”When people make records, they have treble and basses for everything to kind of tame the mid-range and make it sweeter and more hi-fi sounding using stereo separation, reverb and ambience – to make everything sound big and spacious and wide." Kevin explains. "Everything I did is mostly mono: ’Soon’ is mono, and ’To Here Knows When’ is mono – there’s no set area of separation. The sense of bigness just comes from the depth of perception. Pet Sounds and Phil Spector’s productions were mono as well – it’s more the balance of frequencies that creates a sense of depth than stereo separation and ambience; they’re not as important. For me, everything that seemed to really affect me didn’t affect me because I heard something coming out of one speaker and something else coming out of another speaker. The classic 80s version of stereo was basically a drum sound that’s really widened by stereo effects and gated, and the guitars are really panned to extremes and it’s just vocals and drums in the middle with overdubs. It was a corporate, weak sound.”
-Kevin Shields quoted in McGonigal, Mike: Loveless, 2007 pp. 49-50.
Mono ftw! :-)
ReplyDeleteOh yeah! :)
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