subject: No more than 24 [print this page] No more than 24 No more than 24
Even though many of our friend readers that know me won't believe it , when I was born the LP Vinil Records were already invented and the recordings of "Perez Prado" which by the way sounded great, even moretoday they still sound great.Once in a while y play the old an noisy record (78 RPMs) Mambo No.5 recorded back in 1949 out of my father records collection, and today with an objective point of view and certainly different from my childhood I try to analyze which are the key elements of the success of this artist's famous recordings. Just for the record, In order to listen to all my old vinyls without the risk of over wearing them I digitized them all to my Pro Tools HD System
Of course we understand the theme composition, the musical arrangement and most of all the impeccable performance of the musicians, due to the fact that the technology available at that time only allowed one track recordings, so if a musician made a mistake they have to record it all over again. Of course the talent of the recording engineer was important so he/she had to capture all and each of the instruments with the right balance, that implied the precise placement of the microphone(s), which in that moment was the "Final Mix of the Record" so in couldn't be modified afterwards. But the genius and perseverance of the human race continues and takes him to create always new and better technology.
Stereo Recording appeared and then four track recording, bands like the Beatles already benefited from this technology, could you imagine?, record a drum set, bass, two guitars and vocals all of it in only four tracks?, by the way this recordings are still going and playing every day in radio stations all over the world. Well the frantic history of the technological development doesn't stop there, the 8 track recoding and the 16 all the way up to 24 tracks appeared in different formats, being the 2" the most popular. Is fair to say that over two decades this format was the industry standard. And all the producers, musicians, singers, arrangers and engineers knew that they could count with a maximum of 24 tracks to print their talent and creativity and that had to be sufficient. Today we have the possibility to use powerfull DAWs like Pro Tools were you can get practically unlimited number of tracks and digital plugins like Waves that aloud us to create spectacular productions, and leave no doubt that the available tools will be more and more.
But STOP, I'd like to stop and think for a moment,What is the key element to make a good production? Is the technology? Is the channel amount or the available resources? Or the talent and creativity?, Maybe the mix of all of the above?. To the creative musicians and producers that have a home recording studio that I'm sure have more than 24 tracks, why don't make an exercise, try to go back to the basics, try to do once in a while the production of one song whose challenge be the use of the fewer tracks, no sequences, just direct playing, If you are a one man band, do the overdubs, and see what happens. squeeze those tracks and your talent.
I've been passionate for technology and I always keep learning from it, and would be irresponsible on my part the slightest suggestion of diminishing its valuable contribution to the musical production in the world. Mi reflection would be, let the imagination flow, work and develop skills to the deepest form possible, learn the use of the technology bur never let the technology use you, who knows maybe the result, would amaze you.
