Recording - January 2015 - 8

Note to faithful writers: When sending your letters by email,
please remember to include your name and where you hail from.
Maybe my drums are SUPPOSED to sound like that
Hi Bruce Kaphan: I was reading your article about recording with a producer (February 2014), and I have a question.
How do producers and sound engineers know if the drums are
played and sound right-wouldn't a drummer know about
that better? Or is it equally safe to trust the producer and
sound engineer, for that matter?
Michael Rien
via email

Bruce Kaphan replies:
Hi Michael! First of all, thanks for reading Recording
Magazine!
Now, to answer your question: I think that it always
depends on the people involved and their relative level of
studio experience.
A producer or engineer worth hiring is someone who is constantly doing studio work. If someone spends a lot of the time
in the studio, and is energetic and passionate about their
work, they're going to be ear training every day. Studio ear
training should lead toward an enhanced concept of groove,
timbre, and appropriate performance nuance. A drummer
who's spent a lot of time recording is also going to have these
skills, but an inexperienced drummer in his first or second
band may not have developed them yet, or may even have convinced himself that he doesn't need them-that an imperfect
or flawed sense of timing and tone are "part of his sound" and
he is "keeping it real" by staying where he is.
A great team in the studio will find everyone listening
deeply and considerately, with everyone's focus on how
best to serve the production. In such a setting, it won't matter to any of the people involved, who it was that happened
to "hear" how a timbre or performance could be
improved-best ideas should always win, and should
always preclude ego.
If not all the people on a session are at the same level of
accomplishment, then those with less experience and wisdom would be wise to keep their ears open wide. This could
be the young producer working with the seasoned studio
drummer, or vice versa. I hope this helps! Best-BK
Backup strategies
I am just starting to get into recording with Pro Tools. I
record everything on an external hard drive. I would appreciate any suggestions as to what would be a good backup system
for my projects. I live near the lightning capital of the world
(Tampa, FL). So, in addition to a backup "device," a system in
the cloud seems very appealing to me-if the worst nightmare,
where everything is fried, happens.
Also, to the editors, I enjoy your magazine very much, especially articles on songwriting and recording techniques. An
article on the topic of "backup options" would be very helpful
to me and, I am sure, other readers too. Thanks,
Robert Shapiro
Tampa, FL

Hi, Robert! Thanks for the kind words and thanks for
writing.
Having formerly lived in Tallahassee, I know Lightning
Alley very well and I understand your concerns, believe
me! But we have to be very careful about writing reviews
on backup products and online strategies; we can't do
much more than offer anecdotal evidence, since we're not
equipped here at Recording to properly test the reliability of particular products. We can tell you if a system is
fast and easy to use, but we have no practical way to
determine if it's safe.
Since receiving your letter, I have been considering an
article in the form of a survey of our busier authors, to see
what sort of consensus we come up with... if the conclusions are interesting, I'll definitely publish them.
Cloud storage is of course the ultimate offsite backup
strategy, as long as the cloud service you choose is able to
handle the load. Unlike folks who use cloud storage for
things like business documents, PDFs and the like, music
(and video) creators tend to create huge files, and you'll
need a cloud service that offers a lot of capacity and fast
upload and download speeds.
How huge is huge? Here's some quick math. One data
word on a CD is 16 bits (2 bytes) long, and at 44.1 kHz
sample rate, that's how many words per second are written. That means every track of CD-quality audio eats
88,200 bytes per second, or about 5 MB every minute.
Multiply that by, say, 24 tracks, and you're eating 120 MB
per minute or roughly 1 GB every eight minutes. If you
record at 88.2 or 96 kHz your storage doubles or more
than doubles, and if you go to 24-bit audio (3 bytes per
word) for your multitracks then everything gets multiplied by another 150%. Keeping track? Now we're filling
up a GB of storage in under three minutes. And really big
projects can have way more than 24 tracks...
That's not to say that cloud storage is impossible, or
that solutions aren't already on the market. While I
haven't used it myself, I am aware of a musician-friendly
cloud backup and storage/sync service called Gobbler
(gobbler.com). It has the advantage of having been
designed for audio content creators, and offers features
like collaborative file sharing, organized storage of music
products, and high-level encryption to be sure folks don't
steal your material. If you don't need something that
fancy, there are many other cloud services available (we
use Dropbox and Hightail regularly at Music Maker
Publications). But before you buy a subscription, make
sure you're getting enough space to store all your projects
and make sure you have a fast enough connection so that
multi-Gigabyte uploads don't choke your network for
hours at a time.
External drives are faster than the cloud, and you only
pay for them once rather than having to keep up a subscription or risk losing them. But be sure to store them
away from your computer, preferably unplugged and on a
shelf at another location. Good luck!-MM

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RECORDING January 2015

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Recording - January 2015

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