Stretching and Exploding

Over the last few days, the world has gone more or less nuts over the Justin Bieber track that was slowed down 800%. It sounds fantastic. The software that was used to make it is called Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch.

Never ones to pass up the chance to over-use an awesome sound toy, DWLB have thrown several of their songs into the Paulverizer, and the results will now be gloriously cast before you.

Ticket Beautiful Only Stretch — based on Ticket Beautiful Only White, from “tree fort.” This one was slowed down, but then cut up and stacked on itself.

Deena’s Stretchy Mitten — based on Deena’s Mitten, from the upcoming record “Screeching and Exploding.”

Stretchtastic Illogic — based on Thomistic Illogic, from “tree fort.”

Enjoy!

Stretching and Exploding

more,

-dwlb-

DWLB on Progopolis Celebrast!

DWLB has, over the years, enjoyed a fantastic amount of airplay on the Prog’opolis internet radio show. Co-hosts Vince and Daisy Jane have become good friends of the band, and they frequently are good enough to world-premiere new Donny songs. Heck and tarnation, they even gave us the name for this blog. We loves ’em all the live-long day.

They’re celebrating five years of the show this Saturday, August 15, with a special 5th anniversary broadcast. To help them out we sat down in our respective studios, at our Skype-equipped confusers, and had ourselves a two and a half hour interview with Vince and Daisy — an interview the four of us had been talking about doing since we first sent them “tree fort” all those years ago. Vince is likely going mad trying to edit the interview down to a coherent and succinct 5 minutes for inclusion in the show; we do tend to ramble.

Please tune in Saturday, 7 pm Pacific, to listen live to the Prog’opolis Fifth Anniversary Special. Jump into their chat room and tell ’em congrats. Ask Vince about his surgery. Hear some great music.

Happy Anniversary, Vince and Daisy! Thanks for everything.

–dwlb–

In the Still of the Night

I hear the wolf howl, honey

Last night I attended a panel discussion sponsored by The Recording Academy and Shure, featuring record producers Mike Clink, Ron Nevison and Keith Olsen. These guys have recorded the Who, Led Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses, Heart, Bad Company, the Rolling Stones, Whitesnake, Fleetwood Mac, and countless other amazing bands.

It was a fantastic evening, listening to the songs on Shure’s amazing PA system, and hearing the stories behind famous records. Among the fun tidbits:

Stevie Nicks wrote “Landslide” in Olsen’s bedroom after a huge fight with Lindsey Buckingham.

The hoarse vocal bits on Heart’s “These Dreams” were comped in from the scratch vocal, as Nancy Wilson had a cold when she recorded the scratch and the final vocal was too clean in those bits. Nancy asked Nevison to switch it back but he refused (that’s actually my favorite part of that vocal, so I’m glad he won the argument).

Nevison and Pete Townshend flew in the sound effects on Quadrophenia from broadcast cart machines during the mix because they didn’t have enough tracks to print them to the multitrack tape.

John Sykes’ solo on Whitesnake’s “In the Still of the Night” was assembled on 1/2” tape one phrase at a time (sometimes one note at a time) and flown in manually…because Sykes recorded the solo in another studio…over the wrong section of the song.

I love hearing about stuff like that. It’s part of the audio geek mindset. Are any of these anecdotes going to help me make better records? Probably not. But their thoughts on working with musicians, or use of psychology to bring out great performances and keep temperamental artists in their comfort zone (or out of it as needs require) are invaluable.

Some of the Q & A was pretty good too. A couple of “gotcha” questions, a couple of folks trying to look cool, one question that made no sense…and then the question I knew was coming but really hoped wouldn’t.

“Do you think that modern tools like Pro Tools, Autotune and Beat Detective are making musicians lazy?”

Seriously? You’ve got three guys in front of you who have produced or engineered albums that have collectively sold over 300 million copies and you’re going to ask a question that you have already answered for yourself. Just the fact that you’ve asked it gives me a big clue to the position you’ve taken. And now you just want the guy who recorded Appetite For Destruction to agree with you. Come on, man.

I’m not saying it isn’t a valid question these days. I’m not saying it isn’t a concern, an issue we all have to struggle with every time we go into a session where there’s a computer involved. But for one thing, it’s one of those almost religious issues that is never going to be resolved, and for the other, if you really want to talk about it, go to Gearslutz or TapeOp and wait a few minutes—someone will start up a thread about it. It happens almost daily. This is a rare opportunity to actually learn something; ask a better question, not a cliché.

Music technology has, over the last 50+ years, developed myriad ways to alter performances. It didn’t start with Autotune. The first time a recordist punched in a phrase in the middle of a vocal track, or cut two different performances together using a razor blade and tape he was creating an artificial representation of a musical event. Is that reductio ad absurdum? Perhaps. Is a staunchly conservative stance against digital workstations overly reactionary? Very possibly.

If you think that Pro Tools, Autotune and Beat Detective create lazy musicians or are “destroying music”…don’t use them. They’re tools, nothing more, and the positive or negative results from the use of those tools rests squarely in the hands of the craftsmen.

Here endeth the rant.