daniilzh's Journal

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Cool! I love talking about vintage recording practices! I didn’t realize there was much interest in it around here. I’m sure Fretshop must have some good advice from his years of experience…seems like he co-owns a studio now.

For the last couple of years I’ve been studying everything I can find on vintage recording practices from the 50’s and 60’s. My experience in the studio has been limited to self produced demo recordings with my bands in the past. I’m no expert but I have learned a lot over the past few years. I wish someone would write a book called “Recording Techniques of the 1950’s and 1960’s” and get into each major studio from that era in the USA with all the details of how the engineers and producers worked with the equipment on hand to do their thing. I'll try to share what I know (with lots more to learn of course), maybe it'll be of some help to someone.

- There are self produced/engineered recordings, and there are professionally produced/engineered recordings. Self produced means you go into a studio alone or with a mildly experienced ‘engineer’ and experiment with 101 different scenarios using all the equipment on hand. Professionally produced or engineered means you go hunt down a studio, producer, or engineer (or all three in one!) that has a body of work that indicates they can produce a predictable repeatable result every time. They do it in their own studio, or are experienced enough to go to an unfamiliar studio and get ‘their sound’. The obvious advantage to the professional scenario is that you, the artist, find people you can communicate with and understand what you want so that you just show up in the studio and worry about your best performance. Instead of hassling with where the drums sound best in the room, which mics to use, how much compression to use, etc. etc. But then it can be a lot of fun to fool around with stuff and possibly stumble across something great on your own, especially if its not costing you studio time to experiment.

- Its *almost* impossible to make blanket statements about which "vintage" recording techniques that you should use. There are just so many variables. The one thing you can say is that *almost* all of the stuff we adore was done using room micing techniques and analog/tube equipment. But just because you use condenser mics in the room to do a recording doesn’t mean you’re going to get something that sounds like it was cut in 1955. The only guarantee is that you’ll get a room sound out of the recording...hopefully. :-)

- That introduces another huge variable: the room. They all sound different. There a big rooms, small rooms, medium sized rooms, square rooms, rectangular rooms, high ceilings, low ceilings, hardwood floors, carpeted floors, brick walls, wood walls, curtained walls, etc, etc. Some rooms are magical sounding, some aren’t. Some are magical sounding on tape only when the drums are over here in this exact spot and the bass is over there. It goes on and on. Gold Star Studio in LA where Phil Spector recorded a lot of his ‘wall of sound’ and pre 'wall of sound' stuff apparently had the drum kit bolted to the floor at one point. They had found the sweet spot and weren’t going to lose it! But not everything that was recorded at Gold Star sounded like Phil Spector’s work. That’s another whole volume of information…how Spector and his favorite engineer got ‘their sound’. There are some generalities though. A “lively” 300 square foot room is going to have a certain sound, generally speaking. And a “liveley” 500 or 1000 square foot room is also going to have a general sound that you can assume. But its still tough to generalize about these things.

- Then there’s the equipment. A Neumann mic in studio X isn’t necessarily going to sound the same in studio Y. Still too many variables…room, mic cables, mic preamps, recording console, etc, etc. Not to mention the ability of the user to operate the equipment and get the sound that you want. Spector's engineer said a guy from a studio in Chicago came up to him once during his and Spector's heyday and said he thought they got their sound by sending the recording signals up into the red. He said he tried it and it didn't work. Spector's engineer went on to explaing the magic of the room and the arrangment of the people and mics in the room.

- The big one is, of course, the band/musicians involved and the performance. Songs are critical too. Killer recordings with weak songs don’t always add up to something you want to hear over and over again. A perfect example is the Fort Horton sound. Listen to Hashbrown’s, Junior Watson’s, Nick Curran’s, and Kim Lenz’s records that were all recorded there. The recordings are all pretty much the same as far as the engeering, depth and space of the recording. But what’s different is the quality of the songs and the performance of the ‘artist’ who’s featured. All these albums by these four artists are truly outstanding. But what makes one stand out above another is the vocal performance, songwriting, and the personality of the artist that shines through; those magical gifts. Nick Curran’s records have that extra bit of something that just make them sound more ‘vintage’ than the others and its all in his voice. There’s no gimmick or effect on it, its just the way it comes out. Everything else is pretty much the same with those recordings. Another great example is one the albums that Jetlag plays on by Kurt Crandall (hopefully you guys have bought it!). It has some absolutely beautiful playing on it by Jetlag and the rest of the band, including Kurt who’s quite a harp master. The production definitely strikes you as ‘old school’ in that it has a really natural room sound, and has a real full, warm tape sound. It doesn’t necessarily sound like a recording that would date to 1955, but it has a great vintage vibe because of the recording technique and the way the music is coming out of the musicians. But what I hear the most when I listen to that disc is Kurt’s huge vocal presence and strong songwriting. The killer songs and his charisma just take over the performance. Remarkable!

I could ramble on and on. Recording your music is like getting a painter to paint a portrait of your band. You get that painters style and vision of your band that day using his favorite brushes and paints. Then go find another painter to do a portrait next week and you get something different. Hooking up with a painter who either doesn’t have an identifiable style of his own or who has a style that you have never seen means that you may spend a lot of time getting a portrait of your band that you’ll never be happy with.

There are tons of great recordings out there done using all sorts of vintage gear and techniques like room miking. But I’ve heard very, very few modern recordings that come close to a final product that has a true vintage sound. I just don’t think it can be done anymore. That certain warm, but dry and thin sound of vintage recordings seems lost forever. You can get close with digital gear. I figure it must be in the mastering…there just aren’t any mastering studios around like that anymore. Or it must be in the formulation of the tape itself. Most attempts at vintage style recordings nowadays wind up as absolutely incredible live studio performances with a killer warm, full sound. But it still sounds like a modern recording, or at least something from the 70’s. Not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, but still not 50’s style. I was listening to Rusty Zinn’s “Sitting and Waiting” disc today. What a killer recording! That cover of Howling Wolf’s “Moaning’ at Midnight” is sooo good. I mean its got everything, the guitar is right, the harp, drums, bass and vocals are right. The depth and space in the recording is right. Its awesome. But it still sounds like it was recorded in the last 10 to 20 years.

So unfortunately giving out ‘advice’ on how to get ‘the sound’ is pretty hard to do, in my opinion. Too many variables. The best bet is to either get hooked up with a studio, an engineer, or a producer who you can communicate with and who understands the goal and let them worry about all the mechanical details of getting the sound on tape (or hard disk!). Then you can just worry about getting a great performance and how much its costing you per hour to do it all !!!! Or, get hooked up with a studio and engineer who will let you experiment with the gear, in no particular hurry, to find the sound you want with no charge for studio time.

As for analog vs. digital, based on the massive amount of information I’ve studied and music I’ve listened to, my opinion is that it still doesn’t matter. An analog recording can sound just as dull and lifeless or slick and overproduced as a digital recording. It all depends on the knowledge and skill of the guys getting it down on tape or hard disc, and most importantly, the performance!! My personal experience with recording both ways is that digital recordings generally have the tendency to more easily reproduce the actual sound of what is being recorded without adding any coloration. You can really get that ‘right there in the room’ sound recorded without a lot of stress. Whereas with analog recordings you can tend to get a lot more coloration from all the pieces and parts. And its that coloration that were all in love with. The power of Ronnie Earl’s “Guitar Virtuoso Live in Europe” is the magical performance and the recording that sounds like you are right there in the room with the band.

My goal is to one day build a replica of the Sun recording studio in my backyard and get into recording full time. My wife isn’t aware of the plane yet though. I’ll just start building one day and then once it’s all finished, make a grand announcement. That should work…right?

If any of you are really interested in this kind of thing, there is a great magazine out called “Tape-op”. It’s a free subscription and it entirely done by recording engineers and producers around the country. Killer stuff. Tons of information. You can register for it on www.tapeop.com (I believe), and your first issue will probably arrive about 2 months later. The last issue had a large article about getting space and depth in recordings. About 25 different engineers and producers offered their own insight into how they accomplish this in a recording; all different and interesting. This kind of a magazine really gives you insight into how music recording is really an art…maybe even a dying one! :-(

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