TMTYL

[iain ferguson]

Hi Carl,

You may well be right and certainly I work in both Analog & digital 
worlds with music, infact more digital these days.

the contstant tweaking & additions would easily give you a overcooked 
(muddled) mix. I just wondered as the guys did have to spend a long time 
recording it, ( didnt they have to start all over again ??) , that maybe 
some of the first recording was left in there which would certainly take 
you back 8 years and then digital coldness was still a real thing.

just looking at the SCHWA software synth to see if it has any lovely old 
moog style swoops - Looks good (www.stillwellaudio.com) not a plug

Iain


Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
> On 20 Jun 2008, at 04:59 , iain ferguson wrote:
>> I like rather a lot of it, but like yourself find some too Digital - 
>> maybe because this was recorded on a MAC using Logic I believe, which
>> the band had to learn how to use, and have commented on the whole 
>> process.
>> working in the analog world you add Dirt and warmth throughout the 
>> recording, mastering and pressing  proccesses, giving you a warmer 
>> sound, recording in the digital world you have to add that dirt back 
>> in or it sounds clinical, harshly bright etc, maybe what you hear in 
>> parts is where not enough dirt was added back in.
>
>
> I am a musician (though not a drummer ;) -- albeit a very amateur one 
> -- and most of my home recording is on a Mac using GarageBand, which 
> is basically Logic's little brother.  And I think that the digital vs. 
> analogue issue to which you refer is not the "problem" in the 
> production on Hawkwind's recent recordings.
>
> Honestly, the whole analog vs. digital recording (or playback) debate 
> is a bit silly these days; with the right equipment and (perhaps more 
> importantly) skills one can make extremely good recordings on either 
> analogue or digital equipment.  Much of the perceived "analogue is 
> better" argument, I think, goes back to the early days of digital 
> recording when people simply weren't used to it.  They are different 
> beasts, and if you spent all your life engineering analogue 
> recordings, you could easily run into some difficulties if you 
> expected digital to act like analogue (the famous example are a 
> suppose the differences between what happens when you overload the 
> signal on an analogue medium like magnetic tape, which tends to 
> produce a sort of natural compression effect, and what happens when 
> you overload signal to a digital medium, which tends to produce an 
> awful noise :).  But since digital recording was introduced in the 
> late 70s, the cumulative benefits of more experience and better 
> equipment have lead to progressively better digital recordings.  (And, 
> actually, one of the criticisms in early digital recordings was that 
> _more_ "dirt" in the form of ambient background noise, etc. was being 
> picked up than was typically with analog recordings.)
>
> So I don't think the perceived problem in Hawkwind's case is 
> necessarily that of digital vs. analogue, even though surely Brock & 
> Co. probably have more years of experience in the analogue realm than 
> the digital.  I think it's more that recording with a system like 
> Logic makes it incredibly easy to apply fantastic amounts of tweaking 
> and processing to everything, to add new layers than then tweak and 
> process them into the middle of next week as well.  This is an awesome 
> temptation for the musician!  And I think this is what results in the 
> kind of "muffled" sound Mike refers to -- it's something I've noticed 
> more an more of over the last decade or so of Hawkwind records, 
> particularly in the most recent studio outputs.  I think they (or Dave 
> anyway) are just overcooking everything, producing everything to death 
> with piles of tweaking and effects.  When you've been working on a 
> track for a few months and have become way to familiar with every part 
> in it, you adjust a few extra things here and there and slip some new 
> bit in -- and suddenly it sounds great to you again .... But to the 
> casual listener who never heard it before, and may never hear it until 
> they buy the disc, rip the song to some relatively low bit rate MP3 
> and crank it through their iPod earbuds ... it just sounds glossily 
> muffled.
>
> 'Course, this is _all_ subjective.  If one thinks that TMTYL is the 
> greatest thing ever, then "right on"! :)  But IMO Hawkwind have been 
> progressively overcooking their recordings.  If I were ruling the 
> world, I'd inflict a producer on them who would get them back to 
> basics -- or rather take away their control over the sound. :)
>
> It's certainly possibly to use a zillion ingredients in the production 
> of an awesomely subtle curry that balances fire and flavour on that 
> scintillating knife edge of perfection.  And it's also possible to end 
> up with a mess of confused ingredients -- in which case, you may be 
> better off just chucking a steak on the grill (or, if one prefers, the 
> vegetarian equivalent of such simplicity) and having done with it. :)
>
> But, ya know, mileage varies!
>
> Cheers,
> Carl
>
> -- 
> Carl Edlund Anderson
> http://www.carlaz.com/