Working with Crappy Sounds?

[junkyardtodd]

Towards the end of the Bjorn Yttling interview he talks about building recordings around crappy songs, using "odd bits" as "bearing members" of the song. (dig the architecture reference!). How do you go about doing this? I mean, most of the best guitar leads are kinda broken sounding, and it seems like at least half the modern rock records of the last decade used some sort of destructive filter on the lead vox, but what about using bad bass or drum sounds on purpose? What is a "bad sound", anyways?

[vvv]

Think anywhere from lo-fi to Portishead, NIN to Phil Collins.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i think sometimes it can be good to use, not "bad" necessarily, but not "great" drum sounds. i find they sit behind the vocals nicely if they're a little duller than you'd make them if you were mixing the record for the drummer.

also i think a lot of times, things that don't sound all that great by themselves can sound just right all together.

[rwc]

I think a lot of young engineers starting out begin with the idea of making everything sound as "pretty" as possible.

like soloing the acoustic guitar.. listening to how sparkly it is, and how you'd like to add a little bit more sparkle, and maybe some low to give it some balls. adding a tiny bit of 200 hz, then a little shelf eq at 5 KHz.

then thinking wow, I'm a genius! I was made for this sound thing. I knew I could always hear what other people weren't noticing, this wasn't a bad career move, I'm glad I didn't go into IT! Then you pat yourself on the back at how much better you've made it sound.

then you move onto the snare, and do the same thing.

then the kick. you solo it and think of how much better you can make it. You add a lot of low, because a kick should have that, then a lot of high because hell, it sounds clearer now, and compress it just a little bit.

then you move onto the overheads in solo. You remove the lowpass you put on at 13K because of some fitzy spitty nastiness that was detracting from the drums as a cohesive instrument. you bypass it, and listen to the pristine clarity and think.. "oh, we can't lose THAT!!!", and add a little 15 KHz bell EQ, and once again pat yourself on the back for being such a good AE, for imparting your skill into a better record.

Bounce to disk. You're done for the day - you did a lot of hard work with those golden ears. Time to go to the gym, go to the bar, and then home. Then you listen to it in whole, on the couch. wow, what a shitty fucking record! you might be thinking, as you play it at home. You go for another record thinking maybe you've lost perspective, or your hearing - what I did can't be that bad. You grab a legitimate, pressed and mastered release, and it's confirmed. What you did was terrible.

How could it be bad? Fuck, how could it be anything short of amazing? I made every piece sound as best as it could!

This is a modern rock record. the song is telling you the drums should sound like they're up against a wall and trying to explode through the rest of the instrumentation, with hard panned toms, agression, without having a sexy 15 fucking KHz. the acoustic guitar may sound better with the low end, the kick may sound great and big solo'd with the +6 at 40 hz, but what is that doing to the mixbus compressor? the drum bus compressor? what is adding low end to the acgtr and kick doing to the bass guitar? the guitar may sound awesome coming out of both speakers in solo - but big picture, man. one wants to be left, one wants to be right. or maybe it wants to be mono. but you weren't listening to the big picture, you were being a cockrag and trying to make everything sound its best.

however, a good record isn't listening to the sexy acoustic guitar, then the sexy cymbals with their nice 15 KHz, then the powerful bass drum with the 12 dB boost at 40 hz... it's about listening to a record. with no context I'm sure everyone would aim to record the "best" or "prettiest" sound they could get out of every instrument. every record would sound the same.. an incohesive mess.

big picture is important.

Sometimes I wonder how much further along I'd be if I didn't waste the first year and a half of my "career" recording and mixing garbage... and no, I'm not talking about shirley fucking manson.

[fossiltooth]

Wow.

"?????", (the artist formerly known as rwc) is turning into quite the F*ing Yoda.

Dude.

You practically just described my entire progression as a mixing engineer up until this point.

Damn.

You're gonna be good.

[HeavyHand]

me too.i just got to the part where i realized that everything sounding great by itself makes for a shitty end product.

+1 to that fucking post

[Randy]

One adage I keep hearing is "you can't polish a turd." Well, if all you have is turds, get out the palette knife and start blending colors. Something interesting will happen.

The other option is to buy a freeze-drying machine, a powder coater and a magic buffing wheel. But then the problem is you still have a turd, but it's shiny.

This may be putting too fine a point on it, but if you listen to what you have and ask yourself "How can I make this work with what's in the room at this moment." You are doing the world a service. You are putting your brains to work, making something new.

That's the fun part!

[rwc]

One adage I keep hearing is "you can't polish a turd." Well, if all you have is turds, get out the palette knife and start blending colors. Something interesting will happen.

I used to think I could make a good mix, or recording of a mediocre performance. I was quite wrong.

I established early on(well, probably late to you guys.. sometime in late 06) that the method of mixing a song by making every element sound good was bunk. The only way to mix a song is to listen to it, and in your mind get an idea of what it should sound like, then take it there. This is going to sound very copycatish, but if you're listening to something, and you think "wow, this would kick ass if it sounded like the deftones - mascara", take it there! Then make it your own.. or the band's own. Or whatever.

For me the song doesn't tell me where it wants to go - the song tells me what kind of song it is, and then I tell myself where I want it to go based on what kind of song it is.

But - the only thing a lame performance, or shoddy arrangement tells me is THIS SUCKS! - and as such, there's nothing I can do. If the song doesn't tell me how to mix it, then I'm stuck with doing some nonsense where I try to make each part sound sexy.. and as you might have guessed, I wind up with crap.

I used to wonder gee.. this setup worked really well on a similar group. I've tried changing so much stuff, why does it still sound like total crap? I'm a hack, an alcoholic, and a failure. She was right when she said I should drink less.. when recording this total hack metal band a few months ago. I used to even get this drummer intern to play drums before drum sessions just so I knew I wasn't losing my mind, and I'd get it to sound fucking great. then the band would come in. the guy would get his serious face on, ask to punch over and over, and play some of the worst shit I ever heard.. and the drummer would follow suit.

Not only did the drums sound out of time and whacky, they were sonically ten times worse. It's impossible to be inspired to make a good mix, or recording, of shitty playing.

Polishing turds is only possible, IMO, when you have tracks that don't sound amazing sonically, but with great playing.

Even then, it's no fun. On those, I get to a point where I get a mix where I can hear everything, but never get inspired to go the extra mile towards making the song really move the listener. Unless I'm getting paid well, which is the worst case in the world, because I'm forced into a task I'm not sure I can do, being merely human as I am.

[shakestheclown]

I'm working with a similar crappy metal band.

They all have nice instruments but can't really play them well, and don't really know what good tone is. The guitar is probably the worst...but it's "his tone".

When everything is playing together it's all just mud.

I've tried changing things around a little but I'm always met with stubbornness.

Any suggestions for how a guy like me should approach a situation where I need to make money but also do not need the products coming out of my place to sound like... well, you know.?

[junkyardtodd]

This is not actually what I was talking about at all, I meant using crappy sounds "on purpose" in an indie rock or singer/songwriter kinda context. Going back to the architectural reference, heavy rock really depends on solid materials throughout, like a steel framed building. What I was getting at was more like building a cottage on the beach out of some cool driftwood you found.
Btw: if there's one thing that we are all supposed to be learning here, it's that the songs and the performances are EVERYTHING. I know a guy (Bill Korecky) around here who makes some of the best heavy rock records in Cleveland. If you come in and aren't technically able to play well and sound good before he puts the mic's up, he will cancel the session and send you home with a list of things to work on

[caffiend2049]

I'm working with a similar crappy metal band.

They all have nice instruments but can't really play them well, and don't really know what good tone is. The guitar is probably the worst...but it's "his tone".

When everything is playing together it's all just mud.

I've tried changing things around a little but I'm always met with stubbornness.

Any suggestions for how a guy like me should approach a situation where I need to make money but also do not need the products coming out of my place to sound like... well, you know.?

Well I'd be sure to get a DI track in addition to whatever sound he's got goin' on.
Then you can try reamping on the sly.

[Nick Sevilla]

Well I'd be sure to get a DI track in addition to whatever sound he's got goin' on.
Then you can try reamping on the sly.

This is a little off-topic, but what-the-hey.

I never recommend AEs do stuff behind the artist's back. That just is not honest.

If they like their sound, then let them have their crappy sound. You just make sure you record their crappy sound faithfully, and make them happy.

I have been called in to fix recordings, that happen like this:

The artist is done and goes home. The engineer / producer / jerk brings in a hired musician and proceeds to REPLACE approved parts behind the artists' back. Then the musician does not understand why this or that part is different. Sometimes the engineer / producer / dodohead THINKS he is doing a favor to the artist.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Usually the artist fires this engineer / producer / idiot, sometimes actually SUES the aforementioned "audio genius" and wins too...good for the artist.

Then I go in, and have to re-record whatever the artist needs done, the way the artist INTENDED it to sound. At least the anger the artist still feels sometimes helps them perform much better, so there is a bright side to it.

Oh, to the OP, "just do it."

[Randy]

I used to think I could make a good mix, or recording of a mediocre performance. I was quite wrong.

Yeah, I didn't mean to say that it's always going to get better, or that something will always become interesting for you. If you record the people how they want to sound you are doing your job. My allusion to the smearing of poo was to point out that you may not like what's going on, but if the band does that's good enough, in fact it's perfect.

When my band was recording with the guy who recorded the Pixies' Surfer Rosa he told us he didn't think they were anything special and that, in fact, he thought they kinda sucked. He just tried to record them how they wanted to sound. Just think what would have happened to that album if Todd Rundgren recorded it.

My college band was a stripped-down indie-style country band and our first recording was with a friend who loved all that sampling and sound tweaking that was going on in the late 1980's. I listen to the recording nowadays and we sound like a hound dog with a poodle haircut with cotton poofs glued onto his legs and head. He tried to make everything sound "good" to him.

[Randy]

This is not actually what I was talking about at all, I meant using crappy sounds "on purpose" in an indie rock or singer/songwriter kinda context. Going back to the architectural reference, heavy rock really depends on solid materials throughout, like a steel framed building. What I was getting at was more like building a cottage on the beach out of some cool driftwood you found.
Btw: if there's one thing that we are all supposed to be learning here, it's that the songs and the performances are EVERYTHING. I know a guy (Bill Korecky) around here who makes some of the best heavy rock records in Cleveland. If you come in and aren't technically able to play well and sound good before he puts the mic's up, he will cancel the session and send you home with a list of things to work on

Sorry for taking part in veering the thread off topic.

Back on topic though, I think a sound is only crappy if it doesn't fit what's going on in the song, so if the song is built on top of a drum beat pumped through a cell phone and recorded with a crystal mic, and it works, it's a good sound.

[caffiend2049]

I never recommend AEs do stuff behind the artist's back. That just is not honest.

If they like their sound, then let them have their crappy sound.

You are right about this, of course. It would be pretty audacious to replace the sound totally before handing it off.
But if you are really thinking the guitar sounds bad (and not in a "so bad it's good" way) I don't see the harm in offering up two versions for the artist to consider.

If they truly like "their tone" better then hey....let 'em have it. It's just my experience that a lot of musicians are used to how they sound and haven't heard it any other way.
Often these are the same folks who wonder why their recordings don't sound like those of the bands they are trying to emulate.

I speak from personal experience as the type of artist in question.
And while I've pretty well overcome my allergy to recording juju - I can appreciate that it is sometimes the psychological hurdle that is the hardest thing to overcome on the path to a great recording.

So, while I wouldn't go so far as to secretly replace the artist approved tracks....I would definitely (if time/$ allowed and it was a serious concern) engage in some undisclosed methods of sound improvement. Especially if the material warrants it.

If they DO like the new tone better and want to believe that it is their sound made better by your magic boxes....well, that is the truth from a certain point of view.