Interesting story on home produced album....

  • Thread starter Thread starter amra
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It's always been about what you record. People who download the MP4s off iTunes are more interested in the song she's written...but that doesn't mean musicians shouldn't strive for the best quality possible still. Hell, maybe her bedroom turned studio has a kick ass design. We don't know. Doesn't mean there isn't a place for well built studios run by top notch engineers. Why not have both a kick ass song and a kick ass sounding song.

And what is "a sound-insulated vocal booth?" Are we insulating vocal booths with "sound" now? :eek: :p
 
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i agree that it's best that you go for the best production....however the end listener doesnt really care too much about how it was recorded or what format or the studio...they care about is the song something they can relate to, can they dance to it, or is he/she hot looking. look at the white strips....not the best production in the world by two of the worst musicians in the world....lol, but they made it big because of the look and the hype.
 
scorpio01169 said:
but they made it big because of the look and the hype.
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which is helped/formed a lot by the labels. what got me was the comments on that article talking about "goodbye record companies...we don't need you anymore."
and this probably from the same people who turn over to Fox to glue themselves to the screen in hopes of finding out the next American Idol :rolleyes:
 
A recording of just accoustic guitar and voice shouldn't be too tough to pull off in a home recording environment if you know what the hell you're doing.

It's when you start adding in all the other stuff that it starts to get tricky.

:D
 
scorpio01169 said:
i agree that it's best that you go for the best production....however the end listener doesnt really care too much about how it was recorded or what format or the studio...they care about is the song something they can relate to, can they dance to it, or is he/she hot looking. look at the white strips....not the best production in the world by two of the worst musicians in the world....lol, but they made it big because of the look and the hype.
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I disagree. Most people have come to be used to professionally recorded music. If you hand them something with too much bass, no high-end and poorly mixed instruments, they may very well not get past that to the music itself. Just the same with poorly done live music. I've seen acts before that sounded terrible live because they were in a poor venue, and their PA wasn't set up to fit the room well. Their CD on the other hand, was done professionally, and they had a good sound, which made me get to the songs themselves. At that point, I was able to tell if I really liked them or not.

Sure, a well-written song, decent musicianship and an interesting package make up a lot of an artist's popularity. But coupled with sub-standard recording? That will definitely detract from the number of people who listen.

The White Striped may have had very little instrumentation and aren't masters of their craft in terms of musicianship, but the recording itself was done well (or at least up to today's standards). The look and the hype definitely make up a lot of their existance as a popular group, but if their CDs were home produced, drums done by HammerHead percussion and guitar recorded with a 57 in front of a 20 watt Marshall combo, mixed mastered and printed in that dude's basement, chances are the recording wouldn't sound the way it does coming out of a "real" studio. And at that point, I doubt they'd get radio play, unless the poor quality of the recording actually added to the sound, but that usually isn't the case.

The recording quality may not be everything, but it is a factor. And as chess said, she is recording vocals and acoustic guitar. You can make a very professional sounding acoustic album in an amateur room with some treatment for, what? A couple grand, including the instrument?

I think its great this artist was able to pull this off - it is definitely impressive, and a good case for those of us striving to get our material out to the masses. However, in the end, it is really a combination of the music and the recording - this artist had to know how to get a pretty damn good sound out of the space she was working in, with the equipment she had. THEN she had to add decent playing and a set of well-written songs (well, written for mass consumption, anyway) and a good persona to bundle it all together.
 
bennychico11 said:
which is helped/formed a lot by the labels. what got me was the comments on that article talking about "goodbye record companies...we don't need you anymore."
and this probably from the same people who turn over to Fox to glue themselves to the screen in hopes of finding out the next American Idol :rolleyes:
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Yeah... I don't think the major studios are going anywhere for a while. Sure, a lot of the privately-owned studios are closing their doors, but a few will be kept around to record the multitude of artists the industry fabricates to generate income each year. I don't think we are going to see a revolution where every artist builds their own home studio and then sends their finished work to their label... *I can see it now*

"The Fray records solely on Digidesign home hardware with behringer pres and SP microphones!" - Rolling Stone Magazine

"We just finished recording our latest wrist-slitter on our Alesis HD-24, with our DMP-3's and Rode mics... mixed and mastered by our drummer in Audacity on our Pentium 3 box" - Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard
 
scorpio01169 said:
however the end listener doesnt really care too much about how it was recorded or what format or the studio.
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They may not consciously care, but the further the production is from it's sonic "sweet spot", the faster that CD will get changed out on the changer or the faster a single will drop of the listener's playlist because they will either fatigue or lose interest in it faster.

The thing that a lot of listeners don't consider is that when they complain about today's music not having the quality or staying power that music used to, is that crap like the RMS wars and B-list studio work *do* contribute to the faster burn-out rate of the hits du jour.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
They may not consciously care, but the further the production is from it's sonic "sweet spot", the faster that CD will get changed out on the changer or the faster a single will drop of the listener's playlist because they will either fatigue or lose interest in it faster.

The thing that a lot of listeners don't consider is that when they complain about today's music not having the quality or staying power that music used to, is that crap like the RMS wars and B-list studio work *do* contribute to the faster burn-out rate of the hits du jour.

G.
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Could you clarify this? I think I am confused as to your point... at first it would seem that you agree that better production means people are more likely to keep listening to something...

But then in the second paragraph you are saying that volume wars and b-list studio work are doing what? Are worse than what is commercially available now? Is worse than stuff done in decades past? Sorry, I'm just reading it wrong I know, but Im curious :)
 
At work, so I can't listen to the video, but if its embedded like a youtube video, the audio is probably going to be far below what it actually is on CD, or original mastered track.

After reading the full article, I now have an idea of what they meant by the album only costing a few hundred pounds to make... it would seem they weren't referring to the cost of the studio's design and gear, they were referring to how much she paid to record there.

This person's converted studio might have run him 10 grand after all was said and done, but he only charged her to use the space. Maybe like with Glen's post I am just misinterpretting what they meant in the article, but if her album really is that high quality, chances are the gear wasn't a couple hundred pounds... figure at the very least the guy has a computer of some sort, some decent mics and pres, an interface and a treated room. That's gonna cost a lot more than a few hundred pounds :)
 
MCI2424 said:
If that video clip is representative of the sound of the album, her bedroom studio sounds pretty bad.
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it's just a concert I believe...unless she's used to being in studios with a disco ball, red lights pointing at her and using an SM58 as her vocal mic
 
cusebassman said:
Could you clarify this? I think I am confused as to your point... at first it would seem that you agree that better production means people are more likely to keep listening to something...

But then in the second paragraph you are saying that volume wars and b-list studio work are doing what?
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Are causing the effect I mentioned in the first paragraph; reducing the life cycle of a song or CD. People will fatigue of the recording faster, and possibly not even realize it's because of the recording.

G.
 
chessrock said:
A recording of just accoustic guitar and voice shouldn't be too tough to pull off in a home recording environment if you know what the hell you're doing.

It's when you start adding in all the other stuff that it starts to get tricky.

:D
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On the other hand, if you don't do a good job on an acoustic guitar/vocal recording, it sticks out like a sore thumb since there's nothing else to hide behind. So yeah, there's not that much to get right, but getting it right becomes paramount.
 
I'd like to say that...Well...NO SHIT.

And...The White Stripes' drummer may not be great...But Jack White is an amazing guitarist. The Raconteurs show him off more. He knows tone and he can solo like a motherfucker.
 
Go listen to the tracks (scummy myspace stream), they dont sound awesome but are definately not detracting from the songs.

""We just finished recording our latest wrist-slitter on our Alesis HD-24, with our DMP-3's and Rode mics... mixed and mastered by our drummer in Audacity on our Pentium 3 box" - Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard " - I believe this was said in jest, Chris Walla (thier guitarist and producer) recorded all thier stuff onto analogue tape until "Plans" which i believe was done in Logic.

The impressive thing i found about this is not the recording, or its budget but self publicity has caused her to get this far. and by publicity i dont mean adding a squillion people onto her myspace.
 
haha yes, those quotes were fabricated as a joke.

I apologise to those who have now taken those quotes and used them in research papers for school and for business proposals at their respective studios for why they should throw out their hundreds of thousands of dollars of recording gear, and switch to M-Audio and Rode products... I won't degrade the HD24, its a nice unit :)

Of course, so are my Rode K2 and my DMP-3!

Still not what most would consider studio-grade though :P
 
a perfect example of what i'm talking about is....you get these bands that are passing there tapes around their shows that they have done at home, alot have the crappiest recordings but they don't care and the peeps who support them don't care, if a band get a contract from an indie label (and i didn't say recording contract, theres a difference ) you may have them release that crappy recording because of the feedback it got, where as if you get a recording contract from a major label where they give you a recording budget and make cleaner productions then yeah. but in some cases we aren't seeing that.
 
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