Ask not what you can do for the recording industry, but rather…what the hell?

I have recently bumped into an alarming number of acquaintances who are leaving the audio industry after decades of hard graft. A couple are returning to college to study unrelated subjects, journalism and computer studies, one is driving a truck, two are moving sideways into video and one plans to be a plumber. The others haven’t a clue what they’ll do next.

            These are not tape-ops, wannabes or bluffers. They are top professional who have produced or engineered chart albums.

            I hope the grass is greener in their chosen pastures. At least they see some grass upon which to graze. Sadly, the modern recording industry resembles the Kalahari Desert, a vast expanse of nothingness stretching out beyond the horizon, broken only by an occasional mirage of deceit in the form of record companies offering promises, promises, promises. Payment will be rendered if the record sells.  But when and if and maybe don’t put bread on the table or pay the rent.

            Talent is unique, experience hard-earned. It takes years of slog to hone skills that can be consigned to the scrap-heap in the flicker of an eyelid. And when that happens, our industry is impoverished.

            On the other side of the balance sheet, there are tens of thousands of young hopefuls studying for Music Technology degrees. For what? Twenty-seven grand of long term debt? Where is the work? Are these dreamers told that prospects don’t exist? Those few who do find gainful employment usually teach. We therefore have the ludicrous situation where students rely on lecturers, whose only experience is having studied the same course, perpetuating myths, magnifying bookish misconceptions, substituting theory for common sense

            Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that you can learn how to make records in a classroom, any more than you can read up on how to fly a jumbo jet.  Unless you get airborne and have flown sufficient miles, no airline in their right mind would let you near a cockpit and neither would Ryan Air. Even a qualified pilot will often spend a decade assisting before being allowed to twiddle his joystick unaided. Why, then, should anyone assume that a couple of years spent messing with Logic and a Soundcraft Spirit desk can qualify the Mu-Tech graduate to teach, let alone produce a professional session?

            Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for education. There are some first rate courses on offer, such as Tonmeister at Surrey University. What rankles is the implication that a recording degree qualifies the holder for a job. It doesn’t. Recording isn’t like plumbing or bricklaying. It’s an art, a combination of talent and experience.

Making records is alchemy, not cookery.

            So the question that I ask my retiring friends is not why they are leaving the record industry, but rather, why did the industry leave them?

Eccentric

           

HAL

Some months ago, I was travelling on the Paris Metro during the rush hour. Needless to say, the carriage was as packed as a proverbial can of escargot in garlic sauce.

I stood amongst the commuting throng, grateful to have eked out a spare nanometre of space.

Directly opposite me sat a rather fetching mademoiselle, long brown hair and hazel eyes, eyes I realised were staring directly at me.

            I straightened my back and stood as tall as the clickety-clack of the crowded train would allow. I smiled. She smiled sweetly back. ‘Ah, Paris,’ I thought. ‘The city of romance. With luck, I could be in for a little entente cordiale.’

She beckoned with her eyes, ‘come hither.’  I took a step towards her. And then…

            She stood up and offered me her seat.

That’s when I realised I was getting old. And it made me think…

            I started making records in an age when computers occupied the spare room, when the fastest means of communication was the Telex machine, when mobile phones and the Internet were just fantasies in an outlandish sci-fi novel. Remember the computer in ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’? Evil, manipulative and sinister though HAL was, I doubt that he could beat my iPhone in a game of chess, despite being crammed into two acres of heavy metal cupboards.

            Over the last few years, Technology has moved faster than Linford Christie on speed. I regard myself as privileged to work with a bunch of talented young engineers, but they regard me as a dinosaur. For the life of me, I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because I handed a client a guitar lead when he asked for a plug-in. Or could it be because I told the same puzzled punter that all my software was at the launderette? Who can tell?  For some reason my colleagues strive to keep me at arm’s length from anyone who might matter, wheeling me out on my Zimmer Frame to spout forth to gaggles of SAE students about the golden age of wax cylinders that I used to track on in my youth, or rather, in my middle age. And if Josh calls me ‘Granddad’ one more time, he may feel a bony hand across his backside, if I can muster the energy without mainlining a vial or two of Sanatogen.

            So what is the point of my senile ramblings?

            It’s easy to take technology for granted. Progress can be beneficial, but only as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. All too often I encounter a belief that technology can deal with problems later down the line. So what if the drums don’t sound too good…we’ll edit and eq them in the mix. And if the singer doesn’t cut it on the take, we’ll track a hundred vocals and choose one when we do the edit. Harmonise and add some varipitch, then compress, and we’ll be all right on the night. But hey, guys and gals, you’re missing the point. All these new-fangled gizmos and gadgets should be an aid to creativity rather than a substitute. Even though my old mate HAL could fly unwitting hostages to Mars and back, he wasn’t capable of synthesising an emotional performance, let alone tuning a guitar without a helping human hand.

            In any form of music, the performance must take precedence. By all means, tune an occasional note in what is otherwise a perfect take. And cut and paste or loop a killer fill, but please – let’s get the drums sounding great before we start to fuck about.

None of this is new. Back in the old days, when Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed the recording studio (the beast, not the band), that killer drum fill would be spun onto another tape, the master spliced and then the copy cut back in. The not-quite-top-C would be sharpened with an AMS or by varispeeding the multitrack, then bounced back and forth between two machines. None of these patch-ups are new, merely easier with digital recording rigs.

But please, please, please don’t substitute technology for craft.

Eccentric

           

Today's question and answer...Neve vs Portico

Hi,

can you give an opinion of the Portico 5043 vs AMS Neve 33609 reissue?

Aiden

Dear Aidan,

Well, it's a bit like comparing a cheese and an onion.

The 33609 is closely based upon the classic Neve unit of the same designation - discrete and

transformer balanced, with separate compress and limit sections, attack and release,

threshold, gain makeup and accurate PPM meters.

The Portico isn't

Regards

Mark

Thanks Mark,

 I guess that answers the question. I suppose it’s a bit confusing when

reviews in SOS and Mix claim "the 5043 outdoes the 33609".. Hard to know

what to think of the reviews.

Dare I ask; portico 5042 tape emulator vs Empirical Labs Fatso?

Regards

Aidan

Dear Aidan,

Have you EVER seen a bad review in these mags? As long as the distributor/manufacturer advertises, they'll get a good review.

In terms of any piece of kit 'outdoing' another, this is an utterly meaningless thing for anyone to say.

Certain gear works well on certain programme material. It isn't a question of being 'better' or 'outdoing' another. Recording isn't a competition.

Neve have been making the 33609 in various varieties for the best part of 40 years, and most leading engineers use it always or occasionally. It's a good tool for certain jobs, such as tightening mixes, limiting drums and suchlike. I'm sure the Portico also has its uses, but here - I've slammed a tenner on the table to bet that it won't still be made in 40 years. No, come on...that's too one-sided. Twenty quid says it won't still be made in ten years (and judging by the amount of Portico gear we get offered second hand, I doubt any original purchasers will still have it active in their racks by then).

The Portico Tape emulator is basically a module with transformers that give a signal better definition and allows for typical transformer overload. That's a decent idea, and one I approve of, but not at a grand. You could knock something similar up yourself for a couple of hundred squibs or buy the BAE equivalent for not much more. The Fatso, on the other hand, is a compressor that messes with phase to give third harmonic distortion but also allows for much more tailoring of the signal (but no transformers, methinks).

The only true tape emulators use true tape.

Sorry if I'm sounding a bit cynical, but I'd be happy to scrape another tenner (my last) out of my moth-eared wallet to bet that every treasured album in your collection was recorded and mixed using the same small collection of gear, including...

Whatever mic preamps were in the desk

Urei 1176

Fairchild, Ear or similar Vari-Mu compressor

Neve 33609

AMS delay and perhaps reverb

Lexicon 224, 224XL and/or 480L reverb (and maybe a PCM70)

EMT Plate reverb

Neve or SSL eq's (in the desk)

Maybe a Pultec or three

AKG, Neumann, Beyer and Sennheiser mics

DBX compressors

plus a relatively short list of standard  toys and fx (Roland Dimension D, MXR phase and Flange, Roland tape echo et al…)

Why reinvent the wheel? Every day sees some new-fangled variety of the wheel hit the market – square ones, oblong, three sided, plastic, bitumen clad and so on. But do today's records sound any better than those of days gone by? No. Quite the opposite, in fact. So why does every Gearslut try to convince the world that they need the latest mic pre/compressor/tape-phase-bifribulator?

No...concentrate on getting the song tight, the performances true, the mics properly positioned, the signal to noise optimised and the sound full, fat and focused.

It's ultimately down to the music, and that's the start and the finish. The boxes are tools for a job and in my opinion, every technological 'advance' in the last thirty years has more to do with lowering the cost of manufacturing than increasing quality.

Apart from that...

Have fun

Mark

Welcome to the New Eccentric Blog

  

I was supposed to be an historian I suppose. At least, that's what I studied in Oxford back in the days of flares, prog rock and visions of a better world. Maybe I would have been had I spent less time touring with bands and more time submerged in my studies. But music won and the 1970's were spent building large PA rigs and doing tour production for the likes of Selecter, The Beat and Haircut 100 in between sessioning in studios such as Rockfield and theatres around the country (guitar, sax and flute).

Fate intervened once more in 1980 and a period spent managing Roy Harper and launching his record label were followed by a decade at the sharp end of what was then a record industry, managing bands and producers and doing A+R consultancy for the likes of A+M, CBS, MCA and others.

Like all music professionals, part of my accreditation was the Virgin Records rip-off, leading to a nasty legal quagmire feathering the nests of slick lawyers and an accompanying dissillusionment with the record industry but not with music. Refocused if not yet entirely re-energised I returned to recording my own music in the early 1990's, and within the context of assembling my own modest recording rig found myself sourcing juicy bits of equipment for friends and acquaintances in the industry. As so often in my past, an accidental adjunct to the main event turned into the main event itself and the rest is history.

A monster with three heads, Funky Junk now operates from London, Paris and Milan meaning (if nothing else) that I get the occasional good meal and frequent good company. One thing is for sure, though...a life of accidental twists and turns holds other unexpected aventures in store.

At least, I sincerely hope so.

Specialities

Pasta.

Education

University of Oxford

MA, History and Economics

1967 – 1970

My greatest claim to fame was being appointed to the board of the world's oldest historical society, the Dervoghila Society, founded in the twenth century by my college founder, John de Balliol. The next day the rest of the committee resigned, leaving me as Chairman. I promptly designated remaining funds for a blow-out meal for members and wound up the society the following day, thereby erasing eight centuries of tradition overnight.

Activities and Societies: Debauchery

What?

A blog about gear. And about music. And about life. And about the whirlygig of gossip, innuendo and blather surrounding them.

Opinionated? Probably. Wise? Probably not. True? Well, as straight as the next horizon.

All views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the company. However, those here who dissagree face summary dissmissal.

When?

As often as inspiration or the need for verbal vomit dictates.