Recording Random Access Memories | Daft Punk (2024)

Tape Test

When work on Random Access Memories began in 2008, there had already been some indications that Daft Punk were looking to spread out from the approach of their first two albums. Their pointedly titled third album, Human After All (2005), took just six weeks to make, and their epoch-making 2006-7 concert tour has been credited with turning an entire generation of American musicians on to electronic dance music. Bangalter and de Homem-Christo clearly had acompletely different direction in mind for their fourth album, which led them to hire Henson Studio B in Los Angeles, formerly known as the legendary A&M studios, and ask Franco to help them conduct some unusual experiments.

"We were doing lots of tests with analogue tape,” recalls Franco. "We did things like record into Pro Tools and then transfer the material to tape, at various different levels, and then bring it back into Pro Tools. We then compared this with recording the same material directly to tape and transferring that to Pro Tools. We wanted to see what the different combinations did what and how tape could get us certain sounds. One of our conclusions was that we liked the sound we got when we went straight to tape and then to Pro Tools. We liked how tape changed the shape of asound. It's acool journey to understand what analogue does. It wasn't just amatter of trying to find the sounds of the past, but also of trying to achieve the best sound possible today. We decided from the get-go that we wanted analogue to be abig part of this project, and during the first recordings with live musicians, Thomas and Guy-Man also decided to stay away from using plug-ins. Itotally agreed with this and supported this idea, because plug-ins try to mimic what analogue outboard does, and yet they're not on the same level yet. Digital compression in particular is not appealing to us, and also, everyone is using the same plug-ins today. We wanted to step out of that and use the stuff plug-ins are actually modelled after.

Mick Guzauski with his custom monitor speakers, which have the woofer mounted in aseparate enclosure from the mid- and high-frequency drivers.Photo: Ellen Guzauski"After we did these tests, we recorded anumber of song ideas. Because of what we found during these tests, we recorded them both to analogue and directly to Pro Tools, and later loaded the tape material in the same Pro Tools sessions, so we could choose what we liked the best. Making the choice to go to analogue as well as digital was the beginning of what we felt would be something special. It's rare for an artist today to do that. We wanted to make arecord that would be ajoy to listen to and that would feel special and alive.

Thomas and Guy-Man had abunch of keyboards during these early sessions, like the [Sequential Circuits] Prophet 5, [Roland] Jupiter 6, Juno 106, Yamaha CS80. The synth arpeggio in the Giorgio Moroder track was one of the ideas we recorded during these first sessions, with layers of that arpeggio played via MIDI through different synths to create that great sound. Guy-Man and Thomas are masters at manipulating gear and getting great vibes from it. These were great, fun and very loose writing sessions, and to my surprise quite abit of the themes and even some of the parts ended up on the final mixes.”

This Beat Is Techno Tron-ic

After these initial try-out and demoing sessions, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo spent two years on another project: writing and recording the soundtrack for the Disney movie Tron: Legacy. They worked both with synths and afull-size orchestra, an experience which is likely to have alerted them to the benefits of working with live musicians. The resulting soundtrack album was released late 2010, reached number four in the US album charts, and was nominated for aGrammy for Best Score Soundtrack Album For Visual Media. Around the time of the soundtrack's release, the French duo returned to working on what was to become Random Access Memories. During their time working on Tron: Legacy, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo's vision for the new album had become clearer, and it was during this period that they had taken the decision to work with the top musicians who had played on the classic '70s and early '80s albums that were their reference points. Bangalter explained that live musicians offer "an infinity of nuance, in the shuffles and the grooves. These things are impossible to create with machines.”

"Guy-Man and Thomas wanted to inspire the kids to pick up real instruments again, rather than just press buttons!” comments Franco. "They had developed asharper vision of what they wanted during these two years, reworked some of the ideas we had recorded in 2008, and had also written new material. We began with listening to and editing their demos, with help from [Pro Tools engineer] Dan Lerner, to get them ready for overdubbing. We also wanted to mentally prepare ourselves for this huge undertaking of tracking master session musicians at Conway with amaster engineer like Mick Guzauski. Guy-Man and Thomas also brought their modular synth over from Paris. They built it out of various bits of custom pieces that were made for them to their specifications by various different modular synth engineers, including Modcan. Most of the modular stuff was recorded in Paris, but asmall percentage of it was recorded in LA. Some of the synth parts were recorded via DI, at other times they went via guitar amplifiers. The modular synth is alarge part of the sound of the album, almost all of the synth sounds that you hear are made by it, and also many of the drum sounds. The synth and drum sounds on 'Doing' It Right', for example, were created using the modular synth, which also has the capability to store patterns. To mainly use this piece of gear was another very deliberate decision that they made. It's almost alost art form to create sounds on an analogue synthesizer using LFOs and envelope filters and analogue delays and so on. Iwould look at their signal paths and be totally amazed at the sounds they managed to create. For them, the synths they had used for making the demos in 2008 were really simple and easy.”

Groove Freedom

Another photo from the Henson sessions, with Mick Guzauski, Peter Franco and keyboardist Chris Caswell (back right).

The next stage took place at Conway Studio C in Los Angeles, to which the team invited crack session musicians including bassists Nathan East and James Genus, drummers Omar Hakim and John Robertson and keyboardist Chris Caswell, who also responsible for many of the album's orchestrations and arrangements. In addition, Mick Guzauski came over from New York to track all the live musicians recorded in Los Angeles, and he later mixed the entire album. Guzauski has worked on some of the albums that were reference points for Daft Punk, by artists such as Earth, Wind & Fire, Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones, as well as with the likes of Eric Clapton, Burt Bacharach, BB King, Mariah Carey, Michael Bolton and the Corrs. The New York engineer and mixer has close to 30 number one hit singles to his name, and his ability to combine the silken touch of disco, soul and easy listening with the punch of funk and rock & roll was very attractive for the company.

"Thomas and Guy-Man were very specific about the kind of sound they wanted,” recalls Guzauski. "They told me that they wanted avintage feel, very analogue, very smooth, but with amodern sound. They also did not want me to use any plug-ins, and they wanted me to record to both analogue and digital. They came in with their song demos as Pro Tools sessions, and some songs were more completely conceived and had programmed drums, bass and keyboards, and in other cases it were more rough ideas with aclick. They also brought their own synths into the studio, with amodular synth and things like an Oberheim OB8 and aJuno 106 and quite afew old polyphonic analogue synths. At this stage, it was more amatter of having the musicians play to different ideas and grooves, which Thomas and Guy-Man then later edited and created songs structures from. They had very specific ideas about what the musicians should play, so they would get the parts that they wanted, but at the same time they allowed the musicians the freedom to improvise. We recorded alot of stuff, and they then took the best bits and created their masterpiece from that!”

"The initial demos often were sparse,” added Franco, "and could be just stereo or multitrack. They were amatter of 'we have this vibe and chord progression here,' and then Guy-Man and Thomas would explain what they wanted to hear. The musicians would have alisten and went in and did their thing. Guy-Man and Thomas really wanted to capture great live performances, so we strove to let the guys play the stuff the way they felt it, and we'd often just let the tape roll, really allowing the musicians to run free and put their hearts and soul into these ideas. It was an incredible experience to hear these musicians, who have played on many of the albums that we love, do their thing. We'd then load the material that was recorded on analogue tape into Pro Tools, which was running at 96k, where it sat side-by-side with the same digitally recorded material, and then later on we spent alot of time listening to everything and picking the best bits and editing them and fitting them in. This happened every time after things were added, whether the rhythm section, the orchestra, or the vocals. The ability to edit is the great thing about Pro Tools, and this is where Dan Lerner and later David Channing really came into their own. David is awizard when it comes to editing large amounts of tracks and making them groove together.”

Things Going Down

Conway Studio C sports aNeve 88R desk, which is Mad Labs modified and has 24 remote Neve mic pres, consisting of 12 1081s and 12 Air customs. Vibe and groove were alarge part of the focus during the tracking sessions, but as ever with RAM, an extraordinarily amount of time and attention went into making sure that things sounded the way Bangalter and de Homem-Christo envisioned. "We listened very critically during tracking at how things went down,” says Franco. "For example, we really took the time to make the drum kit sound the way we wanted, and the snare sound was very, very important, because the snare on many of these late-'70s disco albums was soft, yet present, and we wanted to get that right from the beginning.”

"Yeah, we tried to get the sounds we wanted from the start,” seconded Guzauski, "mostly by choosing the right microphones and mic positioning and mic pres. Iused very little EQ while tracking, and also during mixing. We did not want the album to sound EQ'ed. We wanted it to sound as natural as possible. It's the old way of doing it, using EQ just to touch things up, and not doing anything drastic. Our choices made subtle differences, with API mic pres sounding nice and punchy and being great for the kick and snare, while Neve mic pres are alittle bit more airy and worked well for the overheads and drums. The other thing was that they in most cases wanted to suppress the room sound. They wanted that '70s drum sound, recorded in studios which were wall-to-wall carpeted and which were therefore very dead at the top end. Today's studios aren't like that at all. We still got alittle bit of room sound in, and this actually added anice sparkle to the sound and modernised it alittle bit.

Peter Franco first worked with Daft Punk on their hugely influential 2006-7 world tour.

"For the drums, on the kick drum Ihad an AKG D112, aSony C500, aNeumann U47 FET, and asub speaker — this wasn't really to get amassive sound, but for control. Rather than drastically EQ'ing the kick drum in the mix, Iwanted to have different perspectives on it. The D112 has anice, solid, low bottom and apunchy mid-range. The C500 has avery defined top and afairly tight low end, and picks up more of the beater. The 47 has more low end and less attack, and Iused the sub for when Iwanted some really low bottom end. So if Iwanted more attack on the kick, I'd add more of the C500, rather than use EQ. The kick drum was the only drum on which Iused so many mics. The snare had aShure SM57 at the top and an [AKC] C451 underneath it, the toms were Sennheiser 421s and the overheads Schoeps CM5Us. As Imentioned, the room mics didn't really play apart, but Idid have Neumann U67s set up, just in case. Iused the Neve 88R remote mic pres on the toms and overheads. Irecorded the bass guitar DI, via aNeve 1081 and a[Teletronix] LA2A. Chris's keyboards were also DI'ed, though the Fender Rhodes was miked with Neumann U87s, and for the piano Iplaced DPA mics over the hammers, and aU67 back where the strings cross. During the mix, the U67 was in the centre and the DPAs were panned left and right.

"The recording signals were split and then sent to both tape and Pro Tools. The analogue side of the recording was aStuder A827 running 24-track ATR tape at 15ips, with +3 alignment and Dolby SR, because we didn't want to have hiss. SR came in during the late '80s, and it suppresses the really high transients alittle bit, but it also fattens the bottom end, which were the characteristics that we wanted. The digital went via Lynx Aurora A-D converters, which Guy-Man and Thomas liked, and Iwas fine with that because they sound great. We also used an Antelope digital clock. The analogue tape was striped with SMPTE, so it could run in sync with Pro Tools, and after the recordings we'd transferred the tape material back into the same session in Pro Tools, so we ended up with two identical versions of the same material in each session. The first 23 tracks would have been directly recorded into Pro Tools, and right underneath that were the exact same 23 tracks, but originating from the analogue tape. We could not keep the analogue material in analogue, because Thomas and Guy-Man needed to be able to extensively edit everything.”

Around The World

During the next one and ahalf years, work on Random Access Memories progressed according to the same pattern, with Guzauski recording live musicians in studios in Los Angeles, while afew other sessions with live musicians, including Nile Rodgers, took place in Electric Lady Studios in New York. The rest of the recordings were done at Gang Recording studios in Paris, and engineered by Florian Lagatta. The vocalists — septuagenarian crooner Paul Williams, Pharrell Williams, Todd Edwards, the Strokes' Julian Casablancas, Panda Bear and Giorgio Moroder (who talked rather than sang) — were also recorded in these locations, although Daft Punk recorded most of their own vocodered robot vocals in their own studio in Paris. Following every session with live musicians and/or singers, the core team of Bangalter, de Homem-Christo, Franco, Lerner and Channing would spend time sifting through what they had recorded, and the Daft Punk duo would then build and alter and edit their tracks using these live recordings, in similar ways to how they'd used samples for their earlier albums.

"The Daft Punks guys spent alot of time with these live tracks, creating what they wanted from them and meticulously designing their songs,” explained Guzauski. "That's why so much time passed between tracking and overdubbing and why the whole process took so long. After the Conway sessions, we went over to Capitol Studios to record the orchestra, and afew months later Iwent out to Los Angeles again, and recorded Paul Jackson's guitars and Greg Leisz's steel guitar, and Chris did more keyboard overdubs, all at Henson. We later tracked more bass and drums at Conway. Ialso recorded apercussionist called Quinn, who was incredible. He filled out most of Conway Studio C, which is afairly large room, probably between 25 and 30 feet wide and at least 40 feet long, and with two really good-sized iso booths. He had home-made drum kits with aunique sound, all sorts of stuff that was made by him and made incredible sounds.

"We used both Studios Aand B at Capitol to record the orchestra. There's amoveable wall, and we had a25-piece orchestra in Studio A, which Irecorded with aDecca Tree with three [Neumann] M50 mics, and spot mics on the instruments, and Ialso had percussion and timpani in the same room. In Studio B, we had the brass section and the woodwind section. We'd record the strings at the same time as either the brass or the woodwinds in the other studio, and then the percussion in Studio Awith whatever we hadn't recorded of the woodwinds and brass in Studio B, so Ihad isolation between these four orchestral sections. Ihad three different mics on the guitar cab, the SM57, Royer 121 and U87. We would listen to them and then decide which ones we liked best. For guitar room microphones, we had Neumann 67s. The mic pres Iused on the guitars were the [Neve] 1073 and in some cases we took aDI. It depended on the song. The acoustic guitar was recorded using aSchoeps CM5U going through a1073, and the steel guitar using aNeumann U87 going through a1073 and a[Universal Audio] 1176. Of the vocalists, Iwas only involved in recording Todd Edwards, for which we used aNeumann U47, and Paul Williams, with aU67. Both mics went through aNeve 1073 and an LA2A.”

Double Or Quits

The dual analogue and digital signal paths meant that all the live tracks, which included orchestra, were doubled in the Pro Tools sessions. When stacks of synth parts from Daft Punk themselves were added, many of the sessions ballooned to ahuge size. The epic eight-minute track 'Touch', featuring Paul Williams, apparently consisted of 250 different parts; these had to be edited and submixed in Pro Tools because the team were still using an HD3 rig, which only allowed 96 tracks in 96kHz. As the songs neared completion, many choices were made about what remained in the sessions and what didn't, and once choices had been made as to whether to use the digital or analogue versions of certain parts, the doubled parts would be removed from the session. "The analogue and digital versions were very similar but subtly different,” explained Guzauski. "The digital was slightly crisper and the transients were better, but in some cases we needed the more laid-back sound of the analogue. The important thing was they had that choice for the entire project.”

Says Franco, "Iwould have to go back to my notes to work out how much of the analogue and how much of the digital we used, because we did quite abit of blind comparing between analogue and digital, and so there are many instances where analogue was used without it being marked in the final session. Iknow we picked the tape quite abit, because it sounded so much sweeter. At other times we wanted the punch of digital. The other thing that you have to realise is that we used the UA 2192 [converters] when we did the tests in 2008. They are great, but they're super-colourful, and don't have the same pristine presence as the Lynx Aurora 16s, which we didn't start using until late 2010 — they didn't exist yet in 2008. When we listened to the Auroras in 2010, we realised that they sounded better than anything we'd heard until then. Plus, by the time of the final mix we were using Pro Tools HDX. So when using digital, one is dealing with atechnology that's still evolving, and very quickly.”

Mixing

Finally, in the summer of 2012, Guzauski received aphone call saying that Bangalter and de Homem-Christo considered the recordings finished and were ready for him to mix the album. Mixdown took place over aperiod of two months at Conway Studio C, the same place where Guzauski had recorded much of the live-musician material. Guzauski recounts: "They came in with the edited and finished Pro Tools sessions, which were very well organised and cleaned up. Normally Ibegin amix by doing some prep work, but in this case there was hardly anything for me to do, as Dan [Lerner] and Peter [Franco] had taken care of that side of things. Iwas pretty much just the mixer!

"The process was for me to lay things out over the Neve 88R board, which has 72 inputs, so in some cases this involved some submixing in the box to bring it down to 72 Pro Tools outputs or less. Ihad an eight-channel Euphonix Artist controller for this, so Icould use faders. I'd then listen to the whole thing quickly, and then I'd listen to each track, not the whole way through, just to get an idea of what was going on. This was quite straightforward because I'd engineered alot of what was there. Then I'd get abasic balance and build the mix from the bass, drums, and keyboards, or bass, drums and guitars, whatever the main part of asong was, though Idon't normally spend alot of time working on individual tracks. Mixing was nothing really fancy, just balancing things with some nice ambience. Processing was purely used to make all the overdubbed parts work together, not to make it brighter or louder. Thomas and Guy-Man would regularly come in and comment, and I'd work on the mix some more. They had aPro Tools system set up in the other room, and they'd sometimes go in there to edit things and make more changes.

"The mixing process took awhile, because it was very detailed. It also was aleisurely process of me setting things up, them listening to it, me tweaking the mix, them maybe doing edits and making other changes in the adjacent room, and me again tweaking things. We had the whole summer to do it! Also, while the Neve 88R has automation, Iwas only using analogue outboard, and mix recalls would have been complicated. So we continued mixing each track until they were happy, and then we moved on the next track. The only plug-ins that Iused were the UA de-esser, because you can be really precise with them, and gates, because nothing beats gates that can look ahead! Other than that, it was all desk EQ and compression and outboard. The monitors Iused when mixing were the Guzauski-Swist 3as, which Ideveloped with Larry Swist. We had also used them for tracking and Daft Punk liked them so much that they bought apair. It's athree-way system with tweeters and mid-range speakers that are mounted isolated from the woofers, so you can really crank them up without transferring any of the low-frequency vibrations to the other drivers, and this cuts distortion.”

"They are abig part of the technical aspect of the album,” adds Franco. "It is an amazing design, and they sound amazing. It made listening to the musicians that much better because these monitors really represent what they are doing.”

"Ihad parallel compression on the kick and snare,” Guzauski continues, "from either an LA2A or an 1176, but didn't use much of it, and parallel compression on the drums as awhole using an API 2500 and sometimes the Chandler EMI Zener. Iseem to recall that Iused the Zener in the big section on the song 'Touch'. Other than that, Iused some desk EQ and compression, and some reverb, mostly from an EMT 140 plate, and occasionally the EMT 250, which was about as modern as we got. Ididn't use anything on the bass during the mix, other than add some desk EQ in the mid-range to make it cut through. Very occasionally we'd need alittle bit more compression, from another LA2A or 1176 or the desk. Iused the latter mostly for dynamic control, whereas outboard compressors were more used as an effect. Yeah, it's abig bass record! It's the way Iheard it. They didn't ask for that, but they didn't say anything against it, either!

"The guitars were, again, very simple. Ididn't do much to them. With Nile, we just put him up, and to make him fit better in the mix I'd add some 5k on the desk, and that was it. Idon't think we used any outboard on him. He simply had his sound and it was great the way it was. On 'Get Lucky', his part was actually made up of two parts. Ididn't do any big treatments on Paul Jackson's guitar either. Because I'd recorded him with different mics, Icould simply use another mic if Iwanted adifferent perspective. It was similar with the keyboards and synthesizers: most of these were treated with EQ and compression on the console, just to make it fit in the mix. Iused the EMT 140 on the orchestra, but I'd also recorded it with the live chamber at Capitol for natural ambience. In some cases Ibrought the orchestra out on astereo bus and compressed it slightly to make sure it kept its place in the track, without me having to mix it too loud. But in the places where the orchestra can be heard by itself, there was very little processing.

"The processing on the guest vocalists, again, was very minimal. Ialways pay alot of attention to the vocals, and try to make sure that they sound natural and have really good diction, so Iusually add some top end to make sure they cut through. But Itend to cut around 3-4kHz, very narrowly and depending on the vocals, and use the Dbx 902 de-esser so Ican make the vocal brighter without it being sibilant. As Imentioned, Ialso used the UAD de-esser. Ialso usually had an LA2A on the vocals, and some EMT 140 reverb, with aLexicon PCM42 or Eventide H3000 delay. Regarding Daft Punk's vocoder parts, what they called the robot vocals, they wanted them to sound as human and soulful as possible. This required quite abit of compression and desk EQ to keep the diction and make them understandable, and once we had done that, we had to do some narrow-band cuts because some frequencies really stuck out. So there were quite afew bands of parametric EQ in action on the GML EQ! The compressor Iused on them was the 1176.

"Once again, the whole thing about the processing was making sure all the parts had the correct dynamic relationships between them. Ithink this is one of the things that makes this record sound so good. Sometimes we ran things through apiece of gear without it actually doing anything, just to get the sound of the transformers and amplifier. We spent some time auditioning compressors, like several 1176s, LA2As and Neve 33609s, and used what individual piece of gear sounded best to us. Daft Punk actually bought avintage reconditioned 33609 and it didn't quite sound the same, so they traded the one that they had spent aton of money on for the 33609 that they had at Conway, because everybody loved that one! This is one of the fun things about analogue gear, every individual piece sounds alittle different.”

Multiple Masters

Although relatively little processing was employed, the actual mixdown process for each song was astonishingly elaborate. "We mixed back into the Pro Tools session,” explained Guzauski, "but we also mixed to three half-inch analogue machines, with one running at 15ips and the other two at 30ips. They were all Ampex 102 recorders, with the machine running at 15ips having custom Aria electronics. For some songs we liked the 15ips master better, because it had more saturation and the transients were more rounded off. But most of the album came from one of the 30ips masters, which both had stock Ampex electronics, but one had the Flux head and the other had the regular head.

"The sounds of these three machines were very close, but Thomas is areal audiophile, and he can hear the differences. He and Guy-Man were also very meticulous about the alignment of these machines: atech at Conway checked the playback every day and aligned the recording for every reel of tape, just to make sure there were no differences in the tape stock. The techs used the Audio Precision analyser to optimise bias and check the distortion, and so on. The tape we used was again ATR, running at +3, and we ran several passes of most mixes at different levels to get more or less saturation of the tape. All four mixdown formats were also recorded on an eight-track Sonoma DSD recorder for listening and archival, because we were alittle bit concerned about the tape falling apart if we played it back too often. Ilove the sound of DSD. If you listen to it critically, it sounds alittle better than Pro Tools. It's not perfectly transparent, but Ilove what it does, which is to give more definition in avery nice way, not harsh at all.”

Throughout the entire mixing process, and also during mastering, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo emphasised that they were not interested in loudness for its own sake, as Guzauski confirms: "If it started to sound too loud, they wanted me to pull things back again. They wanted avery specific sound, and in some cases Imight have gone for asnare drum that was alittle bit too processed or punchy, and they would rein me in again. They had an unfaltering vision of how they wanted this record to sound, and we experimented alot to achieve that. There was alot of experimentation during the mixing. Ireally got into that, because it was fun to mix and it is an incredibly pleasurable album to listen to. We had acouple of older solid-state EQs on the stereo bus during mixdown, just because it sounded good, and it also went through an Avalon EQ, which is very clean, and then abus compressor, which in most cases was the Neve 33609. We just used different pieces of gear to complement each song.”

On The Road

Once the album had been mixed, the master tapes were sent to well-known mastering engineer Bob Ludwig.

Mastering was done from the analogue tapes by Bob Ludwig in Portland, Maine, while some additional mastering work was also done in Paris by Antoine Chabert at Translab. After all this time and effort, not to mention abank balance drained of amillion dollars, the Daft Punk team were understandably precious about their final master tapes, so Peter Franco, with the help of Daft Punk crew member Sam Cooper, offered to drive them from Los Angeles to the East Coast, in amove worthy of aHollywood road movie. "It was the only way to make sure that nobody else would touch these masters,” explains Franco, "and that they wouldn't go through radar or metal detectors and so on. We had put so much energy into this project that we didn't want to hand it over to acourier company. It would have been like handing over your own child. We were just really happy to have come this far, through aprocess that had been great fun. There was no point at which we felt lost or scared. Everything we were doing felt really right, and everybody was on the same page. We were all the time in the studio with great people and great musicians, and it always felt like afamily setting, like going to asummer camp with alot of really fun and interesting people. It was amagical experience, and Ithink this filtered through in the end product.”

The commitment of Daft Punk's team, the band's "singular vision” and agargantuan investment of time and money were all contributing factors in the creation of an extraordinary and hugely successful album. It's especially impressive that it sounds so human after all that.