Is this sound possible with digital equipment?

ogy

Not to drag up an old argument but...

Been listening to lots of Daptones Records stuff lately namely Sugarman 3, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. To my ears all this stuff sounds great, mainly because it sounds like it was recorded in the 60s/70s. I know this wouldn't suit all types of music but all this music is recorded using analogue equipment to tape and i can only presume this is a huge factor in the sound. The house band, the dap kings, also played on amy winehouse' big hits like rehab and you know your no good, and on mark ronsons covers album versions, but even though its the same players/same instruments presumably, the vibe just isn't the same.

Would it be fair to say that this sound just can't be done digitally, and if not can you recomend any records recorded digitally that capture this kind of sound, or any software that can realistically recreate this sound.

DamagedTrax

check out an album called "on how life is" by raphael saadiq.

recorded 2 years ago but he researched the old motown recording process and try to stay as true to possible while still using some modern luxuries. also has stevie wonder questing on harmonica

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCpet4UKE8

K.Flyer

If you want to get your hands on some Sharon Jones Vinyl try http://soundstagedirect.ecomm-search.com/search?menu1=&menu2=&keywords=sharon+Jones
IMO Analogue always sounds better than Digital.

madtheory

IMO it's mostly down to the room and the players, and the producer's in depth knowledge of the earlier music. The analogue gear is the icing on the cake. The only way to really know if it's possible is to try it! Certainly, software alone will not do it, you need the musicians/ musical skill primarily.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

that raphael saadiq stuff is smooth and tasty ,
oh yeah giggidey

ogy

IMO it's mostly down to the room and the players, and the producer's in depth knowledge of the earlier music.

as i said though, the players are on other records not recorded in this style and it doesn't have the old school sound.

can we put more of a finger on the actual qualities that give that motown sound? my guesses would be:
- tape saturation/distortion
- smoother high end, no harshness whatsoever,
- big round bass sound with a thinner punchier kick drum sound (bass guitar on bottom with kick above it frequency wise)
- authentic old school reverb, spring, chambers, plates

anything else i should be thinking about?

that raphael saadiq stuff sounds sweet, similar style to what im talking about, although a little cheesey on the songwriting end:)

PaulBrewer

The Dap Kings are Amy Winehouse's band.

They're also the 'Menihan Street Band' (I'm not sure about spelling) that JZ sampled for a hit ....

Check out Spinner.com where there's a live performance that I absolutely love.

It's a live performance to camera that sounds fantastic.

In fact the live performance sounds much better to me than the album which I bought on the strength of this performance.

The album was done on analogue I believe but not the performance ...

It's only a medium after all ....

madtheory

ogy wrote: »

as i said though, the players are on other records not recorded in this style and it doesn't have the old school sound.

...because they didn't play it that way? I'll give some classic examples, to add to Paul's:
1. There's a story in Recording the Beatles about how the Beatles were always hassling the engineers to get them that Motown bass sound. No one could figure it out. Then one day the Motown band were rehearsing in studio 2. Ken Townsend was passing. There was that bass sound, coming from the room. It was the way he played it, not how it was recorded.
2. Check out the Led Zep DVD with Albert Hall, Knebworth etc. recorded every which way, stereo, eight track, 24 track, different mics, vastly different spaces etc. etc. it still sounds like them. The Bonham drum sound is there whatever the setup.

It's the performance, 99%.

PMI

Here is something to read from this months sound on sound that might help people focus on things:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug10/articles/leader-0810.htm

ogy

ok i take the point that the players are very important to the overall sound, i get that.

The Dap Kings are Amy Winehouse's band.

They're also the 'Menihan Street Band' (I'm not sure about spelling) that JZ sampled for a hit ....

theyre also parts of easy all stars, sugarmen 3, antibalas afrobeat orchestra, mark ronsons cover albums band, soul providers....

i accept that good musicians will use different gear, different settings, different styles of playing, depending on the project theyre working in. but i can't accept that this immediately creates the sound you hear when you click play on the youtube clip above, or any of the sharon jones and the dap-kings recordings, or the sugarmen 3 recordings.

Accepting that they may only be 10%, 5 % whatever or the sound, what im trying to get it is what are the recording techniques and what are the actual properties of the sound we're hearing.

ogy

thanks a million to iquinn who just sent me this, some great stuff in there:
http://www.vijithassar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/gabe-roth-tape-op-interview.pdf

hoopmusic

In terms of the bass sound, James Jamerson used flatwound strings which he never changed (that's where the funk came from apparently)

madtheory

From a cursory glance at that tape op article:

If you’re recording drums, I would say that 90% of the sound is the drummer, first of all.

ogy wrote: »

ok i take the point that the players are very important to the overall sound, i get that.

ogy wrote: »

Accepting that they may only be 10%, 5 % whatever or the sound, what im trying to get it is what are the recording techniques and what are the actual properties of the sound we're hearing.

I don't think you do get it. IME with any music the performance is 99% of the "quality". It's no secret, you get good players and be musical, that takes graft and training from a young age. It takes TIME. I'm inclined to to think the daptones thing is hype, what with the very cool style of the building and all the talk about hard to find and maintain older gear that also looks cool, and the awe associated with classic recordings. That's not as sexy to talk about in interviews as practicing and jamming for years, routining a song for hours, learning orchestration, harmony etc. etc. Software won't do that for you.

However I've never done music in this style, so if you figure out how to do it, and get a few tracks done convincingly then that knocks my theory on the head, doesn't it! That would be cool actually.

ogy

this is gas. I'm not asking "how do i get jimmy from down the road to sound like the dude from the meters"

obviously musicians sound like themselves, or really great musicians can move from one style to another, know the subtleties that suit a particular style of music, know how to tune their kit to different styles etc. but im just trying to talk about the production techniques used in this style of music.

In fact the quotes from me and gabriel roth you quoted add up to exactly 100%:)

Accepting that they may only be 10%, 5 % whatever or the sound, what im trying to get it is what are the recording techniques

i think you thought i meant the players were 10%, read the sentence again, i meant the recording techniques.

Anyway arguing over makey up percentages is daft. What im saying is, YES, performers very important and integral. BUT, are there engineering techniques/analogue equipment/analogue modelling digital techniques/approaches to eq and compression that lend themselves to this style. if you read the full gabriel roth interview, as much as he says how important the performers/arrangement etc are, there are several tips to be gleamed from his recording technique. that is the type of thing i thought could be reasonably discussed on a music production former without being told "forget about it, its just the players"

heres a few cool things i picked up from the interview for anyone who's interested:

"Lately I’ve been really into getting a mic and putting it on the ground two to three feet back, between the hi-hat and the bass drum - about two feet away and to the side of the bass drum, pointed up at the snare from underneath. That’s most of the sound that we have on this record. The best bass drum sound I get is when I don’t put a mic on it, you know? It sounds more natural."

you can get a 20-watt guitar amp as opposed to a Fender Twin or something - you can get a little more dirt out of it without blasting your ears off.

talking about using tape and spring reverb:

I used to do that with springs, too. I would use two channels on the console, one as a preamp and one as a post-amp. I would do the same thing I was talking about with the tape: roll the bass down and turn the high end up and then hit the springs hard, and on the way back I’d do it the other way, because it’s the bass frequencies that knock the springs around and make them all ‘Doing!’ and there’s a lot of hiss that comes out of it. So it’s almost like a homemade Dolby, you know? And when you hit the return, the post-amp for the springs, you can turn the bass back up and bring the high end down, and thus you’d have a real warm reverb that’s not boinging around, and when you bring the high end back down you’re pulling the hiss back down.

Sometimes you get a guitar and just find one midrange frequency - 800 Hz or 2 k or something ugly - and then crank the **** out of it on the EQ and then turn it real low in the mix, so it’s nasty and it’s present, but it’s just in one spot.

You realize that on some Otis Redding records, that his vocals are buried. You can barely hear them, they’re all the way on the right, the entire band is on the left and the loudest things are these two piano notes that come by every sixteen bars. ... Tambourine is a classic example: up until the ’70s, if you had a tambourine on a record, there was a good chance it was louder than everything. ... hese real equal mixes, there’s nothing exciting about that. A lot of times, what really hooks up a mix is the freaky stuff, letting something happen naturally and not trying to make it sound like it’s supposed to sound. Just letting something unfold and be its natural, flawed self can sometimes bring a lot more personality to a song than trying to fix everything.

On the session we’re doing now I’ve got a mic on the piano. I use it a lot of times, and there’s nobody playing the piano. So, yes, in that way there’s definitely some sympathetic resonance going on, but we’ve never, like, tuned a tom to a track.

Usually I just grab a 57 like everybody else and throw it on the amp. I definitely hit the tape hard with guitars, which puts a little crunch on them. Once in a while I’ll compress them a little bit, but that’s usually just if there’s some part that’s really all over the place. Sometimes I’ll EQ them crazy. Guitars are one of the few things where you can just kind of grab some midrange frequency and crank it, or take all the high end out of it, or all the low end. You can do really extreme EQ things with guitars and they still sit nicely and don’t sound distracting. Tracking the reverb out of a guitar amp when it’s playing is something we always do - we rarely put reverb on afterwards.

Companero

People are contantly looking for the magic box that will make their record sounds like an old nugget from the golden era of music and they waste countless hours /Euros worrying about whether it's tape saturation/Tubes/transformers or this or that preamp that will do it for them.

Way before these subtle things come into play are these things:

(1) Records were usually recorded with all the players playing in the same room at the same time: There is plenty of bleed between microphones and no click. Overdubs were rare, and if done were at least being laid on top of a rhythm section that was live. Records were never recorded track by track.

(2) Reverb in the old days was spring/plate/chamber or mics placed far away.

(3) Old records are full of imperfections (Imperfect tuning, breath noises, slow/fast tape machines, drummers speeding up and slowing down, that would be considered 'mistakes' nowadays.

(4) Old records have a vastly reduced high-end response compared to modern ones. Probably the most 'vintage' sounding thing you could do to a mix is to stick an eq on it and kill everything above 8-10 Hz, but of course modern folks want their cake and eat it: They want it to be 'vintage' AND have plenty of shiny top end, so they assume 'vintage' must be about some magic mojo to do with tubes/transformers/saturation/ extra harmonics and so on.

(5) The same thing goes for saturation and tubes: People want the 'vintage' sound of these things without the degradation of the signal. The magic mojo of these things comes when they are being used improperly and overdriven, when tube devices are used in their linear range, the magic mojo they offer is barely preceptible.

The problem in many cases is that people are looking for 'vintage sound' and when they find it, they shy away from it: The fact is that many records now considered 'Vintage', such as for example a Jimi Hednrixes 'All along the Watchtower' or Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence, would simply be considered of poor or unreleasable quality now, as we want vintage , but you know, without all the noise, and buzzes, slack tuning, out of tune vocals, imperfect drum timing and poor gain-staging that makes it sound that way!

ogy

The problem in many cases is that people are looking for 'vintage sound' and when they find it, they shy away from it

think you might be on to something there

i guess the old records have those imperfections due to lack of "better" equipment, know how, whatever, where as nowadays you have to consciously seek out a "lower fidelity" sound and be brave enough to put it out there.

Companero

People are contantly looking for the magic box that will make their record sounds like an old nugget from the golden era of music and they waste countless hours /Euros worrying about whether it's tape saturation/Tubes/transformers or this or that preamp that will do it for them.

Way before these subtle things come into play are these things:

(1) Records were usually recorded with all the players playing in the same room at the same time: There is plenty of bleed between microphones and no click. Overdubs were rare, and if done were at least being laid on top of a rhythm section that was live. Records were never recorded track by track.

(2) Reverb in the old days was spring/plate/chamber or mics placed far away.

(3) Old records are full of imperfections (Imperfect tuning, breath noises, slow/fast tape machines, drummers speeding up and slowing down, that would be considered 'mistakes' nowadays.

(4) Old records have a vastly reduced high-end response compared to modern ones. Probably the most 'vintage' sounding thing you could do to a mix is to stick an eq on it and kill everything above 8-10 Hz, but of course modern folks want their cake and eat it: They want it to be 'vintage' AND have plenty of shiny top end, so they assume 'vintage' must be about some magic mojo to do with tubes/transformers/saturation/ extra harmonics and so on.

(5) The same thing goes for saturation and tubes: People want the 'vintage' sound of these things without the degradation of the signal. The magic mojo of these things comes when they are being used improperly and overdriven, when tube devices are used in their linear range, the magic mojo they offer is barely preceptible.

The problem in many cases is that people are looking for 'vintage sound' and when they find it, they shy away from it: The fact is that many records now considered 'Vintage', such as for example a Jimi Hednrixes 'All along the Watchtower' or Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence, would simply be considered of poor or unreleasable quality now, as we want vintage , but you know, without all the noise, and buzzes, slack tuning, out of tune vocals, imperfect drum timing and poor gain-staging that makes it sound that way!

i57dwun4yb1pt8

companero has a lot of wisdom on this

krd

Companero wrote: »

People are contantly looking for the magic box that will make their record sounds like an old nugget from the golden era of music and they waste countless hours /Euros worrying about whether it's tape saturation/Tubes/transformers or this or that preamp that will do it for them.

Way before these subtle things come into play are these things:

(1) Records were usually recorded with all the players playing in the same room at the same time: There is plenty of bleed between microphones and no click. Overdubs were rare, and if done were at least being laid on top of a rhythm section that was live. Records were never recorded track by track.

[/QOUTE]

You really can't replace the sound of musicians together in a room playing well. Spooky bleeds can really ad something to the sound as well.

I saw Dublin band Ana Gog play in a small place a few months back. I'd heard the recordings of the songs they did - and they were really flat. The live preformance had a real bounce to it that was missing from the recordings. They should have just recorded the Rthym section and over dubbed the rest - or just played live and over dubbed leaving in bleeds where they could get away with it.

[QOUTE]
(2) Reverb in the old days was spring/plate/chamber or mics placed far away.
[/QOUTE]

[QOUTE]
(3) Old records are full of imperfections (Imperfect tuning, breath noises, slow/fast tape machines, drummers speeding up and slowing down, that would be considered 'mistakes' nowadays.
[/QOUTE]

If track requires a perfect drum track - why not just program it. People are too lazy these days to adjust tempos on a DAW. Old records could have huge variation in Tempo - it's even one of the major features of classical music - tempo changes are all over the place.

Removing breaths could be a real killer - one of the most interesting things Bono used to do were these little breath things. You could either think they were annoying or great. A least you knew it wasn't an unbreathing robot at the mike.

[QOUTE]
(4) Old records have a vastly reduced high-end response compared to modern ones. Probably the most 'vintage' sounding thing you could do to a mix is to stick an eq on it and kill everything above 8-10 Hz, but of course modern folks want their cake and eat it: They want it to be 'vintage' AND have plenty of shiny top end, so they assume 'vintage' must be about some magic mojo to do with tubes/transformers/saturation/ extra harmonics and so on.
[/QOUTE]

And wobbles and scratches. Some Vinyl effects do sound convincing - as long as you don't go into over kill on them.

Wobbles and scratches made your ears listen differently to the music.

[QOUTE]
(5) The same thing goes for saturation and tubes: People want the 'vintage' sound of these things without the degradation of the signal. The magic mojo of these things comes when they are being used improperly and overdriven, when tube devices are used in their linear range, the magic mojo they offer is barely preceptible.
[/OUTE]

If you want it to sound dirty you have to have the mud. No mud; no dirt

[QOUTE]
The problem in many cases is that people are looking for 'vintage sound' and when they find it, they shy away from it: The fact is that many records now considered 'Vintage', such as for example a Jimi Hednrixes 'All along the Watchtower' or Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence, would simply be considered of poor or unreleasable quality now, as we want vintage , but you know, without all the noise, and buzzes, slack tuning, out of tune vocals, imperfect drum timing and poor gain-staging that makes it sound that way!

A question has to be asked now: is much of the music that has perfect drum timing, perfect singing, tuning, etc of unreleasable quality - even though it has never perfect mechanical sheen to it.

Here's how I think the Amy Winehouse records were made:

The tracks were recorded live with the complete band. Maybe mixed on analog console. Then the pieces were grabbed into a DAW - time corrected where needed - edited where needed. Funny reverbs and tricks added here and there - but no attempt to make it sound like Girls Aloud - which sounds like ****ty ITV television jingle music - pefect for playing on ITV. There's a weirdness to her voice on some stuff - like it's been time and pitch corrected.

The other reason why it's tricky for people to make stuff sound "classic" is all the stuff we've been listening to. Our ears are different.

If you could find an old guy - who hasn't listened to the radio or a new record since 1979. And trained him up on a modern DAW - he could probably get the classic sound on it just by playing with what's there. When he'd hear the unnatural high end - he'd turn it down - it wouldn't sound right. And he wouldn't be thinking "let's max out the dynamic range"

Jimmy Miller, who did The Stones Beggars Banquet was able to get the Beggars Banquet sound for Primal Scream - I'm pretty sure - using modern equipment.

PaulBrewer

Here it is -

Beautiful, Imperfect, Soulful Music ...... listen to the Digital Warmth !;)

http://www.spinner.com/interface/menahan-street-band

ogy

great performance and a cool clip, but doesn't have the old school sound of the sharon jones records, except for the guitar reverb.

Love the bass guitar sound, anyone know what kind of guitar he's playing?

MilanPan!c

ogy wrote: »

great performance and a cool clip, but doesn't have the old school sound of the sharon jones records, except for the guitar reverb.

Love the bass guitar sound, anyone know what kind of guitar he's playing?

Gibson Ripper?

ogy

it is indeed, cheers man!

iquinn

I forgot about this:

http://www.tube-tech.com/daptone-tube-tech-tips%27n-tricks-81.html#0

Doge

madtheory wrote: »

It's the performance, 99%.

Agreed.

ogy wrote: »

The house band, the dap kings, also played on amy winehouse' big hits like rehab and you know your no good, and on mark ronsons covers album versions, but even though its the same players/same instruments presumably, the vibe just isn't the same.

No wonder it isn't, the mastering/production on her releases is completely different to what's going on in that bands old records.

Sure Amy's releases are watered down for commercial success and you could accuse them of being "overproduced" (man i hate that term for some reason), i mean it is modern chart music at the end of the day, thats becoming increasingly so much more of a product with a short shelf life, than an art, but thats a different debate.


As for the old digital vs tape/vinyl debate,

My opinion is that one is not better than the other,
the analog medium can add some character to the sound, as well as take some away at the same time!

So depending on the music and the situation, one will suit better.

I couldn't imagine my favourite electronic artists - BOC sounding as good if they used solely digital equipment to record, it would have taken so much more effort to get the amount of character they achieved in their tracks.

Currently i'm only using digital equipment and craving to add more analog character to the sound, as its pretty bare, but thats due to my novice production skills more than anything.

I really need to investigate ways of adding character to the sound,
other than using Reel to Reel equipment.