{"id":10508,"date":"2021-05-06T11:13:31","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T18:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=10508"},"modified":"2021-07-20T21:07:19","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T04:07:19","slug":"an-unexpected-audio-production-rabbit-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/06\/an-unexpected-audio-production-rabbit-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"an unexpected audio production rabbit hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

This tweet sent me down an unexpected audio production rabbit hole:<\/p>\n

R. Derek Black – 6 May 2021<\/a>:
\nI think I love every one of the like 15 different versions of the song Valerie I\u2019ve ever heard<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I went to listen to the Amy Winehouse version first, and look for some of the others, but I saw on Wikipedia that Steve Winwood co-wrote it originally, and listened to the ’87 version that was a hit, but also…<\/p>\n

…someone had posted the original 1982<\/em> release, from his third album according to Wikipedia, and listening to it, I’m like…<\/p>\n

…how the fuck did this get released as a single by a major label in 1982?<\/p>\n

It’s not the song! It is<\/em> a good song. But the production is garbage.<\/em><\/p>\n

And I’m not talking, like, artistic garbage. I’m talking about “basic mistakes in recording by first-time artists working in a bedroom” garbage. “Oops, hit the mic stand there and it’s really loud, oh well we’ll just compress it out” levels of “let’s record a demo” bullshit.<\/p>\n

(There are also questionable artistic decisions, particularly the synth someone set on “saxophone” – but it’s ’82, I’ll cut them that slack.)<\/p>\n

But… jeez. Even the vocal track is recorded badly. Plosives, hand noise, all sorts of crap, all clearly audible in the single.<\/p>\n

And if there was a thing called dynamic range in ’82, that engineer hadn’t heard of it. It’s like the loudness wars, but kinda weirdly… quiet.<\/p>\n

They smoothed over most of the recording fuckery in the ’87 remix. There’s a nasty plosive on a B that they couldn’t completely fix despite their best efforts. But it’s a nice salvage job. Plus, a better saxlike synth, unburying the guitar, restoring dynamic range – good work.<\/p>\n

Shame about all the heavy gate reverb on the drums, though.<\/p>\n

But, well, it was<\/em> still the 80s. What do you expect? xD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This tweet sent me down an unexpected audio production rabbit hole: R. Derek Black – 6 May 2021: I think I love every one of the like 15 different versions of the song Valerie I\u2019ve ever heard I went to listen to the Amy Winehouse version first, and look for some of the others, but [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recording"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10508"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10512,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10508\/revisions\/10512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}