O.T. Geoff Emerick has died

[Richard Rupert]

Sad indeed. I met him at AES a few years ago where he signed my copy of his book "Here, There and Everywhere".
https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=G...dies&FORM=EWRE

[Dave Labrecque]

Geoff had been all over Tucson last week doing PR with a friend of mine ahead of his scheduled appearance this coming weekend as part of his "London Revival" tour. My friend, Dave, has been in hog heaven. Here's a shot from last week -- an interview at a local radio station that I worked at briefly in the mid-90s, and that I helped wire up when new facilities were built out 10 or 15 years ago:



But enough about me. Here's his manager's Youtube announcement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwPv...ature=youtu.be

[Tom M]

Geoff's passing and the amazing stories of how he accomplished so much with so little got me thinking again about whether all the time people spend screwing around with gear could be better spent looking for better talent to record.

Last week, I visited both Sun Studios and RCA Studio B in Tennessee. Both are pint-sized holes-in-the-wall and both had some really primitive gear (by today's standards) during their most productive years. Yet with virtually no isolation between instruments, and sometimes with just one Shure 55 in the middle of the room, they turned out some of the most dynamic, exciting records of my generation.

I also just saw a three-hour presentation entitled "Deconstructing Abbey Road" in which the presenter soloed all the various tracks of each song. Geoff was the principal engineer on this album. Some of the tracks were noisy, distorted, or out-of-phase, but in context, delivered a sound that is magic to the ears almost fifty years later.

I think the point I am trying to make is that, when the music and the performers are something special, a great engineer's only job is to capture what is already there, as true to the live performance as possible. That's what guys like Geoff were able to do, perhaps because they weren't always so stressed out about whether the next Windows 10 update was going to crash their system.

[Tim Miskimon]

Geoff's passing and the amazing stories of how he accomplished so much with so little got me thinking again about whether all the time people spend screwing around with gear could be better spent looking for better talent to record.

Last week, I visited both Sun Studios and RCA Studio B in Tennessee. Both are pint-sized holes-in-the-wall and both had some really primitive gear (by today's standards) during their most productive years. Yet with virtually no isolation between instruments, and sometimes with just one Shure 55 in the middle of the room, they turned out some of the most dynamic, exciting records of my generation.

I also just saw a three-hour presentation entitled "Deconstructing Abbey Road" in which the presenter soloed all the various tracks of each song. Geoff was the principal engineer on this album. Some of the tracks were noisy, distorted, or out-of-phase, but in context, delivered a sound that is magic to the ears almost fifty years later.

I think the point I am trying to make is that, when the music and the performers are something special, a great engineer's only job is to capture what is already there, as true to the live performance as possible. That's what guys like Geoff were able to do, perhaps because they weren't always so stressed out about whether the next Windows 10 update was going to crash their system.

Great points you made Tom - exactly how I feel about the state of recording in 2018.
It's not about the room or equipment it's the people involved with the whole process of song creation and recording.
Geoff made some great records with some great bands and his imagination and ear helped make those records.

[Tom M]

This discussion, and just about any technical discussion about music or recording, brings to mind a lyric that pops into my head over-and-over, throughout my life. It's the middle-eight from Paul Simon's One Trick Pony, and it goes:

He makes it look so easy, look so clean
He moves like God's immaculate machine
He makes me think about all these extra moves I make
And all this herky-jerky motion
And the bag of tricks it takes
To get me through my working day...
One trick pony.