John Frusciantes

[Doc Holiday]

Here is an article about his preference for analog
http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_john_frusciantes_creative/[/URL]

[Beck]

A lot of good information in that piece -- great article!

Clearly Frusciante has joined the company of some of the world's most eminent engineers and producers who believe that analog sounds better than digital, and that old equipment is often better than new gear. Like many of his fellow analog-lovers, Frusciante has taken to buying up the old studio gear that's on the market as digital workstations become the norm and established studios close. As a result, the guitarist's modest residence in the Hollywood Hills now looks a little like a museum of rock recording.

Sounds like my modest residence..."Museum of Rock Recording"

[cjacek]

Fascinating to say the least! Thanks for the link Doc!

I'm gonna post a portion of that article below, my fav part:

Frusciante continues to say that he far prefers analog recording “for the vibe that I feel my music should have, in terms of sonic warmth. I want my recordings to fill the room and be comforting, even if it's a really distorted, loud, f----d-up sound. I'm probably one of the few people that go into a mastering place and insist that no computers are used. I want it to be analog all the way until it's pressed into vinyl. For CD pressing, I ask for the music to be mastered to 1630 [U-Matic] tape, which sounds really good. The same EQ is applied for vinyl and CD mastering.”

Frusciante's antipathy toward digital recording was in part fueled by his experience working with an 8-track digital recorder for To Record Only Water for Ten Days. “When we came to mix that record, I realized how bad it sounded. After that album, I vowed that I wasn't going to record anything on digital anymore. Shadows Collide with People was recorded on a Neve desk and an analog 24-track, and we used an old Scully 8-track for the drums because it made them sound warmer. I wanted that album to sound as warm as possible.

“My friend Vincent Gallo opened my eyes to what you're losing when you record things digitally and the degree to which the older equipment is better than the new stuff. My home stereo is the greatest thing in the world. For instance, I have Western Electric speakers from 1949, and they're the best-sounding speakers I've ever heard, for any kind of music.”

Clearly Frusciante has joined the company of some of the world's most eminent engineers and producers who believe that analog sounds better than digital, and that old equipment is often better than new gear. Like many of his fellow analog-lovers, Frusciante has taken to buying up the old studio gear that's on the market as digital workstations become the norm and established studios close. As a result, the guitarist's modest residence in the Hollywood Hills now looks a little like a museum of rock recording.

“I have an API desk from 1972 that's from The Record Plant,” Frusciante reveals. “It's the board that Television and Kiss recorded on, and I think even John Lennon worked with it. I also have a 1-inch Ampex 8-track recorder from 1970, on which King Crimson recorded In the Court of the Crimson King. And I have six old 1176 compressors, a Fair-child, three Lang equalizers [a PEQ4 and two PEQ2s], two Pultec [EQP-IA3] equalizers, an EMT plate reverb, and an EMT 250 digital reverb. I also have a Studer A800 24-track recorder, but it's not here because my house isn't big enough to hold it. I'm trying to find a place, separate from my house, for a studio.”

Frusciante suddenly stops in his tracks and exclaims worriedly, “I'm nervous talking about this stuff. I've never spoken about this to a magazine before.”

While more details about the contents of his new home studio aren't forthcoming, he does explain the reasons for starting his own studio. “It's really good to have the equipment that I love working on in my own place. Also, for the amount of money that I spent on Shadows Collide with People, I could have bought lots of studio equipment and had it forever. And I love the idea of being able to create music all the time without having to book studio time. A lot of the time the best studios in town are already booked, while in other cases, studios you like may close.”

The rest, of course, can be read here:

http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_john...ntes_creative/

~Daniel

[cjacek]

Ok ... and this:

The speed at which Frusciante committed the songs to (analog) tape is astonishing. But his career has always been one of extremes. His first two solo albums were recorded in a haphazard and chaotic fashion. When the spirit took him, he committed material to 4-track cassette tape without any demoing or preproduction — largely without production of any kind.

Then, as he worked on To Record Only Water for Ten Days and especially on Shadows Collide with People (as well as on the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication), he was bitten by the perfection bug. He explains on his Web site, “I was sick and tired of people dismissing my records as being f----d up and unprofessional.” And so Shadows Collide with People was recorded at Cello, a top-of-the-line studio, with Scott, a top-of-the-line engineer.

“There’s no better random generator than a human being.”

But Frusciante now calls the Shadows Collide with People recording experience “frustrating.” Although he doesn't disown the album, he speaks with more affection about the demos he made for it with Klinghoffer on a Tascam 488 mkII 8-track cassette recorder. (The demos are downloadable from Frusciante's Web site, www.johnfrusciante.com.)

On his Web site, the guitarist writes that after recording Shadows Collide with People, he began “noticing that albums I had loved my whole life had tons of things I would [at the time of recording Shadows Collide with People] have insisted on redoing. Slightly off-pitch vocals, instruments going slightly out of time with one another, as well as straight-up mistakes — all of these things prevail triumphantly on Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, Rolling Stones, Van Der Graaf Generator, Butthole Surfers, and countless other records — even The Beatles — that I have always loved. I realized that I had sharpened my sense of perfection to the point where, were they under my supervision, those records would have been cleaned up to the point of being inferior.”

Having come to his realization, Frusciante decided to radically change the way he was recording, mostly by working fast and leaving many of the mistakes. “This record is a celebration of flaws,” Frusciante enthuses on his Web site about The Will to Death.

Very little preproduction occurred for the 12 songs on The Will to Death. Frusciante demoed them in his living room in guitar-vocal fashion, which allowed Klinghoffer to prepare some drum parts and Frusciante to improve his singing. “Hearing yourself sing is a big part of going into a studio and nailing it,” said Frusciante. They also recorded some simple guitar-vocal-drum versions in their rehearsal studio. “That was the closest we got to making demos,” he commented. “I may put them on the Internet. They sound like we were in outer space on a spaceship or something. We'd listen to them, and we'd think of overdubs. But we usually made up overdubs in the studio.”

“I vowed I wasn’t going to record anything on digital anymore.”

Frusciante wasn't focused on overdubs anyway, because he wanted The Will to Death to sound spacious and raw, getting away from the high-production values of Shadows Collide with People. Together with Ryan Hewitt — an up-and-coming engineer who had taken over from Jim Scott halfway through the recording of Shadows Collide with People and who went on to engineer most of Frusciante's subsequent material — Frusciante recorded and mixed 12 songs in 5 days at 2 top Los Angeles studios, Mad Dog and Larrabee. Given that he garners a lot of his inspiration from recordings of the early 1970s, it's not surprising that Frusciante recorded “as if it were 1971” — that is, on 16-track 2-inch tape, mixed down to ¼-inch, and without using computers.

“Many of those records were recorded in a day,” explains Frusciante. “We were taking our inspiration from groups who recorded quickly because they had to. My reasons for working quickly weren't monetary, but it is an artistic challenge to do a record for a certain amount of money. I now make records for $10,000, and by working so quickly I could record in the best studios. When people write about The Will to Death as being lo-fi, that's bulls — t. It was recorded on the best equipment there is. It's just not recorded on a f-----g computer. A computer is not better quality than a 16-track, and just so that people know it, a 16-track 2-inch sounds better than 24-track 2-inch because each track has more space.

“You get a fatter sound with 16-track, which is why I use it. I'm not trying to record lo-fi, I'm trying to record quickly, because that's the best way to capture excitement. As long as people can stand up to the pressure, music comes alive when they are creating it fast. If you can't handle the pressure, then you give up or are forced to take longer. And after the experience of making Shadows Collide with People, Josh and I got used to top studios to the point where we weren't intimidated by them anymore.”

[cjacek]

On second thought, I should have pasted the whole article as it's definitely worth it.

[cjacek]

Just listenning to his stuff ... Pretty amazing actually ... Very much UNLIKE today's awful commercial offerings.

[cjacek]

I can definitely hear the analog sonic signature in John's tunes, despite the transfer from tape to pc.

[Beck]

Yepper Daniel

It’s a tough concept for many people to grasp. After all, some will say, “If it has to go digital at some point what’s the good of starting with analog?”

The answer of course is, if it starts on tape the digital recording process samples not just the instruments, but also the character of those instruments as recorded to tape. That’s the heart of the magic right there.

You can sample a drum with a mic and a digital recorder, but if you record the drum to tape, and then sample the drum playing back on the tape… Eureka! There’s a lot more there for the digital process to capture.

The process is similar in my own humble studio … I work in tape right up to the moment I transfer the half-track master to CD. And then that CD becomes the master for CD duplication. It’s a very short, clean path to the final product, and at least in my studio I don't monkey with the sound in the digital domain at all with plug-ins or editing – very old school.

[cjacek]

Yeah, I completely agree with you, Tim.

I like to leave the pc for just transferring (to cd) and perhaps editing out silences (at beginning / after a track) and "normalizing" the peaks at 0 db and of course seperating / chopping up all tracks into 01, 02, 03 etc ... That's all.

I'll give it to the 'ol CD that it captures analog recordings quite well, if they're not "digitally remastered" that is.

[SteveMac]

That was a really GREAT article Doc. Thanks for posting that.

[SteveMac]

Right on brother!

Although Frusciante recently acquired a genuine Mellotron, sampling, modern synthesis, and programming are clearly not where his heart lies. “There are people doing interesting things with programming, like Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Squarepusher,” he observes. “They use things that sound like flaws to me. I have no interest in programming that strives for perfection. Also, an interesting patch doesn't make music interesting. That's not music. Music is a variety of sounds all happening together. And there's no better random generator than a human being, with all those little inconsistencies, faults, and random things that happen in your voice and fingers. Those are the things that give personality, character, and vibrancy to music, which makes you want to listen to certain records over and over again.”

[cjacek]

SteveMac: Yup, I second that one too!

[Doc Holiday]

Originally Posted by cjacek

I'll give it to the 'ol CD that it captures analog recordings quite well, if they're not "digitally remastered" that is.

Yeah, what is up with that? I've also noticed that a lot of the digitally remastered stuff sounds bad. It's louder, but I can hear...digital clipping? That's what it sounds like.

[Dr ZEE]

there's no better random generator than a human being, with all those little inconsistencies, faults, and random things that happen in your voice and fingers. Those are the things that give personality, character, and vibrancy to music, which makes you want to listen to certain records over and over again.”

... which leads me to believe that those little inconsistencies, faults, and random things are not really as random, faulty and inconsistent as they seem to be due to our human limitations. Things that are too sophisticated, things that are beyond our comprehension commonly fall into "random mess of errors"-category or sometimes (when we try to be rather positive in presentation, but still not to give up the illusional 'control' ) we would reward them (little random thigs, the order or the reason of which we've failed to comprehend) with phenomenon status

Interesting paradox is (imho), that human beings happen to be so disproportionally control-hungry in relation to their obility to comprehend, so they've called upon "random mess of errors" as their rescuer and , apparently rather painlessly, were able to give up the Science in exchange for comfort of fictional control. Twisted B.S. , that is (on my part ) ... I know -

******
This is a very interesting read, that's for sure. Also music is pretty good as performance and excellent as production (my subjective judgement, of course).
Doc Holiday, thanks for posting this link!
/respects

[cjacek]

Dr., it's good to finally see you out of the red and into the green! Thanks guys .... you know who you are!

[brandrum]

I don't really care if it's analog or digital anymore....just give me a fucking good song.

[SteveMac]

Originally Posted by brandrum

I don't really care if it's analog or digital anymore....just give me a fucking good song.

I hear that too, but when it comes to my own stuff it's going to be analog.

[Dr ZEE]

"I don't really care if it's analog or digital anymore....just give me a fucking good song"

Originally Posted by SteveMac

I hear that too, but when it comes to my own stuff it's going to be analog.

Yeah. Me too. Well sort of.... when not paying attention... or not in the mood to pay attention or just don't care about anything type of mood ...which all together becomes to be "most of the time" ... I guess.
However! then, during the occasional days or nights when I get REALLY into the mood of REALLY WANTING to listen to some music, then I pick the stuff which apparently! happen to be recorded with analog only equipment. So, does it mean anything. ??? It may... or it may not.

As for "recording my own stuff" part, which sucks by default, - that gotta be analog (or as minimum, analog has to take the MAJOR part of production process)... so this way I know: even though it sucks, but at least it's ANALOG! so there's something good about it

[cjacek]

One of the best parts of having the majority of production done with analog is that you, by default, eliminate the no-talents out-there .... which means most of the stuff that comes off the shelf today. Digital's main evil (or good depending who's lookin' at it) is that the extensive editing and production possibilities, in the hands of inexperience or those following trends, not only drain the life out of a performance but can also make anyone (and I mean anyone) an overnight sensation, which really means nothing if you're looking to hear good music.

What happened to real musicians playing real instruments all captured with ridiculous simplicity, like a minimum of mics, post production and of course analog ? That would sepererate the men from the boys (or girls), eh ?

[Beck]

I agree… you don’t want it to be so easy that anyone can do it. It can’t be that easy and still be that good.

[Dr ZEE]

Originally Posted by Beck

I agree… you don’t want it to be so easy that anyone can do it. It can’t be that easy and still be that good.

grrrrrrrrrrr Could you use a vis something like THIS ...or if you really feel like 'ugly', then something like THIS ...
...also, the point is taken.

[cjacek]

LOL! Tim!

[cjacek]

Dr. Zee: if this isn't every guy's fantasy then I don't know what is!