Comments on: Don’t Listen to the Astroturf

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 09:34:49 +0000

Wasn’t you. Was another commenter whose manner I found excessively rude and aggressive. I deleted that post because I hadn’t expressed myself as clearly and coherently as I could have done, and the discussion was turning several shades more unpleasant than I really wanted to deal with.

By: NGV

NGV — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 08:58:37 +0000

Nightwish destroy the record company argument from the other direction in that clearly they’re still making a living despite spending an increasing amount of money on each album (Dark Passion Play cost twice as much as Once). But obviously their budget is driven by musical ambition rather than “just because we can” and they had to live within a budget when they first started
I suspect that Serdar may be right and writing the album in the studio is a lot of the reason more “corporate” stars chew up the budget. Not sure how to prove it though!

Probably the wrong place to say but great blog by the way – I’m a long time lurker. Apologies if I came over as a corporate astroturfer on the post that disappeared – if so it was bad phrasing as it was 180 degrees from what was intended!

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 07:23:24 +0000

That’s a good point – A band of 30-somethings who know how to use a studio and have already honed the arrangements of the songs live are going to make far better use of whatever budget they have than a bunch of fresh-faced 17-years old who a record company think are “The next big thing”.

I bet there are plenty of cases where studio time expands to fit the budget available

By: Serdar

Serdar — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 01:07:44 +0000

Most of what matters when making a good album is knowing how to use what you have. I remember hearing a story about how Axl Rose wasted some godawful amount of money renting a piece of equipment for his home studio, which he had in there for over a year — a time when not a single note of music was recorded in it. And from what I heard, there’s nothing on “Chinese Democracy” that you can’t do if you have a good mike setup and ProTools.