How to sound old-school and yet good?

[GreenDank]

I really want to capture some type of 60s Jefferson Airplane sound, where it sounds simple and old-school, but still good. I mean, how did they do it - where there's drums panned all the way to one side and guitars on the left, and everythings clangy and kind of distorted, but it still sounds really good and pro. Is it something that can't really be achieved with home recording stuff? Everything I record ends up sounding "modern and bad" rather than "classic and good." Maybe I really need to turn down the gain on my amps and start using single coil pickups.

[montage]

Maybe pick 10 tunes that seem to capture the sound you really like, then slap on some headphones and take some notes on the techniques they're using?

Plus if you're looking for that Airplane sound, add a 'lil extra 'verb.

[mshilarious]

I love the photos of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds sessions. They are all standing around one or two mics and their parts are all recorded in mono.

Of course, the mics are a U47 and an RCA ribbon, they are in an amazing sounding room, and they are the Beach Boys . . .

I think the basic moral there is the room. If you can get to a place where you can have a room good enough to put most of the band in there with only a few mics and hit record, that's a good place to be, and you can build on that with overdubs.

[Drewcifer666]

You have to be able to do Hi-Fi before you can do lo-fi. In other words, in order to be able to reproduce or emulate a classic sound, in this case 1966/67 psychedelic, you really have to be a master of recording techniques. You have to be able to construct before you de-construct.

Plus you need to know a little history. Not just what mics they used or what guitars, but you need to know that the band played live in the studio. It is likely that very little overdubbing was used.

And the studio had four tracks and one reverb chamber, which may have contributed to the clangy, metallic sound.

[Jillchaw]

I am not an expert at all at recording. But i have listened very hard and tried to understand what i feel are the differences in old vs new recordings. One thing people will always say is that the tape is different so youll never get it to sound the same. Also the mics and rooms and all that will make people tell you that its impossible. And in some ways they are very right in saying that.

But consider this, all older recordings sound different from each other. So not even they could get exactly each others sounds even with the same equipment. The Zombies records are hugely different sonically to Beatles records i think. So ive found that all you can ever hope for is to sound like a variation of old production. Try to think of your recording as being a different take on the old sound rather than trying to replicate it perfectly. Because you cant, and it will ruin your experience.

This is what i would consider the best you can do in a home recording without unlimited budget to get it to sound more "old school":

Firstly and most importantly of all, write great songs and give A TON of your time to composition and arrangement. Never ever try to fix your bad song with extra instruments or more fuzz. If you do you will be making a modern sounding record cause thats all they are these days. Shit songs with "exciting" sounds stuck all over to hide the lack of real talent.

Play your bass and drums and your basic underlying tracks live with a bass and drummer who know how to preserve the feel for entire song. Any lapse in feel will bring your tune down more than youd think. If your song is truely a good one it should be great to listen to as just bass and drums. If its lacking at this stage write a different song.

Dont close mic your acoustic guitar. Mic from far away or mic unplugged electric guitar strings. Make sure everything is in tune. They never used junk instruments back then.

Use a tape machine that runs at 15 ips. Drive the tape at a decent level depending on what is being recorded.

Allow some room bleed between the drums and bass

Dont over-mic the drumset or any instrument

Use tube amplifiers

Use a real physical reverb like a spring or a plate. Dont use simulators because they sound great but "feel" different than the real thing.

Those are jsut some of the things you can do. Keep in mind im not an expert but ive given alot of thought to this subject matter. So you might agree or disagree with this help.

[DAS19]

I know people that arent good at recording at capture that 60s sound pretty good by just playing live micing everything up and then just overdubbing the vocals and maybe guitars after.

Your gonna have to play live and pretend you only have 4 tracks like they did back in the 60s and you can get a nice lofi sound youll probably be happy with.

[DAS19]

check out this band I think the are a perfect example adn they recorded themselves and hardly no anything about recording.

www.myspace.com/hownowpowwow

the dates on the music are just messing with you its all recorded in like 2005-2006

[travelin travis]

Originally Posted by DAS19

check out this band I think the are a perfect example adn they recorded themselves and hardly no anything about recording.

www.myspace.com/hownowpowwow

the dates on the music are just messing with you its all recorded in like 2005-2006

that sounds like a decent tune badly recorded to me (pinup girl). there's a big difference in old school production and shitty production. i also don't think "modern lo-fi" and "badly recorded" necessarily go hand in hand.

I think Jillchaw made alot of good points............except the little tid bit about modern recordings. While we are bombarded with alot of crappy songs BY THE MEDIA, there are still plenty of good musicians, song writers, and recording engineers out there. Take a stroll off the beaten path once in a while and you might be surprised. I'm sure there was some gimmicky crap put out in the golden years too.

[Flux]

A lot of the old school sound is in the old school gear - no amount of recording technique is going to change that. Best you can hope for is old school style with a modern twist - and why not?

[gtrman_66]

If I were wanting to do some "old school" sounding stuff, I'd think about creating the core sounds first and recording second. It's already been touched on, but to expand a bit.

I'd be studying the playing technique and instruments and amp setups etc. first to get the vibe out of the performance before worrying about selecting and setting up the first mic. This is the kind of thing where a set of flatwound bass strings instead of roundwounds, or leaving the front head on the bass drum etc. etc. could make more difference than all the recording gear in the world.

Then, as far as the actual recording goes, studio setups and gear could vary greatly from album to album. Some setups were pretty crude and some amazingly sophisticated for their day. This was an era when recording technology was growing by leaps and bounds sometimes, so a couple years one way or the other could make a huge difference in what might be done studio-wise.

Good luck on the project, it is always nice to see someone that is still interested in doing some "earthy and organic" music

[BigRay]

that band sounded like dogshit.

for a good example of lo-fi genius...check out Iron and Wine--the creek drank the cradle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9SmwC_ZX0I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdebh...elated&search=

[daav]

alternately check out the detroit cobras, recording old school tunes,but with more modern arrangements and recordings are clean. Great musucians and an incredible voice talent preserve the "Old School" feel, make it edgier, and more intense. I find the jangly reverb sound of many of those older recording (Jeffereson airplane or Janis Joplin as examples especially, Beatles and other had a differnt sound) to grate on me, but I love the rawness of the energy.

Daav.

[GreenDank]

great tips and advice - thanks to all.

[Jillchaw]

Gimmicks are not to be avoided. Only when there is no substance to match the gimmick.

I stand by what i said about modern bands. There are rarely any worth listening to especially since there are so many great old bands to dig up. There is more musical genius in one 60s era ray davies song than in an entire box of modern cds. If i only have a few hours a day to hear music, i dont want to spend it on shit that is watered down. There is a HUGE difference at the compositional level between modern bands and older music. I cant tell people what to like and i cant say what is "real" music and what is popular music, but i do know composition and modern music RARELY has anything very impressive. And the ones who do have a sound that i dont really like. Take Coldplay for example. Great songwriter but the overall music itself is dismall and repetitive. Its like music for futuristic yuppies. Its car commercial music. But the guy knows how to write songs.

[gtrman_66]

OK, wtf, I'll post this tune here. I dug it out a while ago for a thread in the guitar forum and I remembered this topic and thought it might be a good illustration of a "quasi old-school" sound using modern equipment.

I did this as a demo, we were setting up my friend's band for an album we were cutting and secided to cut some covers for a booking demo while we were tweaking and testing stuff.

It's been a couple years, so let me se if I can remember the recording setup. Two guitar amps, a sound city and marshall, one in the closet and one in the booth, 57 on the marshall, beta57 on the SC, both close miked. $ mics on drums,d112 in the kick, a pair of Alesis GT AM 52s overhead and I'll be damned if I can remember what was on the snare, but there were just 4 drum mics running through my sidecar mixer which is a mackie 1202, the old pre-vlz model

Everything else was through my Yamaha RM-800 24x8 mixer. Bass was through an SWR interstellar overdrive (stella), I think the vocal was a Beta57 too. Recorded to 8 tracks of type II (20 bit) ADAT.

Hell, that;s all I can remember as far as setup. I never really finished mixing it since it was just for demo, I think the lead vocal is too loud but here goes....

Sunshine of your love

[cjacek]

...or you could always pick up the book RECORDING THE BEATLES

It's an amazing book, full of equipment and most important, the techniques used.

[Lomas]

Originally Posted by Jillchaw

Gimmicks are not to be avoided. Only when there is no substance to match the gimmick.

I stand by what i said about modern bands. There are rarely any worth listening to especially since there are so many great old bands to dig up. There is more musical genius in one 60s era ray davies song than in an entire box of modern cds. If i only have a few hours a day to hear music, i dont want to spend it on shit that is watered down. There is a HUGE difference at the compositional level between modern bands and older music. I cant tell people what to like and i cant say what is "real" music and what is popular music, but i do know composition and modern music RARELY has anything very impressive. And the ones who do have a sound that i dont really like. Take Coldplay for example. Great songwriter but the overall music itself is dismall and repetitive. Its like music for futuristic yuppies. Its car commercial music. But the guy knows how to write songs.

Elliott Smith?

[easlern]

"All Apologies," Jillchaw, but there's an almost ENDLESS supply of independent artists who are creating fantastic music much more sophisticated, heartfelt, and moving than a Kinks album. You need to listen to some Spoon, Arcade Fire, Elliott Smith, Devendra Banhart (sp?) or any other number of perfectly accessible and substantial groups. Ray Davies? In my very humble (and maybe unshared!) opinion, he was a rockstar, not an artist. Anyway, sticking to the topic: I'd second the equipment thing. I don't think there's much about "old-school" technique-wise that you could reproduce except strumming open I IV V over and over on a clean tele. Kidding. A little.

[dave.....]

i dont know about old school....... but when i record our band i hang 2 mics in the room... it helps that i have vaulted ceilings.... it took a few trys to get the placement of the mics right........ by recording the [room] i get the essence of a live band and a great sounding recording....

[Jillchaw]

Whoever that guy is that said Ray Davies was just a rock star and that the arcade fire is better than the kinks is the most fucking retarded piece of shit ever born.

If you are reading this mother fucker than listen good and hard because i am going to teach you a lesson about going around thinking you know shit when really you dont know a fucking thing.

Ray Davies struggled hard to fit out of the scene for years and years during the later 60s. If you think "You really got me" and "all day and all of the night" when you hear the name Ray Davies than you are not even clued in to the history of music and your opinion of music means absolutely shit. Seriously dude. If you think that all this lame indie garbage that you and your faggot friends listen to beats "Village Green" or "Face to Face" era Kinks you are not even a musician. Because anyone who knows how songs work truly would know what Ray Davies accomplished. Its all right there in the music itself.

You want to know what all this indie music is? All this modern music? Its just you and your friends thinking that your lives mean so much and that your generation has figured out something that previous generations had no clue about, but your wrong. Anyone who knows psychology will know that studies have proven young males amplify the significance of "their" music and use it to construct their identity. So if you and your buddies think youre breaking some new ground by writing shit progressions with shit arrangements and calling it "indie" then go on ahead. But those who know art and songwriting as art form will never be so easily fooled into believing the hype that culture brings to music.

the things you have said about modern music are exactly whats wrong with people these days. Everyone is so ready to just believe lies and go with whatever comes down the pipe. Do you think it is rebellious to listen to "indie" as opposed to britney spears? Its all the same crap. There is no credibility in "indie". Indie is the new "grunge" thats all. And it will come and go just like everything else.

You should really be ashamed of yourself being 25 fucking years old and still treating music like its a high school popularity contest.

"The Arcade Fire".... grow the fuck up dude, seriously

[Jillchaw]

One more thing you stupid musically illiterate ****

Do you think that you know about music just because you said "I IV V"?

Basically you implying that great songs must be complex in order to be great.
You MUST be implying that because i dont know what else you could mean.

Music does not progress fucker. Its not like science or technology. Music and all arts stay unchanged and will for a very very long time. Only the cultural aspect of music seemingly progresses. Like how teenagers THINK that "their" music means more. If you think that modern music is truer to the human soul than music written a thousand years ago you are a dumbfuck. And i doubt you could ever write a good song yourself because anyone who cant grasp that concept cant be a very empathetic person and therefore cant write good tunes.

So just keep pretending that modern bands are worth a shit. Keep hanging out with your dumbass friends and spinning those stupid songs over and over to the tune of your little lives and make believe that all your hopes and dreams are coming true just around the corner, in "the future". Because everyone knows that things never go out of style and nothing ever seems great one year then is a tragic embarrassment the next year.

Do you know what most modern music is? Its one of those paintings that is just a bunch of smeared paints. "POST MODERNISM". People call it "art" but really its just someones expression. And it will only mean something to those who WANT it to mean something. Any moron can throw postmodern art together. A baby even. But i think its funny psychologically that the people who always seem to dig postmodern garbage are the ones who stand to benefit from that particular image or lifestyle. OF COURSE you dig the arcade fire. Youre the EXACT age group that is into that shit. I bet you even dress and look like all the other dudes your age. Is any of this starting to make sense to you? So get over yourself and open your eyes to more than just the tiny world surrounding your 25 year old cliched lifestyle and taste. Say one thing or do one thing untypical of your age, race, and sex and ill be impressed. But i doubt you could.

[Jillchaw]

I am 26 years old

[Jillchaw]

Look dont get me wrong, people should be free to be into whatever they want, but when you say Ray Davies isnt an artist and he just stood there playing "I IV V" over and over you are really making a fool out of yourself to a degree that is unforgivable. You must really not have heard much music or studied much. Its practically solid proof that you havent.

[Sloan]

Check out Witchcraft.
http://www.myspace.com/witchcraftswe

[IronFlippy]

Whoah, time to cool down.

I have always believed that a song does not have to be revolutionary to be good. There are plenty of good songs with some sort of I IV V progression. But there are also many more good songs that are more complex. I don't know about anyone else, but I've never looked at the complexity of a song to decide if it was good or not. There are good and bad songs in every genre, but there is no genre that is "better" than another. Bach wrote some bad songs, too.

Does it matter if someone prefers one artist over another? Music is all about taste and opinion, even if it's not your own opinion (like listening to indie because it's "cool"). I say if you enjoy it, then why the hell not listen to it?

Allow me to quote:

Originally Posted by easlern

Ray Davies? In my very humble (and maybe unshared!) opinion, he was a rockstar, not an artist.

This is clearly an opinion. And, he realizes he might be the only one who thinks this. I see no problem, and no need for flaming.


Now, back on topic...

I wasn't around in the 60s, so I can't speak from personal experience, but from what I've gathered, it's about the room that you're in, playing it (almost) all live, and tape compression. I wish I could emphasize, but that's about all I know.