The Musician's Room: What's New?
12/18/09 I'm going on Christmas vacation and have so much to be thankful for: pretty good health, lots of love from my family, and a job that has become increasingly fulfilling of late. I'd like to wish each of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah from my household to yours!
12/18/09 Okay, so I really love the looks of the Gibson Flying V guitar and I couldn't help but put together a photo essay on the used one I tracked down. See it by clicking on the pic below.
12/09/09 This week I've sequenced and mastered a two-CD album set and I'm preparing to mix another artist live for air. Woot!
12/05/09 Look what followed me home from the guitar store. I found a used Gibson Flying V guitar at a killer price and it begged me to redeem it.
10/24/09 Happy Thanksgiving! I have a lot to give thanks for. I'm on vacation and that usually means that an article I've been working on gets finished. It's true again! Every engineer keeps a collection of music ready to serve as a comparison to whatever he's doing and to give him a baseline in a new control room. I'm no different, and thought you'd like a peek at my picks. HERE is my current collection.
10/10/09 Did I have a good practice leading up to the picture above, or what? I really wore the nickel off the strings playing the blues. Yahoo!
10/06/09 As I write this up, I'm watchin' ZZ Top on Storytellers. Another week gone by and it was a doozy. This week I prepped for live broadcast mixes of three bands. That's a live mix followed by a fast-turn-around high-quality remix. Tuesday we prepped up for Wednesday's performance by one band. So Wednesday rolled around and the show producers decided to double the number of performances from the artist. No problem, done, except they wanted the mixes within 24 hours and I would be spending the next day prepping for Friday's performance by two bands. Somehow we were able to get the two mixes out and get prepped as well. Friday went well. Did I mention that I sandwiched in a solo guitar performance on Thursday night?
10/29/09 My how the week has rushed by! Yesterday I previewed a system by Dolby Labs that allows you to input an AES digital stereo signal and both slickly and convincingly transform it into a AC3 stream containing a 5.1 version of the stereo. It allows really nice imaging in the 5.1 without discernable artifacts and does all this in real time. We'll probably be installing these in our control rooms soon. Meanwhile, I'm doing the groundwork for another couple of days of live broadcast band mixes. On of the two days will feature two bands, back to back. A fun time will be had by all, no doubt.
10/23/09 So, the DVD was created, but not by me: my boss is an experienced CD author and all-round nice guy and was able to use a few tricks to generate a version with less compressed video and my mix. Meanwhile, variety is the spice of life. Today I recorded a "table read" for a new animated series. This is a performance review for the executive producer and other involved managment. To do this, after extensive rehearsals, a group of actors are brought around a conference table and perform the scripts, with a director/narrator to read the camera directions, non-verbal, and scene information. They are all mic'd up ad we mix the performance to a pair of cameras that are used to record the whole event. The point is to review the flow of the script before committing it to a recording upon which the animation will be based. It was an interesting diversion.
10/20/09 As I listened to the mix over the weekend, I generated a "punch list" of changes to make, along with their locations in the show. Monday I worked my way through the punch list, made all the changes, generated another demo, and took it home for review. Today I previewed the mix for the director and got his approval. Next, I generate a final approval copy and off it goes to the record company for their review. Woo-hoo!
10/16/09 I got the next iteration of the concert mix home last night and my wife and I reviewed the mix. I'd gotten the LFE portion right and the kick and bass guitar came alive. However, my home system and comparison to some of my favorite concert DVDs revealed that there were more adjustments needed on the blend of the background vocals and the "wrap" of the surround information. Today I implemented those adjustments and burned another trial DVD. We've given it a listen and I'm becoming enthused about the mix. I'll try to get a front-to-back listen this weekend. I've got a couple more sessions to fine tune the mix and then I'll wrap up this little lot and submit it to the director.
10/15/09 Today brought a couple of interesting projects: Firstly, handling the live broadcast of a platinum-seling country band. That was fun and interesting, without going back to my work on the concert. On the concert front, yesterday I made time to listen to the video on my home system and made my notes on changes to be made. Today I'm implementing those changes, including tweaks to the LFE channel (.1) and to the "DialNorm" or Dialog Normalization for the project, to optimize performance on multiple systems.
10/13/09 We had come to a good general mix for each of the songs on the DVD before and had dealt with editing issues. Yesterday I began "dialing in" the mix for each song, emphasizing various instruments and voice passages to make it more exciting. Today I'll be exporting all this, creating a Dolby AC3 stream, and authoring a trial DVD to take home and test on my home system.
10/12/09 As promised, you can listen to the song I've spent the last two months blogging about on this page, HERE.
The Song is called "Stolen Innocence." Copyright 2009 A Cry For Peace.
10/10/09 Yesterday we premiered the song I mentioned on 10/08 at a CD release party after a bit of feverish mix editing. It all worked out well, attitudes were positive, and alterations are so easy in the non-linear world, so I was pleased to trot out the little changes requested. The changes went over well and the party was fun. Meanwhile, in the live concert mix world, I actually began the process of mixing, proper. Quite often, the "discovery" and prep period on a multi-track live mix takes longer and is more involved than the actual mix. The mix itself can be a simple matter of balancing and blending. To a certain extent this has been true here. As usual, part the way down the track, there were some basic signal flow alterations necessary, but they've been minor and haven't disturbed the flow of the mix session. I'm actually beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel and am looking forward to vetting the mixes on my home system before I submit them. That's another little difference with 5.1 mixing: You can't just zip it to a CD or MP3 and shop it around on car stereos and laptops: It has to be checked on other 5.1 systems. That requires authoring a DVD (a very basic job, mind you) and then going where there's a 5.1 system. They are much fewer and further between than stereos!
10/08/09 After a day down for system maintenance, today I continued on the concert mix. There were a number of chores waiting for me. Firstly, I went through the individual tracks and got rid of the spaces between songs and places where unused mics were open to yield a cleaner, tighter sound. This also gave me a chance to listen to technical issues. I discovered that a 60 cycle hum with overtones developed in the bass channel somewhere during the concert so I applied a Waves X-noise plug-in, sampling the noise then canceling it out. When I turned my attention to the audience surround mics, I also discovered that an audience member had brought a loud noisemaker to the concert and applied it generously whenever he got worked up. As a result, whenever he let loose it steered your soundstage to his corner. I had to go through the entire concert, screening the crowd and eliminating Mr. Noisemaker. It's harder than it sounds because the audience tracks have program in them and you can't substitute other (mismatched) program. Instead, you have to choose another mic that is clean, copy the same time sequence from it and paste it onto the affected track in such a way that noone can tell. It's painstaking, and I might have develop a healthy resentment towards Mr. Noisemaker but I realize that he wasn't told this concert was being recorded. Play on! Oh, in the middle of this, a producer from another project that is premiering tomorrow sent me an Email asking for updates to the mix to be used at the CD party. This should get interesting because the initial copies of the song have already been produced...
10/05/09 Today I began the process of mixing the live concert mentioned on 09/19/09 in 5.1 for DVD. I began by collating the forty-something tracks into a logical order under folders and converting the basic stereo template used to monitor the recording into a 5.1 template. The next step was conforming the audio timeline to the video edit, an edit which was just finished up last night and sent to me this morning. There were several places between songs that were reduced in length to make the show move more smoothy. I edited the multitrack timeline, removing the same material that the video editor did and polished the transitions. Next, I set up the basic structure of the mix, with buses for the drums, etc. I routed, EQ'd, and treated the inputs, set up and routed the effects sends, and designed the surround information. We've now got a glimmer of how the mix is going to sound. The rented drum kit was killer. By the way, I used the AKG C451Bs for the side of the snare and the hi-hat, and they gave me a great sound.
09/25/09 I'm headed onto vacation! But before that: Sometimes I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. I was recently in the engineering shop of a large media concern when a friend pulled me over into a conversation, saying, "Psssst. Listen in on this." Turning to the other person in the conversation he said, "I'm getting ready to deliver four professional reel-to-reel tape recorders to the crusher and need your help." My friend knew I wouldn't be able to pass up the opportunity to give one of them a new home, and I wasn't. Read about it HERE.
09/19/09 Yesterday I worked twelve hours mixing a pretty large live concert broadcast while recording it mutitrack. I worked with a team of five engineers and three technicians. My responsibilites were the live music mix and the recording. Later I'll be mixing it in 5.1 for DVD. Here is an action shot:
While mixing the event on the Neve Libra Live II. Here I'm preparing to switch the fader row from volume to "All Aux" mode to adjust the reverb send on the vocals. The mic inputs came over to my control room, 1/8th of a mile away from the stage, via MADI digital audio networking. If you look hard you can see the JBL LSR4328P powered, self-calibrating monitors I'm using. You can't see the LSR4312SP subwoofer but it is there, inboard of the left monitor. They all network together and self calibrate via an included instrumentation mic, which takes literally about 30 seconds. As I mentioned in an earlier update, I'm pretty chuffed about this monitor system. It's the first system down the pike that makes me think there is life after UREIs.
09/15/09 Okay, I beat the limiting issue by tinkering a bit more with the peak levels and improved the mix in the process and... the mix has been delivered! I'm working on getting some clips of this material to demonstrate.
09/14/09 Up to my eyeballs in the mix of an indie pop combo song and I'm struggling with the tension peak of the song. As of right now, the little bit of vocal improv at the peak of the song is so cool, I want to run it pretty high. But at that point in the song the ensemble and strings are at full tilt. As a result, that vocal improv part wacks the limiter that is across the stereo bus to reduce transients, and crushes the mix the tiniest bit for about one second. I've shopped the mix around to several monitor and speaker systems and I'm pretty happpy. Do I tinker with the whole gain structure to prevent the crush and risk having a less than stellar result or slap my hands off the controls, call it done, and chalk it up to the inherent compromise of an imperfect world? You know I'm a perfectionist. You know I'm going to have to try something. I'll have to save this mix stage, though, to have it to fall back on...
You know what's funny? After all the agonizing over a product, I'll play it back for my family, saying, "Listen to this! Two stages back, I was struggling with a level problem and I think I've got it licked." They'll roll their eyes and say, "Two stages back I couldn't hear the problem and I still can't now." THAT's perspective.
09/12/09 After my experience recording the string session using my AKG 451B mics, I've updated my review of them AGAIN, HERE.
09/11/09 WE WILL NOT FORGET. Eight years ago I was broadcasting live coverage of 9/11/01, beginning right after the first crash. I spent the next month in a marathon of long days and nights before I got enough time to react emotionally to the event.
09/11/09 Today, for a part of my day, we began final editing, organizing the 45 tracks of strings, and mixing the song.
09/10/09 It's string overdub day at the studio. Film at eleven.
09/10/09 Session shots!
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(Technical details of the mic array available in the second update of my AKG451B review HERE.)
09/04/09 Always, always shop your mixes around onto multiple speaker systems.
09/01/09 Back to production on the current song: Today I used some downtime from other projects to fine tune the drum kit. The goal is a recording where you can shove up the faders to equal levels and get a great sound with no further tweakage. Of course, it rarely happens so easily, if for no other reason than the fact that as you add other sounds during overdubbing, the needs change. This time I'm very happy with the drums and percussion - good sounds and everything is in phase. I've got eleven tracks of them and only one, the kick, has required much attention. I used two mics on the snare: an SM57 on top and an AKG451 pointed at the side. The top gets the skin sound and the side adds more snap. You can move the side mic up and down during setup to adjust the amount of snap. During the mix you can blend the two tracks as needed. Next week we overdub a string quartet and begin mixing. I've been furiously squiring out rough mixes and trying them out on various systems.
08/31/09 Vacation is over! Today we had a preproduction meeting to go over signal flow and tasking for an upcoming live concert broadcast and recording. We'll have a seven-man crew: FOH, monitors, show audio, recording engineer and live music mixer, recording assistant, and two stage technicians. The signal will be A/D'd at the stage and then shared via MADI between FOH, monitor, and the Neve music recording console in a control room 300 yards away. I'll be handling the music mixing and recording chores, building a stereo mix and sending it to the live show control room while recording to multi-track. Later I'll mix to 5.1 surround for a DVD release.
08/29/09 This has been a vacation week during which, besides anything else, I've been getting acquainted with a new laptop and operating system (Vista). I've also added Fire FTP to my Firefox browser to handle transfer chores and I'm really liking having FTP operations and browser in one window. We'll see what impact they bring to the site!
08/25/09 I've had time to get some studio experience with the AKG451b mics I bought last year and have become more enthusiastic about them. I've updated my review of them, HERE.
08/20/09 Today was vocal overdub day. We set up a Neumann TLM170 and a Neumann U47 to track the performances of our singer, Rebbekka.
Rebekah did an excellent job, adding her lovely voice to the tracks. She sang the lead, doubled herself, and provided the harmonies.
Producer Jennifer and I found her extremely easy to work with and the session steamed along productively.
We ended up with lots of good tracks to work with. Obviously I found the limits of the dynamic range of my cell phone camera in this series.
08/19/09 Yesterday I moved the project over to another studio and we did piano overdubs on our Knabe grand.
That's the bass side Neumann TLM170 mic going into place. The "mood lighting" is courtesy of using the studio on the off-hours. I had to bring in a lamp for Jennifer to read her sheet music. We discovered a couple of sticky keys in the high register and had to tweak 'em.
08/13/09 Today we did acoustic guitar overdubs on the song and pre-planning for upcoming sessions. And now its time for my loadout from yesterday's lap steel session. It's amazing how small my session kit can sometimes be. I'm particularly proud of my brown "road case" from Olive Garden. But don't be deceived: It's full of expensive mics.
08/12/09 I love the smell of overdubs in the morning! Time for lap steel guitar overdubs:
08/07/09 Snappies from another recording session:
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07/17/09 Last weekend I went to a rifle marksmanship and American heritage clinic and learned a bunch. If there's interest, I'll do a write up on The Appleseed Project and my experience at their first local clinic.
06/21/09 I haven't typically editorialized on this site, but something has been stirring in me that needs to come out. For more, read Commentary: What Is Being Lost?
06/01/09 We did it! The site welcomed our 50,000th visitor at around 6:00pm today. I'm sure the milestone feels much bigger than it actually is. Huzzah!!! Hehehehe!
05/26/09 In my "Cool Quotes" section the following gem appears:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert Heinlein
I've lived a good part of my life respecting "specialists" and probably being too much of one myself. Of late, I've begun to attempt to rectify that blunder. Watch for more...
04/22/09 Yesterday we had the release party for the product I've been discussing here and copies were handed out. Perhaps we are there!
"Tight Quarters"
04/10/09 Here's a shot from the session on 2/05/09 showing the dual mic'ing on the snare to give me a choice in the mix. That's an SM-57 on the left and an AKG C460 on the right. I really wanted to use the AKG C451E for sparkle but one of ours was down and I used the other one for the hat. The mic positioning was an attempt to get some rejection on the high-hat. I ended up having to just harmonize the phase between the hat mic and the snare mic because the bleed was pretty strong. I used the SM57 in the mix.
04/09/09 Har-har-har on me! We are up to the ninth numbered mix on that product I thought I had finished. A couple of little revisions upped the ante' and they both came through in one day. I'll be careful not to speculate so freely about the project being finished.
04/06/09 Eight years ago I never thought this site would be more than a guitar site but it has grown over time and I've added both recording topics and the whole MINI Cooper experience. I'm considering adding some more of my experiences into the mix as well. Life is better when you are balanced. I have many different interests and seem to take turns being obsessed with each. Perhaps I could best be described as "serially imbalanced," but I love to learn and do so best with intensive imersion. Besides, it keeps me off the street!
04/02/09 We finished off the overdubs and, I think, have completed the mix (seventh numbered version) for the latest project. The financiers for the project are having a listen and then perhaps we'll have a release party in the making!
03/26/09 Back in the studio with overdubs for the latest project. We're on the sixth rough mixes for the project at this point.
03/25/09 Well, the pics haven't come along, have they? Sorry about that. I've been busy in the studio and at home. The transition went quite well and I'm becoming comfortable with the Mac environment, what with the Command/Apple key being the predominant key for combinations. We are currently trying out the JBL LSR4328P powered monitors as replacements for our Bag-End suround systems.
I'm really quite impressed with them for relatively inexpensive speakers! If you get a chance, give them a listen.
02/28/09 Last day of the month! Yesterday at the studio we completed the physical transition from Nuendo on a Boxx PC to Nuendo on a dual quad-core Mac. Now the mindset changes begin. I hope to have pix soon.
02/21/09 Overdubs and preliminary mixing and formatting began on the latest song this week. Export files travel to Australia for further vocal overdubs next week. The resultant tracks will return for mixing soon. In a side note, I mic'd the high-hat with a 70's vintage AKG C451E mic, out near the edge. It gave me a really nice, bright report. I double mic'd the snare with an SM-57 and an AKG C460, but I preferred the sound of the SM-57. I really wanted to use our other AKG C451E but it has drop damage and needs to be repaired.
02/19/09 By request, I've reinstated the "Guitar Links" page. You can find it under the "Guitar Topics" section of the site.
02/07/09 Basic tracks for the new song were completed on Thursday, 2/05. We head into overdubs next week. On Friday, 2/06, the room moved right into another music project.
02/03/09 Production began today on the next song in the group with recording of the intro and some scratch vocals. Thursday we begin recording the rhythm section. The pre-production meetings were last week.
01/06/09 Happy New Year, everyone! I've been on vacation, and thus a little lethargic, so pardon the cobwebs. As my bio on this site mentioned, WWII U.S. Pacific Submarine operations are a topic of interest to me. As a result, I've been involved in submarine simulators since the mid-80s. For Christmas, my son Trev gave me the latest, greatest sub simulator for the computer, Silent Service 4: Wolves of the Pacific. I've been taking baby steps in getting into this simulation and you can see some screen shots from my training, HERE.
12/24/08 Merry Christmas, everyone!
12/11/08 We wrapped up mixing on the interesting internationally produced music project mentioned on 11/20. The above cellphone snappy is of the Nuendo timeline with the active tracks showing. I'm pretty happy with the results and the client is very pleased, so let's call the project a success, shall we? Meanwhile, looking back over the past few weeks of news posts, I'm sure this site is beginning to look like the "Isle of Misfit Studio Devices" to some...
To cut down on loading time for the update, I've moved previous updates to a second file, HERE
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