What is old school?

[masta247]

I wonder how do you define it in hip-hop? What artists do you consider old school?

A few years ago I'd say with a huge dose of certainty that it's artists like NWA, Public enemy, 80s and very early 90s. In the 90s artists often used the term "Old school" mentioning artists from the 80s and those who performed soon after hip-hop started (take 2pac's "Old school" as an example).
What is old school now? Is 2pac, the early Wu-tang etc. old school?
For some people everything pre 2000 is considered to be old school. Will in 10 years 2009 be considered old school?

Or is it a matter of our own age?

 

[Chronic]

Everything before Run-D.M.C. = old school.

 

[Da_Funk]

Jeremy is old school

 

[yak pac fatal]

idk i consider anything pre96 old skool, just my opinion

 

[Casey]

This might be a bit of a techie or "producers" view, but I consider anything recorded on tape/reel to be oldschool.

Anything recorded digitally does not qualify. There is a certain kind of "warmth" that music recorded to tape has that digital recording does not have. For example, look at the shift in the overall sound of Tupac's music in the mid 90's. 1995 and the "Me Against The World" album was clearly recorded on tape/reel, and just one year later, the "All Eyez On Me" album was clearly recorded digitally.

My cousins have been professional music producers working with major labels since 1987, and by about 1989 they had enough finances to build their own state of the art studio, which I basically grew up in and around. And if I recall, they made the switch from analogue to digital in around 1996, as well.

You can see this in music in general. Compare the overall sound of all the music that came out in 1994, to the sound in 1998, by which time 90% of artists were recording digitally. It's a lot cleaner.

I feel like this had an effect on artistry as well. There was less room for error in the analogue days. Tape was expensive and many times, if the artist fucked up slightly it would stay in the recording because to do it all from scratch was a more arduous process.

I feel like people took advantage of the digital way of recording and started overproducing and making sure everything was clean and perfect. I feel like it really came to a head in 1999. I mean, listen to Christina Aguilera's "Genie In A Bottle" record that came out that year. Sure, it's a great song, but listen to the production! It's cold, machine like and almost sterile. There's not an ounce of warmth there at all. And I'm not talking about the music. Hell, Kraftwerk's electronic music in the 80's was pure bleeps and bloops and it had 10000x the warmth of something like "Genie In A Bottle".

Sorry if this turned into a bit of a rant. I think a lot of people will agree and now understand why the paradigm of music changed in the mid 90's because of the switchover.

 

[roaches]

pre-KRS1

 

[goymz]

It's been a long time since I've read and agreed with something that Casey has written: here the man is bang on.

 

[masta247]

yeah I also have to agree. That music seemed to have soul back in the days.

 

[Freedom Froggy]

round the turn of the mellenium..

i mean songs really lost there soul after 97 i would say by 2000/01 music became fusion hybrids.. with rnb. and now that seems to be the norm.. pop/rap lots of of fusion type of beats

i say up till 96/98 you had soul full rap, hard beat a chick on the chorus.. (Ex: thuggish ruggish, the chronic lp. lots of 2pac, AZ sugar hill nas if i ruled the world etc)

then music started to change and by the new millenium i would say the music change from soulful rap to rnb songs with a rapper on it (fabolous and lil mo, ja rule and whoever he was singing with.. it was always a rnb sample )

im speaking stricly mainstream right now and what was leading the charts.. altho im not speakign on rap as a whole but thats one difference between "old school" and "new school" to me

 

[Caesar]

This might be a bit of a techie or "producers" view, but I consider anything recorded on tape/reel to be oldschool.

Anything recorded digitally does not qualify. There is a certain kind of "warmth" that music recorded to tape has that digital recording does not have. For example, look at the shift in the overall sound of Tupac's music in the mid 90's. 1995 and the "Me Against The World" album was clearly recorded on tape/reel, and just one year later, the "All Eyez On Me" album was clearly recorded digitally.

My cousins have been professional music producers working with major labels since 1987, and by about 1989 they had enough finances to build their own state of the art studio, which I basically grew up in and around. And if I recall, they made the switch from analogue to digital in around 1996, as well.

You can see this in music in general. Compare the overall sound of all the music that came out in 1994, to the sound in 1998, by which time 90% of artists were recording digitally. It's a lot cleaner.

I feel like this had an effect on artistry as well. There was less room for error in the analogue days. Tape was expensive and many times, if the artist fucked up slightly it would stay in the recording because to do it all from scratch was a more arduous process.

I feel like people took advantage of the digital way of recording and started overproducing and making sure everything was clean and perfect. I feel like it really came to a head in 1999. I mean, listen to Christina Aguilera's "Genie In A Bottle" record that came out that year. Sure, it's a great song, but listen to the production! It's cold, machine like and almost sterile. There's not an ounce of warmth there at all. And I'm not talking about the music. Hell, Kraftwerk's electronic music in the 80's was pure bleeps and bloops and it had 10000x the warmth of something like "Genie In A Bottle".

Sorry if this turned into a bit of a rant. I think a lot of people will agree and now understand why the paradigm of music changed in the mid 90's because of the switchover.

Interesting you mention that. I spoke to Ruk yesterday and we were talking about the album they're finally finishing up and he said that the delay was that they've decided to go back and do everything analog to get a better sound out of it so I guess you are right.

But my question to you now is, by definition, will the Rukas & Blaze album then be old school?

 

[Casey]

Interesting you mention that. I spoke to Ruk yesterday and we were talking about the album they're finally finishing up and he said that the delay was that they've decided to go back and do everything analog to get a better sound out of it so I guess you are right.

But my question to you now is, by definition, will the Rukas & Blaze album then be old school?

It depends exactly what he means by "do everything analog" because I'm not sure he means it the same way I mean it.

If he means he is going to re do his entire album with no Pro Tools, no recording to hard drives, no soft synths, a full mixing desk and recording all their output to this:

and running their vocals through compressors like this one:

then yes that is true analog recording and the music may have an "old school" feel to it.

But considering how much those things cost (let alone the tape), and the fact that they would need an engineer who had been a professional engineer for 15 years at the bare minimum to oversee every aspect of the recording, I highly doubt that is what they are doing.

 

[BleezyBlaze]

Well.. we actually tracked everything in PTHD.. Vocals were coming in through an Avalon 737 and a vintage DBX-160X using top of the line A/D converters of course.

The instrumentals although composed in the digital domain the individual stems have been run through a bunch of analog gear during the mix process including some REALLY old school Harrison Console channel strips and analog SSL gear.

What we meant by going back and doing it all analog is that we're taking everything back to the studio and mixing it down and mastering it all in the analog domain. Which includes printing to tape.

The reason for this.. we just love that analog touch and couldn't get the same results when listening to our stuff when it was all in the digital domain.

Although I do a lot of the mixing myself, our main engineer is always there to give it the final touch we need. He's an old school analog cat and has been in the game for over 20 years with credits and music awards all over the place.

 

[_streethop101]

Every artist Tupac mentions in "Old School."

 

[Rukas]

Tape isn't old school.

This is old school! A wire recorder we found in one of the studios we record at. I highly doubt you've even seen one of these in real life Casey

 

[Casey]

Rukas, I've seen shit older than your whole damn country.

I've done two BBC Radio 1 Maida Vale sessions, which only the most acclaimed artists get invited to do. It's the same studios where The Beatles and The Rolling Stones would do sessions in the 60's, and it's such a big freakin place that they still have all the original equipment on display. Old BBC stuff from as early as the 1920's and 1930's all the way up to present days.

So yes I have seen one of those before as well as a lot of other shit that would blow your head off!

As for your recording process, I have to give you props for being thorough with it! I'll be interested to see how the shit sounds when it comes out, definately drop me a couple of samples as soon as you're happy with some of it.

 

[Casey]

Well.. we actually tracked everything in PTHD.. Vocals were coming in through an Avalon 737 and a vintage DBX-160X using top of the line A/D converters of course.

The instrumentals although composed in the digital domain the individual stems have been run through a bunch of analog gear during the mix process including some REALLY old school Harrison Console channel strips and analog SSL gear.

What we meant by going back and doing it all analog is that we're taking everything back to the studio and mixing it down and mastering it all in the analog domain. Which includes printing to tape.

The reason for this.. we just love that analog touch and couldn't get the same results when listening to our stuff when it was all in the digital domain.

Although I do a lot of the mixing myself, our main engineer is always there to give it the final touch we need. He's an old school analog cat and has been in the game for over 20 years with credits and music awards all over the place.

The 737 is dope as hell, my cousin has one of those in his rack.

In all honesty though, you don't need to print to tape.

There's a fairly recent VST that came out that my cousin has been telling me about, the name escapes me, but it almost perfectly replicates the warmth of tape, my cousin has been running it on all our drum and vocal tracks recently and I was incredibly impressed.

Combine that with some Harmonic Balancing to your overall mix with templates ripped from some classic 80's and 90's tracks and you won't be able to tell the difference and you'll be saving a lot of money. (There's an EXCELLENT program called Har-Bal for doing this, but it's Windows only. One of my cousins bought a PC for his studio for the SOLE PURPOSE of using this one program, so that tells you just how dope it is).

I mean, shit, I'm not gonna tell you guys what to do with your budget but if I was you, I'd do what I suggested and funnel the money you saved into your marketing budget cos obviously thats where you'll see the most return.

 

[Bender]

i consider old school to be the early artists that made the biggest influence for the future hip hop, taking hip hop to different levels through experimenting with different forms of the style, they are the founders of form