

Recorded tracks, so he would adeptly calculate the rate of brightness loss on a Recorded earliest would sound progressively duller than the more recently I was going at 78rpm with the EQĮncountered by Paul was the fact that after multiple bounces the tracks That gave me a lot of room, and I was burning up thoseĭiscs. “I got around that by recording at 78rpm on the outside Record, you would lose highs,” Paul told me when I interviewed him in 2001īold Techniques). Was still a problem, however, as a result of the physical properties of the acetate Preamp with a 5kHz boost that added brightness and bite. The mixer’s guitar input fed a custom tube

Input and output levels of the various pieces of gear, resulting in the It was specifically designed to optimally match the Paul employed several ingenious devices and techniques to address those significant challenges.īy his friend Wally Jones. Obviously, the more times he dubbed back and forth, the less distinct the original tracks would become, and the more noise and distortion would be added overall. To record additional tracks, he would simply continue the process of bouncing back and forth, until he had everything he needed.

The output of the mixer was routed to the second disc recorder, resulting in two layered “tracks” on a single disc. He would record one part using the first machine, and then play that recording back through a mixer while simultaneously monitoring the sound using headphones and playing a second part. These unprecedented recordings blew the minds of millions of people-industry professionals and lay listeners alike-upon their release in 1948.īy the time Paul went public with his New Sound, he had already been bouncing back and forth between a pair of disc-cutting lathes for a number of years. Paul played all the instruments on these “multiples,” as he referred to them, including drums and percussion, quasi bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, and several additional guitars that played back at double-speed and consequently were pitched an octave higher. Barry Cleveland: How Les Paul Created His Extraordinary New SoundĪfter secretly toiling away in his garage studio for many months, Les Paul emerged in late 1947 with the first two songs from a batch of extraordinary recordings embodying what became known as his “New Sound.” Paul’s uncanny arrangements of “Lover” and “Brazil” were created using a primitive form of multi-tracking-technically sound-on-sound recording-involving two modified cutting lathes, simple but brilliantly employed electronics, and a large quantity of blank acetate discs.
