Originally Posted by Samc

but what you describe is really about going after commercial success.

Originally Posted by chrisso

Neither?
I think most often it is a necessary 'evil'.
So an artist just wants to break out of the chains of traditional recording - studio time, recording engineers, budgets, record labels, A&R etc....
In my experience, 90% of DIY produced and recorded artists are doing it because it affords them the ultimate freedom to express themselves without other elements (as stated above) getting in the way.
Most artists know creative success is more about the material and the performance, so they prioritise that over trying to be the next Bob Clearmountain or Arif Mardin. There is no shame in releasing a slightly badly engineered/produced record, as long as the material is top notch and the performances resonate with the listener.
Artists KNOW THAT.

Originally Posted by chrisso

Well it's pointless me making dance music that no one wants to dance to.
There's really no money in it anyway. It's like I say - do you want to fit the norms enough to actually achieve something, or do you just want to break every rule and spend a life alone?
Miles Davis, John Bonham, Brian Wilson - they all worked outside the accepted norm. BUT they are few and far between in every generation, and those three artists worked within the rules to begin with, nailed the rules, then understood how to successfully break the rules.

Originally Posted by chrisso

Nooooo, it is not.
I've been in the industry since 1980.
Less than 10% of musicians and artists are truly visionary/unique. Many of that 10% also learned their craft by copying others.
It's absolutely ZERO about commercial success, it's about understanding norms to the extent that you actually get to play with other musicians, rather than sitting at home working on your own everyday.

Originally Posted by Samc

Every reason you have given is based on the fear of being on the outside, while trying to be on the inside is no guarantee that you will be...on the inside.

Originally Posted by Brent Hahn

At first I thought, hm, might be interesting to watch these two bang heads.

Originally Posted by chrisso

Then I remembered why I wasn't posting at Gearslutz any more.

Originally Posted by Funny Cat

You are an experienced engineer. Haven’t you ever had a session where you place the mics and the client moves them or the stands droop and you don’t catch it until after the session, yet the recording sounds phenomenal (because the players performance and the song were spectacular) despite the less than perfect placement?

Originally Posted by Samc

Come on Chris, there is a huge difference between knowing and understanding norms and doing what everybody else is doing for fear of not fitting in, or the fear of not being in with everyone else.

Every reason you have given is based on the fear of being on the outside, while trying to be on the inside is no guarantee that you will be...on the inside.

Originally Posted by chrisso

No, not at all.
It's about mastering the genre. It takes years.
The Beatles spent years playing cover songs. And even when they were 'out there' innovating, their constant touchstones were Buddy Holly and Elvis. They just couldn't help themselves but do it differently.
Take Miles Davis. He played thousands of club gigs, playing standards and soloing like many other people. Gradually he needed to break out and innovate.
The important part was the years and years both The Beatles and Miles Davis played in front of people, in an ensemble setting.
It's not about 'fear', it's about understanding that almost no one is an innovator from day one. Most people need to conform at the beginning, then they understand why they need to innovate, and what that innovation needs to be.

Originally Posted by Drumsound

Do you come here just to be a contrarian?

This is a great post. I'm so sick of people who think that starting with solid foundational skills, learning the correct way of doing things, is a bad idea.

Originally Posted by Samc

I think you REALLY misunderstood what was being discussed...I can assure you, it had nothing to do with learning "solid foundational skills".

Originally Posted by Drumsound

This is a great post. I'm so sick of people who think that starting with solid foundational skills, learning the correct way of doing things, is a bad idea.

I just rewatched Sound City. There's a great section with Trent Reznor where he talks about piano lessons, and how he doesn't not conscientiously think, This chord leads to that, but that, because of his training, it is there. He's proud of the years of study. He sees the value of knowledge of classical music, and theory, to allow him to stretch.

Originally Posted by DomiBabi

7. Following The advice you got at Guitar Center.

Originally Posted by Brent Hahn

I wonder how often these no-fi records are the result of deliberately trying to make a no-fi record, versus making a throwaway work tape that somehow manages to not entirely suck?

Originally Posted by Drumsound

Chris didn't use the phrase, but that's EXACTLY what he was referring to.

Originally Posted by chrisso

I get my tracks mastered so they don't sound odd next to other similar genre tracks. I leave it up to the mastering engineer to a certain degree, but I suspect my tracks are mastered very loud and punchy, because that's what is the norm in my genre. It really has very little to do with other music I listen to.
I'm wasting my time writing and recording the music for weeks beforehand, if the mastering then sounds weak or just odd next to other people's releases in the genre.

Originally Posted by Maggot Brain

Back this 100%. I went to music school with a big chip on my shoulder. "I'm f***in' metal man, I don't need to know how to read music. Jazz? Classical!? GTFOutta here."

I couldn't possibly be more grateful for my guitar teacher setting me straight on that and pushing me HARD to better my chops through constant practice of standards, Bach's inventions, violin concertos, chord melodies, etc. I also felt the same about the 4 semesters of ear training and solfege singing and rudimentary piano I had to do. It's been completely invaluable. I play with musicians that were right there beside me. We all speak the same language. It makes every song better. I can't sell short how much it plays into my engineering too.

In line with Reznor's insight, I remember calling my brother (at the time, an intensely dedicated jazz pianist), basically on the verge of smashing my guitar and he said "you learn this stuff, then you 'forget' it, but it never really leaves your subconscious." Boy was he right. I value those parts of my education far more than the recording classes I took.

Originally Posted by Samc

And you know this how?!? Because, not once during our exchanges was that ever apparent to me...

This is where it started:

Originally Posted by chrisso

No, not at all.
It's about mastering the genre. It takes years.
The Beatles spent years playing cover songs. And even when they were 'out there' innovating, their constant touchstones were Buddy Holly and Elvis. They just couldn't help themselves but do it differently.
Take Miles Davis. He played thousands of club gigs, playing standards and soloing like many other people. Gradually he needed to break out and innovate.
The important part was the years and years both The Beatles and Miles Davis played in front of people, in an ensemble setting.
It's not about 'fear', it's about understanding that almost no one is an innovator from day one. Most people need to conform at the beginning, then they understand why they need to innovate, and what that innovation needs to be.

Originally Posted by joeq

yes, I am an engineer. Which means my job is to put the microphones in the right place. I have had the experience where they "drooped" down enough to change the sound but not so far as to fail to pick up the musician. If they drooped past this magical point, somebody's 'spectacular' performance would not get recorded at all.

It would be ruined.

I don't get this. Should I never bother correctly placing mics again because if the performance is spectacular enough it will always 'make up for it'? Or are you suggesting Murphy's Law kicks in and they play better because the mic drooped?



Of course it could have been better! I could have tightened up the stand and then gotten great sound and the inspired performance. Or are you endorsing the Good Song Fallacy? Are you literally saying the great gear and an inspired performance are mutually exclusive?

That would be the most "extreme" position of them all.


that may be all you need, but some of us have clients who expect better than "average". And why not? Are you implying that better than average engineering skill "scares away" the Great Performances? And as the person who often has to mix these songs, I can tell you a mix comes together faster when the mics have not "drooped".


here is one way in which life "just does not work" for me: Putting in a half-assed effort on my contribution to the project because I know that a "great performance will shine through" the bad recording. And of course a mediocre performance is not worth recording at all, right?

"Get out of my studio, you posers."

If a self-recording musician wants to take this attitude, fine - it's his music. In my case, it is someone else's music. What arrogance it would be for me to say which music deserves care and which music does not.

Truly inspired performances are like lightning. The engineer's job is to always be ready when the lightning strikes. If you are your own engineer, you can brush this off if you like, but then you have to admit you have a mediocre engineer who doesn't care very much about his "job".

Originally Posted by theblue1

One of the reasons I don't post as much as I once did is that I've taken to putting hastily written forum comments 'on hold' for indefinite periods (while I think about the issues, do more research, or simply cool down ). I save them in a text file and leave them on my desktop, occasionally sweeping unfinished posts into a folder (that I'll probably seldom if ever look at again). Anyhow, yesterday, I was pondering a number of posts in this thread and started writing this... today I dug it back out...


Good engineering is a thing unto itself. It's hard to get right and it's hard to keep getting it right going forward as styles and clients change. It IS what binds most of our interests together here.

But, as important as it is, as cherished as those skills are, I always come back around to the fact that a lot of the music I really love is less than ideal in some/many sonic aspects. That doesn't mean we should not strive for better sound, better realization of the artists vision -- at all.

But it's just a fact of life (at least for me) that I've heard a whole lot of 'flawless' studio recordings that, though I marveled at the technical skill, I had no desire to hear a second time; yet other songs I will listen to through scratchy acoustic era recordings (1920s), bad mastering, bad pressing, bad tape machines (yes even wow and flutter), off-center vinyl pressings, even the modern sins of bad / inept mastering or crappy data-compression... because the music moves me.

Loving care and masterful technical skill often greatly enhances the sonic impact of a great record -- but, in my experience, it can't save mediocre content.

Originally Posted by Maggot Brain

Here's my unpopular take:

The room doesn't matter as much as you think. I've spent the last 8 or so years recording bands in just about any environment you can think of. Abandoned warehouse, tiny apartments, my own bedroom, basements, studios, the shed out back (not really, but you get my point)....

If the players are comfortable, the performances are good... it's all good. I think gear matters, but as others have said, you could record an amazing band with 57s and a presonus or something, and you'll be fine.

Originally Posted by psycho_monkey

We really don’t have any say if the song or performance is “good”, so talking about production or performance or writing when discussing recording is in a way irrelevant. Of course the roles (both people and the job) overlap, but in its purest form they’re disconnected. No one ever hired an engineer purely for engineering who tended to be lax with levels and clip stuff or make hissy low level recordings, even if this happened as a by product at times!

Originally Posted by Funny Cat

I agree that we don't have any say in the song but I don't agree that talking about its effect on a recording is irrelevant, especially given the thread title and the extremely mixed emotions we have about current music.

Once someone gets to the point where they realize that the song/arrangement/performance can drastically change the outcome of a recording [all things being equal] one starts to realize that the gear isn't the end-all-be-all and there will be less worship of the sword rather than the one who yields it. Sometimes a little perspective is just what we all need to curb our gear-lust!

Originally Posted by Drumsound

Because he wrote this to clarify: