[Sk106]

I may be out of my depth here; I was not around back then. But I would suspect that people had a different awareness of what they were doing back then compared to now. They had a more present mindset, of here and now, and what I am actually doing and what this will lead to, specifically. It is in a way related to habituation: the longer you do it, the more you lose touch with reality, you start doing things from impulses and stop thinking about were you’re headed .. what you are actually doing compared to what you think you are doing, if you think at all in the end.

Perhaps this was due to that tracks or hardware were more scarcity then than now, and that engineer wasn’t something you got to be or do without people’s undying confidence in your ability. They had more to lose from being careless – compared to now where everybody (and their dog) does it.

In a way, I can relate to this suspicion from a few cases where younger friends wanted my criticism on their mixes and work, and they were frustrated about how bad it sounded. For an outsider, it was easier to find the questions. When listening to the details, soloing tracks .. I pointed to a number of things that really wasn’t so good. And when I did, they looked/listened and went "What the ..?? Have I done that? Why’d I do that, what was I thinking?”. It was so selfevident, yet it had eluded them completely in their work process. In hindsight, I can really look at what I actually did, as opposed to what I think I did, and it's amazing how many people's work ends up this way, and then asking themselves why they can’t cut it, or how they can improve it.

I suspect that part of the 70s thing is that it wasn’t at all as easy or leisure to deal with the technical and musical aspects of the process. People had to be more aware of what they actually did, what it actually led to, and had their mind in the smallest of details as well as the complete overview, all at the same time. You could probably go back in those mixes and not have much to complain about in hindsight. Today, you’re more likely to find young people asking for “presets” that will make their guitar parts sound more musical. And if it doesn’t work still, they can at least compress the big Jesus out of it.