Sonnox Announces 64-Bit Support For Oxford Plug-Ins

The noted plugins developer Sonnox has announced the release of 64-bit versions of native Oxford Plug-ins.

The update now allows Sonnox to provide full native 64-bit support for DAWs such as Logic and Cubase. In addition to 64-bit compatibility, the new versions also have updated graphic interfaces.

Updates can be obtained from the Sonnox website starting at $23.00 per plug-in. The company will also be adding AAX native plug-ins for Pro Tools 10, free of charge to license holders of the new native versions.

 

Sneaky Studios Opens Upstate — Duncan Sheik’s Residential Recording HQ Available to Artists

GARRISON, NEW YORK: Sometimes the siren call of New York City crossfades into the call of the wild, and upstate tracking and mixing begins to beckon. At those naturally inspired moments, audio havens like upstate’s Sneaky Studios become a logical location to look to.

SonicScoop first made mention of Sneaky Studios in our June article on the facility’s founder, Duncan Sheik (“Barely Breathing”, Spring Awakening). While the studio was fully functional then, there was still an incognito feel when it came to the Garrison, NY hideaway’s commercial availability.

But lately, with multiple projects completed and all systems totally go, Sheik and his talented Chief Engineer, Michael Tudor, have been making it clearer: Artists interested in booking time at Sneaky should get in touch. For those who make the one-hour drive up the Pallisades Parkway, it’s a safe bet they’ll find that this residential music destination was worth the trip.

Blessed with space, light, views, and the ambiance of the Appalachian Trail passing through the backyard, Sneaky provides its clients with a musician-centric workflow, designed as it was around Duncan’s multi-instrumentalist skills and impulsive creativity.

“The fact that it’s owned by an artist is the first thing that distinguishes this place,” says Tudor, Sheik’s longtime engineer. “There’s so many toys there: probably 30 guitars, tons of pedals, percussion instruments, keyboards. There’s a huge pallet of stuff to work from there, as opposed to a studio in the traditional sense — where you go in and the room is kind of zeroed out, and anything you want to use has to be unpacked and put together by an assistant.

“At Sneaky Studios, all the guitars are hung out on the wall, and everything is within reach,” Tudor continues. “Also, Duncan’s always looking for what’s new and interesting, in terms of software and synths — he’s loves going into Rogue Music and swapping for gear he’s just heard about.”

For Tudor, who cut his teeth working at sound-for-picture houses like duotone early in his career, the ability to quickly capture a great live sound for guitars, drums and keyboards is paramount.

“Having spent small amounts of time to get good sounds, and letting the mics do the work – I’ve found that’s the way to go,” he explains. “It keeps the clients interested if you can immediately pull up something that sounds great. We designed the studio so that as many of the toys that you have your disposal can be hooked up in the shortest amount of time. We thought ahead about how we should design the patch bays, and what cables we would need to loop everything back out of the computer.”

During tracking and mixing, Sneaky employs an extensive Dangerous Music setup, using the Dangerous 2-Bus analog summing mixer, Monitor ST speaker switching system, and DAC ST D/A converter to cut out the console and work with the Logic/Pro Tools DAW at maximum efficiency.

“The new music industry paradigm is that the budgets are smaller, which means you need to be able to work quicker and make revisions fast if you’re working partially in the box like we are,” says Tudor, who runs a parallel setup in his own Woodstock studio, Mama’s Place. “The Dangerous gear really helps me trust that every time. Whenever I have to come back to a revision, or A/B against other commercial records, I feel like the Dangerous gear is there to do that job for me, and in a very transparent way.”

Via the Dangerous setup, Sheik and Tudor have established a highly dependable system for checking their mixes via Sneaky’s Focal and NS-10 monitors – a workflow that aided them in the completion of recent projects like Sheik’s outstanding Covers ‘80s album. An Apogee Symphony A/D D/A system is also in the signal flow, along with Neumann and Royer microphones, and Telefunken and Urei 1176 mic pre’s/outboard. It’s all the better to capture the 1917 Steinway Upright, 1911 Steinway (Happy 100!) O Grand Piano, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Hammond organs, mandolins, banjos, ukuleles, acoustic/electric guitars, marimba and more that are onsite.

With all of that going on inside, Sneaky’s setting can’t help but to elevate the music that’s made within. “The pastoral environment takes you out of your everyday head, and it’s sort of otherworldly to be surrounded by all that beauty,” Tudor relates. “Artists can be here and be completely focused: The day can be about recording, meals and going on hikes. It gives you protection and isolation from the everyday world, and creates a safe environment where you can get away and create.”

While singer/songwriters will be obviously attracted to Sneaky with its pedigree and amenities, Tudor points out that its natural appeal is wider than that. “As I said, Duncan is also a great collector of synthesizers, and very much plugged into the tools that are more electronica-oriented. So Sneaky could easily serve the new crop of young bands that are combining synths and acoustic instruments. It really has a pretty broad pallet, because Duncan’s interests and his obsession with new technology drive the design of the studio.”

The studio is adjacent to a large house with four sleeping areas, making longer-term creative stays a logistically smooth proposition. But if all this loveliness sounds like something meant just for the upper crust artist, think again.

“The way we think about it is developing relationships,” Tudor says of Sneaky Studios’ flexible rate structure. “We’re sensitive to the realities of the music business as it is. We want to make good records, and obviously we want to pay the bills, but we’re most interested in creating opportunities for people. Duncan and I are both writers/producers/engineers. We’re doing all of those things, all the time, and this is a natural extension of that.”

Track next to Washington Square Park – or cross the George Washington Bridge? As Michael Tudor observes, area facilities located off the city grid have an important function in the region’s constantly evolving audio production ecosystem.

“I think that the upstate studio fulfills a need that the NYC facilities can’t,” he says. “I spoke before about the idea of being a sort of a safe haven and a real inspiring environment creatively. An artist can come up to one of these upstate studios and feel like they’re really spreading out — go for walks, breathe the air. We go out shopping and cook in a kitchen, and there’s something therapeutic about it.

“I’m definitely a lover of NYC studios,” Tudor continues, “but you’re still in the rat race and hustle/bustle there. When you come upstate, you’re coming to an environment that will serve your every creative impulse, You enter a comfort zone that you can’t get in the city.”

– David Weiss

 

 

 

Behind the Record: Mocean Worker’s “Candygram for Mowo!”

UPPER EAST SIDE/PHILADELPHIA/LOS ANGELES: Are you in the continuum? Moving musically through time? Next time you find yourself on a trip where vintage sounds and styles meld seamlessly with forward-thinking beats and production, you might just be with the MOWO.

Also known as Mocean Worker, also known as Adam Dorn, this is an artist too hyper to be defined, too diversified to sit still. MOWO first made a splash in 1998 as a Philly-to-Paris-to-NYC transplant with his imaginative drum & bass debut, Home Movies from the Brain Forest, which transfixed our ears with energetically beautiful revelations like “What’s Wrong”.

The evolution from there to Dorn’s latest release, Candygram for Mowo! (his sixth studio album), has been dramatic. Today, his sound identifies heavily with soul, circa 1930’s big band, jazz, ‘50’s hard bop, and yet even more styles, crystallizing in a charismatic collection that remains motivating after repeated listenings.

One source of MOWO’s rich internal collage is his bloodline, borne of the highly respected producer/A&R man Joel Dorn (Roberta Flack, Bette Midler, Leon Redbone, Don Mclean, The Neville Brothers). But another may be the multimedia explorer energy that drives him – his tracks are heavily licensed, and he successfully maintains a parallel path as TV/film composer. Connecting it all is a massive aptitude for audio software and a desire to merge it with the most organic of sounds in the studio.

Recently relocated to LA, Dorn let us in on the deep journey that was Candygram: From the devastating loss of his father, to a cross-country trek, and embracing the limitations of a Philadelphia studio’s ancient Pro Tools setup, this album’s story has it all.

You had some serious inspiration for Candygram for MoWo!, connected as it is to your father Joel Dorn. What is your personal journey and artistic statement with this record?

This album was started on a very sour note. Sadly — and very, very shortly after starting the writing for it — my father passed away. Many of you may know him as five-time GRAMMY-winning record producer Joel Dorn. I knew him simply as “dad.” I really checked out for a minute as his passing was incredibly disturbing and sudden. I knew I had to make another record and it had to be special.

The title for the album is a nod to Mel Brooks — I know that sounds insane. I just mentioned my father passing away, and yet the album is a cheeky wise-ass nod to Mel Brook’s movie Blazing Saddles — what gives? Well, my father and I shared a strong love and passion for all things comedy. While he was an editor of sorts throughout my entire writing career up to the point of his passing, he also was just my best friend. We would work on music together from time to time, but really he was just such a strong supporter of what I did and a cheerleader.

He never said “do this” or “do that,” he just gave me an incredible set of ears to play music for. This album represents the first time I didn’t get to use his filter as it were. It took me about 18 months to get back on track and get out of the pretty deep depression I had fallen into.

That’s a heavy backstory. How did all this emotion start to come out in the sound of the album?

I don’t normally write dark music — at least not since my debut albums which were actually darker, jazz-influenced Drum & Bass. I knew that this album was going to have to be a continuation of the last two MOWO! albums (2004′s Enter the Mowo! and 2007′s Cinco de Mowo!) and that means a few things.

1) fun, funky music with a nod to past eras 2) uplifting non-pretentious tunes that folks can listen to in many contexts — this is not electronic music strictly for a club setting, in fact, it really strives at being home listening and headphone-oriented music — 3) obey rules 1 and 2 HA!

Simply put I could not make a dark sad album. I just didn’t want to. I wanted to do something that celebrated my old man, was fun, and was an extension of my previous work. So, I took a little while, reflected and got myself to a good place. It’s really an album based on love for looking at the bright side of things. It’s a positive album top to bottom.

You moved out of Manhattan halfway into the production process. Was it difficult shifting gears, location-wise, in the middle of making a record?

I really didn’t have a hard time shifting gears at all. I had started to get on a roll and I just kept it going. I have to say the hardest part of keeping on a roll was that I had set up a new writing environment and I just could not get a handle on what the room sounded like.

The problem with most writing rooms, or at least all the rooms I’ve ever had, is that they pretty much sound terrible. I battle this by writing at low volumes and just trying to keep things simple. I try not to clutter the stereo field at all. This is really hard as I’m often mixing old samples with new beats and live instruments and, well, it’s nearly impossible not to run into some conflicts doing that.

Once I had a vague sense of what my room sounded like I just forged ahead. By the time I started mixing I knew what I was dealing with, and it was what it was. In a dream scenario I will eventually write and always record in a room where I know what I’m getting. I haven’t gotten there yet. Maybe someday I will?

You said you made some interesting observations about long-distance collaboration in the process. What were some of the advantages and disadvantages of that workflow that you discovered as the project went on?

Yeah, it was interesting going through an entire record where only one or two times did I find myself in the room with a musician playing on my stuff. It was surreal, as I’m really accustomed to being in the same room with someone overdubbing on my material, but I just didn’t have that luxury this time out.

The two musicians I happened to get to record with were Charlie Hunter (“Sho Nuff Now”) and Steven Bernstein ( “Shooby Shooby Do Yah! and “It Still Don’t Mean a Thing.”) I gotta be honest: I didn’t have much to say to them when I was in the room with them anyway. I knew why I had hired them, and I got EXACTLY what I wanted to get out of them and I got it. Those two sessions just ended up being incredible hangs where there was no need for notes. I have learned — and this album cemented this concept for me — that you know who you are hiring and what to expect, and 99% of the time you get what you need without much communication. It’s that situation where if you don’t know what you want, and you hire somebody you may run into a problem.

Nobody on this album was hired because I was just poking in the dark with a stick. Everyone on the album was a friend or someone I had worked with numerous times before, or lastly someone I had always wanted on a tune and knew their thing. An example of this is John Ellis’s solo on “Say Yeah Yeah”: I love his playing, have been wanting him for years to play on something but I just didn’t have the right song. This came up and he just nailed it. Bill Frisell is also an old friend and someone I’ve worked with on film scores, his records and my own recordings (ENTER THE MOWO!) so that was also a no-brainer. Seriously, once I had the tracks laid out it was so easy to just pick and choose who I wanted where. The table was set nicely. I can’t say enough about how everyone gave their time and creative energy to this record — just a really huge record for me.

I do have one posthumous collaboration, and that’s with (jazz multi-instrumentalist) Rahsaan Roland Kirk. This is a collab that’s happened on my last three records, and I have some Rah sitting around that my dad had recorded and I love working him into my tunes. He was my father’s favorite artist, and I really love having him in this context — I know my father loved hearing Rah this way, so I had to bring him back on a tune as a nod to my old man.

When I last interviewed you, you were really getting inspired by Reason. Is this still your main creative tool? How has your use of the program evolved along with updates?

OK, this is a very complicated question for me to answer. Sort of.

I have always and will always use Propellerheads software products to write. It’s ingrained in my soul. A little while into writing the album the props released Record and I fell in love instantly with its mindlessly simple interface. I love the software, but I can’t say that I really changed a ton in terms of how I use the products.

The MAIN way I changed everything is the use of the mixing console built into Record. It’s an incredible writing tool. I love the fact that I instantly had the ability to really EQ and write at the same time. The mixing desk, modeled after an SSL mixing console, really made me feel musical. Other sequencers offer you the ability to build a desk suited to your needs by adding plugins and building the signal path. Meanwhile, Record has a desk, its sounds amazing and it has that incredible master bus compressor just sitting there begging you to engage it. It’s just such a simple yet musical piece of software.

As of this moment Reason 6.0 is coming out and now Record is bundled into Reason. So I will see with the new devices how things change. I’m already LOVING the Alligator device like you cannot believe. I am a HUGE fan of the Rex file. It enables me to play samples and make music from records mine. I always find inspiration from it.

What are some cool Reason tips and tricks you can share – what’s a song or songs on “Candygram” where we can hear this in action?

I would say check out the tune “Out there In The Random” from the new album. There are some insanely tweaked-out samples in there – really, really odd things all put together and they make this weird electro lullaby odd little track. Its all Reason top-to-bottom, was mixed in Record, actually, and then touched in Pro Tools a bit.

It’s a vibe not often associated with my sound. I’m proud of it because it sounds simple, but its construction is not simple at all: It’s a bevy of sounds delayed to death and tuned to be in sympathetic keys. It’s a very sing-songy sounding thing with an ‘80′s bent but its based all on totally unrelated samples and the synths built into Reason. It’s a rare example of my actually using the synths in Reason which I do not do very often.

As it was coming together I kind of hated it and loved it at the same time. It’s a strange puzzle but it’s MY strange puzzle. Lots and lots of filtering, reverb and delay went into it. No real trick, just a lot of experimenting.

Why did you find yourself tracking/mixing on a really old version of Pro Tools in Philly? How did the limitations of that platform eventually benefit the final result?

Well, I was introduced to this amazing and insane character named Paul Atkinson, a Brit living in Philadelphia near my house at the time. A close friend named Clay Sears, who plays guitar with Janet Jackson, suggested I check him out. I went into his studio — a complex in the basement of an industrial building in a working class neighborhood. I was not sold at first, and he pushed me for the gig saying, “Just give me a tune and we can take it from there.”

I have a weakness for Brits. I think they are much better at sound than we are. My favorite records are mostly made in Britain, and I find far more influential movements in electronic music coming from there. So, he had at a tune and he kind of nailed it. Over the course of the next five weeks we tweaked and messed with every song multiple times and got things just sitting in such a nice tight funky way.

This was not material he was accustomed to dealing with and I wasn’t used to working in Pro Tools 5.1…..oh did I mention that? We were mixing in the box on an old Mac running OS 9. What was I thinking? It really freaked me out at first, since I hadn’t messed with OS 9 since the year 2002, I think. It felt so ancient but he just got great sound and I slowly over the course of a couple of weeks just trusted him to nail it down. He did! I think he did an amazing job.

That little piece of software time travel is fitting for Candygram, we think! Now, along with the album, you’re scoring for “Weight of the Nation” on HBO. Why is scoring a natural extension of what you do?

I mostly write instrumental music. I’ve always been told my music lends itself to picture. Over the years I have really been blessed to have many of my tunes licensed for films, TV show and commercials — NEVER with the intention of them showing up there. I guess I just write a certain style and it works.

I really have never had a design on it but Id be lying if I said at this point I didn’t expect some licensing here and there. The track record has been incredible with spots for Ford, Kia, Hyundai, Kraft, Marriott, Crayola, Honda, Miller Genuine Draft and Chicos to name a few. I just love that something about my music continues to resonate with music lovers, film makers, advertisers and hipsters and absolute non-hipsters. Just in general, I make my living having music end up in things, having it licensed. I don’t tour, I don’t show up on talk shows. My living and my artistry is funded by all of these things so I sincerely hope it continues.

The “Weight of the Nation Project” is a documentary series about the problems with eating disorders, and food in general in the United States. It’s a four-part series being produced in conjunction with the US Government, so it’s a huge honor to write music and lend music to that cause.

My goal in the next portion of my career is to do more scoring. I have been insanely lucky enough to score films along side Brian Eno, John Cale, Hal Willner and peripherally Danny Elfman — a Disney film called Meet the Robinsons where I scored a nice scene and Master Elfman, one of my heroes, did the rest of the amazing score. I just think that’s the direction things are headed in. Folks know me as MOWO! for sure, but I’ve also scored about five films and documentaries and have had my Mocean Worker music in about 25-30 feature films. I’d love to get the chance to continue doing this alongside my MOWO! career.

That’s a music-for-picture track record that just about any artist would want to achieve, no question. Back on the tech tip for a second: You’ve said you recently started incorporating Logic into your workflow. How has changing DAWs been helpful to you, and in what ways is it a difficult transition?

Man, Logic is a mixed bag. I love it for its stability while running many AU plug ins. I’m using Logic an enormous amount for the HBO ““Weight of the Nation” project. Inside of Logic I’m using Native Instruments’ Komplete Ultimate 8, and the full compliment of Spectrasonics plugs with an emphasis on Omnishpere and Trillian.

I’m also, as always, using Reason 6 for some tunes where a little something different is needed. I’m sure I could just easily run Reason inside of Logic but it’s just a pain in the ass. Id rather just get what I need out of Reason and print stems for importing. I’m lazy. If someone has a nice tutorial for me to watch , please….send it along!

Pro Tools is factoring in less and less. I just ran out of patience. The lack of stability with soft synths just wore thin on me. I have Pro Tools 9 and according to many producer and composer friends it’s far more stable now. I just kind of use it for mixing now when I need to and some other kinds of editing. I don’t feel quite comfortable enough yet in Logic yet to do MOWO! material, but I’m sure as time goes on I will find it to be second nature to do some stuff.

So there you have it. I use three DAWS. I know that sounds insane. It’s just each program offers a specific thing I love.

You’ve just moved to L.A. What are you seeing are the advantages/disadvantages of being based out of there as a musician/engineer/producer, as compared to NYC?

The weather. That’s the only advantage thus far. All of my work is still based in NYC and back on the East Coast. I’ve only been here about 10 weeks at this point, so I would check back in in a couple of years and I think that that will be a different story.

I’m finding things to be different out here so far. Everything is great, but I’m seeing some advantages to the brutal honesty of NYC. They both have upsides and downsides. I love both places but my heart is in NYC, not gonna lie about that. I did 25 years there and will come back as often as I can. That energy only exists in a few places on earth — London, Berlin, Tokyo as well — and I need to feed off it from time to time.

You’ve said that Candygram will “complete a thought” for you musically. Can you explain what you mean by that?

I’ve made three albums under the “MOWO!” moniker, or rather with the word MOWO! in the title. Its sort of a character MOCEAN WORKER turned into. These last three albums I can say without a doubt or reservation I have really feel like I’ve invented something that I can call my own.

Candygram for Mowo! is the last in this installment, I think. I think I said what I wanted to say with the old jazzy thing. I want to start exploring other things a little. Having said that I might find that, “HEY……this is what I do” and can continue to explore this sound. But I remember starting off making drum and bass music, and then taking a really insane hard turn into house/breaks which turned into what I’m doing now.

Enter the Mowo! was delivered to my former record label and handed back to me as a failure. It was discarded as a mistake and the end of my career. I knew that wasn’t the case, self-released it, and haven’t looked back now over the last three albums. It’s been insanely difficult and a make-it-up-as-I-go process. I was DIY when it was SO not cool to go your own way — now everyone is joining me because the business is falling apart.

However, I don’t think it’s falling apart. I think it’s settling in and back to a thing that sort of existed in the ‘50′s: I know that might sound weird, but its kind of a Wild Wild West again, and I think I’m gonna be OK. I think planning success is important, but some things have to also happen on their own and find their cracks and crevices.

So, I say it completes a thought on these types of titles because I might not have a ton more to say. Meanwhile, shit, I just took four years to make an album after losing my father and going through such tremendous change. Moving out of NYC, meeting a wife and becoming a step dad. I think the MOWO! train is still chugging along – it’s going to change, morph and become new and exciting things.

– David Weiss

Candygram for Mowo! is available digitally and physically now.

“Mixology” with George Walker Petit: The Truth About Record Producers

“Cannolis Rock!!”

This is what I heard from the control room…

You gotta be kidding me. Cannolis. Here I am in L.A. in a session that has literally taken me three years to put together (I am producing and engineering, writing for it and arranging) and what I hear is an Italian-American accent getting all hot and bothered about…cannolis? The urge to descend into Brooklyn-speak is just too overwhelming. I have to engage.

“Who in heah is talkin’ cannolis, heh?”, says I, as I strut into the live room, arms out in the quintessentially questioning, universally recognized, Joe Pesci expression.

No answer. It’s like I don’t exist. In front of me I see Marc and Vinnie all red-faced and animated, hands waving in the air, each in a near crouch, facing one another, exchanging opinions on who makes the best cannolis in L.A. They both agree on some place called La Bella Luna or something like that — a local bakery that has their votes. Hands on hips, lips slightly pursed and with a quick sideways tilt of the head, Vinnie says in a near whisper of concurrence:

“Oh yeahhh…Bella Looona. Madonnnnnn….!”

Cannolis have brought them together. Not music, not yet.

Pastry Psychology

This is the first day of the sessions, the first half an hour in fact. I see immediately that these two participants have bonded because of their heritage and love of Italian pastry. It’s made them comfy with each other. Vinnie gets back to tweaking his drum kit and Marc, head still nodding, moves slowly toward the control room muttering about La Bella’s cannolis. And me, opportunist that I am, and seeing an opening here, I quickly snag my intern, Ian, and tell him quietly to track down this uber-bakery and order a dozen large cannolis.

Half an hour later, I walk into the live room munching on a fresh cannoli, fully ignoring Vinnie and Marc. They stop dead, and in perfect rhythmic and harmonic unison I hear them say:

“Yo! You DIDN’T !!”

Success. Instant trust and friendship. Crucial relationships that could have taken me hours or days to form and win in the studio have been forged in 30 minutes over a box of $18 cannolis. Big deal? Yes, in fact, really big deal.

I am a record producer. I don’t call it ‘CD’ producer or ‘music’ producer. I am a record producer in the old sense. When I was 13 years old, living in London and playing bass in West End Pubs with my band, Cajun, my good friend and band mate at the time, Matt Backer actually asked me what I wanted from music. I remember telling him, just outside The American School In London (ASL) where he was a student… “I want to play jazz guitar and be a record producer”. Careful what you wish.

Now I am 52 years old and both of those dreams have come true – with lots of years, lessons, laughs, gaffs, successes and now, cannolis.

So, what is a record producer? What is the job description? What are you called on to do? What do you actually produce?

Wow…now that I have put it out there as a question to myself, I guess I have to think about this and answer it. Not easy.

A Record Producer…For Real

But, much like the job and pursuit of record production itself, addressing this will teach me a great deal. I can tell you immediately that I will not be able to fully define this right here in the time and space allotted. What has taken me decades to learn and understand can not be more than outlined herein. But I can get the conversation started, and I invite you all to get in touch with me, ask me out for a beer and we can sit and discuss this further. YOU can “produce” THAT session!

First off, I don’t believe that a “producer” has a hard-and-fast job description. I have found over the years that an effective (notice I did not say “successful”) “RP” has to learn and practice so many skills that his or her resumé would be thought a pack of lies by most employers.

Let’s start with the laundry list — and we’ll pick a couple of line items to support — and in no particular order, we begin thus:

1. Psychiatrist
2. Task Master
3. Negotiator
4. Shameless manipulator of other people’s feelings and actions
5. Expert people person and communicator
6. Patience of a Saint
7. An understanding of human nature
8. LOTS of experience with musicians (egos) and the recording studio environment
9. A musician yourself (what, you didn’t think you needed that?)
10. Integrity
11. Honesty
12. Strong multi-tasking and planning skills
13. Strategist
14. Dreamer
15. Optimist
16. Realist
17. Ability to be flexible and instantly agile
18. Tact
19. Humor
20. A thirst for knowledge
21. Passion for music and art
22. Engineer (can you make a record by yourself? And I do NOT mean a person that simply knows how to get around Pro Tools or Logic — can you cut tape? Do you know the differences in mic patterns? Preamp design? How to tailor a reverb tail? Gain structure? A live room setup with natural cancellation? Could you run the session without the computer? Better bone up!)
23. The ability to accept one’s own mistakes and…laugh at them, publicly.

There. That’s the short list. Now re-read that list slowly and try to fit an example to each line item. Something that has happened to you or, something that you can imagine happening. Let me help!

A Daze in the Life

So you get into the session on Day Three, after two days of battle with the artist(s) and something tells you that this is just not going to work. The guitarist, you find out, has not slept well lately because the bassist has been seeing his ex. No kidding. It happens. Trust me.

But the music is not getting done. And your job is to get the music done. Clock’s ticking! Furthermore, you need to rent a set of Hammond Organ pedals for tomorrow’s session (the studio pedals just died). The studio manager is on you about a double booking she’s made in three days time, and the sax player in the horn section is not very good — and he paid for the session. Add to that your assistant engineer has screwed up a session by “misplacing” an audio file…and you have a good set of snafus to handle.

And none of this — NONE OF THIS — can invade the studio or your musicians. YOU have to deal. Ever see a duck calmly swimming on the surface of a calm lake? Now look under the surface at his little, maniacal legs…

Not realistic? Rubbish. For as many session days that go well, there are session days that require Herculean effort to simply get to the end of the day. You’d better be prepared to handle all that while discussing tempo, key, feel and whether that last tune actually needed that bridge or not. And then, you have to get an emotional performance from the lead singer (because her best friend heard the last one and didn’t think it was “fun” enough).

Handle the Truth

A producer is not really the guy that sits in the back of the control room and makes calls to stars to get the party going, although tomorrow that might be a part of your job. A good producer, and effective producer is the guy that makes it all happen, solves the problems, talks the musicians down and, hopefully does all of this and more without imposing his/her personal stamp on the music so much so that you do the record what Phil did to “Let It Be.” Unless you are asked to be the next Sir George, be gentle…tact.

The band will be counting on you to expedite, enable and navigate them and their music through the process. You job involves creating a team. The team consists of the musicians, the engineer and you. The engineer is responsible for getting the right sound — the sound you and the band are after — recorded, and perhaps with some creative input, given that trust. YOU are responsible for getting the vision of the artist recorded. Hopefully at an extremely high level of quality.

I just worked a session that, as I said earlier, literally took three years to pull together. It involved some of the most famous and talented people in the music business today. It involved audio tracking a full DVD shoot, flights all over the country a budget of $180k, two other engineers and so far, three studios…and three more to go. It has been at the same time the most challenging and the most rewarding work I have ever done in music. I assure you: I have had to address each and every one of the 23 numbered items above at some point or another during the process.

In the next few articles, I will bring you all into the sessions with stories, photos and some problem solving exercises for us all. So stay tuned. This should be interesting, fun AND entertaining. It should address the needs and curiosities of you audio geeks, you producers and engineers and you musicians.

Now you have to excuse me. I have to finish a rough mix today, order a new set of Dynaudio monitors, write a review on a piece of gear, update the project budget going forward and then, I pray…go to the gym and practice the guitar a bit. And I really want to have dinner with my wife tonight.

Cheers!
Gwp

PS For more information on the project of which I speak and write – visit www.dzdap.com.

George Walker Petit thinks a lot about mixing and many other musical things. An award-winning producer and mixer, he is based in New York City. Visit George at his Website, and keep up with him and the Drew Zingg Debut Album Project here.

Jake Antelis Produces/Tracks/Mixes Debut Album for The New Velvet

NJ-based Jake Antelis recently produced, mixed and recorded NJ pop act The New Velvet for their self-titled debut album.

The record was tracked at Antelis’ studio, Jantelis Productions, using Solid State Logic and Avalon preamps, AKG and Earthworks microphones to record into Pro Tools and  Logic.

The New Velvet is now available on iTunes and all other digital outlets.

Game Scoring: Pure Rhythm Drives “From Dust”

NORWALK, CT: Among the flavors of the Nutmeg State, deep tribal rhythms are not necessarily what this sleepy Northeast enclave is known for. But as you soar through the clouds and into the sanctum of Tom Salta’s studio, the pulse of advanced, yet ancient, beats beat louder.

Here Salta – one of the Northeast’s most in-demand video game/multimedia composers — is perfecting the stems for From Dust, the richly beguiling god game from Ubisoft. Created by one of the industry’s most revered developers in Eric Chahi, Salta’s skill at sculpting immersive sonic environments earned him spot on Chahi’s hand-picked team.

In From Dust, the player gets to be a god, but one with limitations: as you labor to help tribespeople rebuild their civilization and culture, you have less than total control over the tsunamis, volcanos, and fires that constantly threaten to consume them anew. In a fantasy that can take six hours or more to play out, the constant bombast of typical game-sized strings and horns wasn’t going to cut it.

Salta (profiled in SonicScoop in 2010) went in another direction entirely, building a non-stop, subtly stimulating soundtrack of ethnic rhythm and wind instrument performances by top percussionists Bashiri Johnson (Michael Jackson, Madonna, Rolling Stones) and Kimati Dinizulu (Harry Belafonte, Wynton Marsalis, Dizzie Gillespie). The result: an auditory experience that is one with the game play. “This is not your typical epic score,” the always-inspired Salta assures. “It’s the antithesis of that.”

Gamers must have been ready for a misdirection: the Xbox 360 version broke digital sales records after its worldwide launch this summer, with the highest first-day sales of any Xbox LIVE Arcade in Ubisoft’s history. The tallies for the PC downloads, available from the middle of last month, should also end up in the incredibly healthy zone, just part of the estimated $950 million market for that sector alone this year.

Tell us how you approached the game “From Dust” and its specific music needs.
The direction I was given was that it had to be non-Hollywood. All the music in the game while you’re playing is percussive – there’s an ongoing pulse throughout the gameplay that never stops. The BPM is 120, and that’s not an accident. It symbolizes time: It’s twice 60, which is our universal representation of time.

The tribes in the game are constantly playing percussive instruments, no matter what they’re doing. They use music to control nature. The term for the kind of sound that’s applied here is “diegetic,” which means the sound’s source is visible on the screen, originating from the actual location/experience in the game, instead of playing over it. And as the camera pulls back, the sound becomes more distant.

Then, when you get through one level and progress to the next, the non-diegetic theme music starts playing, which is is the antithesis of tribal percussion – it’s a very small string ensemble that we recorded at Avatar Studios, and it juxtaposes against the tribal rhythm. This part of the score features a sophisticated, ethereal kind of music to represent almost like God is looking down onto these people. That music was meant to be very indifferent and symbolize the passage of time. It’s even-keeled and doesn’t have a happy feel or a sad feel to it; somewhat Philip Glass-inspired.

When it came to the percussion, how did you start to work with all that material?
I recorded hundreds of layers of live percussive pieces into Logic. Using Flex Time I was able to mix and match, and move things around.

There’s an alternate tempo point in the game when the pulse of the game speeds up -  at times of severe crisis, everything rises to a higher tempo of up to 145 BPM. Using Flex Time I was able to keep things tightly locked.

The rhythm, again, is very non-Hollywood. I had to hold myself back from using typical sample libraries that are generally very epic, clean, polished, reverberant and bright.  That’s why I wanted to record all live percussion.

What was the creative direction you received from Ubisoft as you moved forward with these elements?
From Dust was the brainchild of celebrated visionary and Creative Director, Eric Chahi. In 1991 he created the highly acclaimed game, Another World which was really ahead of its time. It was innovative in its use of cinematic effects in the graphics, sound and cut scenes, with characters communicating through their facial features, gestures, and actions only. He established himself as a pioneer, taking risks and working outside of the box. Naturally, I was excited to work with him.

Eric himself and the whole audio team flew over here to NYC from Ubisoft’s headquarters in France. We all experimented at my home studio, we spent a day at Bashiri’s studio in Brooklyn, and we also spent a day recording at Avatar.

Can you explain what you communicated to these world-class percussionists?
I asked Bashiri and Kimati to bring all their toys to these sessions, and told them to think of it this way: “You’re on a deserted island with no technology, no metal, nothing. We need to create a texture with all-natural elements.” The drums had to be skins, wood, seashells. We had to experiment to create new textures and deliver an original music palette.

For example, there are a variety of different powers you receive: One of them, the tsunami power, gives you the power to repel water when a tsunami threatens to overtake a village. We had to come up with a way to make a percussive, rhythm-based texture to reflect the power of repelling water.

So we had Kimati playing on a seashell, and his performance was reminiscent of an African ritual to a sea god. He started blowing in the shell Too too too! I said, “That’s it!” We had volcano powers, voices, hnnnnnh growling. Everything was made with voices and primitive instruments.

It was fantastic; we created something I’ve never heard before and it gives the game a completely unique sonic treatment. You hear a few seconds and you know you’re playing From Dust. That’s always my goal on every game I work on.

Can you tell us some more details about working with these engrossing percussive tracks?
The team spent two full days together, and at a later date I went back to Bashiri’s on my own to fill in the missing pieces.  Then I completed everything back in my home studio.

The game was evolving, things were changing and in fact we had to make some micro-adjustments to the tempo, due to frame-rate adjustments within the game. We had to move the tempo from 120 to 120.4 BPM. Thank goodness the Flex Time was there  – with very little fuss I was able to make adjustments.

The score was produced very quickly. I had to have a good plan going in there. I grouped my tracks together based on what kind of textures or areas we were going for. There were all these different, independent soundscapes that would be playing when the whole village was in quiet, ho-hum daily life, with things like Bashiri doing fake language.

While you’re walking around, and depending on where the camera is  – up high, ground level, all these different layers get mixed in real-time. Then the music could come along, and all these different rhythms could overlap each other. If a new village comes and grows out of the ground, there’s a sequence that happens for that.

You can imagine how complex this became, and how much thought had to be given to how things could fit together, so it becomes aurally cohesive and enhances the game experience.

Can you elaborate more on how you accomplish that?
It takes some experimentation and auditioning. I might have a beat that I say is our basic beat, and this can happen over it and this can happen over it. I’ll move those elements together, make a copy and simulate them playing together. Then I’ll ask myself, “Does that work? What’s cluttering it up?”

It’s trial and error. I’m not a magician who automatically knows what’s going to work, especially when you’re doing something as unique as From Dust. I have a feeling for what might be the best approach, and then find out for sure what works and what doesn’t.

When you score a game, you’re writing for multiple possibilities. You can’t have the immediate satisfaction of saying, “OK, I’m looking at the picture. Here’s the music to that. I’m done.” You have to ask, “Will that sound good? Will that sound good?” And I try it out. As you become more experienced, the less experimentation you have to do.

Once the tracks were completed and organized, how did you deliver them to Ubisoft so the game’s mixer could work with it?
I would send them either a stereo mix, or stereo stems. I don’t deal with too much Quad or surround delivery these days. In the case of “From Dust”, I was delivering them individual stereo mixes of different components, “Here’s your Quiet Village, Layer 1,” etc.

It all then goes into the audio engine. They play it out, tell me what’s working and what’s not. It requires a lot of good communication and collaboration between myself and the audio team.

What’s an example of a change they’d request, and a modification you’d then have to make?
Generally I know what they need as far as mixing. But a lot of times, they’d come up with some very ambitious ideas that may need to be simplified in order to achieve their vision. Or they might actually have to remove an entire component, because that feature isn’t going to make it in the game. Sometimes certain instruments might be too loud, or bass-heavy, but that’s not typical.

Here’s an example. “We’d like this to be a bit longer because it’s going to be playing for a while and we don’t want it to get too repetitive. So can you please extend it to :60 in a way so that it sounds random and doesn’t get too monotonous?”

So I have to go back there and take something that started out as eight bars, and extend it to 64 bars in a way so that if you hear it continuously for several minutes it won’t take you out of the experience. In From Dust, we’re always dealing with rhythm. I’ve never played a game before with this constant pulse.

So how does this all translate to the true end result – the user experience?
I’ve played the full game now and I have to say all the music really worked well in context. Everything feels effortless and natural. You just become immersed in the world. The rhythms become integrated into the environment – it feels like all the music we recorded was meant to be here.

That’s especially important in a game like this since that’s the intent of the music. It was meant to sound like it’s coming from the world, not a fourth dimension of emotion that’s added on top.

Of course, the musical opening sets the theme and mood as the camera slowly approaches and enters an ominous black hole-like portal. But with the exception of that, playing the game along with all the rhythms felt natural and immersive. I was very happy with how the music really helped bring the atmosphere of the game to life.

I give a ton of credit to Eric Chahi’s direction. Normally we would never have thought of approaching a score in this way. He had a vision of this game in his head. I know he was really happy with the end result and it was an honor to be a part of something so artistic and uniquely special like From Dust.

– David Weiss

FROM DUST is available for digital download on PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox 360 and PC download via Steam.

Behind the Release: Duncan Sheik Confesses with “Covers 80s”

GARRISON, NY: When you think about it, a cover song is a love triangle of sorts unfolding before the listener.

There’s the original artist who first brought the tune into to the world; then there’s the influenced musician driven to pay tribute to their achievement; and finally there’s the song itself – the object of both of their deepest creative desires.

In this way, Duncan Sheik’s new collection being released Tuesday, June 7, Covers 80s, is one ménage a trios after another. The first studio album in five years for the landmark NYC-based singer/songwriter/composer/lyricist, Covers 80s delivers exactly what the title says, providing a dozen interpretations of the 1980’s songs that made a major impact on Sheik.

It’s interesting to see what hits influenced him: “Stripped” (Dépêche Mode), “Hold Me Now” (Thompson Twins), “Love Vigilante” (New Order), “Kyoto” (The Cure), “What Is Love” (Howard Jones), “So Alive” (Love & Rockets), Shout (Tears for Fears), “Gentleman Take Pictures” (Japan), “Life’s What You Make It” (Talk Talk), “William It Was Really Nothing” (The Smiths), “Stay” (The Blue Nile), and “The Ghost in You” (Psychedelic Furs). Each of Sheik’s covers are revisits worth visiting – a careful embrace of the original song’s sound and meaning as he experiences them.

Obviously, Sheik has first-hand knowledge of what it means to have a hit. His 1996 single,“Barely Breathing,” broke Billboard records for chart longevity and has arguably joined the Great American Songbook. Since then his folk/pop/theater explorations have seen him release five previous studio albums, score feature films and documentaries, compose the GRAMMY-winning original score for the successful Broadway musical Spring Awakening, and followed that up with composing the music and co-writing the lyrics for the 2010-debuting musical theater production Whisper House.

This was my second interview with Sheik, the first being an informative 2005 interview on film scoring in his downtown home studio. An artist with a musicologist’s mindset who lives to record, Sheik discussed a surprisingly deep journey through Covers 80s. Turn this talk into a threesome by reading on.

Why record/perform a cover song? And why listen to one for that matter? What are the opportunities of doing covers, and what are the potential hazards?

Well, there’s this funny thing where if you’re a performer and a singer/songwriter, a lot of times you’ll be at a party and someone will hand you a guitar and say, “Play us a song we can sing along to.” After I played one Radiohead and one Oasis song, my repertoire was finished!

So I started to put together a list of old songs that everyone knows, kind of a fake book. But I found it to be tiresome, and there were other people better than me at that. So I said, “Instead of covering the Stones and the Beatles, why not do ‘80’s English bands?” It would be my personal take on the artists who made me who I am as a songwriter.

So I took a dozen or so bands and tried to identify one song that made sense for me to sing, and made an impact on me in some way. It was hard to put my finger on the genre, but there was an almost arty synth pop aesthetic to the bands that were informing me. That was the wheelhouse, with a couple of obvious exceptions, but at that time in my life — when I was 16 or 17 — they were part of a particular set of records that me and my friends were listening to.

How did the idea for actually making this cover album, with its particular angle, come about from there?
First of all, I’m generally more interested in making records than I am in performing. I’m happiest when I’m in the studio writing and/or recording music. I’ve started to enjoy performing more and more because I’ve done it more and more, but the heart of what I do is making records: If I’m going to go through the work of re-imagining these songs, then I was definitely going to record them.

There was the question if they would see the light of day, but I left that in the capable hands of other people. Once I’d done the recording, it was asking my manager and the people at RED if they thought it was something they thought was worth putting out into the world, and they were very, very excited about it.

With so many great ‘80’s hits to choose from, how did you select the lucky 12 to cover? Is there a common thread between them?
I think one of the main briefs that I gave myself was this idea that these songs — despite how they were produced when they were initially recorded — are great songs no matter how you dress them up.

For example, a song like The Thompson Twins’ “Hold Me Now,” you hear it when it comes on the radio, and certainly it evokes its time in an intense way, in the sounds they used and how it’s done. But if you strip all that away, there’s a simple, heartfelt piece of music that still works if you do it with a completely different kind of palette and sound.

That was the main criteria: Strip away all the production, bells and whistles of that 80’s sound, and you recreate this new arrangement with acoustic instruments. Does that change the power that it initially had?

The ones I chose were songs where I could pick up an acoustic guitar and figure out an approximation of these chord progressions, and sing songs, and still recognize the songs in some way. Which can’t be said for many pieces of music at that time — they were more about a production aesthetic than songwriting.

So I felt these were really great songs themselves, and they were comfortable for me to sing in my voice. I wasn’t having to jump through all of these hoops to pull it off, although I did end up lowering the key to a number of songs so I wasn’t having to yell into the microphone. “Shout” comes down a minor third, “Ghost in You” also comes down a minor third, “Stay” comes down a fifth or so – it’s significantly lower, I’m maybe singing an octave below him. I love (The Blue Nile’s) Paul Buchanan’s voice, he’s an amazing singer, but in the case of that particular song, I wanted it to feel much more intimate, so I’m singing it kind of down.

What did you learn about the much-discussed, instantly recognizable 80’s “sound” as you immersed yourself in these songs? What makes it great, but also what was the opportunity for you in re-imagining and re-recording these songs?
What I think is the least interesting about that era of production was how they dealt with drum programming and drum sounds at that time. It was kind of like people new to this technology and not knowing what to do with it yet, so they did everything all at once. That’s what makes a lot of these sounds sound silly and dated – what some people think of as kitsch.

I decided early there would be no drums, either electronic or acoustic. I really wanted all of the instruments to be acoustic instruments as well. If one of the ‘80’s artists made a synth sound like a marimba, then I’d actually play it on a marimba. On Depeche Mode songs they had really funny FM synth sounds like a glock and a banjo, so really use a glock and a banjo!

So the fun was, “How can I put these arrangements back together? How can I take the electronic approximation and then use the real instruments they were inspired by?” I really enjoyed that part of the project.

The one exception to that is I’d been using the Fulltone tape echo, which is an issue of the Echoplex, and kind of creating these little landscapes of sound that are very particular to that box — very musical, but very mysterious and enigmatic. They behaved in surprising and mysterious ways when you played with that knob.

I’d create a landscape with acoustic guitar and tape echo, find out the key center of a song, then lay these textures out over the course of the song. For me personally, it was a sound that evokes a sense of nostalgia or memory, and that was really emotionally satisfying when I put these two things together. For the Cure song, “Kyoto”, you have this sense of remembering something dark and maybe disturbing that happened in the past, or in the case of “Stay,” it’s heartache for this person you saw. And “The Ghost in You,” the memory of this person that is so deeply ingrained — those are just three examples.

So, what was your own objective with this album? Is this supposed to sound like “Duncan Sheik sings ‘80’s Hits”? Or something else entirely — what did you want to differently with these songs, and just as important, what did you want to preserve?
(laughs) I think covering a song and procuring it in extremely similar ways to the original thing is kind of silly. All due respect to Gwen Stefani, when she did the song by Talk Talk [No Doubt’s cover version of “It’s My Life” from The Singles 1992-2003], it’s like the track could have been ripped form the original recording.

To me that’s not interesting. It was important to take these songs and dress them up in new clothing. But yet, I wanted people to really recognize the songs and know what they were listening to. There’s all this beautiful stuff on the Peter Gabriel covers album Scratch My Back. Maybe I’m not educated enough on that music, but I don’t recognize a lot of those songs!

I wanted a good balance between songs that were a part of culture — that people would know — and songs that you experience in a different way but very much with a memory of them.

Tell us about the tracking and mixing process for these songs. How did you decide to approach it?

It happened up in my studio in Garrison, NY, Sneaky Studios. When you saw my setup in TriBeCa, I was essentially living in my recording studio. I needed a separation of church and state. Upstate, you can have a lot more real estate. I wanted a place where bands could use it, record, stay at the house, and use the pool.

It’s not necessarily a commercial venture, but bands can come up and use it. There are fewer studios in NYC, and fewer places that are residential. It’s a bummer that Allaire closed – this is my own tiny alternative to it. Artists who are interested in it are welcome to visit my site and inquire about it with my manager.

The studio building itself is a 3000 sq. foot, former two-car garage. I had some help converting it into a studio from an architect and Michael Tudor, my longtime engineer. It was a long process, but fun. Construction took a while, and getting everything wired properly was definitely a learning process, but now that Humpty Dumpty is put together, it’s fun.

It’s very beautiful there. You’ve got these huge six-foot windows, and you’re looking up at all the rock formations that leave lead up to the Appalachian Trail, which is in the backyard. It’s a nice calm environment if you want to get out of the city and not get distracted.

What do you have there to record with?
I’m mostly a Logic guy in terms of recording. I have the Dangerous MONITOR ST-SR, the Apogee Symphony system, and I had a bunch of nice mic pres to make this record, some 1072’s, some Manleys, 1176’s, a bunch of Dave Royer mics — the new ones and some very early ones that were Mojave, which is my main vocal mic.

The combination of Logic plus Dangerous is a very streamlined thing, where the Dangerous is the “center section”. We also found a way to get analog synths in there so it comes up in Logic in the page, very fun.

To get going, I put all of the original recordings into Ableton Live. Then I found the key to sing it, then I would slow the song down a sixth, and figure out the arrangements that way. And then I pulled out the harmonium, the dulcimer the marimba, and a lot of ukulele on the record.  Also a nice 19-teens Steinway O, a really nice upright, and I’ve got a nice retooled Rhodes, and a retooled Hammond. That’s the nice thing about being up there. It’s set up, available, and you don’t have to pull it out of the closet all the time.

The sound of the piano especially seems to add its own character, on songs like “Stripped”, “Hold Me Now”, “Shout” and “So Alive”.
The main piano I used on the record is the Steinway upright, 19-teen, and what we did was we got one of those soft pedal attachments. Those pianos don’t necessarily have those — a big piece of felt between the beater and the strings — when you play it and hit it hard, the piano feels very different and antique. It has a prepared piano sound. That was a lot of fun to experiment with. Generally we miked it with a pair of AKG 414s.

To me the other striking characteristic is the ultra-clear, uncolored presence of your own vocals.

It’s that Mojave Audio mic that Dave Royer was building back in the 90’s, going through a Dan Alexander D72 pre, and then an 1176 that’s going straight to the computer. Michael is very clever with his approach to EQ and compression. It is fairly simple, but it’s always been a solid choice.

What unexpected challenges came up when you were putting these songs together?
What’s hard about these songs is that some of these chord progressions and the voicing are strangely more complicated than they sound — a lot of times very odd changes that they’re made up of. With “What is Love,” the Howard Jones song, if you wrote down the chord progression, you’d say, “This doesn’t even make sense!” Making sure I maintained the authenticity of that part of the song took a minute.

How to make a guitar voicing set work for an eccentric keyboard part: That was a little bit of a journey. You don’t really want to copy the song, while imbuing the character of their performance and finding out the right character of how the singer sang the song. That was a process too.

I’d record the song, and realize, “I’m trying to do an impersonation of this song,” and that’s bad. I was trying to find my own voice.

It’s interesting that these are covers of songs that are now part of the pop music “canon”, done by someone who contributed one himself with “Barely Breathing”. The last time I interviewed you, you said to me that you wished you’d never written “Barely Breathing”: Did this experience change your own perspective on what it means to make a hit?
If you ask me about “Barely Breathing”, I’ll give you seven different answers depending on my mood. I’m thrilled that a really wide audience appreciated that song.

But my ambivalence comes from the other artists that were on top 40 Radio at the time: “Barely Breathing” did fit in with them — but the rest of my first record didn’t really! I can say that “Barely Breathing” was a bit of an anomaly for me. I was always trying to do things that were in the tradition of bands I was listening to. These were bands in the import section of the comic shop, not the Top 10 of Sam Goody.

The songs on this album, and the songs on every record that I’ve made — I think it’s pretty obvious I wasn’t always trying to be on Top 40 radio, that my projects were something different. No one would be happier than me to be on the radio all the time, but I wasn’t going to make music for the sake of being on the radio.

So there’s a kinship I felt from these 80’s bands that are on the covers album I made. The Dears, the Doves, were so clearly immersed in listening to Talk Talk. They might admit they listened to Tears for Fears. So for me this is kind of an expression of that experience, and wanting to communicate to my audience that this is where I come from.

So what makes a song a hit? As a hit songwriter yourself, did this exercise deepen your insight on that?
The insight that I leaned is that there doesn’t need to be a rule or formula for how the chord progression moves. Whether you’re clear or enigmatic. All of these songs have their own unique thing. With the exception of the New Order song “Love Vigilantes,” which is I-IV-V, every other song has a unique chord progression.

They have their own quirky arrangements, so in a way it’s kind of freeing. You realize, “I can do things that are harmonically different, melodically risky, and really unique. That can appeal to an incredibly wide audience if it’s done in the right way.”

– David Weiss

Covers 80s comes out on June 7th. Duncan Sheik also kicks off his Spring tour on June 8 at the Highline Ballroom.

Synth Heaven in Greenpoint: Joe McGinty’s Carousel Recording

GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN: Keyboardist, producer, songwriter and Losers Lounge founder Joe McGinty (The Psychedelic Furs, Nada Surf) has amassed an amazing collection of vintage synthesizers over the last three decades. Lucky for him, right? Well, actually, this is lucky for you too. This collection of mint condition classics and inspiring rarities is now available for commercial sessions at his Carousel Recording in Greenpoint.

Located within the Pencil Factory at Greenpoint Ave and Franklin – same building as Rough Magic, Salt Mastering, Insound, The Social Registry, etc. – Carousel is where McGinty produces his own projects, keyboard parts for other artists’ records, and now where he can help bands articulate damn near any synth part they can dream up.

For McGinty, this is like the next level of session playing, as bands can book Carousel for a day of keyboards, and either hire him as their synth guru, player or recordist, or simply play the instruments and run the sessions themselves

McGinty’s personal keyboard collection goes back to the 1950s and includes a number of electro-mechanical, i.e. Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Clavinet, Baldwin Electric Harpsichord, Hammond Organ & Leslie 147 and Yamaha CP60 and CP30 Electric Pianos; combo organs, i.e. Fender Starmaster, Vox Super Continental and Farfisa Combo Compact; vintage analog synthesizers, i.e. Moog 15 Modular, Mini Moog, Memory Moog, ARP 2600, Omni and String Ensemble, Oberheim Xpander and Gibson Clavioline; sample playback, i.e. Mellotron M400, Mattel Optigan and Akai S612; vintage digital, i.e. RMI Keyboard Computer and Korg DS-8; and modern instruments such as Moog’s Little Phatty, the Nord Electro and the Dave Smith Poly Evolver.

See these keyboards go in this charming Carousel music video, “Tubular Bells,” featuring the “Brooklyn Organ Synth Orchestra”:

Since Carousel is a smallish studio, keyboards occupy much of the space — lining the walls, filling the shelves, and cutting a pathway through the room. An iso booth houses the Wurlitzer, a number of guitar amps and plenty of room to cut vocals, guitars and other amplified parts. McGinty’s partner in the space is guitarist/producer Jay Sherman-Godfrey.

Recording-wise, the studio is equipped with Pro Tools 9 and Logic and, as McGinty puts it, “a few good vocal mics and some nice channels of [Neve Portico, API and Focusrite] preamps.” On the studio’s website, he appeals, “Why settle for “virtual” when you can have the real thing? Just bring in your Pro Tools session (or files from Digital Performer, Logic, or any other hard disk recording program) and add some analog warmth to your recording.”

CAROUSEL INVENTORY: KEYBOARDS AND KEYBOARD WISDOM

SonicScoop recently took a spin around Carousel with McGinty pointing out and playing some of the more notable instruments, and providing musical reference points. Stopping at the ARP 2600, McGinty noted: “I recently got a bunch of keyboards from Mark Lindsey, former lead singer of Paul Revere & the Raiders. That’s where I got this ARP 2600, which is pretty rare. Genesis used it a lot, and Edgar Winter.”

Moving on, he points out the original Mini Moog. “This is another favorite. It’s a classic 70s synth – nothing sounds like it.”

An Atlantic City native, McGinty came up playing the hotel-casino circuit, and over the last three decades has recorded and/or performed with artists such as The Psychedelic Furs, The Ramones, Debbie Harry, Devendra Banhart, Nada Surf, Ronnie Spector, Daniel Johnston, Ryan Adams, Bright Eyes and Space Hog.

He’s been a staple of the NYC music community between his live shows with the Losers Lounge, musical projects including Circuit Parade and McGinty & White, frequent session playing, original music for television and web (Bored to Death, Funny or Die) and most recently, a weekly residence at Manhattan Inn with “Joe McGinty’s Keyboard Karaoke.”

His keyboard collection reflects a lifelong obsession with keys, and a unique point of view cultivated over all these years of performance, composition and collaboration. In particular, his early days in piano bars, the Loser’s Lounge tribute shows at Joe’s Pub (this month pays tribute to Neil Diamond!) and the live piano karaoke demonstrate his deep repertoire and encyclopedic head for classic pop keyboard parts and sounds.

Looking at the collection as a whole, McGinty describes, “This is about 25 years of collecting, and a lot of it I got cheap when people were getting rid of stuff, pre eBay. Luckily I hang onto things! And there’s definitely some stuff here I never thought I’d have, like this 1968 Baldwin harpsichord. I also never thought I’d actually own a Mellotron. I know of maybe one or two others in all of NYC. It’s such a classic sound.”

The most prized of the Mark Lindsay package, McGinty points out, is a rare modular Moog. “This is like Switched on Bach era – you really need to know what you’re doing to use it,” he says. “There are so many options in terms of patching and stuff. The guy who restored it gave me a tutorial. I always thought the modular synths were really cool, but now that I have one, I really get it. I christened it on a recent record I did with Ward White.”

As we move around Carousel, McGinty riffs on the keyboards and the classic records that feature them. Every era of popular music is represented here, from the classic Steinway upright to the Hammond organs to the space-age synths to the Casios and keytars to the Dave Smith Poly Evolver and Nord Electro, and on and on.

“Sometimes people come in with CDs and ask me about a particular keyboard sound, and I can tell them what it is,” he notes. “Like, the Clavinets are the classic Stevie Wonder funk machine. And the ARPs do the 70s string sounds – like you hear on “Dream Weaver” and a lot of classic 70s disco songs.”

“This is a Clavioline,” he pointes out. “It’s used on the Beatles’ ‘Baby You’re A Rich Man,’ and ‘Runaway’ by Del Shannon, and ‘Telstar’ by Joe Meek.”

Though the collection does overwhelm the space a bit, it’s setup in a way that a keyboardists can easily demo multiple sounds for a part. “You can get stuff done really quickly because everything’s really accessible,” McGinty notes.

“You go to some studios and they have to get their older keyboards out of a closet or something, and maybe it doesn’t totally work. All these keyboards are instruments I use on my own stuff so I know all the ins and outs, and can even repair them to a point. I also have a few techs I can call on.”

Moving on: “The Yamaha piano has pickups inside so you can electrify it – it’s a very 80s kinda sound, like Peter Gabriel’s ‘Red Rain’ or like Private Eyes by Hall & Oates. It’s very useful around here.”

He also has a unique digital keyboard made by Allen Organs, a primarily church organ manufacturer based in Allentown, PA. “This Allen Organ is pretty fun – it was one of the first digital keyboards they made and it licensed NASA technology, and uses old-fashioned computer punch cards. This is their first attempt at a synthesizer so it’s kind of weird, but it sounds really cool. And it’s sort of a secret weapon…people come in and they’ve never heard of it, but it sounds like nothing else, so it often works.”

Bands such as Robbers on High Street and The Secret History have booked Carousel for keyboard sessions. “I really like it when bands come in,” says McGinty. “It makes me happy that they’re into the old stuff! And it tends to be cool bands, like this Brooklyn band Esque who came in – they’re doing a kind of 80s, Roxy Music, Bowie-style thing – and an artist named Bryan Scary, who’s doing this over the top glam-pop, like Queen or Sparks.

“It’s been a lot of fun to help people realize the sounds in their head.”

Carousel/McGinty are also available for “long distance” sessions, where clients can send files to McGinty with some direction, and he’ll send the synth parts back to them.

“I’ll give people a few options, for example, Nada Surf was doing their record in Seattle, and they wanted me to play Hammond on a song, so I put up the mics, and sent them a few different versions of that. The long distance thing really opens things up, and Pro Tools makes it really easy. There’s a lot of potential there.”

For more on Carousel Studio and Joe McGinty, visit www.joemcginty.com and www.joemcginty.com/carousel. And if you haven’t already, stop into Manhattan Inn some Tuesday night for Keyboard Karaoke — it’s great fun!

Central Brooklyn Studio Tour – Part 1: Gowanus / Park Slope

CENTRAL BROOKLYN, NY: For this installment in SonicScoop’s tour of Brooklyn studios, we took a trip along the border of Park Slope and Gowanus to bring you into four singular spaces that have each carved out their own distinct niche.

TROUT RECORDING
www.troutrecording.com
Room Rate: $825/day with Bryce Goggin; $725/day with house engineer

To profile Trout Recording, we spoke with studio owner Bryce Goggin, who is himself one of the best reasons to track a record in his neighborhood.

In a career that has spanned more than two decades, he and his studio have built up an impressive client list that includes names like Pavement, Herbie Hancock, Swans, Apples in Stereo, Phish,  Sebadoh, Spacehog, King Missle, Elliott Sharp, Marc Ribot,  Antony and the Johnsons, Lemonheads, Akron/Family, The Molecules, and Lisa Loeb.

Built around a Neve 8028 console, Trout’s open-studio design overflows with vintage rack gear, natural plate reverbs, and a half-dozen tape machines that Goggin and the crew routinely use for everyday tracking sessions and genuine tape-slap.

Bookings here also include access to a Pro Tools HD system, ample mic locker, and an assortment of useful vintage amps and keyboards.

According to Goggin, the purpose of having all this gear is forgetting that it’s even there: “Working at a studio like Trout allows the artist to focus on the project at hand,” he says. “You can walk in here with picks and sticks and walk out with a finished record.”

When asked about specialties, Goggin tells us that Trout is a place uniquely suited for capturing live music. “The studio allows real collaboration between real people,” Goggin says. “That’s something you still can’t do at home.”

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THE DOGHOUSE NYC
www.doghousenyc.com
Special Promotional Rate for Spring 2011: $65/hour (includes engineer)

The next studio on our list also features an distinctive semi-open design, this one focused around owner/operator Nathan Rosenberg‘s “immaculately restored” 1926 Mason & Hamlin grand piano.

Rosenberg, an accomplished jazz pianist and producer himself, says he had trouble finding a drum kit to match the tone and balance of his prize piano, so he commissioned master tambourier Frank Ascenza to build him one from scratch.

The result is a kit Rosenberg describes as “versatile and dynamic.” It’s an “exceptional jazz instrument with enough punch and growl to excel in more aggressive musical styles,” he says.

Similarly, the three adjacent live rooms were each designed toward a distinct sonic goal, but made to blend together enough to feel like a single space. These rooms open into one another in succession, providing seamless sight-lines and a musical balance between sonic isolation and natural spill.

Rosenberg tells us his chief aim was to build a studio that would serve as a “musician’s oasis.”

To that end, he forgoes computer screens and glass windows in the studio, instead opting to open up the feel of the space by projecting his DAW’s display on to a wall that can be seen throughout all three conjoined live rooms. “No screens separate the composer, the musician, or the client,” says Rosenberg.

It’s an unconventional approach, he admits, but since Rosenberg is just as likely to be playing piano or producing for his clients, he maintains that the setup’s functionality is paramount as well: “Musicians should look and listen to each other,” he says. “Not screens and consoles.”

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LET ‘EM IN MUSIC
www.letemin.com
Room Rate: $375 per day with house engineer; $250 for room only

Let ‘Em In offers a surprisingly large live room for the money, that offers “a big warm sound and comfortable, homey vibe,” that have earned owner/engineer Nadim Issa praise since opening day.

It’s one of the few commercial studios in the neighborhood, and Issa says the price makes it an ideal space for artists in need of a suite to hole up in while they work on long stretches of writing and pre-production.

With that in mind, Let ‘Em In runs several DAWs: Logic, Pro Tools, Live, Reason, Max/MSP and Cubase, making it a logical choice for producers and artists who’d rather have the studio adapt to them than work the other way around.

Issa is also a producer and engineer in his own right, and provides promising audio samples on his site.

He’s made smart choices on the gear front as well, with a list that features front-end gear from Great River, API, Universal Audio and ADL, all feeding a 24-channel Apogee Symphony system.

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SEIZURES PALACE
www.seizurespalace.com
Rates: $550 for 12 hours or $275 for 6 hours. (Includes engineer)

Seizures Palace is an inimitable and cavernous space that sits along the eastern edge of the Gowanus Canal. A step into the control room reveals dueling consoles, where Jason LaFarge normally works on his preferred Otari 18R.

The other console that sits here is mostly a vestige of the space’s other life as the Brooklyn mainstay “BC Studios,” where Martin Bisi worked on seminal records with Sonic Youth, Afrika Bambaataa, Brian Eno, Lydia Lunch, John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Bootsy Collins, before lightening the load to pursue his career as a solo musician in earnest.

Today, the space is kept busy by owner LaFarge and other engineers who embrace this studio’s distinctive and flexible sound.

In his time at this former automotive factory, La Farge has attracted his own reputable client list, including Akron/Family, Chicha Libre, Angels of Light, Hopewell, Swans, Devendra Banhart, and Mighty High.

When asked about the lasting appeal of this singular space, LaFarge says: “I think what makes Seizures Palace special is a combination of vibe and acoustics. It’s located in an old factory building on the Gowanus Canal and has beautiful stone walls and high ceilings in both tracking rooms that give it an amazing sound.

“It’s an amazing place and I think it reflects on the sessions. I’m often told by clients how comfortable they feel here and how easy it is to work. I take pride in that.”

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn-based audio engineer and music producer who’s worked with Hotels, DeLeon, Soundpool, Team Genius and Monocle, as well as clients such as Nintendo, JDub, Blue Note Records, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visit him at www.justincolletti.com.

Audient Announces Availability of ASP8024 Dual Layer Control Module

Audient has announced that its Dual Layer technology is now available for its flagship ASP8024 console, in the form of a Dual Layer Control (DLC) module. As a result, the ASP8024 can now be the center of a computer session as well as an analogue mixing experience, when fitted with the newly released module.

With the DLC module, the large format console now gives the user control of the computer session plus eight channels of analog moving fader automation. The DLC module connects directly to the computer via an Ethernet connection, supporting control of Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase and Nuendo. A push of the DAW button enables the user to toggle between the control of the computer session and the analogue automation layer.

The new module has eight analogue audio channels enabling the automation of external line input sources or sub group paths. Each channel has a source and destination switch allowing any combination of external I/O and sub group paths to be selected. Below these are the pan controls and mix buttons, allowing users to route the channels directly to the mix and position them in the stereo field. When the eight sources are switched to external input, eight extra channels can be routed directly to the ASP8024 mix bus, and the 24-channel console becomes a 24+8 fader console, giving a total of 64 available analogue inputs.

Full details about the DLC module for ASP8024 can be found on Audient’s recently upgraded website.

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