"in the red" or clippy recordings

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 10:52 pm

anyone else into this style of recording? some of the stuff we've been recording lately has been pushing the mic, so it sounds a little fuzzy, however i'm loving the sound.

i know "you're living all over me and bug" by dinosaur jr are like that, as well as white light/white heat by VU have that style.

roll with it? or TURN DOWN?

olin · Post by **olin** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 12:15 am

Roll with it 100%, me, a complete stranger from the internet agrees that it can sound really cool.

YuriK · Post by **YuriK** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 1:01 am

Yeah
It sounds awesome

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 1:47 am

sweet. new public access cable television EP is gonna be out hopefully by halloween, at least digitally, but it kinda sounds like we're running these songs through a big muff. prolly gonna put out one more song before we put out the ep too. 2 piece noise rock. (also could email an unedited take if anyone's interested)

olin · Post by **olin** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 2:13 am

You had me at noise rock, could I get a take?

George · Post by **George** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 9:44 am

its bad for your preamps bruh

ultratwin · Post by **ultratwin** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 10:19 am

Didn't Brad Laner intentionally fuzz things up on some of Medicine's recordings with an MT100 or something?

I use either Waves J37 or Kramer Master Tape for the warm fuzzies, and using the Kramer one to utterly destroy the snare and toms on the Miek & Ultratwin "Long Long Long" track from the Beatles Compilation. Trashy drums, vocals, the whole bit work really well with these guys. Even if it's the peak snare/overheads and vox on a recording, getting all clippy can sound so nice and toasty.

Somewhat random thought, but if Damien Jurado's producer had pushed this one (from 1996 or so, I think) a tad harder on tape it would have been that much funner.

[youtube][/youtube]

Concretebadger · Post by **Concretebadger** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 12:24 pm

I really like the 'on the edge' sound of clippy recordings - it gives an exciting verge-of-chaos feeling. If you can distort guitar and bass tracks, why stop there? I've always loved the (albeit accidental) over-distortion of this tune:
[youtube][/youtube]

It's definitely not for all styles though. I hate the 'loudness war' approach, e.g. the terribad mastering of the RHCPs' Californication and Metallica's Death Magnetic. Digital clipping sounds awful - I tried to use the built-in distortion and amp sims in Cubase to distort drum tracks, with less-than-stellar results. If you can simulate the compression and distortion of analogue tape Albini-style though, the end results can be amazing. You can also check out the Boris album Pink, or my personal fave of theirs that is Akuma no Uta, which was allegedly recorded onto analogue tape in one take:
[youtube][/youtube]

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 6:35 pm

olin wrote:You had me at noise rock, could I get a take?

sure man, pm me yr email and i'll have it sent to you this afternoon. and those are some good points, that metallica album did sound pretty ass being clippy, and the RHCP album too, but i think that's basede on the style of their music too, metal music i guess i would mix a little more clear, as well as a RHCP album, but for boris definitely sounds cool pushed like that.

singlepup · Post by **singlepup** » Sun Oct 19, 2014 3:31 am

ultratwin wrote:Didn't Brad Laner intentionally fuzz things up on some of Medicine's recordings with an MT100 or something?

Yes, absolutely. I think he used some sort of overdriven 4 track in lieu of a fuzz pedal.

Josh, I'm confident analogue clipping can sound great but not sure about digital clipping. Will be interesting to hear your tracks!

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Sun Oct 19, 2014 4:32 pm

i got like 10 days to finish up, but so far so good! the only thing i'm not liking the clippyness is the vocals, it just sounded kinda bad. hoping to track the guitar and drums this week and give it a decent mix.

Ian · Post by **Ian** » Fri Oct 24, 2014 2:53 am

Distortion is fun. Compression is sort of distortion. Distorting things definitely compresses the peaks. When you use Class A preamps, they all pretty much sound the same when you record "clean"

The idea is to pad your mic, pad your preamp, and then push the gain to get "Character"

This is a balance of character vs noise/hiss

Some things sound better than other things when you "push" them. Don't clip your converters

torchindy · Post by **torchindy** » Fri Oct 24, 2014 3:22 am

Something interesting we did with my old band was to record everything the standard way at the studio using all the digital computerized pro tools crap and then mix the master down to four main tracks, at which point they ran it in to a 4-track reel to reel analog tape with the gain turnt up to get some warm tape compression/bit of hair around the edges, then from that tape back to the digitals for the final mix. Worked great for that garagey sound we were going for

Sloan · Post by **Sloan** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 3:38 am

You may be interested in this article by Gabriel Roth (Daptone).

Shitty Is Still Pretty: The Anatomy Of A Heavy Funk 45
http://www.funkydown.com/downloads/shitty2.pdf

lorez · Post by **lorez** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 8:02 am

Sloan wrote:You may be interested in this article by Gabriel Roth (Daptone).

Shitty Is Still Pretty: The Anatomy Of A Heavy Funk 45
http://www.funkydown.com/downloads/shitty2.pdf

Love those shitty is pretty articles. Proper stank

Fakir Mustache · Post by **Fakir Mustache** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 8:10 am

singlepickup24 wrote:Josh, I'm confident analogue clipping can sound great but not sure about digital clipping. Will be interesting to hear your tracks!

Digital clipping sounds like crap, you can hear it on badly recorded utoob stuff.

Although it might be possible to be used experimentally to give an unsettling feeling and abrasive sounds.