Masters of Thriller

We stared in awe at the contents of the opened box that was just delivered. In the box were several masters of Michael Jackson's Thriller. They were sent here for us to do digital transfers from 2” tape as preparation for the remixes for the 25th Anniversary edition of Thriller.

The client in charge of the process was verifying that the transfers were done properly in our Studio B when we checked in with him. He asked if we would want to hear some of it. Who would say no? He played us the track "Beat It." He soloed the famous Eddie Van Halen guitar solo, then just the lead vocal (which was fantastic!) followed by a lot of other individual tracks giving us an idea of how intricately layered the song was with a lot of different types of sounds and instruments. It was a song we have heard a thousand times, but the experience was still eye-opening and hearing how meticulously crafted it was.

I am always intrigued when a hit song is deconstructed as sometimes demonstrated in the video series, Classic Albums. It would be great to see one for Thriller. Each show has the artist and/or producer & engineer replay tracks from the hit album with running commentary on how much care and craft that went into the playing, shaping and mixing of each song. Showing more of this process would certainly raise the amount of appreciation people have for what professionals do in the studio. Think of the PR value that would have.

When I get the chance, I always ask engineers who have worked on hit songs / albums whether they knew at the time they were working on something special. (If you ask the producers, they'll always say yes). Most of the time, the answer I get is that they knew the music was good or the performance special, but most of the time, they were too busy making sure that everything was being recorded properly and the clients were happy. How can you foresee that the project you are working on will become a mega-Platinum hit? Sure, if the artist is currently hot and their career is on an upswing, you can predict that it will do pretty good, but for the songs on the album to become a sound track to the lives of thousands worldwide and become a cultural phenomenon, that is a little bit harder. That is why you have to treat every session like it will be a hit, because it just might become one. You never know.

Despite the splintering of attention and overabundance of content to consume, it is really encouraging to see that the experience of music can be ubiquitous. This certainly has a lot to do with the genius performer that Michael Jackson was. The sad thing is that people do not realize how important a part of life music is until an unfortunate event such as this occurs. It is a sign that with the right music and performer, there is still value in music and its impact can be powerful. Many people are saying that this phenomenon - the magnitude of talent, the mass appeal and worldwide reach, the record sales, the timing in history - can never be repeated. I would like to believe otherwise. You never know which masters in a box will change the world, again.

Cell Phone Etiquette

Besides the nuisance of phones ringing during takes or the distraction that texting and message checking can cause, there is another reason for requiring everybody involved in a recording session to actually turn off their cell phones. Switching cell phones to vibrate mode will not help in this case.

It is bad enough that studios have to contend with all sorts of RF in the air that show up on microphones and other recording gear. It certainly does not help matters if the RF sources are cell phones of the players in the session.

Every cell phone emits a "homing" signal to the nearest cell tower on a regular basis to let the tower know that it is still within range. When this happens, the cell phone will boost its RF output power up to 1W to make the connection. Normally, the output power is much lower at around 1mW.

If the cell phone is in close proximity to a microphone, it will result in noise. If the cell phone is left on top of or near the recording console, it might show up as noise on one of its channels. Cell phones have been known to interfere with outboard gear as well.

The last thing you need is somebody's cell phone ruining a perfect take. We understand that people want to be accessible so they do not lose a gig, especially in this economy. You can always retrieve and reply to messages during breaks. Most of the time, cell phone reception can be spotty anyway, e.g. in a building like ours that used to be a Con Edison power substation.

As a business that provides room and service, we cannot force people to turn off their cell phones. Unlike smoking, it is not against the law. We can only recommend that they do so. Enforcement will have to come from the producer or someone who is in charge of the session. Don't say we did not warn you.

Lessons from Kitchen Nightmares

I don't watch a lot of television and shockingly, I don't have cable at home. I see what I need to with a Netflix subscription and a digital converter box at home. However, I do see snippets of programming in passing at the studio where we have 200+ channels of DirecTV. One show that has captured my attention is Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (the UK version) that is shown on the BBC America channel. The appeal of the show to me is how Gordon Ramsay, a successful restaurateur and chef, forcefully points out some of the basic principles of business management that is critically lacking in failing restaurants he visits.

Watching how restaurants are run, even as small as a two-person operation, you can see a microcosm of all the things a business has to deal with and do well. The show offers insights on leadership, teamwork, delegation, communications, streamlined operations, quality control, customer service, market research, product mix, differentiation, marketing, promotion, entrepreneurial spirit, change management...etc. The resistance to change that Gordon encounters, even when the restaurant is on the brink of bankruptcy, is fascinating to watch. If a small, handful of people dig their heels in and refuse to change their ways even when they are about to lose their livelihood, imagine what a large corporation has deal with when management wants to enact change in strategy, organization, mind set, ...etc., especially if the employees are too comfortable. I can attest to how difficult that can be having personally witnessed it working at Sony for many years.

There are plenty of lessons here that are valuable and should spur you to take a closer look at how you are running your own studio. Making changes against status quo is always a challenge, especially if you have been doing things a certain way for a while. If this economy does not force you to review everything about your business, the large scale changes occurring in the music industry will certainly test your business acumen, adaptability and resolve in running any kind of recording studio today. The small tweaks suggested in Ramsay's show may not be enough to weather large tidal changes. It makes you wish for a show called "Studio Nightmares" except I think we are operating under conditions much tougher than what restaurants are facing. It might be time to think outside the box of the box.

The Herd Mentality and Other Musings

It never fails. One week, the studio can be slow, even dead, and the following week everybody is clamoring to get into the studio all at the same time on the same day. Is there a conspiracy or some secret pact between those who want to record? Or is it some form of weird competition where everybody waits until one artist decides to record and then all follow suit trying to out-muscle each other? I don't think it is just us. From our conversations with producers, engineers, instrument techs, rental companies, even other studios, that is how it seems to work. If one artist broke ranks from the pack and decided to record one week earlier or one week later, they would have the pick of the rooms and get a great deal to boot. Are you listening out there?

Being someone who won't believe an anecdotal statement without supporting data to back it up, I decided to go back and take a look at monthly bookings from the past six years to see if there really is some sort of trend or seasonality to when people prefer to record. Actually, I get asked the question often whether there is a pattern to recording activity. My usual response is that every year is different, and it is. Each year, there are different circumstances in terms of what is happening around the world, how the economy is, what is happening in the music industry, down to what individual bands are doing. The result of my simple analysis is indicative of our experience and our experience only. From a studio standpoint, it is a sample size of one - not something I can say is statistically significant.

At a very macro level, conventional wisdom says that in general, most artists want to finish recording before summer so they have something to sell when they go out on tour. Post-July summer and the months sandwiching the year-end holiday season were considered to be slow times. The data seemed to support the existence of a pre-summer bump over 80% of the time with May and June being the best months of the year - that is up until 2007. Since then, we have seen a completely different recording behavior with peaks occurring in February for the last two years. The rules have seemed to gone out the window. It is hard to explain why since there are too many factors that could play into this. As a business owner, especially in a downturn, you need to be able to forecast and take corrective action as quickly as possible, but it has been hard to predict what will happen this year or the next. I am already seeing that this year is even more different, but then this year has not been like any other year in terms of the state of economy. What made the herd change it's mind?

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In the last post, I mentioned that almost 80,000 new releases came out in 2007. It takes time and effort to put together and finish an album, which is no small task. Regardless of how many units each release sold, the good news is that there were 80,000 artists who were resourceful and driven enough to produce their albums.

I was talking to a well respected producer, who was telling me that he has been inundated with more projects recently. The reason was that people who had been let go recently by major record labels have approached him with their own projects. These people - lawyers, A&R, publishing and promotions people - were now applying their trade and lending their expertise to help expose artists. Music people are pretty passionate - that is why they got into it in the first place, but they have to eat as well.

As soon as we see the light at the end of this recessionary tunnel and the credit market loosen up a bit, we should see funds become more readily available to these independent projects. We might even see more recording activity. There does not seem to be any shortage of people wanting to record. With talent to attract investors and funding to allow more options for production, we may see more artists needing help from experts. That is reason to be optimistic. I guess that is enough crystal-balling for now. Got to get back to work...

What Price Audio Expertise?

Michael Porter, a renowned expert and scholar on competitive advantage and competitive strategy, states that an organization can compete either by differentiation or by price. To put it more simply, the question is do you want to be like Apple or like Walmart? If you continuously strive to offer a superior product, you can command a premium because you gain a devoted raving fan base of consumers.

There is another economic principle called the law of supply and demand. If you look at professional studio services, history shows that there are now less studios operating. As I stated in an earlier post, studio rates have not really changed over the years. If anything, there seems to be an almost irrational rush to lower them. There are now alternatives, or what Porter may call substitute services, namely home studios powered by less expensive, feature rich modern "prosumer" audio gear. Yes, there is still a need for large spaces where people can play together and there is a need for a no-nonsense place where people can go record and get what they need done professionally.

On the demand side, you can say that CD sales are down, labels are struggling and recording budgets are smaller. Yet, in the last six years, the number of recording releases per year has increased by leaps and bounds. In the U.S. in 2003, over 38,000 albums were released. In 2007, that number reached almost 80,000 (31% of that was digital releases)**. There are a lot of tools available now that make it easy to create and produce your own music. The volume of sales per any single release may be dropping (80% of releases sell less than 100 units) but the total amount of music being generated seems to be greater than any other time in history. The cumulative total number of SKUs in the U.S. is about half a million. The total number of SKUs handled by one record retailer’s system is about 16,000. You can begin to understand how logistically difficult it is to carry inventory that caters to a wide and diverse range of consumer tastes.

With better tools and the Internet, it is the age of democratization of music making, filmmaking, broadcasting, news reporting, ...etc. If a work captures the imagination of the masses for whatever reason, it becomes a viral hit, even if it was produced on a shoestring budget. Whether a hit like that generates any sustainable business remains to be seen. Popularity aside, people can clearly tell if a program was professionally produced or done on a shoestring budget. Just because more money was spent on production, it does not equal or guarantee quality. A lot has to do with the core quality of the song, the story, the writing. But when all the stars align and the content and the presentation are both done with quality, then the end result may transcend the medium and become art.

The other more troubling question is how much value is placed on art in general? With so much content being generated and assuming you can find a nugget in your Google gold pan, how long will the impression that song, book, movie, blog entry made on you last? Will you covet those items and go back and re-experience them again? Will it be relevant in 5 years, 10, even 50?

Yes, there are a lot of technological and cultural factors that affect what we do. It affects the marketplace where we conduct our business. The sorry state of the economy is not helping either. Like any other profession, there is a value to expertise. If a business is run right, there is a value associated with that. If the user experience is superior, there is perceived value. Not all of this is tangible. How do you put a price tag on all of the above? Yes, the price is what the market can bear, what the customer is willing to pay, ...etc.

Is an hour in the studio a commodity - one hour at Avatar is no different than an hour anywhere else - like a sack of potatoes? Is a better maintained studio worth an extra $25 per hour, a better trained staff who is attentive, competent and has pride in what they do an additional $5 per hour, an engineer who can successfully run your session and get a great sound no matter what the situation $15 per hour? We submit to you that there is a difference. If we did not believe it, we would be doing something else.

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** Source: Nielsen Soundscan State of the Industry 2007-2008

Tips on Using Analog Tape

This post is a guest editorial by our highly experienced maintenance staff member.

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QUESTION: What should I watch out for if we decide to record to analog tape?
ANSWER:
So....if an engineer wants to record to analog tape today, here are some suggestions to make the session go off without a hitch.

First, the engineer or producer should estimate how many reels of tape they will need and ask the studio far enough in advance to order enough reels cut from the same batch for the entire project. Today, batches or production runs of tape are much smaller because of the lower volume of analog tape production. Therefore the acceptable deviation or inconsistencies between batches of tape can become more apparent if a project uses reels from different batches in the middle of a project.

Second, it is always good practice for the engineer and assistant engineer to check the alignments of tape machines PRIOR to recording music. It is quick and easy to send 100Hz, 1kHz, and then 10kHz DIRECTLY to tape (no inserts or effects between the oscillator and the tape machine) and look at the level on INPUT and then throw the machine into RECORD and look at the level coming back from tape in REPRO. All that matters is that the level on INPUT and REPRO are the same! You only need about 30 seconds or less of blank tape on each reel to just check the consistency of the batch(es). That is considered acceptable deviation between reels and what is not acceptable can be decided by the engineer, but at least there will not be any unpleasant surprises.

If you have no choice but to work with reels from obviously different batches, there are always options that will enable you to work around the inconsistencies. One option - for very minor differences - is to call the technical engineer and have them tweak the record alignment once you start working with the new, differing batch. For more serious deviations, the machine can be re-aligned and new tones can be printed on reels from different batches of tape. This latter, worst case scenario can be time consuming and bring the creative process to a grinding halt, which is why we recommend getting tape that has the highest probability of consistency (reels from a single batch) for your project.

Lastly, you should remember that the imperfections of analog recording (called "non-linearities" by electrical engineers) are the reasons people find analog appealing to begin with. By non-linearities I do not mean a high noise floor (hiss) and high-output tape slammed with signal. These are not examples of the limitations of the analog recording medium, but are symptoms of unintended use of tape. When you record to analog, you cannot expect the precision and consistency that today's digital recording systems boast in their technical specifications. The analog system should be relatively flat in its frequency response (+/- 1-2dB from 50Hz-15kHz) with a consistency of +/- 0.25dB between channels and a consistency of +/- 1dB between batches of tape.

Paying Your Dues

QUESTION: How long does it take to get really good at recording?
ANSWER:
I recently read a couple of books - one called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and the other The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen. The former talks about attaining excellence and the latter talks about the spread of mediocrity. I recommend reading both books. Later, I will have a post about The Cult of the Amateur. One of the main points in Outliers - that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something - has been mentioned and referred to a lot lately in the press and in many blogs.

I wanted to offer our take on this 10,000 hour principle from the perspective of how our staff members develop from being interns to freelance engineers.

As mentioned in a previous post, people join our staff as interns. After three months of internship, those that show dedication and the right fortitude, they are hired as production assistants (PA). Historically, it takes about 3-4 years to be promoted to assistant engineers. After about three years as an assistant, people start getting a little restless and consider becoming a freelance engineer. I put together a chart that plots the number of years since becoming a staff with the estimated time people actively practice their craft of recording, shown below (click on the chart for a better view).


I did not consider the years of schooling that people have before coming to the studio. You may think of the hours counted as a craft practiced on-the-job. As an intern and then a production assistant, many of the hours are spent running around getting coffee, cleaning, moving things, printing labels, ...etc. Not a lot of time is spent learning the craft other than studying manuals, learning the rooms through practice time, help setting up sessions and watching and listening to engineers. This happens mostly during off-duty hours. However, during this time, one learns what goes on in the studio and how to behave around other people, which is very important.

Toward the end of being a PA, one gets a chance to sit in on sessions or "second assist" and shadow another assistant engineer. This is preparation for becoming an assistant engineer.

Once one becomes an assistant engineer, a lot of time is spent in sessions working with a variety of seasoned engineers. Working at Avatar, this means working with James Farber, Al Schmitt, Kevin Killen, Paul Northfield, Niko Bolas, Dave O'Donnell, Roy Hendrickson and many other talented people. One gets exposed to many different set ups, approaches and techniques and this is where a lot of knowledge is absorbed. This exposure and experiential learning is the invaluable part of working at a large studio. When assistants leave prematurely, they miss the concentrated learning that occurs during this phase. Another benefit is that artists, producers and engineers will remember a promising assistant and this established connection leads to future gigs.

After about three years, assistant engineers get the opportunity to engineer sessions when clients come in with no engineers specifically assigned. At this point, assistants have seen what worked well and they have a few ideas of their own on how they would approach a given session. During this time, assistants have to start thinking about creating their own "rolodexes" of future clients.

Once the assistant makes the leap to become independent and join the ranks of the freelance engineer, which is a major deal, one is free to practice their craft pretty much full-time or as much time as they can get gigs to make a living or work with artists they believe in. After doing this for three years, the cumulative hours spent in perfecting one's craft has gone over 10,000 hours.

If you had a choice of using someone who claims to know the craft versus someone who can show you this kind of a track record, which one would you hire? There would be a difference in quality when someone, who had paid his/her dues to get to this level, works on your project. Let me tell you, it is worth it.