Motown Attic Reverb Chamber

They d put a speaker and a mic in the chosen space to get the sound of the send bouncing around.

Motown attic reverb chamber.

Motown used the attic. This wasn t a traditional reverb chamber it wasn t controlled from the board adjusted by positioning mics to pick up the desired amount of reverb. Motown records hitsville usa complex is rumored to have used a hole in the ceiling as a jerry rigged echo chamber. The motown sound owes some of its uniqueness to the reverb effect created by pumping tracks through the company s echo chamber in the days before computers and synthesizers.

In addition to the echo chamber motown also had an emt 140 plate reverb and an echoplex tape delay unit they d use from time to time. In our attempt at recreating the motown sound we used the audio ease altiverb reverb plugin universal audio s digital emulation of the emt 140 and a fulltone tube tape echo. Another studio used the bathroom. Would not slap a motown label on every song his producers offered.

The bottom line is that the resulting chamber which had a smooth natural quality with a somewhat longer reverb time was not as popular as the original chamber in the hitsville attic. Will kurk and joe shadid take a trip to rax trax recording studios to explore the musical must haves of the beloved moto. Hitsville s attic chamber was crude and not at all designed with acoustical perfection in mind but its ambience had a certain character that came to shape the iconic motown sound. The hitsville chamber had a distinctive and strong individuality to its sound quality with flutter echos from the parallel walls and a rather short reverb time.

True to his commitment to quality berry gordy jr. At elliot hall of music on purdue s campus they have a whole bunch of speakers erratically hanging in the space above the back of the stage that used to be for a reverb chamber. Also the motown house in detroit had an attic that was used as the reverb chamber. A rich piece of motown s history is relived when visitors clap and sing into motown s innovative echo chamber a hole cut in the ceiling and experience early reverb.

What makes motown sound like motown.