Sounds And Stuff Like That

In 1978 I had the pleasure of working on Bedtime Story on the Quincy Jones album "Stuff Like That" in a rather unusual capacity. I was working at Sound Ideas Studios at the time and had worked with Harry Lookofsky, a prodigiously talented violinist, on many sessions but NEVER like this. Harry was usually one of the section players but his time Sy Johnson had transcribed Herbie Hancock's electric piano solo and Harry was to play all of it as a "section" would.

So, into the studio we went. I had set up many chairs (as if they were to be occupied by "a section") and also several mics in the much same way I would if there were a good sized section on hand for a pop recording. I had Harry move to a new location each time we went to a new track. He played slightly differently each time and that way there was also a slightly different acoustical "fingerprint" on each pass. (I think Harry thought it a bit of a pain in the, but...)

And we were off! First we recorded the pad type parts you'd expect to hear on a pop recording. I don't recall how many passes we made, but I do remember I had been sent a 2' 24 track work tape that had several passes of the tune on 4 tracks of pre-mixed elements (stereo rhythm and stereo electric piano) and 20 open tracks to record on. I think we filled up 20 tracks with the pad type "stuff" and then went ahead to the next copy of the same pre-mixed 4 tracks and we began recording the solo. Once again, I don't recall how many passes we did on that, but it sounds like at least 20. Then, when we were done, we shipped it off to the illustrious Bruce Swedien to be mixed.

Today this sort of thing is almost passe but I think it was pretty cool for 1978.

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quincy jones/sounds and stuff like that

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