EQ Magazine - January 2009 - (Page 12)

PUNCH IN Matthew Herbert. FOUNDon Composing with Landscapes SOUNDS Matthew Herbert BY JOE SHAMBRO Outfitted with an arsenal of fieldrecording equipment—as well as the singular goal of creating what he calls “a documentary of music”—Matthew Herbert mixes samples captured from various exotic locales with precise instrumentation on There’s Me and There’s You [CFP Domestic]. To hear the electro-musician/producer tell it, making a record from a foundation of field recordings is business as usual. His 2006 release, Plat du Jour, used samples recorded at factory farms to make a statement on the quality of mass-produced food, and 2001’s Bodily Functions centered around samples recorded from the human body. What is notable about There’s Me and There’s You is Herbert’s message about the current state of the world, and the locations he sampled to serve as sonic examples of what he considers to be a huge downturn in the global quality of life—locales that included the British Houses of Parliament, a McDonald’s restaurant, and even a local landfill. For recording locations where going stealth isn’t necessary, Herbert relies on a Nagra V 2-channel harddisk field recorder that delivers highdefinition sampling (24-bit/96kHz), portability, and long battery life. His mics are a pair of Neumann KMR 82 shotgun mics and an Audio-Technica AT825 stereo mic. For situations where discretion is critical, however, Herbert uses a wide arsenal of smaller recording devices. True to the mission of his recordings, he places the content of the sample over the quality of the medium. “When I’m in a suppressed situation, I go for whatever I can get away with,” he says. “It might be a mobile phone, or a cheap MP3 player with a built-in microphone. It doesn’t matter what it’s recorded on. If I can capture the sound of something extremely prolific, then the story trumps the medium.” After collecting the samples that will serve as the basis of each track, Herbert moves his ensemble, the Big Band, to Abbey Road Studios in London where he tracks additional instrumentation. Afterwards, he exports the tracks to mix at home using Apple Logic 8. “Sometimes, I have up to 300 or 400 channels of audio to sort through at the end of a session,” he says, noting that keeping all of his tracks organized can be quite a challenge. His solution—create three master folders for each song: one for the field recordings, one for the Big Band masters, and another for his vocals. When starting to mix, Herbert begins constructing each song by creating a submix in each folder. “I prefer to make each element sound like itself first, before worrying about the overall mix,” he says. “It’s very important to me that the Big Band sounds like a Big Band, and that the field recordings work together on their own.” An analog aficionado at heart, Herbert says that, although he works largely in a digital environment, he edits his samples with an Akai S612 to 12 EQ JANUARY 2009 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - January 2009

EQ Magazine - January 2009 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Bob Dylan The Killers Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Microsoft Windows Vista Apple Mac OS X "Lite" Software Roundup "Lite" Software Gadgets & Goodies Sounds Room With a Vu

EQ Magazine - January 2009

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