Hacker Cinema
Sound City
2013 · Film · documentary · 106 min
Directed by Dave Grohl
The history of Sound City and their huge recording device; exploring how digital change has allowed 'people that have no place' in music to become stars. It follows former Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighter David Grohl as he attempts to resurrect the studio back to former glories.
5 positivefrom 5 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
6 comments on Hacker News
Sound City deserves its own documentary.[1]
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2306745/
Anyone with even a passing interest in analog recording should spend a couple hours watching the Sound City documentary.
That's a pretty good price if that includes a 24-track board, which cost many multiples of that new back in the day.
Other big costs at the professional level included hardware gates, compressors, tape machines (2 inch analog IIRC), the software (Cubase) and the Macs with the memory and storage required to run it, and staff -- a few engineers and manager employed by the studio and the hired guns brought in for specific tasks.
I was just listening to "Justified & Ancient," one of The KLF's hits from 1991/1992. I don't think it would have been possible to do a song like that (and the remixes) with the Amiga and other low-cost home gear of that era. It's really complex and layered, and Jimmy Cauty and the people he worked with were really pushing the capabilities of the software and studio hardware they had at their disposal. Check out these two mixes of that song:
https://youtu.be/RPjggN-KByI
https://youtu.be/LWuPPMTiuRw
They shifted key with some very complex backing harmonies to make the two versions. It's possible they did that in the studio with singers, but I suspect that was probably done at the console, with hardware and software handling the shift. It would save a lot of time (and money) applying tech for that use case.
Of course, nowadays it is like you said -- the bedroom/home studio model followed by Billie Eilish and her brother and practically every other up-and-coming artist.
The technology shift is very liberating, and opens up music to a much wider range of artists, but there's something lost, as well. A really powerful documentary about this trend was made by Dave Grohl some years back about Sound City in L.A. and the Neve console that powered recordings by Neil Young, RATM, Tom Petty, and more. Details: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/08/173823162/dave-grohl-finds-musics-human-element-in-a-machine
I love, love, love music documentaries. The great ones have a great story to tell. I also believe that the ones about bands have some lessons for people starting businesses and dealing with cofounder friction, creative dynamics, licensing, etc. Many of them also deal with the impact of technology on recording, performing, and marketing. Recommended:
"Anvil! The Story of Anvil" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1157605/)
"What Happened, Miss Simone?" (https://www.netflix.com/title/70308063)
"Soundbreaking: Stories from the cutting edge of recorded music" (PBS documentary on history of sound recording) (http://www.pbs.org/soundbreaking/home/)
"Sound City" (about legendary recording studio in LA, narrated by Dave Grohl) (https://www.netflix.com/za/title/70265771)
"Last Days Here" (About the singer of early doom metal band Pentagram) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1723126/)
"As The Palaces Burn" (Lamb Of God's singer tried in Czech Republic for an incident at a concert) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB6k-Ev_H7c)
People love to hate on "Some Kind of Monster" because they don't like the album St. Anger but I really believe that it caught Metallica at a vulnerable and revealing time in their history. (https://www.netflix.com/title/80174429)
I really enjoyed Dave Grohl's documentary "Sound City", a large part of which revolves around his purchase of a Neve console, and bringing together many famous artists who recorded iconic albums on that very console, to relate their stories of recording at Sound City, and record new tracks with Dave and the rest of the Foo Fighters.
Dave's enthusiasm for the Neve and analog recording in general really opened my eyes.
My understanding is that consoles like this are really unique animals, each one having its own sound. Dave Grohl did a documentary called "Sound City" about his efforts to maintain a legendary console from another studio:
https://www.fastcocreate.com/1682339/dave-grohl-explains-how-a-70s-era-recording-console-rocks-his-world-in-sound-city