How To Bring Back The Golden Era Of Analog Gear Pt. 1

Yesterday Once More

by Eli Krantzberg

When we think of nostalgia, we think of a yearning for the past. Typically of a happy period with positive associations. But the funny thing about nostalgia is that, due to effective marketing and advertising, you don’t necessarily have to have actually experienced a time and place first hand to feel nostalgic for it. And as a result, it is too easy to white-wash or sentimentalize moments in time that never quite existed as we imagine them.

Idealizing The Past

Take Disney, for example. It harkens back to (or emulates for our purposes) an idealized version of a time that never quite existed as it was presented. You never see anxiety about the economy, repressive social mores, suffocating conservative family values, domestic violence, alcohol abuse, or gender and racial inequality depicted. We have a similar phenomenon, built around a not wholly accurate nostalgic ideal, happening with music production.

We are into the third decade of the new Millenium, and the hottest thing still is recreating analog hardware from the last century. The thing is, it is nearly impossible to truly reproduce all the conditions necessary to recreate the sounds of an era accurately. Instruments were made differently. Players played differently. The entire recording chain and environments were different. No matter how many vintage LA2A, 1176, Pultech EQ, Tape saturation, Neve or SSL plug-ins you use, we only get a small piece of a much larger, more nuanced reality.

There were often extreme limitations in the technology that defined part of the era’s aesthetics out of necessity. For example, we’ve all heard Beach Boys or Rolling Stones recordings where the tambourine or claps are insanely loud in the mix. I suspect that these were often the unintentional result of cumulative destructive tape bounces and no Undo buttons.

Instruments weren’t the same either. Guitars slipped out of tune; old drum skins sounded dead, sax players didn’t have the same selection of reeds, amps made noise or had ground hum, and so on. Later we had early digital effects processing, 24 track consoles, black dot drum skins, deeper snare drums, toms with no bottom skin, and so on. All of these various and disparate elements contributed to the sound of these eras.

What’s New Is Old Again

I suspect that the sound of emulations of vintage gear, as applied to modern 24-bit samples and software instruments and pristine recordings on modern instruments through modern audio interfaces, will in itself become the sound of these early decades. We are juxtaposing elements to create another era’s feeling or sound onto modern sounds, instruments, and arrangements. And that in itself will become its own sound.

So rather than unsuccessfully chasing down isolated emulations of isolated elements found in now ancient technologies, why not simply try to capture the overall feeling and mood of the eras? Enter Finisher RETRO from UJAM. As with all of their Finisher line, the interface comprises macros designed for easily dialling in sounds derived from complex signal chains. With RETRO, the macros are specifically designed to recreate and evoke specific eras’ feelings and sound. Applying these processes to our modern recording and software instruments is, arguably, a form of modern nostalgia!

It’s important when trying to emulate an era’s sound to understand the contributing technologies and aesthetics. For example, the 1960s were characterized by the British invasion and the first country and folk-inspired singer-songwriters. The 60s also saw the rise of Motown, R&B, soul, and funk. Four track tape machines (with lots of track bouncing) were the norm.

The 1960s

To situate yourself in the technology, think Glyn Johns drum micing technique, Fender Precision electric bass, early Marshall guitar amps, single-coil fender guitars, spring reverbs, short tape delays. A typical vocal recording chain might have been a Neumann U47 mics -> EMI/Chandler TG2 Pre -> Fairchild 660/670 -> Pultec / Drawmer 1960s EQs. Mixing often involved hard panning and plenty of tape compression.

Here is a simple track I put together in the style of the 1960s. I’m using UJAM’s Virtual Bassist ROYAL 2 for the bass part, Virtual Guitarist SPARKLE for guitar, Virtual Drummer SOLID 2 for the drums, and a plug-in called Combo Model F for an organ sound. You can hear that I’ve tried to create the parts in the style of the era. I’ve got the sounds as close as I could to the era’s aesthetics with the available instrument parameters. It sounds pretty good but doesn’t seem to really fully evoke the character and feeling from that decade.