Breaking down the magic castles

[ahjteam]

You thought the amount of editing on music production these days is bad?

Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enter_Sandman

"Enter Sandman" had what Hetfield described as a "wall of guitars"— three rhythm guitar tracks of the same riff played by himself to create a "wall of sound". According to engineer Randy Staub, close to 50 takes of the drums were recorded because Ulrich did not record the song in its entirety, but rather recorded each section of the song separately. Because it was difficult to get in one take the "intensity" that the band wanted, numerous takes were selected and edited together. Staub mentioned that the producing team spent much time in getting the best sound from each part of the room and used several combinations of 40 to 50 microphones in recording the drums and guitars to simulate the sound of a live concert.

If you are not familiar with analog tape editing, check this out:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkEfo4IVpjk&feature=related[/ame]

That shit is SLOW. If looked at this tape editing tutorial, he does really sloppy edits on loose non-busy single sound material and it takes him over 6 minutes to do a single edit. So if the Metallica's production team has about 50 takes and knowing Ulrich's drumming ability, it means that the drums alone must have minimum of 150 cuts on it, so it must have taken MONTHS to record and edit the whole album together. edit: actually it did and it even reads on the page; October 1990 - June 1991.

No wonder it was helluva expensive to make records back in the day, if you literally have to use over a million to book studio time for 9 month period (Okay, they most likely weren't there 24/7, but still). Also remixing the album 3 times has something to do with it...

 

[NSGUITAR]

That's amazing

 

[Pxz]

Insteresting stuff ahj. Is the black album or enter sadman in particular 3 guitar tracks only L-C-R? or its quad ? or six tracks ?
or OCTOTRACKING ? im confused now.

 

[Ataraxia2320]

Interesting indeed. But hell it was worth it. That album sounds AMAZING!

 

[Ermz]

Fuckin' love Staub, man. He was mixing masterpieces while I was still trying to work out which way was up.

I think using the black album as a representation of how tape recordings were done might give people a pretty skewed impression of prior editing practices. They obviously had a huge budget, timeframe and team put together to do that record. It would be roughly today's equivalent of KoRn doing something like 'The Untouchables'.

When they say 50 takes though, I wonder whether they mean 50 whole takes of the song, 50 punch-ins... or 50 song sections...

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

When they say 50 takes though, I wonder whether they mean 50 whole takes of the song, 50 punch-ins... or 50 song sections...

Yeah. 50 punch-ins (or even sections) for me would mean I was finally working with a drummer who knows which end of the drum stick is supposed to hit the drums

 

[greyskull]

keep in mind also that at 30 IPS a reel of tape lasts for 15 minutes... so 3 takes or so per reel. 50/3 = 16.6` so at least 17 reels of tape.
that shit aint cheap.

 

[kev]

Mare.

 

[ahjteam]

Also if you actually listen carefully, you can actually hear one cut at 1:28... The hihat decay ducks just a bit.


edit: Also, if you haven't already noticed, the cuts are easier to notice if you listen to the sound scape, as it varies a lot. If you compare the snare on Enter Sandman, it is a lot softer most of the time and has a huge reverb when the main pre-verse hits, but changes to really raw at times.

 

[Paulie!]

No wonder it was helluva expensive to make records back in the day, if you literally have to use over a million to book studio time for 9 month period (Okay, they most likely weren't there 24/7, but still). Also remixing the album 3 times has something to do with it...

Per a year in the life of Metallica.. I think they had the studio 24/7 because Lars would record at night, while James liked recording in the day time.. So I believe it was probably rented out completely...

Insteresting stuff ahj. Is the black album or enter sadman in particular 3 guitar tracks only L-C-R? or its quad ? or six tracks ?
or OCTOTRACKING ? im confused now.

I'm pretty sure the whole thing is Left-Center-Right for the rhythms...

 

[MortenDK]

Theres a sequence in the DVD a year and a half in the life of Metaillica, where they are loading up a van with all the tape they use for the black album. Its insane how much there is used!.

 

[greyskull]

when I use it, i just rent a reel, fill it, dump it to tools and then record over it.
CLASP would be preferable, but the studio I use doesnt have it.

 

[PhilR]

IIRC they used two slaved analogue 2" tape machines for the main takes, and this was bounced down to digital tape for mixing once the edits had been made. I imagine there was a lot of submixing going on before the mic signals hit tape.

 

[Jordon]

I thought it was a 24 track tape and a 24 track digital slaved together? Something about drums and rhythms on tape, vocals and dubs on digital?

 

[kev]

Also if you actually listen carefully, you can actually hear one cut at 1:28... The hihat decay ducks just a bit.


edit: Also, if you haven't already noticed, the cuts are easier to notice if you listen to the sound scape, as it varies a lot. If you compare the snare on Enter Sandman, it is a lot softer most of the time and has a huge reverb when the main pre-verse hits, but changes to really raw at times.

I've never listened to the snare on the album like that. The verses are certainly softer, I thought it would have just been mixer riding.

The hi hatt dropout on 1:28, is that not just lars dropping out in the same way as 1:30/ Or are we listening for something different?

 

[ahjteam]

I've never listened to the snare on the album like that. The verses are certainly softer, I thought it would have just been mixer riding.

riding a fader doesn't change the tuning of the snare / the tightness of the snarewires.

 

[C_F_H_13]

I thought it was a 24 track tape and a 24 track digital slaved together? Something about drums and rhythms on tape, vocals and dubs on digital?

There setup was actually pretty crazy.

My understand is they had a Sony dash machine (48 track digital), and then up to 3 other slaved 24 track tape machines.....

 

[PhilR]

They worked their asses off that's for sure and not just on the actual recording process but also getting the absolute best performances from them. Remember one of the first ideas Kirk had for the unforgiven solo? lol painful to listen to, Bob Rock pushed him til he created the best solo on the album, imo.

Hah, that whole scene in the docu was so contrived. I wonder how long it actually took him.

I imagine they had to some creative editing with a large amount of footage for that film. The reality was probably something like:

Lars: Weeks of utterly tedious drum tracking. Bob Rock slowly going completely insane.
Kirk: Weeks of trying to turn his aimless noodling bullshit into gold. The other guys go find something else to do.
Jason: Probably laid down his bass parts inside of a couple of days. Move on, nothing to see here.
James: Does pretty much more work than everyone else, but who wants to watch endless footage of him laying down 10000 tracks of rhythm guitar?

 

[kev]

riding a fader doesn't change the tuning of the snare / the tightness of the snarewires.

I expect for the verses they just switched off one or two of the 6 different samples they had on the snare

Just kidding though, although there was certainly sampling on the snare either from their own brew or elsewhere (highly doubting elsewhere, but you never know I guess).

 

[Jordon]

There setup was actually pretty crazy.

My understand is they had a Sony dash machine (48 track digital), and then up to 3 other slaved 24 track tape machines.....

That's insane. I'd hate to think about how big a pain in the ass it was to keep everything synced up.