INTRODUCTION

ANY ONE FOR ANALOGUE?

'Everything that is easy on analogue is difficult on digital; everything that is difficult on digital is easy on analogue' - 'old Chinese proverb'

There are a lot of myths about recording and some seriously misguided ideas of how you're supposed to go about it. Recording is simple. You put a microphone in front of the sound you want and press record. That's it. There is nothing you have to do, no rule book that says you must EQ and compress or manipulate it afterwards. It's entirely up to you.

Digital recording presents a world of endless options, where all decisions can be postponed indefinitely. 'Make your mind up later' is a strong selling point, but the truth is, digital is not particularly user-friendly. Analogue represents the opposite; its limitations force you to make fast, often intuitive decisions that cut out the middleman and just finish the record. By adopting some analogue thinking and adapting its techniques in the digital realm, you can revolutionise your recordings - not just in the way they sound, but in the way they feel. This takes a completely different mindset than 'plug it in and fix it later'.

Digital systems were not designed by recording engineers and some of the fundamental aspects have been badly thought out. For example, changing a volume level by selecting the sound and using a 'pencil' tool to draw it with a mouse is a hopeless idea. When digital recording encourages you to solve problems by using more complex technology, it's good for them, of course - you have to buy more stuff. Upgrade now, or your system won't work any more.

Recorded sounds are not independent of each other; how they work with their companions, their behaviour and the unique interplay between them is a keystone of recording. Manipulating a sound in isolation doesn't work well if you can't hear it in context quickly and easily and can send you into a tailspin of knob twiddling and tweaking in no time. The better you can compare sounds in context, the more effective the results will be. Unfortunately, digital is lacking in this respect, when you can't click on two things at once with a computer mouse, or turn two knobs at the same time. It's apt to be time-consuming if the most necessary functions are often impractical.

On average, you might spend six hours a day on a mix session. You start making poor choices after that. And the length of time things take is important - because it's all creative time. In real terms, at least half the work will be preparatory, such as fixing levels, fine-tuning sounds and so on. Balancing the mix is the big deal - and there's a short performance curve on that. Believe me, I hit a peak at about forty-five minutes in. You can feel it. Pass that peak and you're in for a long haul to get back. Which is why it's not out of the ordinary to take a week or longer to mix a track digitally that would have taken a maximum of a day and a half on analogue.

It is a challenge not to be a perfectionist when recording digitally. It's unsympathetic to errors and the workflow can be onerous; mixing forty tracks of sound rather than a mere sixteen takes a lot longer and you simply can't connect with it in the same way. But don't for a moment think that analogue recording is all about the type of equipment you use. It's mostly about how you use the technology you've got.

In their heyday, recording studios were unique spaces, each with their own sonic signatures. Abbey Road and Trident were both as good as you could get - but sounded quite different from each other. So, at the outset, the question of 'What studio should we use?' was a significant choice. It's not like that anymore. Everywhere sounds the same because the technology is more or less identical. It's a sad paradox - now that there are no limits to the number of tracks and effects you can use, it is a whole universe of possibilities. Yet recording has become more homogenised than it has ever been. Maybe there are so many choices, we all just opt out and go to the hamburger joint.

'Record player' found at a recent archaeological dig in Merseyside.

It is your approach to the process that matters. Key decisions are made early on in analogue recording, unlike digital where the software encourages you to postpone them. If it's more convenient to open up a new track and save three alternates than do a punch-in and record over an error, you end up fixing all kinds of performance shortcomings when you mix, which will end up taking so long that you lose any sense of spontaneity you might have had when you began.

Getting the most out of analogue recording did need preparation and forethought. You had to figure out in advance what you wanted on the front end, because there were not many fixes possible after the fact; you had to get it right at the time. Quite simply, if you didn't have a pretty good idea of what the finished recording would turn out like before you started, you would be heading for trouble. There was no safety net and I believe that element of risk added more energy and focus to the proceedings. The lack of 'feel' attributed to digital is as much to do with that as the sound itself.

THAT ANALOGUE SOUND

What do you think of as the sound of analogue recording? Is it a vinyl record, tape compression, the preamps and valves, the microphones, or what? Do you mean the sound of 1950s recording? 1960s? 1970s? They are all very different from each other.

Tape boxes from Gooseberry, Mayfair, Utopia and Pye studios.

What I can tell you is that it is definitely not about adding another piece of equipment to your arsenal to use like a plug-in. It's an integrated, start-to-finish process; a way of working. How you think about and prepare for your recordings and all the decisions you make along the way are more important than any equipment you use. That approach can be adapted to a digital environment. You don't need a big rack full of vintage compressors or an expensive mixing desk. You don't need a tape recorder (nice as they may be, though you would be lucky to find one in decent working order). Your choice of gear or your budget has no bearing on the way you choose to work - that costs nothing.

There is no such thing as a 'good' sound. Or a 'bad' one, either. That's rather like saying there are good and bad colours. I'd stretch the point to say there's no such thing as good or bad equipment. It's a matter of taste, how you use it and the choices you make. Incorporating analogue methods and techniques will improve your recording skills across the board, no matter what kind of record it is, or the equipment you happen to have.

It is the way of thinking that is the biggest divide between analogue and digital. Many of the myths that surround recording today are a consequence of technological progress in the past; and all are as untrue now as they were then. You do not have to EQ everything by default, or isolate musicians in booths, or stick a mic on every component of a drum kit. Really.

If I were to pose the question: 'Did we make good records before parametric EQ or multiband compression was invented?', you would reply, 'Yes, of course we did.'

Then I might say, 'Well, you don't really need parametric EQ or multiband compression, do you?'

But of course you can make sounds on digital that are just as effective as analogue, though it is still a different animal. There's a human element to analogue recordings that everyone can relate to, a certain enchantment in a vinyl disc spinning on a record player. I'm not surprised that records are popular again, and not just because of nostalgia. The resurgence of vinyl has largely been fuelled by a young, digital generation, tired of throwaway corporate pop. Vinyl still has its own unique, indefinable magic - and some of it might just rub off on you, as you take it out of the sleeve, mightn't it? CDs and downloads could never hope to compete with that.

The recording industry is driven by profit and will take any opportunity to sell a new but not necessarily improved version of a product that is fundamentally the same. What may be fashionable is not always better. Were CDs really superior to vinyl? Did you get rid of your record collection, only to replace it with the 'remastered vinyl' versions ten years later?

Despite everything, analogue is enduring, maybe because it is remarkably good at capturing our feelings and memories. It carries them well. It is a process that feels in the moment and captures that moment. Digital doesn't really do that, does it? By comparison, it feels impermanent and disposable. No matter what technical wizardry digital can conjure up, analogue is still the yardstick against which results are measured. All that is quick and easy on analogue may well be longwinded and monotonous on digital, but on the plus side, all the things that were impossible on analogue are at your digital fingertips.

It is only very recently that recording has become available to everyone. This is a privilege. In the not too distant past, you needed very deep pockets, or to be contracted to a large corporation. You could only record when you were allowed to and in the way you were told. Thankfully, this is no longer the case and you are completely free to do whatever you want, with a huge array of tools at your disposal.

You may have a home studio or a professional set-up. Either way, you will probably know some of what follows. You might disagree with...