Nostalgia time-your favorite outdated techniques

[MadManDan]

Hey all you fellow (ahem) old audio fogies - I started in the 80's - let's discuss old production techniques now outmoded by DAWs.

I'll kick it off - Backward reverb. Loved it. Scenario uses 24 tk 2" tape. Would start by setting aside 3 tracks if I could. One for the reverb trigger, let's say a particular vocal line or a drum hit. Bounce only what I want to get 'reversed reverbed' to that track.

Then whip up a 'reverse' track sheet, cuz 1 becomes 24 and vice versa and nobody wants accidental erasure!

Take the reels off, flip the tape and thread it back on the machine in reverse. Then take the trigger track and feed it to a nice reverb. Print the reverb on the two other free tracks. Take reels off and put back on correctly. Voila.

The big challenge was picking the right verb settings, but after a while I got good at predicting how it would sound flipped around.

Anyone have any fave ancient rits they'd like to share?

MMD

[tubthumper]

Would love to read some more of these! Coming from the DAW age I have no idea how one goes about recording with analogue, although I reckon it's something I could pick up and would love to have a go!

Makes you realise just how easy everything is 'inside the box' eh?

[Chevytraveller]

this is a "Must Watch" for anyone interested in techniques of old.. absolutely incredible stuff that was done 50 years ago

BBC Radiophonic Workshop

[Scramble]

I like to punch holes in friend's speaker cones with a pencil to get that authentic Link Wray sound.

[Steve A]

Gated reverb on drums. I know I'm in a huge minority here but can't understand why everyone still doesn't do it. BOOOOOM! I love it.

Although granted not technically something that has been superceded by DAWs as such.

[3rdConstruction]

I'm sure this will sound absurd, but I very much miss editing tape with a razor blade. I used to make musique concrete collages with hundreds of edits per short piece. I haven't had time to make any music in many years, but I still miss that process. Rocking the tape back & forth, grease pencil, & then the decisive cut. Cutting on the computer is much easier & yet less satisfying.

I can't access the Radiophonic Workshop video linked above, but I've always been a huge fan of their work. Wish I'd known about them when I was younger & they were still operating.

[Mike Senior]

Triggering Drawmer DS201 gates. They had eight of these at one studio I worked at, and I used to run out of patchcords! There was so much you could do with them -- ducking, attack enhancement, noise removal, mix pumping... and I loved watching all their lights going on a busy mix at night! Ah, those were the days... what I remember of them, that is!

[Zukan]

Real Production

[The Elf]

There's precious little that I miss from the bad old days TBH. Reverse reverb was easier, but I can't think of much else that was.

When you've spent days trying to sort out failing timecode, wiped never-to-be-repeated takes, had tapes stretched, crumpled, snapped and shredded, spent hours looking for dodgy insert connections, hunting ground loops, desperately trying to get a signal marginally above the noise floor, losing takes to badly set gate thresholds and radio interference... breath, dammit, breath... you develop a different kind of nostalgia.

I do still use some Drawmer gates for filtering and to get that gate 'click' for drums - it's a lot easier, more flexible and generally more creative now than it used to be!

[SafeandSound Mastering]

I like to punch holes in friend's speaker cones with a pencil to get that authentic Link Wray sound.

Who needs enemies, eh ? lol

SafenadSound Mastering
online mastering studio

[Mike Stranks]

Although not strictly an outdated technique, from the 70's to the 90's all my Outside Broadcast work was straight to stereo tape. If you got anything wrong then it was either impossible to fix or took forever with a combination of transcribing and tape-cut editing. It made for a buttock-clenching experience!

These days, with cheap digital mutitracks it's usually one mic per track, set the gains during rehearsal/soundcheck and then off you go. Of course, during the recording you have to keep your eye on levels, but as long as gain structure is good I very rarely make anything, but the very slightest adjustments. The mix is made in the DAW with automation and appropriate EQ adjustments etc etc. If it's not right - well have another go.

Do I miss it? Sort of... nah, not really!

[Exalted Wombat]

Backward reverb. Loved it.

Quite possible in a DAW of course.

What I DON'T miss is destructive punching in and out. And track count restrictions. And editing without seeing the waveform. And the expense. And, to be fair, early-generation unstable computer-based DAWs. I'll think of some more in a minute

[nathanscribe]

Triggering Drawmer DS201 gates.

I keep meaning to pick a couple up for experiment. I know there are plugins, but, well...

Regarding obsolete technique, I used to do everything live to stereo. I'd play what I could, mix, push buttons on things and tweak a few knobs, straight to tape. Back then I'd actually have a process of developing ideas, structuring them, writing out a performance chart, running a couple of practise and then a final take. Now I just seem to endlessly noodle and can't get stuff finished. So much for endless possibilities.

[muzines]

Hmm. Losing one precious track to sync code, and in the early days always having to run the entire track from the top, even if you only wanted to record one part at the end of the song.

Sharing tracks across multiple parts, with different mixer settings for the different parts.

Printing a mix by getting a few of your mates in to choreograph a mix performance that required more hands than you had available.

Multitrack bouncedowns to mono to add new tracks.

Having racks of tape machines to run off tape copies (and for that matter, having to print and assemble your "artwork" on home made tape or CD runs).

Cassette 4-tracks.

Not having a casette 4-track yet, and instead borrowing your dad's and your sister's tape machines so you could bounce additional tracks between them.

Dumping out synth/sequence data to tape (and then trying to reload it back in).

Spinning in "samples" to your track from a dictaphone.

Cupping your hand over your home keyboard speaker to make a home-brew wah/filter sound (and also plugging a mic into the headphone output and making a DIY talk box).

Never having enough MIDI voices or FX.

Finally getting an FX unit that could do multiple effects (but not at once) and choosing which *one* effect you were going to route your MIDI gear through.

MIDI sysex dumps.

MIDI sample dumps.

SCSI.

Zip drives...

I'm going to stop now, I can feel the frustration coming back to me...

[Persian Bit]

your question reminded me how more exciting and exploring recording and mixing sessions used to be. i think limitation always generates better results.

process & FX printing to tape: I had only 8 analog tracks on a tascam reel recorder, and a few outboards [a mono compressor, a mono graphic EQ and some roland boss half rack size units. I had to prcoess and actualy print every track by sending it through my chain and record it back onto another track. and it was a game of guess, to imagine how should it sound in final mix and tweak it, and also how to manage your limited tracks to process, print and empty tracks as you record and go on. i would leave the main vocal to use outboards while mixing.that was very fun and after a while helped me a lot how to produce and create a mix as i go with the song.

i also won't forget the first time i sampled a drum beat on my emulator sampler, chopped it to loop properly and mapped it over my keyboard. i played C3 key and woww! trying other keys and playing it in slow or faster pitches was so exciting. it suddenly made me realized all my questions and wonders how depeche mode made all those cool sounds.

everything's fine and cool with new DAWs and the endless choices and options. but there was something really magical using hardware devices. each of them had a specific style and mood. there was something exciting programming a drum beat on a Yamaha drum machine, making patterns and the whole song using its very limited buttons and menus, recording it to the tape and begin dubbing other instruments. you gotta play the whole song. no copy\pasting. you had to know what you wanna play, before hiting 'rec' button. there was a magic when you set that threshold on that little gate device, and all the his and noise would disappear.

and i always dreamed of buying more and more outboards and stuffs. you just couldn't get enough. but today.. the whole store in under your finger through menus. need 16 compressors? need 96 recording tracks?

[Scramble]

Making instruments out of rocks and sticks. Trying to get the other cavemen to redo a take by offering them extra chunks of raw meat (no fire back then). Making drums from enemy skulls. Capturing sabre-tooth tigers because their teeth made good capstans.

I'm glad to have left those difficult old days behind, but the threat of having your head bashed in with a club somehow meant you got more done.

[hollowsun]

I miss varispeed, especially for double tracking...

Record something, rewind, slow tape down (or up) a smidge, double track part, return tape speed to normal. Nice, naturally thick sound.

Also, the old trick of recording at half speed (especially solos) then returning tape speed to normal.

I know these things can be emulated on DAWs but a faff compared with 'ye olde wayes' and doesn't quite sound the same - tape at the wrong speed kind of does something nice.

I do miss aspects of 'ye olde ways' - there was something kind of more 'immediate' and hands on. Yes, there were problems but DAWs are not without their problems either with all the peripheral connections, interfaces, the constant upgrading of OS, drivers, inexplicable glitches and so on.

And I agree with what was said above about limitations being quite inspirational. I had an 8-track, suitable mixer, one reverb, one delay (also used for flanging and chorus), a compressor, gate and that was it. Just had to get on with it and be inventive and make decisions early on. I am sometimes tempted to go 'old skool'.

I wonder how many people just sit at their 'puters these days just totally overwhelmed by the sheer overkill of so many available plug-ins, VST and AU instruments, options, automation, thousands of presets, etc., and unable to make a choice/decision.

But perhaps the topic of another thread.

[Chevytraveller]

Hmm.
MIDI sysex dumps.

MIDI sample dumps.

SCSI.

Zip drives...

I'm going to stop now, I can feel the frustration coming back to me...

Ah yes.. I remember them well..

MIDI sample dumps I think I only ever tried a couple of times.. Once with a DSS1 (yuk) and again with Dynacord I think it was..
Soon realised my life was slipping away one byte at a time!..Then moved onto SCSI

SCSI device IDs, Cable lengths and the Alchemy of Termination!.. I can't complain too much about this as I managed to make a few quid sorting out other people's systems for them

I still have a collection of 6 Zip drives.. (numerous spares) for my aging Emu library.. but will be moving it over to CF Card soon

[Tartaruga]

Hi

What I miss the most,is,rehearsing and working extensively a tune with the band,to arrive at the (expensive) studio and make perfectly usable ‘one shot’ live take…No midi...

[Exalted Wombat]

Hi

What I miss the most,is,rehearsing and working extensively a tune with the band,to arrive at the (expensive) studio and make perfectly usable ‘one shot’ live take…No midi...

Well, you can still do that! Just because technology has opened recording up to people without musician skills, it doesn't stop those WITH them from using them!

[The Elf]

What I miss the most,is,rehearsing and working extensively a tune with the band,to arrive at the (expensive) studio and make perfectly usable ‘one shot’ live take…No midi...

Why knock MIDI? It's not part of the problem. When I record a band live I still record the keyboardist's MIDI, but it's an honest performance.

[Persian Bit]

MIDI was there from the very begining and even if you were a 80's musician rehearsing hard to bang one shot takes in expensive studios, you still needed it for a lot of stuff. all connections between keyboards, synths and samplers were through MIDI even if you didn't use any sequencers. other uses: Midi controller floor boards for guitar effect processors, analog mixer's automation, live stage lighting programing,...

as said above, the technology is not guilty itself. it's the concept behind this kind of writing and recording that weakens the music. when you use a DAW today, the 'time' dimension\factor is virtually bypassed. you don't have to wait for tape rewind or forward, you don
t have to play the whole song even once. you can jump to different parts of the song in a milisecond. you're going ahead of time and moment cause the technology let you, so you don't think about everything so hard, and more important, you lose the magic of the current moment and whole feelings, thoughts, the vibe on the air and..

cause it "can be fixed" later! you even don't have to practice your voice or instrument enough to make a record. auto tune, melodyne do that for you. there's no need to let the time pass and wait until you're good enough at something to achieve something good.

i guess that's why the music sounds this way today, and it comes from a generall concept of our lives: living in rush. everything's fast. including foods, relationships, music creation and then being forgotten! most of the times i hear a hit from recent past years again, i realize how fast i've forgoten the song even it's good. a lot of james blunt stuff is that way. but i clearly remember every pink floyd, eric clapton or stones hit i heard many years ago. in fact a lot of time i suddenly remember one of them in my head, and then go and find it in my archive and play. they've got 'images' in my mind.

that's strange!

[Tartaruga]

Hi
C’mon guys,It was ‘humor’...
But that’s what i miss the most,well rehearsed and skilled musicians,building the ‘vibe’ together,’live’,no ‘punch in’s’.Just playing nicely.Nothing against midi itself...
And we didn’t used ‘midi’ because the keyboard player had a ‘Rhodes’+a ‘B3'(and a DX7 too sometimes,but we didn’t use midi capability by that time,although we could.The keyboardist was not much into it...).
I supposed you could understand that…No offence intended and again,nothing against midi...
Nowadays,I have hard time motivating myself to form a band again(to play my kind of ‘repertoire’,instrumental music I mean,but not Jazz…)
Cheers!

ps:Nowadays,although there’s some ‘trend' about it,I don’t see that many bands arriving with the purpose of making a good ‘one shot live take’,except maybe for Jazz...
ps2:Keep practicing your instrument...

[muzines]

MIDI was there from the very begining

Dunno how old you are but there are many of us here that remember what it was pre-MIDI, pre-computers, sequencers, digital FX and so on.

MIDI was certainly not there from the very beginning...

[Chevytraveller]

MIDI was there from the very begining

Dunno how old you are but there are many of us here that remember what it was pre-MIDI, pre-computers, sequencers, digital FX and so on.

MIDI was certainly not there from the very beginning...

Presumably you're not familiar with Mozart's Requiem for General MIDI