It's when the technical covers the primitive that we lose the passion of music!

[Bruce Swedien]

>I Love The Details

________________________________________________________________

 

I have noticed that even animals souls are affected by the sound of music. Bea's old mare "Susie" used to get nervous and up-tight out on the trail sometimes. Bea would sing softly to her and Susie would calm down almost instantly and be noticibly soothed and relaxed. Susie would even try to sing herself, by making sort of humming, grunting sounds back to Bea as they ride out on the trail.

 

I have also noticed that whenever Bea and I have been overseas, when we come home we love to listen to Country Music for a couple of days. I think that may be because Country Music is truly "American" music.

 

When music makes you want to dance, that is mainly an emotional reaction.

 

Certain types of religious music can make you feel quite holy even if you are not. A good example of that, for me, is 'Gregorian Chant' Catholic Church music.

 

Music of certain types can be annoying or downright painful, if you are not 'in the mood'.

 

What I always try to find in the music that I record, is, those elements in the music that make me react emotionally, and then capitalize on those elements, and make certain that they don't get lost or minimized in the recording process. I try never to leave anything behind, or overlook an element in the music, on the multi-track tape that is important to the emotional statement of the piece of music that I am working on. When I record a song and we are doing the rhythm track, as soon as we are finished with the very basic elements, I make a computerized mix of those elements to freeze my own gut reaction to the music at this very early stage in it's production. This way I have the ability to get back to those instinctive reactions to the rhythm elements before I have had a chance to think about the music and cerebralize it into the wastebasket.

 

One of the toughest thing to keep in focus, in recording modern popular music, is the fact that music must feel spontaneous in order to communicate a feeling to one's emotions.

 

With the attention to detail that is necessary in recording modern pop music we are forced to concentrate on small elements of the composition for long periods of time. This makes it very easy to lose your perspective on the whole musical emotion of the piece of music that you are working on. I guess it becomes a sort of like the old saw "You can't see the forest for the trees."

 

In the old days things moved much faster in the studio. In the 1950's and early 1960's we would book the studio for a three hour session, and when we were through we would walk out of the studio with four songs finished, ready to master.

 

It is possible to keep your perspective, if you learn to trust your instincts as much as possible. This capability takes a long time to master. Even given that knowledge, most recording people can't seem to trust their emotions. I constantly refer to my earliest mixes, of a song, and even more, to my computerized mixes of the original rhythm track, to get back to my very first instinctive reaction to the music, the moment it first effected me. That would be the only time that I would have been able to react to the music emotionaly and not cerebrally. I will then make sound volume level and color judgements that are totally emotional in their relationship to each other, as perceived by my psyche, with all my musical experiences subconciously effecting the outcome of what I am doing with the music at that moment.

 

I think I am lucky, in that I love details in anything that I am involved in. Especially music recording. I love the technical end of what we do in the studio now. I think I love the computer and technical aspect of modern music recording so much that I don't ever get bored with it. Every small, little detail fascinates me. I think I have become a bonafide, card-carrying computer nerd!

 

Another strange thing about my personality is that I absolutely hate surprises. Possibly I am a control freak. In recording music I want to know exactly how every technical aspect of the process will work. That's not easy when one of the most fascinating things about music is it's spontaneity! I have always felt that in recording music you can luck into or luck up on something once, but never twice. It's like getting lightning to strike twice in the same place. I try to reduce the mechanical and mundane segments of the recording process to pure science. When I press a button I want to know exactly what the result will be.

 

I consider myself an artist, in the recording studio. As such I try always to remember that just as a fine artist such as a Van Gogh never attempts to paint the precise reality of a scene or landscape,(which he cannot do anyway), instead he captures the emotion of his interpretation on the canvas; I realized long ago that I couldn't paint the reality of a sonic image. We can't even define reality. The feeling of the music is what I am after. I want people to be able to listen to the music and to experience the sincerity of it's emotion.

 

I don't want to hide the feeling of the music under a lot of meaningless, technical white-wash. I am very much turned off by recordings that are, to me, the obvious result of someone merely "knobbing-about" in the studio trying to make a recording that sounds very much like all the other recordngs of the day. Not that I am against using any and all tricks-of-the-trade. That's not it at all. I will do anything neccessary to paint a sonic image that has both entertainment and feeling as part of it's tapestry.

 

It's when the technical covers the primitive that we lose the passion of music!

 

Bruce Swedien

[coyote-1]

Despite the wonders of the studio, there is only one way to achieve that: Spontanaeous Performance. The moment the autotune gets wheeled out, it's over.

 

One of the toughest thing to keep in focus, in recording modern popular music, is the fact that music must feel spontaneous in order to communicate a feeling to one's emotions. In the old days things moved much faster in the studio. In the 1950's and early 1960's we would book the studio for a three hour session, and when we were through we would walk out of the studio with four songs finished, ready to master.

 

It's no accident that so many of the 'throwaway' tracks from the past are now classics - and today's tracks labored over as if they were the next MonaLisa are so damn disposable. IMO it has a great deal to do with why the industry is hurting.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Despite the wonders of the studio, there is only one way to achieve that: Spontanaeous Performance . The moment the autotune gets wheeled out, it's over.

 

The moment we pull out a multitrack recorder, the moment we start laying down overdubs, we become magicians and illusionists IMO.

 

Multitrack recordings are magic - and those who use them and use them well, are illusionists. We're trying to provide an aural illusion of a live, cohesive performance that never happened. The skill of the illusionist has a lot to do with how well that illusion "works".

 

Anything that breaks the illusion, that breaks the feel and flow and draws the listener's attention to a crack or flaw - not in the performance, but in the slight of hand - is something I try to fix or address. If I use autotune, I dang sure don't want you, the listener, to be distracted from the emotion of the performance because you heard something "Cher effected" in an unintended way. If I do a punch in, I don't want a pop or click, or a tonal difference or level difference to interrupt the listening experience and shout HEY! HE PUNCHED HERE!!! IOW, "I see what you did - you pulled the card out from your sleeve... not out of thin air... "

 

When I recorded "Hope Avenue" for Julie Day's first album, we did the basic rhythm section "live" in the studio, including guide vocals. and then overdubbed from there. One of the overdubs on that track were from a wonderful saxophone player named Sarah Underwood.

 

http://www.proaudioreview.com/pages/s.0022/t.6222.html

http://www,myspace.com/julesdaymusic

http://www.julieday.org

 

I probably spent 30 minutes recording Sarah's parts on that song - from the point I grabbed the mike and started setting up to the point she had to leave for another appointment. I think we did three passes at the song; four tops. All of them were just killing me - Sarah's soft / soaked reed tenor tone was just a perfect compliment to the song IMO, and it really did hit me emotionally. None of the takes were "perfect", but man, there was some great playing laid down...

 

It was a fairly long day in the studio tracking a bunch of stuff, and after everyone had left, I went back to those sax solos... I probably spent another two or three hours going through them and experimenting with various comps. No one had asked me to do that; no one had given me "permission", but I wasn't doing anything destructive either - I could get back to any of the original tracks in half a second if I wanted to... but I knew I could comp together a solo that MOVED ME, and so I went ahead and did it. Sarah had given me more than enough to "work with", and I took that, along with my emotional response to the music, my experience as an engineer, and my previous experience as a sax player (it was my "main" instrument for many years, and what I had studied in school) and started playing with comps. I thought of them like a sax player would - phrasing, feel, emotion, breathing, tension / release... and picked the best parts of those three takes - what I felt worked together - and comped them until I had something that nearly brought me to tears.

 

The next day, when everyone came back to the studio (sans Sarah), I told Julie (the artist), Tom Cosentino (the producer) and Dan Fitzgerald (the executive producer and songwriter) what I had done... and saw the concern on their faces, but they agreed to give it a listen. Uh oh - nervous time...

 

They loved it. And that's the sax part you hear on the finished release.

 

For me, it's not the use of modern tools - multitrack, autotune, punches, comps - whatever - that is the thing that makes or breaks things; it's the material, the performances AND the way that the artists (and like Bruce, I consider engineering as much an art form as a science) utilize those tools. If you use them in a way that gets you excited, that is musical and tasteful, then I have no issue with it. YMMV, but I won't hesitate to use ANY tool if it makes musical sense to me.

 

Please see my sig line.

[Phil O'Keefe]

PS FWIW, if it's up to me, I will always select a better "feeling" take that has a slight flaw, over a technically perfect, yet soul-less, lifeless take.

[blue2blue]

When I find myself drifting away from the heart of a song when I'm recording -- and nowadays I only record myself -- I turn off the DAW and sit with my acoustic guitar in my lap and play the song and try to rediscover the emotion of it.

[bp]

God points Phil. I guess this is why I prefer mixing live to 2 track over any other scenario. My favorite mixes of my career have been live performance, no overdubs. Many of these were multitracked, but the ones where I didn't go back to do a mix off of the multis have a vibe that the remixes don't.

[GY]

Thanks, Bruce for the idea.... iPods for animals. Custom sound files will be available for desired behavior for each individual species. I'm on it.

[Phil O'Keefe]

It is possible to keep your perspective, if you learn to trust your instincts as much as possible. This capability takes a long time to master. Even given that knowledge, most recording people can't seem to trust their emotions. I constantly refer to my earliest mixes, of a song, and even more, to my computerized mixes of the original rhythm track, to get back to my very first instinctive reaction to the music, the moment it first effected me. That would be the only time that I would have been able to react to the music emotionaly and not cerebrally.

 

This is such great advice Bruce! And it's why I wanted to do those comps that night, while my initial response to hearing everything for the first time was still fresh in my mind. I didn't want to think them through too much, or do them "by committee" - not that I don't highly value and trust the opinions of the others who were involved in the project - but I knew in my gut that if I did it right away, and just went with what I was feeling from hearing everything laid down, that I'd do "the" comp, and trusting my gut (my instincts) worked.

 

Later on, you can start to question things, or over-think things too much, and that can definitely hurt the "feel" IMHO.

[Ernest Buckley]

I`ve yet to automate the chill factor!

[philbo]

I've got to agree. The more manipulation, the more sterility. Once the left brain takes over and decides that everything must be close-miced, quantized, and tweaked, the soul and feeling flees the room and heads for some 15 year old's bedroom, where the angst and emotion of a 2 chord song telling of a broken dream is being written on the fly... or something like that.

[nice keetee]

1st takes are often the best. Yeah try again but always in record now. So cheap to do. I cry and laugh about what great music was recorded and erased to make room on a piece of tape to record some more. Imagine all the magic from the past erased so the next act could record. Then again maybe that is what created the urgency to grab the feel and mix/master etc and let it go! Let the public hear it.

[Phil O'Keefe]

I don't want to speak for Bruce (as if I could!), but I think some of you good folks are missing the point.

 

I consider myself an artist, in the recording studio. As such I try always to remember that just as a fine artist such as a Van Gogh never attempts to paint the precise reality of a scene or landscape,(which he cannot do anyway), instead he captures the emotion of his interpretation on the canvas; I realized long ago that I couldn't paint the reality of a sonic image. We can't even define reality. The feeling of the music is what I am after. I want people to be able to listen to the music and to experience the sincerity of it's emotion.

 

I don't want to hide the feeling of the music under a lot of meaningless, technical white-wash. I am very much turned off by recordings that are, to me, the obvious result of someone merely "knobbing-about" in the studio trying to make a recording that sounds very much like all the other recordngs of the day. Not that I am against using any and all tricks-of-the-trade. That's not it at all. I will do anything neccessary to paint a sonic image that has both entertainment and feeling as part of it's tapestry.

 

If I am reading this correctly, what he's saying is is that it is not about first takes, automation, or the tools used or not used, but the emotion, the feel, the emotional reaction - that's "the primitive". How you get there is not the important thing - use whatever methods and tools you need to, but GET THERE. The tools or lack of tools are the means to an end, not the end in and of themselves. The music is the thing. And good music should make people FEEL something.

 

Please correct me if I am misinterpreting what you're saying Bruce.

[nice keetee]

Emotion is what is missing from a lot of our music and media today in my humble opinion. Maybe it it because we can diddle so much with the original recording? Hell a live show is great, and no one recorded it.

[RockViolin]

I'm reminded more than a bit of the lot of a classical musician, particularly the soloist. Some works can take weeks or months of preparation to get to the point where they're ready to be played in front of a few thousand people. Paganini, Ysaye, all pretty hard stuff. Even if you're the one that wrote it I suspect. Nobody just walks up to it for the first time and rips and says, "Heh, that'll do. No sense in beating it into the ground. Gotta keep it fresh."

 

Things get taken apart, meticulously drilled, and gone over and over and over. Then at some point it's time to remember it's a piece of MUSIC. OK. Now one more time, with feeling. It helps to be able to turn it on and off at will. Some can, some can't.

[Bruce Swedien]

I don't want to speak for Bruce (as if I could!), but I think some of you good folks are missing the point. I consider myself an artist, in the recording studio. As such I try always to remember that just as a fine artist such as a Van Gogh never attempts to paint the precise reality of a scene or landscape,(which he cannot do anyway), instead he captures the emotion of his interpretation on the canvas; I realized long ago that I couldn't paint the reality of a sonic image. We can't even define reality. The feeling of the music is what I am after. I want people to be able to listen to the music and to experience the sincerity of it's emotion. I don't want to hide the feeling of the music under a lot of meaningless, technical white-wash. I am very much turned off by recordings that are, to me, the obvious result of someone merely "knobbing-about" in the studio trying to make a recording that sounds very much like all the other recordngs of the day. Not that I am against using any and all tricks-of-the-trade. That's not it at all. I will do anything neccessary to paint a sonic image that has both entertainment and feeling as part of it's tapestry. If I am reading this correctly, what he's saying is is that it is not about first takes, automation, or the tools used or not used, but the emotion , the feel , the emotional reaction - that's "the primitive". How you get there is not the important thing - use whatever methods and tools you need to, but GET THERE. The tools or lack of tools are the means to an end, not the end in and of themselves. The music is the thing. And good music should make people FEEL something. Please correct me if I am misinterpreting what you're saying Bruce.

 

You are readiing it corrtectly Phil...

 

Yes - IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FEEL AND THE EMOTION OF THE MUSIC AT HAND....

 

As usual Philla-Dilla you are on the money!!!

 

Think about this...

 

Ability is what you're capable of doing.

 

Motivation determines what you do.

 

Attitude determines how well you do it.

 

Much love to you all.....

 

Brucie!!!

:soapbox:

[boosh]

I use every piece of equipment I can get my hands on to record or produce the sounds that are deep deep in me.

 

But :

 

I've played in a park with a guy on a guitar with 3 strings while I was singing and beating on a parkbench to get a steady bassdrum.

People loved it and it gave me goosebumps all over.

 

I've also sung with a band on stage(in the same park btw) that had $200,000 of equipment and 100,000 people in the audience....

That gave me goosebumps also.

 

Yesterday morning I drove Skippy to school and suddenly he started singing a nursery rhyme,...I started to sing second voice to the little guy and when we were finished he said : ' daddy we are the best singers in the world ain't we? we should record this when I get home from school .' That didn't give me goosebumps but brought a tear to my eye.

 

Music is from the Gut,..from the heart,...it's in me ,...technical stuff or no technical stuff. The whole civilisation can come to an end and leave us in Neanderthal times again but my song comes from the heart.

 

Music first.

[Ernest Buckley]

Well said Boosh.

[Bruce Swedien]

I use every piece of equipment I can get my hands on to record or produce the sounds that are deep deep in me. But : I've played in a park with a guy on a guitar with 3 strings while I was singing and beating on a parkbench to get a steady bassdrum. People loved it and it gave me goosebumps all over. I've also sung with a band on stage(in the same park btw) that had $200,000 of equipment and 100,000 people in the audience.... That gave me goosebumps also. Yesterday morning I drove Skippy to school and suddenly he started singing a nursery rhyme,...I started to sing second voice to the little guy and when we were finished he said : ' daddy we are the best singers in the world ain't we? we should record this when I get home from school .' That didn't give me goosebumps but brought a tear to my eye. Music is from the Gut,..from the heart,...it's in me ,...technical stuff or no technical stuff. The whole civilisation can come to an end and leave us in Neanderthal times again but my song comes from the heart. Music first.

 

 

My Pal Booshie.....

 

You speak the TRUTH!!!!! I love you!!!!

 

Bruce Swedien

[dahkter]

 

I use every piece of equipment I can get my hands on to record or produce the sounds that are deep deep in me. But : I've played in a park with a guy on a guitar with 3 strings while I was singing and beating on a parkbench to get a steady bassdrum. People loved it and it gave me goosebumps all over. I've also sung with a band on stage(in the same park btw) that had $200,000 of equipment and 100,000 people in the audience.... That gave me goosebumps also. Yesterday morning I drove Skippy to school and suddenly he started singing a nursery rhyme,...I started to sing second voice to the little guy and when we were finished he said : ' daddy we are the best singers in the world ain't we? we should record this when I get home from school .' That didn't give me goosebumps but brought a tear to my eye. Music is from the Gut,..from the heart,...it's in me ,...technical stuff or no technical stuff. The whole civilisation can come to an end and leave us in Neanderthal times again but my song comes from the heart. Music first.

 

 

Right on Boosh, well said.

 

When the overthinking stops, and people are in the zone, that's when the real magic happens. It can be live, it can be a two track cassette, it can be protools. As long as the core element of emotion and love and power shine through, it will impact people.

 

I recall hearing an opera/jazz singer singer I worked with, on more than one occassion I recall being outside of my body, so much soul in that voice, it just took me to another place.

 

Those moments are rare, however when they happen, wow, they are monumental. Definitely good to remind yourself of that subatomic/supergalactic power that music can have, amazing stuff, for sure.

[Bruce Swedien]

Right on Boosh, well said. When the overthinking stops, and people are in the zone, that's when the real magic happens. It can be live, it can be a two track cassette, it can be protools. As long as the core element of emotion and love and power shine through, it will impact people. I recall hearing an opera/jazz singer singer I worked with, on more than one occassion I recall being outside of my body, so much soul in that voice, it just took me to another place. Those moments are rare, however when they happen, wow, they are monumental. Definitely good to remind yourself of that subatomic/supergalactic power that music can have, amazing stuff, for sure.

 

 

 

Yes!!!

 

Ten times....

 

Bruce Swedien

[UstadKhanAli]

The technical should not cover the primitive, it should *enhance* it.

[Dylan Walters]

Maybe it

[boosh]

My Pal Booshie..... I love you!!!!

 

Dito from here, Booshy,Rizz and Skipper,...

Check your mailbox next week Bruce,...I dropped something for ya at the post office this morning,..guess it'll take a week to reach Ocala.

[Frantag]

Saw a Classic Albums show last night about Aja by Steely Dan.

 

For some reason this album has always triggered a joyful response in me, and I love to listen to it. But it was overdubbed a million times UNTIL they found the exact sound they wanted.

 

Nice balance of musicianship and technology.