BBC Arts: Breaking down David Bowie's Heroes

[tblizzParticipant]

"Producer Tony Visconti uses the original master tapes from sessions at Hansa Studio in Berlin to get to the heart of one of David Bowie’s best-loved songs, the title track from Heroes.

We hear the song built up by individual contributions, including those from guitarist Robert Fripp, Brian Eno's 'synthesiser in a briefcase' and of course David Bowie's powerful, harshly emotional vocal."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03g18sx

[Steve AParticipant]

That's a great little piece of history right there, thanks for posting this, I love things that feature a song or session's 'deconstruction' if you will...
I had read a book some time ago about that three mic technique using the gates and the room, brilliant stuff, even if it was because they had a track limit..
But beyond that, and maybe more importantly, it's another thing that Tony did, was have the guts to record things with whatever effect/technique right from the get-go, and use it for the album.
I'm currently reading Visconti's book "Bolan, Bowie, and the boy from Brooklyn" and that's one of the things he was so impressed with when he started working in the UK, is that they would do that all the time.
He remembers saying to himself "They really do things better over here" when he first witnessed it.
Thanks again, t..

[Andrew MckenzieParticipant]

Yeah I enjoyed that, another fine example of pure creativity and to hell with the gear.... 🙂

[tblizzParticipant]

Pretty big room where they did the "3 microphones and 2 gates" technique:

[tblizzParticipant]

And now (soon) available as an Eventide plug-in named Tverb... in stereo!

[Steve AParticipant]

Wow! Nice!
That's a great looking room...and knowing Tony, that should be a great plug..

[tblizzParticipant]

Very cool! It shares some similarities with the Universal Audio Ocean Way Studios plug-In; for instance the the 3 microphone setup (minus dynamics section) and the big name affiliation (Allen Sides).

I hope the Eventide plug-in will be as satisfying as the UAD offering!

[auntiebeebParticipant]

Thanks for posting this, a great clip that I would have missed otherwise. Fascinating!

[Kevin WilliamsParticipant]

Thanks for this! I had no idea that there's more to that Ebow line! ☺☺☺

Cheers! ♫♪♫

[Steve AParticipant]

SOS posted a video tour of it just recently too, Bowie and Iggy used to call it "The big hall by the wall"
Here:
https://youtu.be/wG8H0YwRB3U

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