middleaudio.com

http://www.jimvallance.com/03-projects-folder/purdie-project-folder/pg-purdie.html

An interesting read... I don't think I buy it, but it's interesting.

By, "I don't think I buy it"... I hope you're referring to Purdie's insane claim.

I love him, but him claiming that, along with lists of tracks that he has in his discography that he isn't on, is kinda embarrassing.

I love Vallance's forensic breakdown of the whole issue. He did a great job of explaining it to anyone interested in hearing it. I've passed that link around for years now.

http://www.bernardpurdie.com/

"The World's Most Recorded Drummer"...

Malcolm Boyce wrote:http://www.bernardpurdie.com/

"The World's Most Recorded Drummer"...

I bet Vinnie's getting up there. I wonder who's done more publicly recorded available performances by now?

http://www.johnjrrobinson.com

That's one place to look...

Malcolm Boyce wrote:By, "I don't think I buy it"... I hope you're referring to Purdie's insane claim.

Haha... Obviously.

It brings up a good discussion, though. I remember reading a piece about The Monkees, where they got blasted in the press when it was made known that they used studio musicians for their album. And how ironic they felt it was; not only were they not trying to be a 'real' band, but, lots of famous real bands had studio musicians overdubbing parts all the time.

I found a good little discussion on the subject over here, if anyone's interested (it doesn't really get into the Beatles or Monkees specifically, just a general range of responses to the idea of session musicians).

My opinion? For the most part, I don't care too much who recorded a certain part, so long as it sounds good (this attitude disappears the closer I feel to a band, though). To me, a band that writes their own music and plays it all live shouldn't have anything held against them for having used a hired gun in the studio. As I understand, it was (and is?) a fairly common practice that noone liked to talk about.

Your thoughts?

It brings about some interesting talking points. "Ghost session players" aren't that uncommon. But then you really get into the ethical question of whether or not it's right. It's one thing to hide the process from the public, quite another to hide it from the artist themselves. In the past I've seen situations where both were desirable for the intended results.

In the end it's really up the the producer of the session... Personally I don't care who does what. As soon as I turn on Elastic Audio, I start to play a part in their performance anyways. All I care about is the end result.

Purists don't agree with it, and the rest of the world doesn't really care.

Someone on that link I provided said that just like with hotdogs, you don't always want to know what went into your favourite album

Credit-wise, I don't see anything wrong with saying "additional guitars by ____ ______" somewhere in the credits, leaving it to speculation whether it was the entire song they did, or just some overdub corrections, or even the 33rd layer of guitar, while the band member recorded the other 32.

While I already said that it doesn't matter to me very much who played what, I should disclose that I generally program and quantize a lot (not all) of the music I record, and only play live instruments that have strings on them, or synth performances that have too many knob tweaks to be bothered programming that level of detail. But, it's very important to me that I play those parts that are played, so obviously it must matter to me to some extent (even the thought of someone else programming my stuff makes me feel uneasy). Maybe I have good ethics, or maybe I have low self esteem and just want to prove myself. Either or, it's the same result ;)

It's funny... but I almost gave a session gig to another drummer because I thought he'd do a great job on a session. The client ended up wanting me in the end, which is his call, but again my point is to always think "What's best for the song?" I'll do a great job on the session, but I need to be humble enough to know that the song is the most important thing, not my ego.

Something to think about for sure.

While the claim of subbing on a Beatle track, seemingly without anyone else knowing, is pretty foolish considering the circumstances, the art of others "ghosting" certainly goes back to the beginning of commercial recording period. I have been around all forms of this with the only exception that I can think of being lead vocals. I do know of examples of even that happening, and I'm not just talking Milli-Vanilli. Many cases of someone "doubling" a lead vocal, which ended up being the loudest track in the mix, so to speak... I have cut many a vocal with someone singing to someone else's guide track.

Being honest about the process taken is most important to me. I believe that once we're doing anything over and above a live performance, anything is game. There is a big difference between leaving out credits, and misrepresenting purposely who did what.

Malcolm Boyce wrote:While the claim of subbing on a Beatle track, seemingly without anyone else knowing, is pretty foolish considering the circumstances, the art of others "ghosting" certainly goes back to the beginning of commercial recording period. I have been around all forms of this with the only exception that I can think of being lead vocals. I do know of examples of even that happening, and I'm not just talking Milli-Vanilli. Many cases of someone "doubling" a lead vocal, which ended up being the loudest track in the mix, so to speak... I have cut many a vocal with someone singing to someone else's guide track.

Being honest about the process taken is most important to me. I believe that once we're doing anything over and above a live performance, anything is game. There is a big difference between leaving out credits, and misrepresenting purposely who did what.

+1 My experiences mirror this almost exactly.

I think the line's tend to get blurred, and things become a little more backdoor when a producer is hired to put out a quality product, and is unable to do so with the available talent. With me it's nice because I can always just take the producer credit completely off if I feel it doesn't represent me properly. Especially nice that I usually have full control over the artwork as well. However if I was hired specifically to come in and produce, it would create a bit of a tight situation if expectations were not going to be met.