70s Prog Drumming to Modern Ears

HarbouringTheSoul wrote: I'd rather have things sound wrong than right. Just an opinion.

 

Friends don't let '70's drummers drum into your modern ears.

I'd rather have things sound right then wrong. Just an opinion.

There is definitely a lot of feel and 'looseness' in Remainder the Black Dog.  The drumming especially sounds great, subtle rather than bludgeoning.  Could be that that quality appeals to you.

sagichim wrote: rogerthat wrote: sagichim wrote: So is he still making his records like he was taught? or is he trying to record everybody in the same room, like in the 70's? i think he still wants everything to sound perfect. I think that quote is with regard to the Grace From Drowning album and to me, it does reflect a change in his approach, esp Remainder and the Black Dog.  It doesn't sound exactly like the 70s but he never said it would. i'm not sure he changed his approach about recording methods , although he thinks the 70's approach had something "magical" about it , there are pluses and minuses to every approach. anyway he chooses he is a master . if you would like to hear an example of a great album recorded in the same room nowadays , you should check out 'resistor' album 'rise'  . and also because the music is amazing .

Actually, he has...factually speaking. I cannot speak for how much the change is evident to listeners but to quote from an article:

"A musical Magellan who is constantly exploring the exotic sounds inside his head, Wilson is accustomed to mapping out each musical coordinate prior to recording. This time, Wilson encouraged his musicians to improvise their solos. He even instructed Nic France to treat each song as if it were an extended solo rather than focus on holding down a groove. "

Further, “I was really focused on one thing on this record, and that was the beauty of sounds”, reveals Wilson who, at 43, seemingly hasn’t aged in 10 years. “The tone of the snare drum, which you don’t hear in metal music. To hear the breathing of woodwinds and the creaking of old mellotrons and Leslie cabinets and a real choir. A very kind of organic palette of golden sounds, which is something I associate with that period of experimentation and searching of the early 1970s.”

And according to that Ultimate Guitar interview, the musicians did apparently record together as opposed to separately.

"The approach to Grace For Drowning is old school—put a bunch of musicians in the same room at the same time and let magic happen."

"A lot of the music on that record was made with a bass player, drummer, guitar player and Theo Travis played sax and woodwinds live in the studio. No click tracks. Not on all the record but there are a lot of sections where it’s recorded in that kind of old-fashioned way. "


Edited by rogerthat - February 27 2012 at 21:18

Related anecdote:

The only (failed) recording experience I ever had is when I and my band of stoner psyche and prog heads went to record at a freinds recording studio that primarily recorded metal-core and pop-rap type music. The whole thing really came to a head when our drummer refused to record to a click track using triggers. He bacame even more heated when the guy recording went through and replaced his snare with a sample to make it sound more "crisp". The whole thing was traumitizing for us as we were primarily a jam band... they didn't even have a room big enough for all of us to play together at once, the final product sounded like some generic post-grunge band and not like the psyche/jam/kraut thing that we had always set out to be. Needless to say we scrapped the recording endevor after that!

Just watched Los Lobos last night. They had a young kid playing with the old geezers and he clearly has done a bit of both. But the way he could capture the real feel of many many styles was astounding. It really is a lost art.

sagichim wrote: So is he still making his records like he was taught? or is he trying to record everybody in the same room, like in the 70's? i think he still wants everything to sound perfect.

I think that quote is with regard to the Grace From Drowning album and to me, it does reflect a change in his approach, esp Remainder and the Black Dog.  It doesn't sound exactly like the 70s but he never said it would.

ExittheLemming wrote: BaldJean wrote: that's exactly what makes modern music mostly boring to me - they simply don't take any risks anymore. everything has to be "perfect", which also makes it ultimately boring. hardly anyone records an album live in the studio anymore, as many bands in the late 60s and early 70s had to do simply due to financial problems. granted that albums recorded that way don't sound "perfect", but they definitely sound more exciting. as to the drumming: I like it when a drummer just goes with the music and plays whatever comes to his mind; that's how drumming should be, in my opinion. many of the drummers iin the late 60s and early 70s did that. cutting and copying certain parts of the drumming so that the drumming sounds exactly alike in certain passages is totally insane, in my opinion Have to agree with this. To my admittedly crusty and faulty ears, what demarcates much contemporary rock drumming today with that of the early 70's is the dearth of interactive playing i.e. the earlier mindset was that the pulse is already contained in the music, so the drummer doesn't necessarily have to put it there. Instead, he/she would create patterns that act as a dynamic and reciprocal dialogue with the other musicians. That's not to say contemporary music doesn't have this (just that there seems to be a lot less of it and a lot more drummers who merely identify the underlying pulse and dial it in via an 'in the pocket groove') A really (bad) example of this is how Carl Palmer's sublime interpretive playing on say 1971's, Pictures at an Exhibition degenerated into a bmp -thwack-bmp-thwack metronome on 1992's Black Moon On the other hand, Danny Carey is an example of a brilliant modern drummer who seems to incorporate both approaches into his playing to memorable effect (shame I loathe Tool though)

BaldJean wrote: that's exactly what makes modern music mostly boring to me - they simply don't take any risks anymore. everything has to be "perfect", which also makes it ultimately boring. hardly anyone records an album live in the studio anymore, as many bands in the late 60s and early 70s had to do simply due to financial problems. granted that albums recorded that way don't sound "perfect", but they definitely sound more exciting. as to the drumming: I like it when a drummer just goes with the music and plays whatever comes to his mind; that's how drumming should be, in my opinion. many of the drummers iin the late 60s and early 70s did that. cutting and copying certain parts of the drumming so that the drumming sounds exactly alike in certain passages is totally insane, in my opinion

Have to agree with this. To my admittedly crusty and faulty ears, what demarcates much contemporary rock drumming today with that of the early 70's is the dearth of interactive playing i.e. the earlier mindset was that the pulse is already contained in the music, so the drummer doesn't necessarily have to put it there. Instead, he/she would create patterns that act as a dynamic and reciprocal dialogue with the other musicians. That's not to say contemporary music doesn't have this (just that there seems to be a lot less of it and a lot more drummers who merely identify the underlying pulse and dial it in via an 'in the pocket groove')

A really (bad) example of this is how Carl Palmer's sublime interpretive playing on say 1971's, Pictures at an Exhibition degenerated into a bmp -thwack-bmp-thwack metronome on 1992's Black Moon

On the other hand, Danny Carey is an example of a brilliant modern drummer who seems to incorporate both approaches into his playing to memorable effect (shame I loathe Tool though)