1991 - the year Guitar Sound broke

[gilbertharding]

The other day I bought a CD (remember them?) which looked interesting. It was a 3 CD set of Crosby Stills Nash and Young called Broadcast Sessions, and featured live concert performances from 1970, 1974 and 1991. I figured, well, the last of these discs will probably be horrible - but I asked myself how bad it could be? Neil Young's Ragged Glory came out the year before this, and it sounded pretty good... and look, it's the same people singing mainly the same songs... they won't have forgotten how to play and sing in 17 years, will they?

Anyway, having worked my way through the first two discs, I put the 1991 concert in the player today, and blimey: it's awful. The singing is OK, but the guitar sound. Oh my Christ, the guitar sound.

My questions are: what is it about the turn of that decade which made the guitar sounds so fucking horrible? How come no-one at the time seemed to notice that their guitar sounds were so fucking horrible? If there had been any drums, would I also have been complaining about the horrible drum sound?

It's bad when they play solos - the sound kind of chokes into a weedy digital feedback. It's worse when they play power chords, when you feel the effect they're going for is a menacing thundering roar, but it sounds more like a distant fizz.

I can remember a few hardcore records at the time having the same problem, actually. But what WAS the problem? Drugs? Technology? Record producers with tinnitus?

It reminds me of the Monkees tape I had back then, where the last song on side 2 was That Was Then, This is Now, which never failed to make me dive for the fast forward button (although now I've listened to that again, I notice there are no guitars).

[NoSleep]

It was the 80's that did it. I first noticed a problem not just with guitars (it's electric guitars you're talking about) but with the sound of drums. The music I first detected a problem with was Jazz; no jazz record of the 80's sounded as good as the ones in the 60's or 70's. And for the most part, this was a problem with the sound of the drums.

I think the problem lay with the recording/mixing engineers of the time. They were trained in the art of the "new sound" on pop and rock records; chucking tons of unnecessary post-FX on instruments, gated reverbs on drums, unusually bright guitars, unnaturally bright reverbs. There was a quest not to sound like records of the past that forgot that the goal should always be to sound good.

In Jazz this is highlighted when one of these engineers goes to town on the drums and renders what the player is doing unlistenable by disregarding what the drummer is playing and just applies the same formula as what would normally work on a rock/pop drummer (or drum machine). The kick drum should be that loud, not with the comparatively subtle way it is used in jazz drumming (it isn't central to keeping the beat but rather it pushes and pulls behind the bass player).

My brother, who is a recording engineer in Hamburg, watched as a younger engineer went to work "transforming" the sound of a (jazz) drummer, who was warming up in the live room, before the arrival of the producer. When the producer arrived he took the guy from the console and walked him into the live room, where the drummer continued to play, and told him, "I want the drums to sound like that."

So I blame 80's recording and mixing techniques. Too busy looking for a new sound to notice they had completely lost it.

[purlieu]

Although I actually really like the sound of '80s pop/rock in general, I agree that its transference onto other types of music was awful. Jazz needs a live, roomy sound to work. There are even some '80s ECM albums which are absolutely horrible to listen to, and that's from a label famed for exceptional engineering and production. And certainly by the end of the decade and into the '90s things had got daft: huge long reverb tails on snares, tinny FM synths everywhere, nasty digital guitar sounds in acoustic-based music. The emergence of dance music and more lo-fi sounding indie and grunge stuff was already defining the sound of the '90s, but the mainstream took quite a bit longer to catch up (generally the older the artist, the longer it took: the likes of Tangerine Dream and The Moody Blues were pursuing late-'80s preset sounds to the end of the '90s).

[gilbertharding]

I first noticed a problem not just with guitars (it's electric guitars you're talking about)...

Actually, no - the acoustic guitars sound odd too, but there it's as if all you can hear are the strings, with no resonance from the lovely wooden box at all. I associate it with those acoustic guitars with the black plastic bowl-shaped thing on the back, but I don't know if that's what they're actually playing.

Like you, I've grown to quite like the sound where it's done right. Valerie by Steve Winwood. Sledgehammer by Pete Gabriel. I think Purlieu hit the nail on the head with the observation that The Sound is worst when it's slathered over inappropriate genres and instruments (Jazz, folk-rock, etc).

[Pauline Walnuts]

I blame Piezo pickups for acoustic guitar sounds, they don't actually sound anymore like a miked acoustic guitar than a old fashioned magnetic pickup but through association when they do actually mike an acoustic they now make it sound like that plinky plonky piezo.

Well, that's what I thinks anyway.

[NoSleep]

Yeah, that's a horrible sound, but I think the 80's producer/engineers found ways to make perfectly good miked-up acoustic guitars sound shit (without reference to the sound of piezo pickups).

[NoSleep]

Add to the list of horrifying sounds of the 80's: chorus effect on saxophones. Lead vocals don't need chorus effect either (although I'm quite happy to hear a bit of phasing).

[Pauline Walnuts]

Slap a camera in front of a geetar,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCEp4VvpeLU

Let's spend a fortune and spend hours getting that guitar to  sound like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEos1M87bJU

I don't even like the Mission, don't know why I'm using that example.

[purlieu]

Yeah, with acoustic guitars you need at least a couple of mics to balance out the pickup. As with drum sounds, I want my guitar to sound roomy. Who wants to hear plucky treble in place of something that actually sounds like a guitar?

I think Purlieu hit the nail on the head with the observation that The Sound is worst when it's slathered over inappropriate genres and instruments (Jazz, folk-rock, etc).

There are some nasty examples of bands trying to do a 'back to basics' acoustic-type album without dropping the big '80s sound. Simple Minds' Street Fighting Years is their 'Scottish' album, folk influences, but there's chorus and reverb on everything. Tears for Fears did the jazz- and blues-influenced Seeds of Love in a similar way. I have a fondness for both - there's something about very melodic late '80s MOR stuff that appeals to me - but I'm happy to acknowledge that they both fail miserably at achieving their aims. While they were farting around with all that, Talk Talk slipped through and beat them to it with the sublime Spirit of Eden, which saw them drop the '80s production and focus entirely on the sound of the actual instruments. It feels like the kind of album SM and TfF were aiming for and completely missed.

[gilbertharding]

Perhaps what you're talking about is parallel, analogous to when some of the big Old Rock bands reacted to Punk in the late 70s. Mostly, of course, they got it so wrong you'd barely recognise that is what they were even trying to do... but often the results are interesting/pleasing in spite of that.

See ChartMusicPodcast's recent discussion of Tusk by Fleetwood Mac.

[Pauline Walnuts]

"Genesis punk"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR6QFlNfzdE

[jamiefairlie]

Yeah I struggle to listen to most stuff from around 84 to 87 now, even from my favourite bands. Compare the sound of New Order's PC&L in 82/83 to Lowlife in 84/85, the former sounds warm and integrated even though it's a lot of synths, whereas the latter sounds like a bunch of pots and pans falling down the stairs to a cavernous cellar, cold and uninviting to quote Weller.

[gilbertharding]

"Genesis punk"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR6QFlNfzdE

Perhaps they'd been influenced by all the other punk records in 6/4 time...

Led Zeppelin did it with Wearing and Tearing as another example. Respectable by the Rolling Stones. As I say, I can only say now that they are 'punk' (inspired by or reacting to/against) because of their respective wikipedia pages, less because of their sound.

[buzby]

Yeah I struggle to listen to most stuff from around 84 to 87 now, even from my favourite bands. Compare the sound of New Order's PC&L in 82/83 to Lowlife in 84/85, the former sounds warm and integrated even though it's a lot of synths, whereas the latter sounds like a bunch of pots and pans falling down the stairs to a cavernous cellar, cold and uninviting to quote Weller.

There's a good reason for that. PC&L was recorded at Pink Floyd's Britannia Row studio on it's custom-designed MCI JH-440 console and MCI and Studer 24-track tape machines, along with cutting edge fro the timey Lexicon, AMS and Eventide digital outboard effects processors. Britannia Row was designed for and renowned for it's 'clean' sound.

When they were recording Low Life, Britannia Row was out of action due to a refit, so they used JAM Studios, whichhad been Decca's Tollington Park studio which had closed in the late 70s. It had been bought and re-opened by the Nordmark brothers from Sweden in 1979 and had an older 24-track Harrison console The studio had a bit of a reputation for sounding a bit horrible (mostly because the monitoring in the control room were badly set up) and a bit antiquated . The final mix for the album was done back at Britannia Row once the refit was completed.

Hook reckons they used JAM as they thought PC&L sounded too clean and wanted the dirtiness from JAM's old equipment, particularly on the bass (which is ironic, as the main thing Low Life and Brotherhood, also partly recorded at JAM, lack is any defined bottom end). I think he's talking out of his arse as usual though and it was more to do with the perennial battle between him and Sumner over the band's records sounding 'rock' or 'electronic'.

The only track that was not recorded at JAM was Elegia, which had been recorded in a free studio session at CTS (which specialised in recording film soundtracks) in Wembley after an aftershow party at Heaven on their brand-new fully digital Neve console and Sony digital multitrack. It sounds much cleaner and bright than the rest of the album and much more similar to the sound of PC&L.

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

Led Zeppelin did it with Wearing and Tearing as another example.

There's a song crying out for a remix. I love it but it would surely pack more of a punch with less of that reverb that's piled on everything.

[greenman]

Without knowing exactly what the OP is talking about sound wise it always seemed to me that there was a general overcorrection to the over clean sound of the 80's during the 90's, guitars tended to be overly fuzzed up, bass was a low rumble and drums often sounded dull.

[Johnny Yesno]

Perhaps they'd been influenced by all the other punk records in 6/4 time...

That would be odd, given that it's in 4/4.

[the hum]

Driving home tonight K.D. Lang's "Constant Craving" cropped up on the radio, a tune that I'd not heard for years and had previously assumed to be quite "organic", but is really rather thin and over-produced, and indeed features a rather meh piezo-electric acoustic bit in the middle eight.

There's a host of stuff from the turn of the 80s that seems to suffer from a bit of a production identity crisis, particularly when it involves established artists. Rush's albums Presto (1989) and Roll the Bones (1991) were heralded by then producer Rupert Hine as returning the band to "rock power trio" status. In reality they are ironically far thinner sounding than any of the synth-heavy albums that preceded them, and in any case still end up with some token, very MIDI-ish keyboards thrown over them (mostly the Korg M1 I'd presume, since it was on just about everything at the time.)

[gilbertharding]

That would be odd, given that it's in 4/4.

Take it up with wikipedia...

[edit] I''ve listened again to the track - and I SWEAR it's now a different song. Because the song Who Dunnit is so obviously 4/4 and 'punky' I wouldn't have posted what I posted. Apologies all round. But did the link change? There was a video featuring Phil Collins on a street hitting things with drumsticks.

[gilbertharding]

Without knowing exactly what the OP is talking about sound wise it always seemed to me that there was a general overcorrection to the over clean sound of the 80's during the 90's, guitars tended to be overly fuzzed up, bass was a low rumble and drums often sounded dull.

Perhaps. In fact I agree that probably happened - but I guess for the sound engineers at the Bill Graham Memorial Concert, 1991 was still the 80s.

Honestly, if you're interested, the three cd set Transmission Impossible is like a science experiment in how the same songs by the same performers can be rendered completely unlistenable by 17 years of technological advancement.

[a duncandisorderly]

analogue vs digital plays a part in this too, but the observation about actually listening to the instrument vs what's coming out of the mic is apposite; I've always tried to treat drums, for instance, as a single large stereo instrument, & make them/it sound right in the room before getting any mics out of their boxes. same with pianos, guitars (amplified or not) & so on. acoustic guitars with piezo pickups are horrid sounding trebly approximations of real guitars- very useful if you want the thing to cut through a dense mix at PA levels, but definitely not nice when used in a solo or small ensemble context.

(I recorded lloyd cole for Mtv once- just him & an acoustic- & his tech offered to plug the guitar into a DI box. 'no thanks', I said, & rigged a stereo pair of C451s in front of it, fastening the short boom arm halfway up the same stand as the vocal mic so as to keep the camera shots uncluttered)

as well as all that, guitar amps have gone down a 'digital modelling' or 'emulation' route & away from the tool-per-job days of fender twins, marshall plexis & so on. so something that looks like a normal marshall head actually has several channels, & sometimes some preset-driven tone-shaping circuitry (in some cases, sadly, achieved by digital techniques) so that the single amp can provide clean, crunch & overdriven tones all from one box. the result is jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. that people seem happy with this at all, ever, is depressing.

[Pauline Walnuts]

Take it up with wikipedia...

[edit] I''ve listened again to the track - and I SWEAR it's now a different song. Because the song Who Dunnit is so obviously 4/4 and 'punky' I wouldn't have posted what I posted. Apologies all round. But did the link change? There was a video featuring Phil Collins on a street hitting things with drumsticks.

It did get changed, I got confused by this https://www.genesis-news.com/c-Genesis-Abacab-CD-review-s294.html That misattributes (?) the quote to Keep It Dark.

But in this interview it's Who Dunnit he mentions.
https://youtu.be/3KhF52l83M8?t=270


Actually, this is all far to much work for an album I've never heard, never wanted to hear and even having a laugh at Phil Collin's embarrassing lack of knowledge of punk/his "comedy" 'working class accent' is running thin.

:)

Didn't the Stranglers do a couple of non-4/4 songs, Peasant in the Big Shitty is 13/12 or something?

[gilbertharding]

Thanks for that!

I too am a Genesis-phobe. I'll concede to quite liking some of their tunes, and I'm amused by how obnoxiously Tony Banks comes across in interviews.

On the original topic of bad acoustic guitar treatments - I'm thinking about the disaster of Bob Dylan/Kieth Richards/Ronnie Wood's appearance at Live Aid, where they had to strum so hard to be heard they were virtually breaking strings on every downstroke. I haven't watched it for a while - but I wouldn't be surprised if someone hadn't decided "This Must Never Happen Again," and hence the future over-reliance on piezo pickups.

[Pauline Walnuts]

I too am a Genesis-phobe. I'll concede to quite liking some of their tunes, and I'm amused by how obnoxiously Tony Banks comes across in interviews.

I did watch a lot of those album interview videos, in many successful groups there's a total bastard, a real nasty cunt who keeps everything running by strength of will, even when everything is going wrong.

In most groups Mike Rutherford would be that man. Clearly out ranked by the cunts cunt of Phil Collins, but even he is over shadowed by might of Tony Banks. A quite remarkable achievement by a quite remarkable man.

Steve Hacket seems like a nice guy though.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Isn't this around the time digital delay and processing really opened up effects pedals? It's the start of shoegaze isn't it?

[buzby]

Isn't this around the time digital delay and processing really opened up effects pedals? It's the start of shoegaze isn't it?

Mid-80s for digital delays (the Boss DD2 actually came out in 1983), 1987 for Boss's  digital reverb, sampler/delay and pitchshifting pedals. The second-generation Boss digital pedals came out in 1994/95.

[purlieu]

Isn't this around the time digital delay and processing really opened up effects pedals? It's the start of shoegaze isn't it?

Shoegaze was beginning to get the first traces of backlash by 1991, wasn't it? Slowdive bore the brunt of that. But it was definitely established by this point, coming off the back off bands like the Cocteau Twins who were using those kinds of sounds in the mid '80s.