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 Category :: Music |
Author :: Reese Thomas  |
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| Article Title :: Recording; the Price of Memories |
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If you make a habit of salivating over vintage recording gear,
wince at the price, and secretly wish you lived in the the 'good
old days' when every recording studio was full of these fat
sounding cool pieces of equipment, remember to include being
born rich as part of your dream.
Before the advent of the digital age and cheap consumer
electronics, the phrase "I'm going into the studio' had a
reverence in the music business. The recording studio was a
remote unobtainable dream for most musicians, and for a very
good reason. It was expensive. Really expensive. Studio gear was
expensive, therefore, studio time was very high. In the early
70's, from 40-75 dollars an hour for a good local 16 track
studio and well over 100 dollars for a national house was
normal. Remember, this was in 1970 money, multiply that by at
least a factor of 8 to get todays monetary value. Even demo
studios, with antiquated 8 track equipment were 20 an hour on up
(that makes it $160 by todays money.)
The cost of operation was high as well, the 2 inch tape used in
16 track recorders cost some $50 a roll, (not included in the
price of the session.) Editing was a time consuming process,
every edit point had to be laboriously found on the tape, razor
cut, and the tape physically spiced together. Often hundreds of
yards of acetate lay coiled in empty garbage cans waiting the
razor.
Not just the recording process was pricey. The cost of producing
the vinyl record was astronomical. First, a master had to be
made, with a special machine literally cutting grooves in a
metal plate. Then molds had to be cast, (a mold was good for
only a certain number of records, the longer the run , the more
molds had to be made.) Finally the vinyl had to be pressed and
the label printed. One a small run of a few hundred 45 rpm
singles, just the record manufacturing cost alone ensured the
impossibility of recouping expenses. Only in large runs and
sales of many thousands did the vinyl record become profitable.
The cost of recording and producing a small run of 45 rpm
records to go on local jukeboxes and use as promotional tools
was something many bands scrimped and saved for years, and the
product would very likely be nowhere near airplay quality. A
self produced album was a rarity, usually the result of a band
either finding a wealthy 'backer,' or maybe a member working in
a local studio for studio time in the off hours. A song writer
either relied on simple guitar and vocal demos, or relied on
demo studios to do quicky versions of his songs, often for a
package price per song. Either way, the recording a band was not
something done on a whim, or, on an empty wallet.
So remember, the next time you drool over some esoteric retro
tube 70's gismo, for the adjusted price of a few hours in the
studio 'back in the day,' you now buy gear that will give you
all the time in the world to create, hone your craft, and maybe
still have enough left for that tube preamp.
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