Not really a discussion, but more of an observation,
I was sitting talking with some of the guys from The Rock recently and we were discussing music and the difference / ease it is to create nowadays compared to yester year.
We were talking about Atari's and dongals. quarter inch reels and reel to reel recorders. The days when doing drop ins were almost unheard of. You had to belt out ya verse in one take cos in most instances drop ins weren't cutting it. Having to carry around floppy's with ya samples on it. When the M1 was the industry standard midi keyboard. 16 track desks, 24 track desks, 48 track desks. Having to vocal in the same room as the engineer with everyone wearing headphones and no one could talk until the verse was done. Having to do your chorus each time without copy and paste. Having to record the sympte code onto a reel before being able to record your vocals. Patch Bays. Trying to find a decent studio that offered reductions for the unemployed or students (big IMW in Barbican - good days). Sampling kicks from The Meters, snares from Weather Report, hi hats from Kool and the Gang, Sampling your main loop from Ramsey Lewis, your chorus hook from Bob James, your 8 bar break down from Donald Purdey and putting it all together to make 1 unique track.
Your first 4 track recorder, mine was a yamaha. Recording classic materials with a SURE SM58 mic. The first time you press the red button for the long kick drum on a 808
I could go on but hey I guess you get the message, sometimes its fun to Reminisce
. Still having read your post Steve reminded me of how DIFFICULT it could be to get your tune down back then, and how EASY it is now. It's all
about ideas, which hasn't changed...
You had Mark Ross on WLR everyday from 4pm to 6pm, Chris
Nat on Time Radio from 6pm to 8pm, You had Westwood on Kiss FM (Pirate days and the Capital Radio) as well as Live To London from Dingwalls were we frequently
performed. and through all of this people used to Tape record our stuff from the radio onto cassette tapes, those where our ipods of that era. Nowadays people
are doing the same thing. Their just using Bearshare, Limewire and bit torrents to get there stuff. This is one reason why radio figures have dropped.
Ok this was Reinforced Gus's studio.. well actually
his bedroom (lol) but this where we did tracks like 'Mr Kirks Nightmare' and nuff really early R stuff. Before the Jungle days we were making hip hop
so whenever we had to do a late night vocal take Gus would cover the vocalist/rapper with his quilt or duvet so that we wouldn't disturb his parents
sleeping in the next room...
