Vintage production methods

[Bob Olhsson]

I want to kick off a discussion of retro music recording, i.e. live popular music played to an acoustic balance.

Lets talk about studio setups, acoustics, mikes and employing simple, high quality audio gear. Lets also discuss how to facilitate exceptional musical performances within these limitations.

Jerry Lee Lewis's "Whole Lotta Shak'n" was recorded and mixed in three minutes.

[radeng9805]

My typical gig:

Get to radio station at 12 noon. Build temporary control room by 1:45 pm. Band straggles in by 2-2:30. Band sets up. By 3:30 I've got balances. Live to air at 4 pm. Band plays for 2 hours. Break down and out the door by 7:30.

No computers, all analog except for the CDR and the Lexicon.

j

[PRobb]

OK- I'll go. For Shikawkee's (and Bob's) "Song of America" I recorded John Wesley Harding doing "God Save the King" arranged for demented marching band.

First, the space, which was a lower East Side studio called "The Space". It's in part of an old Vaudeville theater and the studio floor is what would have been under the stage. But the stage isn't there any more which means the ceiling is high enough to be acoustically irrelevant. So it's live space with short rt60 and wonderful natural isolation.

Next comes a great arrangement played by played by great musicians, without which the rest is irrelevant.

The band was drums, tuba, french horn, trombone and trumpet. The horns were in a line facing the drums. JWH was in a goboed vocal booth. We used a whole, live take with one vocal punch.

I miced the whole thing up with the usual suspects (4038s, KM-84s, 87s, etc) through Neve and API pres straight to PT. But more than half the mix came from a Blumlein pair of 121s carefully positioned between the horns and the drums and an omni 67 about 20 feet up. Some of the close mics were used to address features and balance issues.

The basic mix took about an hour. Then the arranger (the brilliantly twisted J. Walter Hawkes) did a few passes with me to address specific chord voicings- a bit more bone here, more french horn there. I'm really pleased with the result and it was a ton of fun to do.

And I have to encourage everyone to check out "Song of America". Ed (and Bob) have really produced something remarkable and very worthwhile.

Jerry Lee Lewis's "Whole Lotta Shak'n" was recorded and mixed in three minutes.
Was that record "mixed", or was the recording the finished product?

[Bob Olhsson]

Recorded straight to a mono 351.

[lebouche]

So it's live space with short rt60 and wonderful natural isolation.


I found this...incase anyone else was stumped.

Reflectivity:

In simple terms, reflectivity is the apparent "liveness" of a room. Professionals prefer the term reverb time or Rt-60. Rt-60 defined, is the amount of time (in seconds) it takes for a pulsed tone to decay to a level 6OdB below the original intensity. A live room has a great deal of reflectivity, and hence a long Rt-60. A dead room has little reflectivity and a short Rt-60.

I've been convinced by Bobs posts over the last few months that recording live is the way to go. I've also had my first good results recently recording a Jazz Quartet live on a wooden stage in a Jazz club. Using the recorderman method on Drums with a pair of 414's & a D112, another pair of 414's on the Piano, 57 and DI on the bass CAB, NT1 on the Sax (which was my only mistake...a little thin sounding). I think the bleed all turned out nice..Piano stage L, Bass center back, Sax center front Drums stage R.

Soon hopefully I'll have space to record bands live at my place..

[chrisj]

I'm getting a setup in my living room with a semicircular bar to hold some mics. My idea was, I'd produce a situation where I could get people laying down music playing together- perhaps with a bunch of no-xfmr SM58s for vocal spot mics, but primarily a way to lay basic tracks to a stereo or LCR array of large-diaphragm condensers with everything from voices, acoustics, percussion, electric players into nice little amps like Champs, all actually in the room.

It's anybody's guess as to whether this idea will be popular with musos- but I do know it would work, and would also be an amazing way to lay a bed for additional overdubs. I wouldn't want to lay drums this way because you'd lose everything else, it would be based around the levels of voices. I've been going to a lot of trouble to get the acoustic space to work like the type of reverb you'd find on a song, instead of the kind of reverb you'd find in a basement... thank goodness the room is flanked by a hallway and another room with BIG PORTALS twice the size of a door to each.

I think you can go surprisingly far with more modern production methods if you base them off a human performance...

As for the tech, I'm only going to be using Studio Projects (hotrodded- I came up with some mods) but I'm interested in the LCR mode, spacing the mics on a semicircular bar. The thing is, if I just put up two cardioids, I might not be spotlighting the middle enough and that's where the IMPORTANT stuff lives- so I'd put up the two cardioids spaced pretty wide as LR, and then the center goes to another track and I can sneak it in until the center image is seriously Technicolor and flashy. Also, center objects are off-axis for the L and R mics, which is totally unacceptable for putting the lead singer there.

I'm trying to figure out if it would be better to put 58s in front of guys and maybe not use the tracks- or have them just standing there, four to six feet from any mic, and say 'project the song so the mics hear you' :) the whole thing would be comb-filter madness so you'd have to control the sound of the room very intentionally and point the mics right at the people- hence LDCs, it has to have extra clarity on-axis and lose a lot of brightness off-axis. Can't be like SDCs and documenting the acoustic event with an emphasis on accurately getting the space, there has to be the extra attention drawn to the performance.

[Bob Olhsson]

My friend Robert Rich has been known to do sleep concerts. He's an ambient electronic musician who performs his music live. It's utterly awesome.

http://www.robertrich.com/

[Swafford]

Well, I'll wade in a little bit. you can sample some of the stuff Bob and Ed worked on for me at the ol' myspace page. Most done with few overdubs (fiddle here, background vox there), a few songs done on the first go through - Napoleon House I think was a first take, including vocals, though that bright electric was overdubbed. It was pretty cool coming in with 5 songs at 10 in the morning and having the tracking on them 90% done by 3 in the afternoon. I'm sure Bob or Ed can answer any of the particulars. The recordings were done in Nashville at either at Dave Martins Java Jive or The Castle.

This is probably a little primitive for what Bob is looking for, but wtf. That experience led me to start doing some recording out in the barn. It's an L shaped room with the ceiling 12 ft on one side and 8 ft. on the other, 19th century wood, opened up the doors.

Put the drums in the corner of the L guitars on either side, keys and bass direct on either side of the drums, vocals (two women trading leads or doing harmonies in fig 8) deep in the long part of the L. 3 monitors placed for minimal bleed, but useful monitoring. Used couch cushions for gobos. 4 tracked with a MH ULN and a ART Digital MPA, bass, rhythm guitar and drums sub mixed to one track of the ULN and compressed a little with one channel of a Peavey VCL/2, vocals are direct to the ULN and compressed a little with the other channel. Electric lead and keys straight to the 2 channel ART. 3 mics on the drums - one Gefell UM70 about chest high between the toms pointing straight down capture the kit and kick nicely and a little bit of cymbals, one Gefell m300 positioned over the cymbals for balance and to augment what the UM70 was picking up, a SM57 on the snare mix under the UM70 to punch up the snare a bit. Beyer 260 on the lead electric guitar, Gefell 582 w/m62 on acoustic and a Heil PR20 on the rhythm amp, Bass direct through a Demeter Tube DI. The vocals are through a Big Mic ER in fig 8 with the null facing the room.

It could use a bit more cymbals. I think, but for old school country and a first go round in the barn, I was pretty pleased. We did 5 songs in about 4 hours.

[Immanuel]

I got to think of 70s filmed recordings of stuff with people not just from one band playing together. Often there would be lead singers singing harmonies, when it was not their turn to do leads. And often these people would then share microphones on stage - usually 2 or 3 people for each "choir" microphone. And sometimes the result would be, that it was difficult to hear all of them. Are there any good reasons for doing it this way, or was that procedure most often dictated by lack of channels awailable or something like that?

[eagan]

My friend Robert Rich has been known to do sleep concerts. He's an ambient electronic musician who performs his music live. It's utterly awesome.

http://www.robertrich.com/

You're a friend of Robert Rich? Not like you needed it, but you just went up a few more points in my book, Bob.

RR is a fucking genius.


JLE

[Bob Olhsson]

Primitive was renting a stereo Nagra and recording a solo flute under one of the pedestrian bridges in Golden Gate Park.

[Swafford]

Primitive was the wrong word, amateurish may have been what I was looking for.

[Pancho Ballard]

My friend Robert Rich has been known to do sleep concerts.

I reckon I'd be good at those. I could vary my act too. In fact, I have the full repetoire of sleeping down to a tee; peaceful, fractious, restless-drunk-too-much-alcohol - I'm a natural!

[Pancho Ballard]

I've been convinced by Bobs posts over the last few months that recording live is the way to go.

Agreed. All that's holding me back is a decent sounding room. I was going to say decent mics too but I reckon even a couple of Rode NT1's will sound good if the band and the room are good.

There is a band in my town who would love to record this way and I know it would also be the best way to record them as they hate having to play their parts seperately.

My kingdom for a room. A cheap one. :grin:

[eagan]

Primitive was renting a stereo Nagra and recording a solo flute under one of the pedestrian bridges in Golden Gate Park.

That reminds me of something I had forgotten about. The album Inside by Paul Horn. I haven't heard that in years.


JLE

[ggunn]

There is a band in my town who would love to record this way and I know it would also be the best way to record them as they hate having to play their parts seperately.


IMO, any band worth their salt on stage would prefer to record live.

[bunnerabb]

L.I.T.S. has always deliverd the best work, for me, on both sides of the mic.

I wish I had the facility to do it.

[Pancho Ballard]

True, but whereas I'd be more than capable of overdubbing my part afterwards (oo-er missus) the band in question would be almost incapable of doing so.

As an aside, years ago at college we had a new teacher working there. He used to work as an engineer at the BBC and his work is on one of the tracks on The Beatles at the Beeb CD. He did many more sessions obviously, The Stones, NME Awards Concerts, etc. Due to the idiotic college management he had to teach us Keyboard Skills when it was obvious (now that I think about it for the first time in over ten years) that he should have been taking us for the Recording Technology side of the course (do you know in 4 years no-one ever told us about compressors?).

Anyway, he did teach us some recording techniques for one lesson. We all went in a small 16 track control room while he mic'd a drumkit up with the window covered so we couldn't see where he was putting the mics. He then got a drummer to play the same beat for about 4 different mic placements and we had to then pick the best sounding one.

To our amazement the best one used just one microphone. You know the worst bit about this story though? I never noted what mic he'd used or exactly where he'd put it. I know it was somewhere just above the kick and I'm sure it was pointing towards the snare but what type and how far back I don't know. I didn't realise back then how much I would want to know this. Damn.

[Bob Olhsson]

A good question is how the !@#$ did we ever get on this kick of not recording live?

The original answer was that the musicians often hit their peak of performance before the singer did.

[bunnerabb]

A good question is how the !@#$ did we ever get on this kick of not recording live?

The original answer was that the musicians often hit their peak of performance before the singer did.

I think Slippy's rant on the radio show about MIDI and the fine folks at Linn has a pony in that race.

[Bob Olhsson]

The way MIDI ended up being used only added insult to injury... Its as if video games had displaced sports.

Of course the other side of the Linn story was that very few towns had more than a couple drummers that were worth recording. This was very appealing.

[eagan]

A good question is how the !@#$ did we ever get on this kick of not recording live?

The original answer was that the musicians often hit their peak of performance before the singer did.

Well, gee, Bob. You tell us! You were on the bus during it all.

I always thought it was mostly because as things moved into the seventies, people started looking at having more tracks for multitrack recording and started thinking 'hey, hang on, you know, if we split this up, we can not only focus on perfect takes for each part, without the problem of everybody doing their best take at the same time.....but when it comes time to mix, we can have total separation of every sound!".

I mean, was this not it?


JLE

[Bob Olhsson]

By the late '70s pop music was drowning in concepts and it wasn't long 'till it was also drowning in technology.

[Mixerpuppet]

A good question is how the !@#$ did we ever get on this kick of not recording live?




Metal Bands with Mesas :lol:

[ggunn]

What impresses the crap out of me is those old Spike Jones recordings that were done live with one mic, and the coordination of those stellar musicians with all those live pistol shots, breaking glass, klaxons, clangs, bongs, burps, razzes, gumps, etc.

[PRobb]

I don't have a problem with modern production techniques per se. They have their place. There are as many valid ways to make records as there are types of music to record. No method is inherently right or wrong.

My problem is that the new methods have obliterated all that came before. A band live in a room is still a wonderful way to make records and I hope more people rediscover it.

[ggunn]

I don't have a problem with modern production techniques per se. They have their place. There are as many valid ways to make records as there are types of music to record. No method is inherently right or wrong.

My problem is that the new methods have obliterated all that came before. A band live in a room is still a wonderful way to make records and I hope more people rediscover it.

My band is stuggling with this dilemma. We record in my home studio every time we rehearse or jam, and from time to time we capture an inspired performance, but since it's a one-take on a pair of room mics, the mix is never what we'd want it to be. We have multitracked on my PT setup and outside studios as well, but since we are not playing together, what we end up with, though it may be a great mix, invariably lacks the "snap" of a live performance.

I'd love to be able to hire a sound stage and get the best of both worlds, but then there's the money...

[eagan]

I don't have a problem with modern production techniques per se. They have their place. There are as many valid ways to make records as there are types of music to record. No method is inherently right or wrong.

My problem is that the new methods have obliterated all that came before. A band live in a room is still a wonderful way to make records and I hope more people rediscover it.

Nail smacked dead center on head. At least I think so, what PR said here matches my thinking exactly.

For a string of years now my recording activity has been entirely just me in the mode of one guy in a home studio doing very electronic stuff. That includes certain ways of working, by necessity.

On the other hand, if I were part of a working band and working on getting things recorded, the mode of operation would definitely have some differences.

It should be stating the painfully obvious to say one size does not fit all. It all depends on the music being played and recorded, the people playing it, the instrumentation and sounds involved, and the room and equipment involved.

This is where the producer comes in. Somebody has to make an objective intelligent decision about what is the best way to proceed. That isn't discussed enough.


JLE

[Bob Olhsson]

Make no mistake about the fact that making an erector set record is an utterly intoxicating experience for the engineer and producer. I was among the very first working with Stevie Wonder and I have been deeply involved with synthesizers since Motown bought one of the very first Moog modulars in 1967.

My problem is completely with the impact of "one size fits all" on music. Using any production approach because it is "kewl" rather than because it leads directly to both an extraordinary performance and listener experience is putting the cart ahead of the horse.

[PRobb]

My band is stuggling with this dilemma. We record in my home studio every time we rehearse or jam, and from time to time we capture an inspired performance, but since it's a one-take on a pair of room mics, the mix is never what we'd want it to be. We have multitracked on my PT setup and outside studios as well, but since we are not playing together, what we end up with, though it may be a great mix, invariably lacks the "snap" of a live performance.

I'd love to be able to hire a sound stage and get the best of both worlds, but then there's the money...

One thing to keep in mind about the "band in a room" approach: IT'S CHEAP! Rent a day at a good studio. If you're well rehearsed and have your gear together there's no reason an 8-10 hour session shouldn't produce five or six tracks.

[Spock]

For the past two small little cover band's I've been in, our demos were done live.

One we planned that way. I didn't want yet another band demo that sounded studio slick. If you take the time and effort you can make even a sucky set of players and make them sound just like everyone else. We were rehersing in a unused but new warehouse. We had the PA setup all the time and all we did was take 4 different AUX mixes out of the board to tape.

We just played the way we always did. No overbuds, nothing fancy, just your standard set of mics you'd see for live band.

Later we put some verb on the vocals and mixed it down.

[Dr. Bob]

We just played the way we always did. No overbuds

Hmmmmm... a little Freudian slip, there bro???

I mean... no over buds... no under buds?? or just no buds... or Bud's?

I digress...

That's what has directed me towards live remote work... real muso's playing real music...

To me, "traditional" multitrack... OMG, look where the technology has driven us... Traditional Multitrack... At any rate, traditional multitrack is great for creating an music as it's written. After that, IMHO, the artist SHOULD go learn the music as they wrote it, and come BACK to the studio and track it live.

On remote sessions, I multitrack as much as I possibly can... it ends up making it a more controlled environment to mix under.

[eagan]

No overbuds.

This is the idea of the lesson learned by many bands over musical history, in which it was discovered that generally better end results can be obtained by not loading up the bong one or two times too many during the recording process.


JLE

[lebouche]

I counted 74 edits on one vocal the other day.... and it needed it. The girl was crying when she heard her unedited takes. Now she thinks she's the shiznit again....thing is I was really torn, really wanted to tell her she needs to practise more. "When I sing live it sounds fine, it's the vibe in here...".
I think the old school methods meant you had to make the grade. Now people like us can create the illusion of talent rather than recording it which sucks big fat ****. I'm certainly bored with it.

[eagan]

I counted 74 edits on one vocal the other day.... and it needed it. The girl was crying when she heard her unedited takes. Now she thinks she's the shiznit again


<sigh>

Well, there we have it. A representative poster girl for about 80% of the stuff Bob talks about here.

....thing is I was really torn, really wanted to tell her she needs to practise more. "When I sing live it sounds fine, it's the vibe in here...".


Right. You don't have enough lava lamps. That's clearly the problem.

By the way, I'm not really an ugly guy, it's that the lighting in here is bad.

Alright, maybe a little more seriously, did she have any problems hearing herself? Any cue mix issues there? This could be a problem, although, realistically, my hunch is that it's a little more fundamental. Have you heard her live?

Maybe she really does think it sounds fine live. I don't think I'm offering up any great revelation here, though, when I say that people's perceptions of how they think they sound onstage live can be very very different from what you get sitting in a studio hearing things coming out of the monitors clearly and objectively and nothing to sugar coat the reality of it like "but look, the crowd is having a good time, so I must sound great!"

Incidentally, what were you torn about? Obviously nobody wants to drive off a paying client. But if you're sitting there doing this, and, if it's what it sounds like, you are also playing the role of producer by default because there isn't a producer, then somebody has to say it, and this means you.

If it takes 74 edits to get a usable vocal track (and you did say "takes", plural, but not how many takes), you can't fucking sing. Not today, anyway.

I think the old school methods meant you had to make the grade.

Yeah. What you heard was the actual performance. Not the results of some form of audio electronic plastic surgery.

Now people like us can create the illusion of talent rather than recording it which sucks big fat ****. I'm certainly bored with it.

Then don't.


JLE

[Swafford]

I counted 74 edits on one vocal the other day.... and it needed it. The girl was crying when she heard her unedited takes. Now she thinks she's the shiznit again....thing is I was really torn, really wanted to tell her she needs to practise more. "When I sing live it sounds fine, it's the vibe in here...".
I think the old school methods meant you had to make the grade. Now people like us can create the illusion of talent rather than recording it which sucks big fat ****. I'm certainly bored with it.

You are causing global warming.

I had a hot little number a few weeks ago at a show I was running. Fantastic tattoo across her chest disappearing beneath her bustier and emerging around her back just before it disappeared beneath her jeans.

YUMMA-A-FUCKING-LUMMA.

She thought she was a GREAT SINGER. Couldn't hold pitch for shit. Everyone in the room shrank a little every time she opened her mouth. She scatted. She melisma-ed. She made Yoko sound like Fart Artfunkel.

When she was done, she asked me earnestly if there was anything she could do to improve her voice. I told her she was singing all head, and needed to blend in some chest and occasionally go for all chest and take some yoga so she could learn how to breath.

She told me she sang from the heart.

Stab me in the ear.

She was hot.

[bunnerabb]

There was a hit record in 1965 by a band called the Gentrys and the song was called " Keep on Dancin' (http://ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/html/lyrics/k/keep_on_dancintg.txt)".

The vocals were nasal and thin, the drummer was quite bad and d r a g g e d the kick on this little two bar bridge between the verses, badly. Like wayyyy behind.

The cheesa Farfisa was tracked badly, and you could tell it was pretty much L.I.T.S.

Technically, the record was pretty bad.

I LOVE that record.

Good song, energy and the band put on the hat that they came there to wear.

The hammer that drives the nail in, and they drove it to fucking flat end of the plank.

There was even a fake fade out and a reprise.

Terrible record.

Wonderful record.

For more information on fun pop recordings, visit my sig.

[Bob Olhsson]

I love that record too, we really need more like it! You can pick lots of stuff apart intellectually but that's the whole problem.

An old sage once said "You can get more stinkin' from thinkin' than you can from drinkin' but to feel is for real." Too many people are drunk on intellectual perfection. "Keep on Dancin'" most likely wasn't produced or engineered by a musician. Folks have really got to learn to take off their musician's hat when they produce pop music.

Intellectually perfect only means there's nothing wrong. To me, overproduction means throwing away what's right in a herculean effort to achieve nothing wrong.

[Immanuel]

Folks have really got to learn to take off their musician's hat when they produce pop music.

Can you dig into, what you mean by that?

[Bob Olhsson]

What I mean is that we are not making pop records for musicians. The idea is to make records that are a blast for anybody to listen to over and over. What's right needs to overwhelm and totally distract the listener from what's wrong.

[lebouche]

<sigh>


Alright, maybe a little more seriously, did she have any problems hearing herself? Any cue mix issues there?

Nope, I have singers performing well with the same setup all the time and there was no mix... just a piano track

This could be a problem, although, realistically, my hunch is that it's a little more fundamental. Have you heard her live?

Yes, same performer/performance



Incidentally, what were you torn about? Obviously nobody wants to drive off a paying client. But if you're sitting there doing this, and, if it's what it sounds like, you are also playing the role of producer by default because there isn't a producer, then somebody has to say it, and this means you.

Well editing =time = money...but I'm torn between earning and being brutally honest

If it takes 74 edits to get a usable vocal track (and you did say "takes", plural, but not how many takes), you can't fucking sing. Not today, anyway.

About 30 takes.... edits from. In her defense she's a strong song writer and has good vocal qualities...she just trys to sing like a diva when she lacks the basic pitching abilitys....makes the nice sounds but not consistantly. It was always going to be pop in style. Truth is I'm happy to get paid but I feel it would be more constructive to help people who don't cut it improve....that's not really what clients want to hear though.



Yeah. What you heard was the actual performance. Not the results of some form of audio electronic plastic surgery.



Then don't.


JLE

Tempting.....but life in central London is expensive. I did feel a little like a master tailor when I finished. I suppose the end result was something fairly satisfying even if 'plastic'. Hopefully I'll get more work recording bands soon..beggars can't be choosers. I enjoyed the experience but I'm not sure its a good thing that I did.

[Dave Martin]

I didn't want yet another band demo that sounded studio slick.
May I be the quiet voice in the back that suggests that you can be 'studio slick' while recording live? Perhaps Bob should chime in, since I've heard his rhythm section guys do it so often. My regular guys do, too. A well recorded rhythm section comprised of competent (ok, extremely competent) musicians should be able to do that all day....

[Dave Martin]

On another tangent, I don't mind at all working with a singer for a couple of hours on the final vocal - it's a combination of coaching (on my part) and self discovery on the artist's part; I did that with an artist last week on a 10 song project, so we spent close to 20 or 25 hours on lead vocals. The result (which, by the way, wasn't tuned - at least not by me) was a performance that was substantially better than she thought she was capable of giving. And we were able to do it together despite the presence of the 'producer'.

[nobby]

I love that record too, we really need more like it! You can pick lots of stuff apart intellectually but that's the whole problem.



I like it too, but to 'pick it apart intellectually' you can't go back to 1962 (or whenever) and use the doo wop chord progression which was shopworn even at that point, along with the cliched production and claim relevance of any kind today.

That doesn't mean we can't enjoy some old fashioned Rock & Roll, of course! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_82jWX_5ZkI) :Coolio:

[weedywet]

What I mean is that we are not making pop records for musicians. The idea is to make records that are a blast for anybody to listen to over and over. What's right needs to overwhelm and totally distract the listener from what's wrong.

EXCELLENT point.

and I might add that non-musicians don't hear it as "wrong"; so for them it's NOT "wrong"; "distractions" or not!


Much of the job of producing is identifying those things that are great... but also those things that really NEED to be either fixed or 'distracted from' without getting bogged down in the things that don't really MATTER.





Part of the reason I hate those records that sound like they're trying to 'impress' musicians or engineers.

Good records convey EMOTION; not skill.

[bunnerabb]

From that other website, regarding songwriting and the Beach Boys.

But "two girls for every boy" is a little silly. A naive America that never really was.

So?

We all piss and whine that "nobody writes really amazing songs anymore" and it's because we sit around analysing the shit out of the ones that were.

"Within the context of their era and mindful of the, now, ironic aspec..."

My ass.

I don't know about y'all, but when those wispy, verbed out pizzicatos of "Wouldn't It Be Nice" start playing, I'm instantly 13 years old, again and holding my girlfriend's hand and breathlessly hoping every second of time we have together, that day, is endless.

Stop thinking and feel something without being afraid to have people notice you feel something or leave the songwriting to people who feel AND think.

It wasn't cool to wear your heart on your sleeve in 1965.

This is because that is the very antithesis of cool.

He who smirks last may have missed the entire f*cking play.

They wrote songs about cars and girls. If cars and girls are old hat, now, write something equally shimmering and amazing about.. computers and girls.

The trick to songwriting is to tell the truth. Especially about things that only exist in your imagination. Nobody ever said Dali's paintings were "Kind of really bad representations of things".

And the truth embedded in the handful of hits that the Beach Boys produced is undeniable.

And that's why you're analysing them, forty years after the fact.

[bunnerabb]

That doesn't mean we can't enjoy some old fashioned Rock & Roll, of course! :Coolio:

If you don't stop doing that, I will kill you with my teeth, :lol:

[Bob Olhsson]

Today I think too many folks are obsessed with being "kewl." What's really kewl is saying something rather than just posing.

I've been to a bunch of songwriter "pulls" here in the gulch. Every now and then somebody throws in a ringer. It generally turns out to be some Hank Williams B-side that nobody my age or younger has ever heard. It almost always brings the house down because it's so much better than anything else including current hits sung by their songwriter.

It was a major eye-opener for me about song quality vs. trendiness.

[weedywet]

Yes.
I've also seen that pulled as a fast one.

Some songwriter is told repeatedly by the producer that the songs aren't there yet.
So he brings in some obscure song that he thinks "I'll show HIM, he'll reject a _____ song. Know it all"

and of COURSE the producer goes crazy "this is the BEST song you've ever written! You finally GOT IT!"

I saw this once some (okay, many) years ago with a major producer and band with a development deal.
After they copped to the song not being there's, he dropped them on the spot.

and rightly so.

[amopae]

To me, another big problem is that a lot of bands/musicians have developed some kind of fear to the producer's figure. Now EVERY guy that knows something about music thinks he can produce his band or his own album, and self production is a really dangerous thing, because when you're doing that, you might lose a bit of perspective and objectivity about your own work. Fuck, you won't have any kind of favorable perspective and objectivity.

I'm talking out of my own experience here, but with my band, the producer figure was kind of hard to accept. At first, when I suggested it, they went: "why do we need one if we can do it ourselves?". After I went anal about it and FORCED them to work that way, and after they've worked with him, they now get the good side of having someone from outside your own little world telling you: "if you want to achieve this result, you can to try it this way and see what comes out of it."

The fear of a producer has been a growing trend among A LOT of musicians that I've known

[Bob Olhsson]

This is because of all the chatter about evil producers and the kewl self-produced bands in the "indier than thou" fan magazines.

[Swafford]

There really is no vast Indie Rock conspiracy to expand the hypsterocracy and make our lives unmanageable.

Some bands have done quite well on their own with a competent engineer to capture what they think their sound is or they find a weird methodology to capture it themselves. You may not like what it is they capture, but on the strength of the song (you know, like the Gentry's), the music endures. Some bands self destruct left to themselves. Some bands sound terrible without the right producer to channel their energies and talents. Some bands find their stride with the right producer who understands what it is they need and then helps them deliver it.

[eagan]

Nobody said that nobody can do it.

There definitely are, however, people who really aren't equipped for it. Worse, because they don't understand it, they don't have a fucking clue about the fact that they aren't equipped to do it.

I totally agree with Bob on the idea that too many young bands and musicians think they can do it based on a billion people telling them it's the cool way to go. Maybe some shit they read or are told about how a producer is some showbiz shark character who will boss them around and, like, totally like corrupt their musical integrity and vision 'n stuff, dood.

Then they read all kinds of bullshit in music magazines about how they can do it all themselves if they just get some stuff from Banjo Center or someplace, and just have at it.

The thing is, again, that the problems happen when people think they don't need a producer simply because they're too naive, inexperienced, or maybe just self deluded and overoptimistic to understand they do need a producer, and they need a producer for exactly those reasons.

It's the ones who are experienced and/or smart enough to think about who they need as a producer objectively that are probably actually equipped with enough understanding of what's involved to possibly do it themselves, or do it in a partnership with a suitable engineer. (Which also can lead into a discussion of the idea that somebody can be a pretty decent engineer and be a fucking awful producer.)

It's one thing for people who've been through a few experiences already to consider the idea that this next time, maybe they should take the wheel themselves.

I read too many stories here about people who are sitting in their studio trying their best to get good results working with some goobers who are in a studio for the first time, have their heads up their asses (the artistes, not the suffering engineer), and there is no producer, and the poor engineer ends up trying to deal with it as producer by default.

Latest example; Lebouche and the Vocal Session From Hell.


JLE

[bunnerabb]

It strikes me that that concern might have arisen out of the fact that every monkey with an M-Box and a Blue Bottle says that they're a producer, lately.

[bunnerabb]

There really is no vast Indie Rock conspiracy to expand the hypsterocracy and make our lives unmanageable

No.

It's a confederacy of dunces that use the "cutting edge" for the whole silverware drawer and the music is just a peg for their raiments of eliteness.

They may have nothing to say, but as soon as it's said, it's not hip anymore.

At least this generation can make fun of itself. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5-rGN0ou_4)

[Swafford]

Nobody said that nobody can do it.

There definitely are, however, people who really aren't equipped for it. Worse, because they don't understand it, they don't have a fucking clue about the fact that they aren't equipped to do it.

I totally agree with Bob on the idea that too many young bands and musicians think they can do it based on a billion people telling them it's the cool way to go. Maybe some shit they read or are told about how a producer is some showbiz shark character who will boss them around and, like, totally like corrupt their musical integrity and vision 'n stuff, dood.

Then they read all kinds of bullshit in music magazines about how they can do it all themselves if they just get some stuff from Banjo Center or someplace, and just have at it.

The thing is, again, that the problems happen when people think they don't need a producer simply because they're too naive, inexperienced, or maybe just self deluded and overoptimistic to understand they do need a producer, and they need a producer for exactly those reasons.

It's the ones who are experienced and/or smart enough to think about who they need as a producer objectively that are probably actually equipped with enough understanding of what's involved to possibly do it themselves, or do it in a partnership with a suitable engineer. (Which also can lead into a discussion of the idea that somebody can be a pretty decent engineer and be a fucking awful producer.)

It's one thing for people who've been through a few experiences already to consider the idea that this next time, maybe they should take the wheel themselves.

I read too many stories here about people who are sitting in their studio trying their best to get good results working with some goobers who are in a studio for the first time, have their heads up their asses (the artistes, not the suffering engineer), and there is no producer, and the poor engineer ends up trying to deal with it as producer by default.

Latest example; Lebouche and the Vocal Session From Hell.


JLE

Yes the world is full of clueless newbies and clued in assholes, I'm not sure why the music world should be any different. I think at this stage or our Internet Relationship, this can be construed as a given.

I guess I don't get the anti-Indie fanboy 'self produced' smack downs.

[Dave Martin]

The fear of a producer has been a growing trend among A LOT of musicians that I've known
Yep, and it's happening at a time when a competent producer is ever more necessary. I played some shows last week with an act that had excellent singers and musicians, and some really wonderful songs. Sadly, every single song they did needed to be between a minute and a minute and a half shorter than it was. I would enjoy producing this act, and they could make a great record - but they feel like their songs are 'perfect' as they are.

Ah, well - maybe they are, and it's ME who doesn't get it... :)

[Swafford]

No.

It's a confederacy of dunces that use the "cutting edge" for the whole silverware drawer and the music is just a peg for their raiments of eliteness.

They may have nothing to say, but as soon as it's said, it's not hip anymore.

At least this generation can make fun of itself. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5-rGN0ou_4)

Really? I think you give people way to much credit for their (lack) of intent.

[Swafford]

It strikes me that that concern might have arisen out of the fact that every monkey with an M-Box and a Blue Bottle says that they're a producer, lately.

For an older guy I spend a lot of time working with budding songwriters, performers and bands, you know the real live kind, not the ones that pose at Gear Slutz. I got to tell you, I have yet to meet ONE kid with an MBox and a Blue Bottle that thinks they are a producer, an engineer or anything more then a little fish in a very large ocean just trying to get some bearing on where to go and what to do with this fire they have in their hearts and bellies.

You guys ought to get some tinfoil hats and form a club.

[Dave Martin]

I read too many stories here about people who are sitting in their studio trying their best to get good results working with some goobers who are in a studio for the first time, have their heads up their asses (the artistes, not the suffering engineer), and there is no producer, and the poor engineer ends up trying to deal with it as producer by default.

Latest example; Lebouche and the Vocal Session From Hell.


Or the project that I just finished. I produced a pretty darned good record, despite the occasional presence and poor choices of the 'paducer'. I'll be listed as the 'engineer', of course.

Ah, well - the money was good. :)

[bunnerabb]

You guys ought to get some tinfoil hats and form a club.

The kids know better.

I'm talking about suburban wankers with jobs and mortgages who should know better.

Maybe you should see where I'm aiming the death ray before you fit me for an Alcoa chapeau. :)

[Tim Armstrong]

I guess I don't get the anti-Indie fanboy 'self produced' smack downs.

I'm with you on this! Producing, recording, mixing, playing, singing, songwriting, etc, are all skills that can be acquired by some folks, and it isn't beyond the realm of the possible for someone to be good at more than one or two of them simultaneously.

Cheers, Tim

[bunnerabb]

Really? I think you give people way to much credit for their (lack) of intent.

Not really. I hang out with der kids, too.

A lot of them just cop whatever pose they think will get them laid.

That's fine.

[Swafford]

The kids know better.

I'm talking about suburban wankers with jobs and mortgages who should know better.

Maybe you should see where I'm aiming the death ray before you fit me for an Alcoa chapeau. :)

It's hard to see in this thread. Indie kewl, clueless chippies, paducing wannabees with bulging wallets, suburban wankers and mooks slinging sell side logic. Maybe we can just call them all "people we loathe who are bringing down our world." There's just so much to hate, it's tough to know where to focus all that energy.....I guess I'll go split some more wood. I was thinking of projecting an image of The Eagles on each log.

[amopae]

I'm with you on this! Producing, recording, mixing, playing, singing, songwriting, etc, are all skills that can be acquired by some folks, and it isn't beyond the realm of the possible for someone to be good at more than one or two of them simultaneously.

Cheers, Tim

I think I didn't wrote my point exactly as I thought it.

Actually, you CAN develop a good criteria for producing, recording, mixing and playing your own music, but still, at least the people that I have knowledge that DO have that good criteria, don't have a problem with working with someone from the outside throwing his opinion in. You can still selfproduce, but selfproduction is a very dangerous thing that, more often than not, becomes selfindulgence and in most cases, selfindulgence is not THAT good and you don't see it until someone points it out.

Also, I think that after you've worked with someone else for a while you start developing your own way of seeing things and you can start putting yourself out of the box and sitting on someone elses chair instead of on your own.

[eagan]

I got to tell you, I have yet to meet ONE kid with an MBox and a Blue Bottle that thinks they are a producer, an engineer or anything more then a little fish in a very large ocean just trying to get some bearing on where to go and what to do with this fire they have in their hearts and bellies.

You guys ought to get some tinfoil hats and form a club.

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who sees something obvious in that.

The fact that these guys you're talking about are actually talking to you about this might be a very good indicator that they aren't the kind of people who we're talking about as possible problem children. They get it. They apparently understand that, even if they do have ideas and ambitions about doing it themselves, it demands a little homework and preparation first, and they probably ought to at least pick the brains of somebody who's been down the road once or twice before.

I'm not speaking for anybody else here, but I don't see anybody here on any kind of anti-DIY crusade. Not me. Shit, I am one of those DIY guys. That has included learning a few things the hard way by my own clueless fuckups.


This might seem way off topic, but here's something. I've had pretty much a lifelong interest in motorsports. A bunch of friends have been or are still involved in that, anywhere from local dirt track stock cars to international level pro sports car racing. There's a little piece of folk wisdom among the people at the level of weekend warrior short oval part time racers and SCCA club racing types. It basically goes like "if you can't afford to take the car and throw the whole thing on a scrap heap as wadded up broken junk write-off, you can't afford to do this".

What does this have to do with what we're talking about?

There's maybe a corrolary in an idea that would be something like if you can't afford to take a bunch of time and money invested in recording and throw it away as failed experiments, maybe you should get a more experienced guide. Or, as we call them, a producer.

Like I said. The people who need a producer the most are the ones who don't even have a glimmer of a clue yet about why they might need some help and guidance.


JLE

[Bob Olhsson]

My complaint is with the selling of and profiteering off of DIY.

It reminds me of song sharking where scamsters offered to "set your poem to music and send copies to all of the record labels" for a hundred bucks.

[Mixerpuppet]

I have yet to meet ONE kid with an MBox and a Blue Bottle that thinks they are a producer, an engineer or anything more


Really!

Don't meet alot of rappers eh? :Razz:

Seems like out here that if you have a Karichokeme Machine your the Producer, Artist, Engineer, Technician, A&R, Graphic Artist, Webmaster, Office Administrator and Advertising sales Manager and now a MySpace account :)

[bilco]

I am a songwriter first, bass player 2nd and audio engineer is really nowhere in my list of talents; it's a hobby that I've loved to mess around with since my grandfather's all tube Wollenak mono reel to reel, Akai deck with "Sound on Sound!", Teac 2340 & 3340, Dokorder 4 Track, Fostex Portastudio Cassette and now PTLE.

So take what I say with a block of salt; I'm not a pro.

but here's what I have discovered about myself about home recordings.

The Vibe Factor

The absolute best recordings I have ever made as far as feel is concerned were recorded with:

1. a 2 track reel to reel with 1 mic in the room, I think it was a Crown
2. a 3340, a Peavey PA head and a handful of SM57s and 58s

In both cases I was recording with friends/bandmembers live in one untreated room, with at least the whole rhythm section being recorded at the same time, no overdubs for the basic tracks. Those recordings have problems with EQ, the noise of the tape decks and a few clams here and there, but the feel is there. We played like we were a band and friends and the live recording captures the feel of those relationships in a way that transcends the glitches in the recordings.

On the other hand are my PTLE sessions, almost always built on a click track, SAME exact musicians/friends, better mics, better preamps and the absence of tape hiss. They sound better in a hi fi kind of way, and the tempos don't rush or drag, but there is no vibe or groove to them. and they're still not mixed down...... which brings me to:

The Decision Making Process

For years I wanted a multitrack deck and had to settle for things like bouncing tracks with the Akai sound on sound feature. If I could just get a 3340, then I could record exactly what I heard in my head.

So I got one. Then 4 tracks was not enough; I needed 8.

8 tracks was better, but if I just had 2 more, I could put more mics on the drums.......

Enter Pro Tools LE, cheap Chinese mics and the preamp wars. Now every recording is preceded by the mental anguish of "Should I use the SM7b or the Beta 52 on kick....... RNP on the acoustic or on the overheads.....2 SM81s on the acoustic or just 1?" ARRRgghhhh!!

The mix decisions are even worse, which take to keep, EQ, compression, does Digi reverb really suck? Gee I thought it sounds okay, but I'd better not use it if no one likes it..... maybe I'll just watch some tv instead of making those decisions tonight and tomorrow night....

I am not Stevie Wonder

I finally got it. I realistically have MORE than enough tools to record what I hear in my head and I discovered that what I hear in my head is not necessarily worth being heard by the rest of the world..... Those harmonies don't quite work out the way I thought. The songs are okay, but my voice and my guitar playing pretty much suck in a typical singer/songwriter kind of way. I am a good songwriter, a decent bass player and a lame singer and guitarist. No amount of gear acquisition can hide that. At least the gear lust is over. I told my wife to throw out every music gear catalog that comes in the mail. I don't want to know what's in them, I am going cold turkey.

Conclusions

*I don't want to take a loss and sell all of this gear, but I really wish I had stuck with an SM57, SM58 and a Portastudio or maybe my Mbox. Walk in, turn it on, record the idea, turn it off, walk out.
*Use guitarists better than me on guitar, if it's a demo use vocalists better than me to sing. Maybe even use a better bassist than me.
*Play the song idea for the band and GET THEIR FEEDBACK, ideas for structure, harmonies, hook licks.
*Better yet, find a producer
*Take the band into a studio with a REAL engineer, record live. Overdub vocals if necessary. Mix and walk out with the finished project that day. Somewhere in this thread I think I read about doing 10 songs in a day, recorded, mixed and mastered. That idea appeals to me so much. Reduce the decision making as much as possible and shift them to the front end of the recording process instead of leaving so much to sift through in Playlists. The bluegrass concept of everybody in a circle around 1 omni mic, controlling their dynamics and recording it to mono is very appealing.

That's where I am right now. Moral of the story - be careful what you ask for. I was better off with a 2 track reel to reel.

bilco

[eagan]

Good, head screwed on straight, realistic perspective.

There's the thing about musicians and home studios. Some of us are comfortable and able to deal with the engineering side in parallel with the musical side without getting derailed on either facet of it. Some get bogged down and just plain distracted from the main item at hand. Making and playing tunes.

There's the thing, though. Popular thinking now tells everybody "hey, you can just do it yourself", but not everybody wants to, or can, or ought to do it all themselves.

There's nothing wrong with sticking with the original idea of a musician's personal recording setup, i.e., just as a sketchpad sort of working tool. You don't have to try to make a sonic masterpiece if you're not up to it, whether it's lack of engineering chops, or difficulty with keeping perspective and juggling everything involved. Just use it for what it's useful for, for you, and when it's time to get serious about a finished article recording, get somebody else to deal with it.

That method still works.


JLE

[Oberlehrer]

There's the thing, though. Popular thinking now tells everybody "hey, you can just do it yourself", but not everybody wants to, or can, or ought to do it all themselves.

We have to remember that "hey, you can just do it yourself" mostly refers to being able to afford the tools. This ability doesn't include automatically the ability to use them, too.

While we're on the subject of producers and self-produced albums: A lot probably depends on genre and things like artistic vision. In jazz there are numerous examples of self-produced records or records done with very minimal interference from a producer - and that goes back a long way.

[weedywet]

interesting choice of words.

so producers "interfere"
that's what we do?

[Oberlehrer]

I'm not a native speaker but I think that's the right word for a lot of cases, yes.
Usually I think that people doing things for a reason. So if a band plays a song in a certain way they probably have a reason for it. If the producer suggests changes he is interfering. That doesn't mean he is wrong; his reasons may be much better than the band's. But interference it is.

[paulie]

I just lent a client of mine Bobby Owinski's (?) book about mixing. I haven't seen him since - I think he believes he will save alot of money if he does it himself....

Most modern records' credits should read,

Vocals by Protools and Antares with slightly out of tune throat noises by (insert singer's name here)

Drums by Beat Detective and Sound Replacer triggered by (insert drummer's name here)

Bass Guitar replaced by (insert the name of competent session musician here)

All edited to shit, compressed to fuck and mixed up its own arse by (insert engineer/producer's name here).

That's why I don't record young artists trying to make it anymore, but multiple hats off to those of you who do and even more hats off if you've got no choice.

In my world I have all the world's thermonuclear missiles pointing at the Propellerheads Reason factory.

I blame them, not the kids. At least Simon Cowell pretends not to give 'em false hope.

Paulie.

[Bob Olhsson]

There's really no such thing as "self-produced," it's just "no producer." There's nothing necessarily wrong with that.

The term "producer" is a vestige from American radio broadcasting. During the 1940s the early independent record labels had to make their recordings in radio stations because all of the gear was all patented and one could only lease it from the patent holder if they were willing to give you a lease.
A studio that was used for prerecording broadcasts was often called a production room and the person in charge was called a producer. Atlantic Records started out this way and decided to credit one of their A&R people as a "producer" and the term stuck.

In other entertainment media the word "director" or, in the case of sports, "coach" are terms typically used to describe the role. It involves challenging people to perform their very best and creating a situation that supports artists in performing at their very best.

In front of an audience a performer gets immediate feedback and can adjust what they are doing to achieve the desired experience for the audience. In a recording session, the producer/recording director provides the performer with feedback about what's working and what isn't. Lots of things that work great in a performance will lay an egg in a recording and vice versa. Generally the producer has way more recording experience than the artist and has worked under some very experienced producers themselves.