Professional albums in house studios

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famous beagle

famous beagle

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I was just wondering about something. You know how you hear that certain albums were recorded in a house or apartment or whatever?

I'm thinking things like The Band's "Music from Big Pink," the Counting Crows' "This Desert Life," Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," etc.

When I see pictures of those sessions, I don't see a whole lot of treatment on the walls or ceilings usually. There are usually some gobos visible maybe, but ...

I guess my question is if room treatment is so essential, then how are these bands achieving pro results in these normal houses? (I know that their mixing rooms are probably treated, but I'm talking about the tracking rooms).

I mean, if you watch "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" (documentary film on the making of Wilco's YHF album), Jeff Tweedy's "vocal booth" has a brick wall behind him with a blanket hanging on it for pete's sake!

What gives?
 
Come on guys ... with all the preaching that goes on around here about how important room acoustics are, how can this not bother anyone else?
 
Some of the drum tracks on "Tiny Music....................." by STP was tracked in an empty swimming pool outside the house that the rest of it was recorded in.
 
I think it's just a matter of finding a room that you like the sound of and going for it. It seems lately that we create our environmnets with effects rather than using an actual room. At the same time I doubt those albums were mixed in these same live rooms. Plus the mixers knew the rooms that they were mixing in.

I would prefer to create my environments with effects so I'm not limited. But a real room sounds better IMO.

Just my thoughts.
 
1: bad sounding rooms sound bad, good sounding rooms sound good.
no designation like "house" or "hospital" will tell you the nature of the acoustic space.

2: close mic'ing minimizes the effect of bad rooms substantially.
 
> When I see pictures of those sessions, I don't see a whole lot of treatment on the walls or ceilings usually. <

It could be that the raw tracks were recorded without much treatment, but all the mixing was done in a pro facility. It's during the mixing that a good engineer can sort out whatever problems are in the original recording. Also, most bands rich enough for you to see on a video will rent a large house for their project. The big problem most folks here have is trying to record and mix in small rooms, where all of the walls and the ceiling are very close to the instruments and microphones.

> Jeff Tweedy's "vocal booth" has a brick wall behind him with a blanket hanging on it for pete's sake! <

A heavy enough blanket might be all that's needed for midrange material like vocals.

--Ethan
 
Agreed. You use a room that sounds the way you want it to for laying things down. Then you move to a room that's treated appropriately so you can hear what's there and mix properly in a relatively neutral environment so the mixes translate well to other venues.
 
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