I recently watched Standing in the Shadows of Motown. There is a section of the film with a contemporary producer discussing the Motown EQ. He is pretty specific in saying that there was a very definite sound to Motown that was not “Musical” but “Studio.” He specifically contrasted it with the Wall-of-Sound associated with Phil Spector.
I’ve done a google search on the term, but I find many, many more references to the term then attempts to define it.
Was it mostly a result of new or different equipment? Was it instrumentation and the relative place of those instruments in the mix? Or was it just a different way of turning the knobs?
I am familiar with the Shadows movie (great movie!) about Motown, and I have been in many recording studios, but never any closer to the Motown era than some Holland/Dozier/Holland sessions in L.A. with large orchestras. So I might not be the best source for an answer, even though I am a Motown fan and musician.
But I think what he is talking about is a nebulous, hard-to-define, je ne sais quoi, best defined as “ambience”. It is the total sum of playing abilities, acoustic values in the room, arrangement, and electronic values contributed to the overall mix by the hardware and engineer.
For the record, Spector’s Wall of Sound was mostly multi-layering, or superimposing additional takes to make the sound “thicker”. Adding echo didn’t hurt. I would say Spector and Motown are quite opposites in ambience; Motown is much tighter and uses a small group of rhythm instruments as a base.