Originally Posted by
GuitarGeek
The reason a lot of 80's stuff sounds so "dated" has to do with the technology available. The big thing was, before 1978, if you wanted to get a particular sound, you were limited to the gear you had, the studio you were working at, and the professionals you were working with. By that last one, I mean the producer and engineer. It was about dialing in a guitar tone, a Hammond organ drawbar setting, a synth patch, etc, plus things like mic placement, and whatever "secret sauce" that your producer liked to toss on things. Sometimes might even be a particular studio, as you often read where musicians would say things like "Oh, Wally Heider's had the greatest echo chamber ever" or "You could get a bass sound at Electric Ladyland unlike anywhere else". But basically, it was down to the expertise of the people present and maybe possibly where you were working.
Even if you were trying to copy the sound of someone else's record (Bernie Krause said that when he and Paul Beaver would do sessions, people would ask for a synth sound they heard on a Stevie Wonder record or whatever), you might not be able to get the exact sound. Maybe it was because you didn't have Wally Heider's echo chamber, or the recording console at whichever studio in Nashville that had the frelled up channel (which is said to have inspired the first distortion pedal), or you didn't have someone who knew how to recreate the synth patch on Living For The City.
But around 1978, synthesizers started to appear that had patch memory. It was said once that when Sequential Circuits first started getting Prophet-5's in for servicing, they noted that a lot of people weren't bothering to program in their own patches. Either people couldn't be bothered to figure out how to store sounds and were just using the live control panel the way you would on a Minimoog or whatever, or they were just using the factory patches.
This ended up having a big effec ton the industry. Gregg Hawkes created the synth patch on Let's Go by The Cars on a Prophet-5, but when Roland put out the Jupiter-8, that was one of the stock factory patches. Anyone wanting to get that sound only had to put down the cash for a JP-8, and dial whichever number patch it was. And it was the same with other synths, I think Eddie Van Halen admitted he used stock patches on the Oberheim OB-Xa on the songs on 1984 where he used it (saying once "I don't have time to program stuff"). So you started hearing a lot of the same synth sounds.
Then, when effects processors came out that had patch memory, it got even worse. If you wanted the "Phil Collins drum sound", well, virtually every digital reverb had that programmed in. It was probably the default setting when you turned the damn box on. Pretty much any other sound that you heard on a record, that was created by effects processing was in there too (I'll come back to that in just a second).
In the guitar department, Tom Scholz put the Rockman out on the market (after Epic cut off his royalties because he was taking too long to finish Third Stage). So everyone started using that because you didn't have to worry about mic placement or whatever. You just had to EQ the hell out of the thing during the mix so you didn't have the "Boston" guitar tone (of course, for it to really sound like Boston, you'd have to play exactly like Scholz or Barry Goudreau, but that stupid "smaller than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" box got you have way there, if that was what you wanted).
And likewise, if you wanted say the Trevor Rabin Owner Of A Lonely Heart solo tone, well, there again effects processor that came out after May 1984 had it programmed in. Some of them even had some clever reference to Trevor or the song title as it's name. If you wanted the Andy Summers stereo chorus guitar tone, you could get that too, at the touch of the button.
ANd then there was drum machines. Everyone had either a Linndrum (or it's predecessor the LM-1, which is what Prince used on most of his stuff) or an Oberheim DMX or one of the Roland boxes. Even today, you hear a lot of hiphop records that still use the Roland TR-808, or something doing a really good impersonation of one.
Don't even get me started on samplers and digital synths. For awhile, it seemed like every frelling record had that exact same Fairlight "orchestra hit" patch, and DX-7 "slap bass" and "Rhodes" patches on them. Oy! I think Tony Banks might have been the only person who didn't use the Fairlight orchestra hit at some point.
That's basically why everything sounded so dated int he 80's, because everyone had these tools/toys and either got lazy, or (perhaps just as likely) they had record company people breathing down their necks saying "WHy don't you do something that sounds like that Phil Collins record that was a big hit last month" or whatever.
Bookmarks