Dirty Mind (the sound)

This one is for sound engineers, nerds and geeks that want to find out more about the technical stuff behind this album. I will start with this post. Fill me in if you think I'm wrong, or have more to say about the classic album.

One of the main reasons I love the fantastic album Dirty Mind besides the songs just being great, is the whole sound of it.According to my own observation combined with reading biographies on his own studies around the early 80s, I have noticed these main characteristic sounds that creates the atmosphere of this album:

(my apoligize in advance, I'm Norwegian and my english is not perfect)

Drums:

My observation of the drums will explain most of the other sounds too. They are extremely dry. The microphones are probably put very close, as well as the use of heavy gating to get rid of the release. If you notice that the cymbals often dies much faster than they're supposed to, it even sometimes sounds like the crash had been recorded seperatly from the rest of the drumset. If they had used overhead mics, it would be impossible to "kill" the release of the cymbals as well as on some of the songs. Even though it sounds so dry with short tail/release, it kinda both sounds isolated and gritty at once, as if there's enough bleed between the microphones. I guess the reason here might be a small room that reflects noise. The result is a gritty sound, but it still sounds punchy and isolated enough to make it funk. It both sounds funk and punk at once.

Actually the drum sound is not very far from the drum sound of the Tubeway Army album Replicas. Both the sound and the whole playing style is quite similar. The difference is Prince was influenced by it, but made it funky and shaped it to fit his rnbish style. In biographies as well as a video I saw of Jill Jones saying that Prince was playing Gary Numan on his way to sleep, studying the rythms of his songs.

Guitar:

Usually very clean with not much distortion from pedals, and Prince does the traditional James Brown style with no wahwah on the guitars, his amps does the job for him. Prince style is heavily depended on the syncopated attack. The only distortion her is probably from his close miced amps. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a guitar player. This is just my observation, and I'm not trying to be a professor at this. Actually I want you to correct me, because this is an important study I'm doing as I have mostly experience from electronic music.

Synth:

Sometimes using the synth for bass, but even more often using synth instead of brass. He creates super cool "brass sections" with the oberheim, and he'll also use Dr Fink for crazy solos. The whole synth part also gives a little nod towards Gary Numan, but Prince does it in alot more funky way.

Bass:

Prince does have an ear for simple, yet effective basslines. Even though it often sounds simple, he does have details here and there with tasty timing that is not easily duplicated. If he isn't one of the greater bass players, he sure is one of the most effective ones. As an arranger and a producer he'll easily see it from another view than someone that is always playing bass, and this is his strength with all instruments imo. This instrument is also very dry, as all of the other instruments seems to be.

Overall: Vocals are also close miced, isolated and probably with enough compression. THe the layered guitars to each side, piano and synths are overall the only sounds that gives a certain "wet" feel to the otherwiese dry and gritty sound. And this is mostly because of the rich sound the chords provide.

I am not listening to the album as I'm writing this. I'm very open to hear what you have to say, because I'm humble and wants to learn more as I'm doing alot of self study as the producer I am.

[Edited 2/22/13 17:07pm]

[Edited 2/22/13 17:08pm]

Does anyone have any cool facts about how this album was recorded? Mic technique, equipment etc? I know it basically was a "home recording" but there's a difference between a small casette type of recorders and 8track recorders etc... I'm sure he had atleat decent equipment.

was there even an engineer? i think it was just Prince. he'll know.

[Edited 2/22/13 17:47pm]

Isn't it the A Leeds liner notes to The Hits that say he recorded it as demos and WB liked the raw sound? Your analysis sounds cool and is very well stated, but I don't know enough to correct it.

[Edited 2/22/13 19:36pm]

Yes, i know from various biographies of Prince that this album was really a series of demos, think all were recorded at this home studio. He played them to WB and it was agreed these could go out as they were rather than being re-recorded due to the raw energy of them.

[Edited 2/23/13 1:55am]

An anonymous working musicians who told me he had met both Andre Cymone and Morris Day at seperate occations sent me a private message containing these words of information...

"...Anyway, I wanted to drop you a line and share with you some info I received from Morris Day and Andre Cymone. I spoke to them on separate occasions, but they both confirmed some things you ask about in your thread. For example, "Dirty Mind" was recorded in Prince's house. Drums set up in the corner of one room. Morris seemed to recall it being a Premier 5-piece kit. "Dirty Mind" was recorded on a 16-track tape machine with only 4 tracks used for drums: Kick, snare, and 2 mono overheads. Andre believed that all the bass tracks were recorded straight into the board and seemed to recall most of the guitars being recorded similarly. CP-70 was in the living room and snake-D.I.'d direct as well...

The 4 tracks used for drums, as well as having the drums set up in the corner of one room could explain the somewhat isolated sound. I guess they drumset was heavily muffled also, since the drums sounds very "dead". It's interesting to know that most of the guitars also were recorded through DI. WHen I come to think of it, it does sound too dry to have come from amps. But at the same time they have a nice analog tone to it. Clean DI through an apogee sound device and straight into the computer doesn't have a warm tone like that today.

It's pretty clear to most of us that this was a so called home recording. But does anyone have more info on the recording process? Thanks for all the answers so far.

thebanishedone said:

great thread

Agree! Would like to have more info on the recording process of this album.

Yes, really great thread.

I would be fascinated to hear more about Prince's recording & engineering techniques. Dirty Mind is probably my favorite sounding record too, very inspiring to think of Prince thrashing about on the drums in his house.

That book 'Prince in the Studio' was terribly written and didn't actually give that much information, apart from the chapter on Lovesexy. So if the orgers have more info, bring it on!