The Story of Sleeping Satellite - Tasmin Archer

The idea of this title comes from co-producer Julian Mendelsohn.


Dreams come true.
On this page co-songwriter John Hughes and co-producer Julian Mendelsohn will shine light..
An attempt to feel the atmosphere of making Sleeping Satellite.


This is the so beautiful ingenious song:
Sleeping Satellite - Tasmin Archer (extended version)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mBTr-2jVVfo


There may be difference in answers between the different songwriters, engineers, producers etc in making the song. For example on the microphone preamplifier used. It must be born in mind that these are some recollections after many years.


John Hughes:


There was a couple of ‘extended’ versions of Sleeping Satellite and they tended to be added as extra tracks on cd singles so yes, they were released during 1993/94 in most countries/regions. There was a vinyl release of the album ‘Great Expectations’ and various singles from it but I don’t think the extended mixes of ’Sleeping Satellite were ever on the B-sides of vinyl 7” singles. I don’t recall EMI releasing any 12” vinyl singles of any of our tracks.

Sleeping Satellite was recorded on 2” tape, 2 x 24 track machines synched together for the final mixes (Studer A800s). That track was recorded mainly at Sarm West Studios in London but bits were also done at Maison Rouge Studios, also in London. All the mixes on Great Expectations were done at Sarm West to 1/2” tape and mastered at Abbey Road. The extended mixes were created by remixing various sections of the recorded track to 1/2” tape and splicing these sections together. Often the same sections were remixed more than once with different instrument/vocals balances/arrangement and using different FX to create ‘different’ sections. Digital editing with things like Pro Tools was in it’s very early days, almost prototype, back in 1991/92 when we did these recordings and mixes so none of that technology was used on these tracks.

When we wrote this song we weren’t particularly aware of theory behind the music, apart from the basics, and it was kind of just ‘jammed’ out during the writing process. Any compositional rules, adhered to or broken, were purely accidental for us at that time. We are obviously much more aware of things like that these days after 30+ years of writing songs/composing other music and recording it for a living but back then things like harmonies were just what felt and sounded right to us.

As far as recording the vocals was concerned, we don’t have a record of what microphones were specifically used for recording specific vocals but we generally used Neumann U47 or Neumann U87 for Tasmin’s vocal back then. We did use dynamic mics occasionally on Tasmin’s voice (SM57/58s) for texture but I don’t recall using those on ’Sleeping Satellite’.
The vocal recording chain on this album was usually mic to either Focusrite Red or Neve 1073 preamps and EQ then into a Tubetech CL1B compressor then straight to tape. We avoided recording the vocals via the SSL console preamps/channels. Obviously there was more processing during mixing but that was the general vocal recording chain.
Any special vocal FX in sections of the extended remixes were probably done using an Eventide H3500 harmoniser. We used that box a lot.
I can’t be more specific than that really. A lot of the time during these extended re-mixes we’d rehearse moves on various outboard FX and then record the moves live. We didn’t document any of those types of things because we were re-patching constantly during the various sections of the re-mix. These type of moves couldn’t be recalled so there was little point keeping a record anyway. We’d have ended up spending more time writing stuff down than actually doing it :) There would have been recall sheets for the outboard FX on the main (non extended) mixes and there would have been the SSL desk recall floppy disks for those mixes but the extended mixes tended to be less documented for the reasons mentioned earlier. We don’t have access to that recall info these days anyway. If it even still exists it would be somewhere with the multitrack tapes that are still owned by the record company, EMI at the time and now Warners.


John Hughes:
It should be clarified that these are my recollections and there were obviously others heavily involved in the process. Steve Fitzmaurice, the assistant engineer on that album and now a top mixer in his own right, was particularly involved with the extended mixes. Producers Julian Mendelsohn, Paul Wickens, Peter Kaye were all heavily involved with all aspects of the production too.
Our songs come about in many ways but the writing of this particular song was started with the chorus chord sequence played on acoustic guitar by myself. Tasmin sang the melody over that with sketchy lyrics to give the melody some lyrical shape. The three of us then developed the rest of the song structure together and I wrote the lyrics afterwards inspired by some of Tasmin’s sketch lines and an article I read about the 20th anniversary of the moon landing.
The vocal melody lines of all of our songs come from Tasmin - both from when we worked as a trio with John Beck and now where it’s just myself and Tasmin (there’s no e on the end of her name by the way). The rest of the aspects of our compositions are usually shared more evenly.


Julian Mendelsohn:
I used a Neuman U87 mic on Tasmin’s vocals. I always record lead vocals flat with maybe a little Urei 1176 compression. This makes it so much easier to match the sound if we need to redo bits. It took a long time to do this Tasmin’s lead vocal. Very difficult to remember the eq etc at the time we mixed it. It was mixed on an SSL 4000e desk at Sarm West studios. My assistant was Steve Fitzmaurice who later did the Sam Smith album.



Julian Mendelsohn:
Just noticed John’s comments on the audio chain for Tasmin’s vocal on Sleeping Satellite. I don’t recall using the stuff he said. Pretty sure we went through the SSL and Urei. He may have used this chain at home.


John Hughes:
I’m pleased you’ve contacted Julian. I see he has a different recollection to me on the vocal chain :) We have never had Focusrite Red or Neve mic pre-amps at home so my memory can’t be based on that but Julian will have more knowledge on this than me. After all he was doing the recording.
I don’t recall any varispeeding to record this in a lower key. The demo was in Fm so I think we would have stuck to that key for this recording. I did play the open Em and Cmaj7 shapes to get that acoustic guitar sound texture but played in Fm by using a capo at the first fret.
In our time of being on it, Top of the Pops was always live vocals over the backing track of the recording. Tasmin sometimes used to drop the register of the ‘greatest adventure’ line if she’d been using her voice a lot to avoid straining it. When playing live shows we often dropped the key of Sleeping Satellite to Em if she was struggling with overuse of her voice.


John Hughes:
As you allude slowing down tape (Varispeed) to record instruments was a common technique back in the tape days. It’s a technique still used in DAWs now though I’m not sure it delivers quite the same sonic effect when done digitally. As far as vocals are concerned though whether the change in sound as a result of recording at a slower speed and playing back at the ‘normal’ speed is preferable is subjective. I don’t think it always sounds better. The effect can differ even for the same singer on different tracks. The outcome always depends on lots of variables. We rarely hear the failed attempts at this technique but I’m sure there are many. I have no doubt that some engineers/producers have experimented purposely with this after discovering the effect you describe in specific cases but those I’ve talked to about this over the years, along with my own experiences, tend to suggest a different scenario is more common. It’s more likely that any positive effects from recording vocals at slightly lower tape speeds were happy accidents as a consequence of having to slow down to get a satisfactory vocal performance in a lower register :) I have absolutely no recollection of us doing this with Tasmin on Sleeping Satellite but Julian will no doubt confirm one way or the other. There are many reasons why Tasmin’s vocal could have a different timbre/formant quality on Top of the Pops videos compared to the released recording. For example, we very closely double tracked a lot of Tasmin’s vocals on ‘Great Expectations’ and blended those in to varying degrees during mixing as was suitable. As I’m sure you are aware this is another very common recording technique used on millions of records. They were ‘real’ double tracks with a distinct performance in this case, not electronically created. These probably wouldn’t have been on the instrumental backing track that Tasmin sang over on Top of the Pops. Even if they were the balance to Tasmin’s main vocal would have been totally different creating a different effect. Top of the Pops performances were recorded in a television studio with a purposely encouraged rowdy live audience. The instrument track would sound the same, since it was the actual recording fed directly to the broadcast desk, but the vocal was live in the room. The vocal was recorded with a very different microphone to that used for the record and processed very differently, kind of stuck on top of the track rather than being part of it. Other factors like the condition of Tasmin’s voice on the day, tiredness, her attitude/mind set, nervousness and just about everything else you can think of can affect the timbre/formant aspects of the vocal sound. You wouldn’t expect the same guitar to sound the same through different amps even if all other factors were equal. The voice as a specific sound source is no different, is it? I’d hazard a guess that Tasmin’s voice even sounds slightly different on each of the different Top of the Pops recordings that we did for that track. We must have done 3 or 4 of those. The differences in timbre/formant quality could also be down to the fact that the Top of the Pops performances were 12-18 months after the song was recorded. Voices can change over time, significantly in some cases, due to wear and tear, gradual minor modifications to vocal technique, and many other factors.
Working from the dates, the non lyrical stages of writing Sleeping Satellite would have happened at Flexible Response Studios, a commercial recording studio in Bradford sadly long gone. For a few years around that time I had a room in their building with an 8 track set up where we wrote our songs and recorded our demos. We moved out of there before we signed with EMI as the studio closed and the building became a radio station, We moved our equipment to our home so some of the songs from Great Expectations were written and demoed there. All of our songs at that time were written in a studio environment though. We used a Tascam 38 (8 track 1/2” tape machine) and synced a MIDI sequencer (Steinberg Pro-24 on an Atari ST computer) to the tape via SMPTE. This way we could keep the available tape tracks for vocals and guitars while drum machines and keyboards were recorded into the sequencer and sequenced ‘live’ for the final demo mixes recorded on a 1/4” Tascam 32.
Our demos are always only rough sketches that serve as maps to find a way towards the finished recordings. If they had any merit other than that we wouldn’t have needed to record a better version :) There are several ‘acoustic’ recordings of Sleeping Satellite around, both live and studio versions, which far better demonstrate the song and the songwriting in its naked form.

John Hughes:
Q:Was double tracking used on all parts, chorus, verse etc? Don’t really know for sure if it was used at all on this track for the lead vocal, it’s not obvious so was subtle if it was. I was just speculating re the sound you hear because we did it with a lot of vocals to varying degrees on Great Expectations but no details other than what you can obviously hear on various tracks. Q: So were 2 tracks of main vocal added together at about same level? I don’t know for sure but I doubt it. Double tracks are usually blended in at a much lower level than the main vocal track unless you are going after a specifically obvious effect. Q: Do you recall if the Neumann U87 was in omnidirectinal mode to avoid the bass proximity effect and having Tasmin closer to mic? If a directional pattern was used I guess the mic's low cut might had been used for that so nice treble sparkling sound. Again, I have no idea and I don’t think this was written down anywhere. Julian might recall whether it was set to omni or cardioid.


Q: Obviously the intro is very impressive too. Do you recall what instruments, percussion blend making up what we listen? Obviously I can hear a pedal F (do you know what synth it is?) which creates nice musical intervals with changing chords on guitar.
John Jughes: Wix did the synth part intro. I think it was programmed using multiple patches on a Roland D50 but I’m not 100% certain that was the synth.
Q: Was the arrangement done mainly by you?
John Hughes:
The song structure was essentially the same as our demo and whilst some of the instrument parts survived I would say that Wix was mainly responsible for the musical arrangement of the released version.
Q:
Did you play the guitar on this track and would you recall details such as mic or mics used, guitar used, close micing or positioning of mics etc, double tracking etc?
John Hughes:
I played the acoustic guitar. Robbie Macintosh played all the other guitar parts on this track.
I can’t recall for sure which guitar I used for the acoustic part. From what I was playing at that time it was probably a Taylor or maybe an Ovation Balladeer. Definitely used close micing and we would have tried a range of mics to see which suited best but I don’t know what we ended up using or whether there was more than one. I don’t remember tracking the acoustic but that doesn’t mean we definitely didn’t.


Q:
I also wanted to ask you if you are mainly self taught in music or lyric writing and if you would like to add on earlier instances related to music in your life such as childhood etc. (I wanted to read about you in Wikipedia but could not find an article yet).
John Hughes:
No formal musical education. My education was principally science and I have a degree in chemistry :) I’ve never bothered with stuff like a Wikipedia page. Not really interested in stuff like that. Tasmin fronts our work and I prefer the lower profile that afford me.