Forced Restrictions

The Guilt of Stopping Aversion Therapy Experiment

Forced Restrictions

currently reading ‘Here, There And Everywhere‘, a book about the Beatles recording sessions by one of the engineers Geoff Emerick. I’ve read quite a lot of Beatles lit. but this one has to take the biscuit. A non-egoic peak from the control room at what was happening without the desperation to cement himself as (another) fifth Beatle or a crucial cog in the insane success story.

I’m only at the beginning but one thing is standing out to me: the immense restrictions that surrounded their creative work. I can load up my computer in my shitty bedroom today and have 100 channels +, and select any instrument with any effect in the world within seconds. I can spend all day rerecording and editing and perfecting.

For the world of music en large, this means mainly perfect music. Perfectly edited without any real things left for us to grab hold of. Crisp and clean, no mistakes, no character, just a computerised perfect turd flushed into a universe of auto tuned, sanitized bollocks.

The removal of the spirit! this is what we’re talking about here. A music industry full of bland forgetful shite, posh people paying more money to gleam up their bland ideas, and radio stations paid to pummel the shit into our lugs until we turn it off and watch 46 episodes of something with some CHARACTERS in it instead.

so how do we bring the character back to the music?

Ive placed one restriction on this post. Ive just searched Holland & Barret closing times. It closes in 25 minutes. That means i have to write this post and edit it and publish it and get to the shop with in that time. Pretty tight! I want to go there and purchase their OPPO ice cream and go home and whack the heating on and sit in my pants and pretend it’s summer scoffing said ice cream. Probably watch Vikings rigged up to my fat system. Ive had some bad new this week, and this sounds like a happy escape. So I better write this shit and get going!! 24 minutes and counting….. it might mean its not perfect. But as they say , Perfect is the Enemy of Done!

Here’s some of the restrictions the most successful band of all time were working under in the early days:

precious studio time

In Abbey Rd, there were three 3 hour sessions per day. And they expected you to cut a record in one of those sessions. That’s 3 hours to nail a hit record, or tara!

2. Needle time

all the tunes of the day were released on 45. Or 7″ record and all came in under 3 mins for the radio to play it. That means there’s no time for breakdowns and build ups and guff. Every single second had to smack you in the head. Every beat counts when you only got a few.

3. two channel recording desk

Literally Music on one channel (played in live) and Vocals on another. Get the balance right. Master it. And it was in the charts rocking the entire globe within a week. Holy shit. I spent two years tweaking some of my songs. TWO YEARS!

4. Effects and editing.

There were no effects. They didn’t exists. If you wanted echo you’d need to play somewhere with echo. If you wanted anything you would need to make it happen in the room. nothing post recording other than: PAN. VOLUME . thats about it. Record it. Capture the magic. get it right. move on.

5. Separation / bleed

There were only a few mics capturing the band. drums were separated by a thin cardboard stand with a mic dangling from the ceiling. Every mic was picking up part of the other band members racket. Unlike today’s anal separation of every sound and every frequency and treating of each one. This was a few mics, everyone going for it. Capture the spirit and keep it in there!

6. Lack of time to write / record

The Beatles were so in demand they didn’t have days, months or years to contemplate songs and editing and tweaking. They popped in to Abbey Rd mid tour and laid down an entire album in one day. End of. They’d pen songs in hotel rooms, they’d record them in one three hour session and America would buy millions of copies the following week. We think today is the age of instantly reaching millions of fans. But the boring shit we make is taking months before we upload it, and with very little spirit left in it the world responds with a collective huff of indifference.

7. Instruments!

There was drum kit, bass, guitars and vox. Nowt else. And they wrote and wrote some tunes that turned the world upside down.

8. Knowledge

The Beatles weren’t up on theory. They just played and played and worked out what they liked. And copied, immitated, and eventually made their own stuff! Limited knowledge produced some of the biggest hits ever made.

With these restrictions and the stiff old men in the studio keeping them, they wrote and recorded songs that created a revolution. Literally sending the world into a frenzy, changing youth culture for ever more. A revolution from stiff rules and schedules and limitations.

So fuck tweaking that shit loop for another 5 months. Export it, release it, Move on.

Set up the Creative Ritual, plan your limitations. Get it out the door. NOW.

4 minutes to peg it through town for a tub of icecream for my fat arse! laters X