11/02/2024
TBT - 34 years ago, Quad Recording Studios in NYC on February 1, 1990. Alison Limerick “Where Love Lives” remixed by Frankie Knuckles and David Morales, one of several gems theat Frankie and David actually mixed together, began it's creation. My recollections of the tracking session...We all know it was a great song, great record, riveting vocal performance, original version produced and written by Lati Kronlund. David programmed some fantastic cracking drums. There was a piano part that came in during the chorus on the original version that was really cool, but the feeling was that it could be flipped a bit and made more prominent in the song as a whole as a hook. Peter Schwartz reprogrammed the piano with a bigger sound and a slightly different feel and groove to it, and also did some orchestration. That piano part became absolutely iconic, the unmistakable signature sound of the record. Peter also played the beautiful live piano. I think Terry Burrus added some strings and other parts as well. There were a few good things on tape already, but I’m not exactly sure what made it to the final mix. I do know for sure that I played the bass line and the little synth hook line after the chorus (the “goober”), and that might be all I did on the best known Classic Mix. Other things I played (more electronic in nature) made it to the Red Zone Mix. Another thing I remember was that it was just before I got my first Macintosh computer later that year, and I was programming everything I did on the onboard sequencer of an Ensoniq ESQ-1 keyboard synthesizer. It only had 8 tracks, so we would do 8, record them to 2 inch 24 track analog tape, and then keep going. Funny stuff by today’s standards. I know I used a Juno 60 for the bass, and maybe the ESQ-1 for the synth hook line. John Poppo was the engineer on the session and made the mix sound truly world class. 2 remixers, 3 keyboard players, an engineer (and assistants). Music was truly a team effort back then. It was mixed on an SSL 4000 E series console. Mosty Studer tape machines, maybe a few Otari. 2 24 track tape machines synced together to give us 48 tracks, and mixed down to 1/2 inch analog tape, to be edited into all the different versions. Yamaha NS-10 and Urei 813 monitor speakers. The record itself stands the test of time of being a true classic. I still play it often, sometimes to an audience that knows it and some that it is new to; but it always gets an amazing response. ☮️❤️
