Getting a raw, nasty '70s funk sound in the box

[js1]

Originally Posted by u b k

I have about 30 cuts in my vinyl arsenal that imo qualify as raw and nasty... none of them are from Sly or James

Could you name a few? Easier to understand with a point of reference.

js

[Dean Roddey]

If "I Wanna Take You Higher" isn't considered raw and nasty funk, I don't know what would be.

[Dean Roddey]

And one of my all time funk favorites, which is pretty raw and nasty as well, in a different sort of way:

YouTube - OH BABY LOVE - Mothers Finest

[initialsBB]

Originally Posted by u b k

Inasmuch as you would like to dictate that this discussion is about mixing and sound, at the heart it is about, in your words, "raw, nasty 70's funk".

Admittedly it was a poor choice of thread title. Particularly considering that so few here seem to read past the thread title. But I'm interested primarily in a raw and nasty sound. The same kind of thing you hear out of 60s garage bands, or Blue Cheer, or stuff like that.

Originally Posted by u b k

I have about 30 cuts in my vinyl arsenal that imo qualify as raw and nasty... none of them are from Sly or James, none of them sound remotely like the Poets of Rhythm or the Daptones.

And Funkadelic doesn't qualify (to satisfy)? Can you list some of the tunes that you're thinking of?

[initialsBB]

Originally Posted by Vum

to me this is more like Krautrock than Funk

LOL, this is about the biggest compliment you could have given me.

[initialsBB]

Originally Posted by Steab

Here's my raw mix on your song!...
That was fun! Too bad the vocals werent included.

Cool, thanks for that! I liked it. Don't know how I forgot the vocals. Here they are.

And here's a quick new mix I did in logic using logic's amp sims and better organ sounds...

[Vum]

LOL, this is about the biggest compliment you could have given me.

Awesome.

[u b k]

Originally Posted by initialsBB

Can you list some of the tunes that you're thinking of?

Originally Posted by js1

Could you name a few? Easier to understand with a point of reference.

Of course!


There's a Wrinkle in Our Time (1984) so friggin nasty!

Sticky Boom Boom (USA) possibly my all time favorite nasty 45. I wore it out completely and had to buy the mp3 on itunes. I'm considering dirtying up the mp3 and pressing it to vinyl, I miss it that much.

Ghetto Funk (QCSB) hard & dirty!


Something that qualifies as nasty to me, but isn't raw, is I Don't Want to Love You (Betty Davis). It's actually quite smooth productionwise, one of the few examples I know of where the more polished studio techniques of the 70's were applied to hard funk. But the groove is still nasty, pure sweaty sex.

Parliament and Funkadelic don't feel nasty to me, not in the sense that I understand it. They're more party, more freakout. Although now that I think about it, Mommy What's a Funkadelic is a bit on the nasty tip.


Gregory Scott - ubk

[Vum]

+1 for "There's a Wrinkle in our Time" by 1984 and "Sticky Boom Boom".

I also dig "Cruise" by Crunch, "Boodhi Shakes Money" by Jade, "Daybreak" by Sam and the Sparks, and "Eye in the Sky" by Allan Parsons...

[initialsBB]

Originally Posted by u b k

Parliament and Funkadelic don't feel nasty to me, not in the sense that I understand it. They're more party, more freakout.

Thanks for the recommendations. As for nasty, I guess it's all relative and there's a pretty wide range of what could be considered sonically nasty relative to most contemporary records. With Funkadelic I was specifically thinking of the shrill guitar sounds, big ridiculous reverb, etc. Free Your Mind & yr ass will follow...

[excLOUsiv]

Originally Posted by initialsBB

Inspired by recent threads about Daptone, vintage breaks, etc. I thought it would be fun to try to get that sort of a sound in the box. I would also love to hear what other people have done in a similar vein. Doesn't have to be funky, but, just the general idea of trying to get an old sound ITB.

I tried to restrict myself as much as possible. All plugins are built-in Ableton Live effects, except for the drums which are Custom & Vintage, and the reverb which is a couple of free impulses run through a free convolution plug. Organ is a cheesy FM patch from Live's Operator plug. Guitars and bass were all recorded direct into MH 2882. Percussion & vox used a 635a or mk012 straight into the 2882.

I mixed it on phones and was having a lot of trouble with the midrange as usual, but let me know what you think, what can be improved, how to make it sound more authentic, etc.

That drum intro is pretty dope. I put a laid back jazzy sample over those drums. It turned out pretty nice.

As far as feedback, I noticed when the music gets a little more heavy and intense it starts to get distorted and the dynamics are pretty much gone.

It's actually at those points where I find it sounds like an old record.

The comment about using mono drums panned sounds like it would make it closer to giving a more authentic feel.

Good work though. It's stuff like this that inspires Hip Hop dudes like myself.

[frenkonio]

Originally Posted by initialsBB

The built-in Ableton saturator plugin

I always said native saturation from Ableton Live 8 is really fantastic

[frenkonio]

Originally Posted by u b k

Something that qualifies as nasty to me, but isn't raw, is I Don't Want to Love You (Betty Davis)

You mean "Anti Love Song" by Betty Davis?

[frenkonio]

Originally Posted by excLOUsiv

It's stuff like this that inspires Hip Hop dudes like myself.

And the stuff you posted is dope man. Really dope

[excLOUsiv]

Originally Posted by frankreverbo

And the stuff you posted is dope man. Really dope

Thanks, man! I appreciate it. I hope the OP sees it as a compliment.

[rjacobsen]

Great thread gearslutz, like the audio clips that were posted, fun stuff. Got to love Funk!

rjacobsen

[OldSkool]

OK, how in the nastifying hell did I miss this thread yesterday? Guess I was too busy bitching about what's wrong with modern music.

Living and breathing funk from 1976 to today, from the filthiest, nastiest, grungiest to the slickest production-values-wise, I have to say first off that IMO the OP has achieved goodness in the realms of both funkiness and nastiness. Well done. My personal tool of choice for all kinds of grunge is this: otiumFX :: Sonitex STX-1260 VST. I just can't find anything wrong about it; every parameter can be turned on or off, so if you don't want things like vinyl noise or tape hiss you don't have to have them. But the things it does saturation-wise are damned tasty. Has a focusing EQ like Softube's built in, all kinds of other goodies. Will have to grab that URS Saturation one of these days.

As someone here said, I don't think groove is a matter of race per se. Obviously if a person grows up in a certain culture they're going to have a groove advantage. I vividly remember David Byrne's film about Salvador de Bahia in Brazil, with little kids banging out polyrhythms on discarded plastic bottles and tin cans - race doesn't signify, groove doesn't reside in your genes, and in any case we're all descended from Africans anyway.

Groove, feel, an overall funky attitude can be learned, as many white guys have proved. The horn players in Tower were white too, don't forget, not just Garibaldi.

Now, there is definitely a huge difference between the wild-ass psychedelia of Funkadelic and the earlier stuff Gabe Roth is referring to and prefers to record. You don't hear a lot of guitar effects, the distortion seems to result from balls-out playing and funky (as in odd, weird, maybe not very high quality) recording equipment and environments. Not saying I know this for a fact, but it sounds like it. I think anyone interested in this period should run, not walk, to amazon or wherever they get their stuff, and buy all 4 of the disks in this series: Dusty Groove America - Various: Texas Funk -- Hard Texas Funk 1968 to 1975 (US version) - Texas, Florida, Midwest, and Carolina. When it comes to hard funk, this is undisputably the $hit. There's a whole education in funkiness in these disks.

Anyway done blatting on my favorite topic for now - again, I think the OP did a damn fine job, especially for a guy who is not funk-obsessed.

[frenkonio]

Originally Posted by excLOUsiv

Thanks, man! I appreciate it. I hope the OP sees it as a compliment.

OP has nothing to worry bout that cause he did a wonderful track too 

[dubrichie]

if you don't know them already, get checking out the re-releases by Numero and Finders Keepers records.

some seriously bad ass stuff to be found.

[Joelee]

Originally Posted by u b k

For the same reason I bring up anything in any discussion: because I believe it to be a) relevant, and b) appropriate.

I recognize that positing the existence of differences in abilities or skills that can be tracked along racial lines will make a lot of people uncomfortable, just as I recognize that same discomfort will emerge when I say that men and women are also different, and middle class teenage suburbanites are different than rich elderly aristocrats.

I have no idea how much of 'what I see' is down to culture vs. environment vs. genetics vs. expectations vs. socialization. It doesn't matter to me insofar as none of it negates the differences, it merely creates stories to accompany them.

But as much as I see some differences, I see more similarities. I see love and sadness and all the commonalities of the human condition, I see grace and I see miracles and I see greed and sickness.

Inasmuch as you would like to dictate that this discussion is about mixing and sound, at the heart it is about, in your words, "raw, nasty 70's funk". That's not just any old funk, that's a very particular breed of funk. I have about 30 cuts in my vinyl arsenal that imo qualify as raw and nasty... none of them are from Sly or James, none of them sound remotely like the Poets of Rhythm or the Daptones. To that end, one of the common factors among the music that I hear as raw and nasty is that the groups all existed in the early to mid 70's and they were always of the same race or culture or skin tone or whatever descriptive sits easiest with you.

Why that is, I have no idea. *That* it is, I have no doubt. I'm not a believer in coincidence, not when it is so overwhelmingly and uniformly stacked in one particular direction, and when even the occasional exception themselves come up short in generating the unmistakable timbre of 'nasty'.

This is all just one man's opinion, please don't confuse my conviction for arrogance or anything else. I could be wrong, but I have a generous stack of 45's here and the trend is, to me, blinding in its obviousness.


Gregory Scott - ubk

If it looks like a duck ("raw, nasty 70s funk sound") and talks like a duck("raw, nasty 70s funk sound") it must be a duck. Regardless of race creed or color. Just my opinion.

[GSF]

You need a Rooster..!

[Mr.HOLMES]

So here is what I did to these files in a fast session in my spare time.
I had no time to tweak the mix more
I wanted it but time is rare at this moment.

I replaced the guitars and tracked myself guitars.
I muted some stuff....

Gear I used:

UAD Helios Channel strip.

Hardware Tube saturation.
HW Tape Recorder.
Transformer balanced mix bus.

Mainly no compression and if only 2 db for some color.
No mix bus compression I drove the carnhills on the mixbus hard... very hard.

I do not care if this sounds 70s alike I just mixed it to my taste.
Hope it gets some love.

LINK TO WAV:
https://www.yousendit.com/transfer.p...b9e69b41a438a7

[biggator6]

I like it!!

[OldSkool]

Just revisted these tunes on a much better audio system, and I wanted to say again - GOD DAMN, what a nice tune - totally early Funkadelic. And all the remixes are superb in different ways as well. That's the sound I am shooting for myself, so big thanks to everyone who participated, for a really good and entertaining learning experience.

[waxx]

the drums are not right, it's like they are close miced and to much panned in the mix, while most drum sounds on those old 45's are more like recorded with 1 till 3 mics in a mediocore room (much more room sound) in mono. But the rest sounds like an 70's low fi funk recording.

the mix (the first one, i can't download the other ones) could be better altough; the guitars take to much place, and compression is to aggressive i find. tape does more work like a soft knee vari mu with distortion when driven hard, this sounds like a pumping compressor on the master.

just my 2 cents

[claend]

Originally Posted by Mr.HOLMES

So here is what I did to these files in a fast session in my spare time.
I had no time to tweak the mix more
I wanted it but time is rare at this moment.

I replaced the guitars and tracked myself guitars.
I muted some stuff....

Gear I used:

UAD Helios Channel strip.

Hardware Tube saturation.
HW Tape Recorder.
Transformer balanced mix bus.

Mainly no compression and if only 2 db for some color.
No mix bus compression I drove the carnhills on the mixbus hard... very hard.

I do not care if this sounds 70s alike I just mixed it to my taste.
Hope it gets some love.

LINK TO WAV:
https://www.yousendit.com/transfer.p...b9e69b41a438a7

The file has expired?? Wanna listen...

[shape shifter]

I think it's too bad this thread didn't keep going, I think the topic of getting drumsounds from specific musical styles and periods - in this case 70s Funk (however different these sounds can obviously be)- with software drums is really interesting.

To kick things of again, I did drumtrack with a bassline yesterday with the new Abbey Roads 70s Drums. It's not that nasty, but I am trying to make it sound "old".
(Disclaimer: I am not a drummer, so the playing is "rough" too .)
I would love to hear some other examples and sharing some ideas/mixing strategies with anyone interested (like initalsBB for example) in trying to achieve different specific sounds especially from the 60s and 70s.

[Broken_English]

YouTube - Celestial Blues - Andy Bey

[cyjanopan]

I would like to try to mix this song but link has expired

[jdier]

Well done. Wish that was a flute in there!

Originally Posted by initialsBB

Inspired by recent threads about Daptone, vintage breaks, etc. I thought it would be fun to try to get that sort of a sound in the box. I would also love to hear what other people have done in a similar vein. Doesn't have to be funky, but, just the general idea of trying to get an old sound ITB.

I tried to restrict myself as much as possible. All plugins are built-in Ableton Live effects, except for the drums which are Custom & Vintage, and the reverb which is a couple of free impulses run through a free convolution plug. Organ is a cheesy FM patch from Live's Operator plug. Guitars and bass were all recorded direct into MH 2882. Percussion & vox used a 635a or mk012 straight into the 2882.

I mixed it on phones and was having a lot of trouble with the midrange as usual, but let me know what you think, what can be improved, how to make it sound more authentic, etc.