Harry's Place Arts

Okay.

But where’s your Shot of Love review? I’m waiting for you to agree with me about Heart of Mine.

“But where’s your Shot of Love review?”

I’m working on it. It’s in the queue.

What’s happened is that a young band are expected to be far more professional than ever before. You don’t sit outside a bar in Soho and get “discovered” anymore, you have to make your own recordings, website, and spend hours promoting yourself online.

Record companies can only afford to spend money on sure-fire things where all the work has already been done. That or have a famous parent of course.

I have often suspected that there will be a massive outpouring of creativity (akin in size to the sixties) in a few years time when all my friends who have the technology (and some who actually have some talent) master the equipment and actually let others hear what they have been doing in their bedrooms for a decade.

And when you do make it you needn’t bother asking for a sub to go to chuffin Montserrat to record it.
Off the top of my head wasn’t Talking Heads fear of music recorded on a 4 track porta studio? I thought that sounded fantastic.

“Off the top of my head wasn’t Talking Heads fear of music recorded on a 4 track porta studio? I thought that sounded fantastic.”

Hahaha! No, I seriously doubt it! I *do* seem to remember hearing it was recorded in one of their bedrooms, but they had a mobile recording studio parked in the drive. The sort of OB Unit used to record concerts. It was “portable” only in the sense that it was on the back of a truck.

Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska was recorded on a portable 4-track. But is sounds like it.

They used to do a 4 track recorder in richer sounds, it cost a packet. I’d assumed you’d get really good results with one, least if you learned how to use it and forked out for a decent mic. The strawberry studios in Stockport looked pretty closed down last time I looked, that was where 10cc and Joy Division used to record.

An argument could be made that the up-hill struggle and competition for access to the facilities in the past separated the musical wheat from the cacophonous chaff.

Well, there was a time when reading and writing was for specialists. Only monks did it, or priests. Aren’t we glad that by, oh, the sixteenth century there were grammar schools and the likes of Shakespeare were taught how to write? Even today there are some societies where there are letter writers in villages and the main population can’t read. Don’t we wish for schools for them?

Undoubtedly more crap gets written but those whose talents would have once gone unexpressed now have a means to express them.

I’d say as a general rule anything that makes forms of communication and recording open to a larger public are a good thing.

I saw that ‘britannia’ prog about synth pop on the Bbc last night… It seems ‘sweet dreams’ by the eurhythmics was home recorded… Joy divisions first synth was soldered up by barney from instructions in a magazine, though he got to use a pro studio, ‘cargo’ in exotic rochdale… Later called ‘suite 16′ iirc.
Pretty shocking that no mention was made of Sparks or John Michelle Jarre who you’d think would have enthused people in the 70s at least as much as kraftwerk and Georgio Moroder.

’sweet dreams’ by the eurhythmics – of course the entire thing would have been a programed into a sequencer, so the only “recording” necessary would have been to overdub the vocals.

Genuine question brett, why’s it harder to make a good recording of your guitar than annie’s voice? The vocals on that record sound to my naieve ear like they’ve been overdubbed from a few takes to fatten the sound up a bit.

“Genuine question brett, why’s it harder to make a good recording of your guitar than annie’s voice?”

It isn’t. The problem with a portastudio is that there are only 4 mono tracks. You need more than that to get a good drum balance these days.

With a sequencer, Dave Stewart would have programed a stereo sequence and, if he was using midi, he’d just need one track on teh portastudio for the sync pulse chich would trigger all the synth modules and soundbanks. The remaining three tracks could then be used for the vocals – double-tracking the lead vocal and one left for backing vocals. Because teh sequencer parts are in stereo, you can get a nice stereo mix with that plus three vocal tracks to pan and EQ.

This is why Springsteen was able to record Nebraska on a 4-track. Because he only needed one track for his guitar, one for his voice, and stillhad two tracks left for overdupping a secodn guitar, harmonica and backing vocals where needed.

The real issue is the loss of quality when you “bounce down”. The first problem is that it uses cassette tape, which is a lot noisier than the 1/2 inch tape used in studios. That is why bouncing doesn’t really work, because each ‘bounce’ loses dynamic range and adds hiss.

Bouncing works like this. Working in mono, you record a drum rack on T1, bass on T2, rhythm guitar on T3. You then do a mix and “bounce” it down to T4. You can’t go backwards. Whatever mixing decion you make here you have to live with.

T4 is now your “rhythym track”. You wipe T1-3. On T1 you record keyboards and on T2 second Guitar. You then do another mix (which you can’t undo) and bounce these down to T3.

That leaves T1 for lead vocals, and T2 for backing vocals and any instrumental solos (assuming you don’t have vocals over solos).

At this point you have two generations of hiss and the only mixing control you have is over the levels of the vocals/solos in realtion to the backing track (which is in mono,because you sacrificed stereo for additional tracks).

Personally, I found the best results was getting a ‘live’ recording of the band on T1 and T2 – doing as many takes as necessary, and then using T3/4 for vocal and solo overdubs.

So basically, for anything other than folk music of electronic music where most of the track is sequenced, a protastudio is only really good for demo-quality recordings.

It’s nice having the option to have infinite tracks, but it’s not that cheap! You still need one mike per track, as well as the cabling etc. The software, if legal, costs an arm and a leg too. Being able to produce CDs at little more than a quid a pop with a proper sleeve and everything is awesome though.

The most important factor is still the space I reckon – if you record in a bedroom it’s still going to sound like you recorded it in a bedroom whether you use 4 tracks or 30.

Ta for the explanation brett.

Here’s a tip – if you have the extra space and equipment – for getting the best results (in my experience) with a rock band format recording on a 4-track (assuming you’re a time traveller to the early 90s)

Mic up the drums using 4 mics – 1 on snare/hi-hat, 1 on bass drum (preferably inside on cushion) and the other 2 on either side, high up to catch stereo split, esp, toms and cymbols. Run this into a small mixer and get a nice stereo balance and EQ. Run the output from this small mixer into 2 tracks on your main mixing desk.

Then run your bass, rhythm guitars, keys, etc, into the main mixer and get a live mix, preferably in another room using headphones so you can mix what is actually coming into the board with as little interference from the instruents and/or amps themselves.

Run the stereo mix output from your desk into the first two tracks of your 4-track recorder. Do a test recording and make any necessary adjustments to the mix. Then do a ‘take’. Repeat until you get a good take

Now you have the foundation in stereo. On track 3 you can record lead vocals and guitar (or sax, or whatever) solo (since the solo and the vocals don’t generally run over each other, they can be on the same track and you can adjust the mix during mastering.).

On track 4 you can add backing vocals, extra guitar fills, sound-effects, etc, running through your desk again to get a live mix. If you have more than one backing vocalist, use the same trick you used for drums and get a pre-mix on a smaller mixer and then send that to the desk.

Obviously opinions differ.

And obvioulsy this advice is pretty redundant today when you can record 64 tracks with Garage Band on your laptop and not have to worry about pre-mixes or bouncing down.

In relation to Brett’s tour de force of bouncing down, Beatles do sound terrific on the new mastered cd’s.
Now ‘sweet dreams’ isn’t a good example, because it was a terrific single and of course Annie Lennox.

In relation to Brett’s tour de force of bouncing down, Beatles do sound terrific on the new mastered cd’s.
Now ‘sweet dreams’ isn’t a good example, because it was a terrific single and of course Annie Lennox.

I used to record on a multitrack cassette machine. I think it forced you to be more creative, and ge the parts right. Now with digital, you don’t really need to get it right first time, so maybe things have become more boring. The qulity kicks ass in comparison though.

I used to be a bluegrass band and travel all about playing live for money, or food if they’d give it to us. We always got a good reception and were in a bit of demand. We aquired a Tascam 4 track and recorded ourselves in the mandolin players living room. Oh my word it was appalling.

Few years later I was asked to play on a country album in NZ after I met the band at a jam session – so turned up at the recording studio and was completely freaked out by the whole experience. Never again ever.

I remember the days when if you had a Fostex eight track, everyone envied you ! These days people may have unlimited tracks but if they have not got the talent, the result is still rubbish.
Although saying that, most audio ends up being listened to in MP3 format, so does it really matter that much ?

did it then and still do it now, but instead it’s all on my mac. as far as the sounding like a bedroom thing: if you ensure that the room has no reflection (foam tiles) you can record anything with a good mic, then you define it’s space with reverb.

one thing about going to an actual studio and paying for it, it meant you would have to commit to the task and finish it. working at home means the temptation to endlessly tweak and alter. the fact is that you will never get it perfect but home recording makes you think you can improve it every time you listen, so you end up either going on and on never reaching the standard you imagine it should attain, or overcooking it and ruining the vibe.