A return to “produced” records…?

[DrewPeterson7]

A). The home recording movement and the Internet has made it easier for musicians with less experience, not only in their chops but in their knowkedge of recording basics, to be heard?
B). There are more studios in business recording bands with less experience and talent behind the board due to the current,"anyone can do it" attitude". Home recording equipment costs and reasonably priced home study coarses are avilable at the click of a mouse.
C). The hourly rate costs,plus necessary add ons,(I.E.) mixing,mastering,etc. are out of most young bands budget reach?
D). The bands that you are referring to have grown up hearing so much "lo Fi" that it's all they know and are now doing a great job of copying it? (Hey, Their friends like it).
E). None of the above ?.
By the way. Good quality recordings and good quality music should never change, unless they start burning books. In which case all will be lost!

Reading between the lines, this could partly explain the decrease in average recording quality (if one in fact exists) we're seeing.

Studio gear is pretty cheap these days. Almost anyone who's willing to save for a bit, cut out expenses elsewhere in life, and has a spare room to set up in these days can have a "studio." From there, it's a small stretch to go from "hey, I have a pretty pimp home studio!" to "hey, I have a pretty pimp studio in my home," and think it's a good idea to start booking bands.

It's been a long time since I've been in a "studio" other than my own. I distantly remember cutting a (never-to-be-released, as it turned out) album in a local studio while I was in college, and I actually learned a fair amount from the experience, but the last time I was in a studio was maybe a year or two ago, when a buddy of mine found an ad on craigs list around here for a drummer who also would record drums for bands/musicians who needed them, in his home studio. Since I had nothing going on that day and since my buddy knew I had a pretty good background in recording (for a hobbyist, anyway), I went down with him.

Small, untreated room in the guy's basement, roughly rectangular, with the drums set up all the way up against the wall. Overhead mics were literally hung from the ceiling, and appeared to be some sort of handheld dynamics - I didn't investigate too closely. He ran everything through a mixing board, and from there into some DAW I don't recall - might have been Cool Edit Pro, if memory serves. I'm pretty sure he just tracked a single stereo out from the drums, rather than splitting them by mic. No clicktracks or anything. The guy wasn't a bad drummer, and did a relatively good job of micing my buddy's amp, but...

I remember one bit of conversation in particular - we'd just mic'd up the cab my buddy brought, and were in the other room talking. the guy said something like,

Studio Owner: "Now, I've noticed a lot of guitarists like it if I use this low knob to boost up the low end a little bit, and make it sound thicker and deeper."
My Buddy: "Cool."
Me: "What's the bandwidth the knob's centered on?
SO: "Huh?"
Me: "You know, what's the frequency range that you're adjusting, that the knob is centered around?"
SO: "Um, the low ones." (confused look)

I forget the exact dialogue, but that was the gist - the guy was making frequency tweaks with little to no idea what frequency he was tweaking, and furthermore was doing the reverse of what most guys do - boosting the low end of a guitar, rather than cutting it. My buddy and I kept coming back to that moment and laughing about it after the fact, over a beer.

Anyway, long story short, a lot of "studios" out there are taking clients when they really don't know that much about tracking and mixing. And, since these guys are usually, um, attractively priced, many young up-and-coming musicians are probably having their first recording experience in a studio like this, and walking away thinking "is that all there is to it? Man, I could do this myself with a mixing board, a couple mics, and a cracked copy of Sonar!" And, if that's their baseline, they're probably right. They just never get a chance to see that there's a lot more to making a great sounding record than that, and maybe they just come away from listening to their "album" they've just recorded thinking there's some magic plugin the pros are using that they're not and that's why Nickelback sounds better than they do, all the while not realizing how much of what they're missing is in the process, in good micing technique and gain staging, and developing a good ear for a mix.

I guess it's good we have places like this where if you spend any amount of time around here it becomes very apparent just how little many of us (and I include myself) know, and how much there really is to learn. I've been a hobbyist recorder for, well, about a decade now, and I've put together a fair collection of gear. While I wouldn't hesitate to record a friend of mine or something as a favor/for the fun of it, I also certainly wouldn't be taking paid clients right now because I'm really not a professional, and I know enough to know that.

 

[TheChikenMaster]

Reading between the lines, this could partly explain the decrease in average recording quality (if one in fact exists) we're seeing.

Studio gear is pretty cheap these days. Almost anyone who's willing to save for a bit, cut out expenses elsewhere in life, and has a spare room to set up in these days can have a "studio." From there, it's a small stretch to go from "hey, I have a pretty pimp home studio!" to "hey, I have a pretty pimp studio in my home," and think it's a good idea to start booking bands.

It's been a long time since I've been in a "studio" other than my own. I distantly remember cutting a (never-to-be-released, as it turned out) album in a local studio while I was in college, and I actually learned a fair amount from the experience, but the last time I was in a studio was maybe a year or two ago, when a buddy of mine found an ad on craigs list around here for a drummer who also would record drums for bands/musicians who needed them, in his home studio. Since I had nothing going on that day and since my buddy knew I had a pretty good background in recording (for a hobbyist, anyway), I went down with him.

Small, untreated room in the guy's basement, roughly rectangular, with the drums set up all the way up against the wall. Overhead mics were literally hung from the ceiling, and appeared to be some sort of handheld dynamics - I didn't investigate too closely. He ran everything through a mixing board, and from there into some DAW I don't recall - might have been Cool Edit Pro, if memory serves. I'm pretty sure he just tracked a single stereo out from the drums, rather than splitting them by mic. No clicktracks or anything. The guy wasn't a bad drummer, and did a relatively good job of micing my buddy's amp, but...

I remember one bit of conversation in particular - we'd just mic'd up the cab my buddy brought, and were in the other room talking. the guy said something like,

Studio Owner: "Now, I've noticed a lot of guitarists like it if I use this low knob to boost up the low end a little bit, and make it sound thicker and deeper."
My Buddy: "Cool."
Me: "What's the bandwidth the knob's centered on?
SO: "Huh?"
Me: "You know, what's the frequency range that you're adjusting, that the knob is centered around?"
SO: "Um, the low ones." (confused look)

I forget the exact dialogue, but that was the gist - the guy was making frequency tweaks with little to no idea what frequency he was tweaking, and furthermore was doing the reverse of what most guys do - boosting the low end of a guitar, rather than cutting it. My buddy and I kept coming back to that moment and laughing about it after the fact, over a beer.

Anyway, long story short, a lot of "studios" out there are taking clients when they really don't know that much about tracking and mixing. And, since these guys are usually, um, attractively priced, many young up-and-coming musicians are probably having their first recording experience in a studio like this, and walking away thinking "is that all there is to it? Man, I could do this myself with a mixing board, a couple mics, and a cracked copy of Sonar!" And, if that's their baseline, they're probably right. They just never get a chance to see that there's a lot more to making a great sounding record than that, and maybe they just come away from listening to their "album" they've just recorded thinking there's some magic plugin the pros are using that they're not and that's why Nickelback sounds better than they do, all the while not realizing how much of what they're missing is in the process, in good micing technique and gain staging, and developing a good ear for a mix.

I guess it's good we have places like this where if you spend any amount of time around here it becomes very apparent just how little many of us (and I include myself) know, and how much there really is to learn. I've been a hobbyist recorder for, well, about a decade now, and I've put together a fair collection of gear. While I wouldn't hesitate to record a friend of mine or something as a favor/for the fun of it, I also certainly wouldn't be taking paid clients right now because I'm really not a professional, and I know enough to know that.

honesty is the best policy.
I do love working under pressure. I produce better results that way.
But yeah Ive seen similar cases like that studio owner. Its sad. At a live show some "techy" started pluging the amps into the mixer he said "the mics arent loud enough" No jokes! I almost fainted.

 

[Paulie Jay]

Id have assumed that punk counted as underground music in the 70s too...even the stuff the sex pistols did in major studios lacked polish and sounded lo-fi.

It's interesting that you say that because at the time they copped a bit of flak for having such a polished sounding album. I'll be honest and say that I certainly don't consider Nevermind the Bollocks to be lo-fi at all. Brash - yes.

But I guess that it is in the ear of the beholder.

 

[c7sus]

I think it was John Prine's "Pink Cadillac" that was refused by the label because they didn't like the sound.

Prine told them they spent a lot of money fucking up those amps to get that sound.

 

[darrin_h2000]

It's interesting that you say that because at the time they copped a bit of flak for having such a polished sounding album. I'll be honest and say that I certainly don't consider Nevermind the Bollocks to be lo-fi at all. Brash - yes.

But I guess that it is in the ear of the beholder.

It was done in a major studio with good stuff...and a pretty good set of people behind the board...thats why it was a pretty decent product.

Lo-Fi works for that music though...gives it an edge.

 

[mshilarious]

The Strokes are not lo-fi. Running the vocals through a guitar amp, yeah, but other that than, that album is not lo-fi. Those guitar tones are some of the best I've ever heard.

Minor Threat was lo-fi


Now, some of the crap bands that copied the Strokes were lo-fi-ish, but the lesson they failed to learn from Minor Threat is that lo-fi only works if you don't suck

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

One of the problems with this thread is that very few people are even talking about the same thing. I can't speak for miro, but based upon what I've read from this thread and what he has and has not agreed to, "lo-fi" here is meant more as as a style of production, not as a technical description of recording fidelity.

There's "lo-fi" and there's low-fidelity. The Strokes are not low fidelity, but they are most definitely "lo-fi".

G.

 

[miroslav]

There's "lo-fi" and there's low-fidelity. The Strokes are not low fidelity, but they are most definitely "lo-fi".

Yeah...there are a few ways to look at it...but your statement above is pretty much the same way I'm looking at it.

AFA The Strokes (and others)...
If you take guitars, vocals, etc...and mangle the shit out of them so it sounds like a trainwreck with a soar throat...but then you record it all using "the best" Hi-Qi gear and techniques ...

...is it lo-fi or hi-fi?

I guess it's "lo-fi with a twist"....

 

[c7sus]

You want lo-fi???

Here it is. Sounds as great as ever. I can't find it right at the moment, but if you can find Dock Boggs "Sugar Baby" you can hear the sound of the recorder in the take. THAT is lo-fi!

http://www.archive.org/details/Prettypolly

Here's another great one from April 1928. Dylan ripped some of the lyrics for "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again".

Mona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line.
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine.
An' I said, "Oh, I didn't know that,
But then again, there's only one I've met
An' he just smoked my eyelids
An' punched my cigarette."
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again.

http://www.archive.org/details/Mole

 

[mattdee1]

Plus, what is "alternative" anyway? The term itself has sort of gotten bastardised.

AAAGGHH, I hate the word "alternative" when used in the music business. Like, when you ask somebody "So, what kind of music do you like?" And they go, "Umm... pretty much anything with a good beat... you know, alternative." More often than not, the person responding this way is in fact referring to hit radio bands like Nickelback, Matchbox 20, Three Doors Down, Sum 41... whatever. These bands couldn't be more mainstream if their lives depended on it, yet somehow the tag "alternative" continues to linger like an annoying crotch blister. The word is being used to describe the exact opposite of what the music is.

People like the rawness and realness of stripped down recordings. It actually makes you listen instead of being spoonfed and taking a nap afterward. I don't think it's going anywhere.

I agree. We're no more likely to see "lo-fi" music go away than we are to see people stop intentionally applying graininess and sepia tones to what would otherwise be vivid and crystal clear 12 mega-pixel photographs.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

These bands couldn't be more mainstream if their lives depended on it, yet somehow the tag "alternative" continues to linger like an annoying crotch blister. The word is being used to describe the exact opposite of what the music is.

That's a holdover from the early 90's, really, although I agree it's kind of meaningless today in it's original sense - it's more "a word to describe acts that really WERE alternative in 1989" than a literal label these days.

 

[Moseph]

That's a holdover from the early 90's, really, although I agree it's kind of meaningless today in it's original sense - it's more "a word to describe acts that really WERE alternative in 1989" than a literal label these days.

I've always considered "alternative" (they way it gets used in modern contexts) to be something along the lines of "rock music which draws more heavily from punk rock than other styles."

Note that the music can contain elements of any number of styles, but so long as punk music is considered the "plurality" of the aesthetic (i.e., not even the majority, just the biggest piece of the pie), then I'd probably classify it as "alternative" rock.

Granted this is my own personal definition and it's kind of broad, but that's kind of how I think about it.

Incidentally, I have similar definition ideas about how "indie" gets tossed around nowadays, like it says something about musical aesthetic, rather than the social atmosphere of the the music.

 

[grimtraveller]

Certain folk within the music industry spent nearly 60 years trying to get cleaner sounding records and eliminate hiss and scratches and the like from vinyl and tape so I had to laugh when I first bought certain VSTis and found parameters like "record crackle" and "lo-fi" next to reverb and delay among the effects. Maybe many artists are human after all. It's a bit like how when some of us are young, we do so much in the quest to be seen as older then as soon as we get to that point, we want to be seen to be younger......
But I think there'll always be 'produced' recordings. I think all kinds of ways of getting music to sound will sit together side by side and as is often the case, many of the paying punters won't care. There's always been bands that went for the rougher, 'sloppier' sound and those that went for a cleaner, cleverer product.

 

[Paulie Jay]

Certain folk within the music industry spent nearly 60 years trying to get cleaner sounding records and eliminate hiss and scratches and the like from vinyl and tape so I had to laugh when I first bought certain VSTis and found parameters like "record crackle" and "lo-fi" next to reverb and delay among the effects. Maybe many artists are human after all. It's a bit like how when some of us are young, we do so much in the quest to be seen as older then as soon as we get to that point, we want to be seen to be younger......
But I think there'll always be 'produced' recordings. I think all kinds of ways of getting music to sound will sit together side by side and as is often the case, many of the paying punters won't care. There's always been bands that went for the rougher, 'sloppier' sound and those that went for a cleaner, cleverer product.

I remember when "Let It Be...Naked" was release Paul McCartney saying "This is what we would have sounded like back then had the technology existed". And yet, other people are trying to capture the original "Let It Be" sound for recordings made today. Funny, really

 

[grimtraveller]

I remember when "Let It Be...Naked" was release Paul McCartney saying "This is what we would have sounded like back then had the technology existed". And yet, other people are trying to capture the original "Let It Be" sound for recordings made today. Funny, really

Ironic in itself is McCartney's statement, given that the original premise behind "Let it be" was to get away from the "produced" sound that characterized all the Beats' recordings from "Help !" onward. The album was lo-fi when Glyn Johns put it together and it was called "Get back". Interestingly, none of the band could stand it ! Lo-fi !

 

[mattdee1]

Incidentally, I have similar definition ideas about how "indie" gets tossed around nowadays, like it says something about musical aesthetic, rather than the social atmosphere of the the music.

I agree. It almost seems like the tag "indie" is poised to become the next "alternative".

To me, indie is simply about sticking strictly to what comes naturally to you, hit-radio trends and broad commercial appeal be damned.

I think Blitzen Trapper's album "Wild Mountain Nation" embodies this principle nicely. Throughout that album they leap around so much stylistically that you get the impression they're running through every idea they ever came up with. Some people look at this variation as a bad thing, but I'm all for it... I mean, if the band is just playing what they want to play because they want to play it, how can I fault them for it?

Then you get bands that are obviously forcing themselves into a narrow section of the available sonic landscape, just to convey a certain contrived "indie vibe" and conform to the strictures of some dogmatic "scene", which is unfortunate.

 

[Moseph]

I agree. It almost seems like the tag "indie" is poised to become the next "alternative".

To me, indie is simply about sticking strictly to what comes naturally to you, hit-radio trends and broad commercial appeal be damned.

I think Blitzen Trapper's album "Wild Mountain Nation" embodies this principle nicely. Throughout that album they leap around so much stylistically that you get the impression they're running through every idea they ever came up with. Some people look at this variation as a bad thing, but I'm all for it... I mean, if the band is just playing what they want to play because they want to play it, how can I fault them for it?

Then you get bands that are obviously forcing themselves into a narrow section of the available sonic landscape, just to convey a certain contrived "indie vibe" and conform to the strictures of some dogmatic "scene", which is unfortunate.

I wouldn't even go that far with it. To me, "indie" is most accurately applied to an artist who is using non-label funds to record/release records/promote/play shows.

Musical aesthetic really doesn't have anything to do with it in my mind: the hard part is that I often have a hard time finding well-known and applicable alternate descriptions.

 

[miroslav]

I wouldn't even go that far with it. To me, "indie" is most accurately applied to an artist who is using non-label funds to record/release records/promote/play shows.

Musical aesthetic really doesn't have anything to do with it in my mind: the hard part is that I often have a hard time finding well-known and applicable alternate descriptions.

True...but a lot of folks DO associate "indie" and "alt" with specific styles of music, even though the terms are rather generic. Anything can be "indie"...and the term "alt" has become a caricature of itself!

 

[bozmillar]

True...but a lot of folks DO associate "indie" and "alt" with specific styles of music, even though the terms are rather generic. Anything can be "indie"...and the term "alt" has become a caricature of itself!

I know I do. When I think of "indie" music, I think of a certain style of music, not a style or budget of production. Same with alternative.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

In my mind "alternative" doesn't even exist anymore except as an adjective to put on another genre of music. Between alt pop, alt rock, alt country, alt blues, alt bluegrass and probably others that I'm not remembering at the moment, there are so many breeds called "alternative" now that it no longer exists as it's own style - if it ever really did. In many ways, it never really meant much of anything other than stuff that never made the Billboard 200 in any given style or genre, it's just that now people are bothering to ID the genre that the record is an alternative selection of.

And "indie" to me never really meant anything other than stuff released by small labels with little to no budget that could never compete for pop radio shelf space with the Time/Warners and Sony/BMGs of the world, and could incorporate any music style out there from rock and jazz to Gregorian chants and Tuvan throat singing.

YMMV, TLI, CSM, LEM, ETC.

G.