Back to Mono

As anyone who knows me will affirm, I'm sceptical about the need for stereo and surround sound in recordings. Mono was good enough for most of the great records of the past, and it's good enough for me. When I released an EP in 1985, the world was dismayed that it was in mono, but I'd still be doing tracks in mono today if it wasn't for my weak will in the face of peer pressure.

There's an interesting article in Sound on Sound magazine this month about a band who were recorded in one room with one microphone (though they cheated and DI'd the bass). Here's an interesting quote:

...some drummers can play pretty well to a click track, but mostly you end up with these weird, rigid, careful performances. But when a drummer's just playing along with the rest of the band, and he plays a fill, he does speed up a little bit. In fact, the whole band will speed up and slow down going in and out of a chorus. There is some come and go in the tempo of natural playing."

I've always had a problem with click tracks, which are the temporal equivalent of stereo. Nobody naturally plays to the same tempo. Everybody varies a little bit, here and there. I think what the world needs is some kind of midi device which can take the tempo from the bouncing of your knee or the tapping of your foot, and map it to a session, so you can play other parts with more natural ebb and flow. Some genius could make a fortune with such a thing.