Very very interesting... Makes me realise once again just how much context matters. Love it!!!

MikeM wrote: Very very interesting... Makes me realise once again just how much context matters. Love it!!!

It makes me feel better about some of the recordings I'm made in my time. They often sound quite hideous in isolation, but good within the context of the song. Also it confirms for me that part of the wonder of sixties music is just how imperfect it is. All together you get something coming through that's so alive and vibrant. While many modern recordings have a mass of perfectly recorded parts that add up to a less than perfect whole.

For those who don't know, this was recorded on Harrison's '57(I think) Les Paul, known as "Lucy" that had quite a history.

singemonkey wrote: It makes me feel better about some of the recordings I'm made in my time. They often sound quite hideous in isolation, but good within the context of the song. Also it confirms for me that part of the wonder of sixties music is just how imperfect it is. All together you get something coming through that's so alive and vibrant. While many modern recordings have a mass of perfectly recorded parts that add up to a less than perfect whole.

A while back I watched some show on which Becker and Fagen discussed the making of one of their songs - "Peg" from the Aja album. They were sitting in front of a desk with the multi-track tape threaded up and they were switching things in and out.

"Well we got Eric Gale in first and he played this part...." [hits button, guitar track plays]
"But we didn't like that. It didn't seem to gel with the bass so well. So we got this...."[hits button, another guitar track]
"And that's Steve Khan. We liked most of what he played but we weren't happy with the solos. So..."[hits button]
"We tried Dean Parks. You can hear what he does here. And that was OK but then we changed the drum part and the solo didn't seem to fit so well. So then we tried this guy here..."[hits button]
"Say Walter, who is this?"
"I have no idea."
"I can't remember either. But then we got in Jay Graydon..."[hits button, yet another track plays]
"And that was the magic part."

So they had so many tracks available (and the number has only gone up since then) that they could keep all the guitar parts and make a decision later. Ditto the drum tracks (there were more than one). They could try different combinations of drums and guitar. They could use the first verse from that player, then the chorus from that guy (switching over to drummer Bs part as they did so) blah blah solo from this guy blah blah.

In the 60s you couldn't do that. The number of tracks was restricted and you had to constantly be bouncing down. Bass, drums, rhythm and lead vocals take up 8 tracks between then. You've still got to get in the backing vocals, the guitar solo and a keyboard part. Well mix what you've already got down to 4. Probably the lead vocal stays on it's own track so you can add reverb later, but perhaps rhythm guitar and bass end up on same track and they're going to stay that way and the balance between then is now fixed.

Now you've got space on the tape for the solo.

And this is what they had to constantly. Not just the Beatles, but everybody. You had to make decisions as you went along. You couldn't keep multiple rhythm guitar parts, you had to commit to one and go with that (or record a whole new version of the song).

And I think because you worked like that the creative process was different and the decision making process was different.

Joe Boyd talks about this. You've got most of the track down then the lead guitarist does a solo. You've got to decide there and then if you're going to keep that solo or rewind the tape and get another solo that will overwrite the first one.

It may have injected a different sensibility into the players as well. You've got to do this all in one take - and live with the mistakes as long as they're not so bad that they force a retake. You can't do what Larry Carlton and Steely Dan did and stitch solos together from multiple takes whilst you aim for perfection, and you can't go into the take knowing that you have that to fall back on.

Often a problem when things are made a bit too easy. People lose focus. Digital photographers laugh themselves silly in the field shooting 1,500 images. Then they get home and they have to work though an endless wall of near identical shots, and they're lucky if they get anything as good as they would have 15 years ago shooting four rolls of film. Because film forced people to concentrate on what they were doing.

My girlfriend worked on a film last year shot on digital in which they'd literally leave the camera "rolling" between takes. They'd do take after take after take. Why not? No film costs. It ended up, of course, going way over time, and the editor ended up with far more footage than he or his assistants could look through. Hundreds and hundreds of hours - often without clear breaks between one take and the next. You'd have to sift through them to find the clapper boards.

Limitations can provide discipline and focus.

Mitchell Froom tells a great story against himself. He's probably best known for his work on the early Crowded House albums, but he's also worked with Suzanne Vega, Los Lobos, Ronnie Montrose, Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson.

Anyway... he tells this tale about how he was preparing for a new Thompson album. They start off with what is, as far as I can tell, Froom's preferred way of working which is to just get quick takes of the songs that he can then start thinking about in various ways. So they get the drummer and the bass player into a rehearsal studio with Thompson and Froom (literally) turns on a casette recorder.

Some time later they start with the actual album and they run into a problem. They're in a proper studio with big desks and everything else, and top notch session players and Froom's choice of engineers etc etc etc and nothing sounds as good as the casette recording! Cleaner, less hiss, sure, but the spark they got down with those quick takes is gone and the balance of the guitar and drums is different and doesn't work as well.

We should get Bill to start taping XRB at TJ's ?

X-rated Bob wrote: Mitchell Froom tells a great story against himself. He's probably best known for his work on the early Crowded House albums, but he's also worked with Suzanne Vega, Los Lobos, Ronnie Montrose, Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson.

I love the imperfections of old recordings. Modern production values tend to kill the happy mistakes in a lot of music, which makes
it less human. (Same can be said for retouching photography to the point that human skin starts looking like plastic, and ironically people
aspire to be like that unreal image or sound like that overproduced voice)


Thanks Bob, I forgot I had Froom's Dopamine album! Giving it a listen now.
Music written and arranged by Froom and performed by the likes of Suzanne Vega (his wife at the time),
M.Doughty (Soul Coughing). Very interesting and eclectic stuff. Bits of jazz, rock and world all in one.

make and do wrote:

X-rated Bob wrote: Mitchell Froom tells a great story against himself. He's probably best known for his work on the early Crowded House albums, but he's also worked with Suzanne Vega, Los Lobos, Ronnie Montrose, Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson.

I love the imperfections of old recordings. Modern production values tend to kill the happy mistakes in a lot of music, which makes
it less human. (Same can be said for retouching photography to the point that human skin starts looking like plastic, and ironically people
aspire to be like that unreal image or sound like that overproduced voice)

+2 - one for recording and one for photography. One of the reasons why, in a survey a couple of years ago, they found that 50% of Japanese fashion photographers had settled on using film. I don't see how the industry thinks that these models that look like they're made of injection molded plastic are appealing. Certain films used to be highly prized (and still are) for their amazing skin tones, but for the convenience of digital, a lot of people have settled for a look that - if it was presented as a film for fashion back in the day - would have been laughed into non-existence.