Building A Tower of Baeble
In late November, we hooked up with audio engineer Paul Vazquez backstage at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. As Papercuts sound-checked, we had a look at Vazquez’s single-tower live recording station he’d setup at stage right to record Scottish indie-pop band Camera Obscura, the night’s headliners. This live recording would ultimately marry to a four-camera HD video shoot produced by NYC’s Baeble Music, kings of the indie concert video.
Camera Obscura played Music Hall of Williamsburg in November and Baeble was there to capture it for audiences around the world.
Baeble is both a destination website – BaebleMusic.com – and video content creator with a proprietary, embeddable video player and distribution channels for plugging its musical video content globally. Baeble partners with labels and artists to create unique video content and then share in its multiple revenue streams.
“The owner of Baeble, David Moffly, came out of the stock photography industry,” notes Baeble content manager David Pitz.
“That business is all about creating and distributing content across a wide network and packaging that content in a variety of different ways. He looked at the music industry and saw an opportunity to do something similar with music video content. Baeble creates proprietary content that we either own or license for a term, and then we monetize that in a variety of ways.”
So, Camera Obscura’s going to play a sold-out show at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Baeble contacts the band’s label, 4AD/Beggers Group, expressing interest in producing the concert video. Beggers checks with Camera Obscura, and they’re on. Camera Obscura, who was already going to play that sold-out show, gets a professionally produced concert video out of the deal (see below), along with revenue generated by Baeble licensing that video.
“We have a good relationship with the folks at Beggars,” says Pitz. “We’ve done a number of concerts with them — Voxtrot, Blonde Redhead, Friendly Fires, New Pornographers; so we have a good solid licensing template set up with them.”
Baeble’s revenue model is three-pronged: they sell advertising onto the video which plays on their website and gets embedded on other blogs and websites worldwide; they license the content to other providers (i.e. IPTV stations in South America, Asia, etc.); and they sell full concert DVDs and high-quality downloads through Amazon and The Orchard.
“The bigger artists, like Camera Obscura, will typically control the distribution somewhat, so we create and license the content for a term, and then they own it in the end,” explains Pitz. “Something as high-profile and global as Camera Obscura, or say Passion Pit, which we shot at Central Park Summerstage, is great for pumping our platform. We may be restricted on distribution, but our embeddable player gets posted on tons of blogs and websites which is great for our exposure.
“Also, the labels love it — we’re creating great marketing tools for their digital marketing departments. We’ve had calls from artist managers wanting us to send them video they can use to solicit for David Letterman, and other shows. Live music’s so big right now and Baeble’s creating some really nice assets for people to market and promote their artists.”
Capturing The Music & The Room
Over the last two years, Vazquez and his company, Digital Mission, has handled live recording for all the Baeble concert videos, from Passion Pit in Central Park to Thao with The Get Down Stay Down at Philly’s First Unitarian Church to Super Furry Animals at the Highline Ballroom. Venue to venue, and artist to artist, the recording challenges vary, as does the value-proposition for Baeble.
“Some venues see Baeble as a marketing opportunity, but most of the marquis NYC venues require that we pay an origination fee,” Pitz points out. “And that can be substantial. Although, having to pay these fees does raise the bar for who can actually produce this kind of content, and it does ensure that we have leverage to get what we want.”
Paul Vazquez at his rig on-stage at Music Hall of Williamsburg
A Bowery Presents venue, Music Hall of Williamsburg is one such marquis room and Vazquez has recorded here before. “We did Beirut here last year,” he recalls.
“And that was one of the more unique shows, where we had glockenspiel, accordion, upright bass…all kinds of acoustic instruments on top of guitars and drums. At this point, we’re not mixing live, so I’ll work with the touring engineer ahead of time to figure out what I might use out of my own microphone cabinet to best-capture everything, and then I can work out where it all sits in the mix in my home studio.”
Vazquez’s rig consists of a Mac Pro 2 Dual Core running Apogee Symphony via Apogee AD16x on the front-end, with preamps by API, Manley, Pendulum, True Systems and PreSonus, and a whole slew ‘o mics from Neumann, Holophone, AKG (C460Bs), Shure (57s, Beta52, 57A), Audix (D6), AEA (R88s, R92s), Sennheiser (421), Electro-Voice (RE-20s) and Heil (PR40s). He records and mixes in Cubase.
Holophone H2Pro mounted on the balcony at Music Hall to capture the room/audience
At Music Hall for Camera Obscura, he hung the Holophone H2Pro 8-channel surround sound microphone up over the center of the balcony. “This is only a 24 track show, so I’m running another 8 channels of ambient mics,” Vazquez describes.
“Each preamp has a duplicate output so I can take each signal to the computer and to the backup recorder, an Alesis HD24. So, at the end of the night, I’ve captured the data on the hard drives of the computer, on the HD24 and it’s also copied onto another hard-drive in the computer.”
Typically, bands will use their own touring mics, but Vazquez often coordinates with the touring engineer to add mics wherever they might enhance the sound. “I’ll bring out the ribbon mics for guitars and horns, but very often there’s not too much you can add to the stage setup, especially if they’re sharing a drum riser with the opener. Best thing I can do is use some of the better mics I have for the audience and just capture that sound really well so that I can produce a really enveloping, convincing live recording.”
New Venues, New Concert Experiences
Baeble is also producing a series called “The Guest Apartment,” where they host more intimate performances in a West Village townhouse. It’s their venue, so no origination fees, plus artists get to perform in a more controlled environment. Recent performers at The Guest Apartment include AA Bondy, Langhorne Slim (see below), Elizabeth and the Catapult, Lissie and Calexico.
Watch the full concert at baeblemusic.com
“The big concert productions can be pretty expensive, between the origination fees and overall production costs,” says Pitz. “And video’s become so important, and so many bands wanted to get involved with us, so we came up with this Guest Apartment series which allows us to work with a much broader range of artists. Publicists love it and bands are really open to it because we make them look really good. It’s professionally produced unique content that a lot of bands cannot afford to do themselves.”
Vazquez will occasionally record The Guest Apartment performances as well. “For Matisyahu and Taylor Barton, we brought the remote rig in there to do a more studio-level production,” says Vazquez, “So the artists are able to do second takes, have a little more control.”
Recording and shooting in so many different kinds of venues brings an important variety to Baeble’s content. “We shot Wavves at Market Hotel and it was just insane,” describes Pitz. “This is a dirty little club and the kids are going crazy and the band’s stage-diving with their instruments. In that case, it’s all about capturing that energy, that hazy, chaotic aesthetic. And then we’ll do something like Camera Obscura that will look and sound very crisp so that you can hear everything — in that case, it’s all about the songs.”
Visit Baeble Music at http://www.baeblemusic.com. And follow them at Twitter for music news and links to new videos @BaebleMusic. Contact Paul Vazquez for all your live recording needs via http://www.digitalmissiononline.com.