Old meet new
Even though we’ve experienced an astonishing shift towards speedy, efficient computer-based workflows, some of those traditional techniques are still relied upon by today’s professionals. For example, Matt Wiggins – the MPG Award winning mix engineer who has worked with Glass Animals, The Horrors and Gary Numan – old-school approaches typically bring out some of the finest results “If there’s time and budget and a reliable machine/reel I will try and record at least the drums to tape.” Matt tells us, “It’s not always practical if it’s a fast moving writing session, but when it works out it’s great.” That being said, Wiggins is also reliant on the modern conveniences of video conferencing to aid in communicating with musicians post-session, “the beauty of modern production is you can do what’s best for the song/band/session. If it’s better to play live and capture the best out of everyone that way then great; if you need to do the drums last and re-do the bass two months later on a Zoom session because the band are on tour in America then fine, it’s possible.” Though it’s a major problem solver, Matt is keen for a return to face-to-face production: “over the past couple of years streaming sessions have been out of necessity, I’m sure people will be happy to get back in the same room as other humans, but I think it will be a big part of production going forward still.”
“The past is a foreign country,” a wise man once said, though when you compare the different methods used to record music at home between the 1990s and now, it may as well be Mars. As we established in the first part, the music production sphere was predominantly hardware dependent, even as we entered the early 2000s, we only had a mere handful of computer musicmaking software tools (which we were eager to spread the word about!).