Whenever I'm in need of inspiration of making music I always go back to songs that did this and I think its what music today is missing. Music sounds either too sanitized (mixes are too clean) right now or too "hollow". In 2025, there are so many ways to achieve this and so many of our greats before have shared what they did.

Songs are supposed to have texture to them. Whether its the warm fuzz you get on synths/leads or the crunch you get from drums.

Yes

Another big thing - less punching in. Back then they couldn't afford to do that. Higher effort and emotion in each take because they knew it was all on the line.

Yes! Untitled famously ends because they ran out of tape while recording the song. That abrupt stop makes the song that much magical man

im sure theres some truth to that but i think we just associate tape warmth with the golden age of music

reality is if your music is mediocre no amount of tape saturation will fix it

mostly agree but really depends - tape saturation is also a form of compression, so really easy to loose the crispness of your transients.

I will say its almost better to keep tape "saturation" and recording to tape as two separate things but thats just for my workflow

yeah i think this is more like it

yeah re recording was kind of a b****

I gotta find the quote but this artist was talking about how tape is magnetic and that it picked up on the feelings/conversations that were being had while recording...half way through writing this I'm like 95% sure questlove said this

there's a loooot to be said for the loss of the sanctity of the "Take"

collaboration too - a lot of my favorite parts of songs are just fills that the musician put in cause they were feeling it

good point. Compression has "evolved" in different ways and for the most part it doesn't feel like for the best (referring to today' music)

Not exactly what you’re talking about but I always loved how this song dissolves into tape decay at the end

its choose your fighter, but i feel you a lot of people compress their rock songs like it's techno or something and that is never gonna work, and vice versa

yeah not to sound like a boomer but back in the day skill mattered way more

not even skill level just like it required this really methodical attention to detail that forced you to develop this really intimate relationship with the music.

like i have only so much time and only so much tape so I gotta lock in and actually get this right

Tape saturation = film

there's a great neil young interview that i don't have time to find, but the gist is him saying "I promise, I'm not a boomer but back in the day you had to collaborate and you had to be open to new ideas and you had to be work methodically and diligently and that made for great records"

Partially why I love old vocal jazz and old soul so much is because of the dirty lo-fi mixes, gives it a lot of charm

examples since post 2010

(you gotta trust me because this is about to be a wild ass range)

yea in a DAW is very easy to just copy and paste s*** over and over again. Key changes, weird effects/ear candy that comes only at the end of a bar once requires you to "care"

the funniest paradoxical thing about the internet is that you have the library of Alexandria at your finger tips but often don't have the resources to make some s*** shake

I think there’s a place for sterile undistorted mixes

i'm interested - what do you mean by this? do you have an example?