mtf week 6: at last

This week's forum saw the beginning of producer presentations in earnest (one snuck into last week's forum). Now, it seems to me that there is a definite pattern forming, the producer is also a musician/performer (and sometimes a failed one at that). Also, it seems that in every case, the end creative output of the band owes at least a little bit to the producer. Lauren raised the question of whether Nigel Godfrey lifted Radiohead to success or vice versa. In the case of the producer Bob Ezrin, his creative input was substantial to the point of forcing a change of style upon the bands he recorded, just about every band he has produced sounds like a seventies rock band. An ample demonstration of his attitude is found in this quote “I’m going to turn ‘Jane’s Addiction’ into a real rock band”. Could it be that Bob Ezrin is some sort of 70s rock music mould? A band goes in one end sounding original and comes out the other sounding just like everything else Bob Ezrin has produced? Once again, that issue of versatility/diversity has been raised. Example…an up and coming producer produces a few bands of the same genre (Pantera, Iron Maiden and the such) and gets tagged as a producer of that style of music. Change the style and you risk losing your customer base. In other news, the second half of the forum consisted on some handy advice for recording Classical music. Handy hint number one, place a mic (or many mics) over the head of the conductor. Why? I hear you ask? Well, the conductor might not know a thing about mixing desks but he knows the Classical piece of music you are trying to record off by heart and has already got some ideas about interpretation. What’s more, he is in a perfect position to communicate his wishes with the whole orchestra. Why mix the thing yourself when you can imitate your conductor’s ears and get the thing perfect first go. (There are even a few techniques developed for doing this including the Orft technique – 110 degrees based on the locations of the average human’s space between the eardrums, the dummy head technique – placing mics where the ears ought to be and the binoral technique – same as the last. The general feeling is that, for Classical recordings, a combination of separated and live recording will yield the best results. It is important that, as the sound engineer, you understand the dynamics written into the score. It wouldn’t do to be boosting the volume through movements marked pianissimo or vice versa. Being able to read the score will help immensely with recording the piece in parts (and not straight through). It isn’t enough to ask the orchestra to play their parts at 1 minute and three seconds, they need to know bar numbers.