Re: ProTools illumination
Thanks for the illumination and enlightenment about ProTools, Joe. It all makes sense now. Joe also wrote: No modern artist will allow lousy performances out of the studio unless being perverse. No, but 30 years ago you had all kinds of records coming out with mistakes in them and who cared? -- because they were damned fine records. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of old blues or rock and roll examples -- like early Beatles records or Creedence Clearwater Revival records or Howlin Wolf records -- so maybe this is one of those things that was once forgiven in rock or blues but would never have been tolerated in country, for example. But it may also be because those Floyd Tillman or Lefty Frizzell or whichever records arent coming to mind. What you have on the records I'm thinking of are things like a blown guitar lick here, a warbled vocal harmony there. As Pete Townshend pointed out in "The Kids Are Alright," if you take those old Beatles records -- where the vocals were on one channel and the instruments on the other -- and you turn off the instrumental channel, the harmonies are sometimes "flippin' lousy." These problems arent bad enough to throw away the track, but you can hear them if you're listening. On the other hand, I will forgive these records any day because the overall sound and feel is so good, so live, unlike a lot of what comes out these days where you can tell the folks in the band may have never even met each other. If ProTools helps in making those live-sounding records then, hey, I wont worry about it. Will Miner Denver, CO
Re: ProTools illumination
Will Miner wrote: No, but 30 years ago you had all kinds of records coming out with mistakes in them and who cared? -- because they were damned fine records. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of old blues or rock and roll examples -- like early Beatles records or Creedence Clearwater Revival records or Howlin Wolf records -- so maybe this is one of those things that was once forgiven in rock or blues but would never have been tolerated in country, for example. But it may also be because those Floyd Tillman or Lefty Frizzell or whichever records arent coming to mind. Mistakes were left in those old records for various reasons, some artistic, some because of budget or time contraints, some because the people involved were all primitive enough to not know or care. I personally love stuff on records that is out of tune or not perfect, but we are now faced with that as a conscious artistic decision to be made rather than an accident or not knowing any better, etc. The advent of guitar tuners, multitrack gear, hard drive digital music, have all given more control over the music to the artists and producers than we have ever had before. Sometimes this is a good thing, but usually stuff gets polished to death, in my opinion. This is probably why, when I reach for a CD to play, my hand swerves toward Jimmy Reed or Bob Wills or T-Bone Walker, stuff from an era when records were literal transcriptions of an event rather than creations resulting from many weeks in a studio. -- Joe Gracey President-For-Life, Jackalope Records http://www.kimmierhodes.com
