Many years ago, I got a chance to sit behind a name-brand producer/engineer (no names here, only credits: One Direction, Flo Rida, Leona Lewis) and watch him mix a song for the band Augustana.
There was a bit of contention: This particular producer/engineer saw no such slash in his title; he believed in his mix; he was attempting to beat out another engineer whom the label had hired.
Watching him work was alternately validating (“Yep, I do that too!”) and inspiring (“Ohhhhh that’s how you do that!”), but towards the end of the mix he did something I had never seen a renowned professional do before:
He popped a software limiter onto the end of his stereo buss (Sonnox, if memory serves) and pushed the song really, truly hard—hard enough to step on the mastering engineer’s toes.
So I opened my big mouth: “Isn’t that going to make life harder for the mastering engineer?”
This, it turns out, was exactly the point: he had no say when it came to the mastering engineer; that was the label’s choice. Who could predict what the mastering engineer would do? Who could predict which mastering engineer the label would hire?
No. For this situation, it was far better to protect the integrity of his mix against the possibility of a sloppy mastering job; to master it as much as possible on the mixing end; to maximize loudness, width, and tonal excellence while keeping the transients intact.
This was my professional introduction to the world of DIY mastering—or to put it bluntly, my first lesson in how to protect your track from a mastering engineer you don’t know, and therefore, don’t trust.
About five years have past since that session—five years of unbelievable improvements in the world of digital; five years that brought us the Slate FG-X, the Ozone 5 mastering bundle, and the FabFilter Pro bundle.
Now iZotope offers a new iteration of its Ozone bundle, Ozone 6, and once again, the boundaries for what you can do with software in the mastering process have been successfully pushed.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
UNDER THE HOOD
The first thing you’ll notice upon instantiating Ozone 6 (or operating it in standalone mode) for the first time is the drastic change to their graphic user interface.
Behold the totally updated GUI of Ozone 6!
Gone are the emerald greens isles of previous Ozones. Now the coloring scheme is quite different: light lines of blue against a flat black background, with bands depicted in a sliding scale from purple to red via gradations of the color spectrum (ROYGBV). The metering has changed as well—turquoise, rather than bright green.
Almost immediately, the new interface reminded me of a conversation I had with Jefferson Hobbs, Lead Developer on iZotope’s RX team; in an interview for Forbes.com, he told me that “Blue is actually made in the brain. It actually takes a little bit longer for the brain to comprehend that, so it’s great as background color.”
This struck a chord: the fact that blue—a color that takes longer to register in our brains—dominates this UI is indicative of something, at least to me:
If blue really makes us stop and think (even for a split second), then the new blue-on-black color scheme must be intended to make us stop and think as well. Personally, I like this. Stopping and thinking is a vital mindset for mastering, especially in a DIY/home setting.
In addition to color changes, the interface has been streamlined and simplified—wide sliders have been reduced to slick indications, for example.
The press release claims these simplifications were enacted to create “an elegant visual aesthetic and fluid workflow…in order to bring the creative elements of mastering front and center and allow users to define their own sound.”
Now, I’m a skeptical curmudgeon by nature, so this kind of speech tends to make me wary—especially when it comes to mastering plugins. My tendency is to think, “I want more technicalities, damn it! More variable controls! More parameters! More…things!”
I must confess that the idea of simplifying Ozone’s already excellent interface to further some “visual aesthetic” seemed anathema to me; it was such visual “streamlining” that forced me out of my preferred DAW (Logic) and into Pro Tools.
Indeed, after dealing with the Garageband-tinged UI of Logic Pro X, I had made up my mind: hefty re-inventions in favor of aesthetics always seem to backfire.
So imagine my delight in finding Ozone 6’s new UI to be largely helpful. Features which used to lurk behind that pesky option screen now exist right out there in the open (the ability to level match when A/B’ing against bypass mode, for instance, or the “surgical” option for the EQ).
This vastly improves the UX (user experience): With so many vital and heretofore closeted features now openly placed, you’re free to dive into the sonics of mastering—the actual meat of it—much faster.
Want to switch the order of the modules? No need to squint for the fine print and click on a box to open some matrix window; just drag and drop at the bottom of your screen and hear the difference immediately. Ozone 6 is filled with many such improvements to the overall experience.
Perhaps my favorite improvement is the new default settings for crossover bands between components.
This is a big step forward, at least for me; in previous iterations, if you wanted to set the bands of two different modules independently (for example, if you wanted to widen a band between 1 and 5k while simultaneously compressing a band between 3 and 6k), you had to manually locate that option and set it yourself upon instantiating the plug. In Ozone 6, such independence between modules is the new normal.
Some of these streamlining maneuvers carry over into the individual components themselves, often with favorable outcomes: the advanced section of Ozone 5 offered you five different algorithms for the Maximizer (fast, slow, IRC I, IRC II, and IRC III); Ozone 6 does away with two of these algorithms altogether (fast and slow), and to be honest, I did not miss them.
But unfortunately, some of the old features have been simplified out of existence: Both the dynamic gate and the mastering reverb have left us entirely, most likely because their practical uses are few and far between.
Yet sometimes I found myself wishing I could reach for these discontinued features: In one of my tests, I needed the reverb in order to soften up a particularly dry Jazz mix.
Luckily, Team Ozone has accounted for this, albeit in a slightly roundabout way; in standalone mode, you can port third party plugins into your chain—you can instantiate the Ozone 5 reverb if you so choose, or indeed, any reverb. Heck, you can even port in a whole new instantiation of Ozone 6, something MC Escher would probably do if he were an audio engineer:
Ozone 6 allows you to port in your favorite 3rd party plugins.
There are, however some real downsides to this overall ethos of re-invention/simplification, and here’s an example: Ozone 5 gave you an “amount slider” which basically functioned as a mix knob for all applicable effects: Exciter, Imager, and Dynamics.
The OLD way of Ozone 5 required you to think a little less via the sliders.
As you can see above, you could affect the amount of overall processing with these highlighted sliders.
But no such across-the-board functionality seems to exist in Ozone 6; if you want to enact broad scale reductions across an entire module, you’ll have to keep the relationships correct in your head as you work with each individual slider.
So yes, there are some downsides, but in practical applications, these downsides don’t present all that much of a problem, as you can always reach for an instance of Ozone 5 (or even 4) to complement 6.
I believe this is the coolest thing about the entire Ozone line: iZotope doesn’t merely improve upon an algorithm, they incorporate it into an already astounding ecosystem of DSP.
The sound of Ozone 6 is indeed excellent—but so was the sound of Ozone 5 and Ozone 4; iZotope has always ridden a fine line between improving their sonic capabilities and offering updated “takes” on classic Ozone aesthetics, and the net result is compounded versatility:
Just because I like the sound of Ozone 6’s Exciter doesn’t mean I won’t reach for Ozone 4’s Imager (which I really enjoy), and thankfully, iZotope’s upgrades allow me to do just that.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Ozone 6 has given us an entirely new module: the Dynamic EQ (available in the advanced edition only).
The Dynamic EQ has arrived.
Up until last week, I believed one multiband plugin towered above all the others: the Fabfilter Pro MB.
I couldn’t stand how other digital multiband compressors affected the rest of my mix—how they influenced the bands I wasn’t compressing; I always fought against the life-draining qualities of multiband processing until I stumbled upon the FabFilter Pro MB.
But with Ozone 6’s Dynamic EQ, I’ve found a process which can stand up to FabFilter—something which even gives FabFilter a run for their money; it’s quite a lovely feeling to know I have two trustworthy options in my band-specific dynamic arsenal, as opposed to one.
Of course, I’d love to be able to “click in” as many bands as I deem necessary, as you can with FabFilter’s frequency based products; indeed, there’s a lot more I would like to see within Ozone 6:
That drag-and-drop module window at the bottom—wouldn’t it be cool if it were endlessly expandable, if I could instantiate as many components as I wanted to? Right now, you’re stuck with one instance of a module in a set, predetermined number of slots.
Likewise, I’d love to see Ozone take their new defaults further: those aforementioned, independently variable crossover points—wouldn’t it be fantastic if I could set separate bands not only between modules, but between Mid/Side as well? Imagine the versatility!
Yet somehow I’m not disappointed about what could be improved. For one thing, you can always pop on another instance of the plugin (although, to be fair, Ozone 6 is fairly CPU intensive; my system craps out after three instantiations).
For another, iZotope has proven again and again that they listen to their customer base (for examples of this, read my Forbes.com on article RX).
What iZotope has given us is basically excellent—from the EQ to the Insight metering platform (available in the advanced iteration only)—and there’s every indication to believe that improvements will be made to whatever is lacking.
But enough of me bloviating. Let’s take this sucker for a spin.
TESTS!
To test Ozone 6, I concocted two different experiments, spotlighting two different concepts: 1) let’s see how far we’ve come in the world of digital mastering, and 2) let’s see how well Ozone 6 stands up to the professional mastering world.
Keep in mind the following caveat as you listen to these tests: I have had Ozone 6 in my arsenal for all of four days.
I don’t know about you, but my learning curve on new plugins is a bit steep—usually my results sound a whole lot worse before they sound better because I tend to go hog-wild with new toys. Only after a couple of weeks do I begin to understand how to use a new piece of software subtly. That’s just how my particular brain works.
That having been said, I’m pretty happy with these results. Soon, you’ll be the judge.
THE FIRST TEST: HOW FAR HAVE WE COME?
For this test, I’m going back to the beginning of my mixing career: one of the first records I mixed was an album of modern Jazz entitled “Gift.” Jayme Silverstein wrote the music (he’s now a touring bass player for Miguel and Nico & Vinz).
I believe the mix was decent, but you’d never know it—the mastering engineer totally messed it up. To be fair, the mastering engineer was also me; budget constraints deemed that necessary. So I did what I could with what I had at the time: good converters (Cranesong Hedd 192, Lynx Aurora 16), an API 2500, and a bunch of Waves plugins.
Never mind the gear though; my talent for mastering, as you’ll soon hear, was lacking.
Here’s the initial mix.(“Gift” — no mastering):
Now, Here’s my DIY, hack-job master of many years ago (“Gift” — Original Master).
So here’s the test: if I only used Ozone 6, could I fashion a master that would trounce the original and compete with similar offerings in the current modern Jazz landscape?
Turns out the answer isn’t just “yes”—it’s yes, and how (“Gift” — Ozone 6 master):
Compare with “Gift” — Ozone 6 master, 2nd pass:.
Compare with “Gift” — Ozone 6 master, 3rd pass:
These are three completely different masters, each of them treated in an increasingly aggressive manner. To my ears, each example trumps the harsh, boxy, and narrow qualities of the original master from so many years ago; played against modern Jazz tunes of a similar ilk, all of these examples stand up.
All of this was accomplished efficiently and expeditiously using one plugin.
Let’s move on to the next test.
SECOND TEST: OZONE 6 VERSUS AN ESTABLISHED MASTERING HOUSE
In 2011, I mixed a single, “Battery,” for the Chicago-based Indie band Empire State Express. Here’s a snippet of the original mix, with nothing on the stereo buss:
“Battery” — Original Mix:
Here’s the reference master I handed in to the mastering engineer (“Battery” — Original L2’d Reference):
Loud, yes, but also quite lifeless and digital sounding.
At this point in my mixing practice, I was still slamming things for clients with Waves’ L2s.
I had nothing in the way of hardware limiters. I boasted no Slate products, no FabFilter bundles. I had only started to use Ozone 5—and I was using it rather unsubtly.
The final master ultimately blew mine away; of course it did: the mastering engineer was Grammy nominated, worked at one of New York’s premier mastering houses, and sported credits such as Kaiser Chiefs, Jimmy Cliff, and Bjork. More than that, I’ve always dug this engineer’s style, hence my continued recommendation to use this person whenever possible.
“Battery” — Original Master:
A rock solid master.
So here’s the question: after three years of digital innovations—three years of better algorithms and better sonics—could I compete with this analogue master in the digital world, DIY style, at home, with only Ozone 6?
Let’s find out (“Battery” — Ozone 6 master):
I believe that for this snippet of this song, Ozone got right up in the previous master’s headspace. Now, to be fair, I do believe that the analogue, expensive mastering job wins out, especially in the upper mids. Plus, the original breathes in a way that the Ozone master hasn’t quite matched; listen to the cymbal hits to really hear what I’m talking about.
Still, I’m not considering this a defeat: With Ozone 6, I’ve gotten very close—much closer than I’ve ever come before, and close enough to impress my friends in mastering circles (they too tended to side with the analog master, but found the Ozone had its own comparable virtues).
Mind you, this is after four scant days of using the product. Imagine what one could do with a thorough understanding of this software?
For me, the alacrity with which I achieved a reasonable result is proof that iZotope has achieved their purported goal: “an elegant visual aesthetic and fluid workflow…in order to bring the creative elements of mastering front and center.”
Certainly this streamlined workflow worked when it came to eliciting fast results of sterner stuff than my old L2’d references.
That having been said, it would be irresponsible for me not to issue the following disclaimer: Mastering your own mix is always a risky endeavor. It’s somewhat like editing your own article—you’re bound to let a few typos slide, only in this case, the harmless typo could be an unmitigated frequency ripping your head off.
Mastering my own work is something I always advise my clients against—indeed, I readily provide the names of well respected engineers anytime a client asks me to put on the mastering hat.
However, not all situations are created equal. Sometimes budget constraints force you to master your own mix. Sometimes you don’t have final say over who’s going to master the project, no matter how loudly your name rings out.
In situations such as these, Ozone 6 gets the job done. More than that, it gets the job done remarkably well. It’s as simple as that.
– As a composer of musicals, Nick Messitte has seen his work enjoy the stages of Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival and New York’s Musical Theater Festival to critical acclaim; as a guitarist, he’s played with internationally renowned musicians, including Sam Rivers, Hawksley Workman, Gary Thomas, Devin Grey and Daniel Levine. Nick is also a sound designer of theater and film (with credits such as the award winning I Hate Myself and Sumi) and a producer/engineer of records (credits include Bullet Proof Stocking’s critically acclaimed EP Down To The Top, which Nick mixed, mastered, and supplied with additional instrumentation). Lastly, he is a writer/cultural critic, whose musings can be seen regularly at Forbes.com.
All along, Glyn Johns has been contemplating this book tour.
That only begins to tell the story of how important this engineer’s engineer is to recorded music. Imagine if your audio resume included The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton. What if you could play potential clients Abbey Road, Led Zeppelin, “My Generation,” and “Sympathy for the Devil” as examples of your work?
If you want to sit in the same room with the man who not only ran cables for the Beatles’ famed rooftop concert, but SUGGESTED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE, now’s your chance: Glyn Johns will be appearing tonight, Friday November 14th, at BookCourt, 163 Court Street in Brooklyn, at 7:00 PM. Upping the ante, he’ll be in conversation with Ben Bridwell, the singer and founding member of Band of Horses. FREE to attend, but we strongly suggest arriving early.
Johns will also be appearing in Cleveland on Saturday, November 15th at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and wraps up his tour Tuesday, November 18 in Nashville at Salon@615, at 6:15pm.
Want to learn it straight from a legend? You KNOW you do. These priceless appearances are a SonicScoop Sure Thing!
A handful of documentaries released since the turn of the new century, from 2002’s Standing In the Shadows of Motown to 2013’s Muscle Shoals, have helped us put names and faces to the backing musicians that brought some of our favorite recordings to life.
It can be surprising to learn just how many classic recordings were churned out by the same small teams of musicians. For discerning listeners, these seasoned session players may be just as responsible for the impact of the music as the artists whose names grace the covers. Let’s meet some of the most prolific in history.
The Funk Brothers
Before the release of Standing in the Shadows of Motown, different explanations for the genesis of the ‘Motown Sound’ abounded: It was the effervescence of singers like young Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross; the Midas touch of label head Berry Gordy; even the feel and warmth of Studio A, the humble basement where the music was recorded.
None of those things hurt, but the easiest answer was often the most overlooked: the session musicians—collectively known as “The Funk Brothers”—were a constant force behind all of the Motown’s greatest hits.
When Berry Gordy needed musicians for his new Motown label in 1959, he poached them from the jazz and blues clubs of Detroit, hand-picking musicians like bassist James Jamerson to become the core of his in-house band.
To balance tones from multiple percussionists (Jack Ashford, Benny Benjamin, “Pistol” Allen, Uriel Jones, and Eddie “Bongo” Brown), keyboard players (Joe Hunter, Earl Van Dyke, and later Johnny Griffith), and guitar players (Robert White, Eddie Willis, and Joe Messina), the Funk Brothers had to operate as a unit, listening to and making space for their fellow players—dialing back performances and egos in service of grooves.
By day, the Funk Brothers provided the backbone and backbeats for a slew of hits by artists like The Contours, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, and The Four Tops. By night, they let off steam from their pressure-filled day jobs by playing jazz and blues back in the clubs of Detroit.
Ideas from a previous night’s jam session might make it into the next day’s recording session. As tambourine/vibes player Jack Ashford says at one point during Standing in the Shadows of Motown, The Funk Brothers had played together for so long that “the only thing that ever changed was the changes”.
Everyone knows “My Girl” as a classic by The Temptations, but could you imagine the song without Robert White’s iconic guitar hook throughout?
Earl Palmer
When Motown relocated to Los Angeles in 1972, essentially dissolving The Funk Brothers, drummer Earl Palmer landed on the label’s short list of local studio musicians.
An entertainer since the age of 5, Palmer tap-danced alongside his mother in black vaudeville shows in their native New Orleans, performing as “Baby Earl Palmer”. After serving in World War II, Palmer learned piano, percussion, and sight-reading at The Gruenwald School of Music in New Orleans. Soon after, he began a drumming career that spanned four decades and thousands of recordings.
In New Orleans, Palmer played on classics likes Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti”, Fats Domino’s “The Fat Man” and Smiley Lewis’ “I Hear You Knocking”. In 1957, Palmer moved to Los Angeles and found work with Ricky Nelson (“I’m Walkin’”), Eddie Cochran (“Summertime Blues”) and Ritchie Valens (“La Bamba”, “Donna”).
In the 60s, Palmer played on songs by The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, The Mamas and the Papas, and Frank Sinatra. He also branched out into film and television, providing drums for TV themes like “The Flintstones” and “Mission: Impossible”, and full-fledged movie scores like “In the Heat of the Night” and “Cool Hand Luke”. The musician’s union counted Palmer as playing on 450 dates in 1967 alone.
Though his work slowed down in the 70s and 80s, Palmer could still be heard on records by Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, and Elvis Costello. “The drums [are] an accompanying instrument, really,” Palmer has said. “If you don’t know how to accompany, then you’re not a good drummer, you’re just a soloist.”
Listen to The Fats Domino song, “The Fat Man”, below and you can hear—despite the mix—Palmer’s trademark backbeat driving the song. That groove, still novel in 1949, would soon become a staple of rock and roll. “That song required a strong afterbeat throughout the whole piece,” said Palmer. “With Dixieland, you had a strong afterbeat only after you got to the last chorus. It was sort of a new approach to rhythm music.”
The Wrecking Crew
In LA, Earl Palmer fell in with a collection of musicians sometimes referred to as “The First Call Gang” due to their status as the go-to session players for producers of the day. The group would evolve over time, eventually earning a new name, coined by one of its young drummers, a friend of Earl Palmer’s named Hal Blaine. Blaine dubbed the collective “The Wrecking Crew”.
Pick a record to come out of Los Angeles in the 60s and chances are that The Wrecking Crew’s fingerprints are all over it, even if their names aren’t. They helped Phil Spector create his “wall of sound” and The Beach Boys get their “Pet Sounds”. They laid down the groove for Nancy Sinatra’s walking boots and they built Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”.
As guitarist Bill Pittman put it: “You leave the house at seven o’clock in the morning, and you’re at Universal at nine till noon; now you’re at Capitol Records at one, you just got time to get there, then you got a jingle at four, then we’re on a date with somebody at eight, then the Beach Boys at midnight, and you do that five days a week…jeez, man, you get burned out.”
Not that anyone was complaining. Guitarist Tommy Tedesco– who wrote a regular column called Studio Log for Guitar PlayerMagazine in the 70s and 80s, documenting his studio exploits–said “When that red light goes on, whether it’s running a race or playing guitar, whatever it is, all the adrenaline goes through the body. Some guys are at their best then, some say they’re at their worst. I’m at my best with the pressure.”
Bassist and guitarist Carol Kaye‑one of the few women to achieve such success in the boys’ club that was the studio musician scene‑has commented non-chalantly that at one point she was making more money than the President of the United States.
A few members of The Wrecking Crew, notably Dr. John, Leon Russell and Glen Campbell, went on to enjoy solo careers later on, while Hal Blaine is considered by many to be ‘the most recorded drummer in history’.
In the rare studio footage below, you can hear the group in all their good vibrating glory, buoying the classic Beach Boys track with direction from Brian Wilson. (That’s a young Hal Blaine behind the drumkit).
A film about The Wrecking Crew—produced and directed by Tommy Tedesco’s son, Denny Tedesco—was completed in 2008 after 12 years of filming, but has yet to receive distribution. The problem? Tedesco needed to raise funds to license the massive amount of music The Wrecking Crew performed on. Tedesco has since raised the money via Kickstarter, and says a commercial release of the film is coming soon.
Joey Waronker
Drummer Joey Waronker may not fit the mold of a typical studio musician. He doesn’t hail from a collective and isn’t known for his contributions to chart-topping pop hits. In fact, Waronker’s initial reaction to the idea of becoming a session musician was that “It sounded awful. [Like I’d be] like the kind of guy who would beplaying on radio commercials.”
Waronker’s technical ability in a wide range of styles, however, have made him one of today’s most in-demand drummers for those subsets of music that were once affectionately called “Alternative”. Hang out in a dorm room at a liberal arts college, zip through an iPod on the floor next to someone’s bong, and you’re likely to find at least one record that Waronker has played on.
Aside from being a mainstay in Beck’s live and recording bands for years, Waronker has recorded tracks for Elliot Smith, Smashing Pumpkins, X bassist John Doe, R.L. Burnside, AIR, Gnarls Barkley, M83, and Paul McCartney, to name a few. He’s also one of the few people not named “Bill Berry” to ever play drums for the band R.E.M. (Waronker toured and recorded with the band after Berry quit in 1997).
Waronker can currently be heard in the band Ultraista alongside producer Nigel Godrich and singer Laura Bettison, and again with Godrich, Flea, and Thom Yorke in their newer group Atoms for Peace.
Waronker’s drumming can be heard on the Beck song “Novacane” below, interspersed with sampled drums. (Waronker’s drumming begins at 25 seconds).
Booker T. and the M.G.’s
Detroit and Motown had The Funk Brothers. Memphis-based Stax Records had Booker T. and the M.G.’s.
As part of the house band for Stax in the 60s, Booker T. Jones (organ and piano), Steve Cropper (guitar), Lewie Steinberg (bass) and Al Jackson, Jr. (drums) provided the backing tracks for artists like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, and Bill Withers (until 1965, when Steinberg was permanently replaced by Donald “Duck” Dunn).
Grantland’s Steven Hyden makes the case that Booker T. and the M.G.’s might have been the American rock band of the mid-60s. They were perhaps unique for a major group of session musicians in that they put out their own instrumental albums in addition to session work. The M.G.’s were also one of the first fully-integrated rock bands in America, hailing from the South no less.
“Hold On, I’m Coming’” by Sam and Dave or “In the Midnight Hour” by Wilson Pickett would be fine examples of Booker T. and the Mug’s’ prowess as backing musicians. But since studio musicians are so rarely given the spotlight of the stars, instead check out the band’s original instrumental–and #1 hit–“Green Onions” below.
The Swampers/The Muscle Shoals Sound
Less than 200 miles from Memphis, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, something similar was happening: As with Stax, white and black studio musicians were working together every day, this time to create grooves that crossed the lines between R&B, soul, and country.
Producer Rick Hall, along with partners Billy Sherrill and Tom Stafford, started FAME Recording Studios in the heart of Muscle Shoals in the late 50s. (Hall would later assume sole ownership). Hall used the proceeds from the label’s first hit recording in 1961, Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On”, which was soon covered by The Rolling Stones, to build a new studio on Avalon Avenue, where it still sits today as an Alabama Historical Landmark.
Muscle Shoals is often praised for its magical environment, and the effect it has had on visiting musicians and their music. (The Rolling Stones and U2 both recorded there). FAME’s homegrown talent provided plenty of other reasons to visit, though.
As Lynyrd Skynyrd name-checked in “Sweet Home Alabama”: “Now Muscle Shoals has got The Swampers/And they’ve been known to pick a song or two.” A bit of a conservative estimate. The Muscle Shoals rhythm section aka “The Swampers”–originally Barry Beckett (keyboards), Roger Hawkins (Drums), David Hood (Bass), and Jimmy Johnson (guitar)–actually played on over 75 gold and platinum records. They backed up Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and Etta James. That’s them underneath The Staples Sisters’ “I’ll Take You There” and Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman”.
Despite these hits, the musicians themselves were so unknown that more than once, a popular black performer asked to record music with a ‘really funky black rhythm section like Muscle Shoals’ (The Swampers themselves were all white).
In 1969, The Swampers left FAME to start their own recording studio nearby, called Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. This splintering move did not diminish the great output from the quiet town on the banks of the Tennessee River. Instead, it doubled. . Rick Hall brought new musicians into FAME and never missed a beat, recording hits from the Osmonds, Clarence Carter, and Mac Davis in the 70s. Hall was nominated for a Grammy for “Producer of the Year” in 1970. Across town, The Swampers played on records like Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” and The Staples Singers’ “I’ll Take You There”. They also introduced more mainstream artists, like the Stones and Bob Seger, to the town and the studio, affirming its place in musical lore. In 2009, The Black Keys recorded their album “Brothers” there.
Listen to Wilson Pickett’s “Land of 1000 Dances” below and get a load of Roger Hawkins’ indelible drum breaks at 40 seconds and a 1:20.
The Dap-Kings
In 2001, in a modest Bushwick, Brooklyn brownstone, Gabe Roth and Neal Sugarman set out to make their own version of Motown—a tight-knit family of polished funk and soul musicians working together to make unforgettable music. So far so good.
Daptone Records rose from the ashes of Roth and Sugarman’s previous venture, Desco Records, and its current success stands in stark contrast to its messy, humble beginnings. As Roth attempted to turn his brownstone into a viable recording studio on a shoestring budget during a brutal New York winter, his label’s future stars helped him wire his electricity (Sharon Jones), install radiators (Charles Bradley), and knock down walls (The Budos Band).
In 2014, Daptone is a thriving outlier in the music industry. For one thing, its label heads, Roth and Sugarman, are members of The Dap-Kings, Sharon Jones’ backing band. Guitarist Thomas Brenneck began with the Dap-Kings, then joined the label again with his own group, The Budos Band. He now leads the Menahan Street Band, the house band of his own Dunham Studios (Dunham Records is a subsidiary of Daptone), and Charles Bradley’s backing band.
Artists like Hank Shockley, Mark Ronson, Amy Winehouse, and Michael Bublé have all used the Daptone Musicians for their own recordings. Listen to Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” below, and from the first drum hits and bassline, you can hear a sound unique in the current musical landscape.
James Jamerson
The tortured geniuses are supposed to be at the front of the stage, but legendary bassist James Jamerson made his career as a sideman. Many would argue he was the most brilliant player to ever provide low-end.
An original Funk Brother, Jamerson and his mother moved from the South up to Detroit during the auto boom of the 50s. As a child, Jamerson would take a long stick, attach a rubber band to it, and go behind his house to ‘make the ants dance’. He soon learned to play the piano, at his cousin Louise’s house, but wouldn’t touch an actual bass until he was a high-school student in Detroit. As friend Clifford Mack explained for the book Standing in the Shadows of Motown, he and Jamerson met in the hallway on the way to the music room and “When we got there, we started checking out different instruments trying to figure out what we wanted to play, and after a while, James noticed the upright bass laying on the floor in the back of the room. He picked it up and started strummin’ it and he said, ‘I’ll be playing this within six months’.
Jamerson’s son, James Jamerson, Jr. recalled that his father saw and heard music everywhere, even in the ba-dump ba-dump movement of a large woman’s backside as she walked by outside the studio one day.
In Standing in the Shadows of Motown, The Funk Brothers recall that Jamerson was usually the first to kick off a groove, or the first to join it once it had already started, and that he had a preternatural understanding of his instrument. And he did it all using just “The Hook”, the nickname of his right index finger, the only finger he used to pluck the strings.
Jamerson was undoubtedly a virtuoso, even in spite of himself. One famous story revolves around the recording of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? Gaye–desperately wanting Jamerson to play bass on his album–stopped by a club where Jamerson was performing one night and asked him to visit the studio afterward. Jamerson obliged, but being both loaded drunk from binge drinking and exhausted, he could barely sit upright to play. So he didn’t. Jamerson played the charts to one of Marvin Gaye’s all-time classics while drunkenly lying on his back on the studio floor.
That was the talent and musical love of James Jamerson. Listen to an isolation of Jamerson’s bass and Gaye’s vocals on “What’s Going On?” below and note how you can almost hear the whole song just in the bass. For a bonus, check out the following video made by Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck (another modern collective of studio musicians) that shows a visualization of one of Jamerson’s most unforgettable basslines, Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in my Life”.
In U2’s 35-plus years of existence, no member has ever died, been fired, or left. The members of U2 have never gone on an “indefinite hiatus” or succumbed to splintering solo projects. On the contrary, they have performed at an extremely high level and been one of the world’s most popular bands throughout most of their career.
Image by Flickr User klemas
They are, indisputably, in the “1%” of bands, as much for their financial standing as for their mastery of the band dynamic.
Commentators will continue to debate whether their recent Apple-sponsored release, “Songs of Innocence”, was a spammy debacle or a savvy and disruptive business move. A more interesting discussion, however, is about how U2 got here—standing shoulder to shoulder with one of the world’s biggest technology giants. How could four Irish teens with the musical ability of a bag of hammers keep a band together long enough to become a commercial juggernaut to begin with, and how can younger groups learn from their unlikely success?
Decisions and Divisions (of Labor)
U2’s most recognizable member is, without a doubt, Bono, the band’s outspoken frontman. In public, Bono certainly plays up–even encourages–the perception that he has an outsized ego. He wears sunglasses and devil horns. He gives TED talks and hangs out with Bill Gates. He shows up in seemingly every music documentary ever, spouting holy opinions you probably weren’t interested in to begin with. Behind the scenes and within the confines of his band, though, Bono is just another member—one with equal say in every decision and equal stake in every outcome.
Image by Flickr User Robert Hensley
In her book Band Together: Internal Dynamics in U2, R.E.M., Radiohead, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mirit Eliraz quotes U2’s longtime manager Paul McGuinness as calling the band “obsessively—sometimes annoyingly—democratic.” (McGuinness receives a fifth of royalty shares, just like each band member). Though at times the band members have called this quest for unanimous consent on issues both big and small “excruciating”, they also recognize the benefit: decisions can’t be made just for the sake of one member’s ego.
Perhaps you’ve been in a band, had a bad show or practice, and had that ego-driven moment when you look sideways at your bandmate and think ‘I can sing/play guitar better than that guy.’ But what if you all play different instruments, you all stink equally and you know it?
“When you think of our start, we all started with minus points,” bassist Adam Clayton told The Bergen County Record in 1985. “There wasn’t even the remotest possibility of anyone having an ego. More importantly, we reveled in seeing each other getting better.” Over time, each member developed a singular style, a singular input to the music, and thus an indispensable role in the band. Although Bono will continue to get the headlines, he is also the first to admit that the band members all need each other to write music, and that if they challenge each other, all the better. “I always think you’re as good as the arguments you get,” he has said.
True Faith
Is U2 the best-selling Christian rock band of all time? One could make a case, as Joshua Rothman suggested in his 2014 New Yorker article “The Church of U2”. In addition to every member besides Adam Clayton being devoutly Christian, the band has several songs with either thinly veiled, or open references to religion and faith.
In their early years, this faith caused friction within the band, particularly for The Edge, who contemplated leaving the October-era U2, feeling that his religious spirituality and the rockstar lifestyle were at odds. He and the band eventually realized it was a imaginary division that could be flipped on its head. Bono, The Edge, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., broke with Shalom, the organized religious community that they belonged to in Ireland, redirecting their impulse toward faith back into the band.
“I think the most important thing, the most important element in painting a picture, writing a song, making a movie, whatever, is that it be truthful,” Bono told Mother Jones in 1989, in response to a question of rock and religion being at odds. “Rock ‘n’ roll, and the blues, they’re truthful. It says in the Scriptures, ‘Know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”
Bono has said before that the band is ‘on a mission’ to improve the world, but stops short of shoehorning any specific religious dogma into that mission statement. However the mission takes shape, being in one of the most successful rock bands in the world provides plenty of resources and influence for good. “To miss realizing the potential of what a band like U2 can achieve in various different spheres, to me, is betrayal,” Bono told Spin in 2009.
The Challenge of the Music
A typical band’s songwriting, recording, and touring schedule may look something like this:
Write a bunch of songs, and practice the hell out of them when no one is looking until they are very good (but you are sort of sick of them),
In an effort to save money, record them quickly and with minimal mistakes (and without much room for creative exploration)
Play those same songs over and over again to new audiences to promote the “new” album you just released, featuring songs that are probably now over a year old.
The perks of being U2, on the other hand, include things like unlimited studio time, indefinite album schedules, infinite recording budgets, and diverse production crews featuring multiple collaborators. This allows U2 to do most of their songwriting in the studio. Some elements evolve from jam sessions, and crystallize through meticulous re-working. . Others—like Bono’s vocal ideas—are invented on the fly and only captured because of U2’s legendary insistence on non-stop recording in the studio.
During the making Achtung Baby and Zooropa, U2 cycled through producers Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, and Flood regularly, and sometimes had all three working at once. Likewise, the band could work independently of one another simultaneously, doing overdubs or cooking up new ideas, often adding them at the last minute—sometimes to mixes that were otherwise finished already.
“What I did was push the performance aspect very hard, often to the point of recklessness,” Daniel Lanois said of the Achtung sessions. “I think that musical recklessness goes a long way on records. You don’t hear enough of it.”
Takes were often completed in “live” settings: the band performing all together with monitor mixes rather than headphones. Bleed was not a major consideration.
Often, hours of jamming would lead to nothing. The band filled over 180 2-hour DAT tapes with overdubs, not using most of them, but never giving permission to get rid of them either. They spent months recording in Berlin’s famed Hansa studios, only to come back with little more than a few half-formed ideas. They flew back from concerts in other European countries just to record at home in Dublin the same night.
Image by Flickr User Kurisu
Frivolous and indulgent? Maybe for any band not named U2. But when making music is your only job, when you can’t write songs without your bandmates, and when you’re not running out of money any time soon, writing in the studio sometimes makes practical sense.
U2 is a band that relishes the inherent challenges of sculpting music out of marble in real-time. They search for transcendent moments in the music—“the reason why we’re all here”—as Bono says in the beginning of Davis Guggenheim’s 2011 documentary From the Sky Down”. The film’s title comes from Bono’s own interpretation of how the band makes their music: They don’t write songs and then try to get these ‘moments’ out of them; rather, the moments of divine inspiration “become” the song.
In one memorable sequence of the film, we see U2 revisit the DAT recordings from the difficult beginnings of their Achtung Baby sessions—another time that the members doubted their future together. During the bridge to a jam that would become “Mysterious Ways”, The Edge throws in his first attempts at the chords for the song “One”. On the DAT, we hear the band immediately latch onto the idea. They pluck through the bridge of the song and work it over in the studio, with Bono leading the way and the band finding their own accompaniment around him. Later on, Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno add their input, and eventually “One” becomes an “organic” classic.
While other bands may begin their tour with material that is already both tired and tiring to them, the members of U2 set off on their massive tours bringing painstakingly engineered hot rods they are only now just getting to drive as fast as they want to. It’s difficult to get sick of your own music when it’s still as new to you as it is to audiences.
What Color is Your Band’s Parachute?
Perhaps the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling would have made more sense if they had invoked U2. Not only can corporations be people, but people can be corporations, too. Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. are all individuals, but they also make up the wildly successful business that is U2.
They have never shied away from ambition, either. (Bono even has his own private equity firm, Elevation Partners). They had two of the highest grossing tours in history, including the all-time #1, their 360 tour. It’s probably best not to think about just how much money U2 generates, unless you want blood to shoot out of your eyes.
Bands may break up all the time, but wildly successful businesses don’t willfully close up shop with any regularity. If anything, they are forced out or bought out. No one is toppling U2 from the perch of U2-dom, and no one can buy out U2, because it is extremely unlikely that anyone can do a better job of being U2 than U2.
U2 is now a one-of-kind band, a brand, and as long as the market wants its music, they will always have that market cornered. In turn, U2’s success creates a positive feedback loop. It allows them to promote the causes they deem worthwhile. It allows them to pursue the musical directions and methodologies that tickle their fancy on any given day. And it further enriches the spiritual and familial relationships they’ve already spent a lifetime cultivating. Nice work if you can get it.
It can be easy to throw darts at U2–at Bono’s relentless public pontificating, at the seeming excess of the band’s tours and its corporate might, at its ability to literally force a new album into people’s music collections. Peel back the layers of the onion, though, and it’s hard not to find a (mostly) likable group of four life-long friends who are (mostly) self-aware and (mostly) down-to-earth. They got lucky in finding a thing they could all do together and do better than anyone else in the world, and decided to dig their fingernails in and hang on to it for life. Wouldn’t you?
“We’re unemployable, you know,” said Bono at the premiere of “From the Sky Down” at The Toronto Film Festival. “It’s like the priesthood. There’s only one way out, in a coffin.”
EDM is big in every way — The audience digs into a concert at Sonar Festival on June 14, 2014 in Barcelona Spain (Image supplied by Shutterstock).
Music fans around the globe have all – at some point – fell victim to genre stereotyping in one form or another.
Whether it be through fashion trends, disposition, social class, drug use or any of the other million possible societal divisions, one thing we can be sure of is that EDM, more formally known as electronic dance music, hasn’t been exempt from this type of systematization.
From clubs to extensive festivals like Electric Zoo which just wrapped in NYC this weekend, EDM is a genre that has exploded in popularity among young people over the past decade – it planted its roots in the late 80’s and has developed into an unstoppable and lucrative scene, to say the least.
EDM is a genre that you either love or hate, and its fans will happily describe to you the powerful force that the music provides them: it regularly compels them to move every muscle in their body. Although many of the genre’s artists have taken to their laptops, the necessity of a knowledgeable producer and engineer in the studio has been the key to making what is good into great…and an Internet buzz into a live sensation.
Disco Debuts…
In the late 1960’s and early 70’s, electronic disco music can be said to have started it all, but it was not until the late 1970’s when electronic instruments started to be utilized in dance music.
Acts like Donna Summer and Gary Numan were at the forefront, using synthesizers, sequencers, drum machines and samplers to lay down the backdrop for some very catchy dance tracks. Proto-synth groups like Kraftwerk had their own role in influencing musical generations to come.
Donna Summer laid the groundwork for EDM.
Established producers who could afford it, were soon able to get their hands on this type of equipment and were becoming quite successful within the genre, sparking a movement now known as electronic dance music, or EDM.
Disco music did not exist and succeed despite adversity however, a prime example of which is the famed Disco Demolition Night which took place at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1979 when anti-disco campaigner Steve Dahl was authorized by the White Sox to blow up a crate filled with disco records donated by sour rock and roll fans. (The stunt took place between the first and second games of a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers. After turning into a massive riot and destructive anti-disco rally, the event ended up causing damage to the field and a forfeit by the White Sox.)
Then Dub to DJ’s…
Subgenres like Dub and synth-pop started to creep their way into the ‘80’s club scene, and dance music really started to explode into what it never was before, a way of life.
MIDI, which was now available, would be every producer’s go-to for the backing of a modern dance track. DJs began remixing old tracks, while house music and techno began to crop up, and the world was embracing the genre with open arms. Some of the more popular equipment and synthesizers being used included the Roland Jupiter-8 and SH-101, as well as the Yamaha DX7 & Korg M1. Bass synthesizers were also being utilized at this time.
It was in the late 1980’s and early 90’s when rave festivals and warehouse parties started to spring up. Techno and trance blew up and the genre was getting heavy radio attention to help it spread its wings. It became a scene and a way of life for listeners. These parties, the majority of which took place in New York City, were pioneered by the likes of DJs like Frankie Bones & DJ Scotto, whose efforts would later give rise to the idea of promotional groups who would front and manage these events.
Ultra Music Festival in Florida, an EDM event that is still very popular today, became one of them. New, young DJs with passion for the genre were now able to obtain their own equipment at a reasonable price because of the demanding market. They began to gain notoriety on their own – later ending up performing in front of a sold out crowd at one of these warehouse parties.
Although dance music groups like The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy were getting noticed by the big record labels and worldwide producers, EDM as its own distinct genre still occurred at a more underground level during this time. It was really Europe who was harnessing the techno and EDM style at the time, and acts like Daft Punk and David Guetta (who would collaborate with hip-hop acts like The Black Eyed Peas) were getting tons of attention. European festivals like Belgium’s Tomorrowland were increasing in attendance.
Mixing EDM: Best Practices
Engineer Kerry Pompeo shares EDM mixing best practices (photo courtesy of SAE NY)
Production was getting very digital and mastering became the key behind the power and clarity of these immensely popular records. Engineers began experimenting with different forms of electronic sounds and helping to isolate the energy that fans of the genre craved.
Kerry Pompeo, a Brooklyn-based freelance engineer affiliated with 440 Sound Studios and Beatstreet Productions, tells SonicScoop about the essence of her EDM process:
“I work with some very talented up and coming producers and DJs (S.O.U.P., Live City, Gazzo) who are on point with their engineering and mix as they go,” she says. “It’s important for me to be transparent and carry out their vision. Generally, my job is to make the track sound bigger, wider and more moving.
“In order to achieve this, it’s essential to maximize the impact of individual sounds while having them take up the least amount of sonic real estate. I filter a LOT, especially low end—the kick and bass need that space and it helps lift synths and vocals. By removing irrelevant frequencies you free up energy and can be more effective in your compression stages.
“Side-chain the kick and it will hit you in the chest every time – tasteful use of this technique will add movement and space in your track. On the master, I use mid-side processing to mono all low end frequencies and create even more width for the vocals and synths.
“It’s important to reference current songs in the genre – if your track doesn’t sonically compete with what’s out there, chances are it won’t make it into a DJ’s set.”
Multi-Dimensional
The visual process (including lighting and stage effects) became an important component of the U.S. EDM, dubstep, and techno scenes, which all began to explode in the mid-2000’s. The Internet became an important outlet for the propagation of the genre through the spreading of songs and videos. Las Vegas became a place where these acts would showcase their music at large, poolside parties (usually in the form of residencies or multiple-day events).
These residencies were also becoming popular in New York City. The Electric Daisy Carnival was a popular EDM festival established in New York around that time as well, and it still carries a heavy buzz each year.
Nowadays, acts like Skrillex, Calvin Harris, deadmau5, Afrojack, and Diplo are just some of the current leaders of the genre. EDM has been getting negative attention from the media as of late for the prevalence of drug use during performances, particularly ecstasy or its purer form known as “molly” and there have been a number of fan deaths at these EDM festivals.
It has tied into the stereotype of the glow-stick-using, tie-dye and eccentric neon-outfit-wearing, drug and alcohol-abusing individual that so many describe as the typical EDM fanatic.
This overgeneralization, paired with the skyrocketing success of arena acts like Avicii and Swedish House Mafia, seems to be the current state of the genre to many. Surprisingly, its radio charisma (somewhat unnecessary since it has had such a bustling Internet presence) had been almost nonexistent until very recently, mostly available only on paid or private radio.
Watch It Grow
Expect EDM to keep us all D’ing. (Image supplied by Shutterstock).
Electronic dance music is a genre that will only grow and prosper. Whether it’s up your alley or not, EDM is music’s new way of looking at things.
It comes with a set of skills that all producers and engineers will need to know. Now that the music industry has embraced the use of electronic sounds and methods, imagine the endless possibilities out there. Will there be new ways to make the music that we all love to hear? Who will be the next unique EDM act to electrify a scene and genre that is already so powerful?
Put on your dancing shoes and get ready for your next EDM party, because they’re not going to stop any time soon.
– Michael Haskoor is a freelance music writer with a passion for music. He currently enjoys writing for Diffuser.fm and The Deli Magazine and will focus this series (done exclusively for SonicScoop) around the effect that studio production has had on different genres of music.
One key to success in the fast-paced world of audio is the ability to adapt. For an artist, producer, engineer or manufacturer, having the ability to go with the flow will make it much easier to garner success.
Ben Findlay at FOH for Robert Plant at the Royal Albert Hall (Credit Carolyn Findlay 2013)
For engineer Ben Findlay, being prepared for new opportunities and adaptable to changes in technology has helped to bring his unique set of skills to arenas and screens around the world.
Early Years
The start of Findlay’s career in audio can be traced back to his time in Bristol. He broke into the business working as an engineer for a live sound company and was making a name for himself.
After a couple of successful years behind the live desks, Findlay got the opportunity of a lifetime, to work at the famed Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire. Founded by Peter Gabriel, Findlay found himself recording and mixing in a top-flight studio and, in turn, fulfilling a childhood dream—entering the “major leagues” of sound engineering. “As a kid, I always wanted to be a studio engineer,” Findlay stated during a Skype video chat.
Being a part of the Real World Studios team meant that Findlay was part of the Peter Gabriel team. When Gabriel did sessions outside of his home studio for radio broadcasts, the multi-tracks were sent back to Findlay, who would mix the show before returning it to the radio station. “For six months, I had been mixing Peter’s live shows while engineer Jim Warren was out on tour as the FOH mixer,” he recalled.
For the studio mixes, Findlay was using Gabriel’s Sony Oxford R3 console with a 48-channel Sony Dash tape machine. And to get everything sounding great, he used a combination of the onboard Oxford processing with top of the line outboard gear (an Empirical Labs Distressor, AMS S-DMX stereo delay, Eventide H3000 harmonizer, Teletronix LA2A, Decca mastering compressor, Bricasti M7, Quantec room simulator and a Sans Amp distortion).
Doors Opening
When FOH engineer Jim Warren got a call to fulfill an obligation from another tour, the vacant position was Findlay’s for the taking. “Peter asked me if I could mix the live show for him,” he remembered. “I really wanted to do it. I probably should have had reservations about it but didn’t. To be honest, it had been on my radar. When he did ask it was exciting. It was also terrifying.”
Making the move from a recording studio engineer to a FOH engineer can be very difficult. Always prepared to take on a challenge, Findlay knew that he needed to get up to speed with mixing live. Using the multi-tracks from the previous shows he’d been mixing back in the studio as playback, Findlay set up a couple of Yamaha PM1Ds in a large rehearsal space and began the process of relearning Gabriel’s music from the FOH perspective.
Since Gabriel loved the sound of his Sony R3 consoles and its famous Oxford processing, it only made sense that Findlay spent many years mixing the live shows on an Avid Profile. With the same algorithms from the R3, Sonnox developed the Oxford series of plug-ins that could be used with the Avid console. “What was fantastic about using the Profile was transitioning from the studio to the FOH—our favorite tools could easily be used in both,” Findlay said.
While using the Profile, Findlay blended Avid processing, third-party plug-ins and hardware effects to create an impeccable sound. Check out his signal flow for Peter Gabriel’s vocals (and see more plug-in settings at the end of the article):
— Audix OM6
— Avid Profile preampflier
— Avid Profile HPF
— Sonnox Oxford R3 EQ with GMLR
— Bomb Factory LA2A emulator
— Avid Profile de-esser
— Sonnox Oxford Inflator
— Line 6 echo
— Quantec Yardstick / Bricasti M7
Ben Findlay PT mix window for “Back to Front” mix.
Continued Success
Quickly becoming a musical commodity, as many Gabriel fans can attest, Findlay was able to parlay his experience running FOH for Peter Gabriel into stints behind the board with Robert Plant (2009, 2013), Yusuf Islam (a.k.a. Cat Stevens, 2009), Sting (2010), Jeff Beck (2011), Lionel Richie (2011) and even a one-off with Sir Paul McCartney (2010). “After a phone call completely out of the blue, I found myself flying to São Paulo, Brazil, to mix the gig of a lifetime,” Findlay said of the experience. “Paul was playing to a packed Morumbi Stadium, and I was to mix the TV sound!”
Ben Findlay FOH for Peter Gabriel at 02 Arena in London (Credit Jason Kelley 2013)
By 2012, Findlay was once again behind the desk for Gabriel, this time on the singer-songwriter’s “Back to Front Tour” commemorating the 25th anniversary of his hit 1986 album, SO. On the tour, Findlay acted as both FOH engineer and location recording engineer, respectively using an SSL Live console and a portable Pro Tools rig.
His set up for Gabriel’s shows switched from the Profile to the SSL Live — after all, Gabriel purchased Solid State Logic in 2005. Unlike the Profile, third-party plug-ins like the Oxford series can’t be accessed on the SSL Live console. Findlay had to, and was able to, recapture the sonic brilliance of the live performance with a whole new set of tools to work with.
Back to the Studio
Things truly came full circle for Findlay with Gabriel’s “Back to Front” tour; not only did Findlay serve as the FOH engineer on location, afterward he headed back into the studio, put on his mix engineer hat and began mixing the tracks for the later released 4K Ultra High Definition feature film and DVD (2014).
Returning to his roots, Findlay used many of the same tools he’d used with Gabriel years earlier, when he’d first begun gaining traction for his mixing chops. Although Findlay’s long trip from the studio to the road and back again may have returned him to a familiar setting, along the way he’s undoubtedly secured his place among the elite of sound reinforcement and mixing.
Jon Lurie is an audio engineer and musician living in Sunnyside, Queens. His favorite Beatles album is Abbey Road. Follow him on the interweb @jon_lurie.
Ben Findlay’s EQ settings for Gabriel’s vocal (Credit Ben Findlay 2014)
Ben Findlay’s compression settings for Gabriel’s vocal.
Ben Findlay’s Inflator settings for Gabriel’s vocal.
As if one rebellion weren’t enough, now David Perlick-Molinari is thick in the midst of another.
We speak not just of the perennially inventive indie rock duo French Horn Rebellion which he co-founded, but of a rather radical studio that he and his collaborators – Deidre Muro and Paul Hammer of the equally acclaimed Savoir Adore — call home base. This beautifully amorphous Brooklyn space is YouTooCanWoo, and it’s shaping up as a revolutionary new place to make music and sound.
The control room A of YouTooCanWoo draws you right in.
As Luck May Have It
A boutique studio at the crossroads of Berry and Grand in Williamsburg, YouTooCanWoo has been busy since even before it officially opened in June. The facility came together when Perlick-Molinari was musing about how to expand past the living room studio in his apartment, walked downstairs one day, and found that a sizable space on the first floor had just become available.
12 months later, the partners at YouTooCanWoo – all of them accomplished artists, composers, and sound designers – are feeling right at home. Besides numerous projects for French Horn Rebellion and Savoir Adore, artist-oriented work includes time with MGMT, Haerts, Deidre & the Dark, Ghost Beach, The Knocks, and St. Lucia. Other recent clients include MTV, Wired magazine, and the feature film Mateo.
With the flurry of album projects, music for picture, online media, film, and uncategorizasbles flying around, Perlick-Molinari isn’t sure how to classify what they do at YouTooCanWoo. “It’s not always so easy to define,” he says. “Do we just create albums for awesome bands? Or are we composers for film and TV, who are equally comfortable in that medium? We love doing both, and we get inspired by all these things.”
The view into the live room from Studio B.
Acoustic Mirror
YouTooCanWoo’s enormously appealing interior reveals a spacious, SSL Matrix-equipped Studio A control room, and a Studio B which also doubles as an isolation booth/project room. Both of those studios share a 300 sq. ft. live room more than sufficient for recording a full band. Tie lines connect all the rooms, all of it bathed in sunshine from multiple windows and gorgeous skylights.
Designed in the style of on “Art Deco reading room in a hotel lobby”, the atmosphere of YouTooCanWoo illustrates its founders’ artistry as much as any sounds they make.
“It’s a direct expression of who we are,” confirms Perlick-Molinari. “We wanted to build something representative of our own tastes, and what we want to be surrounded by. We have our favorite things here to look at and live with.”
Having had the opportunity to build the place from the ground up, and then tweaked to taste as needs arose, the YouTooCanWoo collaborators can accomplish many things under one roof.
“The studio is commercially available – it’s more of a boutique-style studio. We don’t solicit work, but we’re available for people who are into what we’re doing. This is a facility providing creative services from beginning to end: we can do postproduction, compose, do sound design, ADR, and Foley. We can also shoot video projects in the live room, while redoing sound in the control room. For us it’s been a game-changer, because we never had the space to do all these things before.”
An SSL Matrix was the right fit.
Under the Hood
YouTooCanWoo selected the Matrix, SSL’s SuperAnalogue, 40-input mixing console, to power Studio A. “I found that for the size that we are, the Matrix is the perfect match because it’s a module-style board,” states Perlick-Molinari. “I’ve been collecting different gear over the years, and with the board software I can integrate it into the signal chain very easily.”
Choice pieces plugged into the system start with mic pre’s like the API 512, 525, 550, 2500; Neve 1073LB, Trident S20, and of course an Avalon 737sp. Conversion comes via Apogee Symphony I/O, Forsell MADC2A, and Lynx Aurora.
SSL X-Rack VHD, Compressor, Dynamics, EQ is onsite, as well as a Purple Audio MC77, Anthony Demaria Labs 1000 C/L Compressor, SPL Transient Designer, ADR Compex Stereo Dynamics Processor F760XRS, Empirical Labs EL8X Distressors, UA DBX 160, Federal AM864, and ART SGE Mach II.
That last little ART box – a long-ago discontinued 1RU multi-effects guitar processor from back in the day — Is emblematic of what’s going on around YouTooCanWoo. “Paul’s dad is the very influential keyboardist Jan Hammer, and we have little bits of gear he tossed aside, including this processor that he used to make his keyboard sound like a shredding monster guitar,” Perlick-Molinari says. “I don’t know if this SGE Mach II is anything special, but on guitar and keyboards it’s great. I use that a lot on my brother Robert’s French horn in French Horn Rebellion to make it sound like something else.”
Monitoring takes place via Genelec 1032As, Focal Solo6 Bes, Mackie HR824s, and Yamaha HS50Ms. Pro Tools HD3, Logic, and Ableton Live are the DAWs, while a Golden Shield Model 4001 tape machine and Yamaha Mt4X multitrack are on hand to go old skool. Mics include Coles 4038 Ribbons, a Soundelux Elux 25, Blue Kiwi, Wunder Audio CM7 FET, Royer R121, and Microtech Gefell M930.
It’s all the better to capture the plethora of playing devices, which include a 1959 Fender Musicmaster, 1977 Fender Stratocaster, Guild Bluesbird, Martin HD28, Epiphone Hollowbody electric bass, Vox AC15 CC1, Fender Deville, and four-piece Gretsch ’67 Round Badge kit. Or trip out on keys like the Roland Jupiter 8, Rheem Transistor Organ, Farfisa VIP 255, Korg Polysix, Moog MemoryMoog and SubPhatty, plus Dave Smith Prophet ’08.
All Together Now
The best thing about this studio is that it’s equal parts salon, a scintillating center for a lush creative community the facility’s founders hang with. It’s fertile ground for the emerging circle of media producers who get where YouTooCanWoo is coming from.
David Perlick-Molinari sums it up. “We’re working with people who have a shared inspiration as to why we’re in this in the first place. It’s hard to say exactly what makes it tick, but I think it has to do with a sense of empowerment, and a sense of exploration. Curiosity is good too.”
The fourth in a series, presenting a primer on the history of musical genres and the studio basics behind them. Previous installments have focused on Blues Rock, Reggae, and Punk Rock.
A musical revolution starts with a simple idea and transforms into a genre that fans all over the world can embrace as a scene that lives on for decades on end.
A Moog Modular synth circa 1965 — a big part of what started it all (photo courtesy of http://www.moogmusic.com).
This is what happened to the already changing rock and roll scene with the introduction of the synthesizer in the late 1960’s – a development that gave birth to the vast genre known as electronic rock. A genre founded on digital experimentation, electronic rock (which was originally distinguished as progressive or prog-rock) has allowed new distinct and revolutionary acts to gain popularity almost instantly.
The studio has played a major role in this genre’s upbringing and its current industry attention. Production and mastering have always been essential in isolating and amplifying these electronic sounds in a powerful way to blast a listener with something energetic and refreshing that keeps them coming back for more.
Early Circuits
Musicians and classic rock pioneers like Ray Manzarek of The Doors, Pink Floyd, Yes, and Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues were instrumental in the formation of the genre, utilizing the Moog synthesizer to complement their band’s catchy rock songs.
Music sampling and tape manipulation started to become popular, with use of early technological developments like the Mellotron. The Mellotron was most notably initially implemented in songs like The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
With no defined border or boundary, there was a lot of leg room for musicians to now branch out into industrial rock, synth pop, dance-punk and indietronica. In the ’70s, the electronic revolution extended its reach into jazz: A prominent example of this was Herbie Hancock’s significant “Head Hunters” LP series.
Groups like Rush and Van Halen were now taking the use of synthesizers in rock to new heights and began headlining some of the largest arenas in the U.S., setting the precedent for other notable electronic rock acts. As Manzarek once said, “I thought we were gonna open up the world of poetry and music to all kinds of things, and yet, I can’t really think of anyone who’s done anything like it since.”
In a way he was right, the pioneers did open the door for electronic expression, which transformed into many other sounds and styles, but no one replicated what The Doors did. Other bands simply took their lead and did something different with it. The transition was smooth. It almost seemed like music fans were ready and waiting for it – and that’s how these genres remain in the spotlight today.
Rock the Technique
Electronic rock songs tend to either be mellow or upbeat, with echoing yet clean vocals. However, there are many instances where solely instrumental tracks suffice. Although synthesizers have always been the main form of electronic artistic expression, tannerins, theremins and later electronic drums were also implemented.
Later in the ’70s, new wave artists like Gary Numan, Kraftwerk and Ultravox were coming out on top of the scene, implementing all kinds of innovative synth-like devices. MIDI technology, which came about in the late 1980s, added further sophistication to the way different sounds could be merged with each other, giving an already experimental genre the ability to intensify in complexity. Bands like Britain’s Depeche Mode and New Order took synthpop to a new mainstream level, reaching the masses who were now jumping on board.
By the mid-late ’90s, the formation of what is now considered as our current mainstream was in the hands of some of the best producers to date, including William Orbit who helped Madonna create her smash LP “Ray of Light.” Around the same time, Moby unleashed the multi-million selling album “Play,” an LP of almost entirely electronic and production-based tracks. Soon after, Prodigy’s eclectic album “The Fat of The Land” was a chart topper.
These stunning albums, which were produced and mixed to such a high standard don’t fade, and as of last year, Prodigy’s record had sold over 10 million copies worldwide.
Bands like LCD Soundsystem had everyone’s attention with their catchy and powerful music. Often, electronic rock artists are very well-versed in self-production and now former LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy helps artists like Arcade Fire, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and David Bowie implement electronic manipulation into their indie tracks during the songwriting process and in the studio.
Nine Inch Nails, who claim more industrial rock, often dabble in laptronica (use of laptop) and after just reuniting have been selling out some of the largest U.S. venues. Their frontman, Trent Reznor, has also aided in producing albums like Dave Grohl’s “Sound City – Reel to Real.”
Guitar and/or drums are often eschewed by many electronic rock artists, who strictly rely on technology to put out their DJ/rock-themed material. Computer technology has allowed emerging artists, like Black Moth Super Rainbow, Anamanaguchi & André Obin just to name a few, to put out quality in-home recordings for release online. The Internet has allowed new artists to gain enough attention to become relevant, and get into a studio where their product can get some additional quality control.
Engineer’s Guide: The Studio Essentials
Sky Council Recording’s owner/engineer/producer/artist T.H. White commented on the keys to isolating the electronic rock genre in the studio:
“With all the easily accessible technology and laptop producers out there, it’s often assumed that electronic-based music, be it dance, rock or chill-out, is now ‘easy to create,’” White says. “That may be true at a base level, but the successful and respected producers are all excellent engineers as well. As the head of the Sky Council label, we receive submissions all the time where the ideas are cool, but the recordings clearly sound amateur, small and ‘in the box’ as we call it.
T. H. White knows electronic rock recorded right.
“To really make electronic elements in music work, we feel it needs to be combined with traditional high end tracking, mixing and mastering. Meaning lots of analog outboard gear, tube EQ, and high end microphones for tracking and mixing. And, professional mastering, not a ‘pre-set’ plug-in. The way great lengths are gone to in the studio to make a traditional rock, classical or R&B record, the same goes for electronic.
“For example, if you are using a drum machine, the individual hits need to be separated, treated with high end saturation and properly mixed into the track. Fans and producers today can identify the difference, and the availability of easy-to-use all-in-one software isn’t going to cut it alone. Listen to a Deadmau5, Kaskade, Gorrillaz or Pretty Lights LP: They are all masterfully textured to achieve a glossy timeless feel. There is a reason why you drop the needle on a Gary Numan LP today and it sounds rich and beautiful, whereas many of the early 2000’s ‘electronica’ acts have quickly slipped into obscurity…”
Programming the Future
The reach of electronic rock has been profound and it seems like a genre that will stick around and only improve with time. We live in an era in which we’re lucky to still be able to see some of the innovators perform. With talented producers becoming artists themselves, and artists becoming talented producers, it’s clear that electronic rock has a long lifespan still ahead.
What gadget will launch the genre into its next phase of development? What new artist will surprise us all? Stick around, you’re in for quite the digital ride.
– Michael Haskoor is a freelance music writer with a passion for music. He currently enjoys writing for The Deli Magazine and will focus this series (done exclusively for SonicScoop) around the effect that studio production has had on different genres of music.
You peruse the upcoming acts at your local venues and decide that not only is there little in common from one band to the next, but a lot of the bands just don’t seem very good.
So then, how do you go about finding the good bands? It’s taken me years to find a small group of great local rock bands, and I’m heavily entrenched in the industry. Sure, there are sites that showcase independent music, but rarely with a combination of quality control, genre and geographical specifications.
Even if you dedicate an entire evening, do you have the time and energy to filter through garage recordings of mediocre songs to find the band that actually keeps you from incessantly clicking “next?”
Then, if you do happen to stumble upon one, are they playing anywhere worth going to?
How much are the tickets?! Oh, and there’s no parking. Great.
What else is going on? Oh, Seinfeld re-runs. Cool.
LA hard rock band Socionic
While I agree that Seinfeld re-runs are pretty fantastic, a great local rock show is an entirely unique event. Unlike a stadium show (which also has the potential to be amazing), you can get right up to the stage, stand in front of sonic art; musicians that you can talk to and interact with after the show.
The immediacy, the raw emotion, the intimacy and the energy, the bright lights and the searing sounds all aggressively take hold. The thump of the bass in your chest, the tearing guitars, the singers breath, the crushing drums, all in second to second frames; you scream because you can’t contain yourself, you laugh, you jump, you elbow strangers. The night flies by, broken only by the pauses between bands — enough time to get a drink and stand in line for a bathroom that has you contemplating the shrubs you saw outside.
You lose yourself in a sensory waterfall, and come out feeling emotionally and physically drained. If this sounds overly romanticized, then you haven’t seen an amazing local rock show.
If you live in LA, I am not surprised. I have lived here eight years and seen two.
As a hard rock fan and artist, I decided to pull some instruments and intellects together to change that.
Before I get into my insidious plan to shift the stagnating paradigm of LA’s local rock scene, however, let me, and the various other players in this scene, paint the picture of how it looks today, and how it needs to change.
PROBLEMS
I call it the revolving door.
Joey Flores, artist and founder of LA-based online radio station, Earbits, elaborates.
“Booking agents at your average [LA] clubs will book the first 4 bands that commit to selling a certain amount of tickets while ignoring the synergy of the bands’ styles and doing nothing at all to promote the shows. Each band brings their obligatory 20-50 people…people come, stay for their band’s set, hear completely different music start up after they’re done, and then have absolutely no reason to stick around.”
Rooftop Revolutionaries
In a nutshell, that’s the scene. It’s a vicious cycle of ineffective promoters, bands feeding into the broken system and fans leaving after one set, feeling uninspired, ultimately pushing them to do anything but go out to a show the next time the opportunity arises.
As an artist, trying to build a fan base and bolster interest in your music through this revolving door is like trying to hold a meeting on a roller coaster. That said, there’s as much of a need for change from my perspective as a fan’s.
“As a concert goer I hate when I am forced to pay to enter a club and see a variety type lineup of mixed genres with no cross over or logic from one act to the next,” says Brian Marshak, producer and guitarist in my hard rock band, Rooftop Revolutionaries.
Michael Meinhart, founder, writer and singer of the hard rock band, Socionic, agrees, adding that L.A. today is lacking that destination venue where you’re guaranteed a night of good music.
“It used to be the Whisky, or Viper Room, where you could just show up, not knowing the bands on the bill and still know it would be a great show, but now it’s not like that anywhere,” he says. “If there was a venue like that, I would know about it, and I would tell my friends, and they would tell theirs. And we would all hang out there and listen to great music.
“The current approach really puts a ceiling on what a venue could be and stunts the growth of organically grown scenes and nights focused on quality and artistic message.”
Quality – that’s another thing – without trusted local taste-makers, the LA hard rock scene seems to have no quality control.
Under the pay-to-play mentality, if you can pay, or at the very least guarantee a certain amount of heads through the door, you can go up on stage and fart into a flute for half an hour, without complaints from the booker. Simple reality: quantity over quality.
I have seen many a terrible band perform on stage because they managed to drag their friends along, or because their parents paid for that time slot.
Bookers make the claim that they have to worry about the bottom line above all else because people don’t come to shows anymore. The bills have to be paid and fans just aren’t showing up.
Well why should they?! You give them absolutely no reason to!
The revolving door of obligatory friends and family will never equal (monetarily or socially) a night of complementary bands who work together to promote, bringing their fans for an entire night, not a half hour, of good quality music.
“Booking agents fail to see that they are the first gatekeeper, and by allowing shitty bands to pay to earn their way destroys the logic that good bands deserve good time slots and good nights. This in turn forces fans to much indecision and ultimately, a reason to do something other than go out and see local acts,” says Marshak.
So, if booking agents aren’t connecting fans with quality bands, why not go to the source and create the kind of night you want – for your bands, and your fans?
Brian Marshak considered this question a while ago and began booking entire nights for our band, Rooftop Revolutionaries, hand picking other local bands that would fit the bill, creating an entire night of cohesive and good music. He, like many others, saw it as the obvious move.
Malaki (Josh at left)
“Most band leaders could and should replace most booking agents because they know the ’scene‘ better and who would work well with who.”
Josh Buma, founder and guitarist of the hard rock band, Malaki (who we’ve booked on two of our nights) agrees, citing a recent example of his own: “We recently played a [Sunset] Strip venue where bands were booked by the venues. Nothing matched. None of the other bands’ fans would like us, and vice versa. The only way to successfully book local shows is if the bands themselves do it.”
He continues, breaking it down in an LA-friendly step program:
“Step 1, don’t let venues book your band unless you’re opening for a national act. Step 2, whoever books local shows, make sure each band not only draws, but kicks ass. Kicking ass is not as subjective as one might think.”
Michael John Adams, bassist in Opus Dai, puts it another way: “Those of us in bands know a good band when we hear one. And when we find a good band, we want to book shows with them!”
The logic is simple. “With like bands working together, there becomes more of a collective and cohesive resonance to the events. One that exudes energy felt by the bands as well as the fans…” says Meinhart.
In other words, “What is good for one band is good for all bands on the bill. Pack the club. Everybody will win, from the bands, to the club, to most importantly, the fans,” adds Marshak.
SOLUTIONS
Since booking our own shows, Rooftop Revolutionaries, has seen the benefits both online and in person. Even something as simple as creating one event page on Facebook that includes all the bands for the night as opposed to four separate ones, can make a significant difference in turnout and online interaction.
Soundrop is a social “listening room” music service that launched as an app on Spotify.
Fans want to be introduced to new good music. They’ve already heard your band, they already like your band. Give them something new, show them where to look for other good music in your genre, and the cross promotion from other bands will bring you more fans as well.
This idea of introducing fans to more good music in my scene (hard rock) served as the foundation for my current scheme with the audio app, Soundrop.
It began as a conversation over a cup of coffee in Downtown LA. My fellow Swede and Spotify tech friend asked me to think of ideas on how Spotify could work better with and for independent bands. I jumped at the chance.
While researching and exploring the digital soundscape of Spotify, I happened upon one of their apps, Soundrop. I was immediately struck by the simplistic yet unique layout of this app. For those of you not familiar, the basic gist is that Soundrop hosts a variety of “rooms” based on artist, genre, and themes (working out, chilling, falling asleep, etc.). Listeners have the ability to create their own rooms as well, or add to existing rooms.
What began as me uploading tracks to the Soundrop “Rock” room gradually became a digital blueprint for pushing the LA hard rock scene out of the dark ages.
This concept also tackles one of my issues with Spotify — that there’s no obvious pathway to “underground” or “unsigned” artists. The homepage is reserved for artists you’ve already heard of and it would take you a week’s supply of espresso red eyes and Mother Theresa style patience to eventually find good quality unsigned bands.
Soundrop had a similar issue. Even though listeners, such as myself, could add whatever music I wanted to the rock channel, so can everyone else. You can see where this is going.
When sitting in a playlist of hundreds of songs, not even categorized by ‘type of rock,’ my uploaded track quickly got lost somewhere between Imagine Dragons and the end of the world. Not to mention that this lack of quality control ups the quantity of disjointed rock far past the point where fans are willing to look for new music.
After spinning off bullet point after bullet point of ideas for Spotify, I decided to dig deeper into Soundrop.
I created the channel, “LA Unsigned Rock,” and uploaded what I felt to be the best local LA hard rock. After sending notices to these bands, posting about the channel and including it in our band’s newsletter, I wasn’t thrilled with the performance of my new creation.
It just sat there at the top of my Soundrop landing page, unbeknownst, it seemed, to anyone but me.
So, I reached out to Soundrop, a Norwegian company with offices in LA.
I connected with their VP of Marketing and Communications, Thomas Ford. And later, at a comfortable little cafe on Fairfax, I poured my ideas out onto the table.
Soundrop is in the process of building and bettering their platform, so Thomas was open to ideas that will not only help local bands (monetarily and socially) but that will direct fans and listeners to their app, knowing that Soundrop has a unique and unusual handle on the local unsigned music scenes.
The next week, he put the LA Unsigned Rock channel on Soundrop’s home page. Within two days, the channel had gone from 11 visits to over 1,000.
I reached out to more friends and bands with this newfound inspiration, adding more listeners, more fans and some new bands I discovered. Now, fans are engaging, listening, suggesting bands and appreciating the new ones. And bands are enjoying the sense of community. Promoters…what promoters?
Even in its short life span, this Soundrop room has proved a useful tool for fixing a broken scene.
“In Opus, we’ve spent so much time in our studio over the last couple years working on new material that we’ve lost touch with the LA scene a bit,” Adams says.
“To amend this, we’ve been refreshing our list of local bands that we feel are a good fit with our sound. The “LA Unsigned Hard Rock” Soundrop channel has allowed us to expand that list quite a bit. As I was listening to the channel, I thought to myself (more than once), ’Why haven’t I heard of these guys before??’”
The channel, as of now, has 23 tracks from local LA hard rock bands.
There is quality control; not just anyone can add tracks as they please. They have to be suggested and confirmed by the room manager.
Thomas and I are working on the monetization of Soundrop: holding Soundrop concerts that feature the bands in that room, adding links to buy music after a certain number of listens, adding PSA-style commercials from the bands themselves to pepper into the channel.
Ideas such as these are moving forward, catalyzing help and input from various other players in the scene, not least of all the response I got for this article.
Opus Dai
Musicians want to be part of a scene, and get understandably excited when they see an opportunity to move their music forward. As Meinhart more eloquently put it, “We are more effective and poignant when standing together.”
Adams, from Opus Dai, also inspired by the concept, came forward and offered to help in building a free-standing site for the channel as well.
The site will expand on the idea of the Soundrop room, incorporating band profile pages, an “Angie’s List” type forum of good vs. bad venues and bookers, local music news, a show calendar and more.
Again, it’s a way to allow the Soundrop app onto various platforms (as in, not just Spotify) while continuing to build and push the local scene, bringing it to the attention of fans who want to hear good music but need a guide to ensure they won’t waste time or money on endless playlists or pointless live shows. This platform can be that fan’s guide.
“…a place where fans could trust and go in order to find out about quality bands within a genre that they would be interested in listening to and seeing,” Meinhart envisions.
“Trusted quality aggregators such as this could play a great role in cultivating quality scenes online and eventually in venues.”
It won’t change overnight and there is, as you can see, a lot of work to be done. As a local artist and fan, however, it is easily worth it.
As one final note, I would like to send a challenge to local venues and bookers – not just in LA, but everywhere there is a scene that could use a push.
Here is the challenge: give a shit.
Care about the bands that you put on the bill, spend some time with their music and create a bill that flows, just like we spend time on our set lists and our track listings. Then use the tools you have to promote the hell out of that show in targeted places and to targeted audiences; do your best to make sure the fans stick around between sets.
“Offering a drink discount between bands might make people stick around for the next one,” Flores suggests. Yet he cautions that all your deals and specials “only matter if you book bands that complement the one that played before them.”
Eleanor Goldfield is a Los Angeles-based writer, musician and studio tech. She is lead singer in the hard rock band, Rooftop Revolutionaries, and chief tech at The Village Studios.
It’s a magic time in New York City’s audio post scene: Major new sound stages equipped to mix Hollywood sound seem to be appearing out of nowhere.
The latest facility that’s taking audio – as well as video – pros by surprise isn’t new to NYC: Digital Arts, which occupies 12,000 sq. ft. on West 29th Street, has been in operation for 21 years. But their latest upgrade is sure to put a stop to the under-the-radar status that this prolific post resource has enjoyed up until now.
At the center of attention is Digital Arts’ groundbreaking Ultra High Definition theater that stands as the East Coast’s first true-4K post production facility. But as good as everything looks in this 27-seat theater, the sound may be even more impressive, providing a Dolby-approved re-recording dubstage for 7.1 and 5.1 surround/stereo audio mixing that’s already attracting top projects, from Woody Allen films to HBO and beyond.
The new Digital Arts 4k theater is NYC’s latest facility to meet Hollywood audio post mixing standards.
European Origins
Ride the elevator up to the penthouse of the Flower District building that Digital Arts occupies, step out of the box, and visitors find themselves in a striking lobby. There a skylight illuminates a hybrid Bauhaus/minimalist design and high ceilings just outside the entrance to the 4K theater and mix stage.
The creator of the ultra-modern environment is Axel Ericson, a native of Switzerland who launched his audio career working at Parisian radio networks in the 1980’s. Ericson moved to the US, and began to build up his credits as a sound designer, engineer and producer with an advanced understanding of digital workflows.
Determined to work at a faster, digital-enabled pace than most of the major NYC studios were capable of at the time, Ericson launched Digital Arts in 1992. Music video production was another one of his shop’s specialties, laying the foundation for a highly diversified facility that has quietly been in a constant state of expansion ever since.
Today, Digital Arts offers a full range of production and post-production services for digital cinema, television, and other media industries. All told, it operates two shooting stages, provides 4K and 2K Digital Intermediate color grading and finishing, as well as DCP (Digital Cinema Package) mastering, to its clients, as well as a number of audio post suites for television. Additional audio services include editorial, sound design, ADR and voiceover recording.
Ericson built up his new 4K theater with a no-compromise philosophy in sync with the current filmmaking environment. “As the film industry becomes more efficient, budgets are coming down,” he observes. “But that doesn’t mean that the product has to suffer – it just means that things can take less time. We’re a next-generation facility, but I also want to bring back that feeling of the great facilities of the past, and reflect that vibe of NYC by creating this environment that’s inspiring: You work in here, and the quality of the studio itself can push you to do great work.”
Axel Ericson in the Digital Arts theater lobby — the skylit space is designed to create balance with the cinematic environment inside.
Built for Film
Stepping out of the sun-filled Eurolobby and into the theater, visitors encounter an extremely sophisticated mix environment.
Ericson specified an extremely crisp, accurate, and powerful Meyer Sound 7.1 monitoring system for the theater, consisting of three Acheron Studio screen channel loudspeakers, three X-800C cinema subwoofers, and 12 HMS-10 cinema surround loudspeakers. Meyer’s Galileo loudspeaker management system with two Galileo 408 processors provides system optimization within the room. Sound mixing teams can control the action via dual 32 channel Avid ICON D-Control ES consoles, linked to four satellite Avid Pro Tools HDX2 systems, and 512 channels of SSL XLogic Alpha-Link MADI I/O.
Meanwhile, even the most audio-centric mixer will be captivated by the quality of what they see in front of them, courtesy of a Christie 4220 4K digital projector with a 17ft 4K mesh screen, from Image Screens in Germany. When 4K-native footage – a format that adds up to twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of today’s 1080p HDTV standard — is played out, the visual experience here is positively breathtaking, displaying reach-out-and-touch-it imagery that represents the obvious next level in cinema and home entertainment.
“It wasn’t just that we were building a new room — we wanted to take a fresh look at everything when we designed this theater,” Ericson says. “We questioned everything, from the screen the speakers to the square footage. I went through a huge level of minutiae, not accepting things just because they had been done before – every detail specified here probably got my attention. The same goes for all the fabric, all the materials, how dense the insulations should be – the default recommendations were for two inches thick, I settled for four, as it was a better choice.
“In NYC, the real estate will always be a battle, and the rooms are never as big as you’d like them to be,” Ericson continues. “So the question is, ‘How well is your room going to translate to bigger environment? Is it accurate?’ We made sure that we gave the mixer the tools so they could capture all of the details of the original footage, to get the best out of his mix. And because this room is also a video grading environment, the people walking in here are blown away by the picture. We probably have the best picture in NYC. This room is here to show people that we take the needs of the film world seriously.”
The completion of the buildout was especially fortuitous for Digital Arts, coming as it does just months after the closing of Sound One, which for decades stood as the undisputed flagship for film and TV mixing in NYC. Like the recently opened Harbor Sound, which added 10,000 sq. ft. of Dolby-certified space in TriBeCa, Digital Arts’ 4K theater now stands as an essential component in the rebuilding of NYC’s major-league post offerings.
“Sound One was a legendary space,” Ericson says. “So much great work had been done there for a long time, and for them to go down is a huge loss. It’s hard to recreate those large infrastructures and NYC real estate being what it is doesn’t help right now.
“That creates a new challenge. Who’s going to rise up to it? We’ve talked to a lot of people who were there, like Lee Dichter, and they’re starting to work here. Plus, the post incentives have kicked in, which is bringing in a lot of business from out of town. The good news is that people are moving on, and now is a new chapter in NYC’s history.”
Digital Arts should also continue to benefit from its varied business model, where it strives to be a leader in both audio and video post. “We like being more multifaceted, because it changes who we’re talking to and connected with, and when we’re brought into the project,” explains Ericson. “There’s a great deal of efficiency that comes with having everything, image and sound, under one roof. The combination creates a language, whether you’re composing to image, or creating image to sound. I’ve always loved the juxtaposition of the two.
The theater’s machine room: It requires a fraction of the space formerly required for a facility of its capabilities.
“But the broader story of my career is that I’m always following the digital transition, where major tectonic plates are crossing. When people were arguing over whether analog tape sounded better than digital, the focus of that conversation for me was what is possible, and what new language we could create.
“Now 4K is offering a superior experience in film, and as Moore’s law continues on, you’ve got a whole new language once again. I’m fascinated with what great possibilities can be achieved as we follow that path.”
Bigger Post Possibilities
As Ericson pointed out earlier, the overall budgets for productions – for independent films and Hollywood releases alike — are trending downward. Still, the box office take for movie studios so far in 2013 is already $6 billion-plus, making it a large-grossing sector to be a part of. And he also sees aspects of the changing landscape that mean not only more content being made, but potentially more work associated with individual film productions.
“Where do you start?” Ericson asks, when asked how he sees the media environment evolving. “This will be an ongoing process. The main thing we have to look at is that no part of the pipeline is analog anymore. The entire technology supporting the infrastructure, including distribution, is based on computers.
“On the film front, there have been many challenges to traditional methodologies. The ability to make changes on a work in progress are there now, and we’re seeing a huge amount of that – where movies are being mixed or finished, re-edited and rechanged all the time. The Hollywood studios are now used to running test audiences, so they keep changing until they think they’ve got it. So for the team, including the sound team, that means constantly re-editing.
“Picture is never ‘locked’ anymore. There are huge advantages to that, but it’s got to be used wisely. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, and there can be a feeling of too many cooks in the kitchen. Nothing will replace a great vision and a great director.”
Better Before Bigger
For an adventurous company like Digital Arts, one of the prime payoffs of a big investment like their 4K theater is not just more business, but more people to explore and create with.
“This is a huge resource for filmmakers,” Axel Ericson says. “As the word is starting to spread, people are intrigued: ‘How did this large facility appear out of nowhere?’ There’s a sense of excitement about it.
“Although it’s exhilarating for me to reach outside of our network, my goal is not to be the biggest, but to keep our eyes on quality and focus on our clientele. As a result they’ve been keeping me busy. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”
