Post by loveless on Apr 28, 2020 16:32:40 GMT
I suspect there's plenty to agree AND disagree with here, depending on one's personal "North Star".
I don't know much about Martin Newell OR his music, but...he's generally singing my song here.
TOWARDS IMPERFECT POP
:
It could well be my age, but those pop albums made between 1964 and 1968, along with the post-punk crop of the mid-to-late 70s are still the best things I have ever heard. Were ever guitars so jangly? Were ever the vocal harmonies so raw, the drums so ringing – and the cymbals so sibilant? Seems like the older I get, the more I rebel against the tyranny of the computer screen in the recording studio. I'm not a luddite and I know you should never look back down the time tunnel but I think that technology, having superseded the art form, has now robbed the recording process of something vital. Never have we been so imprisoned by sheer weight of choice. Things are now perfectly dull where they used to be brilliantly flawed. Things used to be more.... fun
So here's my submission to the court, M'Luv: If it is a reasonable record you would be making, you must first write your songs. Then you should write, record and release your stuff: all within the same short few months if possible. This is what the pop gods of old did. It was how they ensnared their zeitgeist. You should write twice as many songs as you need and throw the weaker ones out. You should try and do without computers and time-codes as much as possible. You don't want expensive drums...nice cheap kit played by an idiot who can keep a beat and then add some kitchen implements. If you use a drum machine get one so cheap or commonplace that everyone knows exactly what it is. Do swamp it in nasty reverb. I often use a cheap beatbox which I found incorporated in an even cheaper guitar pedal. Don't get any 'musos' in to help. All the best pop is done by improvers, outsiders, ignorant ego-maniacs and gifted amateurs blundering around in the darkness.
Double-track your vocals naturally and sloppily so that they aren't exactly on top of each other. This actually sounds good and endearing. Ditto the odd bum-note, dropped beat, and sound-effect pedal audibly crunching in. For they are as the gobbets, flares and sparks of a natural fire. Do short recording sessions. Three or four hours at a time, during daylight. Work on two or three different things at once, as if the studio was a kitchen and you, the cook: Prepare one thing, while another comes to the boil and a third is iced and decorated. This way you retain some of your perspective, instead of being hunched like an obsessive bug-eyed maniac over the snare-drum sound for three months
Don't do loads of drop-ins. Try to record vocal performances for instance, in one long take, with only your truly embarrassing clunkers having to be re-sung. Stick some compression on it and try to get it released as quickly as possible. Your listeners may at first be startled – unused as they are to such musical roughage. Your fellow musicians will accuse you of sloppiness. But you will have escaped the current musical Stepford which so many currently languish in. And your record, unencumbered by the production gimmicks of the age, may still sound timeless in decades to come. Finally, question all advice, especially mine.
I don't know much about Martin Newell OR his music, but...he's generally singing my song here.
TOWARDS IMPERFECT POP
:
It could well be my age, but those pop albums made between 1964 and 1968, along with the post-punk crop of the mid-to-late 70s are still the best things I have ever heard. Were ever guitars so jangly? Were ever the vocal harmonies so raw, the drums so ringing – and the cymbals so sibilant? Seems like the older I get, the more I rebel against the tyranny of the computer screen in the recording studio. I'm not a luddite and I know you should never look back down the time tunnel but I think that technology, having superseded the art form, has now robbed the recording process of something vital. Never have we been so imprisoned by sheer weight of choice. Things are now perfectly dull where they used to be brilliantly flawed. Things used to be more.... fun
So here's my submission to the court, M'Luv: If it is a reasonable record you would be making, you must first write your songs. Then you should write, record and release your stuff: all within the same short few months if possible. This is what the pop gods of old did. It was how they ensnared their zeitgeist. You should write twice as many songs as you need and throw the weaker ones out. You should try and do without computers and time-codes as much as possible. You don't want expensive drums...nice cheap kit played by an idiot who can keep a beat and then add some kitchen implements. If you use a drum machine get one so cheap or commonplace that everyone knows exactly what it is. Do swamp it in nasty reverb. I often use a cheap beatbox which I found incorporated in an even cheaper guitar pedal. Don't get any 'musos' in to help. All the best pop is done by improvers, outsiders, ignorant ego-maniacs and gifted amateurs blundering around in the darkness.
Double-track your vocals naturally and sloppily so that they aren't exactly on top of each other. This actually sounds good and endearing. Ditto the odd bum-note, dropped beat, and sound-effect pedal audibly crunching in. For they are as the gobbets, flares and sparks of a natural fire. Do short recording sessions. Three or four hours at a time, during daylight. Work on two or three different things at once, as if the studio was a kitchen and you, the cook: Prepare one thing, while another comes to the boil and a third is iced and decorated. This way you retain some of your perspective, instead of being hunched like an obsessive bug-eyed maniac over the snare-drum sound for three months
Don't do loads of drop-ins. Try to record vocal performances for instance, in one long take, with only your truly embarrassing clunkers having to be re-sung. Stick some compression on it and try to get it released as quickly as possible. Your listeners may at first be startled – unused as they are to such musical roughage. Your fellow musicians will accuse you of sloppiness. But you will have escaped the current musical Stepford which so many currently languish in. And your record, unencumbered by the production gimmicks of the age, may still sound timeless in decades to come. Finally, question all advice, especially mine.
