perfect recordings vs. great recordings

Is it just me or isnt it so that often times perfect recordings arent necessarily great recordings, and vice versa? This thought comes to me often when I am doing some home recording. I mean, if we were to listen intently to some of our favorite albums and pick them apart as we do our own recordings, I am sure we would find they leave a lot to be desired...or do they? Take a listen to some of The Beatles early stuff, same as The Stones, The Who, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, etc. Some of that stuff sure sounds rough, and of course weve got to bear in mind they didnt have the technology back then that weve got today, still for all, its bloody brilliant! Theres mistakes all over the place, missed cues, all kinds of funky little noises of scraping strings, picks knocking the fretboard or pickguard, sometimes there are even instruments that are slightly, or drastically out of tune! Still for all, I wonder if we could imagine hearing those tunes any other way, blemishes and all? I wonder....It just seems to me, and please correct me if Im wrong people, we are living in an age of recording technology todat where it is so easy for us to *edit* away our *mistakes* that perhaps we are often times actually *editting* much of the magic out of our own recordings by striving for perfection as we do....maybe, maybe not....theres no arguing with the fact that its amazing to have the option of recording 64 virtual tracks and cutting and copying and pasting til its *just right* and *perfect*, but is it really necessary? Are our ears and in fact our whole attitude toward recording so geared toward *todays sound* that perhaps we cant even recognize when weve struck gold anymore? I found something interesting I heard about Buck Owens and the way he used to make his records (Im a big Buck Ownes fan as well as lots of other classic country, outlaw and classic rock stuff too) so I thought it wa great. Of course studios didnt have much in the way of studio monitors or extra tracks to record on or anything, however ol Buck used to mix his stuff down on the ****tiest pair of spair of speakers he could find (even ****ty by the standards in those days even) and if he could make his music sound good through that, logic told him it would only sound better, or at the very least as good as possible for those days, through a car stereos speakers over the radio, or through a jukebox in a honky tonk, which was where his music was gonna be played the most anyways. And who can argue with him, his music sounds as good today as it ever did, to my ears anyways. Maybe it doesnt, but is it only me who has noticed that often times when one of these rerecords one of their hits from back then with modern equipment, it doesnt touch the original, even when it is sung as well or better than it was performed way back when? Maybe its just me....but there must be something to it...is there? Id love to hear what you folks think, especially you folks who were listening to-playing-recording back then in that era and continue to do so in this one, cant wait to hear your responses!

chubbs, I THINK that I agree with you, but man, that post is a tough read! Seriously, breaking up into coherent paragraphs would go a long ways towards making it readable!

Tim

garbage in, garbage out ... you need a great performance to start ... recording music is like capturing lightning in a bottle ...

Well, I think you're right and wrong. I'm not that old but I know there is no perfect recording. If you think there is, ask the guy who made it and he'll tell you otherwise.

If you take into account what they had in the 50s and 60s it was capable of making good recordings. The mics are still in use and maybe some preamps. But no, they didn't have what we do now on a chip. Nor did almost anyone but a studio have the playback capability we can now get from a boombox. I'd still take a Webcor over an mp3 player but I know what a small minority I fall into. So really no one could hear a lot of mistakes nor did many know they were mistakes. I don't think that's changed much. How many times have you played Running on Empty and the drummer hits the rim becuause one night Kunkel missed? It just happened to be the night the record was recorded. But now it's part of the song.

I don't think Buck was the first or last to do that. I just thought it's SOP.

You have to make allowances when you listen to old stuff and when you watch old movies. Some is obviously crap, some was the best it could have been and some of it is still hard to top. You have to think, was it recorded in mono? 2-track? 3-track? 4-track? 8-track? in a studio? a house? on a farm? in barn? in bar? in a car? while eating green eggs and ham? It all matters.

Music comes down to you either like it or you don't. I can read reviews of classical albums that were recorded with XYZ into QRS byt master recorder ABC and well, I still can't stand classical music. I don't mean I don't like it. I will leave in the middle of something if I hear it. It makes my skin crawl. I don't care if Donald Fagen is conducting. Needless to say I turn off a lot of movies. I don't like snakes either.

The recording shouldn't matter that much. A good recording can add to the pleasure of listening but a bad recording of Muddy Waters is better to me than a pristine recording of Bach while he was alive. I think it matters more to the people who do the recording. Of course everyone wants to be good at what they do. And a few folks really shine. It's like playing guitar. You can be pretty good or be great. But, if you play stuff eiteher that nobody wants to hear or nobody does hear it only matters to you.

the best of the old records were great because people were having fun playing together. it's hard to get that feeling when you're layering over a click track.

Yes.

mud

What was the question again?

mud

Sorry about the way I wrote that first post Tim....
I suppose what I was trying to ask was, whats more important to you-having a lot of fun when youre recording and having that come across on the tape, *mistakes* and all-or getting serious and *buckling down* and get that *perfect take*, even if it means hundreds of takes of the same line or part...Im still fairly new to the whole home recording process, however I find that whenever I attempt to make a part perfect by playing it over and over I risk losing the feeling, and whatever magic might have been in the room seems to disappear....I can only speak from my personal experience thus far...I still have lots to learn...I like what you said rangercaster...garbage in, garbage out...and I suppose in part, *audio* garbage is all in the ear of the beholder.....Thanks for your thoughts folks...

You should be having a blast, be emoting AND be playing it perfect.

Uh oh, woodshed time.

mud

whenever I attempt to make a part perfect by playing it over and over I risk losing the feeling, and whatever magic might have been in the room seems to disappear.

as my first recording mentor back in the tape era so wisely told me: "ALWAYS save your first take — that may be your money track."

as my first recording mentor back in the tape era so wisely told me: "ALWAYS save your first take — that may be your money track."

+1, and then some!

When I'm recording folks, I always tell them, "Let's just run through it quickly once for practice, so I can set levels."

Now, of course, I've got my levels, pretty much had 'em before they walked in ... but, the guys I work with are usually inexperienced in studio sessions, and the fear oozes off them in waves. I've found that the "practice run" is indeed a good one - relaxed and easy - and I make sure to "roll tape" (start the harddrive recorder) for this take.

Then, it's always fun to watch 'em tighten up as you say, "O.K., now this one's for keeps!"

mud

I think so much of this questions depends on whether you accept the 'studio' as part of the sound.
There are so many old Motown recordings where the 'perfection' of the song might have been denegrated by the other sounds in the studio. What would have been a great recording became perfection just because of where and how it was recorded. It certainly wasn't written in the chart sheets, it just happened.
I'm sure a lot of the same went on at Sun and Muscle Shoals.

Agree.

In my mind, the perfect recording doesn't exist.

A great recording however, requires only two things:

1. A person with the equipment and knowledge to faithfully capture what is being accomplished by a musician or musicians.

2. A musician or musicians who is/are doing something great.

Either element can break it, but it takes both to make it.

I'm all about getting a good, passionate performance. Sometimes that means leaving in "mistakes", sometimes with the tools we have now, a little bit of microsurgery can fix some small things without destroying the mojo.

In a perfect world, I think I'd want a relaxed and talented artist and band, recorded live in a really great sounding room with perfectly restored tape equipment from just before everything went solid state. I HAVE recordings like that from back then that just sound so utterly amazing...

Tim

Well, as others have said, there's probably no such thing as a 'perfect recording' cos someone will always hear something wrong with it.

When I'm recording at home, I practice the parts as much as I feel I need to and then hit the 'record' button. If I take more than 4 (or max 5) attempts at any track I leave it and go onto something else cos if I slog away at it then the playing suffers and it may be without mistakes but it'll be soul-less.

I'd rather listen to a 'warts and all' recording which has some life and energy about it than a 'perfect' but lifeless version of the same thing.

Agree.

In my mind, the perfect recording doesn't exist.

A great recording however, requires only two things:

1. A person with the equipment and knowledge to faithfully capture what is being accomplished by a musician or musicians.

2. A musician or musicians who is/are doing something great.

Either element can break it, but it takes both to make it.

That's about as perfectly concise as it gets regarding the topic.

Sometimes recording isn't that fun.
Sometimes you hate the song ... or the singer, or the drummer or bass player and you can still make great music. Fleetwood Mac comes to mind.
Other times everybody's in love with everybody else and the record sucks - for whatever reason - ? Pick your super group/guest stars records.
Personally, I LOVE recording. I don't even mind doing 15 takes of something ... even though I know they'll use one of the first five. I dig the process. It's fun for me to see if I can 1) actually play it right 15 times in a row, 2) get it better and better, or continually different, 3) keep the 'vibe' - even on the 15th take.

I've never heard a perfect record.
I hope I never do.

Well I work in recording and an observation I have would tie in with this. I figured a recording engineer's job is to be able to know when something sounds good - technically: good frequency range, compression levels, no buzzs and noises, accurate representation of the source sound.

A record producer's job is to know when something is good - it may have interference, noise, bleed, clicks pops etc etc, but a producer should realise when that either doesn't matter or when it adds more than a prisitne technically perfect recording. (and also know when those artifacts are spoiling the recording)

in my opinion, a too perfect recording spoils the fun a bit. when i listen to some of the brilliant coutrypickers, it´s like watching formula one on tv. just too fast and polished and slick. on the other side some records with a bit of a weird/ "i can do that too"- factor mean a lot more to me. i thinks that is a more inspirational. still: brad paisley is the "perfect" blast to listen to!

I think a good example of a magical rubbish recording is Jackson Browne's 'running on empty' - a live contractual-obligation album that was tossed out and became a best seller and has a special place in a lot of people's hearts. I heard this before I heard his earlier crafted studio albums, and I must say I love the raw stuff better.

But I also love a lot of perfectionist constructed albums, like the work of Simon and Garfunkel, Buckingham era Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, ELO and many more. Perfectionism doesn't kill music in itself.

Likewise, I hear a lot of recordings of good bands which have been recorded in a raw way, and the recordings don't sound amazing. They sound mushy, the band sounds loose and a bit rubbish, the songs don't really come across that well etc etc. It is a mistake to think that raw = good, just as much as to think perfection = sterile.

It usually takes a great band and a great producer to make a great recording, be it raw or perfectionist. And the producers/engineers do make mistakes, either being too raw or too perfectionist, at all levels of the industry. But I guess that's why we have great albums - if everything sounded great, by definition everything would be average sounding...

+1, and then some!

When I'm recording folks, I always tell them, "Let's just run through it quickly once for practice, so I can set levels."

Now, of course, I've got my levels, pretty much had 'em before they walked in ... but, the guys I work with are usually inexperienced in studio sessions, and the fear oozes off them in waves. I've found that the "practice run" is indeed a good one - relaxed and easy - and I make sure to "roll tape" (start the harddrive recorder) for this take.

Then, it's always fun to watch 'em tighten up as you say, "O.K., now this one's for keeps!"

mud

The last real session I did was with a singer I had been with for a while. We played in KY the night before and came back to Berry Hill and got the session set up about 7am. We started in on a practice run and it rocked. Now I've always done what you describe above when I run a session. I looked over at the 24 track to see it idle. I just about had a come apart. Apparently the drummer was watching me from the booth and his eyes went up....wanting to know if it was running. All I could do is shake my head. That would have been the one. He knew it too. We spent 3 hours on that one track trying to hit it again like the first run through. It just never really got there.

Astro, you bring up some really good points.

Eddie, I've never really understood the "overproduced" theory. Does that mean it sounds too good? What wrong with polish? That goes back to people being good at what they do and wanting to use all they at their disposal to make it good. I'm not talking about turd polishing but good stuff recorded well.

I compose and teach electro-acoustic music. This music is taken from recordings made by the composer of sonically interesting objects. These recordings are manipulated and blended into a composition. Examples of this are on my website (www.lawrencefritts.com). We are increasingly using a program called Max/MSP to play and transpose short sounds to create interesting patterns and phrases. Whenever we multiply, say, the frequency of the sound to get another pitch, we also incorporate another multiplier to randomize the result by a very, very small amount. It makes a ton of difference by breathing life into the process. There are other places in such algorithms to introduce randomness like this. It is a standard practice in my studios. Sometimes I will make a much more noticeable mistake, which livens thing up even more. When I first started teaching this stuff nearly 20 years ago, a magazine for pop musicians and wannabe engineers and producers recommended added guitar finger squeaks, hum, fret noise, and other noises into the mix to liven things up.

Sometimes I serve on doctoral and masters piano recital committees. If the soul is there, the piano faculty could care less about small mistakes. If there are very few mistake, the lack of soul sometimes results in a failed recital. I have heard that classical recordings are generally highly edited, not to eliminate mistakes (professional classical musicians rarely play wrong notes in pieces that they have worked on prior to the recording session) but to bring out an expressive reading of the work. Believe it or not, this is not a matter of running through the piece straight through to capture an expressively coherent take. Instead, they do lots of spot recordings. I'm only speaking of the engineers and musicians that I am familiar with. Maybe Yo-Yo Ma does it differently. But I did sit in on a session with a very well-known pianist who did spots all morning.

One more story. Someone once played a Lou Reed recording for me at a party. At one point, the drummer kind of flubbed a little, but in an obvious way. To my mind, a New York session drummer is not going to get off the beat playing a little 3-stroke flourish. It would be interesting to know how it got into the recording.


In short, the kind of perfection that is about noise, timing, dynamics, etc. absolutely kills a recording. I think a lot of people go to a great deal of trouble to place these goofs into a performance or recording.

It just seems to me, and please correct me if Im wrong people, we are living in an age of recording technology todat where it is so easy for us to *edit* away our *mistakes* that perhaps we are often times actually *editting* much of the magic out of our own recordings by striving for perfection as we do....maybe, maybe not....

(T)heres no arguing with the fact that its amazing to have the option of recording 64 virtual tracks and cutting and copying and pasting til its *just right* and *perfect*, but is it really necessary? Are our ears and in fact our whole attitude toward recording so geared toward *todays sound* that perhaps we cant even recognize when weve struck gold anymore?

*ONE-MAN STANDING OVATION*

For one who has not lived even a single lifetime (or even reached the age of 30, for that matter), you are a wise man, Van Helsing!

Well, you know what I mean. :wink: I certainly know what you mean, and I couldn't agree more! Brilliant!

Joel

Could be another thread - but how about the whole 'thing' of engineering the recording and playing on the same session? I seem to prefer to do it all wrong in my studio at home - the recordings so far (two jazz trio CD's) have been done 'live' with everything spilling into every other microphone, the occasional spike (not terminal) thanks to the other guys actually playing with 'live' energy, and of course no possibility of convincing edits.
You do learn to let go of whatever technical imperfections may be lingering in the background though and do the best you can which in itself is healthy - at least you're in control of the process from A to B and when guitar brain kicks in over recording brain theres no going back.
Still, theres nothing like realising that youve managed to disconnect the ambient guitar mike stumbling across the room but not until you're in the middle of your best solo for the day.

I agree with klasaine - there's no such thing as a perfect recording....but the beauty of the home studio is that there's so many opportunities to 'practice' getting there.....

Eddie, I've never really understood the "overproduced" theory. Does that mean it sounds too good? What wrong with polish? That goes back to people being good at what they do and wanting to use all they at their disposal to make it good. I'm not talking about turd polishing but good stuff recorded well.

I wonder if the term "overproduced" means too many add-ons like strings, heavenly choirs or too many studio tricks like extreme high-pass on the voice, and backwards reverb.

A few months back I got out my old Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass records and listened to them for the first time in many years. I was struck by how sloppy the playing seemed (especially compared to current day music recordings), and there were issues with less than perfect intonation all over the place. But I really enjoyed listening to the music.

Then recently I listened to some sort of Herb Alpert greatest hits CD we checked out from the library. This was produced in recent years, and had lots of commentary in the insert in the CD by Herb Alpert. Apparently all the original recordings were remastered or something.

When listening to this remastered CD, something just seemed wrong, and the music didn't grab me like the original records had. I realized that the intonation errors were gone, and I guess some of the other roughness was fixed up. All I can figure is that they ran the original recordings through the AutoTune program, and fiddled with them in other ways. In the end they ended up with music that was technically far more perfect, but now it's not music that I really care so much to listen to. It just doesn't seem real like the originals did.

as my first recording mentor back in the tape era so wisely told me: "ALWAYS save your first take — that may be your money track."

This reminds me of a recent experience...

I've just gotten started with home recording, and one of the big things I've been working on now that I can essentially play music with myself is to develop accompaniments to play along with (and record with) various original fingerstyle pieces that I play.

So, the other night I sat down with my computer, Firebox, and mic, and I recorded one of my favorite pieces, and then, just to get a feel for how an accompaniment might sound with it, and to see how recording multiple tracks works, I recorded an impromptu improvised accompaniment in a second track. This second track was rough, and I fumbled in places, and the whole thing fell apart in places, but I was really intrigued and inspired by the sounds I was getting. Parts of this sounded really really nice, and I could hear in my head how the fumbled parts should have gone.

So then I worked on composing a nice accompaniment part, and recorded multipe versions of of what I came up with.

The problem is I don't like any of my carefully composed versions. But I love the very first thing I improvised. The product of my initial musical instincts were far better than anything I came up with when I tried thinking the accompaniment through carefully and systematically!

So now I'm trying to go back and learn the improvised version so I can play it smoothly without having it fall apart! I'm glad I didn't delete that track like I almost did.

I wonder if the term "overproduced" means too many add-ons like strings, heavenly choirs or too many studio tricks like extreme high-pass on the voice, and backwards reverb.

Lol! - I think it means different things in different eras and genres ... and it evolves.
"Bird w/Strings" wasn't too well received by the 'jazz set' at the time, though now, some of his best and most 'classic' considered solos are from those sessions ...

If the tunes kind of suck and the performances aren't good and there's a bunch of extraneous junk on the songs, then sometimes the ear candy that's trying to cover up the bad writing and performances may be mislabeled as over-produced.

Nobody complains about an E,W&F or Chicago record being over produced (that's the point). Or, the strings on a Little Milton, Patsy Cline or Aretha record.

I agree with Klasaine about it evolving, although 99.9% of the time, when people say over-produced, they actually seem to just mean badly produced, where the elements do not gel. It seems to me in a lot of cases, if they had put more production in and worked the parts, spent more time on it etc etc, the complaint of 'overproduced' would go away.

I say this with some confidence because the same people playing me albums or CDs examples of overproduction like my 'raw' production, and sit back happily while i drum edit and autotune the living daylights of their music. (I don't work in country music or blues, by the way!)

... although 99.9% of the time, when people say over-produced, they actually seem to just mean badly produced, where the elements do not gel ...

That's what I really meant I guess. Another couple of very 'highly produced' artists come to mind. Nick Drake - tons of strings and flutes and stuff (though most of it was actually done live in the studio) and Pink Floyd - there's a whole lot of stuff on those records. Highly produced but not over produced - GOOD SONGS.

Highly produced but not over produced - GOOD SONGS.

totally agree. if you can garnish it up and still keep the feel, all is groovy — it's a matter of everybody in the creative process knowing what they're doing.