S
studiodrum
New member
I think that just about sums it all up!Beck said:
E
EDAN
New member
MCI2424 said:
You're just plain wrong. Then again what would make anyone think the albums producer knows more than you?
BOSTON'S "MORE THAN A FEELING"
Dan Daley
In 1976, mainstream American rock was making the transition from blues-based proto-metal to what would become a decade-and-a-half's worth of power pop. It was an era when the recording of the pistons of rock - guitars and drums - made the transition from a crude craft to a true science, as guitar sounds began to receive the kind of data processing heretofore reserved for NASA telemetry.
"More Than A Feeling," the first single from Boston's eponymous debut album, hit the airwaves that autumn (making it to Number 5), and acted as a pivot in this transition, combining some of the ebullience of the rock era's early days with the precision and technology that would mark rock record productions from then on. That song and album also set benchmarks for the record business. Boston became the best-selling pop debut effort in history, a title it held for a decade before it was supplanted by Whitney Houston's first album. It ultimately sold 16 million copies in the process of creating a reference point for production values and studio technology that would stand for years.
Not surprisingly, the group's main muse - guitarist and songwriter Tom Scholz - was an interesting blend of Brian Wilson and Albert Einstein. The M.I.T. graduate was working for Polaroid when he hooked up with vocalist Brad Delp and his local rock band. Though Scholz signed on as a keyboardist, he also began learning guitar, and his quick mastery of the instrument soon allowed him to take full control of the band. Scholz's innate technical wizardry allowed him to build one of the first project studios, a 12-track Scully recorder/Dan Flickinger console affair where the band recorded demos that led to their signing by Epic in 1975 and which served as the basis of much of the first album's tracks.
When producer John Boylan was brought into the picture, "More Than a Feeling" and most of the songs on the debut record were just about completed. Boylan, who had previously produced records for Linda Ronstadt, Brewer & Shipley, Pure Prairie League and Roger McGuinn, was contacted by old friend Paul Ahern, who along with local promotion manager Charlie McKenzie, had recently formed a company to manage Boston and were in search of a deal. "The band had been turned down by several labels already, including Epic," Boylan recalls. "Up to that point, Tom [Scholz] had been sending tapes to record companies over the transom, sending them in cold. He needed someone who knew the business and was conversely known by it. Paul was an old friend I'd met through my connection with Linda, and I liked Charlie's flamboyant style of promotion - he would send telegrams to radio stations asking them to play his songs."
Boylan came to Boston and listened to Scholz's 12-track tapes. "I loved it and wanted to work with it," he says. "I knew what was wrong with the recordings immediately: Tom was an obvious genius, but he didn't know how to record acoustic instruments. The drums and acoustic guitars were amateurish, but the guitars sounded amazing."
Scholz's Scully 12-track had a linear-restoration circuit built in, which could restore the uppermost transient lost in the analog circuitry. It seemed to Boylan that some of the sharpness of Scholz's genius came from his own conflict with analog and digital audio technology. "Tom knew what digital technology was capable of," Boylan recalls. "The first Eventide sampler was out then, though it had a terrible sampling rate. But Tom would then invent analog devices to do what the digital boxes were trying to do. His first doubler was actually an analog bucket-brigade device."
Bringing Boylan to the project, along with management, completed the team that Boston needed to get a major-label deal, and the band signed with Epic, though not before the label, responding to rumors that the "band" was actually a mad genius at work in a basement, asked to see them perform. "They needed to see some bodies on a stage, and they quickly added a live drummer [Sib Hashian] and bassist [Fran Sheehan] to the core of Scholz, vocalist Brad Delp and Goudreau.
When Boylan arrived in Boston in early 1976, he found Scholz still working at Polaroid, deeply involved in a pet project for company founder Edward Land, developing an instant-movie camera, a project Scholz confided to Boylan that he felt would never work, and despite the millions of dollars that and threw at it, it was quickly decimated by the arrival of the VCR. But the fact that Scholz would stay on at Polaroid, even as he and the band were on the verge of the big record deal, underscored to Boylan Scholz's own insecurities - about money and his way of working. "Tom didn't want an outside producer; he wanted to do this all himself," Boylan says matter-of-factly. "He accepted me because he knew it was politically necessary. I looked at the situation and told Charlie and Paul in a meeting that this project will sound better if Tom gets to do it the way he wants. What I could do to help it is to make his acoustic sound better, and to run interference with the label while he works out of his basement."
Boylan recognized Scholz's talent, and had already formulated in his mind that once he had gotten Scholz on the right track with drums - achieved by flying in engineer Paul Grupp from Los Angeles to instruct Scholz in microphone technique ("Tom proved to be a very fast study," Boylan says admiringly) - his own hands-on involvement would center on recording the vocals and mixing. Scholz was relieved and agreed readily to that arrangement, Boylan recalls. But before he could get to that stage, Boylan had to orchestrate one of the most complex corporate capers in the history of the music business.
"I had gotten a budget from Epic [he estimates the amount spent in the end was just $28,000], but the more important question from Epic's admin. department was,`Where are you guys going to record?'" Boylan explains. This was a loaded question. Several years before, Epic, which is part of the Columbia Records corporate family, had signed a disadvantageous agreement with NABET, the union representing electrical and broadcast engineers. The agreement had a "featherbedding" clause that, according to Boylan, "would have made Karl Marx grin from ear to ear." Any recording done outside of a Columbia-owned studio [the company's facilities were in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville at the time] but within a 250-mile radius of one of those studios required that a paid union engineer be present, even if all he did was file his nails. Boston, where the band called home and wanted to work, is 211 miles from New York City.
Boylan's first imperative as producer was to put up a smokescreen, because the notion of a stiff union engineer sitting next to the compulsively controlling (and still Polaroid-employed) Scholz in the basement of his house on School Street in the lower-middle-class Boston suburb of Watertown was, alternately, too horrible and too comic to contemplate. "Can you picture it?" Boylan asks. "There's Tom working in his basement after working all day at Polaroid, sitting there recording his guitars through a Marshall and the prototype of his Power Soak, which at the time used a massive resistor taken from a theatrical lighting system and that was the size of a briefcase, while some guy from the union was waiting for him?"
So Boylan developed an elaborate ruse that involved flying the rest of the band to Los Angeles, where they were working on non-Scholz material, such as "Let Me Take You Home Tonight," while Scholz remained in his basement, safe from Epic's accountants. Boylan says he paid for the equipment rentals for Scholz himself to avoid tipping off Epic's auditors.
That spring, Boylan returned to Boston to hear the tracks, on which Scholz had recut drums and other percussion and keyboard parts. Boylan then hired a remote truck in Providence, RI, and had it come to Watertown, where it ran a snake through the basement window of Scholz's home to transfer his tracks to a 3M-79 2-inch 24-track deck, going from 15 ips on the one-inch 112-track tape to 30 ips on the 3M multitrack. The tapes were taken to Los Angeles, where Boylan, Scholz and Delp settled in for vocals.
"Brad was one of the easiest singers to work with that I've ever met," says Boylan. "He actually hits those high notes; there's nothing electronic helping him. And he did it fast." Singing into a Neumann solid-state 87, running through a Quad Eight console using the onboard mic-pre and EQ and an outboard Quad Eight limiter, Delp sang "More Than A Feeling" in Capitol's Studio C with Warren Dewey engineering the overdubs. One of the more remarkable vocal pyrotechnics on an album where Delp's singing gives Scholz's guitar work a run for its money is on the passage where Delp's ever-rising tenor rides into the first notes of the signature guitar solo, a move Boylan says was planned and executed flawlessly on virtually the first take. All vocals were double-tracked except the lead vocal, and all the parts were done by Delp in quick succession.
The rest of the band was less involved. "If Tom could have played drums, he would have; he was that compulsive about the control of the project," Boylan observes. "He was particularly so with Barry, who had taught him to play the guitar in the first place. But with Brad, Tom seemed to find his limit. He knew he couldn't sing like that. He just sat there and listened for pitch and tempo."
It was in the mixing of the song that Boylan found his only real confrontation with the autocratic Scholz. At Westlake Studios' now-gone 6311 Wilshire Blvd. location, in a three-position manual mix - unautomated since all the tracks were filled, leaving no room for the two tracks required by the studio's new and rudimentary API console automation system - Scholz handled the guitar tracks, Boylan the drums and Dewey rode the vocals, with Steve Hodge assisting. "It was a tug-of-war in the beginning," says Boylan. "I want to make sure any Joe Blow can hear the vocals, and Tom is pushing the guitars up in the mix unceasingly. I was also trying to get the backbeat back into the track; I put a gate on the snare to get the hi-hat out of there and give the snare more punch. Meanwhile, Tom loves nothing more than the crash of cymbals and loud guitars."
Boylan concedes that "More Than a Feeling" is a heavily compressed recording, but notes that its squash came not electronically but rather from what he calls "manual compression." "We were pushing everything on the board to the edge," he says. "The interesting thing is that Tom had decided he wanted it to fade in with the acoustic guitars, and that kind of fools radio station compressors into thinking it's a quiet song, so they don't latch on to it right away."
But aside from nifty, if unplanned tricks like that, Boylan says he also learned something more lasting from this mixing session. "And it's something which I put to good use to this day," he notes. "People, as they listen to a record, will always be able to find the vocals when they want to. I learned that the lead vocal is more apparent than you think it is when you're in the middle of a mix."
Boylan also honed his psychological skills working with Scholz. "He's a genius and he's autocratic - when it comes to opinions, with him it's either`my way or the highway,'" he says without judgment. "When you run into a situation where there is a difference of opinion, I had to remind myself that my purpose in this project was to give Tom the room to do what his vision demanded, but to keep him from shooting himself in the foot. So you use karate: you figure out which way he's going and you go in the same direction, all the while quietly, but seriously, manipulating the situation to move it where you want to go in the end. You never confront. You nudge. That's part of producing records."
B
Beck
Guest
MCI2424 said:
No, you're wrong about that. See my last post above. Scholz has consistantly stated as long as I can remember that the original Scully tracks ended up on the first Boston album. They weren't guide tracks by any means.
MCI2424 said:
I’m glad you brought that up. The fact is there are pro toilets, and it’s yet another way to try to explain to you the difference between pro and semi-pro recording equipment… which you still can’t seem to grasp… but here goes. At the very least, those that actually think in English will comprehend.
I don’t need the same kind of toilet at my house that’s installed at an airport or sports arena. Home toilets get the job done in homes, but they don't need to be flushed thousands of times per day. If I opened my toilet to the public it would soon fail.
Pro equipment is more expensive, not because it sounds any better than equipment designed for home/project studio use, but because it is built for the rigors of a commercial operation.
Again, the difference between pro and semi-pro doesn’t necessarily involve audio quality, but rather industrial durability and/or -10 dB vs. +4 dB line levels.
Pro equipment is whatever a pro (talented and capable individual) may choose to use.
By all means please go ask Tom for us. And when you wake up, tell us what you dreamed he said.
Dr ZEE
Anti-Pro Circles Insider
MCI is right as always.
Also, somehow, knowing the fact that Madonna uses the same toilet as I do does not ad a shred of pride to the process of using it nor it generates a sense of conformation that the toilet I'm pissing into is being approved. I don't know why it does not... but it just does not... 
MCI, please, please DO! Of course we are interested. I personally am dying! to know where can I buy that blue-check shirt..... and YOU KNOW WHY.... yep, shoobe doobe doobe doo.
also, I want to know which machine he is about to press-play/or record, since they are all fired-up and ready to roll. Or are they all in synch? Or are we just striking a pose.... , Madonna was good at it also.
**********
God save us all.
or did I say it already somewhere?
/respects
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
Beck said:I’m glad you brought that up. The fact is there are pro toilets, and it’s yet another way to try to explain to you the difference between pro and semi-pro recording equipment… which you still can’t seem to grasp… but here goes. At the very least, those that actually think in English will comprehend.
I don’t need the same kind of toilet at my house that’s installed at an airport or sports arena. Home toilets get the job done in homes, but they don't need to be flushed thousands of times per day. If I opened my toilet to the public it would soon fail.
Pro equipment is more expensive, not because it sounds any better than equipment designed for home/project studio use, but because it is built for the rigors of a commercial operation.
Again, the difference between pro and semi-pro doesn’t necessarily involve audio quality, but rather industrial durability and/or -10 dB vs. +4 dB line levels.
Pro equipment is whatever a pro (talented and capable individual) may choose to use.
By all means please go ask Tom for us. And when you wake up, tell us what you dreamed he said.
If anyone brings up the subject of pro vs semi-pro gear again, I'll quote the above, 'cause it's so damn well written and true.
Who knew toilets could be used so effectively to illustrate the pro vs semi-pro debate.
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superbeatballer
New member
MCI2424 said:
All toilets serve the same utilitarian purpose->Disposal of shit.
This one:https://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i128/rlslattum/toilet.jpg
for argument's sake works as well as this one:https://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i128/rlslattum/elephant.jpg
If excrement is what you deal with, any toilet will get rid of it. On the other hand, if you're trying to flush precious dense metals, a toilet will retain it in the bowl flush after flush.
One can't blame their creative constipation on a "toilet." Some people crap gold nuggets daily into a chamberpot and are very appreciative of their pot to piss in.
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
If my pict wasn't bad enough, that last one made me almost toss my cookies! That's it guys, no more food near the computer for me!! 
arjoll
New member
Its great to see that everyone's moved on from the "analogue vs digital" arguements of last year to these "my analogue vs your analogue" arguements....
Hey, Dr Zee, I'm getting bored with this one - what cool project are you working on now
Hey, Dr Zee, I'm getting bored with this one - what cool project are you working on now
superbeatballer
New member
As long as you're entertained friend.arjoll said:Its great to see that everyone's moved on from the "analogue vs digital" arguements of last year to these "my analogue vs your analogue" arguements....
Hey, Dr Zee, I'm getting bored with this one - what cool project are you working on now
I'm withyou on the Dr. Zee projects though!
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studiodrum
New member
Woh, woh, woh, . . HOLD THE DAMN PHONE! 'What the hell is is going on in Bravo Company????? Apparently he's not happy here at Shangri-la. . .'arjoll said:
How can you even argue a statement like that anyway!!? There's no competition for cryin' out loud, . .
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superbeatballer
New member
How do purpose to do this? It would take a highly controlled lab environment and resources that most don't have at their disposal. Furthermore, where would you get completely objective ears to listen to the tests?MCI2424 said:
I theorize that if it's test tones, white noise, and click tracks you're recording, your machine will win the hi-fi war any day. That doesn't say alot though, as most subjective ears don't care to listen to the aforementioned.
I'll conjecture that in a real world test where there are subjective listeners, almost any tape machine would perform the same given it's recording something worth listening to(again subjective.)
I actually can't believe you came back here with the same mess. People don't enjoy it when you slight them for their decisions. To do so repetedly is obnoxious.
You may have the best gear(maybe) and the best recording skills(probably not), but that won't get you very far without some people skills. Unfortunately for you, you can't buy that in a store.
E
EDAN
New member
Beck said:
I really wouldn't call it vague. Maybe misleading? Perhaps Boston used it on a snippit somewhere on the album? Although not impossible to believe it's BS, I'm more inclined to think there must be some connection for Tascam to claim that.
Dr ZEE
Anti-Pro Circles Insider
Yes. And it is also built to actually to be used. (it ment to be used and not to be looked at with pride or to be tickled with the swifferBeck said:
) . And I mean USED - used allot as hard as possible. The fact, that it is expected to be used heavily in a commercial operation is also a major factor for its price. The industry as a system works pretty well that way.... and when buying a professional piece of gear, you are not just purchasing a tool, you also purchasing an invisible yet "intuitively" recognizable pass into the commercial market-place. The gear list of your commercial studio is your accreditation-badge for the particapation in the established golobal commercial operation at large.It's like being a honey-farmer and paying a fee for a table/space/lot at Established Commercial Honey-Market Festival. You come here to sell honey - pay a fee. And it is expected, that you actually are here to SELL your honey.
You come here to sell your service - pay a fee, and it is expected that you are going to ROLL the reels 24/7 making lotsa'cash. But still - pay a fee
AND! This is not like a some sort of extortion - it's a good deal. The Industry does a good job advertising all the labels, brands and names associated with the gear you purchased from the industry. The system works pretty well that way.... or did I say it already ???/
and a lot of professional equipment is built not to serve the sound but to serve a commercial operation itself in the process,Beck said:
....including devices such as a professional +4/to/-10 balanced/to/unbalanced converter. Now, wait a minute.... hmmmm, how is this possible? why and what for would any real professional ever need one?
*********
ahhhh, well, at the end, when it comes to names, that we all "must" respect and follow when making decisions on what to use and how to use it to "make our honey".... it's not about what counts, but the way it is being presented.
Or must it be otherwise?
Not to mention that music isn't like honey - nobody swallows with with a set of expectations. Art has its ways and all the rights to be either sweet - either sour, either stone-hard - either tender.... in any shapes or forms. Art is a wild mustang - not a farm cow.
here's some honey:
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Beck
Guest
cjacek said:If my pict wasn't bad enough, that last one made me almost toss my cookies! That's it guys, no more food near the computer for me!!
I'm glad you said something before I logged in to look. Some images I just don't want to have in my head. I'll take your word for it on those above, whatever they are.
One has to choose one's analogies carefully around here, eh?
Dr ZEE
Anti-Pro Circles Insider
Non.arjoll said:... - what cool project are you working on now
You see, for a moment I was thinking about obtaining some teac 8-track r-t-r machine, separating all the pres/record channels, hosting each in a separate 2-u rack-mounted box with a larger VU-meter in the center, then re-designing the transport unit placing it side-up-down sexy way ..etc...
then something inside of me spoke to me with a question: "Would not it be way too many holes for you to handle???" ... so I had to do check up first. And so I did.
After analyzing the data they said, that my DRILL is too dull for the job.
So, ... no projects for a day.
And it's a shame, because I really do think she is HOT! Attachments
A Reel Person
It's Too Funky in Here!!!
A Reel Person
It's Too Funky in Here!!!
Dr ZEE
Anti-Pro Circles Insider
Yeah!
Dave! Nice visuals
...soooooooooo
I think I've got it .... visually that is
so it goes like this: PRO , not-PRO ...
*****
We've got it all right and settled down.
We all know what's what. Untill one day a master's soul touches still waters. Until one day Gates of Heaven get open confusing the hell out of spectators about what kind of Woman is This .... and then few days later everybody want one.
...
Dave! Nice visuals
...soooooooooo
I think I've got it
.... visually that isso it goes like this: PRO , not-PRO ...
*****
We've got it all right and settled down.
We all know what's what. Untill one day a master's soul touches still waters. Until one day Gates of Heaven get open confusing the hell out of spectators about what kind of Woman is This .... and then few days later everybody want one.
...
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MCI2424
New member
Beck said:No, you're wrong about that. See my last post above. Scholz has consistantly stated as long as I can remember that the original Scully tracks ended up on the first Boston album. They weren't guide tracks by any means.
I’m glad you brought that up. The fact is there are pro toilets, and it’s yet another way to try to explain to you the difference between pro and semi-pro recording equipment… which you still can’t seem to grasp… but here goes. At the very least, those that actually think in English will comprehend.
I don’t need the same kind of toilet at my house that’s installed at an airport or sports arena. Home toilets get the job done in homes, but they don't need to be flushed thousands of times per day. If I opened my toilet to the public it would soon fail.
Pro equipment is more expensive, not because it sounds any better than equipment designed for home/project studio use, but because it is built for the rigors of a commercial operation.
Again, the difference between pro and semi-pro doesn’t necessarily involve audio quality, but rather industrial durability and/or -10 dB vs. +4 dB line levels.
Pro equipment is whatever a pro (talented and capable individual) may choose to use.
By all means please go ask Tom for us. And when you wake up, tell us what you dreamed he said.
Pro recorders/equipment is made to sound/function and last 10 times longer than semi-pro/home equipment. You seem to keep deluding the newbies here into believing home/semi-pro equipment can prolduce pro-level recordings.
YOU are one who sway people into spending their hard earned money to "find" that "magical tape sweet analog retro-man" bullshit only for them to find out it IS talant, great rooms and pro-equipment that will get a great sound.
Keep bringing these half-baked articles in your grand scheme of bolstering fantasies that don't exist.
Dr ZEE
Anti-Pro Circles Insider
If that was true... or if I believed it is true, then based on what I hear today that comes out of those "great rooms", stuffed with pro-equipment, then I would take a grotesque allegorical word out of poet's mouth and scream madly:MCI2424 said:
"Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?
There's one smoking a joint,
And another with spots!
If I had my way,
I'd have all of you shot!"
...thank You, Roger.
But I know that it's not true, and so I don't srceam nor shoot nobody.
Thanks God it's not true.
*********
There's no need to prove anything. You just do what you gotta do... and that is: "Show them the door out of "YOUR room". Right, Joe?
/later
