Surround
Professional 2003 Case Study
Kevin Shirley: "The Making of Led Zeppelin"
 Despite
Kevin’s initial nervousness he did an excellent job explaining
the genesis of the project and the process involved in creating
the DVD, accompanied by his own digital images from his Powerbook.
Kevin Shirley has known Jimmy Page since working on his ‘Live
at the Greek’ CD. When Jimmy decided he wanted to
produce a Led Zeppelin DVD he asked Kevin to take on the project.
It
was a “déjà vu” experience for Kevin
as it was Led Zeppelin that got him interested in the music
business when he was a seventeen-year-old fan!
Jimmy Page had piles of analogue master tapes at his London
house and Kevin’s first job was to assess their condition.
Tapes from this era are prone to absorbing moisture, which,
if it is not removed, ruins them and the tape machine they
are played on, so the first order of business was to slowly
bake the tapes to dry them out. They were then recorded onto
a Pro Tools HD system. Kevin reported that luckily the tapes
had been well labelled by the original recording engineers
including details of track assignments, some of which were
a little unconventional. There was enough recorded concert
material to match up with the few filmed performances of the
band: London’s Royal Albert Hall in January 1970, the
five-night run at London’s Earl’s Court in May
1975 and their record-breaking shows at England’s Knebworth
Festival in August 1979. Also included is material from New
York’s Madison Square Garden in July 1973.
The prime focus of his seminar was the audio that Kevin mixed
at SARM West Studios in London using an SSL 9000 J console.
The mixing gave rise to several problems. One was that, due
to various legal and illegal substances, the band’s performances
varied widely from show to show, so Kevin had to patch together
good performances from several versions at his disposal. He
also had a number of compressors and EQs available but tried
not to use them too much to preserve the feeling of a live
concert.
The philosophy that Kevin adopted was to try to put the listener
in the fourth row of the audience, so, with a couple of exceptions,
most of what is in the surround channels is the audience. Another
problem for Kevin was maintaining some level of consistency
between material recorded at four different venues. Concentrating
on the audio first made the video production more difficult
as it had to be fitted to the video. Kevin did admit that a
few times they had to go back and adjust the audio to help
it fit!
Despite Jimmy Page being credited as producer, Kevin said that
he really didn’t interfere too much in the mixing, apart
from taking occasional breaks from smoking cigarettes to enquire, “How’s
it goin’, Kevin?”
Nice work Kevin, on the DVD and with the presentation, including
very passable impersonations of Jimmy Page himself!
Nigel Pond 22/12/2003.
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Last update:
27th February 2004
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