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.

 

Avid Announces Restructuring, Lays off 10% of Workforce

Avid confirmed today in its quarterly earnings call that it has undergone a restructuring, laying off approximately 10% of its workforce in the process. With a headcount of 1,944 employees as of today, the move affects about 200 Avid employees. The cuts were across “all areas of the business”, excluding sales and marketing positions.

The announcement was part of an earnings report that observed a GAAP net loss of $8.0 million dollars for the third quarter on revenues of $165 million for the three-month period ended September 30, 2011.

Depending on your viewpoint, this news could either come as a big surprise, or just be what was expected next from this major manufacturer of digital media content tools.

Or it could be both.

Days After a Major New Product Announcement

Surprised? You’re not alone. The timing is highly unexpected, especially to everyone in audio. Thousands watched a live pre-AES 2011 Webcast last Thursday from New York City as Avid’s corporate brass and top developers unveiled Pro Tools 10 and the new Pro Tools|HDX DAW, describing the dawn of an entirely next-generation system.

As usual, Avid’s declaration of bigger-better-faster was matched just as quickly by user concerns over the cost and timeframe to upgrade. And also as usual, Avid had to start dealing immediately with large-scale ill will over forcing a near $10,000 upgrade cost – minimum – on its HD customers, the fact that they would have three years to manage it notwithstanding. Forums are already in flames, and Avid’s Facebook page is seething with angry comments.

A game-changing product rollout, on the eve of the industry’s biggest tradeshow, is generally not a harbinger of restructuring and job cuts. But Avid’s executives may have known the latter were imminent that Thursday night, even as they played out a well-rehearsed routine.

All this came just one year after an equally landmark 2010, when Avid’s near-annual restructuring came in the form of a major rebrand for all audio products. First, Euphonix was acquired in the spring to beef up the work surface sector of the market. Then the poisoned Digidesign name was jettisoned for good, Pro Tools 9 was released, and three new HD interfaces (HD I/O, HD Omni, and HD MADI) were introduced, along with goodies like the Dave Hill-designed HEAT mixing plugin.

Improved customer service, support and overall empathy were also meant to be a part of the program for the industry-standard DAW. In a related development, Avid also simultaneously made it known through the Digi User Conference forum yesterday that it was offering a free 14-day Pro Tools 10 and Pro Tools HD 10 trial, starting next week on the Avid Website. Additionally, any customer who currently owns Pro Tools HD 9 is eligible to purchase the Avid Standard Support Plan for $599, which will qualify them for a free upgrade to Pro Tools HD 10.

The program effectively lowers the cost of an upgrade to HD 10 by several hundred dollars. It addresses post haste some of the heavy flack that Avid caught for the weighty upgrade pricing that accompanied last week’s release of Pro Tools 10.

The Continually Shrinking Avid  

For anyone who has followed Avid Technology as a company (NASDAQ: AVID), however, today’s restructuring and staff reductions are, unfortunately, a logical turn of events.

This is a corporation that laid off 120 people in 2010, and 410 employees the year before that – 15% of its staff at the time. It was all a part of five rounds of Avid layoffs that took place between 2006-2009 alone, and a reflection of the company’s overall declining financial health.

Don’t forget that Avid’s product lines also span essential video editing and finishing systems (DS, Media Composer, Symphony Nitris). The VENUE live consoles are in the mix, as are a raft of popular audio brands that the company acquired over the years, notably M-Audio, System 5, and Sibelius. Clearly, none of these lines have been making enough of a difference to stop Avid from its ongoing advance in the wrong direction.

What the Future May Sound Like

Obviously, an additional restructuring is not a black hole from which there is no escape. But no one knows today how their relationship with the company will be affected – many of their connections were with the myriad talented media industry professionals who are now contemplating pink slips, and their families’ well-being in a troubled industry.

And how will Avid handle a probable tsunami of customer inquiries in response to this latest development? If you thought people had questions about their Pro Tools 8.5 educational license/HD crossgrade to PT 10 and HDX, along with compatibility of their RTAS plugins with the new AAX format (or vice versa) …well, imagine their curiosity now about ongoing support for their current and perhaps future systems.

But unless Avid has also simultaneously hired an army of phone- and Web-support know-it-alls – somehow trained in the US or overseas on every possible scenario that accompanies this latest SEC-mandated announcement – who’s going to answer everyone’s questions? Is a new, incredibly helpful Website with pages of FAQ’s going to be launched tomorrow?

200 people are gone. That’s a lot of phones going into permanent voicemail, potentially leaving the user base and their livelihoods in a slowly onsetting limbo, with increasingly serious questions about the future viability of their main audio infrastructure provider.

Ripple Effects

Within audio’s already fragile ecosystem, the impact may not stop with Avid’s now ex-employees (and the overworked ones that remain).

Dozens of software developers were happy to be invited to Avid’s AAX plugin format development party as early as possible. But many of them make plugins for Pro Tools and nothing but Pro Tools – if consumer confidence in their primary platform is further shaken, what does this bode for these developers’ future sales? And if they can quickly diversify the DAWs they plug into, who do they place their bets on first?

On that note, it’s interesting to think which of Avid’s audio competitors might benefit most from the company’s latest setback. If studio owners, producers, engineers, mixers, audio post facilities, and artists want to hedge their bets and switch to the other leading software/hardware audio platform there’s…well, there’s nothing that compares.

Logic, Digital Performer, Cubase, and SONAR are all fine DAWs, but at and above a certain professional level, they’re serving as a front end for a Pro Tools system that hums efficiently in the background – one more extension of Avid’s category killer.

Indeed, should Avid continue to struggle or even one day disappear, one of the other DAW’s may emerge as the new crowned king.

But, like the U.S. Presidency, does anyone in their right mind really want that job? Avid doesn’t seem to be hacking it even with a highly evolved, fully integrated software/hardware industry-spanning solution. Maybe it’s better to just be part of the chaotic swirl of sequencing software and interfaces that would reign, sans Avid.

What’s Next?

Remember, Avid isn’t gone. It’s just grown smaller still. But things may feel a tad more nerve-wracking in the months to come, the next time that Pro Tools system suffers a big crash.

Until things grow clearer, expect everything in Avid’s signal path to have extra noise.

– David Weiss

 

Crane Song Announces Phoenix II – Now in AAX Format

With all of the great new gadgets and software being unveiled this last weekend at AES, there are still plenty of other surprises out there that you should know about. The next-gen Crane Song Phoenix II being one of them!  For years, Crane Song’s Phoenix plug-in has been renowned to top mixes off with its “unique properties of a magnetic tape machine”…so long as you had a Pro Tools rig that could support the original TDM format.

Now with the announcement of Pro Tools 10 and its new AAX format, the Phoenix II will be available for not only the new Pro Tools HDX DSP systems, but also the Pro Tools HD Native systems (Questions about the new Pro Tools? See our overview here).

The plugin is available now for $450 MSRP with the Mac version available by November 1st. For more information on the plug-in, read on for data straight from Crane Song:

“Designer Dave Hill has crafted this software with the same attention to detail he used to create the electronics for ATR Service’s much heralded ‘Aria’ discrete tape recorders.  His intimate knowledge of analog electronics, as well as decades of experience as a recording engineer has spawned a very useful, musical suite of plug-ins.  The Phoenix II process not only incorporates the nonlinear saturation characteristics created by magnetic tape itself, but also includes the interrelation of an analog tape recorder’s record/reproduce electronics and equalization curves.  Phoenix II is a ground-up application derived from HEDD technology, and specifically engineered and optimized for Avid’s PT 10 architecture.

Phoenix II has five different tape-analog characteristics, The type is selected with a switch for easy comparison between the types, and the brightness is also selected with a switch.  Gold is the position where the color is approximately flat in frequency response, with Sapphire being a brighter, and Opal being a warmer tonality.  A level control determines the amount of the Phoenix II process integrated into the audio signal, and an input trim determines “how hard you hit the tape.” Because the DSP process is level dependent, the input level trim control has been improved and an output trim control has been added.

The input trim can also be used to prevent clipping in the rare cases where clipping may be a problem and bringing up the level of a track for an increased amount of color.  This can be useful on material that is hitting close to or at digital zero and on material that has a low recorded level. When the input trim and output trim controls are at 0dB, (no change in gain) and no tape process is being added to the sound, the plug-in is bit accurate, meaning the output exactly matches the input.

The Phoenix II contains five separate flavors:

• Luminescent is the most neutral sounding process of the five.
• Iridescent has a similar magnetic character, but with a fatter bottom and midrange. (This plug-in is the most similar to the tape knob on HEDD-192.)
• Radiant is characterized by a more aggressive compression curve
• Dark Essence is even more aggressive. (The effect is a color with a wider frequency range-when used on a vocal  Dark Essence can reduce sibilance problems by increasing the apparent loudness of the rest of the signal.)
• Luster starts more gently than the other four processes, but becomes as aggressive as Dark Essence when the process is at full scale.”

Behind the Mix: Everlast’s “Songs of the Ungrateful Living”

NYACK, NEW YORK: In a bittersweet burst of serendipity, Everlast’s new record arrives the same week that the Occupy Wall Street movement is picking up international steam. #Occupy may not have a clear agenda, but as of October 18th at least they have an anthem.

“I Get By”, the lead single off of Everlast’s long-awaited sixth studio album, Songs of the Ungrateful Living, should serve well in this capacity. A gritty chant for the everyman, the song’s verses tell it like it is for many many in 2011, via the athletically interlocking wordflow that originally put this Long Island-borne blues rapper on the map:

“Put your hands in the sky if you barely getting by/It’s on and on till the break of dawn/Got to keep the rent paid and the power on…We dip and we dive and we socialize/We struggle and we strive just to stay alive/ I get by/I barely get by.”

To mix his engrossing new collection – the first in three years since 2008’s Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford – the now LA-based raconteur looked back East to one of the people he could depend on: Jamey Staub.

The veteran NYC mixer had worked the faders for Everlast’s 1998 multi-platinum tome Whitey Ford Sings the Blues and its #1 rock/hip hop/blues hybrid single, “What It’s Like.” The rapper – who got hooked on hits ever since co-founding House of Pain and smashing the charts with the darkly irrepressible “Jump Around” – sensibly turned to his hitmaker again.

But a little catching up was in order. “When he called me, I was really surprised,” says Staub from his Nyack studio, The Astoria Lounge. “We hadn’t spoken in 13 years. I was like, ‘Erik — Erik who?’ ‘Everlast, bitch!’

“He said, ‘I went back and listened to the albums I’ve done, and my favorite was Whitey Ford Sings the Blues,’” Staub recalls. “Everlast told me, ‘I love the way the way the hip hop tracks sound, and the way the rock tracks sound. I want you to mix my new album.’”

Staub’s Start

With mixing in his blood, there was no reason for Staub to pass the project up. A graduate of the University of Miami’s pioneering “Music Engineering Technology” program in the 1980’s, Staub got his start at Miami’s Criteria Studios, then moved to NYC where he landed an internship at the Hit Factory before finally establishing home base at Greene Street Recording.

Def Jam founder Russell Simmons and his artists were steady clients, while Staub found tape and MIDI mentors in Greene Street Chief Engineer Rod Hui, engineer/mixer/producer Chris Shaw, and engineer/producer Nick Sansano. In these formative pre-Pro Toolsyears, Staub, Shaw and the other assistants began explorations with tape that would serve them well in the ensuing age of the DAW.

“We were using tape only, and we got creative with it,” Staub remembers. “We’d say, ‘Let’s over-bias by X amount, let’s get a little more tape saturation and distortion. It’ll make the drums sound a little dirtier if we hit the tape hard.’ That was a real process for me, trying to get as much analog level through the console into the tape machine and back out. Using tape that way to create overtones and get distortion was great.”

After assisting at Greene Street on a steady stream of sessions for hip hop heavy hitters like Public Enemy, Staub got his big break in 1990 when rapper/DJ/producer Pete Rock got him on board mixing for Heavy D and the Boyz.

“There’s a lot of guys who can turn knobs, but at that point what people wanted was somebody they could talk to,” Staub says of his ability to break away from the pack. “The mixer would try to relate what they were saying into reality. I think I was good at that.

“People also wanted me because when I worked with Pete Rock and Public Enemy, they would sample things that were really dirty – like from a crackly record. Instead of trying to clean it up, I would try and polish it while retaining that dirty quality. Turning that old crackle-pop record into a hit was something I was able to do, and that attracted people.

“Flash forward to today, and I think I’m even better at discerning frequencies. I used to go into different rooms and have to learn the place in an hour. But now that I’m in my own room, I understand everything. I know where to go to hear the bass, to check the vocal level. So how I’ve evolved is to use EQ, compression and effects more effectively, because I’m so used to my little space here.”

Making the Everlast Connection

Everlast first came onto Staub’s radar – or vice versa – via a Pete Rock remix of “Jump Around” that Staub collaborated on. From there, he got called on by Electra A&R man/co-producer Dante Ross to help with additional production and mixing on Whitey Ford, a task Staub dug into at Sony Studios after Everlast (aka Erik Schrody) had suffered a major heart attack.

“He wasn’t even in the studio, but the result was that huge hit in ‘What It’s Like’,” says Staub. “What happened there was a culmination of my hip hop and rock experience at Greene Street Recording. On the hip hop side, I had learned to make it really drum-heavy: The kick and snare are bangin’, and the vocals are always clear.

“Ultimately what made the Everlast record so successful was the combination of hip hop-beat style drums and electric guitar, and rapping combined with singing. All those things came together for that record, and I think that’s really why it was successful.”

Everlast’s voice comes through loud and clear in Ungrateful Living, along with an addictively gritty pulse that makes tracks like “I Get By,” “The Rain”, and the 13 other cuts encourage repeated listenings. “What he’s evolved into is a storyteller of what’s going on in America, and what’s going on in the world,” Staub notes. “He wants to describe the state of himself, and how the state of America is that we’re not really the most powerful nation in the world — we’re broke. That’s his goal, to say and sing what’s been going in the last few years.”

Constructing the Mix, and Tips and Tricks

Staub built up his Nyack haven when the venerable Greene Street Recording closed for good in the early 2000’s, allowing him to purchase vintage compressors and EQs that he runs through his vintage Pro Tools|24 mix setup clocked with an Aardsync master clock generator.

Look past the digital Millennium Falcon that Staub flies, and you’ll see what sends his mixes into hyperdrive: Urei 1176’s, an RCA BA-43 program amplifier and BA-45 AGC compressor (Automatic Gain Control) originally used for radio broadcasting, and a heavily used Gates Sta-Level compressor – the latter all the better to mix the big, gravelly presence of Everlast with.

“I used the Sta-Level exclusively on Everlast’s lead vocal,” Staub explains. “I would take what they sent me, run it out through an Avalon 737 for initial compression and to brighten it up with the EQ, then into the Sta-Level. This unit adds some overtone and distortion and harmonics to the voice, while keeping the original sound and allowing the listener to hear every breath, and really bring it forward without making it sound thin. Pretty much every song I’d run the vocal through the Sta-Level, and then back into Pro Tools.

“The Sta-Level is a tube unit,” he continues. “If you open it up, there are no op amps in it. All the components are large, so it’s like this large voltage added to the voice. The special characteristics it brings are the overtones, the harmonic distortion that’s subtle yet thickens the voice and makes it more present.”

Also essential for this landmark mix project was Staub’s FU2, a custom piece of outboard specifically built for him by Jeff Blenkinsopp at the NYC company EARS (Excellent Audio Repair Service)  after he worked on Whitey Ford Sings the Blues. “It’s a special filter unit — from before there was a Filterbank plugin — that can control the envelope, the modulation, filter cutoff, and modulation. It’s like a little synth for filtering audio. On the second Everlast album that I mixed, Eat at Whitey’s [released in 2000], there’s a tune that filters down to the radio sound, for example, where I use the FU2.”

Naturally, the wily veteran turned some of his favorite in-the-box mix tricks on the snapping drum tracks of Ungrateful Living. “I’m a big drum freak,” Staub admits. “I often duplicate tracks. For example, I’ll duplicate the kick to one or two additional tracks, so I have three kick tracks, or I’ll do the same with snare — all with the same plugins, but I’ll use the plugins differently on each track. So I might have one track that’s original, then the second I’ll gate the hell out of it and compress it to give the thump of the kick, and on the next track boost the low end to make your chest thump.

“Another little trick is that when you have a drum loop, you pull it up on three faders on the board: You have the clean sound, the sound that’s gated, then the extra kick sound, and then pull all that in. I do that a lot. A lot of these techniques use multiple channels for the same sound, but you’re treating each one differently. For the vocal I might do one sound on the verse, but then come in really distorted on the chorus.

“Overall, I’m a really big fan of making sections sound different: I want the verse to be clearly the verse, the chorus clearly the chorus, the bridge clearly the bridge, and I might use different delays or other effects to distinguish them.”

Pulling it All Together

While Staub is doubtless psyched to see Ungrateful Living hit the digital shelves, this is one mixer that’s not just waiting around for old contacts to come calling. He also heads up his own indie label, Perimeter Records, and has October releases to tend to for his artists Thomas Anderson (“Stone Temple Pilots-style rock”) and Dogz of Zeus (“The name’s a little Spinal Tap, but they really tear it up – Metallica meets Led Zeppelin.”)

In addition, when possible Staub takes the time to give something back by MDing for a school of music that teaches youth to play their instruments through rock performance. He’s also on the cusp of launching CEO Cares, which recruits CEO’s of major companies to visit NY students, to teach life skills, and support schools with music and arts programs. Lastly, an animated series to revitalize young people’s knowledge and interest in America’s original music contribution, jazz, is on the way via the company Jazzin’ in the Key of Sea.

For Staub, however, what it really boils down to is mixing, and having kept his seasoned ears in business from the late 1980’s to 2011 is no small feat: 2.5 decades after leaving sunny Florida for the snowy Northeast, Staub has zero regrets. “I originally came to NYC because it’s NYC — what else do you have to say?” he laughs. “I came here to make it here. And it’s good to see things growing in Brooklyn, where music and arts can flourish without paying the price.”

In all five boroughs and beyond, count on the sage statements of Everlast to make an impact, whether people are #occupying the Financial District or just the real estate between their headphones.

“What’s important are his lyrics – what he’s actually saying to the listener,” Jamey Staub says. “With Songs of the Ungrateful Living, we’ve succeeded in combining vintage instrumentation with modern recording and mixing techniques. As a whole I think it just speaks volumes about music, how it’s produced and recorded, and what’s being said.”

– David Weiss

Songs of the Ungrateful Living is available on October 18th on Martyr Inc. Records, in partnership with EMI Music. Everlast will be touring nationally and appearing locally on Nov. 05 at Webster Hall, New York, NY and on Nov. 06 at the Westcott Theatre in Syracuse, NY.

No Artificial Reverb Allowed! The Tracking and Mixing Challenge of La Dispute’s “Wildlife”

HARLEM, MANHATTAN: You don’t have to imagine what’s like to be in the head of La Dispute. Everything about this intensely emotional rock band – their lyrics, their message, their music, and even the way it’s recorded – is about removing the mystery.

It’s all obvious from the moment that you hear the band’s singer, Jordan Dreyer, pushing it out in “a Departure,” the opening track from their arresting new album Wildlife. Don’t wait around for the raw energy of this Michigan five-piece to let up either, because the artfully charging guitars, rhythmic explorations, and intimate space of their post-hardcore screamo/progressive rock songs just keep on coming at you.

The recording team of producer Andrew Everding (Thursday) and engineer Joe Pedulla (Swizz Beatz, Thurday, Patent Pending) arrived at an early self-imposed challenge while working with this uniquely inspired group: no artificial reverb allowed. Whether it was plates or Lexicon PCMs, all ambience not imposed by the band’s actual surroundings was banished on Wildlife – instead, only the natural sound of the rooms at NYC’s Stadium Red and Chicago’s Drasik Studios were allowed to influence the sonic sense of space.

Like many feats of engineering, the “no reverb” rule came not by design but as a matter of natural course, starting at the initial sessions in Chicago. “We had miked the drums in the live room, and the room mics that were in there were set up for talkback,” Pedulla recalls. “Then the guitarist was in there to be next to his amp, and we started realizing, ‘This sounds cool.’ The parts needed this ambience, and sounded really good with that sound that you don’t get from close mics.

“So we started printing more and more room mics,” Pedulla continues, “and we realized early on the importance of that way of working. Collectively, we started printing everything by having a ribbon mic in the center of the room. Midway through the record, we made it official: Shoot for no digital reverb, and bash away in a way that you can’t do in a basement studio. Obviously, it’s a digital album to begin with, recorded entirely into Pro Tools, so we did what we could from there to remain in the natural era of recording. It was a fun science experiment for us to do.”

AMPED UP WITHOUT REVERB

After recording six of Wildlife’s 14 songs in Chicago (without vocals), the scene shifted to NYC, where the rest of the album was tracked in the spacious complex of Stadium Red uptown. As Everding, Pedulla, and La Dispute — Dreyer, drummer Brad Vanger Lugt, guitarists Chad Sterenburg and Kevin Whittemore, and bassist Adam Vass – progressed, they got an increasing feel for the appeal of the real reverb that they were cultivating.

“We were just trying to capture what it would be like for an audience member sitting and listening to a guitar in a room,” says Pedulla. “There was something natural about it — no one ever listens to a guitar with their ear right against the speaker. Whenever someone is in their bedroom or basement playing guitar there’s a natural ambience to it, so we wanted to put that down and get the big parts to sound really big, and really ambient.

“The singer, Jordan Dreyer, has this crazy dynamic range – a 20dB swing from how loud and quiet he gets. So there are some vocal parts with no resonance at all, where he’s speaking/singing softly, the room is not echoing, and he sounds close and in-your-face. Then the dynamic swing happens, and we would see how big it can get.”

SPATIAL RELATIONS

At Stadium Red, where Pedulla frequently works, the team took full advantage of the versatile, 1,000 sq. ft. Studio A. “I love that room for its flexibility,” Pedulla says. “It’s got gobos and a throw rug to emulate the size of different rooms, and with the small (300 sq. ft.) drum room, leaving the door full or partially open makes a difference. You can really have everything sound intimate with close mics, or you can open your room mics and get the long throw on it.”

To record the drums at Stadium Red, Pedulla first put a combination of close mics and boundary mics on the kit. Leaving the drum room’s sliding door open, he then miked the large live room purely to pick up the drums’ resonance. “We did a couple of different setups,” says the engineer. “We had a Royer 121 as our mono room mic, and a pair of AKG 414’s as the stereo-pair room mics, or two of the Audio Technica3060 tube condenser mics, which they don’t make anymore.

“There was another mono room mic from the ‘50’s or ‘60’s, the STC 4021 that I know as a ‘ball and basket.’ It’s a really cool, dark-sounding ribbon mic. Ribbon mics on rooms are king, and that’s what we used for our vocal room mic as well — there’s something about the way a ribbon mic chops off the top end, and makes it kind of smooth. Using a ribbon for the room on drums you don’t get too much of a cymbal bang, it’s not harsh, with a really solid top end and it gives you the mid range you need to capture that natural, resonating snare reverb.”

Dreyer’s close vocal mic was the Bock Audio 151 tube microphone, going into an Amek 9098 preamp, then tamed by an Empirical Labs Distressor. “We printed room mics on the vocals as well the whole album through, except for one song because of scheduling we had to record in Stadium Red’s C room,” Pedulla notes. “So for that, while I was mixing I took a Genelec 1031 speaker and placed it in the vocal booth in the exact spot that Jordan was standing. Then I placed the STC 4012 ribbon mic in the center of the live room and ‘reamped’ the vocals.”

When miking guitars, Pedulla looked to a Shure SM57 and a Royer 121 for close mikes, and a Neumann TLM 103 for the room. “There’s something cool about that, from 6’ to 25’ back from the amp. You can put it right in front of the amp and still get the ambience, or put it all the way at the end and really have it sounding big.”

Those listening even semi-carefully will hear some artificial wash on the guitar part for the song “a Poem.” “We used an analog spring reverb, the Sound Workshop 262 Stereo Spring Reverb, on one guitar part there on input,” concedes Pedulla.  “The guitarist, Chad insisted on using it — he used it sort of as you would a pedal into his guitar amp. We were using it as an effect, by picking up and actually dropping the 2U box. Rest assured, this was accompanied by a room mic for more reverb.”

StadiumRed’s SSL G+also helped shape and tame the sound. “We had a 26” kick drum, and that went straight into the SSL,” Pedulla says. “Those drums were so big, and there was something about the kick that I hated at first, but Andrew and I reduced 15 dB at 120Hz – that solved the problem of the kick drum, getting rid of the low-mid garbage we didn’t need. The flexibility of that EQ and that one cut alone saved the drum kit – to me, cutting is just as important as boosting, if not more.”

MAKING IT WORK IN THE MIX

Knowing that Studio A and the SSL G+ were booked up, Pedulla executed the Wildlife mix in the box. “I really liked using HEAT in Pro Tools|HD on this album,” he notes. “For a raw-sounding rock band like La Dispute are, I really liked overcompressing at times and then hearing the harmonic character of the HEAT distortion. I summed through the SSL, with two faders up to unity gain – the SSL 2-buss compressor combined with HEAT was really important to the glue of the mix.”

While temptation ran rampant, Pedulla was able to keep his hands off any and all reverb – hardware or plugins. “It was always in the back of my mind, but I was on this mission to make the record happen without it,” states Pedulla. “Even if it was sounding weird, and the room mic wasn’t able to give me what I wanted to throw in the mix, I just did what I could to make it work. We agreed on it, that’s what it is, and we accepted that fact. Even if it was a little bizarre or not quite perfect, that’s what it was going to be, regardless of the character.”

BEAR-HUGGING THE LIMITATIONS

For Pedulla, Everding, and the brave souls of La Dispute, the self-imposed restrictions of Wildlife were well worth the pain. “You kind of get painted into a corner sometimes, and you need to know how to dig yourself out,” Pedulla says. “The limitations are fun. It’s the challenge of engineering. Some days you’ll say, ‘I have to focus on compression and making this sit well,’ realizing the dynamic and importance of it for the band.

“One of the big lessons I learned from this project is the importance of room mics, and that I shouldn’t neglect them when recording. Even if the fader is at -25 dB, there’s still a little ambience in there, so it can sit in the mix a bit better. And now I know there are some things you can do with room mics that you can’t do with digital reverb — that’s for damn sure!”

– David Weiss

Wildlife is available now on No Sleep Records. Stream the album and purchase at www.ladisputemusic.com.

 

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.

Brooklyn’s Newest Studio: Anthony Gallo Opens Virtue and Vice for Production, Tracking, Mixing

GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN: There’s no substitute for experience, a fact that Anthony “Rocky” Gallo is taking firmly into account as he expands the buzzing Brooklyn studio scene by another degree. His addition to the Broken Land’s soundscape: Virtue and Vice, a just-right room that he’s growing in Greenpoint.

Gallo has set up shop as he exits his position of Chief Engineer at Manhattan’s Cutting Room Studios, his professional home since 2003 (he was also briefly partnered in Williamsburg’s 1.6 studios, before it changed ownership and became Three Egg). In the process of working with major names like John Legend, Carrie Underwood, Jon Bon Jovi, Yeasayer, The XX, and KRS1, along with scores of indie artists, Gallo became convinced that there was a need for a New York City tracking/mixing room that wasn’t too big, and wasn’t too small.

Instead of investing in a massive gear list, Gallo has stocked Virtue and Vice with a tight but superior inventory of the components he knows best, and wired them into a naturally light space that facilitates comfort and creative flow. Filling out 800 sq. ft. in a Greenpoint commercial loft building close to the L train, Rocky G believes V&V can excel and succeed in NYC.

What kind of space were you looking for to go into business?
The big thing to me was creating an accurate, great-sounding listening environment. I was looking for windows with good light, a very clean design and affordability. This building had all of those things — and I spent two or three years looking for a room before I settled on one.

My theory is that the old way of making records is completely dead: control rooms, live rooms, machine rooms…the way they did it for 40 years isn’t working any more. I wasn’t trying to create this super-isolated environment with a control room and a live room – instead there’s a large vocal booth with a large control/main space. I was talking to a colleague who said he thought that around $500 a day with engineer is the magic number, and that was my main goal.

In Brooklyn, that approach can work out well for my clients and for me – you can break even without having to be booked every day of the month. I also have two or three other guys that come in, and they can charge a little less if I’m working in Nashville. It’s a flexible thing.

What niche did you design Virtue and Vice to fill?
The reality is that artists spend a day or two doing drums — that’s what it’s been for most of the records I’ve done. So why spend money for a buildout and treatments for a room you’ll use one or two days a month? For the gear, it’s the same thing: I’m buying pres and compressors that will never go down in value. If you’re going to buy something, you should never have to say later on, “That was stupid.”

So really the idea is to get as clean of a signal as you can get for overdubs and guitar tracking. This is a place where you can set the amp up, run the speaker cable and actually hear what you’re doing — all the things you should be capable of that a lot of people ignore, as far as the indie market goes.

Good feng shui was obviously on the top of your mind when laying this studio out.
A mentor of mine told me once that a great couch can mean more than a $15,000 microphone. As sad as that is for me as a gear head, I’ll realize that that’s true, and I’ll stop myself from buying a new compressor all the time.

As soon as you can make a client feel that they’re not in a recording studio, and feel like they’re in a living room instead and completely relax, they can focus on doing work. The studio environment freaks people out. Back in the day, that was the office for studio musicians, but now it’s a rarity. Making records might happen more often, but a lot less time is spent in the process.

So I was going for a more comfortable environment, rather than saying I had three Telefunken microphones — it’s the reality that it doesn’t matter as much as the feel of the place. Not to say the equipment can’t be good, but I realized that where to put your energy was in a really clean, comfortable environment. Because 90% of the time the project will require one microphone – three tops – for overdubs.

You expect to be doing a lot of mixing here as well, right?
Mixing is most of the work that I do, as far as my clients go, but production, mixing, and overdubs are all my main personal workload. When it comes to mixing, for me the Dangerous 2-BUS has definitely added a huge dimension to the stereo image. I come out of Pro Tools HD3 into the Neve 1081 channels or compressors – which I use like a strip of the console — then back into the Dangerous again. The amount of clarity and overall fatness the combination creates was a huge, noticeable difference.

You’ve been steadily building up an impressive portfolio in NYC and beyond. What would you say is driving your evolution as an engineer/mixer?
The whole Manhattan music production scene has changed more in the last in the last year or two than in the previous twenty years. The way people are releasing and recording records is transforming: Now you can work in Pro Tools on your laptop without an interface. Five years ago that was never even thought of – you were carrying around an Mbox at least.

As far as my approach, I figured out how you can make a record for very little overhead, and still make it sound really great. You should be able to make a major release for $10-15K. Those live KEXP sessions at the Cutting Room really opened my eyes. Great bands like Yeasayer were coming in and saying, “This sounds better than the record,” and I was thinking, “I just spent 25 minutes on this, and you must have spent at least two months making your record. What’s wrong here?”

So you don’t need everything in the world — just experience and doing it time and time again. The theory is just you knowing what you want to hear in the end. I would love to work on a big console today, but I just started to realize you don’t need it. It’s really not important. And time after time I found myself using the desk less and less, based on the short amount of time I had with the client.

On that note, what type of clients are you appealing to with Virtue and Vice?
Pretty much any stage of their project. If someone’s looking to do a record and they hit us up, we’ll find a place to do the drums for the day. We take a strategic approach to production, rather than saying, “Show up for your first day, we’ll set mics up, and see what happens.”

As a staff engineer, for example, I was constantly seeing that people were coming in with problematic drums – they didn’t have their time signature noted, their tempos weren’t set, etc…. I’d rather go over that with my clients in advance, because it will make things challenging for me if I’m the one mixing it down the road. I think the best thing to do is spend some time before you come in, so you make the right decisions before you go in to work.

Overall, the target audience is someone working on a budget, but who still needs to make something really great. I know I’m not the cheapest, but I definitely have the experience and probably work faster than most people, being the product of a Manhattan studio. When your client is getting charged up to $175 an hour you have to be fast and not think twice about what you’re doing. And that’s how I was trained.

You had your choice of boroughs and neighborhoods to set out a shingle. What’s going on in Greenpoint that made you select  it as the home for Virtue and Vice?
A lot of my colleagues are in Manhattan and they’re saying to me, “You’re going to have trouble getting people out here (in Greenpoint).” Some of them say it’s like going to New Jersey, but I tell them that all my clients live out there.

The only people still living in Manhattan are label heads, and how much longer will they be working at that label? The clientele has really moved out here, and the people that have been making music here for the last ten years are growing up, and getting much more developed in what they’re creating. The people doing this for a living are not afraid to spend money to get the right person to do the job. Young guys see how it’s going, and how records as are being made.

Brooklyn’s Greenpoint and Bushwick areas are becoming a mecca for making music: The artists are there, and the studios are there because it’s less expensive to operate. The whole Manhattan recording scenario to me seems bizarre: high rent and a small room to work in. The people who are doing volume recoding are out in Brooklyn. There’s a lot of great places coming up, with guys coming from Manhattan studios who are super-experienced and putting together really tight rooms, like Kevin Blackler who came from Sony (and established Blackler Mastering in Brooklyn). I think the mastering guys like him have it the best, because they can be anywhere.

There are a lot of options already for artists and producers working at that level you just mentioned, as we’re sure you aware. What made you decide to look past that and open another NYC audio facility?
My next door neighbor across the hall is doing the same thing in his off-time, and when I moved into this building, he basically said the same thing, “Another studio?” I said, “I know…”  But this is not a hobby for me. This is the way I live. It’s the way I purchased my equipment: I didn’t give up my old job and make a bunch of miscellaneous purchases with my severance package. I learned how to make records from guys doing it for 20 years, and then I made records in order to buy this gear.

Yes, it seems like the market is flooded with studio choices. and I know a lot of great guys are getting out of doing it, because its flooded with more kids coming out of recording school than there are bands to record, and the young kids are the ones doing it for a six-pack and a pizza. It’s a funny thing, how many people are opening up studios: They think it’s affordable –  that they can charge $300 a day in exchange for making an investment of $15,000 and make it right back.

But it’s not an easy job, and it’s not for somebody who’s in it for the short term. I think I’m finally getting a real grasp of what to do and how to do it, and I’m talking to people who have been doing it for 25 years who are getting their minds blown with the recent developments, and changing what they’re doing.

There’s always been people who are good talkers and will get the gig, but this is a long, slow, steady course. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out of it, and the better records you’ll make. That’s the best way to approach it.

– David Weiss

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