Recreating the sound of Motown

In 1965, Smokey and Claudette Robinson, Pete Moore, Bobby Rogers, Marv Tarplin, and Ronnie White, A.K.A. “The Miracles” walked into Hitsville USA (Studio A) to record “Tracks of My Tears,” which would become ranked as Rolling Stones’ “Greatest Motown Song of All Time.”

When our good friends at Universal Audio set out to recreate that classic Motown sound via the Hitsville EQ Collection and Reverb Chambers, they tapped Producer/Engineer Fab Dupont to produce the project. Fab called the incredible multi-instrumentalist, Louis Cato, to sing one of Motown’s most immense treasures. 

In this Puremix exclusive video, we go behind the scenes of the Universal Audio Apollo Session for “Tracks of My Tears” to see how the original sound was recreated, as well as hear from Bob Olhsson, one of the original engineers at Hitsville, USA who explains all of the original techniques, recording without headphones, the use of DIs, and the evolution of the Motown tape machines. 

Sit next to Fab Dupont, Louis Cato, and the Universal Audio crew as they recreate the original sound of “Tracks of My Tears” from Start to Finish.