I react to the inimitable Espen Kraft. Specifically his "13 Ways To Sound Like The 80s" video. While eating popcorn, drinking coffee, and solving a Rubik's Cube. It was a fun night in.
been a huge fan of this channel since it came across my recommendeds i know absolutely nothing about music other than how to listen to it, but many of the songs i love are from the 80s
This wasn't the EK video I was expecting you to comment on! 😀 In many ways I'm glad because he displayed a lot of (intentional?) ignorance in that other video. Not only ignorance of the realities of developing and pricing electronic products (I spent the first 15 years of my career in product development for both large and small companies so I have some personal insight) but also he's encouraging the common misapprehension about "VSTs in a box" being about the VST. A VST (or ZEN-Core) in a box is not about the software, it's all about THE BOX and the user experience the physical interface delivers. Plus, developing that interface as an electronic product does actually take a bunch of time and money. 🙄 Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this video 👍. I think the problem with talking about sampling is it's like talking about compression - it doesn't just mean one thing. There's sampling as in making loops from records, there's sampling as in multisampled sounds intended to be played chromatically, and then there's the sampler used as a player of chunks of audio within a direct-to-stereo MIDI setup.
@@unclemick-synths Yes. I haven’t actually watched that video (yet) but I realise there’s controversy. There are certainly at least a couple of reasons why a VST in a box would be different - one is latency, another is integrated controls, and that’s not to mention the preamps. However, there is another dirty secret of the digital industry which is that the raw processing power put into boxes is way below that of a computer. This doesn’t matter until you start to do things like emulate chorus or distortion, at which point, particularly with the latter, it matters a great deal. This is why there are several plugins that do fantastic jobs of mimicking analog modulation - for example Antresol by D16 - but literally zero effects pedals. Appreciate this is a slightly different point. Personally I’m not against buying pretty much anything provided it sounds okay, is cheap, and will probably hold its value. Ironically most of the time the analog gear is cheaper.
@@DistortThePreamp Thats why the best are the vintage digital hardware synths and effects from the late 80s, early 90s. There the limitations weren't a secret, and shaped the sound in a very unique way every time.
About "record on tape". What Espen means, is that if you want to emulate the kind of sound that most people remember from the '80s, then recording to tape can help with that. He's not suggesting that this is necessarily a technically superior method, only that it can provide a nostalgic '80s sound. Also, I think he means small 4-track home recorders, like Tascam Portastudio and such, not reel-to-reel studio stuff.
Yes, I think you must be right. I think it must be a nostalgia thing. Ironically none of the 80s music actually sounded like it was recorded on Tascam Portastudios and was, really, pretty hi-fi, so it’s very much a nostalgia for a sound as it’s remembered. But all good. I’m certainly not criticising or arguing.
@@DistortThePreamp I remember most of the '80s music from listening to my older brother's vinyl records, although I did listen to cassettes as well. But Espen Kraft has had videos about recording your tracks onto a Portastudio to get the classic demo tape sound, which is why I'm assuming that is what he was referring to. I mean, who could afford proper studio multitrack tape machines for home studios? :D
Yes you're right @rebeccaschade3987 he's talking about transferring your digital recording to tape. I think Espen has a video coming out shortly about transferring or mastering audio on video tape, I'm sure I read that on Patreon. I recall Alesis used VHS tapes for multitrack recording back in the 80s.
A technique I usually deploy to try counter the static feel of the grid is to split my drum tracks into 4 or 5 different tracks, and then slightly offset the snares a few ms before the kicks, and the opposite for the hi hats, rides, percs etc, and give each a slightly different swing / shuffle to try humanise the groove. Even when everything is quantised, taking this step post sequencing can help breathe a lot of life into an electronic drum track, and pretty much emulates the effect you mentioned when hardware isn’t 100% in sync. Again, offsetting your bass a few ms either way against your kicks can have a great humanising effect.
I think this is a really good technique. If I’m understanding you though, the alignment between, say, the kick and snare is still fixed. See if you can find a way of varying that too. It won’t necessarily change the feel in terms of timing, but it will mean that the combined sound is slightly different every time which makes the whole thing really come alive…
@@DistortThePreamp Yeah, it gives the whole thing a little bit of extra swagger so you actually subconsciously hear multiple transients on the same grid line, instead of them being perfectly stacked on top of each other, but to achieve what you’re getting at the only solution I have there is to grab the odd hit here and there and slightly offset them again, for a little extra humanisation of the groove. It’s time consuming but thats my usual method to beat the rigid feel of a daw grid, a little tempo automation goes a long way too, obviously within the right genre but I always like to creep a track up or down 1 or 2 bpm when the feel of the tune allows for it, that’s when keep pitch functions on delays come in really handy, to avoid pitching warble on synced delays. Love your videos though dude, some great advice on them. It’s getting harder and harder to find production youtubers that don’t talk out their arse these days.
The sound of tape was something that musicians fought against in the 80's. Tape saturation and wow and flutter was our nemesis. These days it would be good if you wanted your track to sound like an 80's demo tape or simply as an effect. To each their own.
Ah yes, Mitsubishi! I could only remember the Sony 24 and 48. And “So” was an entirely digital process and had the label DDD on the CD. Like “Brothers in Arms”.
Yes, I think that’s what he meant. Although none of the FM synths had filters obviously. He might also have meant the LA synths like the D50. Who knows.
He meant using samplers like Akai s612, s950, s900, etc to sample synths sounds. Many bands did this in the late 80’s - early 90’s to add a different vibe and color to those sounds. Some of those samplers really have a unique sound
What I'm interested in is what exactly happened in early 90s (probably late 80s in fact) that even in like 1992 music press was speaking of 80s as the era that has totally ended. Was that the availability of digital tech or something else? I started playing guitar in like 1988 but my first creative steps like performing for my schoolmates and writing my first songs and trying trackers and DAWs were in 90s and we always looked back into 1980s as some "previous era", everything has changed in 1990s. But what was that exactly that changed?
Very interesting question. Musically, it was the probably the ascent of grunge, particularly Nirvana’s extraordinary success. This was a more definitive end to an era than had occurred with previous eras. It also marked a geographic shift from the UK to the US. It wasn’t quite as seismic as punk, but it set the stage for a lot changes in the way records sounded - virtually no reverb on vocals, different kinds of guitars, different kinds of arrangements, different drum sounds, less emphasis on synthesisers, and so on. Also the 90s was the decade when professional producers really started to make records using Pro Tools. This opened up many new options for editing, particularly around tightening rhythm tracks, and led to yet more new sounds being created. Sorry this is a brief answer - it’s a huge topic! And one that gets oversimplified a lot…
@@DistortThePreamp for me it was less about grunge (though Nirvana's success was very very noticeable) and more about rave culture on one hand and also hiphop: even Michael Jackson and Prince started inviting rappers for their songs. But it was again about US: Detroit techno, Chicago house and hiphop from IDK - New York? But BTW unlike house techno had a lot of European influences and many influential techno producers were from Germany and UK and then there was that mini-explosion of ambient techno/house and breakbeat/jungle/hardcore in 1991-1994 which was dominated by UK producers.
I wish tape was a myth. Alas Relax is analogue, although the rest of Pleasuredome was tracked digitally. Big Chair is 1/2 inch tape. There are plenty of examples where some part of the recording process was digital but very few that were tracked, mixed and mastered in digital. The closest might be Christopher Cross or The Bears. I don't mind a hybrid approach but a completely digital recording to me sounds harsh and lacks the opaque blurring required to separate the listener from the performance in time and space. Tape does a good job of making something sound "like a record", the subtle, almost imperceivable smearing removes the audio from reality in the same way a photograph is very subtly not quite reality, it's a facsimile of reality. It makes things just a little more "cinematic" and surreal. I don't think tape is the only way of getting a little bit of this kind of effect but I don't think it's negligible. I've been hoping to find proof that contradicts what I've found so far but every example I've looked into that people claimed to be digital always turned out to be largely tape. If anyone knows of any real examples, I would love to hear them.
I think “So” by Peter Gabriel was entirely digital. They even had a logo “DDD” on the CD. Same with Brothers In Arms, Graceland… You’re right about Big Chair though - it was tracked on a digital multitrack but then mixed to analog. Having said all of that, I was (and still am) slightly confused about what Espen actually meant? Was he talking about printing mixes to tape? Or recording on tape multitrack? Even if it’s the former, 2” tape at 30ips is not even close to the sound of a compact cassette. Who knows… one day I’ll ask him…
2:08 apart from it's trite lyrics, naff sound choices, and horrifically unironic cha-cha-cha ending, the key changes in _I Just Called To Say I Love You_ really overflowed the cliché bucket. To think the same guy wrote classics like Superstition! 😱
Wonder seems to have had a genius period of the mid 70s for about four albums (although they're not as perfect as critics make out, IMHO, such as the repetitive and, yes, trite 'Isn't She Lovely') and then his muse vanished never to return. He has since made a living touring, playing that awful mouth organ on other people's records and resting on his laurels.
Early Human League- timing issues , high noise floor, playing errors , very little reverb but some on the vocals , it has post punk electro all over it. with a punk energy and vitality. yes i know it was 1978 but the 80's really started in late 1970's. But oh sweet jesus for me it is wonderful and exiting. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hENt5xGR8Ng.html
Hi. Could it be Espen means to record the final summed mix onto tape for that nice thick low end thumb and a slightly rolled off high end plus the gluing effect? Cheers.
I think that must be what he meant. Although it’s really more of a lo-fi thing that an 80s thing. As I said in my reaction, some of those 80s records never touched tape. Like “So” by Peter Gabriel - that was entirely digital. Hence the label “DDD” on the compact discs. And I don’t think anybody would say that didn’t sound like the 80s. Same with Tango in the Night (Fleetwood Mac). Also, there’s a world of difference between printing a mix to 2” tape on a properly setup high end recorder and printing to compact cassette.
@@DistortThePreamp Correct. Early 80th still where influenced by the 70th tho. But you're right, a lot of 80th stuff sounds direct in the face and partly transient hard and digital. On the other side, records like Kraftwerk's Computerwelt have a warmth and roundness to it, that reminds on tape sound.
I've just watched another video about digital music in 1980's. The first album recorded in digital to won a Grammy for best recording is Cristopher Cross debut, with the Sailing single in 1981!!! This blew my mind! How many more records in the 80's was recorded in digital?! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NJsSYnrMNYE.html
So many. The digital multitracks were great because although you couldn’t cut and splice tape at least the sound didn’t change during the actual recording session. Most high end studios had at least one digital multitrack (24 or 48) in one of their rooms. Without being too mean about it, it sort of makes a mockery of people who bang on about how important tape was to ‘the sound’. Without being impolite, one wonders how they reached their strong opinions, because it’s certainly not from experience.
@@DistortThePreamp As I said in the other commentary it's terrible how the history is being changed day after day by these kind of information from people that seems to never work on real studios in the 80's
I do remember a lot of bands on stage with a Akai reel to Reel spinning in the Background on stage. I loved the visual so much It was one of the reasons I wanted one.
@@DistortThePreamp I’m trying to make early house and techno styles, looking for a rawer and more unpolished sound than is usually associated with the 80s, and couldn’t manage to emulate that with plug ins, so I bought myself a Tascam cassette portastudio, I’m still experimenting, but even just running the whole mix through it has astounding results, and it is in fact much cleaner than I was expecting.
I realise Espen was referring to proper rtr tape machines, and that is what would have been used back then, but obviously like you say, cost, hassle and non-availability of tape precluded that route.
Ah - they sounded really lush, but they weren’t nearly as long as you might think. I assume you’re thinking of records like Avalon and Boys And Girls which both sound beautiful. Both of those records were mixed by Bob Clearmountain on an SSL 4000 console, and the main reverb was the Lexicon 224. I think the reverb tails would have been 2-3 seconds which is indeed fairly long, but nothing like the huge tails you can get with a modern plugin. I realised afterwards that I should have said what I meant by a ‘long reverb’. A tail of 2-3s is really huge but I think that people listening would imagine the tails to be 8s or more. That’s certainly the impression you get from listening to some synthwave which is drenched. But you make a very good point, and my statement was rather sloppy. Thanks for picking me up on it.
I read somewhere that Wham's last christmas had just a basic drum pattern and all the fills were tapped in on thte drum machine pads in as overdubs, would have saved a lot of time programming them, so kind of makes sense
That’s absolutely not impossible, and it would make a lot of sense. I’m pretty sure that in Heart (Pet Shop Boys) the extra kicks when he sings “My heart keeps missing a beat” are played rather than programmed. That’s what they sound like to me. Every one is ever so slightly different, and the velocities are off. Plus they sound awesome which is also a giveaway 😂
Ah - he did programme quite a lot actually! His setup was quite interesting. He had his Linn permanently rigged up to his console and with all the separate outs already patched. But he used to not only use a lot of detuning (which for various technical reasons changes the groove on the Linn) but he also used to put guitar effect pedals in line. For example: if you listen to Hot Thing, the bass line is actually a Linn tom through a distortion pedal. The distortion gives it a note, and then the note is tuned by tuning the sample in the Linn. Very interesting and creative process…
@@DistortThePreamp ok “all” was probably an exaggeration but Susan Rogers talked about how he would map out whole songs in his head and just bang them out on the Linn. Incredible to me. The guitar pedals on separate outputs thing is how I’ve done it for many years and he and Aphex Twin are the main inspirations for it. It opens up so many new possibilities of sound - and like you point out, sometimes changing the sounds can change the groove to something unexpected.
My question is that a lot of modern mixes sound very loud, where 80s songs are quieter overall due to being recorded on tape, allowing to hear the different individual elements of the mix/song.
Ah, that’s got nothing to do with tape. That’s all to do with the way the were mixed, and then something called mastering that comes after the mix and prepares the song for its final destination - streaming, CD, vinyl, whatever. Some of the 80s records I have are amongst the loudest in my collection.
If you want to sound like the 80's write synthpop songs with lyrics and stop that generative ambient noodling and Just use your DAW as a multitracker. I personally love music with a high noise floor. overproduction is rampant. Those 80's dodgy live mixtapes in Camden market were wonderful.And the tape inserts were a work of Art ....somtimes.
Yeah, I think that’s exactly what he meant. I was so conscious of not wanting to talk smack about him that I was being very careful about what I said. I was going to say digital synths with analog filters, but of course the FM synths didn’t have any filters at all. And the Akais weren’t really synths. So then I started wondering if he meant the LA synths with a sample and synthesis… but I think you’re right. I found his video a bit of a wild ride. Apparently he records to tape. Let me repeat that, to tape. And rolls off 80Hz. Didn’t want to point out that a lot of his favourite 80s records were recorded entirely digitally (apart from the final two track) with nothing at all rolled off before the cutting ;) Anyway, love Espen. Love him.
The myth is that Depeche Mode had a tape machine instead of a drummer on stage which had to be started by one of them. Another myth is that one layer of the bass sound of "behind the wheel" is the sound of someone hitting the tube of a vacuum cleaner, if I remember correctly. The bass sound of "world in my eyes" consists of several layers judging from people who tried to recreate it and came close to the original. I wonder if these three sounds were sequenced on three synths back then or if the individual sounds were sampled in an emulator. Now let's talk about recording to tape. In my opinion what is really a big difference between modern day recordings trying to sound like the 80s and actual 80s songs is the impact that drums have. The drums had a much more prominent role and the vocals seemed to be a bit more in the background, kind of suppressed by the drums. It almost has this pumping effect of sidechaining even though it was probably not sidechained at all. It's just a theory, but for a long time I thought that this effect of the drums pushing away all the other sounds came from recording to tape maybe because of the limited frequency spectrum tape has.
I remember from a broadcast of BBC Radio One's 'Roundtable' weekly show (in which musicians reviewed singles released that week) at some date in the 80s when someone mentioned how loud the drum machine (a Linn LM-1 or Linndrum, I think) was in the mixes of various recent releases and how much further that was likely to go. So it was a thing that people noticed at the time.
Haha! Yes, I do need to do a video on distorting preamps. Basically a lot of what I do is overloading some of the input stages somewhere in the chain. Turns out the more you do that the easier the mix is because you’re baking in all the harmonic saturation. So I even record the drums hot into the interface which (produces analog saturation rather than digital clipping). Awesome comment.
Re the tape.. I just did an ELO inspired song and the final un-polish was putting the whole mix through a tape simulation to, 1 narrow up the sterio field, 2 lose some hi end and warm it up, 3 compress and overdrive dynamic peaks, 4 introduce tape speed fluctuation. All done super sparingly, but applied to the whole mix made it sound "genuine and old" and took away the "did it at home on a digital workstation" sound.
Which of course is the very opposite of how producers & engineers thought in the 80s when the aim was a hi-fi sound. Lo-fi arrived in the 90s and I wasn't impressed as to my ears it just sounded weak and unimpressive.
@@RebeccaTurner-ny1xx It's about capturing a vibe and it's been going on back into the 60s in various forms. Beatles using paper megaphone effects. Stones recording in the substandard studio where their blues heroes were committed to tape. Something old, something new something borrowed, something shamelessly nicked.
4:41 yep, EQing on the way in to anticipate what I would get back off tape. On my Tascam 244 that included anticipating for the extra effect of the bounces because I'd need the EQ for doing the submixing during the bounce! However, the thing I hate most with tape is the linearity. And I hate that with DAWs too. I switched to MPC to get away from it but it seems to have snuck in via MPC 3.0 😢
I love the workflows of the old MPCs. I really love working with my current hardware sequencer and basically do full arrangement on it so, by the time it comes to tracking, I'm just pretty much hitting 'play' and then doing overdubs.
I’d be curious to hear your reaction to Espen’s video where he says that basically all modern synths are a scam. He got a lot of heat about that lately. Even if I disagree with a lot of things he said, there was a lot of unhinged reactions to his video.
I’ve heard about this but haven’t watched it yet. And I’ve been wondering if I should make a reaction. If lots of people give a thumbs up to this comment then I might… ;)
I’ve now watched it, and there is no question. At one point he starts talking about sex workers. He is 100% being provocative. I’m sure he basically believes his thesis, but the over-the-top language is probably designed to wind people up ;)
I don't understand why someone would want their recording to particularly sound like it was made in the eighties. Much of the music I love is from the eighties and give me a real sense of nostalgia, as well as just sounding wonderful in itself. Things like the Synclavier, the Fairlight, the Linn drum and the DMX still thrill me. As do Prophet 5 brass sounds, gated reverbs and all the rest of it. So I can understand, for example, wanting to get a sense of punch and vitality into your drums sounds like the part 1 video. But trying to recreate every last glitch and artefact of eighties recordings like a sort of musical Sealed Knott Society seems odd. If I want to listen to something that sounds like a Human League record, I'll probably listen to a Human League record. I think that Billy Childish generally records directly to Revox reel to reel. I'm not exactly sure what his overall aesthetic is but he's definitely not trying to recreate the eighties.
Yup. This is too interesting a question for me to give a quick reply. I’ll probably make a short video about this question at some stage. But in the meantime I, of course, agree. I use a lot of 80s workflows for very specific reasons, none of which is to ‘sound like the 80s’. Rest assured that, despite the title of the video, everything I do is because I think it sounds better, not because I’m chasing yesterday’s sound ;) Very legit question.
What they're also missing is that this began as an anti-nerd pursuit; I think these two guys just weren’t "cool" enough, so they overlooked the "fashion" aspect-looking, sounding, and thinking fashionable when singing and playing.
Yes! I’ve put it on the list. It’s super simple - basically just a powered switch (with some batteries). Another way is to use piezo pickups under something like rubber which lasts a bit longer than the aluminium method. But I’ll see if I can put something useful together…
Quite. I was vaguely considering producing a session in one of the few London studios that still has a tape multi-track just for the workflow, but the tape price alone was so much more than I had remembered.
at the end: make the music you want! forget all the rules. at the end: if your ahit sounds like shit, its shit, if its an awesome idea it will be sound like an awesome no matter you record it 😂😂😂😂😂
Yes, he records to multi-track tape a lot. He also and he sells his music on cassette tape. I believe he is using a Tascam multi-track cassette tape unit, not a reel to reel or studio quality multi-track. If I remember correctly he does it for the tape effects (making it lo-fi) as much as for the limitation of process (limited tracks and methodology). He may also do it to make a modern recording played on a digital device sound like it is being played on an 80's Walkman or boombox. He did a whole video on this a while back, probably related to the video you commented on.
Oh wow. I will have to check this out. Every artistic choice is valid. But that’s definitely a lo-fi style thing rather than being authentically 80s. Not only were many 80s records entirely digital, but many of them were extremely elaborate in terms of the tracking process.
I just assumed lots of artists were using these relatively inexpensive cassette tape multi-track recorders back then - the ones that weren't signed to a major record deal at least. But that may be more a 90's and 2000's era thing? Today, I largely see using tape as a modern era FX, not so much to recreate the past or lo-fi, but to create warmth and character. Subtle tape saturation is kind of like the recording equivalent of pushing the Minimoog mixer to the max for a synth, or using a tube amp for a guitar. Hainbach is big on this among many others as a style choice. Lisa Bella Donna loves to use tape. She often records on reel to reel multi-track, and has even used recording to an old 8-track tape recorder and then recorded the playback from the 8-track while messing with the tape (moving it around, playing the tape so to speak), causing even more artifacts. But that's not an 80's thing. It is just a creative tool which works well for her music.
I don’t think anybody was releasing records made of a portastudio. All the indie bands would go into cheap demo studios and knock out an album in two weeks, but you still needed some sort of semi-decent mic and way of recording drums. And nobody without some kind of record deal was putting out records because not only did you need distribution, you needed plugging to get radio play. People were for sure making demos using them, but those remained as demos. So it’s a style lo-fi thing. All good and legit, but not particularly related to any ‘80s sound’ :)
The underground independent cassette world sure did work with cassette multi track stuff recorded to cassete and sold on casse only, but i doubt Espen is talking about that, being a saw and pet shop fan.
Well, I am so disappointed he doesn’t release his RU-vid videos in VHS tapes. It’s impossible to look and sound 80’s in this digital format so he is not that purist and authentic anyway… Until he doesn’t releases VHS tapes, his videos are snake oil.
I've been a subscriber of Espen's for years, but now he seems to have started a one-man mission to piss everyone off ("I'M ESPEN AND YOU'RE NOT" - what does that even mean?). It's a shame really, I unsubbed.
Oh that a bit sad. I think his heart is in the right place, even if he goes a bit OTT. I’ve only been doing this RU-vid thing for a few months but it’s pretty weird. Most of the people are supportive, some are horrifically insulting, and you have to be very mentally resilient to keep calm about the whole thing. I can really see how creators end up screaming into the microphone.
I’m wondering if I should do a ‘reaction’ (and analysis) to his controversial video about synths being scams. I haven’t watched it yet. On the one hand I don’t particularly want to get dragged into some controversy. On the other, a genuinely technical perspective might be useful…
