One Mic, Free Software & An Acoustic Guitar From 1964
Did you know that the Grammy winning album “For Emma, Forever Ago” by Bon Iver was recorded with a mic that cost less than $100, on a free copy of Pro Tools with a department store guitar from the 60s? It’s a pretty fascinating story that takes place in a remote cabin in the Wisconsin winter of 2006. (You can watch a fascinating mini-documentary about the production of the album on AudioHaze’s channel if you’re really interested)
Throw Away Those 91 Vocals Takes
Did you know that Tyrone from Rufus Du Sol did 90 something takes of the vocal hook for the beautiful “Innerbloom” before they chose the very first demo take he did whilst writing the song. In their own words they said “they just couldn’t beat the vulnerability of that demo”. It got to the point where they just said, “what are we doing … this is what the song is.”
90 Useless Mixes
Another to polish or not to polish story can be found in the mixing of “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson. The story goes that Michael and mix engineer Bruce Swedien spent hours working up 91 different mixes before producer Quincy Jones walks into the mix room and asks them what they are doing. He asks to hear the latest mix. At the end of the play through he tells them to pull up the 2nd mix. They listened back and, in Swedien’s own words, it blew all the other mixes away.
You Can’t Fake It
One more, did you know Adele’s vocal for “Rolling In The Deep” was the demo vocal she did on the day they wrote the song? She was going through a rough break ups and co-writer and producer, Paul Epsworth, just knew that you wouldn’t be able to “fake” that emotion at another session in the future.
Those future sessions were with some amazing musicians and one of the most iconic producers of the last 30 years, Rick Rubin. She ended up going back to the more pure demos from 9 months before and scrapping quite a few songs from the Rick Rubin sessions.
Great Story, But What’s Really Happening?
There are many, many more stories like these in the world of music production. Those sorts of occurrences make for great stories. But they can open us up to “survivorship bias” too. What is survivorship bias? Survivorship bias is focusing only on the successes and ignoring the failures because those that failed aren’t around to tell their story.
From the stories above, we can assume that raw is better. BUT if we look closely, there is more to the story of why the unpolished versions were chosen:
- Raw Emotion & Authenticity: For both Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever Ago”, Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep,” and Rufus Du Sol’s “Innerbloom” the raw takes captured a unique emotional vulnerability that couldn’t be replicated later.
- Lost In The Details: In the case of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” it took the external perspective of Quincy Jones to come in, free from the details, and point out that they had the mix already.
These stories showcase that choosing a rawer version is about capturing a specific quality – vulnerability, authenticity, or a certain spark – that might be lost in the production process. It’s not simply about rejecting polish altogether.
Giving Up The Detail For The Whole
I’ll finish with an insightful comment from Rick Rubin discussing his music production process which sums up this concept of polish or not to polish:
“Overtime I’ve come to realise that when you’re in a particular groove of energy, when either you’re getting an information download or whether you’re playing something in a particular way, if you come back later to try and recreate that it’s not so easy and it may actually be impossible.
Earlier in my career I would focus more on the content in the writing stage and in the performance stage or in the recording stage it was only about documenting this thing that we already wrote and I still like that method but now I’m much more attentive to recording all of the moments leading up to that quote unquote performance time because often the first time that it’s played can never be recaptured and it’s actually better the first time.
Before I was still trying to get it right now I’m not trying to get it right anymore I’m trying to get the one and sometimes the one … even in those days though, I would listen back and we’d work on a song, we’d work on the arrangement, we’d play it many times and then maybe we’d have a revision, let’s change this part and this part. Then we would change the two parts and we’d keep playing, keep playing, keep playing and then later in the day, let’s change this part and this part. We change those parts and it keeps getting refined as we work over the course of the day. Sometimes we would listen back to one of those earlier takes before it had those refinements and say it’s just better even though it doesn’t have those details we liked that came later . You give up the detail for the whole in that case.
Also, sometimes we’d see if we can keep that original take, that magical take from earlier before it had the revisions and can we incorporate the revisions into it through editing or another way and sometimes we could, sometimes we couldn’t.
I came to learn it was less about getting all the parts right than getting the overall energetic feeling right. That has more power than any of the individual elements.”
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