John Williams: Blog

The very most important thing is the cloud of ether that is the song. The song doesn't exist on it's own unless you are actually playing it - it is only an idea. You can write it down on paper but that's only a representation not the actual song. If the song is really good it trumps almost everything else that can go wrong with the recording. If it is bad there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do to fix it. You end up polishing turds.

Moving into the player's head the next most important thing is the performance attitude. Good attitude can't rescue a truly bad song and bad attitude can't totally kill a good song but attitude is still very important. Lots of things up and down the signal chain affect the player's attitude too. "Bad" attitude might actually be good for the song so this is a tricky thing.

Next we have the player's hands and how they work on the instrument - the player's technique. Really great technique can't fix a bad song and bad technique won't always kill a song. In fact, sometimes bad technique enhances a song. This is not an excuse to put off practicing, however.

The player's hands are touching the guitar strings. This is the first place we come to actual material stuff. Good, fresh strings sound better.

Now we get to the guitar and start to spend some money. This is where the signal chain really starts. The guitar (and all the hardware actually) only affect the sound not the song. If a song needs a special piece of hardware then it is probably crap.

Mic placement is often more important than the mic itself. Believe me, you can make a $6000 mic sound bad by putting it in the wrong spot. I've heard SM57s, in the right hands, sound amazing.

The correctly-placed mic sends its signal down a cable - all cables gotta be good and quiet - then comes the mic pre, compressor, channel strip, effects, and recording medium. No excuses here. Top notch engineers in the '60s could not even dream of what prepubescent bedroom wankers have today. They were, however, very crafty with what they had and many of them had really great songs to start with.

One of my favorite quotes is "nobody walks down the street whistling the sound of an SSL". Replace "SSL" with any tangible part of the signal chain, except the song, and you say it all.

Of course we get to the other end of the chain, promotion and distribution, and find ourselves in another ethereal realm that is often full of stupid......