J.J. wrote on Fri, 18 February 2005 20:34 |
... Big Star is always mentioned in my top five influences. I almost slapped a A&R guy at Atlantic east coast when he told me he'd never even heard of them!
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It's about time a few of 'em got slapped!
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I've always been very curious about what mics and positions were used. "Back of a Car" is pretty much the paradigm for my rock drum sounds. (In fact, I used to even do the snare at 11:00 thing, until about eight or so years ago. Everybody kept insisting that I put the snare up the center, so I conformed.) I pretty much get those sounds, but I really want to know how the methodology differs.
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Well, I don't remember exactly what was done on which song now, but there were general ways we would do things. First, I don't remember for sure who played drums on this cut...it may have been Jody, of course, but it may have been Richard Rosebrough also...
We usually mic'd very simply...nothing out of the ordinary mic-wise or position wise. Neumann's (87, 67) or Shure (57, 545) or EV (RE15, 20) were common. We'd use more condensers for drums than a lot of people do today. Usually not any far-away overheads, but a mic may well have served more than one drum, that is, snare + hat, or snare + hat + rack tom, etc. Sorry I can't get more specific. I do remember that when I went back in about '96 to final mix (for the first time) the old Alex Chilton solo stuff I'd done in '69, I was somewhat shocked to find all of the drums on one track! But it really sounded good in most cases...there was a place or two I would have liked more bass drum, or more snare, but generally, cool. And there was a real power to
the drum track...it may have all been compressed together, but if not, at least the tape had done it! Of course, Radio City was done about 4-5 years later, so I'm sure we were using more tracks by then...but the drums weren't ever spread across 8-12 tracks at that time, like people do today. Decisions were made, and the drum sounds sort of melted/compressed together 'on their own' within a minimum analogue track count.
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Also, you mention what a big influence the Beatles were, but what about groups like the Byrds? I hear so much of that, and of course they influenced the Beatles greatly during the Rubber Soul period.
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The Beatles were certainly the model for most of our Big Star shenanigans, but yes, the Byrds were an influence. Beatles were the most important for Chris Bell. His mother was British; he and I were totally into the Brit-invasion music...we wanted to create something similar to the Beatles. But Alex wasn't as much into them. He had hung out with McGuinn a little bit, and was a big Byrds fan. He was also a part time resident of the folk scene. But he was even more a Beach Boys fan. I personally hear a lot of Wilson in his writing, although he certainly put on a bit of a McGuinn voice at times; and he did own a 12 string!
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And one more question for you and anybody else who cares to answer: My Big Star CD is among the brightest I own. Is this just a mastering guy who really likes high end or were the tracks recorded and mixed that way. I personally dig it, and it sounds amazing on anything that I play it on, but I can't use the record to A/B during mixes without getting myself in serious treble trouble.
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This is one of the small points I have always taken with the BS recordings. I thought at the time that the mixes were too light in low mids and bass. Now, I love these records, and have started listening to them again, enjoyably. And you're right, they do sound good on almost any system. But I did indeed always think that, to my personal taste, they were tilted a bit towards the high end.
But when I go back now and listen to the first, original mix masters here, they aren't THAT bright...so I think there was perhaps some excess added in mastering. I haven't heard the SACD version, so I can't comment on that.
John Fry was the actual mix engineer, but he was heavily influenced conceptually by Chris on #1, and by LX on RC, so either, or both of them may have contributed to treble mania.
But none of this takes anything away at all from the amazing songs and sounds on those recordings, in my opinion.
Terry