frozenhero
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Post by frozenhero on Apr 4, 2019 15:25:13 GMT
Both magazines worth getting if you can read a bit of German.
In GoodTimes, he mostly talks about the duo album with Hannah. Apparently he wants to do another album with her! There's also a review of the album.
Eclipsed printed an excerpt from the book and also a short interview, where Francis admits that the album isn't really country per se, and also says some very telling things about the new Quo album. Translated back to English by myself:
Francis: I think we have to produce at least one really good album.
Michael Lorant: So, you're not happy about the last Quo albums?
FR: We, and that includes the various producers, have produced music which we thought should be made under the name of Status Quo. It often sounds really good and is technically better than 70s Quo, but on the whole, they aren't albums which the world, including me, have been waiting for. That's why I want to produce the next Quo album myself. And I want to give the band the freedom to sound as it does and not the way anybody imagines Quo 2019 or 2020.
Interesting stuff. I guess we knew that this was how he's been feeling about QPQ but it seems he also includes albums like HT or ISOTC in that statement now. The GoodTimes interview points to him wanting to do something a bit different with guitar sounds. Whatever that is supposed to mean.
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Post by snakelady on Apr 4, 2019 16:45:21 GMT
We shall find out about what the current line-up wants to sound like in due course. I for one am looking forward to it - more admittedly than to Rossi/Rickard pt.2 Maybe he's calling the compressed sound modern and it's what he doesn't like ? After all he mentions the producers explicitly. Could get interesting to get his idea of what this band should sound like and not trying to follow a trend. They've done that far too often in the past ..
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frozenhero
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Post by frozenhero on Apr 4, 2019 18:56:46 GMT
He's produced half of QPQ and BQ though, and both weren't exactly dynamic wonders. Although I tend to blame the compression with the mastering engineers (which would probably be Mike Paxman), but John Eden's comment on ISOTFC (Francis being shocked at how compressed the CD is) might actually point to that fact.
I suppose the Rossi/Rickard album is reasonably well mastered, but that's supposed to be a country album, so people aren't expecting it to be as loud as a rock album anyway.
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mortified
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Post by mortified on Apr 5, 2019 4:50:45 GMT
I personally don't understand what 'compressed' means in this musical context. I don't appreciate how it would sound if it wasn't compressed. But " giving the band the freedom to sound as it does" presumably means something closer to their live sound. Which does tend to be louder and 'heavier' than in the studio. Having said that, we've heard all these noises before. I particularly remember the comments before the release of Perfect Remedy. But at least there's an indication that we might actually be getting a Quo album. Sounds feeble but I need a Quo album. I miss it
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Post by snakelady on Apr 5, 2019 6:34:09 GMT
He's produced half of QPQ and BQ though, and both weren't exactly dynamic wonders. Although I tend to blame the compression with the mastering engineers (which would probably be Mike Paxman), but John Eden's comment on ISOTFC (Francis being shocked at how compressed the CD is) might actually point to that fact. I suppose the Rossi/Rickard album is reasonably well mastered, but that's supposed to be a country album, so people aren't expecting it to be as loud as a rock album anyway. Yep, he did produce some off the albums. I suppose that's why he talks about that they felt they had to sound like this and it's not necessarily what he would've preferred. It's never a good sign for an album when a producer thinks he's got to achieve a certain sound - to sound contemporary ? - as opposed to doing what he feels is right. I love a lot of the albums from the last two decades because of the music, but none of them has a brilliant sound. Best sounding Quo album for me was RTYD and that was nearly three decades ago .. Going by JE's comment you mention, at the time Francis obviously wasn't aware that compression was used and what it did to the sound. I got to admit, I'm like mortified in that respect - I don't really know what it is. So I'd not know who's responsible for it either. All I know is that it makes the albums sound somewhat flat, for want of a better word.
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frozenhero
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Post by frozenhero on Apr 5, 2019 11:55:25 GMT
Well, it's basically one of the "spices" used during mixing and mastering. But just like spice in food, it can be over-used.
Dynamic compression during mixing is usually necessary to keep instruments at a certain level (especially bass and vocals).
Compression during mastering gives the mix some "glue" and "punch" but only if it's not used beyond a certain amount. Limiting ensures that the peaks are mostly all at the same level, but if you overuse that, you end up with a wall of sound that never stops attacking the ears. The music can't breathe anymore, and everything starts to sound too uniform, flattening out the differences between songs as well as the differences between bands.
The problem is also that often it's not used for artistic reasons but because record companies think the music will sell better when it's "louder". I know some bands' work was altered in that way after they had already delivered a finished product (!).
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mortified
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Post by mortified on Apr 5, 2019 12:06:30 GMT
Well, it's basically one of the "spices" used during mixing and mastering. But just like spice in food, it can be over-used. Dynamic compression during mixing is usually necessary to keep instruments at a certain level (especially bass and vocals). Compression during mastering gives the mix some "glue" and "punch" but only if it's not used beyond a certain amount. Limiting ensures that the peaks are mostly all at the same level, but if you overuse that, you end up with a wall of sound that never stops attacking the ears. The music can't breathe anymore, and everything starts to sound too uniform, flattening out the differences between songs as well as the differences between bands. The problem is also that often it's not used for artistic reasons but because record companies think the music will sell better when it's "louder". I know some bands' work was altered in that way after they had already delivered a finished product (!). They will also presumably want it 'louder' for radio and, more likely these days, for streaming on places like Spotify. Designed to catch immediate attention type thing but when listened to properly on good equipment, dynamics will be lost. Not that music companies care about that of course. Thank you for the explanation. Not that I understand half of it
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frozenhero
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Post by frozenhero on Apr 17, 2019 11:12:04 GMT
Well, it's basically one of the "spices" used during mixing and mastering. But just like spice in food, it can be over-used. Dynamic compression during mixing is usually necessary to keep instruments at a certain level (especially bass and vocals). Compression during mastering gives the mix some "glue" and "punch" but only if it's not used beyond a certain amount. Limiting ensures that the peaks are mostly all at the same level, but if you overuse that, you end up with a wall of sound that never stops attacking the ears. The music can't breathe anymore, and everything starts to sound too uniform, flattening out the differences between songs as well as the differences between bands. The problem is also that often it's not used for artistic reasons but because record companies think the music will sell better when it's "louder". I know some bands' work was altered in that way after they had already delivered a finished product (!). They will also presumably want it 'louder' for radio and, more likely these days, for streaming on places like Spotify. Designed to catch immediate attention type thing but when listened to properly on good equipment, dynamics will be lost. Not that music companies care about that of course. Thank you for the explanation. Not that I understand half of it The irony is that a lot of streaming services actually use loudness normalization these days - i.e. recordings that are very loud on average get played back at a lower level, making the whole thing moot. It hasn't stopped the wars yet, though... Well, to put it very simple, dynamic compression means limiting or reducing the dynamic range. In other words, the difference between the average volume and the loudest parts (which are usually drum hits, at least in rock music) gets reduced. Thus, the overall level gets louder, but there is less room for the peaks to make an impact, due to the nature of digital audio (which has a clearly fixed maximum of -0dBFS). If you run a completely unprocessed single drum part through the DR meter, it will have extreme dynamics (DR20 and more). A finished recording with that amount of loudness/volume variation is very rare, though. Some people actually argue that mastering is not necessary at all these days. It was/is a necessity to get music onto vinyl because otherwise, quiet parts might fall below the noise floor. But people became used to it and therefore a lot of bands hang onto it. I know that Steven Wilson does generally not allow people to master his mixes anymore, so his releases tend to have a good compromise between "punch" and "air". And of course, all of our favourite rock albums from the 70s are compressed to a degree. You can saturate a recording on tape, which is a sort of built-in compression. The most extreme example of this that I know is Keith Richards' guitar on "Jumpin' Jack Flash". That's actually an acoustic which he overloaded on a tape recorder until it sounded like an electric guitar. But digital clipping is much nastier, and getting a similar 'warm' quality on digital equipment is much harder.
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frozenhero
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Post by frozenhero on May 29, 2019 11:13:21 GMT
The current previous issue of eclipsed (forgot to post it when it was relevant!) has a review of the album. Seems pretty fair to me. Not any outstanding rating - 6,5 of 10, but it has that in common with the new Alan Parsons opus (and Rick's album actually got an even lower grade, if I recall correctly).
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