60's recording questions

6777 · 30th July 2006, 06:56 AM

1. So, when they did reduction mixes back in the day, why did they transfer everything to another machine?

a. because the multitrack recorders of the day were incapable of bouncing on the same tape

b. to get the extra track

c. for reasons of fidelity

d. some combination of the above reasons

2. I've been told that recordings were speeded up sometimes during the final mix to improve the sound of the vocals. If this is true, how common was this practice?

3. Can anyone explain the purpose/process of recording "hot?"

Kiwiburger · 30th July 2006, 07:49 AM

http://recordingthebeatles.com/index.htm should be interesting ... can't wait.

From what I understand - the reason to bounce from one four track machine to another is so that you never throw away your original recording - plus you end up with more tracks that way. That means you have more options should you want to try another mix at some stage.
In theory there is no difference in quality recording to a track on the same, or a different machine. Unless the second machine is higher quality, of course.

The Beatles varispeeded stuff all over the place. It was a George Martin trick from way back. George Martin recorded the Goon Show before he did the Beatles - so he was into comedy, and tape speed tricks for effect. He used these ideas on the Beatles - to turn pianos into harpsichords, or to extend the range of their voices, or sometimes to alter the sound of a complete mix.

I'm waiting on the new book to shed some light on things, but you can use your ears and figure a lot out for yourself. I sometimes listen to Beatles stuff using Mid/Side tricks to isolate parts of the mix, because a lot of stuff was hard panned left or right or centre, so you can zero in on some stuff they did. If you suspect that varispeed was used, you can use pitchshifting in your DAW (with formants and time stretching turn OFF) to listen to the original recording at the original pitch. It's interesting to listen to George Martin playing stuff at original pitch - like the piano solo in Hard Days Night, or the baroque part in In My Life.

I'm fairly sure Yellow Submarine was recording in G but slowed down to F# for the final master. Probably. But the Beatles also detuned their guitars, and/or used kapos, as well as varispeed - so anything goes.

GM often talks about splicing two parts of Strawberry Fields together. He had to ramp up the pitch of the first part over the course of the song, to match the tempo and key of the second part. So if you try to play along, the tuning is constantly increasing. Just another part of the magic.

The idea of recording too hot is simply for the saturation effect (distortion/limiting). Prior to the Rock era, engineers tried to avoid distortion - not always successfully, but basically they tried. But when people found out that distortion could sound really cool, people like the Beatles started abusing the equipment to get distortion. Then people started making fuzz boxes which could do the same thing without abusing the desk. But there isn't a lot of difference between fuzz boxes and simply abusing the desk preamps - they are just one gain stage saturating the next gain stage. Whatever works - there are many flavours of distortion, because subtle differences in components and biasing etc can make for different types of distortion.

You can even distort analog tape, transformers, compressors, eq's, loud speakers - literally anything can be distorted by accident or for effect.

audiothings · 30th July 2006, 08:15 PM

6777

welcome to gearslutz.

kiwiburger has given an excellent answer to your questions. Only thing that i would like to add is that another advantage of recording hot to tape, is to keep the level of tape hiss during playback as low as possible, for if the recording level is much lower than "hot", the listener will turn up his speakers, thereby increasing the level of hiss from the tape (and also the noise from the electronics in his(s) playback system).

please also visit the recording 101 forum over at marsh at prosoundweb, which is ideal for questions like these.

regards,

Bob Olhsson · 30th July 2006, 08:42 PM

The first overdubbing was done by mixing the output of a mono tape or disk with a live mike onto a second machine.

We always had a second machine available because of the need to make safety copies. We needed to make safety copies because it wasn't uncommon for a tape to represent many thousands of dollars worth of musicians' pay and studio charges.

Track bouncing didn't become very common in pro studios until 16 track machines were introduced.

macle · 30th July 2006, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiwiburger

Prior to the Rock era, engineers tried to avoid distortion - not always successfully, but basically they tried. But when people found out that distortion could sound really cool, people like the Beatles started abusing the equipment to get distortion.

I would think that distortion started long before the Beatles and the rock era. Early blues and stuff like that.

GoJiRa 3000 · 30th July 2006, 09:31 PM

hmm while we`re at it..something ive always been wondering about is how they used to record drums back in those days 60-70s.. i mean in both rock and espescialy funk the drums sounds much more meaty and ballsy. It has attitude..and then im wondering why this type of sound dosnt come back since the hole breakbeat, hiphop, dnb genre made these breaks so popular..wouldnt it be cool to get this kind of sound back into music..or have i just been listening to the wrong records...if any of u guys know a particular record made that has this vibe and made recently please post it!

one record for me is Money Marks Keyboard Repair (out on Mo´wax) it just oozes warmth and 70s vibe all over. Must have listened to that album a zillion times

Drumsound · 30th July 2006, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoJiRa 3000

if any of u guys know a particular record made that has this vibe and made recently please post it!

I've done three records with Backyard Tire Fire and we have a definite vintage rock thing happening. 15ips 2" performance based records. Check out "Trying to get Paid" on the Music/video page.

Bob Olhsson · 30th July 2006, 11:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoJiRa 3000

h...something ive always been wondering about is how they used to record drums back in those days 60-70s.. i mean in both rock and espescialy funk the drums sounds much more meaty and ballsy...

A lot of it is that drums were played a lot softer and carefully damped so that sympathetic resonance wouldn't dilute the definition of each drum.

kjcoral · 31st July 2006, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

A lot of it is that drums were played a lot softer and carefully damped so that sympathetic resonance wouldn't dilute the definition of each drum.

man, ain't that the truth! i was not around in the 60's but i have tried to emulate those sounds and was really unable to get it until i did some damping and got a drummer who played softly!! it was revelation, believe me...of course, considering every drummer these days would rather be bohnam or moon than earl palmer makes my life a lot harder!

wwittman · 31st July 2006, 04:01 AM

also, machines of that day especially, had trouble with bouncing adjacent tracks...

so you really could NOT bounce from track 3 onto track 4 at any reaosnable level or it would feedback right at the record/sync head.

that meant that effectively you could only do TWO tracks ont he 4 track that could be bounced to track 4... by bouncing to another machine you could fill all 4 tracks and then reduce them to one on the other machine.

but we DEFINITELY bounced on the 8 track all the time... it's why we were happy to get 16 track.
and it was because people would add stuff... not because we spread things out on multiple tracks.
that didn't really start to happen until after 24 track was around.

thenoodle · 31st July 2006, 04:31 AM

I did bounces between twin 4 track machines back in the beginning of my recording days at the end of the 60's.

I recorded machine to machine rather than mix to trk #4 of machine #1 for three reasons..

one, it was a better creative flow to fill four tracks and then bounce to one track of the second machine. Especially during those first four passes when starting a new song. Having four tracks to start on was massively better than 3 (if bounces had been done to the fourth track on machine #1. For people who didn't start out back then, it's hard to describe how big a deal it was to gain even one extra track to record on.

Two...I could record live during the bounce to the second machine...sort of picking up an extra track during the submix.

Three...there were times when I made really bad submix decisions and had to go back a reel and do the submix to the second machine again....of course then the three tracks I might have just overdubbed on machine #2 (along with the badly submixed tracks) were now ...scrapped. Had to start again after the fresh submix. Having the second machine made it at least easier to back up a step.

Gawd...I do not miss those days one single bit. I don't even miss the sound of that stuff now. Whatever the cool nostalgia for "that" sound and "those" ways of recording, the fact of the matter is that at the time...the procedures were constant frustrations....bounces always screwed up the sound compared to what you...the artist...were trying to get. The end results were always compromises. It was just a drag in so many ways. A lot of people would like to get back to those days but I don't know ANYONE who was there at the time who has ever wanted to go back to that way of recording.

Bob Olhsson · 31st July 2006, 04:54 AM

Interesting. In Detroit it was almost always 8 to 8.

Of course we had early machines that didn't have much top-end in sync.

MJGreene Audio · 31st July 2006, 05:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thenoodle

I did bounces between twin 4 track machines back in the beginning of my recording days at the end of the 60's.

I recorded machine to machine rather than mix to trk #4 of machine #1 for three reasons..

one, it was a better creative flow to fill four tracks and then bounce to one track of the second machine. Especially during those first four passes when starting a new song. Having four tracks to start on was massively better than 3 (if bounces had been done to the fourth track on machine #1. For people who didn't start out back then, it's hard to describe how big a deal it was to gain even one extra track to record on.

Two...I could record live during the bounce to the second machine...sort of picking up an extra track during the submix.

Three...there were times when I made really bad submix decisions and had to go back a reel and do the submix to the second machine again....of course then the three tracks I might have just overdubbed on machine #2 (along with the badly submixed tracks) were now ...scrapped. Had to start again after the fresh submix. Having the second machine made it at least easier to back up a step.

Gawd...I do not miss those days one single bit. I don't even miss the sound of that stuff now. Whatever the cool nostalgia for "that" sound and "those" ways of recording, the fact of the matter is that at the time...the procedures were constant frustrations....bounces always screwed up the sound compared to what you...the artist...were trying to get. The end results were always compromises. It was just a drag in so many ways. A lot of people would like to get back to those days but I don't know ANYONE who was there at the time who have ever wanted to go back to that way of recording.

I don't go that far back but I have to agree. There is so much nostalgia now for all the old stuff but when I talk to people about all the hoops they had to jump through to get a sound or to keep a sound through multiple generations it makes me glad for what we have today.

I do remember mixing without automation and people hanging all over the board making moves. I actually grew to like mixing in sections and cutting together the 2 track.

Call me crazy.

Bob Olhsson · 31st July 2006, 06:11 AM

I still mix in sections and sometimes comp mixes.

seanmw · 31st July 2006, 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

A lot of it is that drums were played a lot softer and carefully damped so that sympathetic resonance wouldn't dilute the definition of each drum.

Great points Bob and KJCoral!!!

OK. SPEAKING OF DRUM TONES,

the drummer i have been doing music with for 15 years has a 60s ludwig kit and actually knows how to tune it.

We have toiled so much to get closer to the 60s drum tones. But playing SOFT has been one of the things that has been a huge revelation and has brought us closer to the sound we want, even if we are ROCKING and when compressed a bit after the fact, it sounds so much better that playing really hard. We were stuck with Pro Tools recording our first record together, just because that is all we had.

Also, the ACTUAL drums from this era sound so different too. So many modern kits lack the tone and subtleties that a 60s kit has.

In terms of US nailing these sounds though,

Just a few weeks ago we tracked some drums straight to tape....One U47 overhead (at that perfect sweet spot between the tom, snare, bass drum and an Electro-Voice 66 6 on the bass drum. Then, through a langevin based 1965 tube board to a Ampex 351 at 15ips. Best we have got yet, but still narrowing it down from here.

Have a listen, this is JUST the U47 overhead, no kick mic in the mix:
http://www.izabelle.net/drumtest_01.wav

The saga continues...

LATER!
-Sean

kjcoral · 31st July 2006, 08:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seanmw

Great points Bob and KJCoral!!!

OK. SPEAKING OF DRUM TONES,

the drummer i have been doing music with for 15 years has a 60s ludwig kit and actually knows how to tune it.

We have toiled so much to get closer to the 60s drum tones. But playing SOFT has been one of the things that has been a huge revelation and has brought us closer to the sound we want, even if we are ROCKING and when compressed a bit after the fact, it sounds so much better that playing really hard. We were stuck with Pro Tools recording our first record together, just because that is all we had.

Also, the ACTUAL drums from this era sound so different too. So many modern kits lack the tone and subtleties that a 60s kit has.

In terms of US nailing these sounds though,

Just a few weeks ago we tracked some drums straight to tape....One U47 overhead (at that perfect sweet spot between the tom, snare, bass drum and an Electro-Voice 66 6 on the bass drum. Then, through a langevin based 1965 tube board to a Ampex 351 at 15ips. Best we have got yet, but still narrowing it down from here.

Have a listen, this is JUST the U47 overhead, no kick mic in the mix:
http://www.izabelle.net/drumtest_01.wav

The saga continues...

LATER!
-Sean

well, sean, you've got the right equipment happening and getting a player with some finesse is great too and a mono overhead is also a key, i think, but i would say from listening to your example to maybe tune down and dampen the snare a bit if you want that more "60's tone," IMHO...

i agree with you about vintage drums as well...

btw, try the 666 as an overhead sometime, you might be surprised...

seanmw · 31st July 2006, 08:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kjcoral

well, sean, you've got the right equipment happening and getting a player with some finesse is great too and a mono overhead is also a key, i think, but i would say from listening to your example to maybe tune down and dampen the snare a bit if you want that more "60's tone," IMHO...

i agree with you about vintage drums as well...

btw, try the 666 as an overhead sometime, you might be surprised...

Cool...thanks for the tips. Yeah, dampening the snare a bit. Don't want it DEAD but not so "ringy" ideas? Its a early 60s, pre-serial # ludwig supraphonic snare.

An EV666 as overhead huh? Look forward to trying it. Also, just got an RCA varacoustic which I lookforward to trying on drums as well.
http://airborneaudio.com/files/mics/rca-varicoustic.jpg

AND...looking for some wicked rooms to record in as well. Lets not forget, that is a huge part of the sound too. The room we tracked the sample above in, was not bad, but nothing specail.

A little plate-esque or echo chamber reverb seems to be part of the sound too....
Hear WITHOUT reverb:
http://www.izabelle.net/drumtest_01.wav
Hear WITH reverb:
http://www.izabelle.net/drumtest_01_rev.wav

And, a photo from the said session, so you can see the kit/mic.
http://www.izabelle.net/craig_u47.jpg (not using the altec m11's in the photo in the MIX)

LATER!
-Sean

kjcoral · 31st July 2006, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seanmw

Cool...thanks for the tips. Yeah, dampening the snare a bit. Don't want it DEAD but not so "ringy" ideas? Its a early 60s, pre-serial # ludwig supraphonic snare.

An EV666 as overhead huh? Look forward to trying it. Also, just got an RCA varacoustic which I lookforward to trying on drums as well.
http://airborneaudio.com/files/mics/rca-varicoustic.jpg

AND...looking for some wicked rooms to record in as well. Lets not forget, that is a huge part of the sound too. The room we tracked the sample above in, was not bad, but nothing specail.

A little plate-esque or echo chamber reverb seems to be part of the sound too....
Hear WITHOUT reverb:
http://www.izabelle.net/drumtest_01.wav
Hear WITH reverb:
http://www.izabelle.net/drumtest_01_rev.wav

And, a photo from the said session, so you can see the kit/mic.
http://www.izabelle.net/craig_u47.jpg (not using the altec m11's in the photo in the MIX)

LATER!
-Sean

yeah, i know the 666 sounds crazy but give it a try or you can try another thing i've done which is have the 47 for your OH and then have the 666 down in the middle of the kit at about eye-level w/the drummer...

and yeah, try the rca. i found the greatest floor tom sound i ever got ( for some songs/projects, i will mic the toms) was with a RCA 74! i had to gate it a bit but man, so full and round...

looking at your pic, i would just say that i use a U87 a lot for OH and i have it higher than you do in your pic. just food for thought...

yeah, a little plate is almost *always* nice. and just work with your drummer on tuning the snare a bit lower or maybe trying a deeper snare, ala hal blaine.
and damping the snare with some felt or the ringo "tea towel" method can really help and don't be afraid to try some nice vintage compresssion on the drumkit.

but you're on the right track, IMHO. you've done the research about the set-ups and playing techniques, so now experiment a little...oh, and hit the tape deck hard! +4 or +6 on a well-set up and aligned machine will make your drums sound so nice...

seanmw · 31st July 2006, 09:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kjcoral

yeah, i know the 666 sounds crazy but give it a try or you can try another thing i've done which is have the 47 for your OH and then have the 666 down in the middle of the kit at about eye-level w/the drummer...

and yeah, try the rca. i found the greatest floor tom sound i ever got ( for some songs/projects, i will mic the toms) was with a RCA 74! i had to gate it a bit but man, so full and round...

looking at your pic, i would just say that i use a U87 a lot for OH and i have it higher than you do in your pic. just food for thought...

yeah, a little plate is almost *always* nice. and just work with your drummer on tuning the snare a bit lower or maybe trying a deeper snare, ala hal blaine.
and damping the snare with some felt or the ringo "tea towel" method can really help and don't be afraid to try some nice vintage compresssion on the drumkit.

but you're on the right track, IMHO. you've done the research about the set-ups and playing techniques, so now experiment a little...oh, and hit the tape deck hard! +4 or +6 on a well-set up and aligned machine will make your drums sound so nice...

Cool....thanks for the tips....

seaneldon · 31st July 2006, 10:00 PM

the best 1960's recording:

WildCowboys · 1st August 2006, 10:15 AM

I was always a sucker for 60ies and 70ies drumsound...did a lot of research and had great results with a mono FOK mic, similar in placement to the photo but about a foot further away from the drummer and slightly lower. excellent spot for any kind of drumsound, when I go vontage then I take a SoundeluxU99 and set it to omni. incredible. almost all you need for 60ies sound, though it´s nice to have a kickmic there as well. add some spotmics for 70ies sound to get it more into your face. when I go for a more modern sound I place a VM1 in omni in the same spot, sounds so perfect.

I noticed a lot of distortion on your 47 OH especially when the toms are hit...did you overdrive the tape or was that the preamp or mic? sounds very, well, old. can be good, can be bad...

anyone here heard the "string love thing" sampling CD? it is not only filled with 60ies muffled fat strings but also 60ies drums, man, those people know what they are doing, I never thought anyone can come up with THAT sound today...

rock on!
pat

O.F.F. · 1st August 2006, 04:16 PM

Couldn't agree more on the 60s &70s drum sound!
Love that slightly dull and floppy sound, especially CAN's 'Yoo Doo Right'.
What a drummer as well: They recorded directly to stereo and this 20 min tune was comped from 12 hours jam session. Put it thru a bpm counter once and it didn't vary by more then 1.5 bpm.
Some of the best drum sound I got was with 2 Shure SM58 or 57 and one cheap AT condenser in an old classroom. Spent most of the day positioning the mics which limited the drummer and bassist to one take (not a bad thing as they were recording a 13 min song) but what a sound!!! Positioning ended up looking very odd but the room was not at all symmetrical and moving the kit a bit required a completely different placement to avoid phasing. I actually had to sneak out during the take and reposition the mics cause the kit was sliding on its carpet across the polished floor.

I actually find that most of the recordings that really excite me and I never tire of listening to are of that era. My own pet theory for this is that while the quality of the equipment was getting there, there wasn't enough of it yet ie limited number of channels on the consoles, only a few tracks to record on. Limitations tend to bring out the best in people in my experience. Unfortunately there is no way back since advertising yourself as an 8 track studio would amount to commercial suicide.

The reason to record hot as fas I am aware is keeping tape hiss low and that lovely combination of tape compression (saturation) and slight distortion. Sounds just right without having to dial in a half dozen plug ins.

My mentor/teacher always said that the first rule of recording to 2" is:
"If it ain't red its dead!"

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30th July 2006, 08:15 PM	#3
audiothings Lives for gear Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Chennai, India Posts: 619	6777 welcome to gearslutz. kiwiburger has given an excellent answer to your questions. Only thing that i would like to add is that another advantage of recording hot to tape, is to keep the level of tape hiss during playback as low as possible, for if the recording level is much lower than "hot", the listener will turn up his speakers, thereby increasing the level of hiss from the tape (and also the noise from the electronics in his(s) playback system). please also visit the recording 101 forum over at marsh at prosoundweb, which is ideal for questions like these. regards, __________________ "Ultimately, I want to reach more people. That's what I've intended all my life even though it may not seem that way." - Randy Newman

31st July 2006, 04:01 AM	#10
wwittman Lives for gear Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: New York Posts: 1,598	also, machines of that day especially, had trouble with bouncing adjacent tracks... so you really could NOT bounce from track 3 onto track 4 at any reaosnable level or it would feedback right at the record/sync head. that meant that effectively you could only do TWO tracks ont he 4 track that could be bounced to track 4... by bouncing to another machine you could fill all 4 tracks and then reduce them to one on the other machine. but we DEFINITELY bounced on the 8 track all the time... it's why we were happy to get 16 track. and it was because people would add stuff... not because we spread things out on multiple tracks. that didn't really start to happen until after 24 track was around. __________________ William Wittman Producer/Engineer (Cyndi Lauper, Joan Osborne, The Fixx, The Outfield...)

31st July 2006, 04:31 AM	#11
thenoodle Lives for gear Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 535	I did bounces between twin 4 track machines back in the beginning of my recording days at the end of the 60's. I recorded machine to machine rather than mix to trk #4 of machine #1 for three reasons.. one, it was a better creative flow to fill four tracks and then bounce to one track of the second machine. Especially during those first four passes when starting a new song. Having four tracks to start on was massively better than 3 (if bounces had been done to the fourth track on machine #1. For people who didn't start out back then, it's hard to describe how big a deal it was to gain even one extra track to record on. Two...I could record live during the bounce to the second machine...sort of picking up an extra track during the submix. Three...there were times when I made really bad submix decisions and had to go back a reel and do the submix to the second machine again....of course then the three tracks I might have just overdubbed on machine #2 (along with the badly submixed tracks) were now ...scrapped. Had to start again after the fresh submix. Having the second machine made it at least easier to back up a step. Gawd...I do not miss those days one single bit. I don't even miss the sound of that stuff now. Whatever the cool nostalgia for "that" sound and "those" ways of recording, the fact of the matter is that at the time...the procedures were constant frustrations....bounces always screwed up the sound compared to what you...the artist...were trying to get. The end results were always compromises. It was just a drag in so many ways. A lot of people would like to get back to those days but I don't know ANYONE who was there at the time who has ever wanted to go back to that way of recording. __________________ *"make multitrack sound for long long time"*

31st July 2006, 04:54 AM	#12
Bob Olhsson Motown legend Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Songwriter Gulch, Nashville TN Posts: 5,246	Interesting. In Detroit it was almost always 8 to 8. Of course we had early machines that didn't have much top-end in sync. __________________ Georgetown Masters 615 254-3233 Bob's room 615 385-8051 Music Industry 2.0

30th July 2006, 06:56 AM	#1
6777 Gear Head Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 50	60's recording questions 1. So, when they did reduction mixes back in the day, why did they transfer everything to another machine? a. because the multitrack recorders of the day were incapable of bouncing on the same tape b. to get the extra track c. for reasons of fidelity d. some combination of the above reasons 2. I've been told that recordings were speeded up sometimes during the final mix to improve the sound of the vocals. If this is true, how common was this practice? 3. Can anyone explain the purpose/process of recording "hot?"

30th July 2006, 07:49 AM	#2
Kiwiburger Lives for gear Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 3,763	http://recordingthebeatles.com/index.htm should be interesting ... can't wait. From what I understand - the reason to bounce from one four track machine to another is so that you never throw away your original recording - plus you end up with more tracks that way. That means you have more options should you want to try another mix at some stage. In theory there is no difference in quality recording to a track on the same, or a different machine. Unless the second machine is higher quality, of course. The Beatles varispeeded stuff all over the place. It was a George Martin trick from way back. George Martin recorded the Goon Show before he did the Beatles - so he was into comedy, and tape speed tricks for effect. He used these ideas on the Beatles - to turn pianos into harpsichords, or to extend the range of their voices, or sometimes to alter the sound of a complete mix. I'm waiting on the new book to shed some light on things, but you can use your ears and figure a lot out for yourself. I sometimes listen to Beatles stuff using Mid/Side tricks to isolate parts of the mix, because a lot of stuff was hard panned left or right or centre, so you can zero in on some stuff they did. If you suspect that varispeed was used, you can use pitchshifting in your DAW (with formants and time stretching turn OFF) to listen to the original recording at the original pitch. It's interesting to listen to George Martin playing stuff at original pitch - like the piano solo in Hard Days Night, or the baroque part in In My Life. I'm fairly sure Yellow Submarine was recording in G but slowed down to F# for the final master. Probably. But the Beatles also detuned their guitars, and/or used kapos, as well as varispeed - so anything goes. GM often talks about splicing two parts of Strawberry Fields together. He had to ramp up the pitch of the first part over the course of the song, to match the tempo and key of the second part. So if you try to play along, the tuning is constantly increasing. Just another part of the magic. The idea of recording too hot is simply for the saturation effect (distortion/limiting). Prior to the Rock era, engineers tried to avoid distortion - not always successfully, but basically they tried. But when people found out that distortion could sound really cool, people like the Beatles started abusing the equipment to get distortion. Then people started making fuzz boxes which could do the same thing without abusing the desk. But there isn't a lot of difference between fuzz boxes and simply abusing the desk preamps - they are just one gain stage saturating the next gain stage. Whatever works - there are many flavours of distortion, because subtle differences in components and biasing etc can make for different types of distortion. You can even distort analog tape, transformers, compressors, eq's, loud speakers - literally anything can be distorted by accident or for effect.

30th July 2006, 08:42 PM	#4
Bob Olhsson Motown legend Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Songwriter Gulch, Nashville TN Posts: 5,246	The first overdubbing was done by mixing the output of a mono tape or disk with a live mike onto a second machine. We always had a second machine available because of the need to make safety copies. We needed to make safety copies because it wasn't uncommon for a tape to represent many thousands of dollars worth of musicians' pay and studio charges. Track bouncing didn't become very common in pro studios until 16 track machines were introduced. __________________ Georgetown Masters 615 254-3233 Bob's room 615 385-8051 Music Industry 2.0

30th July 2006, 09:31 PM	#6
GoJiRa 3000 Gear maniac Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 205	hmm while we`re at it..something ive always been wondering about is how they used to record drums back in those days 60-70s.. i mean in both rock and espescialy funk the drums sounds much more meaty and ballsy. It has attitude..and then im wondering why this type of sound dosnt come back since the hole breakbeat, hiphop, dnb genre made these breaks so popular..wouldnt it be cool to get this kind of sound back into music..or have i just been listening to the wrong records...if any of u guys know a particular record made that has this vibe and made recently please post it! one record for me is Money Marks Keyboard Repair (out on Mo´wax) it just oozes warmth and 70s vibe all over. Must have listened to that album a zillion times

31st July 2006, 06:11 AM	#14
Bob Olhsson Motown legend Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Songwriter Gulch, Nashville TN Posts: 5,246	I still mix in sections and sometimes comp mixes. __________________ Georgetown Masters 615 254-3233 Bob's room 615 385-8051 Music Industry 2.0

31st July 2006, 10:00 PM	#20
seaneldon Lives for gear Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Foxboro, MA Posts: 2,082	the best 1960's recording:

1st August 2006, 10:15 AM	#21
WildCowboys Lives for gear Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: VIE Posts: 1,072	I was always a sucker for 60ies and 70ies drumsound...did a lot of research and had great results with a mono FOK mic, similar in placement to the photo but about a foot further away from the drummer and slightly lower. excellent spot for any kind of drumsound, when I go vontage then I take a SoundeluxU99 and set it to omni. incredible. almost all you need for 60ies sound, though it´s nice to have a kickmic there as well. add some spotmics for 70ies sound to get it more into your face. when I go for a more modern sound I place a VM1 in omni in the same spot, sounds so perfect. I noticed a lot of distortion on your 47 OH especially when the toms are hit...did you overdrive the tape or was that the preamp or mic? sounds very, well, old. can be good, can be bad... anyone here heard the "string love thing" sampling CD? it is not only filled with 60ies muffled fat strings but also 60ies drums, man, those people know what they are doing, I never thought anyone can come up with THAT sound today... rock on! pat

1st August 2006, 04:16 PM	#22
O.F.F. Lives for gear Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 636	Couldn't agree more on the 60s &70s drum sound! Love that slightly dull and floppy sound, especially CAN's 'Yoo Doo Right'. What a drummer as well: They recorded directly to stereo and this 20 min tune was comped from 12 hours jam session. Put it thru a bpm counter once and it didn't vary by more then 1.5 bpm. Some of the best drum sound I got was with 2 Shure SM58 or 57 and one cheap AT condenser in an old classroom. Spent most of the day positioning the mics which limited the drummer and bassist to one take (not a bad thing as they were recording a 13 min song) but what a sound!!! Positioning ended up looking very odd but the room was not at all symmetrical and moving the kit a bit required a completely different placement to avoid phasing. I actually had to sneak out during the take and reposition the mics cause the kit was sliding on its carpet across the polished floor. I actually find that most of the recordings that really excite me and I never tire of listening to are of that era. My own pet theory for this is that while the quality of the equipment was getting there, there wasn't enough of it yet ie limited number of channels on the consoles, only a few tracks to record on. Limitations tend to bring out the best in people in my experience. Unfortunately there is no way back since advertising yourself as an 8 track studio would amount to commercial suicide. The reason to record hot as fas I am aware is keeping tape hiss low and that lovely combination of tape compression (saturation) and slight distortion. Sounds just right without having to dial in a half dozen plug ins. My mentor/teacher always said that the first rule of recording to 2" is: "If it ain't red its dead!"

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