Getting that Old-School sound (or not)

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Tue Dec 31, 2013 5:46 pm

vvv wrote:
A.David.MacKinnon wrote:
vvv wrote:Also, and not sure, but isn't a lot of that stuff panned L-C-R?
A lot of that stuff is panned center ie: mono
Izzat what that's called? :twisted:

But then I always loved this, what sounds fairly panned in places, and not much lo-fi. But the drums are, mebbe, subtly.

I guess this all depends on the idea of "old school". As much as I love the Specials they're new school or maybe middle aged school to me.

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Tue Dec 31, 2013 5:51 pm

Old school = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybmPHD7FPcQ

ott0bot · Post by **ott0bot** » Tue Dec 31, 2013 9:10 pm

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:Old school = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybmPHD7FPcQ

yeah...or this:

http://youtu.be/MJuEYdqNbHI

dirty, rough, but groovy

cale w · Post by **cale w** » Tue Dec 31, 2013 9:36 pm

O.P. here,

Ah! Everyone replied too fast for me to address each reply without writing a dissertation... which I want to do anyways, but not RIGHT now. But geez, I'm going to be tied up with applying these suggestions for a while, so thank everyone who chimed in. I will be back with more to critique soon. But seriously, thanks for everyone's input and for understanding where I was coming from. This forum... I don't even know, They oughta charge to read this stuff. What a resource.

I think "Simmer Down" is what collectively we might be going for. It's daunting trying to compare to that sound though...

Ya'll are great. Happy New Year!

The Scum · Post by **The Scum** » Tue Dec 31, 2013 10:03 pm

They oughta charge to read this stuff.

Unmarked bills to the usual address.

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Tue Dec 31, 2013 10:11 pm

"Simmer Down" is certainly one of the best choices as a Studio One/Coxsone flagship reference track; the vocal sounds decent, you can mostly hear the groove, and the bass isn't completely over-powering everything else in the mix!

GJ

PS-- I listened to "Tighten Up;" you guys have a good handle on the style, very nice. Yes, it's "clean," but so is that new one from Jimmy Cliff, but it sounds great too. I'm thinking, maybe it's the vocals, though? A bit too forward in the mix, and maybe they could use some "echo chamber"-ish verb? A little intentional vocal obfuscation might get things closer. Also, and this might be a crazy idea that someone better equipped to explain why it won't possibly work might shoot down, but what about intentionally down-sampling the whole track before mastering? I'm just thinking of the opaque lo-fi plasticky sheen that my old Boss SP-202 adds to audio, especially drum loops. It samples at a whopping 31.25K; couldn't you try a similar conversion in Pro Tools or Sound-Forge??

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Wed Jan 01, 2014 6:52 am

I was going to post a big list of suggestions but really you should just read this - http://www.funkydown.com/downloads/shitty2.pdf

Just substitute the word ska where-ever you see funk or R&B. They're two sides of the same coin and most of the production techniques are the same (minus the dub elements that came along later).

cale w · Post by **cale w** » Thu Jan 02, 2014 12:11 am

Lynval Golding from the Specials likes to sit in with us when he's in town. In fact, my first professional band experience was with him back in 2004.

Here's him and us a couple summers ago, that's me playing bass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb9p76cZ33o

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Thu Jan 02, 2014 12:21 am

cale w wrote:Lynval Golding from the Specials likes to sit in with us when he's in town. In fact, my first professional band experience was with him back in 2004.

Here's him and us a couple summers ago, that's me playing bass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb9p76cZ33o

You should maybe have youtube mix your record through a camcorder. That video sounds perfect.

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Thu Jan 02, 2014 12:29 am

I just listened to the track in the first post. I gotta say that I think the main "problem" is the playing. It's all too spot on perfect sounding. Too much musicianship, skill and master class workshop attendence in evidence.

Ska needs a "coming off the rails" quality to work. Like it's constantly speeding up, but not really. Voices and horns need to be overblown a bit. Amps need to be vibrating apart. Everything detuned a hair. Wilder vocal harmonies. Sorry. Just calling it like I hear it.

Do you guys drink lots of alcohol and smoke lots of doobage when you go in the studio? It might help in this case.

accordion squeezist · Post by **accordion squeezist** » Thu Jan 02, 2014 2:10 pm

cale, just continue what you're doing...someone a few threads back made the comparison to the new Jimmy Cliff record.

cale w · Post by **cale w** » Thu Jan 02, 2014 10:13 pm

Snarl, I think that's the first time anyone has apologized for calling me a well-trained musician

I totally get what you're saying though. For the record, we smoke as much ganj as any other group of pasty Seattle-ites.

Things are coming along nicely, I'll post another link soon if anyone wants to hear the progress. Grouping before processing has really been key, as well as the midrange character bumps in weird places.

A.David.MacKinnon, that article was nuts! Thanks for posting that.

cale w · Post by **cale w** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:24 pm

So we've come full circle: After seven versions of the mix with various "old-school" methods and fakery applied, we've come to the consensus that I should do a nice balanced mix that highlights the performance of the band, without trying to shove it into a sonic hole that's the wrong shape. The ultimate realization was that, given the tools and technology we were working with, we were not going to get in the ballpark of the technological limitations of 60's ska recordings. My favorite part was when the sax player listened to one of the "affected" mixes and said: "I work way too hard learning and practicing my playing and tone for you to make it sound like that." Safe to say I'm happy with the change in direction. I did learn a lot about purposely mangling sounds though. While not achieving the aesthetic we were shooting for, some of the more bizarre mixes did have their charm and appeal. Just not for our little ska band.

I think the big lesson is that you're never going to make a rusty old Telecaster sound like a Stradivarius. And you can't make a Stradivarius sound like a goat. Because they are all different things!

cale w · Post by **cale w** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 1:35 pm

This project is done and we're pretty happy with the results! You can hear a few of the tunes on our reverb nation page:

http://www.reverbnation.com/georgetownorbits

Kick the Can, Too Far Too Late, and Son of a Preacher Man are all from the new album.

Thanks everyone for your input, hope you enjoy the tunes!

Judas Jetski · Post by **Judas Jetski** » Tue Mar 10, 2015 3:21 pm

I like it. To my ear, there's nothing obtrusively new-school about the recording.

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