Sunday, March 14, 2010
Building The Best Product You Can, Whether It’s Motorcycles Or Recordings
Drawing from theory and techniques that will pretty much insure a good translation of the artist's intentionI’m regularly asked about my choices of favorite microphones.
The answer is really pretty easy every time: my favorite ever made is the Shure SM57.
You can point a ‘57 in the general direction of a sound and you’ll get a pretty decent representation of that sound that can be recorded and pounded to death later.
Everything else in terms of microphones is pretty much open to negotiation. I do mostly unsigned artists, which often means that the “A List” gear isn’t an option.
In a past life, I headed a retail audio operation, and there was always a ton of stuff that I’d be checking out, so it wasn’t all that uncommon for me to be in the position where I was working on a project with nothing but tools I’ve never seen before.
So, I’d be in the studio trying to define uses (or reasons why I’d never use them again) for stuff that was a total and complete mystery to me.
A lot of times I’d hit on a piece of gear that I absolutely thought was great, only to get to the mix or mastering and find that it wasn’t all that great - so then I’d have a self-imposed problem to try to work out of.
The only things I really stress about in terms of the whole recording process are the sounds I’m recording. You can have all the $10,000 mics in the world, but if the sound you’re recording is crap, the recording is going to come out like crap.
If you have great sounds with great performances and can use whatever tools you have at your disposal to capture those sounds, and those performances are of a manner that compliments the musical statement, then you’re sitting in a damn good chair.
Having access to some of the hardware I have access to will often make the job a hell of a lot easier. It can often make the product maintain the emotional content that was the artist’s vision of how the product should be presented.
But, it’s never a means to an end. The whole goal is to be consistently “upper mediocre.”
Nobody is a genius every day, nobody is lousy every day - O.K, some are indeed lousy every day, but they’re destined for failure in anything they do. The idea is really to be a little better than average everyday, and genius when you can, and try to avoid being totally lousy always.
In real life, I’m a mechanic by hobby while many of the people that might read this are “recording engineers” by hobby. When I go to a custom motorcycle shop and see the tools they have at their disposal, I drool.
We have a moderately well set up shop that we play in on weekends. I’m like the little intern. We have some pretty cool stuff. A lot of the tools run on compressed air, we have lifts and bead blasters and some specialty tools.
We can build a scoot pretty much from the ground up, but we don’t have the CNC stuff that a lot of the “real” shops have - and we never will, because it’s a hobby and not a profession.
By the same token, I like some of the stuff we build in our shop way more than some of the custom bikes that sell for $50,000.
If you’re drawing the parallel, it’s all about making the best product you can with the tools at your disposal whether you’re building motorcycles or recording music.
After building a few motors, I’ve learned some tricks to make it easier to build motors and I’ve learned some tricks that make the motors come out better.
After approximately 35 years of being an audio engineer I have a pretty good grasp of theory and a repertoire of techniques from which I can draw that will pretty much insure a good translation of the artist’s intention.
At the end of the day it ain’t how you got to the finishing line, it’s that you got there at all. I don’t think there are a dozen things I’ve done in my career as an engineer that I’ve sat back and listened to and said, “Holy crap! That’s good.” I’m the same way with a bike. I’ve never owned one that’s been “finished.”
There is always something I’d like to change. There is always something where I feel I could have done better. There is always something I wish I’d done differently.
I just take that to the next gig, and the gig after that, and so on.
Recording is a medium because it’s oh so rare that it’s ever well done.
Fletcher moderates a popular REP forum here on ProSoundWeb.
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