I’m going to go slightly off the track for this blog here.
The subject of 10cc and their hit record “I’m not in love” from 1975 came up elsewhere this morning.
Of itself it’s a great song, but the use of the technology of the time… technology relatively primitive though it was, enabled them to make 500 and some odd voices from the four voices in the band. That produced a legendary sound that eclipsed anything else the band had done, and in fact eclipse just about everything else produced that year musically.
It’s interesting that this record was produced just about the same time that Queens Bohemian Rhapsody was released… Both multitrack masterpieces.
But now, think about trying to make that record with today’s technology. They probably would have taken those four voices recorded them into a metafile and then run it through a keyboard to achieve the same idea.
The thing is though, it would not have been the same sound. Granted that the sounds produced could have been similar but not the same. The difference is in the recording would be subtle but it would take on an entirely different character.
The reason for the difference in character? I suspect a lot of it has to do with the amount of care required to piece together something like this in 1975 versus 2022. I know for example that the band suggested they did nothing but record note tracks for 3 days to produce the sound you hear on I’m not in love.
I’d like you to consider also the case of Isao Tomita who recorded a collection of the music of Claude Debussy in 1968. Keep in mind the very primitive nature of the instruments that he’s playing in 1968. Bob Moog had just started producing his instrument which was only capable of OneNote one voice at a time. The recording offered here and the rest of that album collectively took 3 years to produce on the equipment of the day and is done in pure multitrack.
s an aside did you see was noted as frequently complaining about the limited range of sounds he could make with the standard orchestra. I have often wondered what he would have thought of this recording which contains sounds that until 1968 nobody ever heard before, and literally took years to produce.
On the strength of that album, Tomita, was contracted for and released several other albums over the years, all of which were excellent but none had the same sound.
Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra is another example. Compare the sounds of some of his earlier work say, Face the Music or Out of the Blue, and compare it to the sound of Balance of Power. He remarked at one point, with words to the effect that it would have been a lot easier to produce some of the sounds he made on his earlier works if the technology had been more like what we have now. But I suggest the opposite is true. Even with the smaller changes in technology, the sounds of each of those recordings is quite different. Both superlative work, but the sound changed, if only in a subtle manner.
Is it the amount of care and patience required to produce the desired sound, while using the older technology? Looking in the other direction, our auto tune and all the other studio tricks that we’ve picked up over the last 50 years making today’s music less satisfying?
Is there a larger point to be made here? They’re probably is, but I haven’t managed to cast it into words yet
