[terminal pharmacy]

Originally Posted by DJ Rick

If you're trying to disagree with me about the whole fidelity/recording thing, you're not. I totally agree with you that there's nothing wrong with recording your music with whatever's available....personally, I'm a big fan of some boombox recordings.

But there's still more to it that just hitting the red button and playing the song. There's the characteristics of the room. There's the placement of the microphone. There's also the performance itself. If you just do a basic recording of an acoustic song, and it is hampered by the hum of an impedance problem, or it just sounds totally flat because of the room it's in, or you can only hear vocals and no guitar, and any of these things actually mar the song in a bad way, or the performance was not as good as it could be, then if you put those mp3s up on your MySpace page, you shouldn't be surprised when you meet disinterest or scoffing. And if your answer is "BUT I'M JUST LO-FI...WHAT DO YOU WANT?!?!", that is using lo-fi as a crutch rather than an honest mode to record music with zero or little budget.

You needn't know much of anything except how to hit record, but you should give trial and error its due diligence. If it doesn't work in this room, move to that room. Figure out where to sit and how to hold the guitar.

Of course, you really only hafta please yourself. But I do know I've met bands that have recorded DIY stuff which they themselves weren't pleased with, and that's why they were making excuses before I even heard it. Like they were warning me...."Well, it's pretty lo-fi!" And then all I heard was the flattest, most undynamic thing ever, and they wanted to know "What do you think?" I won't go totally Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on 'em, but I will encourage them to re-record it over and over again until they no longer hafta use the "lo-fi" thing as an excuse.

i agree djr, lofi to me is and has been for a long time an aesthetic choice, cos even the simplest computer recording setup these days can produce incredibly pro sounding production, the only difference most of the time is in the mastering. e.g. nearly all of the eels albums were recorded in small home studios but are mostly incredibly lush sounding. mostly lofi is used alot as an excuse in people not arming themselves with knowledge (not that they have to at all), but i find things more fun the more i learn about things anyway.