Some months ago, I was travelling on the Paris Metro during the rush hour. Needless to say, the carriage was as packed as a proverbial can of escargot in garlic sauce.
I stood amongst the commuting throng, grateful to have eked out a spare nanometre of space.
Directly opposite me sat a rather fetching mademoiselle, long brown hair and hazel eyes, eyes I realised were staring directly at me.
I straightened my back and stood as tall as the clickety-clack of the crowded train would allow. I smiled. She smiled sweetly back. ‘Ah, Paris,’ I thought. ‘The city of romance. With luck, I could be in for a little entente cordiale.’
She beckoned with her eyes, ‘come hither.’ I took a step towards her. And then…
She stood up and offered me her seat.
That’s when I realised I was getting old. And it made me think…
I started making records in an age when computers occupied the spare room, when the fastest means of communication was the Telex machine, when mobile phones and the Internet were just fantasies in an outlandish sci-fi novel. Remember the computer in ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’? Evil, manipulative and sinister though HAL was, I doubt that he could beat my iPhone in a game of chess, despite being crammed into two acres of heavy metal cupboards.
Over the last few years, Technology has moved faster than Linford Christie on speed. I regard myself as privileged to work with a bunch of talented young engineers, but they regard me as a dinosaur. For the life of me, I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because I handed a client a guitar lead when he asked for a plug-in. Or could it be because I told the same puzzled punter that all my software was at the launderette? Who can tell? For some reason my colleagues strive to keep me at arm’s length from anyone who might matter, wheeling me out on my Zimmer Frame to spout forth to gaggles of SAE students about the golden age of wax cylinders that I used to track on in my youth, or rather, in my middle age. And if Josh calls me ‘Granddad’ one more time, he may feel a bony hand across his backside, if I can muster the energy without mainlining a vial or two of Sanatogen.
So what is the point of my senile ramblings?
It’s easy to take technology for granted. Progress can be beneficial, but only as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. All too often I encounter a belief that technology can deal with problems later down the line. So what if the drums don’t sound too good…we’ll edit and eq them in the mix. And if the singer doesn’t cut it on the take, we’ll track a hundred vocals and choose one when we do the edit. Harmonise and add some varipitch, then compress, and we’ll be all right on the night. But hey, guys and gals, you’re missing the point. All these new-fangled gizmos and gadgets should be an aid to creativity rather than a substitute. Even though my old mate HAL could fly unwitting hostages to Mars and back, he wasn’t capable of synthesising an emotional performance, let alone tuning a guitar without a helping human hand.
In any form of music, the performance must take precedence. By all means, tune an occasional note in what is otherwise a perfect take. And cut and paste or loop a killer fill, but please – let’s get the drums sounding great before we start to fuck about.
None of this is new. Back in the old days, when Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed the recording studio (the beast, not the band), that killer drum fill would be spun onto another tape, the master spliced and then the copy cut back in. The not-quite-top-C would be sharpened with an AMS or by varispeeding the multitrack, then bounced back and forth between two machines. None of these patch-ups are new, merely easier with digital recording rigs.
But please, please, please don’t substitute technology for craft.
Eccentric
