Jul 16, 2005, Posted by Mike in the category, 0 Comments

Thirteen loops make a noose

Its certainly hard to deny the significance of looping software like Sony’s Acid and others for the production community. With the great number and quality of loops inundating the market today, an audio engineer’s choices are almost uncountable. They always sound better than a drum machine and few things can make your ears burn more than a cheap keyboard huffing and wheezing its way through a horn part. While I’m certainly not against the use of loops in any production, I think a word or two of caution applies.

I have to be honest for a minute…I hate hearing people refer to music to as just “files”. Music is certainly much more than that even if its just because of the human element involved in making it. Did you ever get a chance to listen to the “World Anthem”? Some schmo in Denver takes a bunch of different nations’ anthems and puts them in a blender he calls “an artificial intelligence computer” and churns out this mess of music that he hopes children throughout the world will someday recognize. Call it Loopology, call it artificial intelligence, call it crap, call it anything you want, a damn computer wrote it. No let me rephrase, a computer “assembled” it.

Quickly someone will say, ” Of course you think that way, you’re a music snob because you know how to play a couple of instruments and you were in a bunch of bands.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Music is about the sum of personal experience whether its a sappy 80′s power ballad or a national anthem. Nothing beats the feeling of composing a song and then performing it for a group of people to hear and getting applause and reaction to it. And as engineers, our job is to capture the music and feeling on a recording medium for others to share. Sure we can color the sounds the way we might like or cover up a sour note or two played by someone with an ego the size of Alaska. But the bottom line is once again the quality of the finished product and the care that we put in to capturing the moment.

Which is why I say to be cautious in the use of music loops in your productions. If you need a hand clap, get a mike and record someone’s hands clapping. If you need a good drummer, find one! And if you decide to use loops in your productions, make them musical and make them make sense. I’ve consulted drummers when using drum loops to make sure that they sound like they could be recreated live. I’ve checked with other professionals and people I trust to be sure I’m not abusing the privelage of having other people’s work in my arsenal for fear of changing the feel of it too much.

And finally remember, thirteen loops make a noose…don’t doom the quality of your recordings by doing the impossible with your loops and taking away the human element. When the human element does not exist in your productions they are dry and lifeless and you haven’t done your job well as a professional.

Jul 16, 2005, Posted by Mike in the category, 0 Comments

Its all Digital Dude…or is it?

You can’t count the number of conversations (read: arguments) I’ve been either involved in or asked to mediate when it comes to analog vs. digital audio. OK, I’ll be the first one to say that my studio and career have come a long way since the day that I bought my first Fostex 4 Track cassette recorder, but I worry that some audio folks are losing sight of a few things as they look up from the Pro Tools edit screen.

Its a no brainer. There’s no comparing editing on Pro Tools, Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition)or any number of digital NLEs. For the record I prefer Cool Edit Pro to any of them even though my career requires that I’m able to use Pro Tools whether I like it or not. But even the worst NLE is a Cakewalk(if you’ll pardon the pun) to pulling out the razor blade and tape and editing the old way. But somehow it seemed that audio people were more connected to the music in the tape days and less connected to the technology. In years gone by, audio engineers would set up singers in a shower stall or a long hallway to get reverb. Now its just a click away. Cakewalk FX3 Soundstage offers you the ability to locate mics anywhere in a room compared to your sound source without leaving your chair. But you’d better have a good understanding of how reverb works to get a finished product that sounds real.

And that’s my worry. Audio engineers have become so absorbed into the technology that I think some have forgotten the basics. Some never had to worry about tape hiss as they’ve never recorded to tape. Sony offers tremendous noise reduction software but I often wonder what noise you really should have. If there’s noise in your mic preamp, shouldn’t you be looking at how to fix your preamp signal instead of dealing with it later? Not everything can be “fixed in the mix”. A great resource for aspiring audio professionals is Recording Magazine. I’ve found that engineers of all levels can get something out of it as they focus on the recording as well as the technology. Give me a good mic and anything to record it on and I’ll make a recording that could stand up to scrutiny by the most discerning ears. Your good technique should always be the same regardless of your equipment.

We haven’t even touched the whole digital vs. analog thing yet and I’ll get to that later. In the meantime, whether you’re recording on your Pro Tools / Cakewalk system or the cassette recorder that you found at the bottom of the closet, keep in mind that the recording is king, not the technology that went into making it.