How do I get that Jeff Lynne sound?

I would agree that Lynne's sound is prevalent even in most "co-productions" like the George and Wilbury stuff. Interestingly, on "Flaming Pie", they credited some tracks as produced by "Jeff Lynne/Paul McCartney" and others as "Paul McCartney/Jeff Lynne", perhaps suggesting a stronger role for each on some songs more than others. But pretty much all of the Lynne stuff on "Flaming Pie" has the trademark Lynne sound. Even on the songs that don't have drums, you can hear it in the dry lead vocals, or backing vocals, or acoustic guitars, etc. I remember years ago reading a review of the "Flaming Pie" album where somebody was talking about anticipating how strongly Lynne's sound would come on. They talked about listening to the first track, "The Song We Were Singing", and how it didn't have a lot of very obvious Lynne hallmarks. But then the second track, "The World Tonight" comes on and we're in full "Tweeter and the Monkey Man" mode.

Interestingly, it sounds like George's few post-87 productions took on some of the Lynne production sound, like the two "new" tracks "Poor Little Girl" and "Cockamamie Business" in 1989, and even the track Harrison did with Carl Perkins, "Distance Makes No Difference with Love." I would also say that some of the Mike Campbell-co-produced tracks on Orbison's "Mystery Girl" have some of the Lynne production sounds going on, which would make sense as Campbell had been working with Lynne on "Full Moon Fever" presumably around the same time, although I don't know how concurrent or staggered the sessions for those two albums were.

 

For the acoustic guitars, find somebody that can play like an absolute robot and put super light strings (or super zingy eq) on the guitar. Have him follow the hi-hat EXACTLY. Capo-ing the guitar (or guitarS) up will give extra zing.

 

Snare sound...

I have not read the rest of the postings ...But,in respect to the snare ...On the Beatles albums post 66 they would double the back beats on the snare on an awful lot of tunes,especially the White Album ... Just hitting the 2/4 to fatten it up ... If you buy the book "RECORDING THE BEATLES" ( Curvebender ) you will know exactly how Jeff Lynne gets his sound ...
Regards
Jake
I should be getting a comission from Ryan and Kehew ...

 

Thanks for the tip.
I'm mostly going to be doing all the instruments myself.

The guitar pattern will not pose too much of a problem for me since I'm a guitarist who started off as a drummer and I usually play straight rhythm anyway.

 

I've got the book. I agree, it's very helpful for any recording enthusiest.

 

I'm sure you don't need me to point this out, but I would imagine while the sound and production values can be discussed seperately from the actual music in question, I would imagine the type of music you're thinking of recording would also play into how Lynne-esque the sound is going to be. If you're doing a basic sort of rock/pop thing, it's probably easier to apply some Lynne-esque touches as opposed to recording a jazz fusion number or something.

One additional hallmark of Lynne's sound worth mentioning is his recent electric guitar sound. If you check "Zoom" out, you'll hear a really compressed, crunchy guitar sound. I think he used his old Telecaster on most of that stuff, and perhaps even if he just played it straight through an amp and simply mic'ed it, perhaps that is one of the areas where the 1176 piece of gear came into play (I'm totally guessing this as someone who doesn't have that gear or much recording/engineering knowledge).

One additional and slighty more subtle thing I hear in some of Lynne's productions is on the backing vocals. He often does the lush, layered vocals. But sometimes, on some tracks, you'll hear almost stray-sounding single voices doing sort of abrupt and almost truncated vocal parts. This can be heard sometimes when you OOPS some of his tracks. I'm trying to think of some easy examples, but I'm not sure I can come up with one. If you pick apart the 5.1 mix of "Free As A Bird" for instance, you can hear this one part near the end of middle section with the guitar solo, there is this one stray soaring vocal bit that Paul sings that sounds really Lynne-esque, almost as if Lynne sang it.

You can hear this a bit on McCartney's track "Little Willow" as well only with more than one voice, with some backing vocal bits that sound very much like punch-ins (not neccesarily in the literal/technical sense of recording punch-ins, but sort of sounding like that). A more prominent example of this would be the backing vocals on "When We Was Fab", with the quick "do-do-do-fab" and "gear" parts.

 

Another major element of Jeff Lynne's production is the lack of reverb on the vocals. I know a couple of the business who dislike it, but I actually think it's an integral part of the ELO sound. I think a lot of engineers are so used to automatically dialing in a certain amount of reverb on the lead vocals, they're almost offended when somebody does it totally dry.

I think Jeff's an underrated singer. To me, the production work on all the stuff he did with ELO, Tom Petty, George Harrison and so on are fantastic, and it doesn't bother me that there's an identifiable sound with all of them. Even the post-Beatles tracks he did sound fine to me; granted, it isn't George Martin, but they're fine for what they are.

 

Jeff"s vocal style ..operatic Roy Orbison,Bee Gee high voice, Bob Dylan, and his own voice which sometimes has a bit of Lennon in it.

 

I suppose you're correct. Flaming Pie didn't sound like Cloud Nine, which made me think Jeff was more subdued. I generally associate Jeff's sound as the 87-91 sound, which had a lot of synths. By the time of Flaming Pie, that was mostly gone.

Have you heard Del Shannon's Rock On? Jeff Lynne produced some of the tracks and Mike Campbell produced the others. Campbell's tracks sound just like Lynne.

 

I've GOT to send the URL of this thread to a friend of mine who absolutely can't stand Jeff Lynne's sound. Doesn't even respect Lynne for the fact it's his signature and is wholly unique ... he refers to Phil Spector's sound as "the Wall of S_ _ t." Other than that, we agree on a lot of other recording production values.

On second thought, what's the point?

BTW, I've loved Brian Wilson's "Let It Shine" since the day the CD came out ... twenty years ago this month. TWENTY YEARS AGO. Sheesh.

Hey, anyone know what Jeff Lynne's up to these days? Maybe a solo (or "ELO") album? It's been awhile ...

 

He's become a 'Pugwash' fan according to my dear friend Ken Simpson who plays with Neil Innes!!

I'm playing it down though whilst I enter re-hab for shock therapy.....!!!!!

T.

 

Jeff's sound has changed over the years. My favorite period was when he worked with engineer Richard Dodd. Richard did both Wilbury's records as well as George Harrison's Cloud Nine, Tom Petty's albums, Del Shannon, Dylan, etc... plus he did Jeff's solo record (Armchair Theater). He's really the one who refined the Jeff Lynne sound to a thing of beauty.

Richard's studio is a few doors down from mine. It was a thrill to assist him on a record back in 1994. He's a very nice guy and is always happy to answer questions. I suggest you email him. You can get the info straight from the guy who did it!

RICHARD DODD

 

Maybe you should give him a call about producing. He might say yes.

 

I would like to see him produce BoB Dylan & Paul McCartney ..now that would be something !

 

I talked with Richard Dodd recently about Jeff's solo record. He said they only used two mics to record it... a Shure SM57 and a Neumann U-87. I also suggest you get yourself an 1176 compressor. That's all Richard Dodd used to get those drum sounds, a 57 and an 1176.

I know 1176s are expensive ($1,500 a channel) but the UA plug-in is absolutely spot on! If you have a system that can use them I highly recommend it. Other companies make plug-in emulations but they're not right (especially the Bomb Factory 1176. It's garbage and sounds nothing like the real deal).

Richard recorded everything through an 1176 and also compressed the mixes with it. Armchair Theater could be a demo disc for the 1176. I have six of them. Can't do anything without them!

 

FYI I think it's Paul, George, and Jeff Lynne doing the backing vocals during the FAAB guitar solo. George did say that Jeff does sing on it and that's the only part where it does sound like he is singing.

Evan

 

As has been mentioned already, during the Petty/ Wilburys era he used a very clean/trebly telecaster tone which sounds very dry and probably recorded direct. It's not a sound I care for that much but it was a bit of a trademark for him. Think the intro of Freefallin'.

Bobby Sutliff

 

He did:

Paul McCartney, Flaming Pie
Bob Dylan, Traveling Wilburies Vol. 1 & 3.

 

Together on the same record Bob vocals/lyrics/gtr..Paul Vocals/lyrics/bass. Jeff producing..my cup of english tea, or is it boston tea

 

Yet again, Mr. Tate comes through for me in a big way.

Thank you very, very much.

 

Don't hesitate to email him. He's very approachable.

 

I suppose it's possibly Lynne is in there on vocals. I've read some very vague references in the past, usually just anecdotal sort of pieces of information, of Harrison managing to get Lynne on one or both of the "Threetles" songs just because Jeff was just a huge fan. The only story I remember is that they managed to get Jeff playing a bit of guitar or something on "Real Love." Even those anecdotal sort of stories usually suggested that they sort of just got a little bit of Jeff on there somewhere, sort of just to say he was on it. But I don't think Lynne was musically involved much in those recordings the way he usually is on his co-productions. It seems he was very much the sound guy, the producer behind the board, etc.

I'm not sure Paul would have gone for Jeff doing harmonies during the FAAB solo; that would be a rather intrusive sort of contribution given the unique nature of it being a Beatles "reunion." Listening to the backing vocals via the 5.1 mix or via OOPS'ing the stereo mix, it sounds to me like Paul and George singing, just doubled or triped or quadrupled or whatever. It sounds mostly like Paul, with some George thrown in there as well.

 

I actually have an SM57 and old Ludwig drum kit. So now I can...oh wait, $1500 per channel for the 1176? That ain't happening any time soon. So Universal Audio makes their own sort of ProTools plug-in? This is probably all way too much for such a novice like myself. But I like logging all of this information away, and one day I'd like to try some of this stuff out.

And how about this: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/prod...76-Twin-Vintage-Limiting-Amplifier?sku=181021

They call it the "Universal Audio 2-1176 Twin Vintage Limiting Amplifier". It's $2799 on that site, but I don't know if it's the sort of thing where a new unit with the two channels combined in one thing is "not the same" as the original real deal blue face. I don't know enough about that gear, and I'm a ways away from spending that much for my own recording noodling. But I like that Lynne drum sound so much, maybe years from now I'll be able to try it out.