you was in your early 20's in the 1960's?

I was watching a Mike Oldfield tubular bells documentary the other night and was thinking how much harder it was for musicians back then

Obviously, not just the financial side of things either, sampling for example, wasn't the first ever sampler only capable of a 1 second sample?

Then you had the synths, mega mega expensive, 4/8 track recorders was the standard, and so on

So, my question to the forum is, how do you think you would of made music back then without all the luxuries we have today, unlimited tracks, vst's etc?

 

lol I was watching that docu last night

 

When you can't use your time's stuff, the only tool you need is your brain... it is adaptive more than you believe.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDLrpG0DCqI

 

It is the same hassle ppl face nowadays, running laptops on stage for guitar amp sims, synths, backtracking, realtime plugins, 4 controllers, tablets, VJ videos, light sync...
Every generation face different technical challenges and limitations
Try to run a MIDI controller app on an iPad by Wifi in a room full of ppl using cellular phones, and you will see what i mean about "challenge"

I'm thinking about my next guitar/backtracks system, and i can tell you it is complicated enough to get the things done without paying more than my car for two Receptors (redundancy) and two AxeFX (redundancy).
Because i can't even buy ONE of those So it is going to be a single or two laptop(s), in a vented rack, audio card, power amp (heat troubles with laptop(s)), vibrations...and more troubles to come with stability, latency and such.

I will probably need to find and make my own solution. Because there are parts, but no serious solution until i spend big bucks to sell my car, my wife and my kids (may be my soul, too)

Take a look at one mighty electronic 80's band : Depeche Mode
They started using big synths, but in the studio only. So they sampled them, for stage use.
Now, they still do the same for most of their tracks
They don't take all their synths on stage...who would play them realtime ?
Lastly, they used Ableton as creative mixer for their Playing The Angel tour. There was a single project, with morphing between parts and songs. Very clever...but they didn't made it. Someone else did.
In electronic/experimental music, you need to be a geek...or collaborate with one

Even in guitar world, how many ppl know Van Halen and Brian May modded (even made) their guitars, amps, pedals ?
There was almost no market for what they needed. Or not enough money to buy it.
Like when ppl started using Mac laptops with Ableton

Human limit (time, money, energy...) is the limit. Not technology itself.
That's why most DX7 users only used presets : no time to loose with the crappy interface. And after the 80's and having all used the same presets...they sold them

DeadMaus said "We all press play !". Because we make more complex arrangements nowadays. But WHO can manage 64 tracks, one by one ?
One head and two hands guys. Even if you add footswitches...you'd better be a drummer
At the end, you should not get more than 8 tracks to be in (my) human limit.
And one track to manage at once.
Bounce, render, mix whatever you want. But at the end, if you get more than 8 tracks (or buses) realtime, you are going to bang your head against the wall.

That's what i call "human limit"
So yes, technology is better. But at the end, there are the same amount of ppl pushing the limit nowadays.
I don't feel more comfortable because i can stack 128 tracks...because i still don't know what to put inside them.

 

I might be playing the old valve "synth" from my grandfather, record it on my Telefunken valve tape recorder, tweak stuff by twisting the tape wheels, cut and re-glue tape snippets and I'd likely get results others would only get by using a sampler.
I'd play stuff thru different bad-quality speakers and record the sound in different rooms and locations with even worse microphones, then use a DIY valve EQ to add even more character. My uncle would play guitar, my niece would sing and Diesel generators would play the drums
Certainly as much fun as making music today

The fact that using modern "can-do-it-all" technology is no challenge anymore can lead to losing interest in doing interesting things with it. Sounds familiar?

 

When I played in a band before technology was cheap enough to indulge myself, it forced me to practice to the point I played better than I ever thought I could achieve, since then I've gone downhill as too much time spent reading and configuring and not playing, the results sound sonically better but I still enjoy my old crap tapes because they focused more on getting everything right on the artistic side of things. I found it's pluses and minuses with technology. I'd still rather listen to grade B recordings of good performances than pristine quality commercial music that record company's think will make them money today.

 

You mean, how I would have made music?

You're talking about the 1960s, when only professional (label-funded) or independently-wealthy or ultra-successful musicians had access to multitrack recorders (mid-'60s, four-tracks; late-'60s, eight-tracks; 1970-onward, 16-tracks), and there was no such thing as sampling nor computer-assisted recording; takes had to be performed live, but could be corrected by "punching-in." If you're seeking historic accuracy, it's not just a matter of citing what one in the '60s would have being "doing without," but moreso of what one would have had to work with - and though in retrospect, seems like limitations, but at the time was taken for granted as normal or as an occasional innovation reserved for those with deep pockets.

Myself, having been a little boy in the '60s (and had taken my first music lesson in third grade in 1968), I would have, as a young adult in the '60s, taken for granted the necessity of being able to read music at least on the page, if not to be able to sight-read on my instrument of choice, and to know some essential music theory and harmonic structure, and to practice regularly, and to try to find others of my level or better with whom to play music, not just for improving my chops, but for the great feeling of playing with other musicians.

I had been reflecting upon this very matter last night, while watching videos of the band Traffic performing live in Santa Monica in 1972 (search on YouTube for them). More than one of the comments below the videos mentioned the level of musical proficiency among the musicians - as compared to, say, a couple of guys on stage sampling stuff on laptops - and how people's attenbtion-spans would now hardly be able to endure a 14-minute "Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys." I myself was blown-away by Steve Winwood's excellence on guitar and piano - but I realized that that level of musicianship doesn't come "out of the box," but from sitting alone with one's instrument(s), practicing for lonely hours on end, and then from jamming, collaborating, and performing with other musicians of one's own caliber or higher. Winwood may have been a sort of prodigy, but the guy had to have practiced his butt off.

As someone who was in his 20s in the '80s, I could not then afford a four-track cassette recorder, but every so often would borrow or rent (for, oh, $20) someone else's. I now find that recording music that way, in real-time takes, with real instruments, had given me a solid, "hard-way" preparation for music-making with a DAW. Also, my having studied music theory when a lot younger helped me to leap right into orchestations via the MIDI timeline editor, assigning harmonic voicings to repective instruments. Also, having learned to play different types of instruments (keyboard, woodwind, stringed) to degrees of proficiency which at least gave me awareness of how different types are handled, how they behave, and how dynamics are applied to them in ensemble arrangements, so I have been more successful with using sample libraries than if I were coming into it without any real-musical background.

Although I often sit at my computer and moan about having been born 20 or 30 years too soon, or wishing they'd had this stuff when I was a kid, I compare my own background to that of some kid who's using "construction kits" and "making beats" and sampling other people's music (or even others' samples), and using software to come up with melodies and harmonies for him, and then passing it off to himself and everyone on the Internet as "his" music - and I'm glad that it had been a matter of technology's having caught-up with me, rather than of its being the only way I'd known to go about music-making. It's so much more meaningful and gratifying to put one's experience and personal development into one's music than to just copy/paste and hit "Go."

 

In the late 70s whole 80s and early 90s i practice guitar atleast 2-3 hours every day often more then in the mid 90s i practice 1-2 hours and in the early 2000 it was down to 1 hour.
Nowadays i play 30 min a day sometimes i dont even touch the guitar for 2-3 days

All because i have to tweak some stuff in my Daw or install latest update or even watch tv..
Oh and i got a job that also take some time.

 

jazz and blues all day long

 

The truth is I wouldn't have made music back then at all. What made this all cool and got me interested was the fact that I could do all these things on the computer. Especially
back when all of this was still cool and new.

What drives me is software technology, computers and just creating cool things... or at least that's what used to drive me...