Mark Royzenblat

Studio Recording Techniques

December 12th, 2019

The Man with the Golden Ears

Phil Ramone was born on Jan 5th, 1934 in South Africa. Shortly after his birth his family

moved to New York City where he grew up in Brooklyn. At the age of three, he began taking

violin lessons and quickly became a child prodigy. He became more and more attracted to jazz

and popular music, being influenced by jazz violinists such as Joe Venuti and Stuff Smith and

bands like the Count Basie Orchestra. Eventually, he went to Julliard School to study classical

violin but his interests were elsewhere. He switched his focus to be a songwriter and worked at

the famous Brill Building.

Ramone was able to meet many reputable people in the music industry there including

Quincy Jones, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, all of whom he would

work with in his career. He was eventually recruited as an engineer at JAC Recording studios,

where he met his later future partner, Jack Arnold. Together they opened A&R Recording in

1958, a new recording studio where the aim was to specialize in recording jazz and pop artists.

He was able to gain experience with working with different producers like Creed Taylor and

Tom Dowd. Among jazz artists that recorded there was John Coltrane for his record, “Ole

Coltrane”, Gerry Mulligan for his record “Spring is Sprung”, and Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto for the

hit-Grammy Award winning record, “Getz/Gilberto”. In 1962, he was music director/recorder of

Marilyn Monroe’s famous “Happy Birthday” performance for JFK.

Pop music became the main interest for Ramone, working with artists like Billy Joel,

Elton, John, Paul Simon and Frank Sinatra. He slowly began to shift his attention to producing
and got his first producer credit on the sound track for the film “Midnight Cowboy”. His career

began to grow when he produced Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years”, Billy Joel’s

“The Stranger” and engineering Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”. Producing then became his

main gig and he would continue working with big name artists like Barry Manilow, Madonna,

Chicago, Kris Kristofferson and many more.

Phil Ramone had may career highlights that he talked about, one of which was for the

soundtrack to the movie Beyond The Sea, starring Kevin Spacey, about the singer Bobby Darin.

The team spent 3 years preparing vocals and finding the original big band charts. Since Ramone

always wanted to innovate, he wanted to get the best sound for the band. They put the band “in a

semicircle, with the drums and bass off to one side, and the guitar opposite, and the brass off to

the right, the clarinets and saxes to the left, the trombones next to the saxes, and the trumpets at

the end.” They used a microphone on every instrument and had a section of 35 strings in a few

tunes. They also used some really interesting mic techniques: they placed Neumann M50s with

directional patterns, which are usually omnidirectional mics really high against the walls. They

also used EMT 140 plates for the reverb which helped create a nice setting in the movie. The

whole movie was recorded on “two HD Pro Tools systems and 24-track analogue tapes at 15ips,

Dolby SR.”

Another large career highlight for Phil Ramone, was Elton John’s performance at the

Royal Opera House in London and Radio City Music Hall concert. During the London

performance, he used a full band, orchestra, choir, and an extended band. For recording, he used

a Euphonix R1 desk and two Sony 3348 digital 48-tracks. 2 years later at the Radio City concert

he used Pro Tools while using 114 Audio-Technica microphones including ATM35, AE5100,

AT4050 and AE5400. Since the rock and roll band gets loud and reflects off the back wall,
recording the orchestra would prove more difficult especially getting the details. So they used

contact microphones in the F-Holes and on the tailpieces of the strings, section mics, and

overheads for ambience. Both concerts were mixed in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound.

Phil Ramone was widely known for being an innovator and pioneer in finding the best

sound. A list of all the things he was first to do is as follows, courtesy of soundonsound.com: use

of solid-state console for recording and mastering, use Dolby four-track discrete sound in a

motion picture, link a recording studio with the Hollywood film sound facility Todd-AO via

satellite, use Dolby optical surround for a film, use digital live recording, use fibre-optic system

to record artists in different locations in real time. He has also won 14 Grammys for various

projects throughout his career and an Emmy for a television special.

His studio called, Shire Studios, is based around a Yamaha DM200 with Steinberg

Nuendo and in another room he has two Yamaha 02Rs with Pro Tools HD. He is able to do

different types of mixing including 5.1 surround sound. This studio is more designed for pre and

post production as it is built inside a barn on Ramone’s Farm about 50 miles away from NYC.

In 2005, Ramone was a huge proponent of stem mixing which Ramone described as “like

cooking an important meal…line up the ingredients, it’s just a conglomerate of nothing. But

when you put things together in different bowls, with each bowl contained a unique dish, then

you can start creating a great four-course meal.” He also explains how mixing with your hands is

very different than doing it with a mouse because dictating/typing in amounts of volume change

takes away from the emotional aspect of the music. Even though Ramone was a big proponent of

sound innovation he still preferred “man to be in charge.” In the early days of recording there

was no recall features since everything was on tape or vinyl so you couldn’t make a mistake and
if you did, it would be recorded. Ramone says doing this decreases the intensity of the recording

process…treating a studio session like a live date will make results come out a lot better.

Phil Ramone married the singer/actress Karen Kamon and lived for 73 years.

Refrences

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/phil-ramone-producer

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/apr/01/phil-ramone

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phil-Ramone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_%26_R_Recording