Pitfalls of obsessive behavior
Endless Takes: The reason records used to be made in a matter of hours was that the musicians were all union pros and they could do it in one or two takes. In the old school, an arranger figured out the right instrumentation, the tempo, the feel, and wrote charts for the musicians The singers were pros that were signed by record companies, and studios were prohibitively expensive to most amateurs. The producer was the leader, oversaw the recording and decided how to navigate the whole thing through the goal posts without going overtime. Now, since people write and perform their own songs, and studios are infinitely cheaper to rent, anyone can record. However, you have to be prepared and rehearsed, otherwise you become weary of it by the time you can actually play the song correctly. There is the magic of the first take. The problem is that if you don't know the song well, your magical vibe on take 1 is ruined by mistakes, or worse yet, completely breaks down and stops before the ending. Sometimes it's take 2 or 3, but in my experience, by the fourth or fifth time, people change their playing, their attitude is skewed, and it's just not the same. Often you have to go back later in the day, or try again another day.
Digital Editing: It's very tempting nowadays to clear up every little deviation from the ideal with Pro Tools and I find it takes a level of humanity and integrity away with every edit. The "mistakes" are often the most beloved and memorable bits in a recording. It is an endless quest that can go to infinite proportions, and wastes studio time. Also, when recording on the computer, looking at the screen, your eyes will tell you what you think you're hearing. I've had someone spot an "error" on the screen, ask me to change it around, listen again, move it some more, deem it "perfect," only to have it revealed we weren't even listening to that track! As producer, I try to keep the big picture and often have to wean the client or a band member off the Pro Tools obsessions and get back to the music. Of course we just want to "get it right" but making everything consistent in a homogenous manner for the sake of order doesn't make for good music. Bad music isn't music with mistakes, bad music is something that makes you feel nothing.
Electronic dance music benefits from robotic qualities, however. The perfectly aligned rhythms help make the trance-inducing sounds, which is fantastic for those who like it. It's a different thing to apply that method to tracks played by a rock band or anything ensemble playing.
And what is the "right" way for these blobs to appear on the screen? Lining them up doesn't always mean it sounds good, and if you move several sonic events to the same point in time, the sounds mask each other. The snare will obliterate the tambourine, etc. Having instruments complement each other, impacting at slightly different times gives even more punch. My point is that there is a growing trend to pursue edits that are inspired only because they look right on the screen. I feel that no one is considering what is being lost in the trade-off.
The exception I make is if a performer simply cannot sing in tune, or play in time, and replacing that performer isn't an option. I can tune it, time it, wrestle it to the ground and make it lie flat and play nicely. I get asked, "...yeah, is there anything you can do to help that?" I tweak it and then the next question is "can you fix all of it?" I can usually hear all that stuff on records and it doesn't make me feel anything. I might actually prefer the limited performance because at least it is real. Rarely does the artist want to leave it as-is.
I want to get an optimized performance, yes, and perfection, whatever that is, hopefully is attainable. The temptation is there to pursue an idealized version of the recording. Deconstruction and reconstruction of it runs the risk of destroying the personality and soul of a production. You satisfy one part of yourself by succeeding in everything line up while stripping clean the very thing that makes it human. No human can honk a car horn in perfect robotic time, like when the car alarm has been activated.
The interesting part of this practice is that the more we become accustomed to hearing music that is optimized this way, the more we come to expect it.
Digital Editing: It's very tempting nowadays to clear up every little deviation from the ideal with Pro Tools and I find it takes a level of humanity and integrity away with every edit. The "mistakes" are often the most beloved and memorable bits in a recording. It is an endless quest that can go to infinite proportions, and wastes studio time. Also, when recording on the computer, looking at the screen, your eyes will tell you what you think you're hearing. I've had someone spot an "error" on the screen, ask me to change it around, listen again, move it some more, deem it "perfect," only to have it revealed we weren't even listening to that track! As producer, I try to keep the big picture and often have to wean the client or a band member off the Pro Tools obsessions and get back to the music. Of course we just want to "get it right" but making everything consistent in a homogenous manner for the sake of order doesn't make for good music. Bad music isn't music with mistakes, bad music is something that makes you feel nothing.
Electronic dance music benefits from robotic qualities, however. The perfectly aligned rhythms help make the trance-inducing sounds, which is fantastic for those who like it. It's a different thing to apply that method to tracks played by a rock band or anything ensemble playing.
And what is the "right" way for these blobs to appear on the screen? Lining them up doesn't always mean it sounds good, and if you move several sonic events to the same point in time, the sounds mask each other. The snare will obliterate the tambourine, etc. Having instruments complement each other, impacting at slightly different times gives even more punch. My point is that there is a growing trend to pursue edits that are inspired only because they look right on the screen. I feel that no one is considering what is being lost in the trade-off.
The exception I make is if a performer simply cannot sing in tune, or play in time, and replacing that performer isn't an option. I can tune it, time it, wrestle it to the ground and make it lie flat and play nicely. I get asked, "...yeah, is there anything you can do to help that?" I tweak it and then the next question is "can you fix all of it?" I can usually hear all that stuff on records and it doesn't make me feel anything. I might actually prefer the limited performance because at least it is real. Rarely does the artist want to leave it as-is.
I want to get an optimized performance, yes, and perfection, whatever that is, hopefully is attainable. The temptation is there to pursue an idealized version of the recording. Deconstruction and reconstruction of it runs the risk of destroying the personality and soul of a production. You satisfy one part of yourself by succeeding in everything line up while stripping clean the very thing that makes it human. No human can honk a car horn in perfect robotic time, like when the car alarm has been activated.
The interesting part of this practice is that the more we become accustomed to hearing music that is optimized this way, the more we come to expect it.
There is a practical side of it all, I know, and that is just to make something listenable when things are really screwed up. Those kinds of mistakes are total messes that can be chopped up and made into a track. I have been asked to make something musical out of really impossible-sounding drum performances, which is often the case with editing. I feel like a plastic surgeon that is trying to reconstruct a blown-up hand, or doing body work on a totaled car. The frame is bent, it'll never really be the same.
Mixing: I think we all learn as we go, what seems the big goal on projects one year gets to be easy stuff as time goes by. Drum sounds are easier for me to get now than 10 years ago, there was a while where I could never get the bass sound I wanted, and it seems everyone goes through a period of using compressors too much.
Another luxury we have, along with endless editing, is the fact that with digital everything, the mix is never done until you decide that it is, as opposed to when we mixed on loads of racked gear and an analog mixer. On analog, you could go back for a revision of the mix, but you could rarely get everything to sound exactly the same after a hardware settings recall, and it might take hours to reset all the knobs after having written every knob setting down when you last mixed it, which also took a long time. And if you forgot one switch, you are sunk and are basically starting from a new place. This unreliable and expensive method forced the artist or client to make decisions and live with them.
Now we can listen to a mix on an iPod at the gym, get picky about how the piano hits going into the verse, or something, and email your engineer in the middle of the night with twenty little "fixes." And we'll happily do it! It's the same thing as the editing obsession, now with the mix. Trimming those hedges little bit here and there until you have no hedge.
Mixing: I think we all learn as we go, what seems the big goal on projects one year gets to be easy stuff as time goes by. Drum sounds are easier for me to get now than 10 years ago, there was a while where I could never get the bass sound I wanted, and it seems everyone goes through a period of using compressors too much.
Another luxury we have, along with endless editing, is the fact that with digital everything, the mix is never done until you decide that it is, as opposed to when we mixed on loads of racked gear and an analog mixer. On analog, you could go back for a revision of the mix, but you could rarely get everything to sound exactly the same after a hardware settings recall, and it might take hours to reset all the knobs after having written every knob setting down when you last mixed it, which also took a long time. And if you forgot one switch, you are sunk and are basically starting from a new place. This unreliable and expensive method forced the artist or client to make decisions and live with them.
Now we can listen to a mix on an iPod at the gym, get picky about how the piano hits going into the verse, or something, and email your engineer in the middle of the night with twenty little "fixes." And we'll happily do it! It's the same thing as the editing obsession, now with the mix. Trimming those hedges little bit here and there until you have no hedge.