Members loner22 Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 A friend of mine played those to me last night; i guess the tracks are available @ torrent downloads. Has anyone heard those? I listened to one song only; I don't know the name, but the lyrics start with "if you cut yourself, you will make 'em happy.." So I listened, and to me, the guitars on the recording were horrible. Drums and vocals were okay, but wtf was with guitars? There were like three or four gtr tracks, and distorted parts were so unbelievably thin and harsh; and one of the guitars was almost semitone off. I don't understand - I was expecting to hear work of a big name pro (the recording was engineered by Steve Albini), but it sounded like... school band thrashing through a gorilla amp? please tell me i missed something Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members CN Fletcher Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 I've not heard the tracks and can't comment... but Steve's a friend of mine and we've talked about stuff like this for more than a few hours on end. Steve's philosophy is that he records what they give him to the best of his ability. He doesn't comment on the sounds, he just captures them. He doesn't comment on the performances... he just captures them. I don't know anything about those sessions [maybe one of the reasons Steve seems to like me is because I've never asked him any questions about his work with Nirvana]... but I would hazard a guess that those are the sounds and performances that were presented for Steve to record... and record them he did. I do remember reading something somewhere that when the label [Geffen?] first hear "In Utero" they were aghast and sent the product out to be "mixed" [or something like that]. From what I remember reading they felt the product submitted to the label by the band was "too raw"... which might be what you're talking about. One man's ceiling is another man's floor... one man's "horrible" is another man's "perfect". It could very well be that after the 'slick success' of Nevermind that the band wanted something to be "raw-er" and that's what they had in mind. Could very well have been the band's 'punk sensibilities' taking over the process [which may very well be why they didn't use Butch Vig for the follow album... I don't know, I wasn't there... and frankly I don't much care]. My only point being is that it's impossible to crawl into anyone's head and try to figure out where they were going with their "art". Jackson Pollock is a very famous painter... I don't understand why. I don't find his work aestheticly pleasing. Same with Damien Hirst... though I do find his work to at least have the ability to stimulate the thought process and while it may be revulsion... his work makes me think and feel something. I'm sure you weren't around when "Never Mind The Bollocks" first hit the street... but at the time it was one of most interesting pieces of {censored} I had ever heard. You could really get a sense from that album that those guys didn't give a {censored} about anything. Now it all seems pretty standard and somewhat pedestrian... but at the time it signaled a revolutionary change in music. Perhaps that's what Nirvana was trying to achieve with "In Utero"... or maybe not, I dunno... I wasn't there... and more importantly, I don't care. Peace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members loner22 Posted January 14, 2009 Author Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 thanks for sharing your thoughts, anyway.i am a big fan of albini's, and what startles me is that the final product is somewhat different. that's probably what we got after Geffen sent the tape back for RM. I mean, at certaing point guiatrs really sounded like a small cheap practice amp, so I was thinking wtf is going on? what's the secret? and what's the most important thing to me. when i put faders up on multitrack masters, i don't like the sound. when i put the record on, be it geffen or albini-remixed box set, i like the sound. i don't see how the fact, the philosophy of "capturing the right way" translates into totally different sound - just of similar character - post-mixdown. may be i am just ignorant. i am actually even afraid of questioning the fact the record was "done right', but still - i don't {censored}ing understand that. oh well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wwwjd Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 I think all raw tracks sound like crap, but that is just me. The REAL fun is in the mixing isn't it? And all off notes can be fixed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MrJoshua Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 I think that's "Verse Chorus Verse" and it was never on an actual album, IIRC. I believe it might have been the B-side off a single or something like that, but I only ever heard it as a bootleg floating around. Everything I've ever heard about them led me to believe that when it came to guitar sounds, Nirvana's philosophy was pretty much "whatever the pawn shop has available." Kurt Cobain wasn't cranking Les Pauls through Marshall stacks. So it doesn't surprise me that the raw tracks would be less-than-polished. But I'm not an expert. I was 13 when "Nevermind" came out and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hit the airwaves, so this band had a pretty big impact on me and I paid attention whenever I read something about them. But I haven't made a research project out of them or anything like that, so I could easily be wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MrJoshua Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 I think all raw tracks sound like crap, but that is just me. The REAL fun is in the mixing isn't it? And all off notes can be fixed Why would all raw tracks sound like crap? I mean, if you have a good instrument in the hands of a good player and you stick a decent mic in front of 'em, it ought to be pretty easy to capture a raw track that sounds pretty darn good. I'm kind of old-fashioned about stuff like that, though, I guess - I'd MUCH rather fix it at the source and redo the take as opposed to capturing a bad sound and then reamping, using an amp sim plugin, or anything like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wwwjd Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 bland, dull, unprocessed, yuck. but that's just me. I enjoy tracks after they've been polished up with a nice EQ/compression wax Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 The end result was that it sounded incredible. I really love Albini's productions, btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zooey Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 please tell me i missed something If you listened to individual guitar tracks and discovered that they sound less than perfect when isolated from the mix, you just discovered something very important about mixing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 If you listened to individual guitar tracks and discovered that they sound less than perfect when isolated from the mix, you just discovered something very important about mixing. That's most likely quite right. Especially since the engineer was most likely looking at the big overall picture and not one individual guitar part/sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted January 14, 2009 Members Share Posted January 14, 2009 A friend of mine played those to me last night; i guess the tracks are available @ torrent downloads. Has anyone heard those? This is a bit surprising to me that they'd be available since I believe Albini keeps the masters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Instrospection Posted January 15, 2009 Members Share Posted January 15, 2009 Some good points raised here. I don't think that Albini keeps the masters. This would seemingly go against his DIY and indie friendly stance (keeping masters would be, likely, a Geffen thing). i am a big fan of albini's, and what startles me is that the final product is somewhat different. that's probably what we got after Geffen sent the tape back for RM. I mean, at certaing point guiatrs really sounded like a small cheap practice amp, so I was thinking wtf is going on? what's the secret?and what's the most important thing to me. when i put faders up on multitrack masters, i don't like the sound. when i put the record on, be it geffen or albini-remixed box set, i like the sound. i don't see how the fact, the philosophy of "capturing the right way" translates into totally different sound - just of similar character - post-mixdown. Here's the rub--with the multitrack masters, you're not getting: --reverb--EQ--panning position Also, you're not clear which tracks made the final mix, either (ie: you wouldn't know which was take one, take two, and which take they mixed in). As well, Albini has alot of distant mics on things, so he often combines things that are tracked to a dedicated track to something else in the mix, say, a mic at the back of the room getting the room's sound with the amp in it. By itself, it would probably sound weird, but Steve likely mixed some of these types of things like this, especially on drums, as he has been known to put tons of mics up, and distant room mics, as well. This is a great case of why it's a great idea NOT to get the multitracks, because when the average person gets ahold of them and tries to better what the professionals did, this is exactly why we leave it to those guys. And it ruins alot of the mystique and the magic; once you start to see how it works, you're hearing all the vocal flaws when soloed (breathing, some noise gating, bleed from the headphones into a vocal mic, etc). Alot of people think that they can mix an album, but they can't.....I still say that alot of vision and cohesiveness falls apart at the mixing stage (deciding which take to use, proportions of things, what there is too much of/ not enough of). As well, soloing the guitar tracks will reveal that it's the overall mix that made all the instruments work together. The "whole is greater than the sum of it's parts" thing. Kurt liked really abrasive sounds, and as someone mentioned, he was pretty much a budget, pawn shop equipment type of guy. I have a feeling that he wanted to knock the commercial shine off the music and record the guitars REALLY {censored}ed up and fuzzed out and distorted....which Albini helped do. All Albini did was get Kurt's sound, and then tweak it in the mix (which, apparently, was remixed on some songs, and also was remastered, as the band didn't like the original master). This would also indicate that a great mastering job can rectify some things in the mix....not all the things and not all the time, but again, this is why we leave these things to the people that get paid good money to do those things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members veracohr Posted January 15, 2009 Members Share Posted January 15, 2009 The song is "Sappy". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members loner22 Posted January 15, 2009 Author Members Share Posted January 15, 2009 The end result was that it sounded incredible. thta's what i am talking about. the guitars sounded pretty much meh even in the mix, with faders up. to me, that means a ton of work for the mixing engineer. i searched the web for gear Kurt used at Pachyderm. it seems that he was running Fenders into a Boss distortion pedal, then into either a Mesa preamp / SS poweramp (Jeeeeesus) or Fender Twin combo. and actually, listening to the tracks, it sounds quite like that gear. Very much unlike a Gibson into Mark IV =) anyway, one more reason to admire the dude behind the huge multi-knobbed board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MrJoshua Posted January 15, 2009 Members Share Posted January 15, 2009 My guitarist has one of those Mesa preamps (it's been at my home studio for ages) and I actually love that freaking thing. Sounds great through a Crown power amp into a Marshall 2x12 cab. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members barny15 Posted January 21, 2009 Members Share Posted January 21, 2009 I didn't think that song turned out too bad. And I thought Albini did a good job with "In Utero". He got some good drum and guitar sounds, imo. Kurt's guitar was mostly a Fender Strat or Jaguar into a Boss DS1 into a Fender Twin. One man's ceiling is another man's floor... one man's "horrible" is another man's "perfect". It could very well be that after the 'slick success' of Nevermind that the band wanted something to be "raw-er" and that's what they had in mind.From everything I've read about Nirvana, this is pretty much it. I'm sure you weren't around when "Never Mind The Bollocks" first hit the street... but at the time it was one of most interesting pieces of {censored} I had ever heard. You could really get a sense from that album that those guys didn't give a {censored} about anything. Now it all seems pretty standard and somewhat pedestrian... but at the time it signaled a revolutionary change in music.I always thought that album sounded really good. Everyone says it sounds crappy, that the guitars were way out of tune and that it's sloppy, but I always thought of it as a pretty slick album and while not overproduced, there was a bit of effort put into it. Sounds more like a souped up Rolling Stones record than a "punk" record, I reckon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted January 21, 2009 Members Share Posted January 21, 2009 I don't know if "Never Minds the Bollocks" sounds slick or not. It sounds bold and ballsy...and a middle finger and a spit in the face to what was going on at the time. It just reeks of attitude, and in that way alone, it's a good recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members barny15 Posted January 22, 2009 Members Share Posted January 22, 2009 I don't know if "Never Minds the Bollocks" sounds slick or not. It sounds bold and ballsy...and a middle finger and a spit in the face to what was going on at the time. It just reeks of attitude, and in that way alone, it's a good recording.Yeah, "slick" might have been the wrong word; it's definitely a bold record in terms of attitude and lyrics and songwriting, but sonically, I didn't think it was the complete mess that some people (overzealous journalists writing about the "attitude of punk" or whatever) made it out to be. It sounds like a conventional rock record in a lot of ways. I read somewhere that guitarist Steve Jones overdubbed tons of guitar parts on that record and spent weeks in the studio doing so, which means that there was probably a pretty high degree of thought and care put into recording and production on that album. It wasn't engineered by top notch engineers with super-expensive equipment, but I always thought it sounded pretty good in terms of audio quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted January 22, 2009 Members Share Posted January 22, 2009 Yeah, definitely, it sounds quite full and not completely trashy. Definitely some production and whatnot going in there, but it really gets the snotty "two fingers to the world" attitude across. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Untone Posted January 22, 2009 Members Share Posted January 22, 2009 Bollocks, I have it on a commercial cassette tape and I can't really listen to it any other way because that's what I got at the time and I never upgraded my source for that fix. I love this record...sounds thick and fine, I crank up some bass listen loud... Those guys got what they wanted to get from it. I would never call that record slick. Slick, to me, are the Steely Dan recordings, particularly, Katy Lied. Though, that one's good-slick, not schlick-stick-slick. Some friends of mine did drum tracks for some songs at Albini's Electrical audio and I can confirm what someone up there said about the mic-ing via Albini and co. He said they had mics all over the place in that room, taped to the floor far from the kit..everywhere in a very large room Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members styphon Posted January 24, 2009 Members Share Posted January 24, 2009 Interesting, I always heard the same thing about "In Utero", that Kurt wanted to escape the commercial sheen and the original album was very raw and garage band like. He also caused trouble with "Rape me" and the cover of the album. But the record company took care of that ;D I love the multitrack masters. Who cares about "it taking away the magic and mystic", if you want to mix your own music, shouldn't you see HOW much is PLAYING vs how much is PRODUCTION? It helps people in home studios learn that you don't spend countless hours getting the perfect track, with no clicks or breathing or coughing or people lighting cigarettes. It runs the myth of people being perfect singers and perfect guitar players with perfect tone. It stops beginners from chasing impossible ideals that they were mislead to believe where true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nice keetee Posted January 24, 2009 Members Share Posted January 24, 2009 Hard work, magic and luck helps along with a track record... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted January 24, 2009 Members Share Posted January 24, 2009 Maybe a little artistry and inspiration too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Instrospection Posted January 28, 2009 Members Share Posted January 28, 2009 As cool as it is to hear the multitracks of things, I only got one or two songs before I realized that I don't really want to hear the gates cut off the noise in a vocal track or whatever. However, it is kind of cool to hear the harmonics in Diamond Dave's voice in "Runnin' With The Devil"....they even played that on the radio. The best and worst aspects is that it LOSES CONTEXT, take that for what it's worth. Soloing things usually reveals the minor problems in individual tracks. Even if you soloed a particular singer that would be mic'd up in a choir, you'd notice that they would be slightly out of tune with other singers. It's all those voices drifting in and out of tune with each other that gives it that cohesion. Rare is the time where people are absolutely in tune and absolutely on tempo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Flogger59 Posted January 28, 2009 Members Share Posted January 28, 2009 Before a burglary impoverished me of my Beatles studio bootleg collection, I had two track mixes of the raw takes for side 2 of Abbey Road. Take, for instance, the end of You Never Give Me Your Money (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,All good children go to heaven). The guitar fills sounded kinda farty, and George Martin was a genious at knowing what to leave out, because there were a couple of cringers that didn't make the final mix. It was a revelation to hear how human the recording process was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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