Production / Recording / Mixing / Mastering

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Jorge]

Just that snippet. I tinkered with it to make the phantom drums clearer.

[Birds in Hell]

Would love to hear from Spenno or any of the other audio dudes.

I am a bonehead next to you here, trag.

Super excellent thread, I'm enjoying it a lot. I'll try to think of some things to query later.

[CopperTom]

What's the gentle "glonk" in Half Full at 1:06. I always assumed it was a studio / production noise, but what exactly?

[Mine]

and I think it's been condenser mics from Riot Act onward. Which is a shame, because he's gotten so breathy and wharbly, and they're pushing his vox ahead of the rest of the mix, so the whole thing is super unflattering.

So why on earth would BOB go in that direction? He must think there's some kind of benefit. Or has he completely lost the plot?

Well, doesn't the wider audience love this kind of sound, though? Haven't the last three albums been PJ's most successful in a long time? It sounds like shit, but it's sellable shit.

I could be completely wrong but i think the wider audience cares about the sound on a much much rougher and superficial level.
I think it's probably more a trend with the producers and engineers than the public.

[coptheriotact]

I think these days it takes more effort to make a great sounding record as producers are just going to attempt to stick to a modern digital formula. Brendan O'Brien instructions are probably "Make OLD band no one cares about sound rockin' again" It sucks that pearl jam don't see what a lot of credible bands are doing these days to avoid creating such uninteresting sounding albums. RANDOM EXAMPLES Alabama shakes,foals..

As PJ get get older and slow down they should be spending more time on making their softer songs have room dynamics and intricate parts, and their louder songs have cool guitar tones etc.

[LikeLukin]

Trag, can you give us your opinion as to the origin of the phantom drum sound at the start of "Swallowed Whole"?



Is it Ed's mic picking up a drum track they later deleted, or some sort of guide track?

I never noticed this on the actual album, but this sounds very odd. It doesn't even sound handy to the timing of the actual song.

[LikeLukin]

Vitalogy has a lot of that mid-range fuzz I mentioned earlier, and the depth of field (the width or overall sense of space) on Vitalogy is fairly narrow and claustrophobic. With lots of layered guitars, often playing the same part but with a slightly different tone and strumming feel, the effect is one of overwhelming emotion. All the pressures the band was feeling at that time are perfectly illustrated by the combination of the music and the production choices. With headphones on, you can feel the sense of being trapped, or under pressure, that PJ, and Ed in particular, were experiencing at that time. But there's also a warmth, a sense that the music offered some sort of safe retreat from the storm outside.

Probably the best paragraph I have ever read on RM.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[joostone]

Yea, I came here to basically say this. I believe Backspacer and Lightning Bolt are ships captained by Ed and co-captained by BOB. Like most current engineers, it's just so easy to pull up a channel strip setting that worked elsewhere and slap it on a new track -- it makes for both small recording budgets and less experimentation. And based on Jeff's recent comments about RNDM's Ghost Riding being a real nice headphone album, we know they are aware of what they're hearing. My sense is that Ed is trying to push the band towards something more immediate -- in the music, lyrics, performance, and production -- and less obtuse than the older records. So Brendan throws on whatever channel strip setting will make things sound big, bold, crispy, clear, and LOUD.
.

I agree with all of that. It almost seems that they (or Ed...) don't want to work as much on recordings nowadays. It's true that Vitalogy was a very dense record. Lots of layered guitars, Riot Act had a very live feel and was also amazing. S/T was the most produced record the band ever released, even more layered vocals and guitars. BS and LB seem to be e reaction to that process, something like: from now on we want to work quick. They even leave space for Brendan. On Vs<>Yield I believe Brendan was more of a engineer than producer/member. For BS/LB Brendan was heavily involved in the whole process. I still think BS is a nice addition to their catalog, LB is a bit clueless/unfocused in my opinion. It's fun to hear records like RNDM's Ghost Riding or Stone's Moonlanding. Both very produced and layered and very different from BS/LB. I my opinion it could still be a good choice to work with Brendan, they should use him for his strengths.He is one of the best engineers/mixers around.

[McParadigm]

The problem (for me) stands in what seems to be "their two-sided coin" brand of thinking. "There are headphone records, and then there are pop records. No overlap exists." It's the kind of logic one would expect from someone half their age to have.

I hit this point a lot, but I can never stress enough how valuable it was (for us) for them to be moving so fast that they couldn't second-guess. In the 5 years after Vs they made 3 Pearl Jam records and a Neil Young record. They weren't "collecting" ideas or setting half a record aside to revisit in 3 years' time. They were on the fly. They were doing what The Beatles and The Stones and Neil Young and EVERYBODY did in that period when great music seemed to come without break. They were unfiltered in their expression. They were the moment.

The intro to Tremor Christ has one of the most unapologetic ghost-guitar "here's where we unmuted the track" moments in rock history. Vitalogy and No Code are full of accidental sounds. No Code in particular is almost a document of a session rather than an album. It has so little correction on it, it might actually be less engineered than the original Basement Tapes release (certainly less than Exile on Main Street). The muddies swell, the tracks merge, everything is pitchy, and the whole result feels so low-fi at times that you are stunned when the high frequencies suddenly shimmer and glow.

Weirdly, there's a lot of this approach in The Into the Wild soundtrack. I assume it came from Ed's impatience mixed with his decision to play most everything. There are noises, mistakes, and moments throughout that short collection that are great studio "off the cuff" found sounds. So when I imagine what the band who made No Code would sound like as an older, more professional-but still interesting act....I hear that.

[Kaius]

On point.

[Mine]

Ed is also co-credited for the mixing of ITW and Ukulele Songs.

[Norah]

Ed is also co-credited for the mixing of ITW and Ukulele Songs.

Yeah, and Elvis is credited for writing his own songs, don't make it true.

[Mine]

People get songwriting credits for songs they didn't write because it gets them royalties, mixing credits on the other hand don't.

[Jorge]

Yeah shut up Chud.

[Norah]

Maybe they just wanted Ed to feel like he helped.

[bodysnatcher]

Yeah, it was probably like a participation trophy they gave him

[bodysnatcher]

oh, and i really enjoyed McP's post

[evenslow]

Weirdly, there's a lot of this approach in The Into the Wild soundtrack. I assume it came from Ed's impatience mixed with his decision to play most everything. There are noises, mistakes, and moments throughout that short collection that are great studio "off the cuff" found sounds. So when I imagine what the band who made No Code would sound like as an older, more professional-but still interesting act....I hear that.

Vedder described the recording process as a "factory." He said, "I'd just sit in the chair, and they'd hand me a fretless bass, and they'd hand me a mandolin, and they'd take a second to do the rough mix, and then I'd write the vocal, and it was just quick."[4] On the recording sessions as a whole, Vedder stated, "It was like I kinda went into some weird space for a week or two, and then I woke up out of this daze, and it was done. I don't really remember it."[4]