First, before I start, let me explain my situation. I'm not a tremendously talented recording engineer yet. I'm not blowing away the major labels with my recording quality. I'm just a guy who's been doing this for over 4 years now basically full time who takes pride in his work. I've noticed that a lot of times I've came out with projects that weren't that fun to listen to. I've noticed that I've had projects that have nearly great guitar sounds, but don't sound like they have nearly great guitar sounds. I started to ask ?Why??. I had also recorded bands that just wanted to capture the natural sound of the band and weren't too concerned about anything else. These bands didn't focus on sound quality on my studio monitors. The focused on playing great performances of their songs. It turns out that the bands who didn't focus on sound quality, actually ended up with better sound quality. I started to ask ?Why??.It turns out it was the songs and the performances that made the engineering in most cases.

A recent discussion on the recording forum here at recordingreview.com led me to write an article about capturing a magical performance and not so much about using 25 mics to get some sort of crazy sound (which I've never done). I have this theory that sound quality is dictated by the songs. Did John Bohnam or Jimmy Page really have that great of drum or guitar tone? Sure, both were great players, but did they sound THAT good. I personally think that writing the songs that became part of people's lives is what made these sounds so desirable. Looking back to when I was in my early teens, I think the records made around 1994 sound the best to me. This is because the songs defined the production. It's usually a given that your favorite song has close to your favorite production too.