The Sound of a Decade - 1950s

Since the dawn of time music has come in fixed periods of time; cohesion and structure have always been an integral part of the musical experience, from Bach to The Beatles and Debussy to Drake, there has always been a culture developed on the context surrounding a certain period of time.

Context, Artists & Innovations

The '50s - think polka dots, soda fountains and jukeboxes – its 1950's youth revival of a generation brought up singing and dancing to the likes of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Pat Boone and Elvis Presley, to name only a few. Without going into too much detail, the cultural shift that took place as a result of the end of World War 2, the explosion of capitalism, the advent of television broadcasting and the rise of the entertainment industry has had enormous impact on culture, spreading beyond borders and introducing a new reality to the world. With it, it also brought a trend we now commonly refer to as Rock and Roll.

The ‘50s were a time of change for every industry, including the music industry. Rock and roll combined with newly developed instruments such as the electric guitar, the electric bass guitar, electric organs and classic amplifiers, each defining the other in a chicken and egg situation. The fine craftsmanship of the 50s brought us the highly sought after Gretsch Hollowbodies, Fender Strats & Teles and the immortal Les Pauls. One of the most famous bass guitars was also released in the same decade – the Fender Precission Bass commonly known as the P-Bass. Soon after, Fender launched the Tweed amplifier – another classic by today’s standards, followed closely by the Echofonic and the Echoplex units. Microphones of the era include Shure’s model 333 ribbon and Electro-Voice’s collection of all-round classics headlined by model 950.

Sound & Gear

Much of the ‘sound’ attributed to ‘50s music comes from a combination of factors including gear and recording techniques. For example, Ricky Nelson, holder of the 1^st ever #1 entry in Billboard’s Top 100 Chart and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, used to record his albums using classic, all-tube microphones, mixers and recorders. The discovery of the German built Telefunken U47M as one of the greatest vocal mics of all time, used by everyone from Sinatra to Adele, helped define a new, clearer and more direct vocal sound than previous generations thought possible. What’s more, the choice for signal path also contributed extensively to the sound – despite currently being used to the endless routing possibilities inside the DAW, back then, the preferred route was microphone -> mixer -> recorder. This short chain added only minute changes to the sound, allowing it to ‘breathe’ naturally. Furthermore, since compression and EQ were rarely used as creative tools, the recordings of that time have a larger dynamic range and provided a faithful reproduction of the original frequency spectrum, with the modern concerns regarding headroom and latency being virtually non-existent.

Speaking of mixers, a classic choice for that period was the Ampex MX-10 Tube mixer-preamplifier which was used to boost the level of the microphone before it hit tape. Although engineers chased purity of sound over anything else, it was the beautiful saturation that the equipment added – at the time considered a fault within the equipment – that has become the craved analogue goodness of modern times.

Recording Techniques

Tape machines in the ‘50s were considered the norm in recording studios – The Ampex models 200 and 601 are only a few of the regular culprits. In Rick Nelson’s case, the choice for tape was the Ampex 300-C set at 15ips using Scotch tape and each individual instrument was mic-ed up separately. Elvis Presley’s recordings were also achieved using a single microphone per instrument, including the drumkit. ‘Jailhouse Rock’ drums, for example, were recorded through a single U47 placed above the entire kit. This technique would later be used by The Beatles amongst many and stands as a clear contributor to the sound of that era.

Since recording was done via tape machines, multiple passes through these units produced a loss in the higher end of the frequency spectrum. To solve this problem, engineers at the time would boost 5, 7 and even 20kHz using a variety of tools such as Pultec EQP-1A units, which were amongst the most popular choices and also amongst the most versatile, with their sound remaining unique and highly sought after to this day. In terms of compression, this was the era of the holy grail of compressors – the Fairchild 660 / 670. Runner ups for the title were the Altec 436C, Teletronix LA-2A and EMI/Abbey Road RS124. Together, these units have played a paramount role in shaping the sound of ‘50s and, by extension, the sound of modern recorded music as we now know it.

It is a common belief shared by many that the sound of a decade has been heavily influenced by the effects used at that time. In the ‘50s, echo was one of the first effects to gain widespread approval with units such as the Tubeplex Echoplex and Binson’s Echorec being at the forefront of recording studios. Reverbs were also being introduced, headed by the luxurious EMT 140 plate reverberator. Introduced in 1957, EMT would forever solve the problem of controlling and manipulating artificial reverberation. Weighing in at a staggering 270KG and usually requiring its own room within the studio, these units can be compared to the first computers ever made and the impact they have had in their industry.

A Turning Point

Despite all the technical innovations, the classic recording techniques used by the engineers of the day and the rather simplistic storage mediums we now appreciate, the sound of the ‘50s is ultimately the sound of a decade filled with joy and excitement driven be a youthful generation growing up in a reorganized world, where traditional values were being replaced with new ones driven by prosperity and economic growth; a generation yet to break free as the following years will have shown us. The 50s were filled with a sense of capitalist pride which has spread throughout society, reaching far beyond national boundaries and affecting individuals, cultures and industries alike. Pop culture as we know it would have been entirely different, had it not been for the cultural phenomenon of the 1950s. 

Now, take a look at how to get the sound of the 1950's in our article that shows you some of the techniques you can use on your own productions to replicate the classic sound of this era.