Phil. Redmon. wrote:Hoblit, you are clearly the voice of the lame, anusy future.
Correction: the lame, anusy present.
I've heard it said: "There are two kinds of fool. One says this is old, and therefore good. Another says this is new, and therefore better." I'm a proud member of the latter.
Yes, delay, flange, and multitracking are all results of tape experimentation that are now permanant aspects of recording in any medium, but can anyone say that similar advances won't come from people stretching the boudaries of digital? I, too, wish we could always have everything available instead of some dominant mode taking over the world every so often. But creativity comes from constraint. Be the first to recreate tape warmth using digital means and you will a) become old engineers' new best friend, and b) be able to tweak that process to make some pretty interesting new sounds. Weeping in the empty Ampex isle may feel good, but it ain't making art.
Things you may miss, but I won't: print-through, hiss, noise reduction by low-pass filter, rewinding, garble, cleaning heads, rescuing snagged tape from various spindles, leader tape, splicing tape and splicing blocks, misaligned record heads, clicking sounds from cutting in or out, added noise from ping-ponging to busses or from mixing down, etc., etc. Maybe you spent the money for equipment that solves (or, more likely, reduces) these problems; I feel your pain in that case. But it's hardly a paradise lost.
"We don’t write songs about our own largely dull lives. We mostly rely on the time-tested gimmick of making shit up."
-John Linnell
