. Final week before I signed the deal I sat down with Trevor Horn. It was his record company. Let me finish the story.
So I’m sitting there and Trevor, it’s this gigantic table, he’s got like this Knights of the Round Table shit in his office. And we’re sitting there at his table, he’s sitting at the other end of the table, tripping. And I’m at this other end and I feel like I’m in some really bad Federal Express commercial or something like that. And the dude says, “So tell me Derek,” as he lights up his spliff, “How do you feel about Top of the Pops?” [inhales] He’s trying to be cool. I said, “Top of the Pops?” The reason he asked me that is because I can’t stand at the time Top of the Pops. I thought it was a whack show.
TORSTEN SCHMIDT
It’s not history as well.
DERRICK MAY
It’s not history. Do you guys know what it is? What it was? OK, if you’re from the States, there was Dick Clark. That was the show, they had like the top 10 bands of the week. They’d have them perform. It was a horrible show. Soul Train was better than that, believe it or not. In this country or even England for that matter, Top of the Pops. Really crappy show where the top 10 bands of the week that had the top pop songs, they’d perform live their song. It’s a really bad show. It’s embarrassing.
So I said, “No, I don’t want to do that.” I was really fair about it, he said well, “You know, Kraftwerk did Top of the Pops.” I said, “Really?” I was very sincere about that, I said, “Really, wow.” In other words, almost like I have to think about that. But I think inside his spliff was not weed, I think it was cocaine, because that motherfucker didn’t understand a goddamn word I said. When I left the meeting, he said I was a lunatic because I didn’t want to do Top of the Pops. And the deal was off.
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TORSTEN SCHMIDT
What I don’t get about this whole thing is that obviously there’s always been a strong affirmation and fascination with european electronics in Detroit, but the Transmat sound and Trevor Horn. That’s like totally opposite polars.
DERRICK MAY
Not really, because he felt, Trevor Horn, if anybody here is familiar with Art of Noise or Frankie Goes to Hollywood or Propaganda, all that stuff. That was nice stuff. Still today, when I listen to that I just have to sit back and just turn on the surround, just check it out man. It’s beautiful, the way they layered it and the technical sort of EQing and just the amount of time they put into that sound.
TORSTEN SCHMIDT
Technology-wise, I mean, it’s obviously...
DERRICK MAY
It was on point at that time.
TORSTEN SCHMIDT
Without a doubt, but then on the other hand, what many people were so relieved about with the Detroit techno was that it somehow incorporated some sort of a post…
DERRICK MAY
Minimalism to it at the time. We didn’t want that sound, but we felt like he was one of the few people that understood electronic music, and that’s why we gravitated to the man. We went to him because we felt like this dude understands electronic music. That would make sense. There was no other record labels at that time that had that kind of juice that would give you the kind of freedom to make the music you wanted to make.
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Strings of Life on TOTP without him playing it? now it all makes sense...
 
V

version

Well-known member
blissblogger said:
Classic example of the Superproducer where every record - regardless of the band - sounds exactly the same.

He just has his sound and imposes it. The only way to differentiate the groups at all is by the vocalist.

One of his particular hallmarks is a kind of chiming rhythmic guitar sound - sort of a "ca-ching" - haloed in reverb. It's like something glinting when it catches the light. Not really rhythm guitar though, as it's not a pulse but like a single ringing ca-ching.

Presumably it's a particular session player he keeps using.
Click to expand...

Some of the Art of Noise stuff sticks out from the rest. The first album's like My Life In The Bush of Ghosts meets '80s Rick Rubin.
 
O

okzharp

Well-known member
chaching guitar harmonics through one of these
H3000-Wide.png
 
0bleak

0bleak

Well-known member
blissblogger said:
Ah, so that's how that sound is achieved!

Same machine that Goldie used on "Terminator".

And This Heat on "24-Track Loop"

And Tony Visconti all over Low
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There were some earlier models than that one which would have been what Tony Visconti used.

I also thought 24-Track Loop was done with tape loops. I can't find anything on google that mentions using an Eventide.
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
0bleak said:
There were some earlier models than that one which would have been what Tony Visconti used.

I also thought 24-Track Loop was done with tape loops. I can't find anything on google that mentions using an Eventide.
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There's a thing in the Guardian that mentions it:

"This Heat specialised in crashing together disparate elements: lo-fi recordings and cutting-edge technology – their use of a harmonizer, the pitch-shifting digital effect notably deployed on David Bowie’s Low album, resulted in 24 Track Loop, an instrumental that sounds more like a piece of experimental noughties dance music than something recorded in 1979"

Charles Hayward mentioned it to me as well. The transcript of the interview for Rip It Up, later at the Quietus
https://thequietus.com/articles/011...-simon-reynolds-an-outtake-from-totally-wired

24 Track Loop' has these percussion sounds that almost sound like jungle, the pitchshifted breakbeats in darkside drum'n'bass. But you did that in, what, 1979, whereas darkside was 1993.

CH: "We did that with this thing called the Harmoniser. It meant you could give a tonal scale value to anything, like a drum. That album was the Harmoniser sessions. When I think about what Cage, Pierre Henry, Stockhausen were doing, and then you compare that with what's happening today with laptop music, or Pro Tools. It would take Stockhausen a month to get 15 seconds of music when he was collaging bits of tape together. But the struggle is part and parcel of what comes out the other end. If it's too easy, there isn’t that yearning inside it.
 
0bleak

0bleak

Well-known member
Ah, yes - I should have searched for Harmonizer instead of Eventide.
I was actually just listening to it again for the first time in ages while reading your Quietus interview that i found from another page.
The main thing I remembered was the flanger and delay kinds of effects, but that wouldn't explain the pitch change that happens.
After listening to it again, I was thinking about how I'm not sure how you would get that done with just tapes even if the flanger and delay kind of effects would be possible if you have the same tracks playing just slightly out of sync with each other.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
other_life said:
see i was naive and thought it was done by manipulating flanger + delay feedback in a dynamic way - which *does* give things this overtone of a subjective pitch
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no the loops definitely have that vertigo you get from pitch shifting whilst the track is playing. What I think you are describing works better with sort of beatless music and drone. I once did it with some old Nasheed. extreme pitchdown of the master track, and then gradual alteration of flanger+delay, where the alterations are minute but do give the sense of subjective alteration of pitch.


this is more strictly a timestretch where it gets seriously grainy. You can hear a bit of that in Terminator, but more the breaks being shifted up and down. whereas here its the 160 decelerated to 80

 
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