Question for you old guys...

[GZsound]

I was wondering how many of you started back in the day when you had to figure out by yourself how to record music.

 

I read the threads in all the various forums and wonder how nice it would have been in 1972 to just get on the internet and ask about the "best vocal mic", or "I'm a NOOB, what do I need to get started recording million selling CD's?"..

 

Where DID most of you learn your craft?

 

I remember spending hundreds of hours trying to get a cassette I had recorded to sound like a store bought cassette of my favorite group.. literally hundreds of hours. Nobody to ask.

 

Is this new era of instant information helpful or going to hurt the quality of music?

[alcohol]

I remember trying to get my recordings to sound as loud a professional recording. I remember asking on the internet and getting the replies like: 'you need years of experience and {censored}loads of expensive equipment.'

 

Then I went to a professional mastering engineer and had him master a CD while asking him several innocent questions about what he was doing and discovered that the years of experience and {censored}loads of equipment was only necessary for a small difference when you knew the basic procedure.

 

I do remember going to several professional studios with world class equipment and paying dearly for a mediocre product. I learned that talent is 'god given' and that experience and equipment only serves the talent and that's when I thought I can do better than them.

 

Actually, from decades of listening and analyzing hit music, I've concluded that the recording techniques are secondary. The quality of the arrangement, song and performance make the engineering sound good. There is no consistency in what makes a good sounding set of drums or strings or voice. There are only hit pieces of music which then everyone tries to mimic. It could be recorded in your living room. However, you need someone who knows how to master it. Which is well hidden secret until you pay to discover it.

[rhat]

 

I was wondering how many of you started back in the day when you had to figure out by yourself how to record music. I read the threads in all the various forums and wonder how nice it would have been in 1972 to just get on the internet and ask about the "best vocal mic", or "I'm a NOOB, what do I need to get started recording million selling CD's?".. Where DID most of you learn your craft? I remember spending hundreds of hours trying to get a cassette I had recorded to sound like a store bought cassette of my favorite group.. literally hundreds of hours. Nobody to ask. Is this new era of instant information helpful or going to hurt the quality of music?

 

 

 

back in the day ,, no one really recorded anything. The most they did was take a stereo reel to reel and spread out the mics and record a band practice. For the most part you didnt record till you got a record label interested in your band. Those guys went looking for talent... they found good cover bands and pitched a deal to them. There really wasnt much in the way of a orignal music scene. Sure guys wrote songs .. but alot of groups recorded cover songs and re released them and they became hits. We got approached by a record company my senior year in high school. We were nothing but a real solid cover band that had great vocals and horns and a super tight rhythm section. It was a whole lot different then .....this was in the 60s. Most bands felt the way up the ladder was though just playing cover gigs and getting someone to say ,, hey these guys are good. take a good band that can cover hard stuff ,, and the company will come up with the song and hook you up with the co writers and the songs. We just didnt have the access to cheap recording equipment..... hell we didnt even have mixer board or monitors. It was a pretty low tech deal..

[MrKnobs]

I guess I've been recording since I was maybe 10 years old, using a cheapie little battery powered reel to reel recorder. That got me hooked.

 

When I was in high school, I saved up my grocery store pay and bought a Sony reel to reel deck that did sound on sound and sound with sound. Sound with sound makes it basically a multitrack machine that happens to have just two tracks.

 

Sound ON sound turns the erase head off, so you can add as many overdubs as you like, provided you guess the volume levels right on the initial tracks. Otherwise, you have to start over.

 

I wore that Sony machine out, both listening to music and making it. Sometimes I would make a twelve track or more demo with all the instruments I could play and a lot of vocal overdubs. I learned a tremendous amount from all the hours I spend doing that.

 

I guess next I bought a Teac 4 track. You could basically do two tracks on what would be the front side of the tape, then use the "back" side for another two. That machine forced me to learn how to modify tape machines, since it didn't (originally) have a way to turn off the erase head or to record on a single track at a time.

 

Round about the late 70's and early 80's true multitrack, prosumer format decks came out and slowly became affordable. First really good one was the Tascam 80-8 which was a half inch 8 track. The model 38 replaced that and was even more affordable, and offered (optional) dBx noise reduction. Fostex also made a popular 8 track machine.

 

My Model 38 paid for itself a hundred times over. A partner and I opened a small studio in the small college town we lived in, and were quickly booked 24/7, doing corporate work in the day and recording hopeful bands in the evenings. We were limited only by the constant maintenance and repair the machines required. We literally beat those machines to death at $40/hr, which was a fortune back in the day.

 

On top of this income was the money we shared with our writers and talent for all the ad jingles we produced, which were the bread and butter of our business.

 

 

We were so successful with our recordings and various promotions (concerts, contests, etc) that in 1983 the local newspaper featured us on the front page - they even gave us the headline.

 

Several hours after that newspaper came out, I was fired from my day job at the university (see groupie stories link below for details). Several days later, my partner was fired from his job at the bank. We couldn't have cared less. By that time we were easily making maybe 5 times as much from the studio as we were making at our suit and tie day jobs. Besides, we were both dead tired from lack of sleep running the studio and we could use the extra time.

 

I used the extra time to open a second business which also prospered. If only I had the energy, balls, and drive now that I did then.

 

I still have a lot of the money and equipment, though.

 

Terry D.

[GZsound]

 

I remember trying to get my recordings to sound as loud a professional recording. I remember asking on the internet and getting the replies like: 'you need years of experience and {censored}loads of expensive equipment.' Then I went to a professional mastering engineer and had him master a CD while asking him several innocent questions about what he was doing and discovered that the years of experience and {censored}loads of equipment was only necessary for a small difference when you knew the basic procedure. I do remember going to several professional studios with world class equipment and paying dearly for a mediocre product. I learned that talent is 'god given' and that experience and equipment only serves the talent and that's when I thought I can do better than them. Actually, from decades of listening and analyzing hit music, I've concluded that the recording techniques are secondary. The quality of the arrangement, song and performance make the engineering sound good. There is no consistency in what makes a good sounding set of drums or strings or voice. There are only hit pieces of music which then everyone tries to mimic. It could be recorded in your living room. However, you need someone who knows how to master it. Which is well hidden secret until you pay to discover it.

 

 

So it appears that at least you had the internet available when you were trying to get levels up to "commercial" sound..

 

I keep trying to remember what magazines I was reading in the early 70's when I started my first studio..I think that's where I got most of my information.

 

In the 60's, rhat is right. We were picked up by a producer who paid for us to go to a commercial studio and record our tunes. The only real recording we did on our own was with a mono Wollensack reel to reel machine with one mic placed out in front of the band around 1964.

[GZsound]

I guess I've been recording since I was maybe 10 years old, using a cheapie little battery powered reel to reel recorder. That got me hooked. When I was in high school, I saved up my grocery store pay and bought a Sony reel to reel deck that did sound on sound and sound with sound. Sound with sound makes it basically a multitrack machine that happens to have just two tracks. Sound ON sound turns the erase head off, so you can add as many overdubs as you like, provided you guess the volume levels right on the initial tracks. Otherwise, you have to start over. I wore that Sony machine out, both listening to music and making it. Sometimes I would make a twelve track or more demo with all the instruments I could play and a lot of vocal overdubs. I learned a tremendous amount from all the hours I spend doing that. I guess next I bought a Teac 4 track. You could basically do two tracks on what would be the front side of the tape, then use the "back" side for another two. That machine forced me to learn how to modify tape machines, since it didn't (originally) have a way to turn off the erase head or to record on a single track at a time. Round about the late 70's and early 80's true multitrack, prosumer format decks came out and slowly became affordable. First really good one was the Tascam 80-8 which was a half inch 8 track. The model 38 replaced that and was even more affordable, and offered (optional) dBx noise reduction. Fostex also made a popular 8 track machine. My Model 38 paid for itself a hundred times over. A partner and I opened a small studio in the small college town we lived in, and were quickly booked 24/7, doing corporate work in the day and recording hopeful bands in the evenings. We were limited only by the constant maintenance and repair the machines required. We literally beat those machines to death at $40/hr, which was a fortune back in the day. On top of this income was the money we shared with our writers and talent for all the ad jingles we produced, which were the bread and butter of our business. We were so successful with our recordings and various promotions (concerts, contests, etc) that in 1983 the local newspaper featured us on the front page - they even gave us the headline. Several hours after that newspaper came out, I was fired from my day job at the university (see groupie stories link below for details). Several days later, my partner was fired from his job at the bank. We couldn't have cared less. By that time we were easily making maybe 5 times as much from the studio as we were making at our suit and tie day jobs. Besides, we were both dead tired from lack of sleep running the studio and we could use the extra time. I used the extra time to open a second business which also prospered. If only I had the energy, balls, and drive now that I did then. I still have a lot of the money and equipment, though. Terry D.

 

I sort of did the same thing. Worked my way through a two track reel to reel in the early 70's, to a four track Teac 3340 that I added DBX noise reduction to,..to eventually getting a Fostex 8 track reel to reel to ADAT to computer..etc.

 

I didn't build up any studio business until the 80's because I was on the road full time with a six piece show band from 1975 into the 80's, but in the 80's there was a lot of business in doing demo work for bands.

 

 

Good stories.. But the underlying question is where did you learn your craft?

 

Just by doing it?

[UstadKhanAli]

I purchased a used Akai MG1214 12-track analog multi-track in 1989, and learned a lot from just doing it, reading a couple of books on recording engineering, and recording in studios and following the recording engineer around and asking questions when they were receptive (which was most of the time, as they were typically super friendly and seemed to enjoy someone taking an interest in what they were doing).

 

I learned even more when I got online in the mid-'90s, learning stuff from Craig Anderton's SSS forum (which then was housed on AOL) and rec.audio.pro, a recording engineering newsgroup (usenet).

 

Because I've answered this thread, does this make me old, Mark?

[MrKnobs]

I sort of did the same thing. Worked my way through a two track reel to reel in the early 70's, to a four track Teac 3340 that I added DBX noise reduction to,..to eventually getting a Fostex 8 track reel to reel to ADAT to computer..etc. I didn't build up any studio business until the 80's because I was on the road full time with a six piece show band from 1975 into the 80's, but in the 80's there was a lot of business in doing demo work for bands. Good stories.. But the underlying question is where did you learn your craft? Just by doing it?

 

Let me begin my reply by saying I by no means consider myself an expert at recording. As my mean old boss liked to say, some people have accumulated twenty years of experience at something and others have acquired one year of experience twenty times.

 

Like you, I was mostly a working musician at first. Recording/sound was a sideline, mostly because I wanted to record my band and then found out other people would pay me to record or run live sound for them also.

 

 

So, at first I learned by doing, and, as you might expect, there were a lot of holes in my knowledge. That's because I wasn't working with anyone who knew more about sound than me to learn from.

 

However, my band became moderately successful and all that changed abruptly. First we opened for some bigger acts, who had their own soundperson or sound company. The difference in quality was startling.

 

So I hung around with these guys, the heroes of my youth (recently ran into one of them after not seeing him for 30 years, but that's another story) and pestered them mercilessly trying to learn everything they knew about sound and mixing. Before too long they were letting me work shows with them when I wasn't playing. I can't overstate how much I learned working with these guys, who were masters of their craft.

 

At the same time, my band was recording and releasing records. Our first album was cut in Dallas and it was the first professional studio I'd ever been in. 2" 16 track machine, fantastic console, outboard, beautiful acoustic environments. Expensive as all hell.

 

We did all the tracking for the album in two very long days. The tracking engineer was a young guy, and we liked him - we were young too. We were also awestruck by the sounds he was getting, having never heard anything of that quality before. I have faithfully maintained a copy of that original recording through the years, and I still even have one of the 16 track reels from the sessions. The engineer gave it to me as it had been spliced so many times during our session that he didn't think he should use it again.

 

He ran off a copy of the two track on 1/4" 15IPS for me, which at the time I had no way to play. Later, when I got a Tascam 32, I did. Still later, when I switched to DAT for mixdown I copied it onto that, and then eventually to CDR. I should get that out and listen to it, to see if my older and jaded ears think so much of it now as I did then.

 

Anyway....sorry, I'm old and the mind wanders. Haven't thought about this for a while.

 

So enter the next guy to change my life. After the young engineer finished up the tracking, we were in the customary state of euphoria just hearing the rough mixes. Then he excused himself, and introduced us to the old guy who would be doing our mixes, the guy who owned the studio. That guy is actually quite well known and I'm not sure I should mention his name here, considering what I'm about to say.

 

We, young dumbasses that we were at the time, were horrified. We didn't want some old guy doing our mixes, we wanted the young guy we had grown to trust. We pleaded to no avail. The young guy just smiled and said, "Be glad you don't always get what you wish for" and left.

 

Well, this "old" guy (consider we were very young at time and had a strange idea of old) was nothing short of phenomenal. It took us all of about 15 minutes to seque from a state of horror to a state of awe. If I had one tenth the knowledge today that this guy had then, I'd be happy.

 

Luckily for ME, our label had some issues with the recording and sent the album back for changes and remixing several times. That meant a lot of driving back and forth to Dallas and I volunteered to be the driver every time (even if I was not needed for the changes which were mostly vocals) just because I wanted to sit in those sessions and learn as much from that "old" guy as I possibly could. And I did.

 

So that was another guy who changed my life. So much knowledge, and so much patience with an irritating n00b asking questions, amazing. Or, maybe he was happy to work slow since he was billing by the hour.

 

Sorry, with age comes cynicism.

 

The last part of my education in sound came on the road, working for various country stars. I got my big break running sound at a huge outdoor show in Rockdale TX. A regional country band I was working for was the opening act for George Strait. Country stars tended to not carry their own soundpeople in those days so I got to run sound for George, which was to be the first of many times as it turned out.

 

As a result, I worked many tours for various artists and worked with some amazing sound people. I learned something from each and every one I met. I thought I was hot {censored} when I started working those tours, but working with these legendary guys quickly taught me a sense of humility. Not because I wasn't a good live sound guy as much as the fact that they were GREAT live sound guys and humble to a man.

 

Reading that last paragraph back, maybe I need to brush up on my humility a bit!

 

And now I do acoustics research, which has brought my life full circle and tied up all the loose ends and both of my careers into a nice bow. I can honestly say that without the live sound and recording experience I've described above, which let me dive into my first university acoustics research program 12 years ago (in the field crew), without the associations and work I've made and done for gear manufacturers on these forums, even with all my education and other experience I'd never have won the $600k grant for acoustics research that I'm now serving as Principal Investigator on.

 

Life is funny that way.

 

And you know what? Every day I'm still learning more about recording and acoustics - and now I'm actually advancing the technology and techniques of recording and publishing quite a volume of work about it.

 

How in the hell did I get here from there? How can I make my own recordings sound better?

 

And what was your question again?

 

Terry D.

[alcohol]

great story!

[Lee Knight]

For me it was a Tascam 244. My first actually was a 3340 but quickly moved to the cassette format. My educator was my album and later CD collection.

 

One sentence has been my motivator and method all in one: How do I get it to sound like that...?

 

Then at 30, I attended Columbia College Chicago and their audio faculty included Marty Feldman and Malcolm Chisholm. True Chicago heavyweights in the record biz. But I never took a single course on record production or engineering (well maybe a couple). It was all science. I loved it and it informed me more than any Full Sail-like experience would have.

[mdog114]

I started recording in the mid 70s. I started with the typical teac/tascam stuff and graduated up from there. I attended the institute of audio research in the village and beside getting the audio, I learned more math than ever before! I also got to work in some great studios in and around NYC and learned a lot!

 

I've had my own place since 1989. I don't book too much anymore due to economics, I make more money in other areas, but that lets me pick and choose projects more carefully.

 

There's a lot of good musicians in the area and I now get to work with just the ones I want.

[GZsound]

I purchased a used Akai MG1214 12-track analog multi-track in 1989, and learned a lot from just doing it, reading a couple of books on recording engineering, and recording in studios and following the recording engineer around and asking questions when they were receptive (which was most of the time, as they were typically super friendly and seemed to enjoy someone taking an interest in what they were doing). I learned even more when I got online in the mid-'90s, learning stuff from Craig Anderton's SSS forum (which then was housed on AOL) and rec.audio.pro, a recording engineering newsgroup (usenet). Because I've answered this thread, does this make me old, Mark?

 

Well... starting in 1989 sort of disqualifies you from beng "old".. And the fact you had internet access is one of the reasons I started this thread..

 

Those of us who started pre internet access had to learn the old fashioned way, by trying over and over on our own, frequently without any source of help and by experimentation.

 

I think the ability to get instant advice and help has changed the way music is created, produced and distributed and it takes a lot less time now. Not that that's a bad thing.

 

With todays access to information and help, the term "practicing your craft" has sort of gone away..

[GZsound]

Ah the good old days....

 

When I started playing we didn't have or need a PA. Just five kids under 16 riding around in a 56 Cadillac convertable (had to leave the top down..all year long so our upright bass would fit) playing instrumentals only for anywhere that would pay us five bucks each... That was in 1961.

 

Got picked up by a big regional band and eventually ended up opening for the major acts who came to town. Sonny & Cher, The Dave Clark Five, Them, The Rascals, etc. Spent some time on the road with Gary Lewis & The Playboys.... So my musical life was managed by others. I never worried about PA systems..or singing.

 

After Uncle Sam let me go home in 1971 I wanted to start a band, but none of my friends knew the words to the songs. None of them had a PA. I started because nobody else stepped up.

 

Our first PA was a Radio Shack battery powered mic mixer with four Radio Shack high impedence mics and a Sears Silvertone guitar amp...

 

Recording demo's was done on my Teac stereo reel to reel, cassette, etc. and slowly upgrading as funds permitted through four track reel to reel, four track cassette, eight track reel to reel..etc.

 

In 1975 I got hired to join a six piece show band touring the west coast. I had to provide the PA, mix sound from stage, record all the demo tracks..sing and play. That lasted until 1980 when I built my second studio.

 

So I spent most of my time as a player and recording was something I had to do to get decent demo recordings and decent product to sell at our gigs..

 

Now I still get the best of both worlds by playing in my band a couple times a month and recording the rest of the time.

 

But I wish I would have had the access to information to learn more and faster.. like now...when I was growing up.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Well... starting in 1989 sort of disqualifies you from beng "old".. And the fact you had internet access is one of the reasons I started this thread.. Those of us who started pre internet access had to learn the old fashioned way, by trying over and over on our own, frequently without any source of help and by experimentation.

 

 

I did learn a lot of stuff pre-internet (this is mostly between the time I first got the Akai in '89 and the mid-'90s). Although I was aware of the internet in the early '90s, I didn't get online until the mid-'90s, so I learned from trial and error, following engineers around, and reading books. And those are still great ways of learning how to do things. The internet adds one more (rather immediate) way of learning, which is great.

[Dave Martin]

 

I did learn a lot of stuff pre-internet (this is mostly between the time I first got the Akai in '89 and the mid-'90s). Although I was aware of the internet in the early '90s, I didn't get online until the mid-'90s, so I learned from trial and error, following engineers around, and reading books. And those are still great ways of learning how to do things. The internet adds one more (rather immediate) way of learning, which is great.

 

 

I'll also add that when you found rec.audio.pro more than 10 years ago, the signal to noise ratio wasn't NEARLY as high is it is in most forums today; there were still professional engineers who were willing to share knowledge and experience. I'm afraid that these days, it's mostly the blind leading the blind....

[UstadKhanAli]

That's a good point, Dave. That's why I don't post there anymore. Back then, it was far more helpful, and I met a lot of great people from there.

[BrainChild]

Gosh I still feel young, am I really old now since I grew up and remember when the cassette came out. I was playing guitar in a band and an older friend helped me learn a lot and loaned me his gear to use. My dad got one of the first Sony portables and I started recording stuff in mono. Then I got a few stereo cassette decks and began bouncing one to the other to get multiple tracks. I also found out how to use the deck in the pause mode as a preamp to get a distorted guitar sound. We also got an 8-track tape player that recorded stereo and made some live recordings around 1974, which I still have. From there our band started recording at a few local studios that had 8 track machines and Studiomaster boards and I always was on top of the engineers gleaning anything I could learn. Then I started buying recorders and working with them, from a Yamaha 4 track cassette, Fostex A80, Tascam 80-8, to a Fostex B16 and many others. When the VHS came out we started recording masters to it and then the PCM Beta's. I read anything I could and hung out with lots of sound guys. I ran live sound and started a sound company. I remember an old book by Heil about live sound that was pretty infomative. I remember the first computer setup we had was an Atari running C-Lab, Pro24, and some kind of 2 channel interface. I had a music store by then and remember when Twelve Tone started trying to talk me into carrying their software and I thought it was stupid. I was first on our block with the original 2408's and a $5k PII computer. Time flies and here we are now.

[Lee Knight]

Gosh I still feel young, am I really old now since I grew up and remember when the cassette came out...

 

 

Old Guys

 

Tom Dowd. Ken Scott. Alan Parsons. Tony Platt. Hugh Padgham. Tony Visconti. Elliot Scheiner. Al Schmidt. George Martin...

 

We can add ourselves to the list then, huh?

[Lee Flier]

Well, I grew up in Los Angeles, so I did have the advantage of being able to pick people's brains directly and started interning at studios at a young age (15 or 16) during the late 70's, which was an awesome time for audio quality. I still think internship the best way to learn if you can. If you can't, the Internet is great because people with a clue can pass their knowledge on to a whole LOT of other n00bs, whereas before they were limited to the specific n00bs they picked as interns. The Internet isn't the same thing as personal attention in a real life studio, but not everyone can have that.

 

Nowadays there is little excuse for recordings to suck, but it seems more sucky recordings are made than ever. I suppose that's only because so many more people are recording than ever have, and whenever you get "the masses" doing anything, a large percentage is going to suck.

[GZsound]

I also think that there are more quality recordings now which creates a problem in getting them heard.

 

I bought a mixer from a kid the other day and he gave me his bedroom produced CD.. Four songs of him singing and playing his guitar.

 

Man....it was great. Very well done, excellent singer/songwriter and great sounding acoustic guitar.

 

He can't get arrested and nobody will hear his music because it instantly got lost in the myspace type universe of massive crappola..

 

 

I got involved in recording because the quality of the "professional" recording studio's we used in the early 70's simply didn't meet my idea of quality. I felt I could do a better job by myself..and started trying to figure out how to accomplish that.

 

I forgot about using VHS video machines as two track mastering and I forgot about my old (Toshiba?) VHS recorder that also recorded 12 bit PCM audio.

 

All that stuff, including the Radio Shack PZM mics I bought, were recommendations found in Modern Recording magazine...I think.

 

But the internet sure makes it easy to find out about good equipment, techniques, etc. and I wonder where us older guys would be if we would have had the same "leg up" that the younger generation takes for granted.

[The Real Ant]

I started recoding in 1990 on some Tascam 4-track that can't rememer the name of. We used to use that with just two room mics to record ideas and jams that we were working up into songs.

 

From that we graduated to a Tascam 388 which was basically an 8-track full console with a built in 1/4" reel-to reel. We got it used and it worked great. Using that we would mic all the intruments live in one room and record. We recorded jams and rehearsals and even ended up making a decent sounding demo that we used to get gigs. We got quite a few gigs from the demo actually. Since the band rehearsed in my basement I was the one who had fulltime access and I got into recording more and more. I even recorded a couple demos for an acoustic duo that I was friends with and they used that recording to get gigs. I basically learned on my own from whatever I picked up when we would go to a pro studio to do recordings. I never even read any recording mags.

 

Unfortunately when thay band broke up and we divided up the gear I ended up with some $$$ and the PA system for which I really had no use.

 

Now I've got a little Pro-Tools rig which works fine for me since I mostly work on tnes by myself now. I'll just expand my current set up once I get a dedicated space where I can some more noise.

 

The internet is a great resource for me now.

 

...oh yeah, I'm not old.

[Kid Klash]

I guess I came in the back door... I first found myself in recording studios in the mid to late 60's, recording with bands that I was a member of, and just learning a lot by watching and asking questions. It was a completely different world back then, not just technically, but the whole vibe and pecking order of who did what, and how they approached things. Some studios were very "straight" and thought rock music was a total waste, but there were others that figured "whatever makes money" was cool, and it was those studios that were great places to learn. That information (mic'ing, studio layout, using gobos, using compression, monitoring in mono, then stereo, etc.) are the building blocks that I still use today.

[Phil O'Keefe]

I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that I might incriminate myself on the "old" part.

[Lee Flier]

I also think that there are more quality recordings now which creates a problem in getting them heard. I bought a mixer from a kid the other day and he gave me his bedroom produced CD.. Four songs of him singing and playing his guitar. Man....it was great. Very well done, excellent singer/songwriter and great sounding acoustic guitar. He can't get arrested and nobody will hear his music because it instantly got lost in the myspace type universe of massive crappola..

 

Yeah, this is very true... there is a lot of great stuff out now that never gets heard.

 

I got involved in recording because the quality of the "professional" recording studio's we used in the early 70's simply didn't meet my idea of quality. I felt I could do a better job by myself..and started trying to figure out how to accomplish that.

 

Yeah, that is pretty much the reason I got into it. It seemed I could never get the sound I wanted or even communicate to the engineer what I was looking for, and it was frustrating. I always seemed to have a particular sound in my head even as a kid, so I guess I was meant to start seeking that out for myself. Not that I didn't meet some engineers later on who could do what I wanted and then some... but I couldn't have afforded those guys when I started.

[Beck]

I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that I might incriminate myself on the "old" part.

 

LOL