[quote author="bradzatitagain"]it was all pretty much flying fingers coffee and tobacco, and lot's of praying you got it all on the first take (in mono!)[/quote]
you know, seems like it would be like a lot of praying and stress but I think I disagree. Its just the job, the mindset, thats what it was, make a recording, thats how you did it, and the people that got the jobs were the people that did it well. This is really the main reason so far as Im concerned why records from that period sound as good as they do, the vast majority of people making recordings were intensely competent, not because some school churned them out but because the job demanded it. Ive worked with some older guys that worked in the late 60's at least and the mentality is just sooo different from what I see with guys in my generation. I have a little bit of perspective on this subject, MIXING, when I record production sound for features (which is about half my gig these days, little less) Im mixing to mono I'd say about %90 of the time from as many as 8 channels of people talking, which is about as random as it can be, no drum kit to take your cues from. Its a challenging job, but the demand is there for a usable mono mix, especially so on a low budget feature, so you just learn to do it and adapt around the confines of the situation. There are some guys that split everything out to multitracks and they get very little love in the industry for doing so, I often think this is how the older guys from the 50's must look at all of us today, laughing.
The best drum sound I ever got was with a setup that had sucked the day before with a different drummer. New guy comes in who is one of the best drummers on earth and I havent changed a single thing and Ive made personal history, just like that. The whole thing really suprised me.
Take a situation described above with musicians as competent as monk and davis and pair that with someone as competent as van gelder and quite honestly, Im betting that its not that van gelder is being particularly secretive about a single thing that he did, its just not believeable to hear him go, "I just went in, turned the stuff on, put up some mics, recorded it and that was it". Id bet anything it was just as simple as that and there really isnt much of a story to tell.
For me, thats the relationship I usually have with the stuff Im most proud of, simplicity just flows and always sounds bigger than the stuff I tweak at for days or weeks or months. I have long elaborate stories about how I made a poorly recorded thing sound somewhat passable but the stuff that is done right the first time, there's never a tale. I hate to say it but so much of the time, with good musicians, the gear just doesnt matter at all so long as you are using stuff that is decent.
dave