MTF Wk 11 - remix city

Commonly, people delved into their mixes without hearing the original (thus minimising the chance of simply recreating the original). Where this didn’t happen, people still, to varying degrees, avoided simply putting the song back together. This said, I personally preferred mixes that bore little resemblance to the original, more creative I think (though I suppose, less demonstrative of one’s ability to mix sounds the way they are intended. Scott H. – If I Had My Way • Constructed without hearing the original though (as a result of keeping the lyrics intact I think) it has become essentially the song with a different backing. • Endeavoured to create space and succeeded well Ben – If I Had My Way • Chopped up samples and created a remix with a techno feel • Chopped and distorted guitar to create new backing for a verse Scott P. – What You Are • Having not heard original, uses samples to create a song that has half the duration • Use of backwards vocals Stewart – My Secret Bliss • Approached task as an arrangement rather than a remix because the samples were already highly produced • Had to chop drums to make them fit • Changed guitar tracks to mono for something different • Got very nice musicality out of the vocals, made them sound busy • Mentioned idea of building mix around the vox, which made me think that what you choose to mix around makes all the difference to the end result. As does having an idea beforehand about what style you want to mould your samples into. Jake – My Secret Bliss • Fades the vocals in and out (much to my liking) • Highlights the whistle – double tracks, delays, has to boost 1kHz frequency to compensate for phase issues. Daniel – My Secret Bliss • Techno head thus steered clear of vocals and brought cool little electronic samples to the fore using the EQ • Drums and bass are the most prominent instruments in the mix • Very spacious mix – this leaves headroom for panning to be effective • Aimed to incorporate layers Simon – What You Are • Wanted to multitrack but couldn’t find information on it. • Thin intro, good use of builds. • Good, techno treatment of vocals. • Primary vocals in the first minute are a section of the original vocals sample reversed • Had the problem of running out of tracks, had to ‘track stack’

MTF week 10

Grunge • Very raw • Once cleaned up and stylised by record companies, was assimilated into other forms of music • Trend Genre – experiences waves of popularity • Was a rebellion against glam metal and the over produced 80s Grunge artists learn to play as they go, Grunge Metal band Sound Garden lost fans as their technique improved. An interesting note on ‘copycat bands’…Firstly, it is possible to get artists who reach the same musical sounds independently of each other, sounding the same does not necessarily reek of theft and, the line between copycatting and being legitimately and unavoidably influenced. However, some bands are just straight out copying, sometimes even down to their image, they don’t always sell so well. Some of the Offspring of Grunge include Stoner Rock (my favourite kind) • Evolution of the Black Sabbath sound • Psychopathic vocals (think QOTSA) http://youtube.com/watch?v=nR2emR9xvCE The White Stripes • Mid-fi • Basic songs and performance but sells well (a fine example of successfully pulling off a cliché?) Marilyn Manson’s ‘Beautiful People’ • Glam Metal meets Industrial • Double tracked drums Iggy Pop – shows Grunge tendencies before Grunge emerges. (Layers mix with the sound a guitar feeding back.) Australian Grunge. Sounds kind of pop…think Spiderbait. http://youtube.com/watch?v=UtqjmuUaYXA Punk (not an evolution of grunge) • Lots of mid range and a fast tempo make it very in your face The other topic covered in forum this week was ‘English sound production. For a country where the various sources of music are geographically pretty close, there are notable differences (characteristic of England in general to my knowledge. Just look at the multitude of accents). Locations covered included: Bristol • Dark sound, haunting, to me it sounds like the band Gomez • Lots of bottom end • Retain dynamic variety despite massive compression Manchester • Influenced by late 60s stuff (ecstasy) • Sound like Rolling Stones • Layered • Airy vocals – sound very English Oxfordshire - RadioHead • like to progress from lo-fi to hi-fi in songs (for effect/contrast). • Create excellent new guitar sounds (then get sick of it after copycats overuse it) So, if you are producing a young new band, try and accentuate the new and innovative things in their sound. Back to English production…my favourite band Muse (quoted by Stephen Fieldhouse as sounding like Radiohead on steroids) • Use mega compression. So much so that the climatic loud parts become quieter than the normal parts. This could be some horrible mistake on the part of the producer or, it could be art. I am now left to wonder. Certainly, I had never noticed the dramatic loud parts getting quieter without having it pointed out to me. Liverpool (primarily, The Beatles) • Artist comes first • Reversed guitar solos • Sampled and spliced sounds • Concept record • Staggered orchestral crescendo English Glam Rock • David Bowie – invents a character4 for each album • Outrageous falsetto vocals • Tuned down and dampened drums Lastly, from the two minutes spent talking about film music, I can now tell you that the best orchestral recordings are to be found in the vaults of Hollywood. Sample away my pets.

Trent Reznor!

Trent Reznor. Musical super ego, top of Digidesign’s promotions payroll (or so I have heard)[1], bringer of industrial music to the mainstream market and (maybe most importantly) a figurehead for independent production. A quote from a letter written by Bob Ezrin could not have put it better...“Trent Reznor is a true visionary. He has broken and reinvented the rules of engagement on every level, from recording to touring to interacting with his fans.”[2]

Reznor's list of productions is an impressive one. By far, the most successful bands he has produced are his own band Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids (who he in fact, discovered) and Pop Will Eat Itself but there are countless other productions under his belt. Other bands include Prick, The The, Pig, a number of remixes,[3] the soundtracks for Lost Highway and Natural Born Killers[4] and Reznor created and produced the background music for the game Quake.[5]

As a producer, Reznor's preference is to make full use of postproduction facilities available to him (something that, with the advent of digital recording hardware seems to be becoming the mainstream recording technique). Repeatedly in music he has produced, one can find effects such as chorus, delay and distortion used on the vocals, digital distortion on the guitars, synthesizers and regular use of drum machines and samplers.

In Reznor's own music, one can (if one tries) find a solid sensibility for the common pop song. In an interview with Reznor on his 'Downward Spiral' album he can be quoted saying “I was trying to keep the songs in a framework that was tough and I learnt a lot from Jesus and Mary Chain about how to bury nice pop songs in unlistenable noise - the idea being if you can get behind that wall you find there's a pearl inside. That's where my head was at.” [6]

Nine Inch Nails songs often have fairly minimal instrumentation. Songs like Closer and Hurt manage to sound full with only a few instrumental parts. A balanced mix of percussion, bass, samples and vocals result in a rounded piece of work.

Reznor likes to make use of the multitude of production techniques out there. Concept albums are a regular occurrence on his label. Both Downward Spiral and his latest release Year Zero are concept albums with a story/theme, Marilyn Manson's album Antichrist Super Star is also structured like a concept album.

A lot of Reznor's productions sound like Nine Inch Nails. His collaborations (as an artist, not a producer) with other artists like Bowie and Hip Hop outfit Flyentology result in music that sounds like Nine Inch Nails with a different singer. This can be heard in some of the music he has produced for other artists too. It is quite likely that this is a result of Reznor's guidance in terms of equipment to use, skill at writing pop songs, ability to contrast sounds and postproduction mixing techniques. Songs like Tough by Prick and Ich Bin Ein Auslander by Pop Will Eat Itself feature effects on the vocals, Industrial beats and guitar. By the sounds of it, Tough uses a drum machine, both songs have prominent vocals (a production technique often overlooked by the less mainstream bands). Prick even makes use of the 'small guitar sound' in the intro to Tough.

The Nine Inch Nails album With Teeth provides insight into Reznor’s heavy use of Pro Tools, in fact, there isn’t any effect or recording trickery implemented pre or during production. EQing (which is only used occasionally for effect or repairs, not for everything) and compression are done on the computer, as is the application of effects to recorded sound.[7]

The list of plug-ins on With Teeth is extensive to say the least. The ‘Izotope Trash’ plug-in supplies distortion, ‘RE Vibe’ is used for reverb and T racks/the Cycling 74 pluggo (primarily using the turbo synth) supply electronically generated sound. Reznor also uses the Tom Erbe VST spectral shaper (which is wrapped as a RTAS plug in Protools), Bomb factory plug-ins (“Over 200 instruments from 1888 to present, set up, plugged in and ready to track. Sounds you simply won't find anywhere else”)[8], ‘Unique Recording Software’ EQs, the Audio ease Nautilus Bundle (‘a crazy sounding and very resonant EQ’[9]) and the Granular synth River Run which, Reznor claims can be used to make ‘any sound you want’.[10]

Guitar tracks are recorded generally through line 6 PODs or native instruments guitar rig software. However, Reznor also makes use of various Marshall, Mesa, Line 6, Fender and Diezel amps. The vocals are recorded through a Blue Microphone[11] (see http://www.bluemic.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Products&file=index) with occasional use of Celemony’s Melodine (a program that allows you to edit vocals on a piano roll[12]). Sequencing on With Teeth is done using Ableton live (loop-based software music sequencer for Mac and Windows designed to be used for performance as much as studio music creation)[13]. According to an article in a Digizine magazine ‘there is a huge native instruments presence across the entire with teeth album’.

For touring, Reznor has invested in the digidesign VENUE live sound systems, which allow him to use Pro Tools plug-ins on tour.[14]

After listening to a number of bands that Reznor produced (and quite likely collaborated with) and, considering that Reznor uses the same equipment to record other bands that he would use to record Nine Inch Nails songs, I have had to conclude that he comes under the category of a niche style producer. Artists who go to Reznor to produce their music are looking for a sound like Nine Inch Nails.

Anyone who would like to see Reznor’s use of Pro Tools first hand, go to www.nin.com/onlyprotools. Here you will find the Pro Tools session for the With Teeth single ‘Only’. Be warned though, it’s for remixing only. Have fun J

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[1] Stephen Wilson, MTF week 5

[2] letter written by Bob Ezrin and posted on... http://www.torontoist.com/archives/2007/04/thank_god_for_t.php (accessed 25/4/07)

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Records (accessed 17/5/07)

[4] http://www.answers.com/topic/trent-reznor

[5] As stated in the production credits on the album cover of the game itself

[6] http://www.uncut.co.uk/music/nine_inch_nails/interviews/8597 (accessed 7/5/07)

[7] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p16

[8] http://www.bombfactory.com/studio/ (accessed 17/5/07)

[9] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p19

[10] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p19

[11] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p20

[12] http://www.celemony.com/cms/ (accessed 17/5/07)

[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableton_Live (accessed 17/5/07)

[14] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p20

mtf week 8: Genre land

FUNK!

• Two primary, distinguishable kinds (American and London),

Features of early American funk include:

• Dry and somewhat distorted recordings
• Extreme use of pan
• Clean recording
• Compression and reverb

UK funk on the other hand, uses:

· dry sounding drum kits

· darker sounding recordings

· ‘mixing in layers’ (a concept that intrigues me…I think I might explore that for one of my major assignments)

· subliminal messages embedded in the music.

Australian funk outfits usually meet the American and UK styles midway. Regardless of the style of funk, the first beat is always heavily emphasised. Essentially a ‘live format’ that requires little or no postproduction. A good funk recording is one that accurately catches ‘the Groove’[1].

Reggae.

• Guitar and keyboards panned through opposite speakers.
• Compression on ‘clean guitar’
• phasers and flangers on keyboards

I was interested to note that some of the sounds I was familiar with in music by artists like Gorillaz are an evolution of a reggae/hip hop fondness of rhythmic delay on snares and cymbals (these effects are prominent in Dub music).

The Blues

• Close micing on pianos.
• Harmonicas are recorded with shure Green Mics.
• The likes of Xavier Rudd tap on an old suitcase and mic it up for a backing track.
• Natural sounding music with little postproduction.

Jazz

• ‘live’ music. Anti postproduction, pro gathering an entire ensemble in a nice, echoing hall and (with some strategic mic placement) recording the thing and leaving it well alone. A good Jazz recording captures the sound with minimum embellishment.[2]

‘Hard Rock’

• ‘smiley curve’ in the EQ. (Lots of bass balanced with lots of treble)
• Compressed guitar solos
• Lots of attack (or ‘click) on the drum kit

Nifty tricks used by hard rock artists include:

• panning guitar and distorted bass through left and right (Rage Against the Machine)
• Using protools trickery to put their listener on edge (System of a Down)
• Double tracking of vocals

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[1] Stephen Fields, MTF week 8, level 4 tutorial room Shultz building, Adelaide uni, 9/5/07

[2] Stephen Fields, MTF week 8, level 4 tutorial room Shultz building, Adelaide uni, 9/5/07

MTF Wk 8 (The write up is coming....)

Well, one of this week’s presentations featured a producer who then became a musician (not a terribly famous one but never the less, the musician come producer pattern has been broken at last. In fact, becoming a musician it seemed to me was a symptom of being a sound engineer, interesting, interesting, a first for the books). Who is the man in question? Steven Wilson, creative mind behind Porcupine Tree (yep, I’d never heard of them either). This man is a self taught musician/producer who in his early years did things including exploring scraping mics over guitar strings and inventing a primitive form of multi tracking including much recording of recordings played back through multiple cassette players (reminds me of Stockhausen and his ilk, ahh, Stockhausen you eccentric, There is No Point!) {Curious about this Stockhausen fellow (if you like techno, you ought to be)? Go and check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Stockhausen or this http://youtube.com/watch?v=v-1Vmr9xjg4 (damn string instruments think they can do anything. This isn’t exactly accurate as the original piece would have consisted of electronic sounds but it gives an idea never the less…. If nothing else, you should check this out, it’s less than a minute http://youtube.com/watch?v=JxuftUJrago&mode=related&search= how ironic that to my 1990’s ears this sounds cliché. } I think I like this producer. A) When he used a real drummer for the first time, he was reluctant to return to using drum machines. Could it be that, like myself, he has not the mind of a composer. Given the choice between having someone else invent a drum part for me and having to write one myself, I can tell you now I would opt for the former. Perhaps like myself, Steve Wilson likes/needs the creative input of others to make new music. B) He is anti surround sound *does little dance of joy *. OK, he likes surround sound I think…but realises that, realistically, you can’t have the entire audience sitting in the sweet spot. I know in forum I have never been privileged enough to sit in the sweet spot. In fact, even in sound engineering live, I have never found this mystical sweet spot. How is one supposed to hear the ‘out of phase’ sound that David Lokan goes on about when one can’t even find the stereo sweet spot? Biased? You better believe I am. Also, I finally found out what the ‘wall of sound’ is courtesy of a talk on suspected murderer and all round nasty guy Phil Spektor. And the Wall of Sound is…..’dense layers that reproduce well on tape players and duke boxes’ (and why not mix for the lowest denominator, that way, everyone can hear your skills, not just owners of 5.1 surround sound systems). Wall of Sound recordings capitalised on double and sometimes even triple tracking for that extra big sound. Although he eventually ate his words, Spektor was against stereo mixing when it first came out. It amused me to hear that distorted vocals in some of Spektor’s productions were simply a consequence of careless disregard of fidelity loss.

mtf 7: I think I see a pattern forming

This week’s talks made me wonder about a few things. Separation of instruments when recording, analogue versus digital and the complete and utter pointlessness of 5.1 surround sound in music. Kevin Shirley recorded some of rock/metal’s big names in a live setting. Why do we go to all the effort and hassle of recording instrumental lines separately? Every band member needs to hear the rest of the instruments to be able to play their part and recording parts separately is quite time consuming. Shirley has proven that you can record commercial releases live, I am left wondering why more producers don't make use of this. And that brings me to my next query. What the heck is with so called 'live' albums being multi-tracked and tampered with post gig? If anything should be possible to get down in one take, it's one of these. A quick note on Shirley's drum micing technique, Shirley regards the drum kit as one instrument and refuses to mic up each individual part. He close-mics up the kick and the two toms and uses overheads for the rest, something I am actually pretty keen to try as I tend to find the crack of the snare to always be too sharp/bright and painful to listen to up loud. Perhaps micing it with an overhead would positively affect the sound. Next, on mixing and matching recording platforms (something that just keeps cropping up in peoples’ talks). What of those of us that are only just getting into production now and learning it at a theoretical level (rather than from an old professional)? We know analogue exists but we are being trained on digital, Will we even know how to use analogue should we encounter it? Will we care? We certainly aren't going to actively seek it out without knowing what its glories are. Surely it is only a matter of time before it dies out. A talk on Ross Robertson (giver of voice to the fad of Nu-metal...later, denouncer of fad of Nu-metal as it stagnated) brought up the issue of raw sound versus ‘plug-in’ sound. I guess the choice of raw or ‘plug-in’ is an artistic choice, or maybe it’s a case of just staying with what you know. It might be that a synthesized sound or a raw guitar sound lends itself to the writing of song. If the song is a good one, it will be able to cross over from raw to synthesized to raw again easily. The proof? A cover of Nine Inch Nails’ hurt by Johnny Cash. Nine Inch Nails: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgSWRicWIy4&mode=related&search= Johnny Cash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO9dbmJ_2zU (this was the last song Cash released by the looks of it, how cool is that?! How honoured would Reznor feel!) I wasn’t sure if presentations would lend themselves to worthwhile blog writing in the beginning but it has proven interesting to see, time and time again, these same old statements cropping up. If anyone can ‘sell’ 5.1 surround to me, I’d love to hear them try.

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.