Recording - October 2011 - 2

PUBLISHER: Thomas Hawley ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Brent Heintz

EDITOR: Lorenz Rychner ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Mike Metlay MÚSICO PRO EDITOR: Fernando Curiel

EDITORIAL

Skill It’s what wins out in the end. Talent alone gets you only so far; practice gets you to Carnegie Hall; but only when you combine talent, lots of practice, and the experiences thus gained do you become truly skilled. And when you’re truly skilled, the world’s your oyster and you can rise to any challenge. In this issue, the beginning of our 25th year of bringing you the very best information on recording technique and technology, we check in with a diverse group of truly skilled operators, in the hope of learning a thing or two about how they face various career challenges. We already knew Michael C. Ross (Christina Aguilera, Vanessa Carlton, Queen Latifah, Dixie Chicks, etc.) to be an intrepid problem solver—we brought you the story of his recording of huge drum bands for the movie Drumline, in an improbably cavernous interior space (December 2004). Rent the movie and hear the results... Today we find Michael talking about a gig he took in Turkey, recording a local household-name superstar, and how he draws on his skills to adapt to the challenges. Jeremy Cohen sets himself improbable goals and meets those challenges head-on, as a highly skilled violonist leading his own group, adapting music for his string quartet— from Tango to Dave Brubeck, planning his recordings and managing his own label and publishing company. Many hats, many skills, “you can sleep when you’re old”... Rather than resting on the laurels of their years with Blue Öyster Cult, the brothers Bouchard now apply their skills in their home studios, producing great-sounding tracks and music videos; they not only can play and write songs with the best of them, they make long-distance collaboration work, with excellent results. Toby Gad has amassed an astounding résumé of songs written with and for high-caliber chart-topping artists—in the August 2011 issue he told us how he went about selecting a full-time engineer for his studio, and today he tells us how he approaches songwriting as a collaborative art. He is often faced with the added challenge of high expectations from labels and artist management to produce a hit in the brief time he gets allocated to spend with the artist. Toby’s musical and—just as important—his people skills obviously prevail; his record speaks for itself. Mark Hornsby had to use all his skill and experience to make a record sound cohesive, when the tracks came from studios and rooms all over the map, and he tells us how he went about creating a consistent sound. This issue isn’t all about these skilled recordists, though. For your gear lust we bring you reviews of products from some of the best names in the business: A-Designs, Adobe, Alesis, Audix, Blue, Electro-Voice, Fable Sounds, Grace Design, Great River Electronics, Millennia Media, Radial Engineering, Telefunken, and the recently reborn Pulse Techniques a.k.a. Pultec. In this issue, we conclude the legal advice column by attorney Todd Gascon with Bruce Kaphan—in this final chapter you get a checklist of legalities to take care of before you release your finished album. We hope you learned a lot from the 19 chapters of the series, and we thank Todd and Bruce for their untiring efforts! Before we get on with the issue, we should note that the music world has bid farewell to two giants who passed away in late August: Jerry Leiber and Nick Ashford. Jerry Leiber was the lyricist who wrote, with Mike Stoller, the immortal “Yakety Yak”, “Stand By Me”, “On Broadway”, and “Hound Dog”, among many others. Nick Ashford and his songwriting partner (and wife and recording-duo partner) Valerie Simpson penned huge hits for Motown, songs like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing”, “Reach Out And Touch Somebody’s Hand”, and many others. As I mentioned earlier, we’re beginning our silver anniversary year with this issue. If you’ve been with us for a while, we thank you for your continued support and encouragement. If you’re new to this magazine, picking it up for the first time at the 131st AES Convention in New York, we welcome you to our pages and hope you’ll stick with us for the next quarter century. Either way, we hope you’ll enjoy the issue (if not, it’s “Yakety Yak—Don’t Talk Back”...). Happy Recording!

CONTRIBUTORS Toby Gad, Darwin Grosse, Paul Vnuk Jr., Brian Tarquin, Todd Gascon, Bruce Kaphan, Scott Dorsey, Mark Hornsby, Gary Eskow, Marty Peters SOCIAL MEDIA Brent Heintz, Paul Vnuk Jr.
ART DIRECTOR: Scott Simmonds PRODUCTION MANAGER: Colin Courtney WEB GOALIE: Colin Courtney

ART & PRODUCTION

EDITOR/PRODUCER:

PLAYBACK PLATINUM SERIES Lorenz Rychner CIRCULATION Tiffany Sepe

CIRCULATION MANAGER:

ADVERTISING SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR: Brent Heintz CLASSIFIEDS MANAGER: Stephanie King
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE:

ADMINISTRATION Stephanie King

PRESIDENT: Thomas Hawley VICE PRESIDENT: Brent Heintz

EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

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RECORDING OCTOBER 2011

Recording - October 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - October 2011