Over-produced. Over-appreciated.

By Des Burkinshaw

The Beatles have a (deserved) reputation for being the band that made the recording studio the principal tool of rock music.

Of course, there were great studio rock and pops wizards before them, not least Phil Spector and Joe Meek. Their major contributions, I suggest, were to change the way music was recorded. In Meek’s case, by using unusual spaces for echo, crafting his own compressors etc. And doing it all from home, which has become the 2024 model for almost all music, bar the highest of high ends. Spector’s revolution was in the arrangements. Let’s have 3 different pianos playing in sync, 2 basses, 4 guitars in unison.

However, despite these advances, both of their staggering outputs are still recognisably classic pop songs.

More importantly historically in terms of the radical overhaul of music structure, there were the music concrète experiments of Pierre Schaeffer and associates in France, starting in 1948. Schaeffer’s studio produced highly innovative work, including Karlheinz Stockhausen’s first major electronic work, Konkrete Etüde in 1952.