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Thread started 12/25/13 6:26pm

kidmelody2012

Prince recording process?

after watching the brilliant Studio City documentary by Dave Grohl I was wondering if prince is still recording to tape? or is he a Pro tools clone like everyone else?

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Reply #1 posted 12/26/13 1:21am

bluegangsta

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kidmelody2012 said:

or is he a Pro tools clone like everyone else?

You mean that incredible technology that gets snubbed at by pretentious music snobs? Ah, right...

Always cry 4 love, never cry 4 pain.
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Reply #2 posted 12/26/13 5:59am

Giovanni777

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kidmelody2012 said:

after watching the brilliant Studio City documentary by Dave Grohl I was wondering if prince is still recording to tape? or is he a Pro tools clone like everyone else?

.

'The Rainbow Children' was recorded to 2" taPe, then mixed and mastered in ProTools. This method has been pretty common for a while now, and it makes alot of sense, for real. You get the fat warm sound quality from the tape, then the flexibility within ProTools with mixing and mastering.

"He's a musician's musician..."
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Reply #3 posted 12/26/13 11:41am

novabrkr

I was under the impression that all the records made after TRC are recorded directly to HD (using ProTools, most likely). It seems that he started using analog tape again with the Andy Allo record, or a little bit before that. It's not clear to me if he's using tape for the multitracking process these days, as one option could be just to have the songs "downmixed" to tape after they're pretty much in a finished state with the HD setup (and then after that, recorded back to HD for mastering and whatever additional tinkering he wants to do on them). You'll get quite a lot of analog warmth that way too, although it's not really the same thing as recording everything on tape to begin with. Many artists prefer to do it that way these days (Maxwell and Chromeo come to mind instantly).

[Edited 12/26/13 11:43am]

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Reply #4 posted 12/26/13 2:56pm

kidmelody2012

bluegangsta said:

kidmelody2012 said:

or is he a Pro tools clone like everyone else?

You mean that incredible technology that gets snubbed at by pretentious music snobs? Ah, right...

its cold and unfeeling

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Reply #5 posted 12/27/13 10:21am

steakfinger

kidmelody2012 said:



bluegangsta said:




kidmelody2012 said:


or is he a Pro tools clone like everyone else?



You mean that incredible technology that gets snubbed at by pretentious music snobs? Ah, right...



its cold and unfeeling




Once upon a time, but now the technology has far exceeded the frequency range of analog tape. The "cold" and "unfeeling" aspects you hear are the lack of tape imperfections like compression and distortion and tape hiss. It's the illusion that black and white film is "classier" than color. It's a caricature of reality whereas digital technology is closer to reality. It doesn't do fantasy as easily.
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Reply #6 posted 12/27/13 10:30am

novabrkr

I wouldn't say Emancipation sounds that much "warmer" than 3121 does. So many other factors contribute to the overall result.

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Reply #7 posted 12/27/13 12:54pm

kidmelody2012

novabrkr said:

I wouldn't say Emancipation sounds that much "warmer" than 3121 does. So many other factors contribute to the overall result.

so prince meeds new engineer or Rick Rubin?

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