Cooz’s Recording Studio Blog

 

 

In this fast pace world that we live in with creative clients wanting to produce audio for all kinds of reasons I find myself, having just got back from a few days in Paris, now back at my desk and reflecting on the studios client base since its creation a year ago.

It seems to me that clients who want to use the studio come in three categories. First there are the business clients who require audio for pod casts and audiobooks. They have specific recording goals and time frames and are therefore easy to work with. Usually the work involves reading from a script but can be an interview style recording which involves some form of improvisation from the participants. All very clear cut and easily achievable. Then there are the business clients who require recording for the band they manage. They do have goals and time frames but this can, and often is, unrealistic. It is not that they do not know the process, usually they have one or two that know a great deal about recording but sometimes into the mix there is also the added complication of there expert “producer”. He is human, usually, and so used to a specific work flow or setup. He therefore requires a certain amount of “retuning” to suit the studio he now finds himself in. This is well understood by Cooz’s and is completely normal and so a good one will make this transition look easy by taking the helpful advice offered and is great to work with. A bad one will criticise just about every aspect of the house and generally be grumpy for the whole of the session wondering how he can possibly work without compressor X or EQ Y. The final client type is the private individual/group. Again they can have a great deal of knowledge of recording and be excellent to work with but, just as the “producer” can be blinded by his expert knowledge. The private group can form a cleek that is difficult to disband into effect work flow if they are unwilling to get off their high horse about what they do know and trust that the in-house guy knows best in the recording environment they have chosen to be in.

What I like about working with musicians and groups is there ability to play music. It is, after all, what they do and what they do best. What Cooz’s Ltd does is record music. As Bob Katz points out this process is both an art and a science. It is something that requires experience, talent and hard work to do well. There is no one piece of equipment, technique or process which gives the best results. The organic nature of the process is what makes it so appealing to me and so interesting to work through in order to achieve the best results. In recording music, just as in playing it, best results are achieved when your ear directs you to what is possible to do with the group you work with. This is usually not what you would expect but in working through the process the session, if managed well, can achieve all that was initially desired and more.

 

As my studio inextricably fills itself with kit I find myself with more and more complex approaches to mixes. I am reminded of Paul White’s view on this related below. Studio mixing can be a hugely complex affair but the product should reflect the strengths of the musicians and your ability to draw on those strengths. As engineers and producers we run the risk focusing on the technical at the expense of the recording goals. Your rig is there to be used but not used because it’s there. Here is that article and for all you mixers out there enjoy the less is more principle:

“Now, I’m not a fan of TV reality shows based on the ‘phone-in poll’ formats, but I’ve caught the occasional glimpse of the ones relating to cooking, and it seems to me that some of the advice offered might apply equally well to recording and mixing. Often, it seems, contestants are criticised for trying to bring too many ingredients together in the same dish, so that the flavours become confused rather than harmonious. Of course, you can see where I’m going with this, because many problem mixes can be traced back to either too many different parts competing for attention or to the wrong choice of sounds in the first place. The fact that modern recording software and hardware offers us astounding track counts shouldn’t be taken as an invitation to fill them all up, and where large numbers of tracks are needed on a project, it will be probably be to introduce spot sounds or elements that play for only a short duration.

Of course musicians can be partly to blame; back in the steam-powered days when I ran a little eight-track analogue studio, clients would often use up only six or seven of the available tracks and then agonise over what they could possibly add to their song to fill up what was left. This is clearly not a basis upon which to create serious arrangements!

Perhaps the best way to avoid ingredient overkill is to listen to some work that you admire in a similar style to your own and see if you can pick out the different parts. Even the grandest pomp-rock epic can usually be whittled down to a couple of guitars, bass and drums, with maybe two or three keyboard parts and some vocals. If you’re using one of the excellent sample-based drum instruments to produce your drum parts, then it is hard to see how any well-constructed piece of music could run to more than 16 or so tracks unless you’re doing film orchestration — in which case this probably doesn’t apply to you!

The more I think about it, the more the recipe analogy holds up, because any decent rock or pop song comprises a small number of core elements with maybe a little added garnish in the form of extra percussion and brief snatches of ear candy such as synth punctuations, reversed cymbals and so on. I like to think of these secondary elements as being akin to using spices in food (or perhaps I just like to think of spices and food as it reminds me of curry?), and while they add character to the main ingredients, they are present in much smaller amounts and are designed to complement rather than obscure the original flavours. I guess what I’m saying is that if you take the time to choose better ingredients (more suitable sounds) and combine them sensibly rather than layering on the contents of your entire larder, you’re more likely to end up with a classy creation that’s a pleasure to mix and to listen to.”

It seems that, despite advances in recording technology, many producers create records that sound like the hits of the ’60s and ’70s. This is understandable, as these are the records that helped form our opinions of what constitutes good-sounding music. From my own perspective, having also been brought up on music of that era, I have to say that there were some very good recordings made back then. Even in the cases where the musical performances were somehow less polished than we might expect from a modern record, and the sound was a hint lacking in top-end, or slightly on the noisy side, they still had that magical quality. So why is this so difficult to recreate today?

Of course, all those old records were made using entirely analogue gear but, even though there are distinct differences between analogue and digital domains, both are equally capable of making great-sounding recordings.

I think a major reason for the difference in sound is that the recordings of the ’60s and ’70s were made by gigging bands comprised of experienced players, as I’ve mentioned in this column before. These days, many recordings are pieced together in project studios, rather than being captured using the ‘live recording plus overdubs’ method. No matter how good your playing or programming skills, the sound of a recording built up track-by-track will never have the same vibe as the recording of a real band doing what they do best.

Those old recordings also tended to be made in fairly large spaces with significant amounts of spill, which produces a different sound to that of a garage studio, no matter how well-treated the latter is.

Possibly the most significant difference between old and new records is the techniques used to actually produce them; 40 years ago, there were far fewer processing tools available to damage the material! After all, what did they have in the early days of recording? Razor blades for editing, compressors and limiters to look after level fluctuations, a plate reverb, a tape-loop echo and EQ that was often no more than treble and bass. And that was pretty much it, so they had to get the performance right and position their mics to capture that performance as well as possible. Mix engineers used to be called balance engineers and that gives you a clue as to the process. When everything is miked properly, you don’t need to do much more than balance the instruments and voices, which, back then, was often done on the way into the recorder, because the material was probably being recorded direct to mono, stereo or four-track.

Today we have plug-ins to fix everything from timing and tuning errors to excess noise, more EQ bands than we know what to do with, exciters to add top end, enhancers to add low end, vocal modellers, dozens of flavours of compressor and simulations of just about everything else, past and present. It takes time to learn what any piece of gear can do, so what chance do we have of using 300 plug-ins to their best advantage, even when they’re actually needed?

Perhaps if something is out of time or out of tune we should just play it again; if it isn’t bright enough, move the mic or try a different one, and if it sounds wrong in the mix, try to figure out why, rather than beating it into submission with EQ. Maybe then we’ll be able to make records that come just a little closer to what was achieved in that supposedly golden age of audio and all recordings will stop sounding the same because every producer uses the same plugins.

Before the invention of sound recording, if you wanted to hear music you had to go to where the musicians were, and once they died, their playing was gone forever. Even the best musicians could only hope to play to a tiny percentage of their potential audience, but with the wonderful technology of recording, augmented by the likes of MySpace and YouTube, anyone has the potential to have their music accessed by everyone. In recent years, the studio has made it possible to create music to such precision that it could never actually be played that way live without technological assistance. We also have the tools to edit and polish our recordings to produce a ‘perfect’ version. And when we die, our music lives on. This effortless access to music means that everyone can seek out the best the world has to offer, and they can listen to it at any time and in any place. The role of recorded music in film and TV should also not be underestimated, as it is invaluable in setting the right mood. So how can anyone attack the concept of recording when it offers so much? Well, where to start?

Before recording messed everything up, musicians were rated against others within traveling distance of their audience, rather than against the best or most popular on the planet, which was probably healthier. Furthermore, it meant a greater variety of music and musical interpretation with no commercial pressures beyond the popular dance steps of the day with which to comply. Everyone had their own version of the popular songs. There were no cars driving past with 500W sub woofers, no ‘tizzy’ headphones on the train, no muzak in shops and restaurants, and you could go on a holiday boat-trip without the whole experience being ruined by loud (and usually distorted) Turkish dance music.

When you did go out to hear live music, it was something special; you got a fresh version of the songs at every concert, whereas recording gives us the same performance time after time. What upsets me most is that music, which is an incredibly special form of human expression, has been downgraded to sonic wallpaper, to be ‘put on’ when you’re doing the washing up or tidying your room. In fact, I’d go as far as to say few people actually listen to music any more, they simply hear it!

So does recorded music lead to the betterment of music and more listener choice, or is it responsible for demoting music from its original position as a hugely enjoyable art-form to a ‘spray on when needed’ product that we simply take for granted?

I can not take the temperature of humanity but I think music is how it is perceived and if the majority perceive it as meaningless wall paper then that is what it is. But humans are humans and it is meaning that we all care for. I can accept that music can not be listened to but I can not accept that music is meaningless. We care, I care and you care for something relevant in your life and it is that connection with music which sets us apart from animal and puts us in touch instantly with many things including the divine.

Is the internet killing our culture and undermining the livelihood of cultural producers? Or does it provide us with the tools to take control of our own media destinies and escape from the inefficient and uncaring mass-media companies created in the post industrial era? Well in truth, like most disease where its spread can be determined by a little of both nature and nurture, this cultural paradigm shift creates a little of both effects.

The first effect endangers the very existence of the creative class in the new digital economy. With the old copy economy of the last industrial revolution in free fall it is becoming increasingly difficult to sell any media anywhere. If it’s not possible to sell content online, and if the analog market is also in dramatic decline, then must we conclude that the Internet is actually a catastrophe for creative artists and high cultural organizations?

As Andrew Keen of the telegraph would put it:

“Yes and no. The irony of the digital devaluation of media content is that, while it destroys the value of the copy, it is actually adding to the value of physical events. While it’s true that CD sales have been dramatically declining for years, the music business is actually experiencing a boom in live concerts. While consumers won’t pay for copies of the work of their favorite bands, they will pay for the privilege of seeing them live.

Thus, artists like Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Prince are all divorcing themselves from their traditional music labels and are, instead, experimenting by giving away their product online as a means of promoting their brands and tickets for their live events. In the old industrial economy, artists played concerts to sell recordings; in the digital economy, artists give away recordings in order to sell concert tickets.”

This is a reality but not the reality. The truth is that Radiohead and the rest are also a manifestation of arts place in culture. Not all artists judge there artistic worth by how famous they have become in the globalised mass media feeding frenzy. There artistic worth is not counted by bums on seats; that count is a measure of their artistic relevance today, their marketing mans effectiveness and their personal good fortune. If you like the good life then promotion is an important part of success. But it could be argued that most artists produce their best art when they are relatively poor and struggling in a hostile environment. That is not to say that good art does not or should not sell nor that good artists should not try to sell their art. Most good art will sell in time. James Joyce and the entire impressionist movement are a sad reminder of just how long that time frame can be. Most bad art can sell a lot in any time frame if it is well promoted. As Eric Clapton says in his autobiography:

“The music scene as I look at it today is little different from when I was growing up. The percentages are roughly the same - 95 percent rubbish, 5 percent pure. However, the systems of marketing and distribution are in the middle of a huge shift, and by then end of this decade I think it’s unlikely that any of the existing record companies will still be in business. With the greatest respect to all involved, that would be no great loss. Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance.”

So is the internet killing culture? I do not think so. Culture, like music survives everything and is always present. You just have to look hard enough whether on the net or in the real world. It’s there and sometimes it’s right under your nose.

Those of you who have been there will know the difficulties in learning the tango. It is, for want of a better phrase, a bitch of a dance. It requires balance, poise, and talent; all if which I have, but in miniscule amounts. It may come naturally to some but to me it is a steep and high mountain that I climb. I use all the equipment I have to hand, lessons, mirrors, determination, and a willingness to look like a complete dork whilst holding a pillow and prancing around the drum room. However, like any thing that requires sustained effort to overcome it is immensely rewarding when it is permanently locked into the neurons correctly.

There is nothing that I have not been able to do if I put my mind to it and, crucially, did not give up at. That is the key. Never give up. And that is the point to this blog. As my late Father used to say (God bless him) “if your gonna do it, DO IT!” What I think he meant by this was be prepared for the journey and, what he knew was, like a subatomic experiment, the act of doing changes every thing. Subatomic measurements impose a Dirac Delta function and literally make the object real. Before that, as Schrodinger would point out, it is in limbo. Be prepared for the journey to change everything and when it does wonder why you started the journey in the first place. This is my nemesis. Everyone has one and this is mine. It is the last obstacle for me before the easy ones of grind and effort take it’s place and the job can be done. Why do it? Can you even remember? Is that remembrance even relevant any more? Well we all make our choices and succeed and fail at many things. But if you choose to do something then DO IT. But be warned, that strength of purpose takes no prisoners, and right or wrong you will never be the same again.

Click here for Tango lessons in Oxford.