Production Firsts

I was just listening to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlE6eHEENg4

which apparently is the one of the first uses of phasing on a record. What are some other first examples of production tricks, frills, fx, etc?

"Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa, the first hit record to use the Roland 808 drum machine

"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" the first hit record to use the Gibson Maestro fuzzbox

"Reflections" by Diana Ross & the Supremes, first hit record to use a Moog synth

apparently "Sing Sweet Nightingale" from Cinderella (1950) was the first use of multitracking to make a singer harmonize with herself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l-vJ4fdac8

Patti Page used multitracking later that year on "Tennessee Waltz", as did Les Paul & Mary Ford on their version of the song (although they didn't go dull apeshit with the technique until "How High the Moon" in early 1951)

("full apeshit", that is)

Some examples can be found in this thread:

The history of specific sounds in electronic music

Given a prototype by Robert Moog Annette (Peacock) is thought to have been the first to use one to process her voice.[1]

Doesn't seem to be the case though, according to the Wikipedia article on vocoders:

One of the first uses of a vocoder to create music was using the “Siemens Synthesizer” at the Siemens Studio for Electronic Music, developed between 1956–1959.[16]

In 1968, Bruce Haack built a prototype vocoder, named "Farad" after Michael Faraday,[18] and it was first featured on "The Electronic Record For Children" released in 1969 and then on his rock album The Electric Lucifer released in 1970.[19]]

She was using the filter (and ring mod, I think) on her voice.

Here's the credited first use of distorted guitar on record - from an accidentally damaged amplifier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbfnh1oVTk0

was Cher's 'Believe' the first chart hit to make excessive use of autotune?

was Cher's 'Believe' the first chart hit to make excessive use of auto tune?

yeah, but I'd really love to hear any examples before that. the machine had been out a year or so before Believe hit.

One of the first examples of playing a recording in reverse (not that obvious, but…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMM5RFHcBdI

IIRC "Believe" doesn't actually use Autotune, but some other processing method... Though obviously the end result is quite similar, and was heavily imitated.

I think Believe did actually use Autotune, though people do use the word to describe a process that loads of different programs can do nowadays.

Ah okay, I was wrong... Apparently it does use Autotune, but at the time it came out the producers claimed they were using a vocoder, because they wanted to keep it a trade secret that Autotune could do stuff like that. That must be where my confusion came from.

Robin Gibb "Saved by the Bell" - first pop song to feature a drum machine

Perhaps the earliest commercial issue of recordings with overdubs was by RCA Victor in the late 1920s, not long after the introduction of electric microphones into the recording studio. Recordings by the late Enrico Caruso still sold well, so RCA took some of his early records made with only piano accompaniment, added a studio orchestra, and reissued the recordings.[citation needed]

Sidney Bechet made a pair of famous overdubbed sides in 1941, "The Sheik of Araby" and "Blues of Bechet". Multi-instrumentalist Bechet recorded on six different instruments; each version had to be recorded onto a new master disc along with the preceding performance, with consequent loss of audio quality. The novelty was issued as "Sidney Bechet's One Man Band". The American Federation of Musicians protested the recording, putting an end to experiments with commercial overdubbing in the United States for years.[citation needed]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_ORo7xI3PY

Halim El-Dabh, "The Expression of Zaar" -- first tape composition/musique concrète, 1944.

Others have attributed it to George Chkiantz, an engineer at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London. One of the first instances on a pop recording was The Small Faces' 1967 single "Itchycoo Park",[5] recorded at Olympic and engineered by Chkiantz's colleague Glyn Johns.

The first stereo flanging is credited to producer Eddie Kramer, in the coda of Jimi Hendrix's "Bold as Love" (1967). Kramer said in the 1990s that he read BBC Radiophonic Workshop journals for ideas and circuit diagrams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGEgRnvFzLY

apparently "Sing Sweet Nightingale" from Cinderella (1950) was the first use of multitracking to make a singer harmonize with herself. Patti Page used multitracking later that year on "Tennessee Waltz", as did Les Paul & Mary Ford on their version of the song.

Patti Page actually used the technique on her record 'Confess' in 1947, back when recordings were made directly to disk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TINg81um_2U

The engineer had to tie two recorders together by rewiring the control board, and when Patty sang along with a replay of the original disk, the sound machine recorded it and her voice together onto the second disk.

and by 1949 she'd graduated to 4-part harmonies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR1ZBPJOKng

One of two commercially issued tracks ("Music Makes Me" also posted) that Astaire recorded outside the United States. Produced in London with an unidentified studio orchestra, this title song from the first on-screen pairing of Fred and Ginger displays both a fade-in open and fade-out close...quite unusual for recordings of that period.

Processed from digital source, originally issued on 78rpm: Columbia (UK) DB-1329 and Columbia (US) 2912-D - Flying Down To Rio (Kahn-Eliscu-Youmans) by Fred Astaire with studio orchestra, recorded in London December 12, 1933

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtQGzf6lLtM

toni fisher record is very good

what was the first film sample ever used on a record? first 'chart hit' might have been E=mc2 by BAD? i'm sure there loads more before that possibly dating back years.

Jon & Vangelis' "The Friends of Mr. Cairo" (from 1981) has some extended bits that sound like dialogue samples from Bogart, Peter Lorre, etc, but they were done by impersonators... However, that tune does have a genuine movie sample too, according to Wikipedia:

At the beginning of the track, the screeching of tires and a car horn are heard, presumably as a car makes an attempted getaway, which then gives way to the sound of gunfire. This screeching sound/car horn is identical to that heard in the 1970 feature film Get Carter (at 1.1.52-1.1.56), and was probably sampled for use on the track.

Ah, there's an even earlier example: "Flash" (1980) by Queen samples dialogue from the Flash Gordon movie. I'm not sure if that counts, though, as it was made for the soundtrack of that movie.

IIRC "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" (from 1981) also has a sample from the Flash Gordon movie. That might be the first tune to sample a movie it's not associated with?

Hmm, it seems the Grandmaster Flash tune actually samples a Flash Gordon audioplay, so I guess it doesn't count...

Does Meco's disco version of the Star Wars theme actually sample the movie, I can't remember? It does have some R2-D2 bleeps, but they could've been created in the studio.

shit i never thought about Flash Gordon! most samples from songs not used in the film itself were invariably taped-off-the-tv-with-a-microphone jobs
(Prinal Scream's Loaded, all the St Etienne ones etc). very lo-fi.

"Flash" (1980) by Queen samples dialogue from the Flash Gordon movie

if we're gonna go there, what about the beatles sampling a bbc radio broadcast of "king lear" on "i am the walrus" (1967)?

or, way before that, john cage's "imaginary landscape" series (starting 1939), which incorporated a variety of existing sounds from turntables, radios, etc. (not sure, though, if any performances way back then were recorded, or just performed live). and obviously plenty of other electronic and musique concrete composers were doing similar things.

none of those are film samples

oh, sorry, i misunderstood. carry on then.

(except i'm sure there are examples of early electronic composers incorporating sounds from film in their pieces.)

yeah I was googling around for that kind of thing but I couldn't find any concrete evidence

"Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa, the first hit record to use the Roland 808 drum machine

First hit record in North America, maybe. YMO had been using the 808 for two years by that point.

I've essentially decided it is but it's worth asking, is this (at 1:55) the first hit single with proper vocal delay (a UK hit in March 56)? Stan Freberg's Heartbreak Hotel was still a few months away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqnhsGpjjkY

what was the first film sample ever used on a record?

"Clergy" by Jefferson Airplane, from 1969, "samples" King Kong. It's actually a live recording of the film playing before they come onstage.

Does anybody know what the first instance of using low pass filter sweeps was? Is it on some house record? Or did it originate elsewhere?

I've essentially decided it is but it's worth asking, is this (at 1:55) the first hit single with proper vocal delay (a UK hit in March 56)? Stan Freberg's Heartbreak Hotel was still a few months away.

You might well be be right. That's a really intense production for the time. There is very conspicuous delay on the vocal all the way through, with a tight delay time, classic slapback sound I guess, until 1:55 when the delay time is extended to exaggerate the effect. The drums and guitar are highly processed too, with a lot of compression. Fuck knows what is going on with the snare.

To make matters stranger, it predates the UK release of Elvis' HH, so the punishing slapback is even more inexplicable.

what was the first film sample ever used on a record?

This United Artists single from 1967 features samples from How I Won the War.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8hOo5BXaXc

Kember, in particular, managed to coax some highly unusual sounds out of the EMT 250 digital reverb — only one example of which survives on the finished album, partway through 'Siberian Breaks'. In the album credits, it is jokingly referred to as the "first documented use of the EMT 250 reverb 'glitch'”.

"He figured out that it's the sound that it makes when you change a bunch of settings at once,” explains Goldwasser. "It's not a smooth transition. You do all this stuff and then you press the button and there's this kind of Looney Tunes sound that it makes where it all catches up and goes 'boing'.”

"He'd just be sitting there with a cigarette in his mouth and sunglasses on,” laughs VanWyngarden, "making it go 'Kkccco!'”

"So we'd be trying to record a part or listen to rough mixes or whatever,” Goldwasser continues, "and all of a sudden we hear Pete making this sound. We're like, 'Pete, can you just chill out with that for just a second?'”

Re:first film sample. From 1951, what about this extremely weird George Martin production? The main, so-called "gurgle glub gurgle" sound effect comes from The Man in the White Suit. It also makes this possibly the first pop record to do de facto musique concrete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUvded8mqw