Vinyl vs. iPod
A Studer 2-inch tape machine is a huge cumbersome beast that takes up a lot of space and might need pampering and attention when you make records. It requires that you use big, heavy rolls of 2-inch tape that need changing when you record two or three songs on them. And hardly anyone produces or manufactures vinyl records anymore. And nobody has a turntable. But it's making a trendy comeback.
Just because something is easier doesn't make it better. It certainly doesn't make it sound better. I had a digital recording rig in my home studio for a month or two and got so depressed. I quit writing songs, my guitar collected dust and I thought my creative life had ended. So I jerked it all out of the wall and threw it in the garage and that's where it will stay.
My new album, "Just A Little Lovin'" was made on a 2-inch tape machine. I demanded it. I like working with engineers and producers who love and appreciate tape. I love the sound, smell, and feel of tape. That's why I enlisted legendary record producer, Phil Ramone, and the brilliant recording engineer, Al Schmitt. They didn't mind my insistence. They put up with my hardheadedness. Hardly anyone uses tape anymore because they claim it's so expensive and it's just easier to use a computer. Most engineers can operate any computer rig in studios these days. But if you ask them to run a Studer and put on a reel of tape, they run down the hallway screaming for Mommy. I'm sorry, but I can't get turned on looking at a computer screen. First of all, it's not more expensive. By the time digital users spend the time and money to buy the software needed to put that "tape sound" on their digital record, they have spent more time and money than I have. While their downloading "tape sound" software, I'm kicking back on the houseboat drinking beer with a fishing pole in my hand listening to Django.
It's not for everybody. Tapes are not perfect like digital. If you want to sing the word "love" 40 different times and 40 different ways, then digital's for you. Tape requires attention. You can't just push the space bar and go to lunch. For example: When I put on my vinyl (yes vinyl) of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love," my favorite part is towards the end when you hear the "print through" of Robert's vocals. You know the part when he sings "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah"? For years, before I made records I thought that what I was hearing was on there on purpose, for effect. But while making my new record the same thing happened. There is no reason, it's just a tape thing. Sometimes that happens. It's not as noticeable or as cool as Zeppelin but if you listen to my first track, "Just A Little Lovin'," towards the end you will hear my voice. I made a record with print through. Wow. Everybody wanted to fix it but I insisted on keeping it. This is a true testament to using tape. The "real" comes through. It makes me proud to be such a hard head.
I was born in '68. Mama and Daddy had albums. I grew up listening to their vinyl. I have discovered that having a vinyl collection is so much cooler than having an iPod. Now, I have an iPod and I admit they are genius especially for travel and convenience. But they aren't really any fun. I don't call up my friends and say "Hey why don't y'all come over and bring your computers and let's have a party"? Hell no! I say bring pot, wine and vinyl. That's sexy. It's really a great excuse to get together and listen to music. Everybody takes a turn looking through the collection and it's interesting to see what each person plays. The vinyl way is just me. I think if if we all listen to more music together, it really doesn't matter how we do it. Music will save us all just like it always has. We feed our souls with it. Vinyl just creates a little more discussion for us. You get to look at the covers, the liner notes, sometimes the lyrics are included. Plus you can roll a doobie on it. That's hard on an Ipod.
Times are tough. Concert tickets are high and records are, too. Hell, everything is high and nobody has any dough. With our economy and the way it's headed, my guess is that we'll all be staying home drinking bottles of Two Buck Chuck listening to music, however we choose to do it. Cheers, music lovin' fools!
Keeping the dinosaur way alive y'all..........
Rockingly yours,
Shelby Lynne
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Shelby Lynne, you are a goddess! I have everything you've ever recorded and released. Being a big Dusty fan, too, I almost wet myself when I saw your latest album (yes, I'm of "that" generation...no matter what media I purchase or download you on, it's STILL and ALBUM, dammit!).
Unfortunately, my dumb a$$ got rid of my Denon turntable and vinyl collection when I was a stupid 20-something. Man, do I ever regret the loss of about 10 "book boxes" of LP's!
Much love to you and Allison. Today's Nashville doesn't deserve either of you!
Amen.
Thanks Shelby! This is real.....vinyl is real.....your stand and comments are a breath of fresh air in a sterile digital world. Roll one for me sister!
As if there wasn't enough partisan bickering in our lives, now it's tape vs. digital recording. (?) I suppose there's a point to recording tech snobbery, just like artistic media snobbery (oil vs. acrylic?) but, after a while, it all gets kind of silly. There's something sort of irresponsible about it.
Like Hillary blaming her Iraq war vote on George Bush, it reveals "a poor workman who blames his tools."
This snobbery, taken to the nenth degree, will have you asking, is a recording in a studio even "music" without the interaction of the audience? Is a photograph of a painting really art?
Do we need a "two-state" solution for every single aspect of our lives?
Thank you for your courageos post, Shelby, you've finally decided my vote for me. This presidential nomination is not a choice between black and white, young and old, change vs. status quo: it's a vote to put an end to this PHILOSOPHY OF PARTISANSHIP that has permeated American culture.
We can't even have a hearing about steroids in baseball without it turning into a battle of the north vs. the south.
"A house divided cannot stand" was the way Abraham Lincoln said it. "We can't raise ourselves up by tearing the other guy down" is the way Obama said it.
Any artist or musician will tell you, it's what you feel that counts and in the end, it's all good. This is a time for the world to heal, to come together.
Choose inclusion.
Obama, now and in November.
I forgot to mention... I love my Korg M-1000. If you like the sound of tape saturation, it's because of the headroom and the dynamics. At 1bit, 5.6 MEGA Hertz, it's even better specs than tape. True, there's not any editing at that resolution... yet. But, it's moving that way with the Sony Blu-ray HD stuff. (I'm not up on the video terms, sorry.) Tube mics, good pre-amps, and the right room... it's nice. Very warm but clear as crystal. Even the buttons are like some old German two-track.
Proud owner of a 2-inch Ampex MM-1000 16-track, two AG-440B quarter-inch two-tracks and a Scully 280B half-inch 4-track (and a vintage Aengus 18-input console that recorded some biggies, back in the day)... all where normal humans keep their living rooms.
Literally spent years inside (or under) these behemoths, rewiring, refurbishing and tweaking... and the job's never done. Half the 'fun' has been tracking down parts, especially circuit components so 'old' they're not even cross-referenced any more!
These days, the convenience and power of digital editing is a boon for me -- but mostly for archiving and sharing my old stuff online and diddling with audio-related web sites. Yeah, digital is great and very convenient...
... but when those relays clack and the comforting "ssssss" of tape passing over the heads, along with the warmth imparted by analog electronics, produces the unmistakable (and, no matter how hard they try, inimitable) mystery of 'tape compression', you're back in the zone where much (most?) of the great stuff was created.
Digital versus analog? There's plenty of room for both. Pleased that you've come to the same conclusion.
... and about that vinyl -- ahh, another discussion for another time. Just discovered that something I played on in '70 (yeah, 38 friggin' years ago!) has recently been reissued -- ON VINYL! Check eBay and Google... it's a regular surge. What's old is new again.
(sigh)
Shelby,
My husband still has the turntable from his teenage years and we have kept all of our vinyl; especially the long playing import special editions. But I also have an MP3 player and stream music from various internet stations, like Pandora, all the time.
Vinyl does have a very real and raw sound. I much prefer listening to music on vinyl than digitally. But I also have to say that the digital age has enabled me to discover so much new music. Terrestrial radio has become a bane to music lovers. Guys in suits decide what we get to listen to and it's all shiny packaged American Idolesque crap. The new stuff I find on the internet many times put out there by the artists themselves is miles above anything the studios are offering.
I have it all ways - vinyl, cassettes, satellite radio, internet radio, MP3 and love listening to music anyway I can get it. But I do agree with you on the wine and having friends over to hang out and listen to music. Economy or not - it's the perfect way to spend an eveninig.
I assumed that this was post was going to be another political analogy for Clinton v Obama.
The election has gone on for far too long.
Yes it has, and it'snot over for another 8 months. But Shelby's post is a welcome change no?
vinyl is sth only real music enthusiasts get, which makes for unbelievable bargains in garage sales the world over.
Your new record sounds great, very organic, and you couldn't get that sound with digital no matter how many layers of digital "tape sound" effect you dump over it. Django would've smiled...
any chance we can get it in vinyl, btw? (your record, I mean)
Shelby,
LOVED your post. I was born in '66 and also was raised on vinyl. I even had some old jazz 78s that my dad gave me. My vinyl is now gone - mostly from convenience and space - although I still have a pretty nice system. I guess my compromise is that even though I've gone digital, my CD player, amp and pre-amp are all tube. Gotta love that midrange warmth. I know that there are great solid state amps out there, but I like tubes better.
Anyway... Your talk of getting together with friends and playing what I call 'Trade-a-Song' is right on the mark. It is actually what I choose to do on Friday nights regardless of economy. It is just fun. The ONE good thing about a bad economy is that it almost invariably leads to better music. Good music is rarely the product of boom-times. We have an unpopular war and an increasingly terrible economy - Hello music!!!
I'm a rock and blues guy but I think I'll have to go look into your albums now. (I still use the term albums - funny how old habits die hard.)
I don't expect vinyl or tape will ever make a comeback. It's simply too easily damaged, not portable and not compact enough.In addition it doesn't store well and the media itself is too expensive. (At this point it really isn't being manufactured anymore) Digital recording has certainly had its setbacks. To make a good recording in a home studio requires more than what you can pick up at Guitar Center. Digital has the capability of mimiking all of the frequency characterisics of tape and vinyl but it does require an investment.
Good ADDA converters are the starting point. You get what you pay for in this department; there's a big difference between Apogee converters and a soundblaster card (or for that matter MOTU, M-Audio and other pro-sumer gear.) Invest wisely on equipment that does the job right the first time and you'll be a lot happier.
Microphones and high grade pre-amps are also extremely important. A big part of Zeppelins sound wasn't always the tape it was being recorded to so much as it was the Telefunken Elam 251 mics traveling through the heavily transformered sound of the Helios and Neve consoles that were used in the recording process.
There's certainly no question that having talent running the machines like Al Schmitt or Chuck Ainlay certainly makes a big difference as well and guys like that will make you sound fantastic regardless of which medium you choose. It doesn't hurt to have somebody like Bob Ludwig or Lynn Fuston master your work at the end of the process either. But is that practical for a project studio you want to use for composing?
I wouldn't be so afraid of digital; if you use the right gear with the right people the results should equal analog if not exeed it. Years ago I preferred the sound of tape as well - a Studer A800 was an awsome piece of technology but in the era of 192Khz sampling rates and 32 bit float dynamic range it's a dinosaur. A good engineer really isn't going to mind much if you want to go analog, but finding a facility that's willing to keep maintainence hungry machines like that around is harder and more expensive to do.
My advice is to invest in higher grade gear for your digital world; only then does it become worth it. If you try to do it on a shoestring budget you're not likely to be too happy with the results. The same is very much true of analog.
Yes! God, yes! We've all been sold a bill of goods by the recording and electronics industries. First it was 8-tracks and then cassettes. You had to buy new electronics and a whole new music collection. Now they had some advantages. For the first time I could take my music from the house and into my car. Couldn't do that with records! And they were smaller. But they were still analog tape. Then came the horror of digital music. Yes, you had to have new electronics. Yes, you had to rebuild your music collection. But the sound is total crap. If you like clean and sterile, it's ok, enjoy it. I recently rebuilt my music collection, but this time it was vinyl. Not only vinyl. I went back to vacuum tube electronics. Even better! Vinyl played through a vacuum tube amplifier. You can't get closer to sound heaven than that. Side note: On the dust sleeve of one of my albums the record company had put a warning about the penalties of using the new cassettes to "illegally record and distribute music". They expressed concern that it would cause the record industry to go bankrupt. Sound familiar?
Wow....can I come over? I'll bring the pot, the wine and some vinyl. Seriously, the first time I ever recorded on to a computer, when I was done, the engineer said to me, "Want to see your part?" Actually I would like to come over.
thought-provoking post!
i was an engineer for several years - started in 1990. i learned how to calibrate a machine, run the tones, etc - and then along came pro tools. i stuck to live sound more than studio work.
the problem is that 2-inch tape is nasty stuff to make. it doesn't store well - and an analog gear overall is EXPENSIVE! also, it requires sensitive maintenance and repair work. most musicians could buy your digital rig for the cost of fixing a 48-channel console!
having said that - the other problem is that 2-inch tape SOUNDS GREAT!
i think that recording to tape and mixing with digital gear is the best of both worlds. hopefully, they'll figure out how to 'warm up' the cold digital realm.
thanks for the post!
Cool post, definitely right about tape and vinyl sounding better than digital. However, if I could get a Studer and a bunch of rolls of 2 inch for the price of a computer and a hard drive, I'd have one too!
Computer digital recording, like the internet, has at least given more people the chance to participate, and it ain't all good, and it doesn't sound as sweet as tape to vinyl, but we do the best we can with what we've got, and it's way better than nothing, which is what most musicians could afford if big tape machines were still all we had. Glad you're keeping it rolling though.
"Just a little lovin" is the name of your new record??? "Pot, wine & vinyl" at your house-parties???????
Hooooooo-doggies, I dun wet mu-self.......
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