Black Sabbath

skills, baby.

First Led Zeppelin - recorded and mixed in 36 hours. And that thing wasn't just recorded properly but featured some of the most amazing drums sound ever recorded at that point, and little novelties like backwards echo (which Jimmy Page claims he invented).

Rain


First Led Zeppelin - recorded and mixed in 36 hours. And that thing wasn't just recorded properly but featured some of the most amazing drums sound ever recorded at that point, and little novelties like backwards echo (which Jimmy Page claims he invented).

Agreed!
 
Not sure about the echo thing ... you ought to look up Tangerine Dream's Edgar Froese talking about using the tape loops as early as 1968 ... he also talks about talking to "those folks" about getting the tape loops "right" so the music could be done right!

Rain


.......................... and little novelties like backwards echo (which Jimmy Page claims he invented).

Thats just silly.




Common knowledge is that Al Gore invented backwards echo. 


Jimmy Page invented the internet.

Moshkiae

Agreed!
 
Not sure about the echo thing ... you ought to look up Tangerine Dream's Edgar Froese talking about using the tape loops as early as 1968 ... he also talks about talking to "those folks" about getting the tape loops "right" so the music could be done right!

Well, TBH, people had started experimenting w/ tape loops before 68 - the avant garde scene of the mid sixties for example. Also, Page specifies reversed echo - which goes one step further: reversing the tape, adding echo to that and then re-reversing it. 

Here's the excerpt from an interview w/ Guitar World, dated 1993.

"During one session [with The Yardbirds],  we were recording "Ten Little Indians",  which was an extremely silly song that featured a truly awful brass arrangement. In fact,  the whole track sounded terrible. In a desperate attempt to salvage it,  I hit upon an idea. I said,  "Look, turn the tape over and employ the echo for the brass on a spare track. Then turn it back over and we'll get the echo preceding the signal." The result was very interesting -- it made the track sound like it was going backwards.

Later,  when we recorded "You Shook Me",  I told the engineer,  Glyn Johns,  that I wanted to use backwards echo on the end. He said,  "Jimmy, it can't be done". I said "Yes, it can. I've already done it." Then he began arguing,  so I said,  "Look, I'm the producer. I'm going to tell you what to do, and just do it." So he grudgingly did everything I told him to,  and when we were finished he started refusing to push the fader up so I could hear the result. Finally,  I had to scream,  "Push the bloody fader up!" And lo and behold,  the effect worked perfectly.


He just couldn't accept that someone knew something that he didn't know - especially a musician!  The pompous git!   The funny thing is,  Glyn did the next Stones album and what was on it? Backwards echo!  And I'm sure he took full credit for the effect."

Most productions back then were quick. The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" was recorded in 15 minutes. The second take is the one we all know so well. And they recorded it at 8:00 in the morning after coming down to London on the train overnight with all their gear.

The difference is that back then they were real bands, who played real gigs in front of real people, refining performances and arrangements over time. Rehearsal! It's today's lost art and secret weapon.

bitflipper


Most productions back then were quick. The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" was recorded in 15 minutes. The second take is the one we all know so well. And they recorded it at 8:00 in the morning after coming down to London on the train overnight with all their gear.

The difference is that back then they were real bands, who played real gigs in front of real people, refining performances and arrangements over time. Rehearsal! It's today's lost art and secret weapon.

I'm sorry to say: I agree. I did a major project starting a year ago now and it lasted for 8 months. Now, I'm going to make a bold statement and say: It would have been finished in no more than five months if the other bastards had spent more time rehearsing - especially the drummer!!!


The lack of rehearsiing kills any production both live and in the studio. I've worked with many good musicians but most have a bad habbit of not taking the rehearsal seriously enough. 


Records were better in the old days. My favourite production of all time is actually Piano Man by Billy Joel - that sonds perfect! Start Something by Lost Prophets and Slipknot's Iowa is my favourite modern productions. They took a whole lot longer to record though. 

Those were the days!
I remember how impressed I was baaack then when I realised the amount of live gigging the Beatles and the kinds did. 3-6 hour gigs week after week. No wonder they could then later perform on stadions without hearing the monitors/eachother. Those bands at their best were like one living creature.

Where can a starting band nowadays find regular gigs to create a routine like that? Rehearsing in the cellar isn't quite the same, though if it has to do then it has to do.

Well, like it is in Finland, many (most??) of the rock/entertainment musicians, the ones that are not stars or in the band of a star, play in 2-4 bands, one performing classic heavy, one rock'n'roll, one dance hall music, jazz...whatever. (I doubt if there are more than 20 rockbands in the whole country that actually make a decent living doing gigs and records, curse of a small country). That way you do get routine and gig hours, but it also means that you need to be a well educated musician to be able to do that: Learning new stuff of different genres reading sheet music and listening to MP3s in a touring van and then jumping on the stage with a different band. That kind of bands mostly  play with skills and memory, not with a gut feeling of a die cast team that creates unique moments.

One thing that struck me was when I read a Jimi Hendrix biography, w/ a timeline in it. 

Just seeing how busy he was and all that was happening in his life - touring, jamming, traveling, working on his own studio - and in the midst of all that, the guys wrote and recorded hours and hours of material - from basic demos to pretty much completed songs. 
I was reading that listening to bootlegs and unreleased material and I couldn't help thinking - how could he accomplish so much, when did he sleep?


And he had time left for the ladies and partying...

LOL Yeah, that's a time vampire for sure.

Though I did read that book in the mid 90's, at a time where you wouldn't have caught me anywhere near one of those darn computers.