Vintage Service

Call me Old Fashioned.

 I remember a time when the end user was King. A time before the big box shops and internet sales that a dealer or manufacturers rep would come visit you at the studio or venue to show their latest products. You would get a demonstration, then they would leave it with you for a week or so to try it out. Then if you liked it, guess what.....you would by it from them! We wouldn't go on Ebay or Amazon to find it, we would buy it from the people that provided the SERVICE. Then, after some time passed the salesman would come back to see how you were doing with a follow up, provide any more training you would need and make sure you were completely happy. Some people look for vintage gear, I look for vintage service. And it worked very well, just ask a company called Digidesign how their product "Pro Tools" became the industry standard.
 With the onslaught of crappy consumer users, came the crappy consumer gear with prices cut so low, that companies could no longer pay a field rep to have one on one contact with the end user. The majority of consumers now are more concerned with how cheap they can get something, rather than the quality and type of ground support you get. Some manufacturers support is non existent, it's cheaper to buy another product from the box shop than to get it fixed by a human. Some that do offer support, offer it in terms of paid email tickets. Where is the human touch any more.....cue Rick Springfield.
 There are a few dealers/reps that offer personal support and I encourage you to support them to the best of your ability because they will support you. Make an investment in your craft, not just a purchase. Support the industry that supports you.
 Dealers and Reps....support your customers! Check up on them, give them a phone call and make sure they are happy with what you just sold them. Word of mouth does travel a long way these days and it can be your strongest ally. And don't focus on the superstars to get an ad in print, here's a little secret, they will use what they want when working on their projects.  Make sure all your customers are happy big and small. Treat us how you would like to be treated and hear us roar your praises. Screw us over and feel the wrath of modern day technology. We are the Curmudgeons! Here us ROAR!

Recording and Mixing "The Whole Earth" OR How Presonus invaded my life.

Recently I was called to record and mix a live praise and worship event for release on CD.
The dates were clear so, I took the project because for me capturing and mixing a live event is my forte. It's what I first learned to do when I started to record and I much prefer it to sitting in a studio all day.
The call came from a friend of a friend and turned out to be one of the nicest people I've met. You never know how the person is going to be to work with, especially going in blind. Our first meeting was a meet and greet and I got to look at the gear that was on site.They had a



       separate mix room in a balcony off of the main lobby. In the room is two Presonus Studio Live 16 input mixers channel mixers tied together creating a 32 input mixer, a pair of Yamaha msp5 monitor and an iMac loaded with Cubase and Capture. I was familiar with everything in that room, I have used the Presonus mixers before, I owned a pair of Yamaha msp7's and have used Cubase often. I felt good and confident about what they had. Then I found out they were lacking in the microphone end. Especially for a live recording. I ended up calling my friends at my local Shure representatives office. Not only would this provide me with great recording mics, but also give the church a chance to demo some stellar Shure recording gear, a win-win! They came through with some of Shure's top recording mics such as the wonderful KSM44 and and I won't forget what they did for me,
As the time grew closer to the rehearsal dates I just kept getting an uneasy feeling about using Cubase. I don't know what it was, but I wasn't feeling good about it. I started looking at other programs that I could bring and load into their Mac, but nothing thrilled me or made me feel at ease. Then I remembered the Presonus includes a program with their consoles called "Capture". It's basically just a very stripped down, non bloated recorder that integrates tightly with the Studio Live mixers. If anything was going to give me the best stability to capture (no pun intended) the event this would be it. Capture records wave files, then you can import those files into any DAW program you like to work in. All righty, I have the mics, and I have a plan for recording, lets rehears and see how this goes.
I'm thrilled to report that the rehearsal went fantastic without a single glitch and I recorded it for back up purposes. So I'm feeling super confident now, I know it's going to work....feeling great!
Time for the event! (You're just waiting for the bad news to drop aren't you?) everything is setup ready to go, I start rolling during the opening welcome and kept right on rolling through nearly two hours of music doing a live stereo mix for video, while Capture was faithfully doing its job. The event ended and all was success! I checked the files, all there all good to go. The rep from Shure came to collect the mics, made some new contacts and everyone is happy.
Now....getting on with it....I had to decide what I was going to use to mix. I didn't have the budget to go into a studio and mix like I normally would do, so I had to build a setup at home. I had a computer with some software, and converters. I needed some speakers.
After doing a lot of research looking for accurate but low cost speakers I found Equator Audio's D5 model speaker. A compact coaxial speakers the received high praise for being spot accurate. The company has a 60 money back guarantee so what's to lose to try them? I received my pair and burned them in for a while, and started to mix. I have to confess, that in the middle of mixing on these things, I started to not like them. They're not exciting. Then I noticed something.....everywhere I played the references, they sounded exactly the same as what came out of the Equators at home. Deadly accurate. Translating very well. I was in love!
So before all that got started I had to decide what software to use. Now, if you have read any of my previous blogs, you know I pretty much have tried every DAW out there and I hate them all. I needed something that would be stable, but also would let me use my right brain to mix more than my left. Something that wouldn't make me feel like I was operating a computer, but rather a mixer.
I already owned some software but wasn't too thrilled with the idea of mixing two hours worth of music on any of it.
Again Presonus invades my life. I've heard about how easy their Studio One software is to use, how good it sounds, etc. but then I found out it will straight open Capture sessions. Then I remembered how stable and how much fun I had recording with the Presonus gear I decided to try Studio One.

I downloaded the demo, and at first was a little skeptical, given Studio One's affordable price tag. I kind of saw it as more of a non-pro type app. Also, the feeling of trying to learn a new DAW while mixing a paying clients project seemed a little.......well, silly.
I must confess that not only was it easy to learn, it is actually fun to work in. Opening the Capture project was a breeze. The workflow is intuitive. Most importantly this is not a toy program. This is a seriously professional program that just gets out of your way and let's you create. I am very happy with my results so far and have become a big fan of Presonus...and Shure in the process.
I'm really thrilled with how the project came together and in the process I have discovered the perfect tools that I need to do remote recordings with confidence and with great results!

2012 Christmas Eve

Here is a Link to this year's Christmas Eve service. I really enjoy live recordings but this is a straight FOH mix. I had a lot of fun on this one because of having to mic the string quartet that played in conjunction to a pre recorded multi track.
 I decided to use a pair of Audio Technica 4050's in a Spaced Omni configuration for the strings and
Was happy with the results that the mic choice gave me.  The mix came straight off my Avid D show console and track playback was throughs Pro Tools HD10. The music that follows the reading is all live with no tracks and is the raw mix off the D Show.
 I've been very pleased with the results I've been getting from the D Show. It's a fun console to mix on with a great sound and the Pro Tools integration is superb. It makes live remote recording a breeze.

Surviving

Bob Dylan sings “The times, they are a changing”. The whole music production business seems to be going through a pretty tough shift.

I learned and starting mixing on a Sony analog console feeding a 24 track 2” tape machine. It wasn’t a glamorous as we like to remember. What I do remember was when the first DAW’s started to roll out, how cool we thought it was and the anticipation for what the future would hold.

Fast forward 20 years. DAW’s have pretty much taken over and enslaved humanity to their grids. Fine. I can deal with that. Along with that comes the unexpected competition of people buying the equipment and recording/mixing their own stuff. Fine. I’ll learn to deal with that.

What does not come in a box is the hours upon hours of experience placing microphones around instruments for the very best results. What it doesn’t replace is the knowledge of how to manage a whole lotta frequencies in a limited spectrum. It does not come with a magic spell to create the perfect sense of space around your vocals that were recorded in a closet. Admittedly I am still learning the above and more, but I’ve spent a lot of time perfecting more skills that just how to load software onto a computer.

Sometimes to remain competitive, one has to scale back and do some trimming. I’ve had just about every workstation out there but none really made me happy for mixing, until recently…and it’s not really a big name daw, it doesn’t cost a lot either but the way it is laid out is perfect for me. I still get great sounding mixes because I know how to engineer, but now the process is a whole lot more pleasing to me and that makes my results even better. I’m happy that I scaled back, life is simpler, music is sweeter and the blue birds aren’t as blue any more!

See…. I believe that technology gets in the way of art and with most tools that are available it’s almost impossible to let go of your left brain and make artistic decisions. For that reason, I have really changed the way I work and with what I work. I have what fits ME, not what a dude in a guitar store said was “The industry standard”. It took a while, and some people thought I was insane because of how many DAW’s I bought and sold, but I was on a quest, believing that I shouldn’t have to conform myself to something I did not like. The big boys all have their preferences….Neve, API, SSL, Harrison, usually when a mixer finds something that he A) Likes the sound of and B) fits how they work, they stick with that for most of their career. They all don’t try to fit into SSL’s workflow…why should we be forced into one DAW’s workflow? Find what works best for you and makes you happy. I have.

But back to surviving…. to make the best with what you have it takes skills. Real skills. That’s something I will never scale back on. To survive, learn to listen, learn what the equipment does then get creative. Use whatever tools you want and survive!

Avid tech support review

                                                                                           

My assessment of Avid's phone support.....for those who care.
First let me say that phone support is not free, in order to talk to someone on the phone, one has to purchase a "support ticket" it's a number code that you punch in at the beginning of the phone call. I guess so they weed out all the "I can't get my Digi 001 to work" calls. The fees for the support calls are $49 for PT and $79 for HD or you can buy a support contract for $599 a year to get unlimited calls in that year along with any software updates released that year for free.
It may be just me but it feels like between this new support paradigm and the new pricing/ update cost Avid is trying to cater more to the professional money making users rather than spending time on the hobbiest.
Now, on to the adventure. After spending 30 minutes on the phone, my call was put through to a gentleman who asked if I wanted to continue to hold or have a call back, but all the call backs for the day were already booked so the call back would be the next day. I opted continue to wait since I wouldn't be in front of the machine the next day.
Another 30 minutes and my call was answered by tech support. The gentleman was very nice, non condescending, didn't make me feel like an idiot for calling (believe me some tech support treat you like a child that just ate the crayons). I described my problem and he took me right to the solution within 5 minutes my problems was solved.Admittedly the problem was that I had a setting off, it was not the fault of the software but I would have never figured it out. I would be raving about support if it wasn't for the wait. Avid needs to reduce wait time, otherwise a pleasant and productive experience. I can understand the wait if support were free, but we are purchasing a service, so we can expect a timely response. i would say one half hour tops would be fair to expect....oh and some nice music to listen to while on hold.

The Studio: A Freelancer’s best tool.

For a while now, I've been doing freelance work whenever I have the opportunity to do so. Because of that I've been collecting equipment that I thought I would need to do that job well.
At the end of the year, I decided to streamline and focus my life, so I sold almost all the gear I had and am working on getting rid of the rest of it, except my copy of Pro Tools, plugins and my controllers. Why? Well, beyond the refocus, I came to this realization....there are these businesses out there that are designed from the ground up to help me do what I do better. They are called "studios". I am talking about built from the ground up and acoustically designed to record sound- studio…..not your basement.

  The studio is the freelancers best tool. they have the gear and rooms that help you capture great sounds without having to invade some ones basement. The studio's focus is to help you get the best sound you possibly can. Some even provide instruments...something I as a freelance engineer would not stock for sure.

So, I have decided to declutter my life of the gear, and start using studios and it has relieved me of the stress of feeling like I need to acquire these things in order to be successful. Let them deal with it, that's why they went into business. I can track in a beautiful room then using my Pro Tools rig, mix where I want.

I see this as a two fold solution. 1- it de-stresses my life and 2- it helps the studio economy, and that's a good thing. Work the studio fee into your fee and pay the studio from that. If you feel that your client doesn't have the budget, try working something out with them and try working something out with the studio manager, I'm sure they will find a way to not turn down cash. Get the client in the studio for a tour, that will raise their level of excitement and they will want to record there after actually being in the room.
Finally for me, it gives me confidence in my recordings. I've never really enjoyed basement recordings because I knew that wouldn't be the best way to do a project and if it isn't going to be a stellar project, I really didn't want to waste my time. So I can feel good that I am getting the best possible tracks to mix with, I don't have to blow every penny I earn collecting gear, the band is super excited and the local studio is making money. Sounds like a Win-Win-Win to me.