Moral Questions
OK, the more I explore the sea of recording I see some trends emerging.
Your average band wants to record a record. The person they choose to record it is faced with lots of moral questions. There are many answers to these questions. Answers that will take you to subjectivity hell or John Bonham heaven.
For what it's worth, I will now jump upside the podium, to lay down a few laws. I mean there's no point in talking about this shit unless you put forward your view point in an "I'm fucking right, and anyone who doesn't agree with me is fucking wrong!" fashion.
OK. Let us pray.
To Produce or Record, (i.e. not to produce), that is the question.
OK, the non-exact quote short hand way of introducing this question is as follows;
Recordist
Albini: As a recording engineer, my job is to 'record' this band. Not to make them sound the way I think they should sound. The recording should be as much of their input and as least of my input as possible. I will neither claim credit for it sounding good nor accept responsibility for it sounding bad. 99% of the work is done when placing mics around the band at the time of recording. Thereafter, minimal fucking with the sound during mixing will result in a reasonably good reproduction of the sound of the band. End of Story.
Producer
George Martin: As the producer of the Beatles, I had to take them wherever they wanted to go. John Lennon was an incredibly imaginative musician but he could barely tune his own guitar. I had to get inside his head and try to help him create what he had going on in his imagination.
OK, so those are the 2 starting points. Of course there's variations on these themes...
Corporate satanic cock suckin producer from hell
"No no no Mariah, I don't think the second 8 of that bridge has quite enough meanderitis vocal wanking going on in it. I mean come on now team, if we want the grammy, we've got to aim higher. OK Mariah, we've got it set to repeat record here in our protools session, I'm going to fuck off for lunch now, so I'll hit record and you just keep churning out that shit for an hour, and when I get back we'll pick out the best takes. OK honey?" Jeese.
OK, for me it comes down to honesty. And honestly as much as I love "Debaser" (Albini recorded, I think), and The Wedding Present's "Seamonsters" (wonderful other Albini recorded album, the one with Dalliance on it), I don't think I could live in a world without aHA, or Cornelius, or Dj Shadow, or The Beach Boys.
But even those last few examples, aHA to Beach Boys, are all musicians who know exactly what the fuck they are doing in a studio. Using the studio as a compositional tool. As in the music they are making, isn't right untill they are happy with it in the studio.
I think where the shit runs into trouble when you get a band into a studio who have no idea how to use a studio and are like a kid in a sweet shop, running around wondering what all these buttons do. And that's natural. It's a new universe, one they may not have experienced before. And they want to fuck around in it.
I think this fresh off the street band can only survive a successful trip into 'productionland' in the hands of a 'producer' who knows their shit, who has seen them live and knows where they are trying to go. Just like when (arguably) George Martin turned John Lennon saying "OK George I want like a kind of reverse space whizzing aliens flying around a neverending bassline and cool fucking drums Ringo, and lots of acid on my voice please" into 'Tomorrow never knows'.
Personally, music which blows my mind, is music which I can't believe is happening in my ears, and fills my spine with ecstasy flavoured sugar acid. Here's a few examples
All of these songs/recordings came from lots of recording situations, both 'recordings' and 'productions'.
I think a golden rule of creativity is that there are no boundaries, and that saying one form of recording over another is better than the other is not really OK because it can cut out a quadrant of the creative universe. However dodgy and Harrold Faltimeyer it may be, it still deserves exploring.
If you've seen the band you are recording live first, have an understanding of their music, then the recording has a good chance of not ending up sounding like Barry Manilow.
So, if the band are up for it, and if you know your way around the joystick and the band know's which part of the universe they are looking for, then away you go, "set controls for the heart of the sun" and "careful with that reverb-axe Eugene."
Mastering Wankers
There's a fair bit of "be afraid, be very afraid" country involved in this game.
One example that always springs to mind is the following;
Nirvana unplugged: Song: Pennyroyal Tea. The bit after the 2nd chorus, "I'm on warm milk and laxatives" etc. Going into this bit, Kurt appears to make a mistake. Hits what the average dog on the street would call a 'wrong note'.
I have 2 copies of this live performance. 1 is from a bootleg CD, which also had the "live and loud" MTV show thing on it too. The other copy is my gal's official Nirvana Unplugged CD.
OK. On the bootleg, come the mistake bit, there's the mistake, in all its glory. Grand.
On Nirvana Unplugged, it comes to that bit.... AND IT'S FUCKING GONE! WHAT THE FUCK! WHERE'S THE FUCKING MISTAKE? WHO'S THE WANKER WHO TOOK OUT THE MISTAKE?
So I listen back a few times, and if you listen closely, you'll hear how the mastering engineer oh so skillfully got the last strum of the end of the 2nd chorus, moistened it with a touch or 'verb, cut the fucked up note of the mistake, and cleanly pasted in the nice non-mistake note to start the 3rd verse, nobody is any the wiser. Wonderfully seamless. There, that didn't hurt too much Kurt, did it?
Well you wanker mastering engineer, he's not around to give you his opinion on it, is he?
HOW DARE YOU take this mistake out. How dare you put yourself into your magic self shrinking time machine, travel back in time, jump onto Kurt's guitar, and magically place his fingers on the right notes. YOU WANKER. HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME.
Thank goodness for bootlegs. I haven't seen the DVD, but I'm sure the guys down at the video studio spliced some other shots together, to erase all evidence of that unsightly mistake bit! "Oh how awful! Glad we got rid of that! That was close. Today it's Kurt's mistake, tomorrow it could be Communism!"
WANKERS. How dare you dare to think what the fuck Kurt had in mind!
Having said that, my own theory on that bit (as if I haven't dwelled on it enough) is that, this being a solo performance of the song, playing a guitar solo wasn't going to happen, so instead of an attention grabbing solo, Kurt intentionally put in the fuck up, to break the song in half, make the 3rd chorus sound fresh again after the downbeat 3rd verse. Any takers on my theory? Anyone?
All this business came to mind as Emily Lazar spoke at the Tape Op conference. She told us of how she managed to put together the intro of a live Elvis Costello song by splicing bits together from the rest of the song. The original intro was horribly mutilated by the sound of applause from the crowd (oh how awful).
In this case, I suppose, Elvis was there at her side to give his blessing to the final edit. But Kurt aint.
Damnit...
Moral of the story - Mastering engineers - Dont touch it! You'll only break it! The queen shits too you know. If there's a snot up my nose, I want to know about it!
"Make the bad drummer sound good!"
Recently enough I came across the morality spangling piece of software. I don't use Protools, so it's new to me. But the software is able to analyse a drumbeat, played by a 'bad' drummer, paste in synth tom sounds every time a tom sound is produced, and align the sounds of the beats in such a way that it will be in time.
Or whatever.
Oh good. Let's do that. Let's remove the real sound, and put in an artificial sound. Let's make him sound like everybody else. Let's take away his individuality.
FUCK THAT.
OK more self righteous preaching later...