In more recent times, they could be seen on Saturday morning cartoons, and a few years ago, Bagdasarian’s son brought the Chipmunks back, where they’ve starred in a number of successful animated features. These days pitch-shifting their voices is a plug-in.
Phil Spector created another landmark pop sound, noteworthy because he may be considered the first record producer to have attained “star” status. Spector’s “Wall of Sound” hits with The Crystals, The Righteous Brothers, The Ronettes, and Tina Turner’s classic “River Deep-Mountain High” were exclusively associated with the reverb chambers at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood.
Many other top artists of the era also used these same chambers, including Sonny & Cher, Iron Butterfly, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. In fact, the Gold Star chambers were so popular that the owners built two copies and leased them to other studios, linked by high-quality telephone lines. The Phil Spector sound and those chambers were a commodity for a while in the 1960s.
Unique sound may come from a state-of-the-art device, or a vintage piece of equipment, because unlike other types of media that drop older state of the art in favor of the latest innovations, sound producers prize vintage microphones, sound generators and processor devices for the qualities they have.
Some of these qualities are so characteristic that modern digital multi-processors have presets that attempt to create the attributes of these vintage devices. The manufacturers of production equipment have, in a sense, made a commodity of sound processes.
And, of course. there is the emergence of manufacturers of audio equipment that pride themselves in offering exact duplicates of what are now legendary devices from an earlier time.
For the music producer/engineer, the latest techniques and “sounds” are directly associated with the hardware. Hundreds of production equipment manufacturers jostle for market share. NAB and AES trade show booths beckon aisle-strolling musicians, producers, and engineers to have a listen to the latest new thing.
The most popular processes become commodities in the marketing and application of these devices. By the next show, today’s hot new sound will inevitably be copied and included in any number of devices by other manufacturers.
The sounds that these devices create may be as clearly identified as a specific preset program on a digital effect, or it might be quite beyond a layman’s description.