fantasyn,

All music builds upon the past, whether immediate past, or distant past. This is actually true with clothing fashions as well.

Other influences that may not be obvious on the surface would be song structure in terms of it's intro verse chorus prechorus bridge sections (not that this is the pattern of Motown songs), overall song length, instrumentation, EQ of the songs themselves, the concept of a studio 'house' band (Funk Brothers) which underlaid countless hits (you have the Muscle Shoals folks down south, and the Wrecking Crew out in La-La-Land) that were slightly after the Motown guys (I think - someone might jump in here and correct this assumption), etc.

Something else that Motown brought to the forefront - more than 4 tracks to work with when mixing down. I think it was Motown that had one of the first 8 track simultaneous recording capabilities anywhere, with ability to pan - (even though much were mono mixes).

If you want a deep answer to this, you could hit up some of the Detroit chapter AES folks. I was in the Detroit section for a couple of years and my favorite meeting was on the main studio floor of the Motown studios and this was the lecture:

"May 2008: Tony Bongiovi of Bongiovi Acoustics spoke at the Motown Historical Museum on the secrets behind the famous “Motown” sound. Tony gave a presentation on the methods that were used to give Motown recordings that unique sound. The methods gave a small midwestern recording studio an advantage over larger more established studios in New York and LA, and allowed Motown to make its mark on music history. The meeting drew a large turnout including former Motown engineers. "

I could also possibly connect you to David Clark, one of the engineers referred to above (not of the Dave Clark 5). Dave co-presented with Tony Bongiovi in that May 2008 meeting - they talked quite a bit about the EQs that were in the rack at Motown. Hit me up with a private message if you want me to make the connection for you.

-Scott

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