Rewinding tape made studios money!

This is part of the reason I don't charge by the hour for most recording.  Not only do I not want the artist to feel rushed, but sitting around talking keeps people feeling good and loose, and that helps performances too.  Tense people worried about costs waste more time in nervous retakes than if they had simply taken it slow to begin with.

Curious, I find sessions on tape tend to be more efficient. We do about 50/50 tape/protools here.

I've never been convinced saving rewind time has any benefit. Performance is all about focus. Those added seconds often help people take a breath and get even more into it.

barring few exceptions, things that take more time, have more thought put into them, end up better. Even the most spontaneously inspired song ideas are usually developed over time, Strawberry Fields Forever was developed over 7 years!

So there's the chorus for the 3/4 song you guys are gonna write......


8)

cheers

Wiz

Original. That's quaint. I demand we do it in 6/8, though.

I find when working on the computer many decisions tend to be postponed. With tape, it's more complicated to do that. A classic example is the band's dynamic when recording basic tracks. On Protools, practically every band tends to do three or four takes in a row and then listen back to them (I believe the reason is this way of working calms many anxieties). Working on tape, bands generally have enough tape to keep one or two alternate takes. This forces them to decide whether or not to erase the take right after they've recorded it. If the take has a chance of being a keeper, they come into the control room to listen. At the end of the day, this means that bands that record on tape can have a keeper first take and move on to the next song. Many bands on protools are robbed of this posibility by the standard protools/computer working method. This is just an example we see every day at the studio. Switching from tape to protools constantly at our studio, as unbelievable as it might seem, tape wins out as the more efficient system. Obviously, you can work on the computer in a similar way to working on tape, and I often do. You do have to talk to the band and explain the advantages, though.

I've seen many first takes become the keeper. If the band is well rehearsed, and they are comfortable in the studio, it is more than feasible for the first take to actually be better than any subsequent takes. I'm talking about bands that come in to record after a 20 day tour or bands that have worked hard in the rehearsal room. I would say, in my experience, the better the musicianship, the higher the chances of a first take being the take. Of course, we might all have different ideas of what constitutes a better take : )

I know of one guy who was as close to a one taker as I've ever known.  A session guitarist.  He could easily switch from style to style with the feeling and timing fully intact.  it was unbelievable watching him work. 

He'd listen to the track to play to, maybe 3-4 times.  First time he'd just listen and close his eyes and bob his head to the music.  2nd through 4th times he'd go through and play a bit during certain parts, mainly the catchy parts first, and then fill in the more straight parts.

We'd track once, he'd either say yes or no to it and then we either did it again or did a double.  He could double it exactly the same way, feeling, timing and everything, without even having to listen again.  Boom.  Done.

While everyone else in the band took hours to days to do all their parts, he was done in about 2 hours for 6 songs and his playing still killed the rest of the band..

I've never met anyone so humble about playing at such a high level too.  He'd get all bashful when folks were raving about his playing.

The fact that a Dr. Dre quote came up right after Bob mentioned the LA Wrecking Crew is pure gold. When I read his post, all I could think of was the World Class Wreckin' Cru. Here's a bit of old school Dre for your enjoyment!