1950s recording question...

[Chibi Nappa]

Then why not just record everything into a Panasonic tape recorder? As long as the performance is good, why waste your time trying to get a good sound?

The recorder and mic have to at least not be destructive. And it always helps to go into a professional room with a producer who knows what he's doing. But aside from that...Yes. In the past 10 or so years there have been billions of dollars worth of "why did we bother". Highly-paid talented people have spent the past decade bending over backwards to actively destroy sound in the pursuit of "loud". If I can't sit through "21st Century Breakdown" because it is so fatiguing (I can't), I submit that putting a single mic in the room while Greenday performed would have been a better recording, on nothing other than the basis that I could stand to hear it.

So...why did they bother?

To clarify: I don't want to come off as a radical advocating only natural sound. My favorite production of all time is Siamese Dream. I'm just saying that while "unnatural" can do amazing and wonderful things, and is a vital part of many wonderful productions, it is not required for a great recording.

 

[rockinokie]

I can both agree and disagree with Rami. I understand what he is saying. Some of those recordings are just REAL to me. So therefore they are a good recording TO ME. They sound REAL and they sound great TO ME.

Leddy,

I have an 8 track 1/2 tape Otrari I will be using. I have a shure 300 ribbon that I just picked up and have a lot more stuff to get before I'm on a roll. I know I would like to get another ribbon, and maybe an SM57 or two. Not sure on what pres to consider just yet either.

I guess more than anything I need to learn about mic placement...

...and its hard to say, setting at my work computer (about the recordings I like) I like a lot of songs that were bad recordings from that era as well, and over time they've all been lopped together in my mind. I will say, I think Decca and RCA had the best recordings of that era. Not nessesarilly best songs, but best recordings. There are great Holly (decca) and great Elvis (rca) records among many others.

 

[rockinokie]

Being in the same room or recording at the same time has nothing to do with it. The 50's sound is the lack of compressors, gates, amps, eqs, editing, multi-tracking, etc. It's natural. We never hear "natural" anymore, because even a live performance has all of that stuff. Unless you are playing in your garage without a soundman or something. But in that case you still aren't hearing "natural" because the room sucks.

But if you take a great band, put them in a great room, and record them without sound reinforcement... That is the 50's sound.

Multi-tracking was used quite a bit in the 50s as I understand it. But it was mostly used for vocal overdubs and the occasional instrumental guitarist playing octaves of himself. Not really a practice though. And I think I had read compressors had their beginings in the 50s as well. Just thought I would throw that out there.

Room/mic placement/talent/specific gear that was used to record. There really is a lot of factors to it I guess.

 

[RAMI]

To clarify: I don't want to come off as a radical advocating only natural sound.

No, I see where you're coming from and I respect it.

I don't think we disagree as much as it may seem. I might just be having trouble articulating that I love much of the music that I seem to be criticizing, but don't think the recordings always did the writers and performers justice.

 

[Chibi Nappa]

I don't think we disagree as much as it may seem.

Yeah. It's always hard to accurately transmit a thought on the internet. I know I've gotten hung up on semantics more than once...

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Scary to think that "we" need "them" way more than "they" need "us", but it's true.

I personally don't find that anything close to "scary"; it's simply the name of the game. "We" (the guys behind the desk) are there to capture performances for posterity. Yes we can polish them and perhaps even enhance them, but without the performance first, we have no reason to do our thing. Music can go on just fine without us, all we do is multiply the number of people with access to the great performances. But without music, we have nothing to provide but equipment hiss.

And I'm fine with that. For without the performance, without the music, I couldn't care less abut the rest of it. I'm not the least bit interested in recording dialog or sound effects - though I'll be happy to do so and do it well in between music gigs, just to keep the bills paid - nor do I give a shit about all the fancy blinking lights and gizmos. I *love* good music and musicianship, and engineering is my way of getting close to it and contributing to it in some small way. It IS ALL about the performer and performance, not about me or my gear.

There is a fuzzy area here. There comes a point when the engineer and production becomes part of the performance, where the control room is just as much an instrument in the arrangement and the played back performance as the guitar or the horn is. (Just ask Alan Parsons or Brian Eno.) And I ratehr enjoy that part of it also. But making a silk purse out of a sow's ear is not what that's about; I still believe that if it's not happening in front of the desk to begin with, that whatever happens behind the desk - no matter how clever - is a waste of everybody's time.

Unfortunately there is a culture today that takes exactly the opposite tack; that ability and performance are irrelevant; it's all about making a recording. People are no longer interested in making music, they're interested in releasing recordings, music be damned...or rather, "music" is used as a thinly veiled excuse to put out a recording, and the "performer" needs to be more concerned with camera friendliness and stage presence than they do about being able to actually play or sing anything. Personally, I'm not the least bit interested in that,

G.

 

[leddy]

Multi-tracking was used quite a bit in the 50s as I understand it. But it was mostly used for vocal overdubs and the occasional instrumental guitarist playing octaves of himself. Not really a practice though. And I think I had read compressors had their beginings in the 50s as well. Just thought I would throw that out there.

Room/mic placement/talent/specific gear that was used to record. There really is a lot of factors to it I guess.

The first multi-track tape recorders were available in the mid-fifties, and IIRC they were three-tracks. Early mixing consoles had no knobs for pan-pots, only switches. Everything was left, right or center.

You could capture some vibe by hard-panning everything, or leaving it center. Another trick is to hard-pan the original dry signal, then run the reverb (100% wet, no dry signal) to the opposite side. That was something that was done a lot.

 

[rockinokie]

HA HA HA HA!!! I work sound at a bar that does metal ALL THE TIME...and one night one of the bands decided to go totally rockabilly. I think they were missing a guitar player or something... Anyway, they go acoustic guitar, upright bass, stripped-down drum kit. The whole thing. I'm micing them up. I'm seeing what they're doing. All I need on the drums is something hovering two feet above the snare out in front a tiny bit. This dude who writes for a music magazine was watching from the crowd and goes all "big shot" on me telling me I'm micing it all wrong and tries to lobby with the band to get me to close-mic. I totally blow him off and the set kicks ass. Then I close mic the next metal band and take the room's head off. It was great.

This world needs a sound man like you in every venue... I usually have to argue with the sound man in order to get things to sound right. ...and by that time he is pissed off and doesn't do the sound much justice anyway.

 

[Terry Wetzel]

old timer with the will to learn.

h i! it's me again, the butinski! i don't know if my input here is relevant. it seems that every time i try to post or answer one i'm not logged in when i know that i am. i had to log in and give my password in order to be here right? so what the fuck is the problem?? i'm 68 years old and in search of what ever knowledge i can glean about recording with computers. i'm a lifelong musician and i've recorded at some major studios with some well respected producers. for some reason that doesn't seem to make a damn bit of difference here! as i said, i'm in search of knowledge and every now and then i think i've paid enough dues to put my 2 cents in. who knows, some little punk guitar shredder just might learn something from me! i'm sorry i don't rate high enough to be a member of the home recording web sites elite charter members but all that really means is they have the bucks to fund an actual open for business recording studio and i don't! if this posts offends the powers that be, so be it. nothing pisses me off more than spending my precious time,(i'm 68 and don't have a lot left) composing posts or answers to one and being informed by my computer that i'm either not logged in or some other assinine digital dumbass text! someone needs to be telling me what i'm doing wrong in easy to understand english! oh,by the way, how long does one remain a newbie before being promoted ?? i was trying to put in my 2 cents on the new post subject, 50's recordings but what do i know?

 

[RAMI]

h i! It's me again, the butinski! I don't know if my input here is relevant. It seems that every time i try to post or answer one i'm not logged in when i know that i am. I had to log in and give my password in order to be here right? So what the fuck is the problem?? I'm 68 years old and in search of what ever knowledge i can glean about recording with computers. I'm a lifelong musician and i've recorded at some major studios with some well respected producers. For some reason that doesn't seem to make a damn bit of difference here! As i said, i'm in search of knowledge and every now and then i think i've paid enough dues to put my 2 cents in. Who knows, some little punk guitar shredder just might learn something from me! I'm sorry i don't rate high enough to be a member of the home recording web sites elite charter members but all that really means is they have the bucks to fund an actual open for business recording studio and i don't! If this posts offends the powers that be, so be it. Nothing pisses me off more than spending my precious time,(i'm 68 and don't have a lot left) composing posts or answers to one and being informed by my computer that i'm either not logged in or some other assinine digital dumbass text! Someone needs to be telling me what i'm doing wrong in easy to understand english! Oh,by the way, how long does one remain a newbie before being promoted ?? I was trying to put in my 2 cents on the new post subject, 50's recordings but what do i know?

Rofl!!!!!!

Post of the week!!!!

 

[Terry Wetzel]

i'll apologize for my ignrance and my hot temper. like i said, i'm old. and thanks for nominating me for post of the week! now, i was trying to tell rockinokie that i spent some time in studios in the 50's and early 60's and we either set up where the owner/engineer placed us and he handled the mic placement.sometimes it was all together but parts like lead vocal and lead guitar solo were overdubbed. my prefference was to do the rythym section,(i.e.)drums,bass rythym guitar first, then lead instrument and/or lead vocal. remember,it's your studio and it's up to you to convince these guys that, yes they are the paying customer and always right but you have the expertise to deliver a final product they will be proud of. in the old days bass drums were totally ignored and bass was pushed to the back because, if too prominent it caused the phonograph needle to skip. thank goodness modeern recording techniques and equipment have solved these problems and cds don't skip. mastering was done on acetate material with a scully lathe, usually in the same studio. the big guys, capitol,rca,decca had caverneous studios and staff engineers and producers that really knew their stuff that enabled recording of entire symphony orchestras and vocalists at once. the small independent studios around the country pioneered overdubbing and multitrack as we know it today. i hope this is helpful to you.

 

[dintymoore]

One of my best friends (he's dead now) was recording at Capitol Records around 1969. He had a pic of him recording there with a group called Lamb (w/Barabara Mauritz) and they had everybody set up in one room, but they had dividers (maybe 4' tall) between everybody. It looked like the dividers were covered with carpet; like the cubicle dividers they have in offices except low. It was set up so that the players could maintain eye contact with each other but the mics had enough isolation. He was proud of the pic because the Brecker Brothers were in the cubicle next to him (he was only 19). They wore headphones, but I would try it without them because a) the players you're talking about don't normally wear them and b) I've found that drummers tend to loose finesse when they play with headphones, the same as when you talk to someone with headphones on and they scream back at you.
I saw a pic of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and they had a dividers like that too. The eye contact is crucial.

What you want is what I call "event" recording, and you want to screw the guys up as little as possible!

In some ways it's the most fun recording there is. What a trip to play a song once and then be able to hear it back right away.

 

[RAMI]

in the old days bass drums were totally ignored and bass was pushed to the back because, if too prominent it caused the phonograph needle to skip.

Interesting point. So, some of the reason for the resulting sound was due to limitations in the playback medium. Which tells me that those recordings would have more low end, for example, if they could. But they couldn't. Interesting.

 

[leddy]

This world needs a sound man like you in every venue...

True. I recently played a special event with a jazz gorup at a big-name club that normally does rock. This club was used to having national acts come through. These guys [should] know what they are doing. And yet...bass drum is shaking the stage, upright bass is rattling my teeth, etc. Come on. Do these guys ever take a step back and listen to what the music is about before they start putting up mics?

 

[mattdee1]

To clarify: I don't want to come off as a radical advocating only natural sound. My favorite production of all time is Siamese Dream. I'm just saying that while "unnatural" can do amazing and wonderful things, and is a vital part of many wonderful productions, it is not required for a great recording.

I was going to make this point, but you beat me to it. Funny you mention Siamese Dream, because it was a Billy Corgan interview in some long lost guitar magazine from the early 90's that opened my eyes to this philosophy. I don't remember the exact words, but in "defense" of using an obscene number of overdubs in his recordings, Corgan made the point that a live performance and a recording playing on a stereo are very different mediums and therefore it should come as no surprise when an artist chooses to use a vastly different approach when recording. Always made sense to me, although it's definitely possible to muck things up, depending on what kind of "vastly different approach" you use.

I agree with Rami on his "nostalgia" point as well, though. While I don't necessarily share his opinion on just how "bad" some of those recordings actually are, the point remains that there is a certain sound to them that dates them.

As kind of an analogy to all this, I had the urge to watch the original Star Wars a while back, and in a moment of nostalgia I decided to pop in my old VHS version rather than the re-made DVD version. I'm 32 so I literally grew up with the VHS version.. and I gotta tell you, despite the grainy picture and ho-hum audio, it was strangely cool to watch the movie that way again (even if it was on a 72" screen ).

 

[Jazzsax0707]

Hi All, I joined just today and might as well jump into this topic.
A band I was in during the 50's recorded in one room, the repair area in back of a TV store in Monterey, CA. (My grandkids found the recording on youtube this weekend)
As I recall it took quite awhile to get mic placement correct. We did not have the luxury of over dubbing and I believe the only FX was a speaker in a nearby bathroom with a mic feed back into the studio board for echo
I don't know how well end result using this set up compares to todays studio
but I do know that everything from each band member had to perfect before the session was done.
I do remember a comparison done years back where a small jazz group was recorded by a veteran engineer using 2 mics. It was then compared with the same group recorded with the musicians isolated. The end result was virtually identical.

 

[gecko zzed]

I do remember a comparison done years back where a small jazz group was recorded by a veteran engineer using 2 mics. It was then compared with the same group recorded with the musicians isolated. The end result was virtually identical.

This is, in fact, a credit to them both, because I assume the recording souinded good. A credit to the early engineer for achieving it with just two mikes, and a credit to the newer engineer for recreating the live sound in artificial surrounds.

 

[jndietz]

Ah, to hell with all the advice in this thread!

All you need to do...is put six crappy microphones in your room, put EVERY band member in there, then put a low pass and a high pass filter on the master bus to make it sound like its from the 50s...then you're done. Don't even bother "mixing" anything!

Kidding of course

 

[Chili]

Ah, to hell with all the advice in this thread!

All you need to do...is put six crappy microphones in your room, put EVERY band member in there, then put a low pass and a high pass filter on the master bus to make it sound like its from the 50s...then you're done. Don't even bother "mixing" anything!

Kidding of course

LOL, I know you're just kidding...

Back then, the magic happened before the tape started rolling. For sure you had to be a really good musician to get a cut back then. Then you could do the two mics and one room sessions.

I would never be able to make the grade. It don't come naturally to me and I hate practicing.

 

[Dani Pace]

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again sometime... Anyone who is seriously interested in gaining some insight reguarding how many of the recordings from the 50s and 60s were made needs to hurry on down to their local video store and pick up a copy of "TOM DOWD AND THE LANGUAGE OF MUSIC" and watch it carefully several times. This documentary gives tons of insights from Tom (probably the greatest pioneer of multi track recording) and fantastic film footage of a large number of the great artist from that era at work in the studio. If this film doesn't open your eyes to "how it was done" back in the time when music and recording was expanding at a rate faster than a sonic boom, nothing will.