"When we were mixing it, there was no Auto-Tune on her. All of the music on Frank came from live instrumentation nothing was quantized, everything was natural. He wanted the end result of her recording to sound natural-not pieced together one vocal take at a time. When she was ready, Winehouse would go in the booth and play guitar and sing simultaneously. Noble remembers a typical session involving Remi making a rough drum track on the MPC whenever Winehouse was beginning to write songs, in order to keep the timing of the song in creation. It brought out the natural resonance of her voice. "But, to me, that's what made her special. Some people may not like it because they said it brought up her midrange," Noble says. Noble says Remi refurbished the vintage mic to its original factory specs to get it as close as possible to Sinatra's timeless sound.įrank was, in part, destined to be a classic from its inception. It's also Remi who possibly imbued Frank with the spirit of the great Frank Sinatra.īefore the Frank sessions, Remi purchased New York City recording studio Soundworks with a U 47 mic in a mic closet leftover from the previous iteration of the studio space, and one possibly used by the great Frank Sinattra. It was Remi who wanted everything to sound live. It's Remi who brought the Yamaha DM-2000 Digital Console to the sessions in order for them to switch between projects at will, a capability impossible on an analog console. Winehouse was the driving force for Frank, Noble was the facilitator of her vision, but Noble remembers Remi setting the tone and direction of Frank's production.
#Amy winehouse just friend pro#
It's not like now where you can buy Pro Tools software and run it on anything." Plus, you had to buy the Pro Tools/TDM rig, which was like 70 grand, just to be able to use Pro Tools. "At that time, Pro Tools was still TDM, and to us, it didn't sound as good as Digital Performer. Noble now uses Pro Tools HD daily to record artists because of its improved automatic delay compensation, but back in the early 2000s, the DAW that would become industry standard was lacking. For mixing Winehouse's smoky and enveloping vocals, Noble used the Neve 33609/N Stereo Compressor and Avalon AD2055 Equalizer before ending off with a bit of LA-2A, which added a bit of smoothness and warmth to the vocals. Chatting with Reverb, Noble discusses why Pro Tools wasn't good enough during the Frank sessions, Winehouse's curious creative mind, and his last memories of the creative genius.įor the Frank sessions, Noble remembers Winehouse being recorded on Digital Performer using a Neumann U 47 mic going into an Avalon VT-737sp Tube Channel Strip with very light compression and basically no EQ.
This started a relationship that would result in the making of her debut album, Frank, the world's first full-length introduction to the sorceress of sorrow. His and our eyes made contact and it was like, 'Dude, we have to work with her,'" Noble says. Instead, she got up, opened up the guitar case, took the guitar out, sat down, tuned the guitar in front of us, and then started playing the song on the guitar and singing. "I thought she was going to pull out a CD or something. After exchanging introductions, Remi and Noble wanted to hear what she had to offer. He remembers the precocious singer arriving at the studio with a knapsack on one shoulder and a guitar case on the other. Three-time Grammy Award–winning engineer Gary Noble met an unassuming 18-year-old Amy Winehouse in 2002 when she arrived at producer Salaam Remi's production studio off of Biscayne and 15th Street in downtown Miami with just her manager. Sometimes the biggest shifts start with the most humble beginnings. Remi was also kind enough to let us publish a photograph from the sessions.
In the first half, Nelson speaks with Gary Noble about Amy Winehouse's debut, Frank, and in the next, he talks to Salaam Remi about her enduring hit Back to Black. Editor's note: Last month, we launched the first installment of a new regular series, Finer Notes, where journalist Keith Nelson Jr shares inside stories from the recording sessions of classic and modern-classic albums.
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