Notes on production, reproduction

[imomus]

You know, one of the things that makes cold Hakodate (and tonight it's forecast to dip to minus 13 centigrade) just that little bit warmer is the knowledge that in two weeks I'll be back home in Berlin with the two mammals I live with, twin bunnies Hisae (below) and Topo. Keep the igloo warm, mammals! I will be wild and fleecy when I return, wearing pelt of bear and sounding a mighty horn!



I'm supposed to deliver a lecture at 4.30pm this afternoon at the Future University. I guess I'll just extemporize about sound and music, the raw and the cooked. Maybe I could do a John Shuttleworth-style workshop choc-a-bloc with tips on mic technique and production. If I do, maybe I'll project Ariel Pink's video for Kate I Wait (Paw Tracks) and use it as an example of good production.

"What, Ariel Pink, good production?" I hear my audience expostulate. "How can that be when his sound is muddy and murky, his channels aren't clearly separated, he doesn't stay in time or in tune, and his 80s string machine is mixed so loud? Put him in a good studio with lots of outboard! Never mind that whacky label Panda Bear runs, sign him to a company that'll get him a nice professional producer like Nigel Godrich! Or at least buy him one of those electronic guitar tuners!"

My dear friends, you have understood nothing about production. Good production is about character, personality, intrigue, flamboyance, charm, fascination, license, not about levels, channels, separation, clarity, normality or competent engineering! It's about ravishing the ears by all means imagineable! It's about creeping out of shadows and repositioning conceptual frames, not about synching to SMPTE frames! You'll be telling me next that The Mountain Goats and Devendra Banhart are better now they've thrown away their hissy cassette recorders and employed session musicians! You'll be telling me that everyone should sound just like everyone else! That there are 'objective standards of recording quality'! You'll be agreeing with Shuttleworth that Johnny Rotten should have taken a few minutes before each Sex Pistols gig to adjust his microphone stand to the correct height so he didn't have to do that Richard III hunchback thing! Stooping like a hunchback isn't just great actor's business, it's great production! They don't teach you this at singing school, but there's no better way to project "No future".

More Ariel Pink here and here.

Comments

[runstaverun.livejournal.com]

so where are your bunnies currently?

[deadbatteries.livejournal.com]

I can't decide which bunny is cuter! Hm, and the one on the couch seems strangely robot-like - is that bunny real? The hind legs protruding outwards would led me to believe that it is real, but those eyes...

And how does a geodesic dome stay inflated?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

They're in Berlin, in my aparto.

[runstaverun.livejournal.com]

all alone?! hopefully there is a third mammal there to care for them.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The bunny on the couch is real, and we worked out last month (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/75388.html) that it's a breed called Lionhead. Maybe it's gentech of some kind. I keep telling Hisae it's a trumped up hamster, but she won't hear of it.

The dome (http://www.ilandart.com/IA_Single_Listing.cfm?ID=9999) gets pumped up with a footpump, which is quite some task. After that, it stays inflated in pretty much the same way a beach ball does. In fact, you can play a sort of gigantic football game with it when it's really hard, because it goes completely round.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Stop making me paranoid! They are awaiting me. their Ulysses, their Odysseus, their third mammal. Actually, now I think about it, Ulysses is not the best metaphor.

[runstaverun.livejournal.com]

and reading quickly before bedtime makes my comprehension levels drop quite a bit...

[runstaverun.livejournal.com]

I just read quickly and tiredly, missing the fact that one bunny could easily take care of the other...

[robotar.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I want a dome. Though I can't imagine it'd be too fun in a fire.

usagi-chan

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

menkoi! (is there any tohoku-ben spoken in hakodate?)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's a tough criterion you have there. The only things enhanced by fire are fire extinguishers and certain barbecue meats.

Re: usagi-chan

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think we're way too far south for that. But thanks for the term. In order to find out that it means 'kawaii' I googled this lovely page of geta (http://www.karankoron.com/online_shop_geta.html). Menkoi indeed!

[robotar.livejournal.com]

I hope I don't count as a barbecue meat!

[cowboyrockstar.livejournal.com]

Like Daltry's shivvering vocals on My Generation (the Count Five cover of it sounding silly because that poor fellow tried to imitate the stutter) or that fellow from the Troggs who had to jump up to shout in the mic when they recorded Wild Thing.

I often wonder how strong a collective subconscious is if this is the second time tonight I've used those as examples of lo-tech techniques that produced an inimitable sound.

I'm surprised a number of contemporary indie acts haven't picked up that yet. Band Y puts out a great debute they recorded on an 8track in their apartment. It get some acclaim and they get signed and make the circuit. Their next album is recorded in a studio and looses all its charm and the band fails miserably, ala the Mink Lungs and the Shins.

[thegroupie.livejournal.com]

ariel will be totally stoked that you are a fan!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

A shot from back home to remind the boys what they're fighting for, I gather?

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

He's not the only one (http://www.newstatesman.com/Arts/200502070034)



Great video.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

Topo's winter regalia is quite flattering.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if that's an argument against studio recording per se. It might depend on what a particular band does in that situation. If they go into a studio with a new / different producer, that might be a problem. If they go into a studio but carry on doing it themselves, that might be a benefit. I guess, though, that not many lables would let a new signing have complete control over their time in an expensive per diem studio.

Mind you, I do think that this kind of idea might be a blow to the old adage that A good song is a good song, no matter how you play it. Or whatvere the words are.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

A good song is a good song, no matter how you play it

That's pure Platonism, I couldn't possibly agree. Songs are incarnated in musical robes of flesh, and cannot be separated from what Eno called "the vertical colour of sound". They are not mere scripts privileged with objective qualities. If they were, there'd be fewer rotten cover versions.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

Exactly, the point I was making. Or, perhaps not making, more waving my arms in the general direction. I hate the idea of the perfect song (script as you call it).

What I was trying to say (not actually addressing anyone else's point in particular) is that big studio recording isn't necessarily bad as long as the people in charge are the ones with the ideas. That is, if a band sat at home and made fantastic 8 track recordings, perhaps if they are in control they might make fantatsic recordings in a big studio - and utilize the technological benefits in the same way they utilized the more limited technology of the 8 track.

If they go in to the studio, being able to call the shots, and then turn out stuff with *add your pet over-production-hate here*, then that's their fault. Mind you, it's obviously more likely that if a new band goes into a big studio, they'll be under the "control" of some other producer. Which is bad too.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

As I get older, I get more and more convinced that most of the things I consider virtues are in fact just necessities which people consider compromises and abandon at the first opportunity. That fits bands 'cleaning up their sound', and it also fits people moving out of virtuous high density urban environments (yes, slums) to spread and sprawl in the suburbs. I suppose another way of putting this is "Protect me from what I want". Poverty is sometimes the only protection people get from what they want.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The photo? Yes, it is rather "entertaining the troops", isn't it? If I had an aircraft I would painstakingly paint it under my cockpit hatch to boost morale.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

Then would it make more sense to stop considering the sounds in terms of lo-fi / hi-fi or dirty / clean, and consider it more in terms of the sound you want vs the sound you don't want? This might be more in keeping with "songs [that] are incarnated in musical robes of flesh". The terrible cleaned-up-second-album syndrome is like Nip/Tuck on the robes of flesh, administering expensive plastic surgery in an attempt to mould the unique into the universal "beauty".

Back to wax

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

Some people who say production values changed for the worse when musicians no longer had to shout down the amplifier horn to be heard and started using electric microphones (such as Harry Smith). Some people say records took a big turn for the worse when everyone went stereo (such as Phil Spector). Some people say multitracking ruined everything (such as Greil Marcus, I suppose). Some people say digital killed off good sound (Lenny Kravitz and any other musician who makes a big deal out of using analogue equipment).

They're all right, of course, and all wrong--both lo-fi and hi-fi have produced scads of wonderful recordings. Some of my 78's from 1905 are more alive than HDCD-DVD's from 2005, but I still like expensive, smooth-sounding, even slick recordings if they sound appropriate (as in any number of pop hits and of course Kate Bush's "The Dreaming" or "Hounds of Love"). In the end, though, I'd probably prefer the cheap and idiosyncratic if I were given the blindfold test. (My personal favorite production is Brian Eno's "On Land," which combines the best of both worlds.)

Whatever, I really wish I could be at that lecture today! Please tell us how it goes (went).

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"Lt. Currie: get down from that plane's nose and get something on--this is the third time this afternoon, fer chrissakes!"

[(Anonymous)]

i dream of making a porn crossover of fellini and jan svankmajer films set in a japanese high school and in osaka restaurants,but poverty totally protects me (and the rest of the world)from doing it

superanonymous mario

[(Anonymous)]

Who would believe it when I say she's 29 years old?