English‑born producer and mixing engineer Warne Livesey has worked with a wide array of musical artists spanning different genres, from Australian band Midnight Oil to Scottish pop‑rockers Deacon Blue to blue‑eyed soulster Paul Young. Now based in Canada, Livesey highlights the intro to Midnight Oil’s 1987 classic ‘Beds Are Burning’ as a favourite sound.
Warne Livesey: There’s good reason to believe that a really great intro can significantly help with song recognition, as well as pulling people into the song from the start.
“There’s good reason to believe that a really great intro can significantly help with song recognition, as well as pulling people into the song from the start. To that end, in ‘Beds Are Burning’ we start with three power chord shots: E, G, A. Simple and effective and part of the song from the beginning. Some people have said to me they think it had some orchestral sample added to it, but it is simply the band hitting the chords, with [Australian band] the Hunters & Collectors’ horns added on top.
“That is followed with the crescendo of two reverse delays and reverse reverb. These were printed with the tape machine running backwards. The delays were a quarter note and an eighth note. As the quarter‑note delay trail is longer, that is the one heard first in reverse, with the double‑tempo delay and reverb joining and adding to the swelling effect. Those effects were generated from the first note of the riff and moved to cut off with the snare on the four pickup, one beat before the riff starts.”
Adding Excitement
Livesey highlights the intro to Midnight Oil’s 1987 classic ‘Beds Are Burning’ as a favourite sound.
“In his recent memoir The Silver River, Midnight Oil guitarist, keyboardist and songwriter Jim Moginie recalls that the studio we recorded this album in was very limited in the area of acoustical spaces. The studio was more of a jingle studio, and the tracking rooms were very small. But it was the only studio available for the dates, Sydney being under‑serviced by professional recording venues at the time. So, we had to take a decision to forgo big, bombastic drum sounds and focus the production on other things to deliver the sense of excitement and power.
“Fortunately, I had already decided in my own mind that this LP should focus on songs and vocals: both lead vocal performances and the use of backing vocals to enrich melody and build harmony. I remember us sending the band’s road crew out to get a bunch of large 8x4‑foot panels of plywood and corrugated metal roofing sheets that we could then use in the studio to create more reflections and a livelier space to play in. But it’s the performances themselves that supply most of the energy.
“Even though the drums in the song are real, that fill has samples running in my Akai S900. Rob [Hirst] hit the finger pads on some small drum machine and I recorded the MIDI notes into an Atari ST running an early version of Cubase. Then we played around with some saturated lo‑fi drum samples and other metallic percussive noises to make those fills in the intro, and before the choruses, have a more explosive and unusual sound. The intro is only two bars — 10 beats — but proved effective.”