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All Of Those Old Records Have Mistakes On Them

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(@fleaaaaaa)
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http://www.bravewords.com/news/185505

A quote from Randy Bachman of the Canadian band "The Guess whos"

So here is what I was wanting to ask about...... are there any records where you think that there are mistakes and do they make it just SO much better?

Apparently I have read the organ intro to "like a rolling stone" by Dylan was shambolic and would never appear on a modern record - I didn't quite get what was meant by that one.

"Way Down inside" - The echo on Whole Lotta Love is not a designed effect using a delay but a tape bleed!

Also do you think if music these days was recorded like it used to be we would get better results, protools and the like make it so easy to hide mistakes, perfect albums til they are lifeless - quantize (put in time), autotune and copy and paste bits around so less work is required. Or you could argue the opposite that all of these things are positive - and make recording easier and that these are now standard tools of the industry.

So what is your opinion?

together we stand, divided we fall..........


   
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 cnev
(@cnev)
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I don't thnk mistakes are limited to just records there are still mistakes on recent recordings also.

"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!


   
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(@boxboy)
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Maybe this is a little different from what you're talking about flea, but it's the most famous 'mistake' I could think of off the top of my head:

'I've always had 'Crossroads' held up as, like, one of the great landmarks of guitar playing, but most of that solo is on the wrong beat. Instead of playing on the two and four, I'm playing on the one and three and thinking, 'that's the off beat.' No wonder people think it's so good-because it's wrong!"'
- Eric Clapton, April '98 interview with Britain's Mojo.

Don


   
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(@fleaaaaaa)
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I think maybe what a lot of people really dig about old records is there is a lot of unrefined character about it..... if someone hit a few open strings in a solo it wouldn't be removed.... the sound and production was not as crystal clear and clean as now... which gives it a certain sound - strange things were done as experiments (Hendrix and Beatles panning things into strange places). I mean I doubt anyone would put out Led Zep - Heartbreaker out now as it was then, it is all about attitude, it is totally sloppy but it is also brilliant.

together we stand, divided we fall..........


   
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(@trguitar)
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Happy accidents? I had read in Guitar world where they remastered Layla and it was hard to do because they were riding the faders throughout the song and broke many basic rules of recording such as not having the bass and drums panned center. It said they were ... um "in an altered state" while doing the sessions. I have also heard that Inagaddadavida is the drunk crooning of "In the garden of Eden" by highly intoxicated Iron Butterfly members. Still all sounds cool though!

"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
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(@alangreen)
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In the old days, of course, you'd put the band in the studio up fairly close to the mics, hit the button, and the recording would be cut straight onto the disc. There's be no room for edits, so you took the one take flying by the seat of your pants and hoped it was a good one.

I think the old method's quaint, but you wouldn't do it that way now. I think our modern methods give us better recordings even though they are a bit lifeless.

"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk


   
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(@ezraplaysezra)
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I think our modern methods give us better recordings even though they are a bit lifeless.

Better lifeless recordings, I couldn't agree more.

Even when I'm tracking in DAW I treat it like tape and rarely use more than 8 tracks. We record primarily live and try not to do edits. You get better takes, better mistakes and overall better tracks. I have heard lots of pretty good recording go horribly wrong in mixing because of the sheer number of tracks and personal fatigue or over exuberance. The Beatles used 8 tracks for sgt pepper on - who the hell do you think you are, Zubin Mehta? Take penny lane for instance, all of those instruments and vocals on 8 tracks - the french horn is on the vocal track!!! The original piece of music was altered to fit into the solo break between the vocal tracks, the only place it could go on the tape.

I am a sucker for outtakes, 1st takes, ground tracks, B sides, Board feeds, 4 tracks and Alternates. I like recordings to feel like I'm in the room much more than the best possible rendition. Obviously, mass appeal dictates that music sounds like it was created in a vacuum because the average person pretty much thinks that's how it happens but if you look into the really great producers and you'll find lot of "life" in the tracks even when the product is surgical - listen to ghost in the machine or synchronicity as examples - perfect surgical recordings with plenty of life.

Great post.


   
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(@fleaaaaaa)
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Does anyone know when the transition of recording everything separately and to a click started? What I mean is that now if you record you will start with the drummer recording to a click track and do every single track separately. I was having this talk with a friend and was saying about Led Zeppelin - Black Dog, he thinks there was no click track involved at all on that one, and I think he was probably right because the studio version of Black dog, it seems pretty difficult to count the spaces - as if they did it all with eye contact and nods - and if you hear the live versions they make it much simpler.

together we stand, divided we fall..........


   
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(@alangreen)
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Les Paul gave us multitrack recording when he took German tape-recording technology back to the US after WW2, so sometime around the late 1940s is when we got the potential. Jimi Hendrix is quoted as saying to one recording engineer that he should just put the mic "about 12 feet in front of the band" so at the start of the 1970s it hadn't quite taken off like it should.

Playing to click tracks is just one aspect of how recording performance has changed in the 20th century. A hundred years ago we played faster because we were limited to one side of vinyl, with less focus on solid timings, and with a number of idiomatic techniques (including portamento) that we don't really use any more. Now we can get the whole of Beethoven's 9th symphony on one CD there's no need to squeeze everything into four minutes.

"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk


   
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(@greybeard)
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Well, my initial thought was that a click track was probably first used on multi-track tape, wider than 1/4". You lose too much of the recording capability by dedicating 1 track on 1/4" tape. I would have suspected that, up to that point, a metronome had been used.
I found a Wikipedia entry for "click track", which was most enlightening - it, apparently, started as an aid to musicians, dubbing sound tracks for movies.

There is also a nice comment about metronome/click track's effect on music:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_track

"Using a click track, does not really allow a natural shifting of tempo, that would be vital for expressive phrasing and instances of fermata, accelerando, ritardando, etc.

"And many recent recordings of pop music demonstrate how music is killed by a metronome for they are as square as a draftsman's T"

I started with nothing - and I've still got most of it left.
Did you know that the word "gullible" is not in any dictionary?
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(@fleaaaaaa)
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Yeah and the Led Zep records had a lot of long spaces..... and tempo changes - those artists at that time must have had so much inner pulse.

together we stand, divided we fall..........


   
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(@trguitar)
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Definitely the draw back of a click track is the loss of using tempo in a dynamic way.

"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
-- The Webb Wilder Credo --


   
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(@ezraplaysezra)
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Are click tracks the norm? I have played on albums where a click track was used initially but the majority of recordings I have done have not. Of coarse, I've not played on pop albums or anything like that.


   
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(@alangreen)
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I wouldn't dream of recording any of my own material without a click track. It helps to time things up when you do the overdubs.

"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk


   
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(@fleaaaaaa)
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Could you imagine today's reaction though if Bob Dylan was a new an upcoming pop star? - American Idol judges - "You can't even stay in tune Bob!" - if he then made it to be famous they would auto-tune the heck out of him. :roll:

together we stand, divided we fall..........


   
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