It is The Parts You Don’t Hear‘s dream to visit Jamaica and cover the Jamaican aspect of the Sound Techniques story but in the meantime Ray Hitchins, author of Vibe Merchants: The Sound Creators of Jamaican Popular Music expertly filled us in with his insider’s knowledge to a most curious curveball of music making history. It was while he was researching for his PHD that he came across the relatively unknown name of Sound Techniques.
Dynamic Sounds, Randy’s / Studio 17 and Joe Gibbs were three of the most important Jamaican recording studios of the golden era and they all used the Sound Techniques System 12, 16 track mixer. Paul Simon, Cat Stevens and The Rolling Stones all recorded at Dynamic Sounds but there were also the Jamaican legends of Bob Marley, Lee Scratch Perry, Augustus Pablo, Toots & The Maytals, Burning Spear & Peter Tosh who chose to record at these cutting edge studios. Even if we take the ground-breaking dub work of genius King Tubby who mixed at his own tiny studio, most of these incendiary numbers were tracked on the Sound Techniques console.
It is Ray’s belief that The Stones, Herbie Mann, Cat Stevens and Paul Simon all came to Jamaica to tap into its compulsive energy. You can certainly feel this immediacy when listening to tracks like Paul Simon‘s Mother & Child Re-union. Through engineers like Errol Thompson, Dennis Thompson, Joe Gibbs and Glen Whitter, the Jamaican sound was captured and taken from the control room out onto the dance floors. Glen Whitter still uses his Sound Techniques console to this day and has told Ray personally that he will be buried with it! Many thanks Ray for your enthusiasm and kindly taking time off from your holiday to come and talk to us and also for Marco Windham for filming.
