10cc - I'm Not in Love

[marble falls]

?si=M_j13WzOxZM7A7G1

[Figarosmom]

1. Liked this song too

Thanks for posting. It's another one of those haunting songs.Really good production.

[marble falls]

2. It was one of my favorites from first listen. And it was sooo lush in the production, clever lyrucs; a haunting ...

... song fer sure.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. The Work This Took To Complete!

12 tape loops wrapped around mike stands, the muting & unmuting the right channels so the right notes cane on with the chord changes.
IIRC, it took about 3 weeks to record this one song!

[keep_left]

4. Not to mention the massive multitracking and bouncing that was needed...

...just for each of the twelve tape loops. There must be 40 or more voices on each loop. It's beyond what even the Carpenters were doing at the time; they were massively multitracking vocals, but without all the experimental studio techniques. You could probably argue that Pink Floyd inspired the experimenting that 10cc did on this song, as similar techniques had been used on Dark Side of the Moon. Today's digital production allows the multitracking/bouncing procedure to be done almost infinitely, but you don't hear this kind of production much anymore--because it's a huge amount of work even with the advantages of digital recording.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. Yeah, Godley & Creme Sang Each Note...

...6 times, separately, for each of the 12 tones. That's 144 tracks recorded, mixed to 12.
Unreal amount of effort.
Like I said, 3 weeks of studio time for one song. Good thing it was a hit. The record company had to be puking on their own shoes with worry about the cost!

[keep_left]

6. I actually know the story on this one! It comes from a Godley & Creme interview.

So the band was struggling financially. When they got close to done with that track, they invited the suits from the record company over to the studio and played them the work in progress. The suits knew what anyone who heard the track knew--it was a hit record. They also knew that it would be one for the history books when it came to the production techniques. No one had heard anything like that since the Beatles, and even they probably couldn't have pulled that off without 24-track tape, which was a fairly new thing in the '70s. The record company basically turned on the money printer for the band after that meeting.