lo-fi revisited

[dr.colossus]

o.k. now that all the hype has died downlets get bck into this lo-fi debate.....

i still love the strokes album, however none of the recording i've done of late has been at all similar to this style of music....

one of my favourite bands of all timeis kyuss.. not many of you guy s would have heard of them, but my favourite stuff of thiers is straight to lo-fi vynil...

what i'm talking about here is over production.... for my taste a lot of new albums are over produced, and taking the "band" out of the picture... what i mean is i am hearing a vocalist and a backing track, not a band....

now, i understand as aspiring engineers we strive for clarity, but when do we step too far and steal from the honesty of a recording?

lets roll

 

[ridl]

When you play a recording for a band and they don't recognize their own song style.

 

[jake-owa]

I would give a categorized answer for this one.

Firstly I 'd like to say that an individual recording, performing, composing and mixing their own music cannot over-produce, it's all a matter of taste and the only opinion important is the artist's. I know that was not the meat of the subject but it leads to this: a producer who hires musicians and polishes a solo artist into some star is in much the same boat. I guess if it sounds "overproduced" it may be, but many producers get that sound easily. For many producer/engineers it may be much harder to not sound over-produced which would be over-over-produced. Clean is appropriate sometimes.

In the second category, bands are in a different boat. The Strokes (whose album amused me for a day or so) made a descision to not over-do it. It was a wise one in their case. The production style should not (for bands) create a noticeable contrast to the talent or musical value of the group (in my opinion). While there may be exceptions to this, I feel it is e
generally true.

The third (and worst) category is the group of individual "artists" that are all used by a producer to create the image of a real band. He/she will write music/buy songs, hire real musicians, trainers and polish the resulting turd like there is no tomorrow. It's not his fault though he is just using bad market research to pander in the worst way to a dollar.

I do like recording in lo-fi sometimes but rarely for an entire peice. Usually just a part or two. I recently did a funny jaws-type thing with a freind that had overdriven, crushed, filtered vox that sounded cool. I also used to use a sampler in lo-fi mode to get a weird effect. I can definately appreciate the limited dynamic range of a cassette four-track recorder.

 

[dr.colossus]

o.k. well to me the new audioslave is overproduced... the certain amount of the accesibilty that rage against the machine had is gone.... i mean the recording is so hyped (imho) that it loses the "band" feeling.....

your second catoegory is the one that intrigues me jake... and i think a bands recording shoud resemble thier live sound.... just to paraphrase mike patton said if you cant do it live don't put it on c.d..... i agree to this with a certain extent...

i'm all for dry mixes, and just for a while there it seemed to me that big studios were embracing the home recording sound... but now it seems that overcompression is filling the sonic void left excessive reverb..... its all becoming aurally fatiguing...

 

[cominginsecond]

Dr. Colossus -

Is that Wayne Coyne in your avatar? If so, how did you like the new Lips record?

 

[BuildingStudios]

and i think a bands recording shoud resemble thier live sound.... just to paraphrase mike patton said if you cant do it live don't put it on c.d.....

Why??? I dont understand why every aspect of a band has to follow from or be in respect to their live show. why cant they be two distinct parts. If i want to go to a concert I will go to a concert, when i want to listen to a recording i dont want to here a cheap imitation of what a band does live... I want to hear their songs enhanced by all of the technology of the last 25 years... why should bands be limited by what they can do live... Thats what studios are there for...
There are so many amazing albums that would never have been made with this view... sgt. peppers for example.

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

Why??? I dont understand why every aspect of a band has to follow from or be in respect to their live show. why cant they be two distinct parts. If i want to go to a concert I will go to a concert, when i want to listen to a recording i dont want to here a cheap imitation of what a band does live... I want to hear their songs enhanced by all of the technology of the last 25 years... why should bands be limited by what they can do live... Thats what studios are there for...

I agree completely....

I, for one, am not a fan of live recordings.... the sound generally sucks... you don't get the energy of being there anyways (how do capture the stadium effect of a crowd of people without the actual crowd of people around you?!)... and worse - there are very few live recordings that haven't been overdubbed or retouched so much that it may as well have been a studio recording in the first place.....!

A band should have a polished studio sound... and their live sound can be completely different - usually more raw, sparse, and edgy........ nothing wrong with having both types........

 

[fprod south]

"just to paraphrase mike patton said if you cant do it live don't put it on c.d."

I don't think Mike Patton practices what he preaches. Someone else from Mr. Bungle said that the tapes of "California" are so complicated that no one would be able to put it together without someone in the band to direct them.

What I don't like is when a live band tries to replicate what they did in the studio by adding prerecorded tracks and tons of samples. I saw the Flaming Lips recently. They tried to do this and I just found it boring. I understand that Mr. Bungle was doing this too, but I didn't get to see them.

Jimi Hendrix set the perfect example, in my opinion, of how to handle the difference between live and studio playing.

 

[Sennheiser]

I know of a couple of albums that were recorded live back in the early eighties. Overall, they just sucked. Not the performance, but the recording. I'm not even sure I would have approved the release of one of them had I been a bandmember.

The same songs in the studio were much better. Additionally, there are some things you just can't do live depending upon the song and if they had taken into consideration if they should perform it live.

The same band I mentioned in my first paragraph released another live album in the late nineties that would run circles around many studio recorded albums I hear today. Maybe it's the technology and the experience of the engineer that made the difference in the two albums. The performance was excellent as usual from this band.

 

[BuildingStudios]

Sennheiser
.... what band are you refering to if you dont mind me asking...
ohh yeah and i also thought the new lips album was amazing, did they really try to pull too much off live?

 

[esactun]

one of my favourite bands of all timeis kyuss.. not many of you guy s would have heard of them, but my favourite stuff of thiers is straight to lo-fi vynil...

Aaah, Kyuss.... one of the best hard rock bands noone has ever heard of. One of the band responsible for inspiring the modern stoner doom rock scene.

Certain styles can't be polished much without draining all the life out of them. Kyuss produced by Bob Rock wouldn't rock nearly so hard. (I'm used to hearing the guitars and bass splattering into each other to create a "rhythm sludge". )

I record lo-fi, but not exactly by choice (heh).

But I don't think that studio tricks etc. are "cheating" unless one tries to make the listener think that they're that good live.

I agree with the Bear about having a studio style and a live style. Why not? And speaking of sucky sound: a monkey with a Radio Shack tape deck woulda done a better job than whoever did that old Sonic Youth live record!

 

[dr.colossus]

fprod; i went to both fantomas and bungle concerts to see if they really could do it, and its scary my friend.

now guys i'm talking about a live type of production, not a live performance... i want to feel like the band is playing the song together not overdubbed from one wek to the next...... with the vocals done in one side of the country and the rest done in another.....

other things i'm talking about are letting small mistakes through and background noise, look at tom waites mule variations....

personally its things like this that give me that feeling that like "hey its the band thats good not the production"

sorry if this mdoesn't make much sense, i just woke up

 

[Sennheiser]

Sennheiser
.... what band are you refering to if you dont mind me asking...
ohh yeah and i also thought the new lips album was amazing, did they really try to pull too much off live?

Fleetwood Mac. The "Live" album was done in 1980 and "The Dance" was done on 1997. Two totally different sounds.

 

[fprod south]

Good morning Dr. Colossus,
Is Bungle ever going to tour again? I'd be more than happy to eat my words. Does Fantomas tour?
I saw Sleepytime Gorilla Museum live a couple times. They're one of those bands where you think "they could never do this live" - but they do. If you like Mike Patton's stuff, you should check them out. They've got some free mp3's at www.sleepytimegorillamuseum.com
PW Long's Reelfoot has a good band sound that "let's the small mistakes and background noise" through. Government Mule had a really good recorded band sound - no mistakes though.

Buildingstudios,
The Flaming Lips played mostly stuff from the last two albums. There was tons of prerecorded stuff, so it pretty much just sounded like the album with not so good sound quality. But Wayne Coyne was pretty fun to watch.

 

[dr.colossus]

coming second; no, thats a self portrait in my avatar...

 

[TexRoadkill]

I think U2 is an interesting example of the different recording styles. Their first 3 albums are pretty raw and have very few overdubs in comparison to their later work. They have become known for using a lot of loops and samples now but they somehow manage to pull it off live without seeming like they are playing to a bunch of backing tracks.

I bet a lot of it just comes down to time and budget. If you have 6mos or more to screw around in the studio while writing than a lot of studio tricks will be more integral to the song writing and arranging. If your band rehearses the songs for 6mos then goes into the studio for a week your probably going to put out a more rockin' band album.

 

[JG96]

recording lo-fi realy takes balls kuz you cant cover up you music with sound effects and random insturuments. but i also like some albums i find overproduced like some stuff by radiohead

 

[Elton Bear]

Six years old...

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Six years old...

This thread is soooo old that...

...when it was started, even hi-fi was lo-fi.

...it was started on Compuserve.

...it's available on cassette.



G.

 

[RAMI]

...it's available on cassette.

Unfortunately, it will NOT self-destruct in 5 seconds.