audiot

so there is a part five :-) at least kind of…

i thought it might be helpful to get a little more into the diplomacy thing. this is an often underrated point of huge importance. a band is quite similar to a relationship, sometimes even worse :-)

a lot of musicians are no fun when it comes to the picture they have about art. they see themselves as artists so who are you daring to question a decision they’ve made? as such kind of artists they seem to believe that any change to their work is a sacrilege. of course they’re wrong but they will never understand that. this is one species of musicians i encountered and it’s the worst of them all because in dealing with them everything is about strategy. if it’s ‘your’ band, get rid of them and save yourself the trouble. but you might not have that luxury, maybe they’re just really good on their instrument and it would take ages to find a decent follower. for whatever reason, let’s assume you have to work with them. that’s already it: work ‘with’ them, not ‘against’ and not ‘without’. it’s ‘with’. it’s always teamwork, but what good is it if one side understands that and the other doesn’t? that’s where diplomacy comes in. it’s one of the things i learned during my times as estate agent and financial advisor (yes, i’ve been there….) and that served me well in all the bands i have been since. for example, if there’s a question to which you know the answer, you don’t give it. instead you direct the other one, without him noticing, so he finds the answer himself. now you’re not the dislikable mr. know-it-all and he doesn’t feel stupid because he found the answer himself or better: you both found it together. this goes for other things as well. you want him to do something to your advantage – turn down his amp for instance. but if you say: “hey, turn down your amp!” or “you’re too loud!”, chances are it wouldn’t work because he’d see it as an interference and would block. yes, i know, this whole issue is infantile and ridiculous but look at today’s international politics….

this is like a law of nature: if one involved person is irrational, everything becomes irrational. being reasonable doesn’t work anymore, so you’ll have to use strategy to achieve your goals. whatever brings him to turn down his amp is irrelevant, the only thing that counts is that he does it. you know him best, so you’ll have to figure something out that works for you. a good start usually is to compliment on his sound or solo or speed or whatever. too bad that this room turns everything above a certain volume to mud. and you would so enjoy to listen to that solo, but oh well…. and don’t you forget to mention that it is so much better now that everything became a lot clearer once it’s done – you want your success to last, don’t you?

so if you’re dealing with such specimen, become the helmsman, the influencer, the puppet master (think mike novick on ’24′ – i just love that character…). as long as nobody notices, you’re fine.

recently, i told you i recorded a student of mine who wanted to make a demo to get some gigs. a simple singer/songwriter thing, just him and his guitar. we recorded in my living room and i did a little mixing. now he has listened to two of the songs and allowed me to upload them here. i will do so in the next few days, because now that i’ve listened to them on/in countless different players, home stereos, cars etc. i want to adjust some things first but they will be up before the end of the week, so stay tuned…

i just finished uploading a bunch of pictures to my flickr site. you can see me practice playing drums and making funny faces… and there’s some pictures of my last holiday in 2005. a quite relaxing and inspiring journey :-)

there’s still an unbelievable amount of live pics. i’ll post some of them every now and then…

right now i’m thinking about changes in my listening habits. there are phases when i want it to be complicated, when i want to think about music, maybe even count along with odd meters and more such things. i remember when i started playing drums, i started getting into fusion music as well…

at first, i was a heavy metal freak – back when i was about 13 or so and it happened totally by accident. maybe this should get its own entry… then, while taking guitar lessons, i became a blues-guy. this also matched my mental situation then, you know, first big love etc… when i started with singing, again my priorities changed. and at the same time a guitarplayer and i wrote songs together – he was into the studio scene. it seemed he didn’t care much about styles, more about who played on what record. so i kind of got into that as well, looked around what the guys i liked did in solo or other projects and started to read the names in the booklets, the hired guns so to speak… this brought me to all kinds of different music, including funk for instance or easy listening stuff and jazz of course. with playing drums, fusion came along – the more complicated, the better…

and then, a few years ago, another transition towards a non-genre-listening-policy. i don’t care anymore – and i often even do not know – what genre it is i’m listening to at the moment. sometimes i go through my fusion records, but it’s not that often. i noticed i go through different phases that usually last a few weeks. today i finished one of them, filled with things like clutch and primus. while looking through my cd collection this morning i suddenly felt the urge to hear some ac/dc again…

so i wonder what’s next. chances are it will be something completely different because the rock-phase is lasting longer than usual already…

this is just a short update on the new project. i’m working on the drums right now. the sounds are selected, so i’m working out the parts. as you may know already, this record is something new for me and i’m learning while making it. for the first time i’m doing everything myself, including writing of the music and the lyrics, playing and programming every instrument involved, recording, mixing, artwork…well, everything. although i have been in studios many times and i have recorded many times, i never did both of it on the same project. either i recorded somebody else or i sung, played guitar or drums while someone else pushed the buttons… so there’s lots of new experiences and learning involved – especially one important lesson: not getting in the way of yourself. so now i’m creating drumparts on the mac and right now i do not know if i will keep them or if i will use them as kind of a map while recording real drums. yeah, i know what you think: sampled drums suck, do the real thing! and until now i would have been the first to say so (at least in certain musical styles). but i guess that’s something i learned through the last few weeks. programming drums is quite challenging if you want them to sound authentic. you have to play and record them rather than draw small events with a pencil tool. so there’s a click and you track the drumpart live. only instead of a real drumkit and a bunch of microphones you’re using a midi-controller of some kind. again, i’m talking about seemingly genuine drums appropriate for certain genres – no copy and paste here, everything’s played. and you have to know quite a bit about drumming because otherwise it just wouldn’t sound like a drumpart, more like a keyboard track with percussive sounds….

as i said, i don’t know yet if the drums on the final versions of the songs will be real or sampled ones. and come to think of it, maybe i should keep this a secret :-)

it’s the same with guitars. modeling units and reamping are quite common but no one uses them, right?

enough about gear-talk. let’s say your, and the band’s, equipment is ok. now what? what could happen if you turn up the mixer’s fader that controls your voice is feedback. so you turn it down again to a point without feedback and again you’re not loud enough. you figured it out with your bandmates, they were reasonable and turned down their gear but still it’s not enough. so you should focus on fighting that feedback. possible reasons for feedback are:

• wrong positioning of the speakers
• wrong positioning of the mic(s)
• bad interior of your room
• wrong handling of the mic(s)
• wrong handling of mixer or effects

there could be other reasons as well but dealing with those five should usually solve the problem. i’m not a physicist, so i won’t give any scientific answers (glad to hear that? yeah, me too :-) ). it’s all based on experiences, so maybe you’d have to mess around a little bit.

first of all, mics have polar patterns, usually a vocal mic is a dynamic microphone with a cardioid pattern (sometimes super- or hypercardioid), that means you should never point your microphone towards the speakers (monitors are speakers as well…). that is of course the side of the microphone that you’re singing into. if your speakers are behind you, so that you in a way have to point the mic at them, move either the speakers or yourself. the rule would be to point the mic as far away as possible. so check out your options regarding positioning of mics and speakers. certainly this goes for other microphones in the room as well (background vocals for instance). if the monitor is the problem, make sure you really need it at all. i have never been in a rehearsal room where monitors were necessary. people often do use them though… if you absolutely want to use a monitor because you want to look as cool as this guy (ego anyone?), be careful to never point your mic at it as well. the less speakers the better because each one is a possible feedback source. be sure as well to not set up the speakers too close to a wall, they should point into the room. google around a bit for correct positioning or read/ask in forums. don’t forget to post a picture of your room with your question. the problem could also be wrong positioning of guitar or bass amps, because if there’s a muddy soundsoup instead of a clear sound separation, problems are preassigned already.

the treatment of the room itself is also important. naked concrete walls may be exactly to your gusto, but soundwise it’s…uhm…kind of subperfect… again google around. just pasting carpet to the walls is not really a solution. a wall-air-carpet-sandwich could work fine though. use wooden battens (if that’s the correct word….) to create a layer of air (about 4-5 inches thick) between the wall and the carpet. try to make the wall patchy and uneven. but this depends very much on your specific room so no one-fits-all-recommendations here, sorry. that’s what internet forums are for…

now about the handling of your gear. first, read the manuals to be able to use the mixer correctly. this should be a no-brainer but people operate mixers wrong quite often, so make sure not to be among them. the same goes for any additional equipment like reverbs or delays for instance. there are feedback destroyers out there and some of them work nicely but it’s always better to solve the problem than to keep it at arm’s length. feedback destroyers could for example cut frequencies that you do want and therefore create unwanted sound changes.

one more thing that always reminds me of action movies in which people hold guns horizontally to look cool. they wouldn’t hit the target if it would be more than, like, five feet away, but who cares if cool-looking is involved ;-) . anyway there are people who hold their microphone by closing their hand around its head (the ball-shaped thing at the top). this is the part you should sing into. smart designers created handheld microphones with a haft which can be used to hold it with the hand. so please do so. i once was part of a ‘support’ band that played the songs to which contestants sang in some kind of singer’s battle. we did rehearsals with all of them before and about 80% of them held the mic the wrong way. what a feedback party! and check this out, we had a feedback destroyer back then and because of the massive feedbacking it shut down frequencies our guitarist needed (he was playing through the p.a.) for his sounds. so i gave this advice about a hundred times in three days: hold the mic where you’re supposed to hold it. good thing i had my earplugs then already – i might be deaf by now….

cool, now we had own gear, band equipment, the room, positioning of various things, handling of mics and other stuff as well as a bit of egos and dealing with feedback. maybe there’ll be a part V, i’m not sure yet…

wow! i’m kind of speechless…wow…

just surfing around, not expecting anything out of the ordinary and then pow !!! i found this site where someone uploaded his collection of old 78rpm records converted to mp3s. actually it’s not his complete collection…..yet. it’s ‘only’ 3.739 records so far, 2.500 are not done yet. you don’t see the coolness in this? first, it’s all completely free, you can just go to the site and listen, listen, listen – just like that. and second, there’s albums of count basie, duke ellington, gene krupa, king cole…you name it – even the first jazz recording ever! …what’s that?…..no, i think radiohead’s not among them……

anyway, the man who made this happen and whom we all owe a big thank you is Cliff Bolling and the link to his site is right here.

so go there, have a look and pass out in sheer amazement…

edited: damn, the link is broken so i removed it. maybe we had it coming…. i wonder if it will be up and running again. it would be nice to have those old gems preserved in the realms of the internet. go Cliff !!!

so it’s back to the loudness war inside your band :-)

ok, let’s assume you have decent equipment now. then there’s still the question about the band’s gear. if you sing through a small powered mixer and cheapish small speakers (i once encountered a band that sang through a small home stereo…) you can easily reach the limit of this gear and that means there’s simply nothing you can do – loudness-wise. so it becomes a matter of diplomacy. the only way here to get a good mix of all instruments (including the voice of course) is to get the others to turn down – not necessarily an easy enterprise. one way would be to just not care (you can hear yourself because of your earplugs, remember?) and wait until the others mention that the vocals are not loud enough. then point at the mixer to show them that you can’t do anything about it. now try to convince them to turn down their gear so the voice will be heard again. never, never, never give in and try to sing louder !!! you’re as loud as it gets. that’s what you have to believe yourself and that’s what the others need to believe as well. and one other thing: loudness is no criterion for a singer’s quality! good luck. by the way, i left bands because of this and if your bandmates are too stupid or stubborn to understand, maybe you should do the same – this is a fight, nobody can win because the loser in any possible case is the music aka the band aka all of you.

if the guys understand that you’re all sitting in the same boat – cool. but although they might agree to turn down their volume it still doesn’t have to work because – depending on the music – a certain loudness could be essential, at least for the drums. below this crucial volume-level the music does just not work. if that’s still too much for your gear, there might be no other way than investing in a better amp and speakers…

as a last resort you could focus your attention on the next part of this series…

actually i wanted to write the next part of the ‘how loud do i need to be’ series, but i just found a blog-entry that caught my attention because i thought about this for quite some time now. read it here. it’s about the loudness race/loudness war. this term describes the fact that producers compress the dynamic range of a recording in order to make it sound louder. huh? yes, compressing means the span between the soft and loud parts (dynamic range) of a song is reduced drastically so that the whole song can be blown up to a much louder volume. hmmm, is it clearer now? ok, if a dj plays a song and turns up the volume, distortion will occur at some point – meaning loud events (like snare hits for example) are just too much for the equipment to handle. so the dj has to keep it below that point. but that means the rest of the song, especially the softer parts, are not loud enough. that’s where compression comes in. the dynamic range is reduced and the song can be played much louder because all events are nice and even, nothing sticks out. this is done especially with commercials – did you ever notice that commercial breaks are a lot louder than the movie itself? that’s because the commercials are compressed as much as possible in order to make them as loud as possible. but it’s used in music a lot as well. since this race began more and more artists/producers had to join this battle because compared to an over-compressed recording a ‘normal’ song sounds wimpy. that means if a ‘normal’ song is played between two over-compressed ones on radio or in a club – listeners will think of it as weak and thin or maybe even miss it (if they’re in a car and listening at low volume anyway). so the dj won’t even bother playing it…. so more compression is better, right? nah, sorry to disappoint you. because of the reduced dynamic range the recording lacks one important thing. take a guess………. dynamics! dynamics are an important and great tool for every musician and it’s a huge loss for the song if dynamics have to be sacrificed in order to coexist between the competitors…

in that other blog entry, there’s a video embedded that demonstrates really well how this works…

oh, and for the sake of completeness, here’s the comment i posted over there as well:

i guess it’s the same with bad design, when form beats function. dynamics are, and have always been, one tool of expression for artists (at least the better ones) – so it’s a loss for our art. but what can one do if he/she wants to be on radio or played by a dj or something like that. not joining the race makes the song sound wimpy and weak compared to the others, compressing the hell out of it sacrifices an important part of the music itself…
on the other hand, does the consumer even care about that? chances are, he/she doesn’t know about this matter and the non-audiophile-guy might not even notice the difference. listening through low-grade gear often makes it not possible even for experienced listeners…
and, if the consumer would know about it, wouldn’t he rather choose the over-compressed version because he could listen to it everywhere without adjusting the volume all the time?
this is an interesting question. would the ‘standard-listener’ appreciate a recording with full dynamic range (which, if I remember correctly, is already compressed down to 90dB on a cd, right?) or would he rather think of it as thin and weak – and therefore of minor value – because the competitors (including commercials) use compression to ridiculous lenghts and he got used to that? which is followed by the question: could the artist afford to go against the customer’s wishes or would he have to adapt? even if it means to reduce the artistic value?
ha. by the way, my home stereo has a button to compress while listening. it’s called ‘night mode’ and is meant to reduce the dynamic range so you can watch an action movie without disturbing the neighbours – pretty cool feature.
so where does this lead us? two versions of the same song? equipment with such buttons? unlikely, the audience does not care enough to make this a major issue. but Peter Blue might be right about the fading of the war. a few years ago every musician panicked because real instruments wouldn’t be needed anymore in the future – computers were to take over everything. but did it happen? today it feels more like a renaissance of playing instead of only programmed stuff all around – and i guess there will come a time (again) when dynamics do matter….
great discussion by the way :-)

hi there.

i just finished working on two songs which will make a demo for one of my students along with a third one, already recorded but not mixed yet, and maybe a fourth. it’s just acoustic guitar and vocals – he put together a set of about one hour i think and wants to gig in clubs. so we did a quick live recording of him in my living room and i just sat down and worked on two of them. it was a somewhat new approach though – recording, cutting and some editing was done with apple’s logic express 7, any further treatment took place in reason 3.0, a complete virtual studio rack. i worked a lot with reason recently and love its design and versatility, so i thought to give it a try. i haven’t listened to it on more than two different sources: headphones and home stereo, so i’m not really certain if it’s ok yet, but it seems fine so far. it’s cool to get a somewhat decent sound without a proper room to record in…

i hope my student will let me post those songs right here on this site, he has to listen to them first of course – so we’ll see about that…