Just Curious...

[nick_a]

i think when someone gets used to one thing (i.e. lower fidelity stuff or less clean stuff), it's got to be a nutty feeling to go somewhere where someone is as talented at what they're doing as you are with what you're doing. It sounds to me like the guy might want to hear some fucked up sounding stuff mixed in with all this stuff that is really well recorded. I mean it's not like i know shit but that might be something that would work.

[Slider]

I know every record I made with a pro engineer was too clean sounding for all of us.

You mentioned Puig, well I did a couple things with Puig and he's absolutely amazing, but we drove him crazy constantly asking him to mess stuff up. He couldn't figure out what we wanted.
I remember the whole band complaining that everything was too seperated.

We always had a hard time expressing exactly what is was we wanted, but looking back I think we liked things bussed together and compressed,
and not so close mic'ed.
We wanted a real mic'ed bass amp sound, not a clean fake sounding DI.
We missed all the fun stuff like effects and cool accidental shit that made it through on our demo's.
It's hard to get that "having fun recording at home" sound on a professional recording.

We often think as engineers we have to clean everything up. I know I've been guilty of it. There's always this pressure to do a "good" job.

I still would love to do a record in a really nice studio, but approach it as if I'm at home with a 388 and a 57.
It's sounds easy enough, but it's really not.

[T-rex]

It's funny, I have just gotten started in this whole recording thing in the last few years, so I strive to make everything as clear and audible as possible. But the singer in my current band comes from strictly a punk rock/indie rock background. He loves the music when he hears it as we are tracking. Once I get the mix happening, the happier I am with it the less happy he is with it. He just loves the raw sound.

But you know, I don't think its all a fear of being over produced or wearing you lo-finess on your sleeve. I think alot of this comes from going out and seeing live music in shitty clubs with no pa or maybe a small vocal pa. Most of the all ages shows around here are like that. There is no reverb on the vocals, no mics on the drums, etc. To me, this is what the Albini stuff everyone freaks about sounds like. You can't always hear everything in that type of situation, even with a really good band. The bass drum sounds like a bass drum, not a close approximation that has been gated and eq'd to cut through the mix.

[Rigsby]

There is a definate association in many minds between production sheen and sincerity (i.e. more production=less sincerity).

Most things are a reaction to something and the deal with early lo-fi stuff was a reaction to spending months getting things together only for them to sound sterile and emotionless due to too long trying to get it just right. Most of the lo-fi records were made by people who couldn't have afforded to have done that anyway, so without that choice it created a divide of the people spending the money and the people putting a mic up to get their tune down with what they could afford. Before it was a 'sound', it was people doing their best with what they had and without the possibility of 'perfection', people borrowed spaces and equipment from wherever they could, had to keep their first or second takes, and through that spontineity some fairly emotive records were made. Now that it's a sound i'm less sure that that's the case, but you probably are more sincere when you've just written something and you put it down there and then.

Concerning the original post, i think it comes down to what you're used to and comfortable hearing. If you're used to playing live then records can often sound sterile in comparison. You don't hear a drummer close mic'd at rehearsal so it can sound a little strange having it all so close up on a recording; the volume is usually at the point live where your ears are having to compress so hearing things so clearly on a recording can sound pretty fake etc etc.

[numberthirty]

Is everything finished? Are you still in the process of recording? Did any of these concerns about the sonic quality that your client is voicing come up as you've been working or, did they all just get relayed to you recently. On the one hand, I'd say the customer is always right. However, it seems the customer may not be able to relay exatly what they want. On the technical side(not that I know diddly about that but) some folks are just drawn to certain sounds. I'm not a big Dave Sardy fan. However, his comment about recording through the tascam 424 preamps strictly to achieve that sound did ring true. I love the way Zepplin records sound but, a lot of the Will Johnson/Centro-matic stuff I love as well is all about the sound of a portastudio. Not sure that helps, good luck.

[Judas Jetski]

I think the challenge I am facing right now is delivering a product that has the feel of a shitty sounding record without sounding like one... is this a realistic goal for someone who is after a "lo-fi" recording, or does the "lo-fi" set just want a shitty sounding recording? I know that my client does not want to sound like black flag yet feels like the "too good" quality of the recording I provided has gotten in front of the message of his music.

This is actually something I think about quite a bit, especially when I'm at work and have the oldies station on. There's definately a synergy that develops when you are trying to work around the limitations of your medium. When things go very well, it's all the better. The artist is used to working against something, and when that barrier is removed, the artist comes across that much stronger. Like weight training. But when "very well" becomes normal, that synergy can kind of atrophy.

Think about the Ramones' End of the Century. It should be perfect. One of the great rock bands recording with a great producer. But the thing is, Phil Spector wasn't at a point where he had to struggle to do his thing and make it work. The Ramones were. The combination is interesting to people like me, it doesn't really work overall. There's a lack of immediacy to the recording. The Ramones were about piss, spit, and blood, and Phil was doing spit and polish. The recording was too good.

Another good example would be the Stooges' Raw Power. The original version is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the Iggy Pop remix where you can hear everything--warts and all. In the liner notes, Iggy says it was just remixed to modern tastes, but to me there's something transcendent about hearing the process, not just the results.

I think that what people look for in a lo-fi approach has something to do with that synergy. Either they want the recording to sound like synergy is there when it really isn't, or they want to emphasize the synergy that's there already. We live in a society which seems to value nothing more than economic exploitation. In dehumanizing times, art becomes a matter of life and death, because art is inherently human. Maybe this guy--the recording artist--wants the emphasis on his humanity more so than on anyone's technical ability.

If that's the case, maybe there's a way to draw some of that in--the sound of someone clearing their throat, or emphasizing an exhalation at the end of a really intense lyric. That wouldn't exactly be lo-fi, but it might be making the dis(?)advantages of hi-fi accomplish the same ends.

I mean, sure, you could master the thing to cassette to dial in some yuck, but that's probably not what someone with 20 recordings is really looking for. They probably want people to hear the amount of work that went into the project--not from the production end, which is all about polish, but from the artistic end, where technique sometimes takes a back seat. It seems to me that the whole lo-fi thing is all about wearing your scrappiness on your sleeve.

It's all sort of like taking on a new BMW with a rustbucket '73 Dodge Coronet. If the guy has to work his car to beat you out, you still win, even in losing. Because look how hard the guy had to work to stay ahead of a 30 year old rotbox. Apply this reasoning to music, and you've got the lo-fi aesthetic nailed.

[Huntlabs]

Dave,

What are you going to do to fix this "problem"? Retracking? Reamping? Are you going to buy a fostex 4 track and dump you mixes to it?

I'm really curious to hear what solutions you come up with. I doubt you could but I'd love to hear the different versions. Some day tell us who your client is.

John

[tsw]

This is a great discussion.

I was thinking a few things. One is that I don't know why some people here are equating lo-fi with the word "shitty." Sound is totally subjective.

I remember reading something about Cobain having a love/hate relationship with Nevermind because of the smiley face curve thing that Butch Vig did to it. I'm not sure how that helps to answer the original question, but there's something relevant in it.

Whoever said earlier that this is about aesthetics was dead on in my opinion. The thing about aesthetics is, they change. Maybe your client should give some thought to records like Pink Moon that sound like they could have been recorded either 30 years ago or 30 minutes ago. Again, I'm not smart enough to know what answer this suggests to your question, but I think it has some bearing.

Another thing...I remember a John Vanderslice article where he was talking about the point at which things become too polished, and I think he mentioned compression and exciters and that kind of stuff. I wonder at what point your client started thinking the project was too polished.

Last thing (I think): lo-fi to me means a crispier mid-range and maybe less high end. It's the difference between a totally clear, journalistic photo and an impressionist painting. Sometimes one is preferred over the other.

I just can't believe some people here were bashing this client for having a sonic vision. That's messed up.

[Randy]

Dave-

Maybe the client isn't saying what he means too clearly. He obviously chose you for your skills and he obviously knows what he is doing. This has been said here already, but personally, I would rather have a set of pristine tracks that I can screw up in the mixdown. One has so many more options when starting with accurate records of the take. Maybe he is afraid of the options.

Maybe he is used to working around something that has been messed up and that has been part of his process to this point. Now that he is working with someone who can get it all as it should be, he feels there is no random factor that will push him to make new unexpected decisions.

I had this problem with a client who was used to recording with her 4-track and one mic in the corner of a small cluttered room. She had hours and hours of really cool stuff, and wanted to make "good recordings" of a few of them. The first stuff we recorded sounded sterile and stiff. I started asking her about her process and we figured out the problem. She had to work with constraints or else she had no focus. We worked on ways to gradually open things up so she could accept more options as time went by.

When the mass acceptance of lo-fi gave us all a new bag of tricks to evoke mood and get ideas across, some people fell into the trap that any set of new tools creates- some people think it's the only way. A cult of process develops, and a group of people find a new way to uselessly stare at their navels for the rest of their short lives.

It's great when someone can expand their process to incorporate more options. Too many options at once can make you do the "deer in the headlights" thing. Too few options can make things stagnant.

[joel hamilton]

I feel like my job is to flatter the performance by putting it in "the right light." Presentation should come off effortless, meaning: if you put a urinal in the art museum, it is art... Conversely, some piece of shit song presented as "perfect" will draw only critical judgements. I say this to people when we are mixing all the time: unless you are goiing to have a 50 page booklet come with your album that describes your real intent, then we have to make that intent obvious from the first note to the last. Records that have this "deliberate intent" seem to be the ones with staying power.

Is it huge? is it humble? is it supposed to come off aggressive? What the hell is this?

Put something in the right light and I feel it gets back to being what it needs to be: art. Even as a commodity, art.

[TapeOpLarry]

I dunno Dave,
Not to say your client is right but: There is a thing where the clean studio recordings that we spend years learning to do can start to lack the grit or immediacy of say a boombox or 4-track cassette recording. Not that these recordings are fit for mass consumption in most cases, but the rough quality can be engaging sometimes. Like when I record punk bands it always seems that the $9 Nady mic rocks harder as a vocal mic than the Soundelux 251. Doing records wih someone like M. Ward, he'll be asking for my crappiest mics just to see what sonic qualities show up. I find this interesting as sonic experimentation and not the antithesis of the recording process.

Okay, now pick me apart...

[Brian]

The guy ain't no dipshit.
Was it autotuned or beat detectived?
Many bands don't like that now. It makes them too perfect.
Was everything too clean? Maybe a murky track or two would help?
To me, if you said it was "too good", It would mean that the shelving was all up front, "over"-compressed and everything smashed in your face, "autotuned", "beat detectived", CRAP!! I just described every pop record of the last 15 years, as far as you know.
I would keep it clean, remix with "space and time" in mind, where is the performer placed in the recording spacially and how close? drop some compression, take the sheen off stuff that doesn't warrant it. Move things to the back that need to be there.
Sometimes when things are really clean it reveals how spartan a recording really is, as in, there is some melodic information missing like countermelodies and pads and dark murky undertones. It may not be your fault and his comment may not be about "your mix" as much as and apposed to "his arrangement".

[trianglelines]

Because there is not a lot of specific detail here, I'm going to make a couple of guesses about some things. Please bear with me here.

Well captured sounds are essential even in so called "lo-fi" recordings like early REM or Pavement.

The issue here is about polishing. Drums are a good example. The exact same drums recorded by Steve Albini with the all Josephson chain or whatever can be EQ'd and compressed literally millions of different ways by different mixers.

I think there is some confusion about "shitty engineering" and "production approaches that result in a slick product". I think the artist wants to avoid too many of the "slick-ifying" things that can happen that can change the presentation but they DO want their instruments accurately captured no matter what - or at least a performance quality captured "correctly".

I was shocked to discover what my friend, who is a BIG time engineer these days, did to my ghetto tracks in my home studio. He made the whole thing sound really, really commercial - the drums in particular - and that drum sound happened with a Mackie board and a 3630 cuz that is all I really had at the time. I didn't think it was possible. Everything was tight and distinct and sat it it's own place but it didn't GEL the way I wanted it to GEL. It was also exactly what I *didn't* want because aesthetically I am not after that sound. Nice separate parts and all that seemed like I'd overdubbed every little thing. It needed to have PERFECT performances to turn out "right" and I don't have the right ingredients professionally or career arc wise to sustain a sound like that. I make records that appeal to me personally and hope that extends to others (indie or beyond). I'm not looking for a "deal" so I don't make records that sound like I want one...

Here is to hairy, weird compelling mixes full of accidents and attack and kick drums that are more diffuse (or whatever). Sometimes as an artist you just want that guitar to be "too loud" or to glide slightly over a keyboard line, and the subtle choices are absolutely the KEY thing from an artistic perspective. It is crushing, too, to send something so subtley made to an Mastering Engineer and get it back with all the "wrong" decisions being made about it from an emphasis point of view. A lot of ears and artistic biases are competing for the destiny of ANY recording.

I think I know where your friend is coming from- no point in taking a "commercial" leap if there is no "market" for it. People will just wonder what happened to his "essential" sound, you know?

-TimT

[soundguy]

I suppose at this point people are hungry for details:

I recorded a bunch of tracks for this record I think about 6 months ago. The band came in and we recorded a bunch of stuff in two days and then they split. The whole idea was down and dirty, mics went up and didnt move once during the session. When I mixed everything, the client wasnt present, I spent maybe 2 hours max on each song, pretty much just threw it up and off it went. I had the audacity to record two different mixes of I think two or three of the songs. I think I used a limiter on the vocals and then the mix buss, thats about it, definitely no parallel subgroup tier limiting or anything "commercial rock radio" like that. The project was done 2" 16 track, like everything I do, no autotune or other such nonsense. No edits. All the songs are first take performances. The band rushed to record it, I rushed to mix it, the artist has had the mixes for several months now. The plan is to record the second half of the record over the summer under similar circumstances. Im meeting with him now to discuss the mistakes we made and how to improve the second half of the job. Ive reccomended that we mix together when the time comes and Im sure we'll remix the first half of songs. I suggested that we use shittier mics, "I wont use a CMV563 on your vocals for the other songs" and got "Oh no, the vocals are great". Ive got my work cut out for me. I know what he is trying to do, the avenues of communication are flowing well and Im making progress.

I appreciate everyones comments so far and you guys have shed some light on some things I hadnt considered. Im not so much looking for advice on how to deal with my thing so much as Im looking to see what people like about thheir favorite lo-fi recordings, what is integral about them and what aspects of a lo-fi production they would want to keep for themselves and which they'd want to improve on their own recordings. Its all subjective I know, dont want to start a debate about who's rigth or wrong, it would be helpful to see what people get off on. I dont listen to much indie rock at all, Im content sitting on a rock with the led zeppelin catalog for the rest of my life, so...

The challenge I have is keeping the indie spirit alive and breathing on a record that sounds awesome. I did this thing FAST, I think I got the alive thing down, but it sounds too good for the client and he knows the boundaries of what is too good for him, its his world, his career and his money, hes got the final word, Ive got to try to make it happen for him, which Im happy to do. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, but first for me is a crash course in why people celebrate lo-fi, Im convinced its beyond performance, there sa big trend right now with bands with budgets making lofi records, its THAT that Im trying to understand vs. we got lo-fi because its all we could afford.

dave

[Knights Who Say Neve]

Some of those bands, that want to go loer fi when they have a budget, are just jumping on a trend. Forget them.

For everybody else- I think it's an impressionistic thing. Another way to get something different from the idealized live performance captured to tape thing.
Examples: I've been doing electronica lately. I'll take a "violin" part and smear it in reverb so it will sound like an old bollywood soundtrack. Play with bleed by running amps with other tracks in the rear of the room while I record a percussion overdub. The aim is a dreamlike soundscape without the usual cliches. Something that will bring the listener's ear in to hear the details.

Lo-Fi, for this generation, is the sound of our youth- video arcade sounds, tape 4 track, ham radio heterodyne, etc. have pleasant associations. They sound like youthful idealism...

Mabye your client can bring in a record of something with the vibe he's looking for?