EQ Magazine - November 2008 - (Page 58)

GEAR HEAD THE HARDWARE CONTROLLER GET ROUNDUP HERE’S HOW TO YOUR PHYSICAL WITH RECORDINGS by Craig Anderton Until digital recording appeared, every function in analog gear had an associated control: Whether you were tweaking levels, changing the amount of EQ gain, or switching a channel to a particular bus, a physical device controlled that function. Digital technology changed that, because functions were no longer tied to physical circuits, but virtualized as a string of numbers. This gave several advantages: Controls are more expensive than numbers, so virtualizing multiple parameters and controlling them with fewer controls lowered costs. Virtualizatoin also saved space, because mixers no longer had to have one control per function; they could use a small collection of channel strips—say, eight—that could bank-switch to control eight channels at a time. But you don’t get something for nothing, and virtualization broke the physical connection between gear and the person operating the gear. People debate the importance of that physical connection; to me, though, there’s no question that having a direct, physical link between a sound you’re trying to create and the method of creating that sound is vital—for several reasons. THE ZEN OF CONTROLLERS If you’re a guitar player, here’s a test: Quick—play an A#7 chord. Okay, now list the notes that make up the chord, lowest pitch to highest. Chances are you grabbed the A#7 instantly, because your fingers— your “muscle memory”—knew exactly where to go. But you probably had to think, even if only for a second, to name all the notes making up the chord. Muscle memory is like the DMA (Direct Memory Access) process in computers, where an operation can pull data directly from memory without having to go through the CPU. This saves time, and lets the CPU concentrate on other tasks where it truly is needed. So it is with controllers: When you learn one well enough so that your fingers know where to go and you don’t have to parse a screen, look for a particular control, click it with your mouse, then adjust it, the recording process becomes faster and more efficient. IMPROVING DAW WORKFLOW Would you rather hit a physical button labeled “Record” when it was time to record, or hold down Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar and then type “R”? Yeah, I thought so. The mouse/keyboard combination was never designed for recording music, but for data entry. For starters, the keyboard is switchesonly—no faders. The role of changing a value over a range falls to the mouse, but a mouse can do only one thing at a time—and when recording, you often want to do something like fade one instrument down while you fade up another. Sure, there are workarounds: You can group channels and offset them, or set up one channel to increase while the other decreases, and bind them to a single mouse motion. But who wants to do that kind of housekeeping when you’re trying to be creative? Wouldn’t you rather just have a bunch of faders in front of you, and control the parameters directly? Another important consideration is that your ears do not exist in a vacuum; people refer to how we hear as the “ear/brain combination,” and with good reason. Your brain needs to process whatever enters your ears, so the simple act of critical listening requires concentration. Do you really want to squander your brain’s resources trying to figure out workarounds to tasks that would be easy to do if you only had physical control? Trust me—you don’t. But. . . . PROBLEM 1: JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING HAS KNOBS DOESN’T GUARANTEE BETTER WORKFLOW Some controllers try to squeeze too much functionality into too few controls, and you might actually be better off assigning lots of functions to keyboard shortcuts, learning those shortcuts, then using a mouse to change values. I once used a controller for editing synth parameters (the controller was not intended specifically for synths, which was part of the problem), and it was a nightmare: I’d have to remember that, say, pulse width resided somewhere on page 6, then remember which knob (which of course didn’t have a label) controlled that parameter. It was easier just to grab a parameter with a mouse, and tweak. On the other hand, a system like Native Instruments’ Kore (covered in the 10/08 issue) is designed specifically for controlling plug-ins, and arranges parameters in a logical 58 EQ NOVEMBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - November 2008

EQ Magazine - November 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Brian Wilson Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Sony Acid 6 Abelton Live 7 Controller World New Controllers Analysis Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - November 2008

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