sound principles

funny how the process of recording music manages to be both fascinating and boring.

you invariably spend unbelievable amounts of time fussing and fiddling: setting up, testing, adjusting, trying to work out why something is or isn’t happening. the technology’s incredibly dense and complex to navigate, the acoustic issues are always tricky, and the performers wait and wait, go away, come back again, momentarily get interested in the process or the problem, lose interest again, go get something to eat, then suddenly have to perform – perfectly – or again and again. somewhere between stone cold and too tired, you hope for that one flawless take.

Good Friday

coal country

Originally uploaded by Illuminata.

Good Friday – a lovely, crisp autumn day, and I’m journeying south along the coast to Woonona, about an hour and a half out of Sydney. My tafe teammate James lives here, commuting to town three days a week, but today I’m commuting to him to begin recording my song. The train passes through green valleys, bushland, seaside hamlets and the occasional old coal silo rigged for rail transport; the view ranges from idyllic to panoramic but the train windows are dirty and my photos can’t do it justice.

returning…
The recording process is simultaneously stimulating and draining. You’d think a day was enough to complete a 4-minute song, but it’s not even close. By the time you factor in travel time, meal time, setting up and faffing round time, the public holiday train timetable and my commitment to dinner with Drew’s folks who eat at 6, there was only a couple of hours real work time left. We talked through the parts and the dynamics I want, James got a clearer feel for the song and we set bpm rates for the 2 parts. I chose which string sounds I wanted, we sorted the keyboard strings wash for the prelude verse and I practiced the keyboard string solo. We managed to get guide vocal and guitar lines down and burnt me a CD without the vocal so I have a practice track, but are we even halfway through? I don’t think so.

*sigh*

The scary part is that the time we have left to complete this project is rapidly shrinking, but what I have to get done in that time seems to keep on expanding. I honestly can’t see it all coming together…

but it’s always like that at this stage, isn’t it?

what is sound?

me at my workstation

Originally uploaded by Illuminata.

This sound recording business; it’s such alien territory. First of all, it’s deep technology – even the experts don’t know it all inside out… I’m trying not to let that intimidate me. Me, a body artist and recovering technophobe.

Secondly, it requires not only an unfamiliar mindset but the wealth of small knowledges and basic understandings that enable that mindset. It requires that one not zone out on hearing unfamiliar and often complex terminology. It expects active comprehension; it demands uncompromising engagement. In short, we have to tame this bleeping beast. We may not become sound engineers but we’re expected to acquire sufficient working knowledge to demo our own ideas.

Will it make my quaint little analog 4-track redundant? I doubt it: not unless I shell out a coupla grand for the software, and given that I’m not an instrumentalist so anything I demo is at pre-pre-production stage anyway, I can’t see it being worth it. But it’s still a required module of the course, so I have to conquer my bewilderment.

Worst of all, my straight-A student’s ego is having to reach unhappy compromises with my energy levels. I wish, even just for my pride’s sake, that I could give each subject the time it needed to bring it up to best possible standards, but I’ve been forced to be realistic: I may have to be satisfied with a pass in my weakest subject. Supporting oneself while studying sucks.

this is my workstation

this is my workstation

Originally uploaded by Illuminata.

this is the keyboard that caused the word ’shonky’ to be reintroduced into the vocabulary of today’s youth. my sister bought it for my niece shiara at a garage sale and i used my status as a grown-up to do a shamelessly profitable swap for my much cheaper, nastier and more basic keyboard.
so now, introducing the sankei stereo entertainer… when all its parts worked (sometime back in the ’70s) you could choose a beat, play along to it on the keyboard (with or without an excruciatingly cheesy vibrato), sing into the microphone and tape yourself on the built-in cassette recorder. and it has a radio for good measure.

it also has a rather loud and increasingly intrusive drone in a pitch that varies from day to day. alas, the sankei’s days are numbered.

but if that’s not low-tech enough for you, my other beloved instrument of interpretation is a bottom-of-the-range analogue four-track cassette recorder. i fear its days may be numbered too, because though it works fine it takes metal tapes, and they’re getting hard to find…

note the Q encyclopedia of rock stars on the shelf beside the cambridge companion to music…