DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Chuck forwarded a pointer to a neat article on the recording of Synchronicity:
The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”

Synchronicity was engineered and produced by the legendary Hugh Padgham, who was interviewed for the article. So was Stewart Copeland, who recalled the peculiar approach they took when recording the drums for the mega-hit:

The kick drum is from a drum box — an Oberheim — and I overdubbed the snare drum, which is actually a snare drum and a Tama gong drum played together, one in one hand, one in the other so you get a really heavy, but cracking, backbeat. Then the hi-hat was overdubbed as a separate track. For the swooshes into the choruses, I overdubbed the gong drum with a cymbal swell played with soft mallets. The drum part was completely assembled with overdubs.

There’s a lot of technical recording jargon in the article, because it was written for MIX magazine — not a magazine you’d be able to find at the airport bookstore. But there are some great anecdotes too:

Recording the bass could be frustrating, Padgham says, when Sting wanted to play while jumping on a mini trampoline. “It sounds mad — and I have trouble recalling whether it was during Ghost in the Machine or Synchronicity, because we recorded them 18 months apart at the same place 20 years ago — but what was really annoying was, even at the best of times, with all due respect to Sting, who is a fantastic bass player, he’s quite sloppy. If you solo his bass track, there’s all sorts of fret noise and bits of dodgy playing. When he was bouncing on the trampoline, it made it even worse.”

In a sense, it’s reassuring that “dodgy” players have a shot at rock stardom. But in another sense, it’s rarely the playing that makes anyone a star — it’s the ability to write songs that sell 30 million copies.