The Steel Guitar Forum

A quote from a friend of mine who is a producer with a thirty year track record of awards and hit records- I showed him the posting about Mutt Lange and he said:-
"Mutt is one of the few producers who still gets a budget to make a record. Of course he does that, he has the time and money to do it. Most of the stuff these days - well you do the best you can, then the mix goes off to a mastering studio, and they run a couple of passes through a multi band compressor and that's it.
The record companies say the all the pop stuff is on MP3 anyway, so why bother?"


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Cheers!
Dave

Welcome to the Pro-tool world.!!
Oh Yes, cheating is the thing that is happening, if you will see it this way. But as long as recording excists, it happens, only the possibilities to have so much tracks , and pick the best one out to use, have taken a flight with digital recording.

What is cheating? If your wife is using make-up, is that cheating too? If Rembrandt came back the next day, and put some paint over some spots he wasn't satisfied with on his paintings, was that cheating?
That' s the difference in live-playing and recording. Every producer/engineer has to fight with the factors :making a product that breathes, something that is perfect for the goal, something that pleases the listeners(and buyer's ears),being original and giving him credits by other artists/producers, for getting a next job, and not the forget: the possibilities and impossibilities from the musicians and the tools they work with.
Every new invention in recording has it's perpose, and a lot of producers can do good things with it.
However: I do some protools-recordings for a German rock-band, the last one took me two days and a night to lay down about 90 tracks, to be used in three songs, about 30 tracks a song. When I heard to results it took me a lot of time to get 'used to it'. The whole story that I tried to tell with my playing, was interpreted in another way, a lot of cutting and pasting, it was not me anymore. The end result is OK, but when I play the record now , I listen to another.
The producer is satisfied, and this is his way of working. The CD sells, and the jobs for me with him continue... JJ

Wheee Fellows..........

It's hard to "Cheat" on a live gig.

One of the hardest things our group contends with is when I or the 6-string player has to impress upon them,: If you cain't reproduce it on a live show,DON'T put it on a recording.




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http://home.comcast.net/~crookwf/

http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/crookwf/my_photos

<SMALL>One of the hardest things our group contends with is when I or the 6-string player has to impress upon them,: If you cain't reproduce it on a live show,DON'T put it on a recording.</SMALL>

I don't agree. It depends on your goal. Do you want to archive the exact sound of the band, or create something unique? Personally - I think both goals are valid. But, if you have the ability to do something creative in the studio - why not? I used to judge live performances based on what I knew from the album - not anymore. If the tune is a good one, it will stand. I appreciate the uniqueness of live music.

I'm glad there are great albums like Sergeant Pepper, Pet Sounds, Switched on Bach - (name your fav.) - they'll never be reproduced live exactly like they were recorded. That's ok. It's all good music in the end.

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Chris Kennison
Ft. Collins, Colorado
"There is no spoon" www.book-em-danno.com


<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by seldomfed on 07 June 2004 at 12:00 PM.]</p></FONT>

I agree with Chris (above). A live performance is not the only valid form of musical expression. A recording is equally valid and can stand on its own merits, without having to be compared to whether a group of live musicians can produce the same thing.

Think of a movie. Is a movie only valid if you could see the exact same thing happen on stage using live actors? Hardly. Do we accept "special effects" in the movies? You bet!

My band plays live shows, and we sell our CD's after the show. This is our only CD distribution. I feel that we have a good stage presentation, and this first impression is what creates the demand for our CD's. However, I want the buyers of the CD to go home and listen to the CD, and hear something even better than what caused them to buy the CD in the first place. It is hoped that this second impression will cause them to want to talk about us positively with their friends, and then they and their friends will all come to see our next live show when we pass through that area.
To create that favorable second impression on our CD, we took some liberties with the recording process.
I have at times been disappointed with live recordings in the past. I also have been occasionally disappointed with CD's purposely made to sound "just like we sound live on stage".

I think the question was more about studio work and an end product, not neccessaraly live performances. I do both live and studio work, however most can do live what they can do in the studio. Somtimes I'll do a steel track and might only use part of it because it interfered with something else on the session, so I cut & paste. It's kinda like picking and choosing the best parts and what works best for the recording. Live performances (to me anyway) are more forgiving unless it's a total train wreck and I'v had my share of live gigs that had less than a great performances, anyway to my standards. Most of the time the listeners very seldom here the little mistakes, except for a mucians in the crowd and they catch everything. So to me, the orginal question was studio work not live gigs. You can't cheat on stage or can you?
My playing live gigs is a little like my golf game, when I'm on, my drives are down the middle and when I'm off, I'm in the bushes. But I'm better playing my steel than I am drive the little white ball, I think anyway
Just my thoughts and no ones elses.

Clay

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><HR><SMALL>You can't cheat on stage or can you?
</SMALL><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Oh yes you can! I've been told that some of the biggest "country music" stars use not just one but TWO auto-tuners on their microphones for live performances! One for coarse tuning, and one for fine-tuning!

Tim you said it best. I think Patsy Cline did Walking after Midnite
it one take at the "Barn". The idea was to get a performance on the track. In those days they were lucky enough not to have all the studio stuff we have today.

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Gordon Borland
MSA D10,NASHVILLE 400,SESSIONS 2000,PEAVEY ADDVERB,SOME WIRES AND A BATTERY.


<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Gordon Borland on 08 June 2004 at 09:18 PM.]</p></FONT>

When it comes to recording, using the tools that are available to us today isn't any different in concept than using the new tools developed for pedal steels or amps or bars, or the myriad of instruction material. Tools is tools...use 'em.

Mike