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in Philadelphia, Sigma Sound Studios was Philadelphia’s primary site of record production during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Beyond the musicians, songwriters, and producers of recorded music, can the creative procedures and technical environment associated with the recording studio provide an identifiable impact on the sonic characteristics of the recording studio’s output? Specifically, this paper asks the question: Did the acoustic environment, production workflow, and recording technology in place at the now defunct Sigma Sound Studios of Philadelphia provide an identifiable sonic imprint on the music that became known as Philadelphia soul? 1.1 Sigma Sound Studios and Philadelphia Soul It is then reasonable to expect the recording environment and procedures to have an affect on musical performance, not just the recorded sound.Īffect on performance and sound is central to the thesis of this paper. She writes: “While the performance necessarily dictates what is etched into the cylinder recording, the recording process determines why and how a performance will take place” (Stakelon 2009). Though she was speaking specifically about cylinder recordings, Stakelon further describes this interrelation of performance and process. This culture then sets in place the conditions whereby performance and recording procedures predispose the recording to having a similar identifiable sound. Therefore, the factors that create an identifiable sound become a culturally significant part of the studio’s recording output. Or, as Pauline Stakelon writes, audio recordings “involve a translation of the sound into a new object, allowing for culturally contingent expectations about these sounds to be introduced into the mode of production” (Stakelon 2009). The production of these identifiable sounds creates a new entity separate from the original musical performance. Therefore, in smaller markets where the majority of music production was created in a selected few facilities, such as Philadelphia, Detroit or Muscle Shoals, there is a higher probability that these tacit skills could create uniquely identifiable sounds associated with each recording community. Junior engineers traditionally learned skills from senior engineers and continued the chain of knowledge to others as they rose through the hierarchy of the studio. This building of tacit skills hints at the insular nature of knowledge and training within the recording studio environment. To do this effectively engineers build up not only tacit skills, but also a vocabulary to describe sound” (Horning 2004). “Studio engineers, whether through miking, reverb, or mixing, are engaged in reconfiguring the sonic space of the studio. This sonic manipulation, and the skills necessary to control this manipulation, is further described by Horning. This statement describes an explicit desire to manipulate the studio environment for the creation of unique sonic characteristics. Susan Schmidt Horning described the recording studio’s working environment by saying “…the studio became an instrument in its own right, which musicians and producer-engineering teams exploited to create new sounds, rather than simply trying to capture them” (Horning 2004). Such characteristics can correspond to the perceived acoustic environment, specific recording technology, manipulation of technology and recording workflow procedures. This statement implies that music recordings can have uniquely identifiable sounds involving characteristics other than the music performance alone.
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In his book What’s That Sound? An Introduction to Rock and Its History, John Covach makes the case that “…different recordings have what might be thought of as ‘sonic signatures’ – features that mark them in terms of where and when they were recorded, as well as by whom” (Covach 2009).