Practical Audio and Electronics for a Composer

A New Year, some New Ideas

2011-01-05T14:39:00.001-08:00

All those loyal readers of SineWaveGurus,

The new year has begun, and as one of the contributors to this blog, I've decided to spice it up/change it up. The posts are irregular at best with a meandering line through different topics.

Well, this semester i'm teaching three electronic music course, both involving MIDI. So, why not go through some of the topics/lectures i do for those classes? I'll skip the more benign for now (history of the Internet and MS Word for one class) but I will include some of the more interesting/lively discussions.

Some topics that will be tackled this semester that will be of interest:

The use of the studio as a compositional tool

Studio techniques for the beginning electronic composer

Basic hardware set-up/maintenance/troubleshooting for the beginning electronic composer

Web-design for the composer- what's important?

Music and Multimedia- the importance in today's society

Writing with an external source- Music for video

Multimedia and the Internet- how and where to post video and audio

Old School meets New School- MIDI as a Controller

the last one somewhat surprised me when my students last semester weren't familiar with hardware samplers and how it used MIDI. So, i am going to do a segment in a two of the classes that focuses on that topic. Because live performance using a MIDI controller is definitely still in vogue, though we're using software samplers now; samplers that seem to fail more often than their hardware counterparts.

Anyway, let me know if there are any other topics you'd like to see in the coming months. This is just a short list, and i'm sure i'll be adding more as time goes on.

Happy New Year!

Analog vs. Digital pt. 2

2010-10-21T21:29:00.000-07:00

Well, tonight proved the one thing about this fight...

If your board crashes, and someone else programmed the scenes and didn't tell anyone there all the ins and outs of how the scene was set, then you're in for a bad night.

Analogs don't fail that way, and it's quick and easy to see the "previous setting." yeah, there'll be differences between boards, but you could make it work. but to troubleshoot a digital board, you have to know its OS inside and out.

unfortunately for tonight's concert, i did not. Perhaps i shouldn't have tried to even lend a hand and just let the pieces not be performed. I almost limped it through, but, almost doesn't quite cut it.

So, my vote is back to Analog, if for no other reason than i can troubleshoot any analog board with some confidence, but put me in front of a digital board i've only used once or twice, and i'm probably boned. lol

Top Ten Technical Concepts You Should Know

2010-10-05T18:08:00.000-07:00

This article at ProSoundWeb is pretty freaking awesome. I think this may become ten separate articles on this forum discussing these problems

The Top 10 Technical Concepts You Should Know

a quick list of things to remember for a gig

2010-09-19T08:21:00.001-07:00

This is going to be a quickhit, a list of experiences and remedies of mine from working too many gigs/festivals, especially ones with tons of different set-ups

1) make sure you have a tech rider. period. most festivals are sticklers for making you list everything you need, and for obvious reason. but if you're doing any show, especially one of those outdoors "we have 10 groups performing tonight!" have a rider made up, and stage plot. then forward it to whoever needs it. it'll make your life better.

if you're the tech, demand them. it's a complete mess if you have 10 bands and no idea what anyone has.

2) tarps- lots of tarps. friday night, forecast was 10% chance of rain in the morning and afternoon, 30% late evening/overnight. Saturday morning, people were saying it was going to be clear. by 3:30, torrential downpour. We had a ton of tarps, and it still wasn't enough. the speakers got soaked. granted, they are "water resistant" but we're still gonna have to dry them out for a week...

3) check everything the day before. do you have enough of all the little things, like turnarounds, 1/4" to XLR adapters (Male and Female), batteries (dead wireless = dead gig), etc. are the amps configured properly for the gig?

4) bring a nice set of tools. i suggest at minimum a crescent wrench, multi-tool, and a phillips and flat-head screw driver. also bring your own miscellaneous adapters, ground lifts, outlet testers, etc. i didn't bring my outlet tester yesterday, wish i had.

5) remain calm and collected. when you see a cable sitting in 3 inches of rushing water, don't immediately slam the off button to your console. do your best to remember the proper order- power off before signal. i freaked out yesterday (i blame partly my sick and medicated brain, i was off a bit all day) and killed it. a nice loud pop ensued. everything be fine

6) if you're working with less experienced guys, give them a task, then check their work later. there's usually more work than any one person can do, but if you're a lead, it's your job to make sure it did get done correctly. having someone make a cable may seem easy, but once you cross neutral and ground, well, let's just say it's a "shocking" experience. and then, turn it into a teaching experience (remember, most audio is learned on gigs, not in the class. especially troubleshooting techniques)

7) bring extra cables. I used to hate hauling around extra cables- at the place I used to gig, we'd sometimes bring twice as many cable as needed! that was a bit of overkill, but definitely bring extras. you never know when you'll need to one more return, so you'll have to adapt both sides of the snake, run a cable to that extra amp you have, then run an extra NL-4 to a speaker...case and point, i did 2 extra returns yesterday, 1 for 5th monitor, and 1 that was a quick fix of a problem/front fill (from the mono-send no less. oh yeah, making it work for me!)

8) know your gear before you go. it makes troubleshooting a million times easier. if you can plan the whole set-up, you'll have a total win. this is especially true for knowing your mixer and knowing your speaker set-up (like right now, i've realized how to make a 5.1 diffused system easier off a specific board. that's pretty sweet, ya gotta admit.)

Anyone else have any quick tips for working gigs? or any ideas for future posts? problem, concerns, gripes? let it all out

Analog vs. Digital- why all the fighting?

2010-09-14T10:56:00.000-07:00

Analog vs. Digital- why all the fighting?

I have been following, and commenting, on an ongoing thread at www.proaudiospace.com. There is a group entitled “Analog World” that started one heckuva discussion on Analog vs. Digital. It got pretty fiery but has calmed down a great deal in the past few days.

Also, one of the mixing consoles on campus at UMKC decided to not turn on ever again. It was an old (relatively) Soundcraft Spirit 328i. Not a bad little digital console, but power supplies have always been an issue in them, or so I’ve been told. In fact, I would say power supplies are usually one of the weakest links in gear, but I digress.

The board died and so we started scoping out new ones. Fixing it would cost north of $1K, so might as well just get something new in there. The choices were narrowed to a couple digital consoles: Yamaha 01V(with 8 bus expansion) and Presonus Studiolive 24; and one analog board; Allen and Heath Mixwizard 12M.

My money, in this instance, is definitely for the digital board. Having the incredibly flexible routing of the digital board, using them as a control surface with the DAW, having the option of keeping all the sound digital until the moment it heads off to the speakers (or even at the speakers, if they take digital.). That is incredibly inviting to me in a computer music mastering studio.

In various other places, there are plenty of other pros and cons. From my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience using all sorts of different boards, here are some of the breakdowns of pros and cons as I see them for digital and analogy

Digital Pros:

Routing flexibility

Built in effects (specifically comps, limiters, gates most handy)

Show recall and automation

Smaller overall footprint (less room is always good)

Normally, more bang for your buck (all those ins and outs and outboard gear add up!)

Digital Cons:

Possible latency issues (gotta tweak everything just so, at least when working with a DAW)

Possibly inferior sound (completely subjective)

Repair/maintenance difficulties (one pot goes, you’re in deep trouble buddy…)

Not always easy to navigate/harder learning curve (all those pages…so many pages…)

Constant updates/changing landscape

Analog Pros:

WYSIWYG- if it’s there, it’s there, all right in front of you

Less conversions (which some say is where inferior sound comes from)

Incredibly stable

Many have modular designs that make service, maintenance, and modification much easier (oh, this channel is bad? Eh, I’ll just take it out and pop a new one in!)

No possible OS crashes

Analog cons:

Less flexible routing (this is in comparison to digital. Large format boards have a large amount of routing available, however, it comes with other drawbacks)

Big Foot- the more you want, the bigger it is! Take the Yamaha PM4000, it’s a whopping 82” wide, 13-5/8” tall, and 44-18” wide and weighs 403 lbs!!! (Trust me, it’s every bit of that…add in a case, and you’re talking an easy 550-600 lbs to lift. Oy, my back!)

Huge amount of outboard gear needed (comps, gates, multieffects, limiters, harmonizers, etc)

Just from looking at that, I can think of specific scenarios where one board would definitely work much better than another. You’ve got a small gig, maybe a trio playing local clubs only? If you’re building your own PA, go with an analog desk. No reason to spend the money on a small format digital (which will run you around $2K still) when you only need 12 inputs, stereo outputs, and 3 buss outs. Starting up a new theater? I’d spend the money on a digital for sure. Being able to put comp/limiters on your vocal mics will be wonderful. And being able to just program in the show, just like the lighting board, will help alleviate the headache that comes with pushing faders up and down quickly, and hoping you don’t hear the actor that just walked into the bathroom…

Ah, but what about EA music? Well, EA music has some particular challenges we have to overcome in this digital vs. analog debate.

First off, there’s the speaker set-up convention. Traditionally, in most live reinforcement, there is only, really, a stereo out. From there it is broken up as needed for reinforcement: the main stacks (often times a left and right stack), subs, delay points (in larger applications) and sometimes some far remote points. All the bussing is done just to give finer control on a quick basis (oh man, the rhythm section, in general, is too loud! Ooo gotta boost those vocals). It isn’t about sending 8 separate mixes out to separate areas of the stadium. That is handled with a separate piece of gear, a loudspeaker management system.

There is a very good reason for this. In almost every other type of show, they are trying to create a homogenous sound. By homogenous, I mean all the sound being experienced in the same way at ever point. Perhaps that isn’t the best phrasing. How to say, every person is meant to experience the exact same sound at the exact same time in the exact same place. In EA music, there is a wider range between homogenous sound and heterogeneous point source sound. Somehow, the mixer has to accommodate those that want a unified stereo field, and being able to have sounds fly around the room almost as if programmed to do so.

Another big issue is this concept of diffusion. The idea of taking a single stereo in (or mono in) and spreading it to many different speakers, and being able to change that on the fly. Modern boards, in general, just aren’t set-up for that type of operation. This is true of digital or analog. Digital gives you much more control over your routing, with more possible outs for less money than an analog. However, doing quick changes of sends is a bit easier on an analog board, depending on how you’ve set-up your pages on the digital, of course. Like I mentioned earlier, that learning curve can be a problem, learning to set-up your pages quickly for easy concerts.

All in all, I don’t think there’s a clear-cut winner. Both analog and digital are good formats. It just depends on what exactly you are working with at the time. For EA concerts, I have my own ideals of how to set them up, and lists of gear that I think are important. Digital boards can cut down on how much gear I bring to a concert, but, in the end, it doesn’t make it “easier” for me. In the end, it completely depends on the operator and what s/he is used to using.

Chime in on the raging debate between digital and analog! It’s one that will rage for a long time, I am sure

- John Chittum-

UMKC DMA candidate and UMKC IMPACT Studio Manager

www.johnchittum.com

Great Article!

2010-09-07T18:11:00.001-07:00

I am still drafting my article on analog vs. digital mixers. The new school year has started up and with my schedule as a student, as a teacher, and doing freelance work, i'm really busy. but...

I did have time to read a nice article posted online at ProSoundWeb. It's entitled Ear Versus Eduction. Check it out.

I agree with the majority of the sentiment. Having a musical background is "nice, and helpful," but 100% necessary. You can pick up the majority of the knowledge (albeit, without the terminology) from working. Case and point, my boss in New Jersey, John Heinz at Concert Quality Sound. He had no formal musical training. But he KNEW the styles of music we normally did. He could hear what was important, knew what to bring out, and did great mixes. He didn't know the musical terminology, but from mixing various kinds of music, John learned the practical application of the knowledge.

I still say a little music background is nice, especially historically if you think you're going to be amplifying Jazz groups or other mostly acoustic groups. And, the opposite is true.

Our finely tuned ears, able to pick out all this harmonic and melodic info, get bogged down and miss the point! It's all about balance, my friends. And i think the article does a nice job of saying that...with a little bent toward music education, of course. lol

The Art of Listening, pt. 2

2010-08-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Art of Listening, pt. 2

Headphones, Monitors, and Spaces.

As I mentioned in my opening article, That One Piece of Gear, I made an argument for nice headphones being a good starting point. Some of my earliest recordings and pieces that still hold up today were done on a pair of Sony MDR EX-56’s. These weren’t even great headphones, only cost about $40, but they still gave me a better sense than my laptop speakers, my cheap desktop speakers, and whatever came with my iPod. I still keep them around for general listening and as secondary listening source.

And on this I wish to speak: Multiple listening sources in different places. I remember talking to a budding producer at Sam Ash and he told me that he was surprised at “how different his mix sounded on the radio.” And I asked him, “did you ever rip it and listen to your mix in the car before finalizing it?” The answer was as I expected; “No, I just listened to it on my monitors and my nice headphones.”

I told him that a great last step before finalizing it is taking the mix to a car audio system. CD players in cars are designed to basically EQ the music so that it will work properly on the system. You then have the ability to change it up slightly yourself, with nice systems having a three band boost system- bass, mids, and highs (or traditionally in car audio “treble”). You’ll hear what the “everyday” listener will hear. The same holds true with popping in a pair of cheap headphones.

Most studios have at least a couple sets of monitors set-up, carefully chosen to have a wide variety of characteristics. The studios will be set up to turn the sub on and off as well, to hear what becomes of the bass when no sub is present. Still, I don’t think it is quite enough. Most are still using high-end monitors of much higher quality than your average computer or car speakers, or iPod headphones. At most festivals, EA composers’ music will run on something akin to the Mackie SRM450 or 350s, nice sounding PA speakers, but not high definition like those Genelecs they just laboriously spent 8 hours a day mixing. Then they take them next door to the Dyneaudio monitors. Trust me, those Mackie speakers just don’t have the definition.

I truly think checking your mix on as many different speakers, headphones, and in as many different spaces as possible is a great idea. We don’t always remember, even as we’re in the custom listening studio with 4 pairs of speakers, that those rooms are designed for careful listening. What will happen in that concert hall? Will its designed reverb react well with the reverb I programmed?

It’s important to have a really nice set of monitors, as well as listen on headphones. The immediacy of the headphones can let you hear detail you might not catch in monitors. Listening in monitors gives you a better idea of what will happen acoustically in space. But don’t forget your audience and where the final product is going to end up. Is it a piece to be played on PA speakers in a concert hall? Check it on PA speakers, especially in a concert hall. Is it going to be an MP3 rip of a recording to post on your website? Give it a few listens on your laptop speakers and cheap headphones to possibly sweeten the sound a bit. Is it going to be pressed to CD? Take it in your car, and see if you can tweak a little bit to make the mix happier everywhere.

It’s all about finding that balance between sounding awesome on your high-end speakers, having the mix translate to the medium on which it will be played, and other areas it might be played. Some say that a great mix on great speakers, or terrible speakers in the case of Yamaha NS10s, will translate to anything. However, what does it hurt to check it out in as many places as possible? You might be surprised. I know I generally am

John Chittum

DMA Candidate, Composition, UMKC

Freelance Audio Engineer, Live and Recording.

drafting, redrafting, and the perfect product

2010-08-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

I have been drafting and redrafting a new entry for about a month. I still can't seem to get it right for some reason. I've become much more nit-picky about what ends up on this blog compared to my general blog.

I've come to realize that this sort of attention to detail, while uncommon in my writing (just ask anyone who has read my large papers...) is a normal function when i compose anything, acoustic or EA, or when i'm mixing and mastering (every click will be defeated!). i don't end up with the same eye when programming for some reason (oh Pd, if i tried but a little bit harder...).

A friend of mine, Eileen, keeps a regular blog about writing, literature, and life. She linked an article by Mette Ivie Harrison entitled "In The Details" about drafting, revisions, and perfection. while it pertained to writing, as i read i substituted "composed" and it was exactly how i felt in regards to music, mixing, and mastering. I guess that's why i'm going pro! i'm not sure what makes me get so detail oriented, if it's a "defect" as Harrison put it (and one she and I would definitely like to keep) or if it's simply paying attention to something i love, or aliens (probably aliens), but i definitely obsess over each note.

is it a good thing? is it a bad thing? Generally i think it's good. The finished product ends up better. I am perpetually late with deadlines, however. And, with my mixing at least, i'll obsess over a sound that others in the room might not even catch. I probably come off as being crazy(-ier?). enough meta-conversation. Check out the article, and tell me what you think!

~John Chittum

A Performer's Take on Electronic Music (The Click Track is 100% Pure Evil)

2010-06-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

A Performer's Take on Electronic Music (The Click Track is 100% Pure Evil)

contributed by Brad Baumgardner ( www.bradbaumgardner.com )

Those who know me know that I don’t write much electro-acoustic music, which is to say that aside from required class projects, I haven’t written any electronic or electro-acoustic music. In fact, I consider myself woefully inadequate regarding the use of technology in general. We never had a computer in the house when I was growing up and I didn’t even have an email account until I was a wide-eyed college freshman in the Fall of 1999. Given my largely analog existence, it is a wonder that I greatly enjoy performing electro-acoustic works. I take pleasure in nearly every aspect of the process, from collaborating with the composer, to overcoming the obstacles and hurdles involved in integrating my instrument (bass clarinet) with electronic sounds, to the seemingly endless wood-shedding I must put into some of the ridiculously difficult parts that come my way. As an enthusiastic new music bass clarinetist and experienced acoustic composer, I have very little to offer in the way of technical advice for composers of electronic music. But, I can offer the experience and observations of a committed musician who has worked on a number of electro-acoustic pieces and has discovered things that electronic composers can do to either greatly aid or substantially piss off a musician who has agreed to tackle a difficult work.

As I’m sure anyone who happens to read this already knows, synchronization is often the most difficult part of performing with any kind of fixed media. Both tape and video are completely unforgiving and relentlessly repetitive musical partners because fixed media is exactly that – fixed. It will never change for, or react to a live performer. For composers, pieces featuring a performer coupled with fixed media can present a specific appeal – the accompaniment is for all intents and purposes relatively foolproof. It never changes, so even an incompetent performer cannot completely derail a work. If the performer gets lost or screws up in any noticeable fashion, the electronic components still sound polished and well crafted. We’re all friends here, so let’s be honest – composers (me included) are often very weary of being made to look incompetent by less than stellar performances. Fixed media offers a solution to this dilemma since it is a wonderful way to faithfully reproduce a composer’s intent time after time with little to no risk involved. But, from a performer’s perspective, artistically realizing a piece of music that involves fixed media is one of the most difficult things we can be asked to do.
I have played for a number of composers who have employed different methods for simplifying this task. Some of them are useful and others I completely detest. I can say with absolute vigor and no regret that as a soloist I absolutely abhor click tracks. As a composer, I can understand the appeal of a click track. It functions much in the same way my metronome does. It guarantees that I am keeping accurate time. But unlike my metronome, which is used solely for practice, many composers expect their players to perform with this unrelenting pulsation. It robs performers of the opportunity to actually produce musical phrases by instead requiring them to realize notation against a time grid rather than interacting with auditory cues and ultimately making more expressive music. I can’t speak for other performers, but I have a very difficult time reacting to other musicians or even static tape or video with a persistent click in my ear. That constant click also alters my own concept of my tone production and results in a less confident and less expressive sound from my horn. I take no issue with click tracks for conductors of large ensembles or click tracks that are included as optional rehearsal tools, but requiring a player to perform with a click track is essentially unmusical.

Composers often resort to the use of a click track because tape parts are not always overtly metrical. I don’t know much about the popular aesthetics of electronic music, but in my experience composers shy away from musically metrical tape parts. It probably has something to do with the whole “if you can’t figure out the way I constructed my sounds, then I must be a great composer” attitude that tends to permeate the genre. While I don’t necessarily agree with this culture of electronic mystique, some of the tape parts I’ve heard are very unique, but often difficult to analyze from either a technical or a musical perspective. This doesn’t mean that these electronically produced elements are not inherently musical in their own right, it just means that it is difficult for performers to take cues from music that isn’t predictable to some degree. Composers often build in auditory landmarks that function as musical signposts for performers. This is often very useful, but if they are few and far between it can be difficult to regulate the space between cues. Luckily I’ve never crashed and burned on a tape and electronics piece in performance, but there have been plenty of rehearsal situations in which I either had to wait for the tape to catch up to me or feverishly accelerate through material to overtake the tape part. A click track may remedy this situation, but I feel that it takes away from my ability to play musically and makes me a very accurate robotic pitch generator.

In my experience, one of the simplest and most successful techniques for synchronizing non-metrical tape parts with a live performer is the construction of interactive cues. If tape parts can be chopped into smaller fragments that can be operated by the performer via foot pedal, or triggered by the composer during live performance, flexibility is created without sacrificing the reliability of the tape part. This allows flexibility in the absolute time of the tape part and also creates the possibility of free time sections within a fixed media piece.

I’ve also played with visual cues, both within tape parts and as counters displayed in monitors. These can be very useful with highly improvisatory music, but are nearly impossible as musical markers if the part is complex and requires my constant visual attention. I’ll try just about anything, but my experience with fixed media has made me most comfortable with flexible cues activated by triggering. In my opinion this is the easiest and most effective way of accurately representing the composer’s intentions while keeping the part playable for the performer.

I enjoy playing with fixed media, but I really love playing with interactive electronics. Programs like Max/MSP that allow me as a performer to have a hand in the production of the electronic sounds are very appealing. As I’m sure anyone reading this knows, the possibilities are nearly endless with a program like this. Most of what I’ve heard in this vein tends to be either loop heavy or effects driven. Many composers will generate grooves that may be layered by the player to create dense textures for soloing. While this is really fun to play, if you don’t have a complete monster of a soloist who has the vision to think at least three steps ahead of where he or she is, the audience loses interest very quickly. I’ve also heard a lot of pieces that basically alter an acoustic instrument’s sound much in the way that guitar pedals change a guitar’s basic sound. This can be a really useful tool, but when a piece is centered around this timbral aspect, the gimmick ceases to be engaging after a couple of minutes. These loop and effects heavy pieces often make me feel inconsequential as a player. In these situations I feel that the composer really should have written a tape piece, because all of his or her objectives could be met without me having to learn a part. I understand that the technology involved in performing these kinds of works in a “live” setting makes them that much cooler to most musicians, but if I’m going to woodshed a solo part and commit to a convincing performance, I want a part that will let me shine rather than highlight the super cool programming of the composer and the abilities of his computer programs. The best (at least most fun for me) interactive pieces that I’ve played have always involved me personally as a player. They are constructed in a way that makes me sound great at what I do best while still allowing the electronics to showcase the composer’s demented auditory vision.

I can’t give any advice on how to create pieces like this because frankly, I don’t have the first clue. But, I can tell you that every electro-acoustic piece that I’ve really enjoyed was always the result of a significant collaboration between the composer and myself. As composers (both electronic and acoustic) we always look the best when we write the things that performers want to play. I’ve learned this the hard way…

*******************************************************************

Now that you’ve let me ramble on about my own particular likes and dislikes in electronic music, I’d like to mention a few examples that illustrate the points I’ve been trying to make.

Lately, I’ve been performing a bass clarinet and tape piece called Fractal Excursions by Pei Ying Yuan. This piece was written for me as a result of the KCEMA commissioning project. We worked closely on the piece, and Pei Ying was very willing to alter portions at my suggestion so that we both looked good. The tape part is divided into cues, which may be triggered by the performer or by the person running the tech at the board. Pei Ying built in some improvisation for me and was kind enough to ask which super altissimo pitches I could jump up and easily grab (for those interested concert D6 and D#6 are pretty easy to just pop out) and she wrote them into a virtuosic passage that makes me look like a complete beast. I always enjoy playing those parts because quite honestly . . . they are really impressive.

Another of my favorites to play is Adam Hardin’s Echolalia. Adam set up a framework that constantly samples the bass clarinet and uses these samples in real time against the material currently being played by the performer. He also uses some processing at points in the composition. This keeps me engaged because I know that whatever I put into the computer I will most likely be hearing out of the monitor anywhere from 2 to 20 seconds in the future. This piece is also controlled either from the computer or via foot pedal. Adam has built in a degree of freedom by letting me repeat portions or by opening certain sections up for complete improvisatory freedom. This kind of trust in a composer inspires me to make sure that I represent his vision well and I always try to play this piece a little differently each time in order to pay tribute to the nature of its construction.

Another one of my absolute favorites is Scott Blasco’s Four Songs from the Caucasian Chalk Circle for soprano and playback. I’ve heard my friend Katie Crawford perform this 3 or 4 times and every time she does it I think I love it even more. Scott has shattered the electronic cult of complexity with this piece. The electronic accompaniments are fairly simple and don’t feature any super technological manipulation. The work allows the soprano to be expressive and shine as the obvious focal point of the work. I don’t know very much about the creation of electronic music, but to me the sounds seem fairly straightforward and they are definitely overtly metrical. Again this seems to fly in the face of the generally accepted electronic aesthetic of over processed complexity. The important thing about this piece is that it is expertly crafted and supremely tasteful. It is an example that simple electronic music can be truly sublime.

If you would like to hear these pieces, the first two may be found on my website bradbaumgardner.com and the latter at scottblasco.com

The Art of Listening, pt.1

2010-06-11T14:12:00.001-07:00

Today starts a little series i'm doing about Listening. Enjoy!

The Art of Listening

A few days ago I was laying down a couple tracks with a buddy of mine. Nothing intense, just a little acoustic guitar, some easy overdubbing, and some light editing. As I was cleaning up the final track, I kept hearing a little click. I stopped it, turned to my buddy and said, “Do you hear that?” His answer “I don’t know how you guys can hear that!”

It took my by surprise for a second. My buddy is an incredibly talented musician, great jazz background, and when it comes to aural training we all love so dearly, he soundly schools me. And yet, I could hear little imperfections in the recording, clicks, bumps, uneven sounds that he could not. Made me think a bit harder about listening.

In all my years in music programs, the main focus of listening is, first, our aural skills such as dictation, and then our solo listening, intonation, tone of ourselves, and finally ensemble listening, or how we fit into an ensemble. Even later when I was more composer than performer, I listened to those three things the most. It wasn’t until I really started doing more EA music, recording, and most importantly, live sound reinforcement mixing, that my ear shifted.

How is listening different for an audio engineer from a classically trained musician? For me it all comes down to one key term: timbre. It’s not about the pitches, or the rhythms, it’s about the sound as a whole, the collective tone if you will and about learning to listen critically for all those differences in tone. What do you think?

I was freed from pitch, so to speak, when I started doing live mixing. It was not my job to get the band in tune. It was my job to make the band sound the best I could through the PA provided. That meant balancing the vocals and the drum set, finding the niche for the guitar and bass, and somehow decided where the keys fell into this. And, beyond just the mixing component, how do I make these instruments sound the best?

I’m not saying that there is only one way you should listen to music as an engineer. That’s not it at all. Having a good ear for pitch, harmony, and rhythm is incredibly useful, especially for an electro-acoustic composer or recording engineer. Learning critical listening for sound quality and timbre are also incredibly important. And learning to listen “as a listener,” deciding what really sounds the best to you as a total package is also important.

An electro-acoustic composer and audio engineer needs to where many different hats. Leaving out any part of the equation can spell trouble. A nice balance between listening as a musician, critically listening as an engineer, and listening as a consumer is important. What is a good way to approach this problem? For me, it’s just a matter of patience and time. Learning to listen critically for recording mistakes and timbre takes practice and lots of time listening to good and bad recordings. Then the patience and time to listen to a track multiple times, over and over, concentrating on one area. That’s how I approach a session, be it recording or making my own music. How about everyone else? And any good tips for learning critical listening for production mistakes over pitch content?

I do want to say finally, that being a good musician does not make a good engineer, and vice versa. I know many great engineers that are not great musicians. And I know some great musicians that are terrible engineers. It’s a fine balance between all things, especially in listening. Trust the musicians to play the right notes, but know when to tell them “maybe we should do another take.”

~John Chittum~
Freelance Engineer and Composer
DMA Candidate in Composition, UMKC

a few good articles

2010-06-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

I'm currently drafting an article with the working title "The Art of Listening." We also have on deck in the future an article about FFT basics and how to control your frequencies and performance considerations of EA music.

To hold you over, here are three good articles from Pro Sound Web. The articles they post are quite good and range from articles for seasons life-long audio pros, to anyone that plans to get near a computer and work on audio. If you're not a member, check it out. However, be forewarned, trolling their forums can give you a quick headache, and it's hard to figure out who is a credible source and who isn't. Avoid opinions by those saying "BBE Sonic Maximizers are the single most important piece of equipment you need."

AC power conditioners, what are they and why are they important?

10 most FAQ with Mastering, Pt. 1

What defines good bass in sound reinforcement?

Thanks for starting this blog!

2010-05-30T05:49:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of thing that should be a great resource for composers, both experienced and new, in the electroacoustic medium. Even the experienced folks tackle new hardware and software on occasion. Looking forward to lots of postings.

j

That one piece of gear

2010-05-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

As an active electro-acoustic composer, I constantly think about that “one piece of gear that will make my set-up perfect.” I’m sure we’ve all had that point. Or the “building my first studio, what do I have to have?” To me, this boils down to a single question: “What is the one piece of must have gear?” What do all of you out there in cyber-land think?

It’s an interesting exercise, boiling everything to that one “must have” item. Is it the software? What about the interface? Oh, a computer, of course! Wait…what about analog electronics?

For me, there is one answer: Headphones. And, past that, audio monitors. Why? I’ll break it down quickly:

1) for what I do in electro-acoustic music, a computer is a big deal. However, I could do the majority of work on just about any computer. I don’t have to have this pimped out macbook pro. And, you can always plug your headphones into a synth or workstation and work without touching a computer.

2) Portability. Laptops are made to travel, of course. But say you’re going to coffee and may want to work. Your whole rig isn’t coming with you, but your headphones can.

3) quality vs. price. One reason I took so long in buying monitors was that I was looking for a deal. A nice set of studio monitors can reach over a grand for a pair easily. Headphones? If you’re willing to drop $200 you can get a really nice pair with a flat response better than most monitors at that price point.

Those are the quick reasons why my headphones are the most important part of my set-up. Regardless of computer, software, interface, microphone, my headphones are always present. I bring them on gigs when I’m doing live sound, I take them with me to the studio. It’s plug and play at it’s finest, and I always know the characteristics of the sound I’ll hear.

Of course, I hardly ever just mix on my headphones. Then again, I try not to mix on any one transducer. So don’t take this as an “only mix on headphones!” style propaganda. Everything is still incredibly important. Headphones are just that “must have” piece for me.

How about everyone else? What do you think is the most important part of the chain, or the one piece of “must have” gear for an electro-acoustic composer?

Greetings!

2010-05-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

Greetings to everyone! this is a brand spanking new blog that's going to deal with a specific issue dear to my heart: Audio and Electronics for the Composer.

Now, there are tons of books out there, getting nitty gritty on audio engineering (I keep my copy of the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook nearby at all times) and there are books on programming and electronic music (ahem, The Computer Music Tutorial by Roads anyone?) slews of books on recording and mastering, even specific manuals on how to use programs. In the end, to me, no one book is practical for my needs as a composer/engineer. And, i'm not sure, practically speaking, there ever will be a book that can be published that will contain all the info needed.

I don't intend for this blog to become "book-like." The goal is, instead, to tackle issues that have come up as a composer/engineer in my time. Things like "What are some good microphones to buy for recording vocals? or for violin?" or "How do i get rid of this clicks in my PD patch?" or "in a simple straight forward way, explain FFT."

This is meant to be a nice supplement to something you've been doing. A practical guide, if you will, of the contributors' experiences and our conclusions. I've invited some friends along for the ride, and hope to get a few more. feel free to leave comments, give your opinions, question my opinions, and have a nice lively discussion. I decided to do it as a blog, or rather, in my mind, a series of articles, instead of an open forum just to give contributors time to really write a useful document, rather than a quick response (as i find myself often doing as i hit the forums.)

i am hoping this will be a nice supplement to all of our learning. I am sure I will learn a great deal from everyone else interacting with the blog. Hopefully we can all walk away learning a trick or two about how to be a composer, an engineer, an electrician, and, most importantly, an artist.

- John Chittum