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Hi All, Does anyone have any gubbins on how blue monday was recorded in the studio. I know that they used prophets, moog source, dmx, Emulator etc but any info on how they got that punchy kick drum or mixed the track would be great. There was a brilliant article in Sound on Sound about True Faith. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar05/articles/classictracks.htm
If anyone has anything similar on Blue moday I'd really appreciate it.
Cheers
Leigh
Thanks! as old and hoary as it is, "True Faith" is still one of my favorite songs ever-great article
There's the 'recreating blue monday live' article in SOS:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/articles/rogerlyons.htm
That SOS article makes me appreciate how Ground Breaking BM was at the time. the lads and lady went for broke-even tho it was prolly never planned that way
Thanks, Thats a really good start. I read that article a while back its really good. If anyone else has any more production info on BM I really like to read it. Leigh
There was an article in SOS or Music technology covering a few things done during the recording....it also featured the tracksheet from the original session.
It didn't have much to say about the bassdrum tho. Bernard did get kidnapped by kraftwerk and asked to recreate it for them.
if anyone has a scan or transcript of the following this sounds like it may be just about the best info available i remember the kraftwerk thing too. wern't they really shocked when they booked into the same studio and saw how prehistoric the mixing desk was?! :0) thanks steve. :
Steve Campbell wrote: There was an article in SOS or Music technology covering a few things done during the recording....it also featured the tracksheet from the original session.
It didn't have much to say about the bassdrum tho. Bernard did get kidnapped by kraftwerk and asked to recreate it for them.
Sadly my copy was pinned to my wall with a huge arrow pointing to the bit on the track sheet where it said "6 string bass" cos lots of my mates said it was a guitar. We're talking late 80's articale BTW, it may even have been in "international musician and recording world" but my money's on music technology.
EDIT: I don't recall it being too technical, more a typical New Order disaster catalogue, I think that's where I heard the version of the DMX story with it crashing everytime it got the right groove, which was something closer to version on the beack where the rolling part of the bass drums fades out and back slightly (achieved by fader poking on the Beach probably). Consequently the classic BM groove is actually a "fuck it, that'll have to bloody do"
Leigh maude wrote: Hi All, Does anyone have any gubbins on how blue monday was recorded in the studio. I know that they used prophets, moog source, dmx, Emulator etc but any info on how they got that punchy kick drum or mixed the track would be great. There was a brilliant article in Sound on Sound about True Faith. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar05/articles/classictracks.htm
If anyone has anything similar on Blue moday I'd really appreciate it.
Cheers
Leigh
The TF article is a really fun read. i love hague's stories about the band. especially the one about how they "accidentally" locked barney in the flat they had rented during the sesions.
That's certainly what No would tell you.
But the guy from Kraftwerk cam up to them and said "ve vould like to make ze dmx kickdrum sound as good as ze blue monday" barney, ever the lazy swine offered them an emulator disc of said noise.." Nein nein, ve vish you to show us vat you did to make zis noise"
and barney had to go and give fucking kraftwerk a drum machine recording masterclass.
you couldn;t make shit like that up :)
And Barney said " we can give you a sample if you like", to which Ralf Hutter said " No No, ve need to understand ze process"
any stories to do with Kraftwerk are inevitably made up. probably by Bernard. They also only use one studio, their own. No-one gets in there either. Although they did mix down Electric Cafe somewhere in NY. But that's 'mix down' and not record. That may be one of the only outside studios they've ever used.
One thing I've never really got is how Blue Monday is supposed to have invented electronic music and dance music etc. I mean New Order were about the last band in britain to get onto this. Preceding them were: The Human League, Soft Cell, BEF, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Gary Numan, Blancmange, Visage, Ultravox, OMD, and many other less well remembered bands, even Duran Duran were using synths and doing dance mixes in 81. So, how do you come along right after all this and invent what's already been invented?
Only idiot journalists say that. They did however contribute a lot to what was to become "dance music" as we know it. and JD did a fully electronic track before any of those guys. And cabaret voltaire claim they made acid house in 1974.
The Cabs making a House recording in 1974 They made alot of noise in their early years and perhaps if you took one of their 1974 tracks and played it over actual house music then the statement would be true.
the Cabs didn't make anything you could call house until, well...the same time as anyone else really. The Crackdown wasn't. After that album they were influenced by electro (as were many others) and that influence started to seep in, until the point a couple of years later when they sounded just like many others. Bad move I always thought, and I lost interest in them.
Maybe that's all No are responsible for creating then....an electronic sound that didn't suck balls :)
There's a nifty Virtual Oberheim DX here.
The kick and the open hi-hat of the DMX are the Blue Monday drum sound.
If you hit the Play button on the demo, you're pretty close to Thieves Like Us.
I read somewhere (an interview with steve, can't remember the mag) that the kick roll in BM was supposed to fade like an echo, but steve fucked up the programming and it came out as we all know it, probably the most fortunate fuck up in history, if you can believe it.
I'm quite sure that SOS mag did an article on BM88 which gave a bit of info about the original, mine got lost a long while ago so can't be 100% sure which mag.
I'm affraid my memory from 86 - 96 is a bit vaigue, can't remember why
Pretty sure I said that up there :) Mind you it's easy to miss the info in the bullshit with my posts.
Mind you I think you are right tat the article was about BM88....did the one you're thinking of have the tracksheet pictured?
Jed Stephens wrote: I read somewhere (an interview with steve, can't remember the mag) that the kick roll in BM was supposed to fade like an echo, but steve fucked up the programming and it came out as we all know it, probably the most fortunate fuck up in history, if you can believe it.
Perhaps a bit like the beat on the Sight & Sound session version?
For other tracks in New Order's live shows, a click pulse from the DR16 was fed to Stephen's headphones so that he could play his Roland TD8 electronic drum kit in time to the assorted sampled material. "Steve worked really hard to get his drums to sound like they did on the original records, and by the time he'd finished they were spot on," says Roger. "Steve is a big fan of the TD8, but he uses a real bass drum with a trigger on it to get the feel and air on stage, and a real snare with a pad on it for a similar reason. I think the real drums were miked up, but that was probably just going to his stage monitors."
So what do you make of that last sentence. . .whats that about it only going to the stage monitors. Can someone explain ??
Cosmo wrote: So what do you make of that last sentence. . .whats that about it only going to the stage monitors. Can someone explain ??
If it's only going to the stage monitors(speakers), only the band can hear it and not the audience. Each band member has a monitor or monitors positioned near them so they can hear what everybody is playing so they can follow along. Each member may also have a specific balance of instruments in their own monitor.
Bentley wrote:
Cosmo wrote: So what do you make of that last sentence. . .whats that about it only going to the stage monitors. Can someone explain ??
If it's only going to the stage monitors(speakers), only the band can hear it and not the audience. Each band member has a monitor or monitors positioned near them so they can hear what everybody is playing so they can follow along. Each member may also have a specific balance of instruments in their own monitor.
I suppose the plan being that if the triggers go looney (and boy can they go looney) it wont affect the band. Seems odd though.
triggering by the way is simply the process of getting a sampler or drum machine to spit out a drum sample every time it "hears" steve strike a drum. They can be an unholy terror of missed triggers and double triggers. Fortunately Steve is one of the most even drummers I've ever heard so he gets away with it all the time. Actually, the Roland kit itself can go bananas, there's at least one performance of atmoshpere I've heard where Steve gets so heavily lashed into the drumheads on the Roland that it starts to double trigger itself....I've never been anywhere near a TD series kit, but I've used Roand pads before and all I'm saying is....don;t get into a game of knuckles with Morris, he'll break your arms.
Steve Campbell wrote: did the one you're thinking of have the tracksheet pictured?
The track sheet appeared in SOS, but I'm sure the bit about the fading beat was in a different mag, possibly the mix, which is probably not in existance anymore.
Yeah, I understand what those monitors do. . .but what I really meant was why isn't what Steve is playing going out to the audience ?? So, he is playing only for himself and his bandmates ?? Seems really, really odd. Because, being a drummer myself, I am always keen to make sure what he is hitting/playing is in synch, etc. and is a live feed. With the Regret track and LWTUA at the award ceremony, his "sounds" were definitely coming thru. Would not want it any other way !!
Cosmo wrote: Yeah, I understand what those monitors do. . .but what I really meant was why isn't what Steve is playing going out to the audience ?? So, he is playing only for himself and his bandmates ?? Seems really, really odd. Because, being a drummer myself, I am always keen to make sure what he is hitting/playing is in synch, etc. and is a live feed. With the Regret track and LWTUA at the award ceremony, his "sounds" were definitely coming thru. Would not want it any other way !!
his kick you mean?
the snare is damped and everything else is plastic.
