Recording - April 2012 - 4

PUBLISHER: Thomas Hawley ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Brent Heintz

EDITOR: Lorenz Rychner ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Mike Metlay EDITOR AT LARGE: Beto Hale MÚSICO PRO EDITOR: Fernando Curiel

EDITORIAL

CONTRIBUTORS Paul Vnuk Jr., Scott Dorsey, Brian Gadson, Eric Ferguson, Devon Brent, Marty Peters, Steve Bowman

Go to your room! Now close the door and listen. Do you hear anything you shouldn’t be hearing? Equipment hum? Air conditioning? Street traffic? The neighbor’s Fido? Now turn up some music you’ve recorded, and ask yourself—does it sound the same as it did over at your friend’s place, and in the car on the way there, and in your earbuds at the gym? Where did it sound just the way you would like it to sound everywhere? We are creatures of habit. That hard disk that hums away in the corner under the desk, we don’t hear it usually. We can abstract the air conditioner... at least we think we can. Old habits die hard, and one of those is the habit of kidding ourselves. If you can hear Fido, chances are that Fido’s owner can hear you. Maybe more than she’d like to. And if you think you’ve learned to live with your familiar noises, you may not realize any longer that these noises can mask frequencies in your music that you should hear unmasked. Room correction and perfection can be a complex process—we’ve dealt with it before and will deal with it again. In this issue, Brian Gadson, a musician and studio owner who also designs studios, points out a few areas where noises enter and exit more studios and music rooms than one would think. Low-tech solutions can be astonishingly simple, and worth the effort. His piece starts on page 26. Another area where many of us are kidding ourselves is the monitors. So much so that a great numbers of readers who type in their equipment lists with their Readers’ Tapes submissions don’t even mention monitors! It drives our Marty Peters batty—if he can’t tell how you hear your mixes, how can he divine where you went wrong if things aren’t right? Your monitors need to deliver all frequencies as evenly as possible so that your mixes have nothing sticking out or hiding that you should be hearing smoothly and in balance. Critical details should be brought to light if the speakers deserve the name “monitors” as opposed to just “speakers”. We bring you reviews of four very different monitoring systems, plus a headphone review and a DIY article on a mono check-mix monitor. Here’s to hearing, you hear? Speaking of balance in mixing: Balance mixer is a job description, and one of the best recently passed away. Look up Onno Scholtze’s list of credits on websites like allmusic.com and be impressed. In his long career he did mostly orchestral recordings, from film music like the score to Vertigo to recordings by John Williams and the Boston Pops or Joe Zawinul’s Stories of the Danube; the huge bulk of his work was major-label releases of mainstream classical music, by and with the most famous names ever. Golden Ears for sure! Another mostly unsung hero who passed away recently was Billy Strange. He was a studio rat, arranging tunes and playing guitar for and behind the Greats. Listen to him filling in the gaps in the classic “Ramblin’ Rose” by Nat King Cole, a track he arranged on the spot for small group and voices when someone else’s arrangement for full orchestra didn’t work out. He was buddies with Elvis, in the studio and privately, he was in on the classic Beach Boy sessions, worked with Ricky Nelson, Doris Day, and lots of others. And to round out the trio of recent losses that may not have resonated much outside the world of studios: Pianist/composer/arranger Mike Melvoin could do it all— his credits include Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman”, John Lennon’s “Stand By Me”, Quincy Jones’ “We Are The World”, Natalie Cole’s “Unforgettable” with her late father, The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”, and on and on. He was the consummate Los Angeles studio cat who played any style as if it was the only style he could play. Why am I tipping my hat to these three? Because for every big name on the front of a CD there have to be recording musicians and engineers whose names will be on the back, in small print, but without whom the big name on the front wouldn’t be quite as big. Happy Recording!

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

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RECORDING APRIL 2012

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Recording - April 2012

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