hey guys,

So im doing this project with incredible female soul singers here in Madagascar. Its got a typical 60's vibe, motownish kind of sound.
Of course they dont have the gear of that era here to emulate the sound of the 60s ( amps, preamps, mics etc...)

So i was wondering how would you go about emulating that sound with lets say Waves plug ins, or others for that matter.

Im thinking what kind of EQ , reverbs and other treatment would you use for kind of faking that sound? ( either at the mixing or mastering stage )

VP

 

Convolution impulses of old gear, mono plate reverb, LCR panning, plugins like Abbey Road Vinyl, and tape emulation etc.

You'll likely get better results using a combination of many thing in subtle amounts rather than overdoing a single effect which will just sound gimmicky.

Also keep in mind that a lot of the greatness is in the actual songs, arrangements and players.
Good luck emulating the combination of Phil Spector or Brian Wilson with The Wrecking Crew using plugins...

 

Honestly (and you might be set on your course of action) but do the best job you can with what you have. Don't chase a sound, just get the best sound you can, that's what people did in the 60s. They go the best sound they could of out of the gear they had (they would have loved to have the gear you have now.) and they didn't push their channels as much as people think but they pushed where they could because SNR was much higher than it is today - not because they wanted to - or got some magical sound of it.

Do the best you can with as many takes as you need or can afford, that's what made the sound. Edit as little as possible to "FIX" things, because back then - you really couldn't fix much... the performers either got it or they didn't. Use the best room you can, that is about the biggest difference between then and now, the cost of treatment has gone down, but they had quality sound stages and large room back then and because of how crappy the gear was and the high SNR they needed good rooms or it showed.

If you have the vibe already - just go with what you have it will come through a thousand times better than chasing someone else's sound.

The biggest favor you can do the world and yourself - if you sound good - sound like you, please.

 

http://www.recordinginstitute.com/R2KREQ/excomp.htm

 

I would assume lofi is the way.
On all channels: no crispy highs, no fat lows, not much processing at all, emultation of tube preamps, tapes, analogue eqs and compressors.
Spring & plate reverb, losts of bleeding in the drums.
No mastering as it is today at all.

 

Last edited: Oct 22, 2017

I'd say
- using specific VST & libraries ( there's some 60s / 70s kontakt libs for horns, strings, bass and rythm section out there )
- same thing regarding the samples lbraries (drums
- in waves, it's gonna be more about EQs (and mixing I guess)
- maybe try to find an old 8 tracks tape mixer..

it's tricky, because they were totally analog at the time, and using real instruments, so...

another point to consider is that most of the mixer were mono tracks.
for example, the beatlles were recording 2 tracks, bouncing, recording other tracks..

they also were recording the band together, with additional tracks
and one last point is the mix : mono tracks of instruments panned L/R

maybe find books about george martin or other engineer to figure out more specific details if you can

interesting topic, though, because even reggae today won't sound like old days roots, unless it's recorded on rare gears & stuff

following the thread, let us know if you've find ways to do what you want

 

Try Izotope Vinyl, U-he Satin. I think that there were some old multitracks of Motown songs - completely wacky panning, I'm not sure that you want such panning.
In the end you can't get the Motown vibe with mixing. It's in the writing. You can only make the record to sound old and that's it.

 

For old school vocal reverbs I love the Altiverb Cello echo chambers and Chapman plates, both in mono. Also try the Abbey Road eq trick before the reverb if you need to clean it up some.

Radiator and Little Radiator from Soundtoys are good, especially on guitars. If I remember correctly, the unit they are based on was used on some guitar parts of some Motown songs. At least that's what I read haha.

Soundtoys Decapitator is also really good, especially for vocals and drums. Look up how Tchad Blake used Decapitator and some other plugins when he mixed Brothers by the Black Keys. To me it definately has an old school vibe and there is quite a bit of info out there about how he mixed it. The mixbuss alone was pretty crazy.

 

The early Motown sound is the sound of tubes and tube mixers. Try Soundtoys Radiator in a similar way you'd use Slate VCC. Should be a good starting point.

 

Pultec eq, old tube consoles like waves nls, waves abbey road stuff,waves redd consoles waves tape machines, basically you can do all waves plugs their 1960's stuff,
tube and ribbon microphones.
you can study the equipment from that time and study the sound of the recordings of that time old analog equipment with a thick rich harmonics. records vinyl etc.

 

Sounds so vintage:

 

To try tape saturation, I use plugins that closer to tape. So, how to check this. First you should ehat the tape is, and what maximum stuff it gives. So studio tape is subtle, check how it emulates old cassettes , if it gives maximum true shitt as cassette tape does, so it should do studio tape. I like sknote roundtone 3, goodhertz wow control (it is really a big thing, at first place, still can't find bundle on sister site, but on rutracker the whole bundle 3.0.9 krakd for win, works perfect), ferox, reelbus, airwindows tapes, satin, and many others for extra. Wow control by goodhertz is all in one, advanced tape with wow and flutter control, saturation etc, it gives a lot of bad cassette vibes. Tape is one of a keys to old sound you are looking for. Use on vox, basses, drums, maybe on harsh digital stuff, masterbus, mix groups, experiment.
Then compression, classic ones emulations.
And same with eqs. Tube stuff for guitars, basses, vocals preamping. Consoles emus. Vinyl vibe for some stuff.
Using properly high sample rates such as 96k give you less digital artefacts such as aliasing, and eq will work as they should, not nyquist frequency depended.
Limiters like old ones, not overdo with modern clipping and transparent limiters. Try emulation of old limiters.
Less use of digitally clean equalisers and compressors, but maybe they may help to not oversaturate etc.
A lot of Nebula and acqua plugins.
No bitcrushers and decimators. It is for 80s and 90s lofi didzshital stuff, old ADCs and chiptune emulation stuff. Or creative, electronic music like edm dubstep trap blahblahblah.

 

use only analog emulations with a noise emulation and turn it on on every track and bus kidding

Like mentioned try to recreat a digital workflow equivalent of the analog workflow of that time. Abbey road plugins + console emulation + tape + tape and maybe some tape.

 

IMO, it's not the mics, the desk or even the tape or end product format. 60's motown you say? Put the band in a room, figure out how to mic them using 4 channels. If you want to go really wild you also record the singers live. That's how it was done and that's why it sounds the way it does.

 

Mic placement is key. record the background vocals to one mic and place the singers in positions that create a natural "in the room mix". any live instruments are played live, at the same time. and utilize bleed rather than fight it. the singers can record without headphones getting room bleed from the monitors. Eqs were really limited so they mostly captured the sound to tape that they wanted in the first place. I get good results using all of these techniques. remember , there is no "fixing it" in the mix.

 

tape

 

The only peeps I know of who can nail the old school sound is Gabriel Roth and his team at Daptone Studios. Here’s a short primer on how to get fairly close to what they do...

http://www.funkydown.com/downloads/shitty2.pdf

 

@Moogerfooger How about this one?

 

That’s pretty good, but it’s over baked in my opinion. To me, that clip nails the sound of a sampled old school break beat kit from an early 70s funk 45. Love me some Vulfpack!!!!!

 

Why try and recapture an inferior (acoustically, not musically) sound? How many artist from the 60s do you think were like "yeah I'm going for that mono gramophone sound, with the brass horn to add colour" lmao Take advantage of the advances in musical technology man.