I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

hopefully answered by a request for some toppings with good bite and texture, because "all i want is chew."

He invented vaporware - that's something.

re: I assume it’s down to something more than just studios moving to transistorized desks (as Abbey Road had just prior to Abbey Road), but I dunno.

for the beatles i think the big shifts that lead to that 70s feeling on abbey road are indeed the transistor desk - that really changes the colour of the recording - but also the addition of moog synths to their sound palette. not sure it's really any more than that

I read a book last month that is based around this idea, called Solid State

was it good? this conversation (and listening to Abbey Road side 2 right this moment) has got me interested in this. cause i could totally imagine a world where basically they were recording this largely like The White Album, heavy on after-the-fact overdubs on each other's songs, etc., but the equipment change-over yields a much more precise, 'clean' sound, rather than the fascinating and sometimes unsettling sense of closeness on the earlier record. but i have no idea.

one striking example: the "out of college, money spent" vocals from Paul - the effect on those is something i'm sure they used on earlier records, but it somehow feels more pasted-in to me. i love it, i have no beef with it, but it does feel like he literally picked up the handset and phoned that one in.

ranking George's beard over Paul's beard is basically being in Q Anon

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Mr. Mike Love.

XXP - It was decent, I can't say it brought any great insight but it was a good summation of the transition period, I think it could have done with being a bit more technical really.

I started watching this last night and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. And I am not the worlds biggest fan.

there’s an interview excerpt with Alex Van Halen that Dave q posted once where basically he says that the 70s close-micd, dry drum sound was largely about making it easy on the engineers.

He invented vaporware - that's something.

Was going to say, he's very much a Silicon Valley character.

surely Da Vinci or someone deserves the vaporware-inventor title tho

loved this whole thing, felt like part 3 was way more of a slog than the other two but whatever, the part where John and Paul sang that one song through clenched teeth was pretty funny

I still don't get any of the criticism that this is getting, it feels very magical and mundane to me, something about the whole vibe of this reminds me of the Gus Van Sant Cobain movie that I thought was hilarious (prob the only music biopic I've liked) but a lot of people hated

The magical mundanity tour

basically he says that the 70s close-micd, dry drum sound was largely about making it easy on the engineers

But were drum sounds in the '60s any great shakes either? Generally not, in my opinion. I've seen Jimmy Page credited with popularizing the notion that the mics should be pulled back from the kit, to provide a more reverberant sound on tape. (Culminating, of course, with setting Bonham up in a stone hallway.)

But were drum sounds in the '60s any great shakes either?

Motown, Stax, Dylan (particularly Highway 61), James Brown, the Impressions ("A Fool For You" especially), Hendrix' first two records, Phil Spector's productions, Shel Talmy's Kinks and Creation records, the Sonics,...and that's before we even get to Glyn Johns' engineering work on Who, Small Faces, and Rolling Stones records.

The Beatles were acutely jealous of the Motown drum sound(s), and seriously looked into recording at Stax (which, it was found, would've been insanely expensive, due to a few clauses in their EMI contract).

Vast halo, this is a little confuzzled, because 60s drums were not close-mic'd, it was usually room microphones.

Geoff Emerick almost seems to credit himself with inventing close-micing, because EMI had strict placement standards that he bravely ignored in order to get the punchy sound of mid-career Beatles. Glyn Johns is famous for a 3-mic technique.

I associate strict close-mic technique with 70s when it became economically feasible to have one mic per drum.

i swear lately on ilm there's this weird hoffman board thing where anything that doesn't sound like rumours is considered bad sounding or lo fi. so many 60s records have amazing sounding drums.

lots of different drums sound good

fuck, you leave the beatles thread for three days and there's like 400 new posts

xxpost even some of the earlier Beatles albums had some great drum sounds. That opening CRACK! on “Any Time At All” comes to mind

but yeah, what Tarfumes said
60’s were awash with awesome drum sounds and Hal Blaine would def like a word

Definitely true that some of their early records had great drum sounds -- the drums on Please Please Me sound incredible (especially "Boys").

Y'all are right, of course. I just get vexed that there are a bunch of songs from that era that I love (e.g. "Substitute") that are let down by really ineptly-recorded drums. That rarely seems to have happened any more after 1970. (Back on theme, I particularly like the sound they got for Ringo's kit on "Come Together".)

maybe its just your hearing

i swear lately on ilm there's this weird hoffman board thing where anything that doesn't sound like rumours is considered bad sounding or lo fi. so many 60s records have amazing sounding drums.

80s gated drum sound was an overcorrection to recapture presence and atmosphere or something

i swear lately on ilm there's this weird hoffman board thing where anything that doesn't sound like rumours is considered bad sounding or lo fi. so many 60s records have amazing sounding drums.

which is why we should use drum machines if Ringo isn't available

maybe its just your hearing

No, it's an opinion, and mine is as valid as yours

I can still eat corn if you mash it into a fine paste

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG3VUXBcyt0

The rumors are true!

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Two monkeys fucking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2Pq2cCVLpQ

While I think '80s gated drums came first - Phil Collins/"Abacab" was one of the first to really push drums to the fore - they definitely cohabitated with increasingly bigger sounding reverbed-out everything as the decade progressed. The huge marshmallow snares would sound so small with everything else overinflated.

I just get vexed that there are a bunch of songs from that era that I love (e.g. "Substitute") that are let down by really ineptly-recorded drums.

And “Substitute” is far from the worst of them. The drums on A Quick One and The Who Sell Out (with an exception or two) are abominably recorded. It sounds like there may have been a single mic within no less than 20 feet of the drums.

Shel Talmy, absolutely terrible engineer/producer, same with the early Kinks stuff that sounds like shite.

Maybe you guys should tell him so on Facepalm.

Talmy was great. His Kinks records had far more bite and presence than most of the ‘64-‘65 Beatles or Stones records, and his Who records — the My Generation album and the two singles that preceded it, all engineered by Glyn Johns — were heavier than anything previously heard.

Have to disagree, those first few Kinks records and My Generation have always sounded bad to me.

i swear lately on ilm there's this weird hoffman board thing where you leave the beatles thread for three days and there's like 400 new posts

400 posts
And it’s the same philosophy

i mean if the Kinks & My Generation “sound bad” what is yr idea of “good sounding” records

I'm going to side with those that think the early Who and Kinks records sound great. I mean not from the standpoint of technical proficiency, but their sloppiness and roughness is part of their appeal. I wouldn't want them to have glossy '70s studio polish.

exactly! the garagey sound is the bonus byproduct and what makes this stuff cool.

I always thought The Stones "I wanna be your man" sounded like an insane carcrash of sound, especially for its time

Not as much as She Said Yeah, but yeah

yeah, loved this.

What I’m saying is…. 70s drums actually sound bad

Dear lord this take is as bad as saying Paul's beard is ugly

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