2. music
  3. 1143814204

is it just me, new Steely Dan cd's too brite snare

I've had this debate on a Steely Dan webpage

several of the latest dan albums
Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go
and the new Donald Fagen album
seem to be recorded beautifully, all the nuances, close mixed horns, incredibly lush mix

everything perfect except for the snare drum which is way up in the mix and headache inducing

it isn't my sytem and it's worse on Two Against Nature
especially the title track and West of Hollywood
it's so bad I have to listen in the next room

EMG recorded in analog is a little less bright
and Don's new spectacular Morph the Cat (MtC) has some hot snare in the mix

the last two albums feature Keith Carlock who is an incredible drummer, but Don has him in tight snare timekeeping with little room for fills on most of MtC

has Fagen lost his upper frequency end of his hearing?
is he mixing things hot for jumpy mid fi reproduction?
or am I hallucinating?
128x128audiotomb
audiotomb's avatar
audiotomb OP
1,112 posts
 
ghostrider - the Dan don't use drum machines but they do sometimes sample the drum track and get it right on the millisecond (Gaucho had Werlin a prototype drum machine on in and so did Walt's solo, but not those you mentioned)

24phun - yes that Winwood album is killer, I saw him perform that and old traffic last year, great show
ghostrider45
449 posts
 
Audiotomb, I politely beg to differ. Automated drum tracks are all over the later Steely Dan works. One example that's really easy to hear is towards the end of the final vamp on "West of Hollywood" on 2AN. You can hear the unmistakable sound of an automated drum track playing solo for the last few bars after the musicians drop out.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,137 posts
 
In a recent issue of Recording magazine they had an interview with Keith Carlock about recording "Morph the Cat". He states that Fagen distributes a demo track for each song to the musicians a few days before the recording session. The demo is either a DAT or CDR with Fagen doing all the parts via computer software. Carlock says he's expected to humanize the computer generated drum parts. He also says that Fagen is open to the musicians' input, but that he has a strong sense of what he wants before the session starts and is quick to say what he doesn't like. In an article sidebar the recording engineering says that the drums were minimally processed during tracking to 2" analog tape which was then transferred to ProTools for mixing and song assembling.
More to discover