"Sound City" movie
On 2/26/2017 12:53 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
Neil wrote:
On 2/25/2017 11:44 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article , Neil
wrote:
My take on it is that a lot of artists' perspective toward digital was
formed in the early transitional years, and this movie is largely about
that time period. From a personal perspective, I sold our analog studio
about that time (late 70's) simply because the cost of conversion was
unjustifiable due to many things, including the rise of home studios
and
disco-based "beat" music.
Well, there are a lot of different things going on. The main difference
between traditional analogue and digital production methods is not sound
quality per se but the fact that everything is so much faster in the
digital
world and you're not locked down to doing things in realtime. Add
that to
being able to undo, and you have totally changed the way production is
done
and not always for the better. The fast pace and not having the
ability to
slow down and think about things is where a lot of artists have
problems.
During the "dawn of digital" one could see the potential for new
production techniques, but it wasn't realized until about a decade
after
studios had to decide what they were going to do. For example, the 3M
and other digital recorders were still based on reels of tape, so
retakes were required and splicing was out. In the meantime, classic
electronic music (read, synthesizer techniques aka musique concrete)
dominated the disco scene, and bands that previously would go to a
studio to record their demos were using Tascam gear at home, so the
money was siphoned off.
You didn't just go to a studio. It was very expensive. The rest of the
production process - pressing - was extremely expensive.
In the late '60s - mid '70s it was common in this neck of the woods to
record demos in studios. Most never pressed a disc, but took cassettes
of the session.
A little later ( 1980ish ) you had "home" studios based on
narrow-format tape where people financed their own singles and
albums. "Home" might have been a storefront but then commercial
real estate prices were a thing.
Yeah, there was some of that for a very short time. Once the 4-track
cassette decks became available, the "semi-pro" studios closed. At least
around here.
But you're right that early digital systems sounded pretty bad, and a
lot
of artists remember those days (and many of them heard better back in
those
days too). So you have a lot of the same kinds of issues that we had in
the eighties with people complaining about how bad solid state
electronics
sounded, because they remembered the solid state gear of twenty years
earlier
that sounded very bad.
There wasn't anything really wrong with solid state electronics
per se, even in the '60s. There was some bad design using
transistors, but there
was also some excellent gear. What I think musicians had a
problem with
is that solid state didn't mask artifacts such as the odd harmonics
that
were a part of the overdrive they liked.
That came later. For a span of time, you couldn't give an old Fender
tube amp away. Lotta Peavey Bandits and Lab Series amps then.
I was mainly referring to pre-Peavey days... Magnetone, Silvertone,
Supro, et al. The Fenders of the day were mostly going for a "clean"
sound by comparison.
But, that was easily dealt
with, too, if one knew what they were dealing with.
You also had people using Acoustic Control SS amps with *horns*
for electric guitar. WTF? Major icepick.
I think they were trying to out-ring the Vox Super Beatles.
--
best regards,
Neil
|