The Velvet Underground Sounds

general questions, comments and ideas about recording, audio, music, etc.
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soundguy
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Re: The Velvet Underground Sounds

Post by soundguy » Sun Feb 13, 2005 5:49 pm

pscottm wrote:
like i said, it's the band.
fucking cop out man.

dave
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Girl Toes
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Re: The Velvet Underground Sounds

Post by Girl Toes » Sun Feb 13, 2005 5:52 pm

pscottm wrote:
Girl Toes wrote:
bigbrainjob wrote:Let's see.... In early days, the Velvets would often have several instruments going through the same amp. They would turn up the amp to hear the natural tone of the hum and tune their guitars to that tone. This, in combination with guitar tunings usings fifths and octaves, creates it's own minature "wall of sound" with thick overtones..... they used Vox amps...... John Cale put mandolin strings on his viola...... Mo turned trashcans upside down, threw a mic in there, banged loud, and turned down the gain.

The first two Velvets records were recorded mostly live in a single room so there was a lot of bleeding over with the sounds.
Now there is an answer!!!!
like i said, it's the band.
Yeah, but its the band doing production.

pscottm
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Re: The Velvet Underground Sounds

Post by pscottm » Sun Feb 13, 2005 5:55 pm

soundguy wrote:
pscottm wrote:
like i said, it's the band.
fucking cop out man.

dave
hahaha! well, if i knew the details about how the sessions were run (probably close to the same for everybody who came into that studio for years), i'd post them. :D

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Slider
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Re: The Velvet Underground Sounds

Post by Slider » Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:26 pm

bigbrainjob wrote:Let's see.... In early days, the Velvets would often have several instruments going through the same amp. They would turn up the amp to hear the natural tone of the hum and tune their guitars to that tone. This, in combination with guitar tunings usings fifths and octaves, creates it's own minature "wall of sound" with thick overtones..... they used Vox amps...... John Cale put mandolin strings on his viola...... Mo turned trashcans upside down, threw a mic in there, banged loud, and turned down the gain.

The first two Velvets records were recorded mostly live in a single room so there was a lot of bleeding over with the sounds.
Lou used a silvertone amp early on..

They got a bunch of Sunn amps much later on.
John had a custom made tube bass amp instead of using the Sunn.
I think the band was pissed because the custom tube amp was like $1500, where the Sunns were free.

potsandpans
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Re: The Velvet Underground Sounds

Post by potsandpans » Mon Feb 14, 2005 1:25 am

potsandpans wrote:

i heard somewhere that the cassette four-tracks that are manufactured now are better in terms of sound then that telefunken or whatever that the beatles were using.


On cassette?? That's ridiculous. The parts are cheaper than ever.
the cassette quote was NOT by me. someone messed up earlier in the thread.

Anyways,
the engineer on WLWH was Gary Kellgren..
he did a little jazz stuff for Verve but also did Zappa, Hendrix, and some Faces live stuff. at least Verve was daring enough to try the "freak" music, and Zappa said they were trying to run Tom Wilson for President.

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red cross
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Re: The Velvet Underground Sounds

Post by red cross » Mon Feb 14, 2005 1:44 am

In many of these cases where people are saying "its the band, not the recording" you'll probably notice that that statement is generally applied to records that wer made in the late 60's and early 70's, most often. Why is this? The common ethic in commercial studios then was to make a recording of the band where the recording technology available was simply used to capture what was happening in the studio, or whatever environment the band was recording in.
I think the whole idea of simply "capturing what was happening in the studio", as far as rock n' roll was concerned, died the moment recording engineers discovered the overdub. Doesn't the ethic you're referring to come more from the jazz/classical world, where the intention is to present the instrumentation in as "natural" a state as electronically possible? I certainly don't agree that the VU records were made with any Albini-esque "naturalist" intentions. More likely that they fucked an already fucked up sound even more in the mix. On purpose!

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