The sound of vintage recordings

[RFR]

Yes, but back then in our 'naive' state we listened to the music.
Nowadays we listen to the recording quality and mix.

The music has suffered.

I remember the height of the autotune craze. Sure, it was an interesting vocal effect that caught your attention........but a shitty song.

 

[zepfan59]

While I agree that everything is of it's time--i.e. you mostly love what you grew up with, with exceptions--I think you can make reasonable judgments between technology. An analog group would be slanted, however, rightfully so, in regards to the actual recording chain, mic>preamp>processors>tape--whatever. BUT there's no doubt that first, multi multi track, secondly, digital, has made the post recording process, mixing and particularly master better....in the right hands, that is. Because like anything else, give people new toys and they will OVER use them. This is actually relevant to the "sound" you are talking about. In the pre-digital world, mastering was meant to "tame" the music so that it cut nice grooves into the vinyl--and later, yes even tape could distort if the master wasn't right. Digital has changed all of that, and not always for the better. I lament a lot of the "remastered" albums now because they don't all sound better. But no matter what the technology is it ALWAYS come down to the user, the people with their hands on the buttons. In the old days they had to get the best out of less, while today a lot of producers need to learn how to do less with so much more.

 

[DM60]

In the old days they had to get the best out of less, while today a lot of producers need to learn how to do less with so much more.

This I couldn't agree with more. Not over doing it seems to be the hardest point in today's music production. Especially for the home recorder.

 

[BroKen_H]

In the 70s and early 80s when I was programming computers, there was so much you could do if you used "economy of code". Now you have programs that do the same things and take up 5-10 times the memory that our little efforts of the day did. I look at some of the software that was available for the C=64 and Atari and what was available, and then look at today's stuff, and it's like, yeah the graphics are better, the sound is better, but a program that would fit in 64k requires a 4GB environment...
The same with modern music vs "in the day". It's cleaner, it's brighter, it's shinier, but is it better? A lot of it is sure sloppier...

 

[Johnny Don't!]

I can't stand listening to a singer gasp for air between every word...

Couldn't agree more. I mean, I understand hearing a breath occasionally, but when there are literal "GASPS" between lines, like someone snuck up behind the vocalist in the studio and scared him or something, that drives me fucking NUTS. It's not even a modern vs. vintage issue; it's just shit breath control/vocal technique. (I had a whole slew of stuff to say about the OP and my thoughts on it, but it seems most of what I'd write has already been covered, and I'd end up writing literally 15-20 pages about it. So many angles to approach it from, and so many different ideas to address....argh.)

Here's a great example of a huge band with terrible breath control & technique; just be prepared to be annoyed as hell, as this dude freakin' GASPS between EVERY. SINGLE. LINE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lAbFnPFnkA

 

[famous beagle]

Couldn't agree more. I mean, I understand hearing a breath occasionally, but when there are literal "GASPS" between lines, like someone snuck up behind the vocalist in the studio and scared him or something, that drives me fucking NUTS. It's not even a modern vs. vintage issue; it's just shit breath control/vocal technique. (I had a whole slew of stuff to say about the OP and my thoughts on it, but it seems most of what I'd write has already been covered, and I'd end up writing literally 15-20 pages about it. So many angles to approach it from, and so many different ideas to address....argh.)

Here's a great example of a huge band with terrible breath control & technique; just be prepared to be annoyed as hell, as this dude freakin' GASPS between EVERY. SINGLE. LINE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lAbFnPFnkA

I have to respectfully disagree here. It's not that I like that Muse song---I don't---but I don't think he's doing that because his technique sucks. I think it's a stylistic choice. For instance, check out the vocal in the song I posted at the beginning of this thread. Here it is again, for convenience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvRwR-hZDVY

It starts off pretty tame, but as the song progresses and builds in intensity, you hear much more breath in between the lines. I don't think that's because Stevie has shit breath control or vocal technique. I think it's because it's adding to the intensity of the song.

Now, regarding the Muse song you posted, I don't think that's necessarily because of the intensity, but I do think it's a stylistic choice. In other words, I firmly believe that the engineer could have said, "OK, sounds cool dude, but can you do it again without making the breaths so obvious," and he could have done it. Those breaths were very obviously left in there (it would have been quiet easy to clean them up if they wanted to).

I approximate this type of vocal delivery with the kind of grunge style of playing chords on the guitar. I'm talking about the technique of deliberately lifting your fingers off the strings during a chord change so that the open strings are played on the upbeat right before each new chord. You can hear it in songs like Nirvana's "Rape Me." It's not that Kurt couldn't make his chord changes smoother if he wanted---he did so in many other songs---but that technique is part of that sound.

Anyway, obviously you don't like hearing a lot of breaths in a vocal, and that's cool. But to just say that it's only or always because of shit technique doesn't hold a lot of water, IMHO. I think it's quite deliberate most of the time. And when it's not deliberate, it's done so to put forth a style in which that is part of the sound.

That's the way I see it, anyway.

 

[Johnny Don't!]

Hmmmm. I don't hear Stevie inhaling all that much on that recording, which I know VERY well. I even cover that tune in my acoustic sets (and don't get ANYWHERE NEAR the vocal awesomeness of Stevie, that's for sure). What I do hear is his exhalation after a particularly intense vocal sound. But you are correct: it becomes more intense as the tune goes on, fo' sho', both in terms of inhalation and exhalation. I view the exhalation as a percussive element, much like Michael Jackson started doing heavily on the "Thriller" record and later releases. Prince even does it a bit on some of his deeper cuts, but it's all over "My Name is Prince" too.

That being said, the reason I say the guy from Muse has shitty technique is because that's what it sounds like to me. If it's a stylistic choice, it's a pretty bad one, IMHO. As a professional vocalist of nearly two decades, trained by various instructors/coaches over the years (including a year at Berklee in Boston studying under a crazy opera coach..she kicked my ass, nearly literally), it's painful for me to listen to him do that. Breathing before every single line is a bozo no-no in just about ANY genre of music, not only for purposes of phrasing & whatnot but also because of how that kind of repetitive inhalation affects the lungs: taking many short, small breaths as opposed to slightly longer but still fairly rapid inhalations makes it much harder for the lungs to expand to full capacity in order to sing long phrases where taking breaths isn't possible.

All THAT being said, I can completely see how one can view the Muse gasps as a stylistic choice, and based on my familiarity with their later work, you have a strong argument there, as he doesn't do that as much on later recordings. Or, maybe the producer and/or engineer cut them out during editing. Either way, you definitely have a point, one I'll hafta think on for a while. I would most definitely agree that in Stevie's case, it IS a stylistic choice. He's such a vocal master that not only I am NOT gonna question what he does, I just hafta assume he did it purposely.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply; much appreesh! I definitely have some thinking to do on this one.