sr1200 said:
OK, over the past few weeks, i've been listening to a lot of recordings from the late 50's early 60's... This is probably my youth speaking (and i use youth relatively, since i dont feel young) but, I don't get it. you got some really catchy songs that even by today's standards are GREAT songs... but all my ears focus on is the insane amount of distortion on just about everything I'm listening to. The vocals on just about every "agressive" (i use that term loosely) Beatles song I've heard sounds like its either hit the tape with the ferocity of a charging bull elephant, or the pre was so far in the red, the clip indicator is still cooling off some 50 years later... and they could never quite straighten the needle on the meter ever again from hitting the stop... And its not only the beatles. (which brings me to another discovery... that everyone from that era was just trying to clone that sound without even trying for something different)
So is this the "sound" that everyone is looking for? Distorted, loose performance, noisy? I understand that the style of music was new and engineers of the day were still experimenting with techniques and pushing new technology to its limits and in that, I can hear it as a great history lesson. But I just hear it differently I guess, since to me, it wasn't something so radically new.
The Beatles represent a tiny fraction of all the recordings from "50s-60s" and the sonic difference between early Beatles and late Beatles is quite noticeable as well. I imagine the attitude toward them early on was similar to what other rock n roll acts got - that it was a fad, barely tolerable, or just "total rubbish". Early Beatles was 63. Here's a good track from the same year and to my ears it's hard to do anything less than enjoy the big lush vocal sound. If there are serious critiques to this sound regarding excessive distortion then I'm at a loss. My ears are arguably corrupted from ignoring a lot of modern music and studio gear though. ;D Something like Earth Wind & Fire's 'Serpentine Fire' (late 70's, George Massenburg) is clean for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ6zVW3V1hc
I do know what you're saying about distorted vocals but I don't think it was purely limited by the technology as there were cleaner recordings being made. What came out of Nashville from 1960-1970 tend to be good examples.
To my ears some aspects of recordings got worse from the late 60s to mid early 70s due to changes in recording techniques - namely close miking and multitracking many parts. Something got smaller sounding in exchange for trying to present a more visceral rhythm section.
I think source should be considered too. Early Stones playing in the same room and probably not as loud as Count Basie's group could go on certain passages would've sounded raunchier because they were raunchier. If it were recorded the same way with modern set up it would only be a slightly more clean and less noisy version of the same sonic mess. I think part of the challenge was learning how to use the gear to make the rock bands come across in a better way. Both the engineers and the bands had to get better to do that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IVX8BayOCA&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL8FB4A77C84C68706
Lots of condensers fairly close. It's not pristine clean but a long ways from the raunchy gritty tones of Exile on Main Street, or the ice pick in the ears guitars of Big Star records of the mid 70s.
I haven't decided which is worse though, today's overcompression and "Give me some air - I wanna hear that air" engineers, purposely built designer distortion boxes, some disguised as console mic channels, can easily make for some harsh edgy listening. Why it's come into fad to create a vocal chain that makes the tiniest lip smack and spit sound sizzle right in your face like hot frying egg splatter is interesting. The hyper extended bandwidth is sometimes a nice tool to have but I sometimes think that the designers of old had a better sensibility of tonal balance and what bandwidth was considered suitable for good audio.
I dunno about that, groups like the whitestripes and the vines go for that aggressive (shall we say) sound with overloaded everything. They're doing it as an artistic expression (well that and if you've ever seen an interview with them... you'd probably want to smack them... kinda like a bafoon that piles dirt in a museum and calls it art... i digress)
My take on the Jack White thing is that he's using the excessive distortion for partly for compensation. He cannot wail like the singers of old he idolizes who often had a distorted sound to their recordings and has become focused on getting that "sound". Fun to mess around with but futile in achieving the real McCoy. Nor can he sing like Dexter Romweber who made plenty of cleaner modern recordings in the late 80s. Yes, it is irritating watching him futz around with a blasting vocal on some old tube tape player. I just FFWD the DVD to the Jimmy Page segments. ;D
Elmore's later recordings were overall cleaner and more relatively more "modern" but didn't give quite the same sonic impact that the crunchy ones like this did. Still, Elmore comes across with plenty of fire and brimstone and would have in a 2012 DAW set up. Jack White crunches everything into oblivion on the stuff I've heard, and it's just not the same.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INUX-_XGoR4