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Authors: Erik Davis
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vital 1990 essay on the band, Page was “extremely conscious of building and maintaining the atmospheric quality of the song from square one.” Inspired by early Sun and Chess records, Page used echo and reverb to soften the separation between instruments;these techniques also added depth and dimension to the tracks, since both echo and reverberation are rooted in our physical experience of sound-in-space, of the volume of volume. But ambience does more than just shape a sound world; it also transports the listener. Zak compares ambience to the mirror in Cocteau’s film
Orphée
: “it draws the listener into an aural world whose shape, dimensions, lighting, and perspective it helps to define.” 43 Ambience tricks us into believing that the recording takes place somewhere, in a sort of spirit realm, “the true world of the disembodied voice.”
Just as the word “atmosphere” can refer to both the surrounding air and the mood of a place, so did Page’s art of ambience extend beyond the shaping of acoustic space into the realm of emotional texture. Hearkening forward to a more “electronic” sense of ambience, Page created atmospheric mood through the exploration of timbre; by layering various textures and multi-tracking his guitars, he created what he called “collages and tissues of sound with emotional intensity.” 44 Page brought a similar sensibility to the hotel rooms he would decorate on tour; seeking to replicate the exotic interior design of his homes, the guitarist would lay Persian carpets on top of one another and then bathe the overlapping patterns in candlelight.
Page also engineered ambience through what he called “the science of microphone placement.” Backwhen Page was slaving as a studio hack, the engineers he worked with would often place a single microphone in front of an instrument’s amplifier. But Page, again inspired by early rock and roll records, augmented this arrangement by placing additional mics ten or twenty feet away; he’d then record and balance the difference between these mics, capturing a time lag that reflected the acoustic shape of the room itself. “Distance makes depth,” he’d say, tipping his hat to the engineers of the old school. “The whole idea, the way I see recording, is to try and capture the sound of the room live and the emotion of the whole moment.” 45 As a producer, Page had a romantic, almost animistic desire to absorb the actual environment where the sounds were made with the bodies of men. As Zak writes, “the master recordist uses microphones to capture not only sonic and musical elements, but also the weight of apparent physical presence.” Such physical graffiti also appears on some Zeppelin tracks as extraneous, documentary slop. Think of the jet that flies overhead before the band launches into “Black Country Woman,” recorded on the lawn at Mick Jagger’s Stargroves estate. Or think of the guitar army that growls before “Black Dog” begins.
And through what sort of acoustic space does the electronic bark of “Black Dog” resound? What ghost of what hall stages the riff symphony that is?The bulk of Led Zeppelin’s fourth album was rehearsed and partially recorded in Headley Grange, three stories of stone gloom in the middle of nowhere, or at least eastern Hampshire’s version of nowhere. Built in 1795, Headley Grange was designed to house the poor and infirm, and was sacked by disgruntled workingmen in 1830. The place became a private home in 1870; a century later, rock bands like Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, and the Pretty Things started renting the place out, attracted by the place’s isolation and unique acoustics. When Led Zeppelin arrived in December 1970, with Ian Stewart and the Rolling Stone Mobile Studio in tow, they found the place cold and damp and rather the worse for wear. The band had burned some of the banisters during their previous visit, so they started burning some more, but it only helped so much. Plant and
Orphée
: “it draws the listener into an aural world whose shape, dimensions, lighting, and perspective it helps to define.” 43 Ambience tricks us into believing that the recording takes place somewhere, in a sort of spirit realm, “the true world of the disembodied voice.”
Just as the word “atmosphere” can refer to both the surrounding air and the mood of a place, so did Page’s art of ambience extend beyond the shaping of acoustic space into the realm of emotional texture. Hearkening forward to a more “electronic” sense of ambience, Page created atmospheric mood through the exploration of timbre; by layering various textures and multi-tracking his guitars, he created what he called “collages and tissues of sound with emotional intensity.” 44 Page brought a similar sensibility to the hotel rooms he would decorate on tour; seeking to replicate the exotic interior design of his homes, the guitarist would lay Persian carpets on top of one another and then bathe the overlapping patterns in candlelight.
Page also engineered ambience through what he called “the science of microphone placement.” Backwhen Page was slaving as a studio hack, the engineers he worked with would often place a single microphone in front of an instrument’s amplifier. But Page, again inspired by early rock and roll records, augmented this arrangement by placing additional mics ten or twenty feet away; he’d then record and balance the difference between these mics, capturing a time lag that reflected the acoustic shape of the room itself. “Distance makes depth,” he’d say, tipping his hat to the engineers of the old school. “The whole idea, the way I see recording, is to try and capture the sound of the room live and the emotion of the whole moment.” 45 As a producer, Page had a romantic, almost animistic desire to absorb the actual environment where the sounds were made with the bodies of men. As Zak writes, “the master recordist uses microphones to capture not only sonic and musical elements, but also the weight of apparent physical presence.” Such physical graffiti also appears on some Zeppelin tracks as extraneous, documentary slop. Think of the jet that flies overhead before the band launches into “Black Country Woman,” recorded on the lawn at Mick Jagger’s Stargroves estate. Or think of the guitar army that growls before “Black Dog” begins.
And through what sort of acoustic space does the electronic bark of “Black Dog” resound? What ghost of what hall stages the riff symphony that is?The bulk of Led Zeppelin’s fourth album was rehearsed and partially recorded in Headley Grange, three stories of stone gloom in the middle of nowhere, or at least eastern Hampshire’s version of nowhere. Built in 1795, Headley Grange was designed to house the poor and infirm, and was sacked by disgruntled workingmen in 1830. The place became a private home in 1870; a century later, rock bands like Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, and the Pretty Things started renting the place out, attracted by the place’s isolation and unique acoustics. When Led Zeppelin arrived in December 1970, with Ian Stewart and the Rolling Stone Mobile Studio in tow, they found the place cold and damp and rather the worse for wear. The band had burned some of the banisters during their previous visit, so they started burning some more, but it only helped so much. Plant and
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