Sounds good, Sounds Good

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Sounds Good, Sounds Good

Lately I feel like I’ve been bombarded with many great opinions on what sonic option sounds best. My mentality has always been this simple: Sounds Good, Sounds Good. Let me explain.

First, opinions are great. Thats why there are so many choices of spaghetti sauce. Malcolm Gladwell (my favorite author) writes about the huge variety of sauces that first appeared in the 1970’s. This became the real point for consumers to have many options on what they wanted to buy. This event is what gives us variety and distinguished options about almost everything.

So, what does that have to do with music? In the old days of “modern” recording, there were really only a few varieties of microphones and equipment, and everything was recorded to tape. Now we have clones of every mic and on every price level. People can make records in their bedrooms with protools and logic, and the tape machine is obsolete. Our options with software are endless and we can do so many exciting things.

Ultimately, this just leads us to more opinions on which option sounds best.

Bands love the idea of tracking to tape using old guitars and amps. I’m convinced that this is sort of a romance with the vintage. I think that is wonderful but not always practical. I collect old old radios because they look cool and have vibe…but none of them work or sound good. Recently an amazing 60’s Vox AC30 went head to head with a London 65AMP (which is a newer boutique amp with the basic same build up of the VoxAC30), the London won every time.

Butch Vig (Green Day, Nirvanna, Garbage), wrote in a couple posts on a website that they recorded Drums on a Green Day record to Tape and Pro Tools at the same time. They didn’t use any of the drums recorded to tape. He went on to say that the Tape was changing the sound too much, and that Pro Tools was giving them exactly what they were hearing.

A lot of times when discussions about if API, NEVE, or some other preamp sounds better than the other I usually just sort of listen to them talk. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about our ears. Talking about which pre-amps or mics or guitars or drums is better doesn’t really matter (unless its educational). Because everything is different for each song every time. The studio space, the player, the melody, the mic placement, and the vibe all have more influence than any one single piece of gear. Taking a moment to listen to what sounds good in the environment, will always sound good.

The best way to wrap this up is for me to tell you about a couple of recent recording situations. I was just up in DE working with Find Vienna again. I was in a brand new studio that I had never worked in with a variety of gear. They have an old Slingerland drum kit that sounded great and was left with the mics on it. My initial thought was to re-patch everything into the preamps that I like to use on a drum kit. But, I resisted, taking a moment to hear what a completely different room, drum kit, preamps, etc sounded like first. It sounded amazing. I did a few tweaks for the vibe of the song, but ultimately it was how it was.

One last quick thing. Last fall when I was producing the Dana Alexandra record, we were in the studio listening down to the pre-production parts that we had recorded the month earlier. As we were listening people with trusted ears said “wow, what mic is that on dana, it sounds great!” It was a Shure SM57 running right into my 003 rack. Probably the most basic cheapest vocal chain you can use.

The reaction about the vocal sound didn’t have anything to do with the microphone. It had everything to do with Dana. Did we end up using an SM57 for the final vocal? No, but we probably could have. Sounds Good, Sounds Good.

Thanks for reading, I’d love to hear your thoughts.