Quote:
Originally Posted by u b k  Imagine if you could slather your productions with the tone and vibe of a particular 12 month period, past or present, what would it be?
I'm not even talking about how good the music was, most of us seem equally jazzed by sound as by music. I'm talking purely about the sonics that were in vogue.
What are the qualities that you find yourself admiring, or wanting?
Me, it's a tossup between 1975 and 1977, but I'm gonna go with 1977. 77 just had the fatness, the dryness, the density, and the clarity in all the right proportions.
Honorable mention to 1998, that was the last year I still heard a lot of what I would call massive but tasteful compression that wasn't totally killed by brickwalling. By 99, the limiting had pretty much taken over and crushed all the remaining transients to my ears.
Gregory Scott - ubk
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I hear some great sounds today (I don't listen to the radio, though, except NPR -- so I'll often hear about it here, another forum or blog, or, frequently, from [not necessarily but often] young friends). I mean, there's oceans of
drek, no question. But I hear some really nicely recorded stuff.
Of course, like most of us, there are a few periods that
musically mean a whole lot to me. But, perhaps ironically, a couple of the periods where I was most intimately and immediately affected by the music, the mid and late 60s psychedelic/acid rock era, and the late 70s punk/no wave era/milieu, were
not generally marked by stellar sound or production. (At least not on most of the music that moved
me. There were exceptions, of course.)
I love the
sound of some of the better pop sessions of the 50s and early 60s, your Sinatras, your Nat Coles, your Ellas. They really knew how to get a bunch of people in a studio and get a great performance out of them and onto tape. And they
really knew how to make a single vocal track seem big and immediate and detailed. (Of course, if you're working with that kind of talent, you're not going to just throw the session together and toss any old mic and compressor at the vocalist. There was no
close enough mentality at work when dealing with that kind of talent.)
Some of the very
best sounding recordings, for sheer sonic gloss and impact, to my thinking are from the mid-70s. I'm thinking specifically of some of the Nilsson stuff. Production and recording on things like "Without Her" and a number of his other, not necessarily as well known, tracks continues to knock me for a loop. But, again, where does studio gloss leave off and a great ensemble playing really stunning arrangements begin? Let's just say things
came together on some of those tracks.
Another example of a 70s stand out that's always knocked me out, sonically (and musically it was quite adventurous, as well) was the
Fearless album from the little-known-in-the-US art/prog/blues band, Family, which had folks like John Wetton, Charlie Whitney, Ric Grech, and larger than life-voiced Roger Chapman. Its really a brilliant sounding record to my way of thinking.