Frampton Comes Alive In 5.1

Page 1, 2, 3

Structuring the Mix

Peter Frampton and Chuck Ainlay at the SSL Axiom-MT

The original tapes may have been something of a mess, but mixing the project was relatively straightforward. Thanks to the SSL console’s facility for making stereo and 5.1 mixes simultaneously, Frampton and Ainlay were able to create both stereo and 5.1 remixes of Frampton Comes Alive at the same time, an economy that pleased Universal’s Levenson and eased the workload for Ainlay and Frampton. To monitor in both formats, Ainlay used Backstage’s self-powered KRK E-8s with an M&K subwoofer and bass management crossover.

“My intention for this project was to provide the listener with a good seat in the house and not surround the listener with all the instruments. Rather, it was my intention not to redesign the idea of the original live record, but to try and enhance it and bring it up to today’s technology and then offer a 5.1 mix of it,” Ainlay explains.

One area where Ainlay diverged from the original mix was in the level of the audience tracks. “That audience must’ve been huge—you turn up the audience mics and it is like white noise. It must’ve been deafening there at the time,” Ainlay laughs. Though the audience interaction with the music helps create much of the magic on Frampton Comes Alive, Ainlay, Frampton and Levenson decided to lower the audience tracks slightly for the 5.1 mix. “The original album was a little over the top with the audience,” says Ainlay. “If you listen to the [original album], there is so much coloration from the audience mics being so cranked up that to make the remix sound good, we backed off a little bit. I wanted to keep that energy and vibe, but I wanted to also make it sound warmer and richer, with a little more contact with the source. We tried to not redefine what the record is, but we tried to bring it more up-to-date and have more power, and so there was slightly less use of the audience.”

Chuck Ainlay

On the original Frampton Comes Alive, audience reaction and sounds were added to the smaller venue recordings to match the feel of the Winterland recordings. Because “Show Me the Way” had not yet been released in any form, the audience response was less than more familiar numbers. On the original album, Frampton added more audience response to make it appear that it was as recognizable to the audience as more familiar material.

“The remix makes you feel like you are really sitting at the mixing console, and that is the best seat in the house,” enthuses Frampton. “I’ve engineered a lot of my own stuff, and I mixed ‘Show Me the Way’ and ‘Shine On’ from the live record, because Chris Kimsey had to go off to another project. So it was quite interesting to hear someone else mix ‘Show Me the Way,’ and—what a bastard—he made it sound better.”

Frampton is particularly pleased with the way Ainlay used the 5.1 surround sound field to enhance an already historical musical document. “I think it helped to have a different perspective, someone who wasn’t involved in the original project,” says Frampton. “Chuck’s got such a great pair of ears, and he knows exactly what he is doing. It was great to hear the extra warmth that he gave to the instruments, warmth that wasn’t originally there on the tapes. When you really sit down in front of the speakers and you concentrate and do an A/B, you go ‘Wow!’” Frampton continues. “It feels like you are there at the show.”

In addition to the surround mix, the new DVD-A version features other value-added elements: There are four new tracks, three of which were from other concert recordings made that same year, and one live-for-radio session. The new tracks are “Just the Time of Year,” “Nowhere’s Too Far for My Baby,” “White Sugar” and “Day’s Dawing.”
And, encouraged by this first foray into mining its vaults, Universal is already looking at other candidates for future DVD-A releases, including The Allman Brothers Live at the Fillmore East, Layla by Derek & The Dominoes and Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen.

Rick Clark is a producer and freelance writer raised in Memphis, now living in Nashville.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]