Finishing Mix's

Earlier this weekend I was learning songs for an upcoming gig & watched some youtube videos, as Muse were playing at wembley performing "Knight of Cydonia" I glanced at the next tune on the band set list & it was Oh Carol ! the Neil Sedaka penned tune. It stuck me the huge contrast between the 1958 production & the 2010 production.

Oh Carol! a gorgeous hum along melody with poignant break up lyrics aimed straight at teenagers hearts, but that aside - the recording is < possibly a 3 hour session from start to finish. I've not used the journalists best friend Google for details, but my knowledge of the process in this period leads me to contour images of a pre-laid out studio ( Drums, Bass, Guitars,& Piano ) Sub-mixed into a 4 track or 2 or 8 etc….

The Muse recordings on the other hand are sonic sculptures, old and established techniques have been adhered to , the Marshall Amps cranked to 11 , fine pedal effects by the bucket & 100's of Pro Tools stems ( ok maybe 80 ) , clipped over time in to a mastered 2 track. I could not estimate the studio time for a behemoth undertaking but to keep the Analogy , ignoring the time taken to actually write the songs ( we did not take this into account with Neil Sedaka ) recording 1 muse single must be at the higher end of 100 hours.

To look at making records in terms of a time constraint , perhaps (some of the) studio (s) booked for recording would be charged by the hour or day rate, but the band would not be doing that, they would be creating their art and trying not to impose time constraints upon their music.

Whilst writing this i've drifted from the conceptual thought i was hoping to conceive ; that today i wrote out arrangements for an upcoming gig & cleared a couple of edits off my desk & moved them towards the finish pile. I will try to finish though… some of my favourite records are created in lengthy studio sessions, and the Muse tape of their Wembley concert is just another example, but the innocence and very quick delivery / capture of a Neil Sedaka song in 3 hours is more than testimony to that which can and should be achieved, in a studio recording.