Johnny splits
Mr Dekam took a plane back to his new home town Houston, TX this morning. We got an enormous amount done in a week and a half in the Shed. His easy-going, cavalier style of live mixing carries over into his FinalCut editing. We have a rough assembly of the whole concert, though the sound is currently mainly direct off the camera and ‘board mixes’, and I now need to go into the studio and mix the separate tracks against picture. Then we will reassemble it into a fine cut, do the DVD authoring, and get it off to Discmakers for pressing.
I didn’t learn FinalCut Pro as I had hoped, but from looking over Johnny’s shoulder it’s clearly not a lot different from ProTools. (And even more similar to its Apple cousin Garageband.) If push came to shove I could probably do my own project in FCP; I’m just a bit lacking in technical understanding of compression algorithms etc. I learned the finer points of film and video editing way back in the eighties. I can easily spot when a shot is a couple of frames out of sync, and I have a good advance sense of which cuts are going to work, and why they don’t when they don’t.
As with producing music, I accept that there’s not much objectivity when I’m my own editor. I’d probably end up with a better result in objective terms if I let someone else call the shots. However, there’s already way to much ‘perfectly produced’ music and film out there. But not a lot that’s actually interesting and makes a personal statement. So I’ve always felt that I should please myself, and not try to second-guess the marketplace.
This morning I was reading an article in Electronic Musician about record production. It said that Rule #1 is you need your individual faders lower than your subgroup or master faders. The article treated this as gospel, as if it’s something every professional engineer and producer learned on day 1. In the same mag, Russ Kunkel, who is also a musician first and foremost (or rather a drummer, which may/may not be the same thing!) was talking about mixing boards with a +25dB overhead.
Well, I’ve produced and engineered several albums myself that have sold gold or better, and I have to confess I don’t really know what a dB is. I certainly didn’t know about Rule #1 with the faders. I like to use old analog Neve 8068 boards and plug my keyboards into the mic preamps. The good thing is, if a board from that era gets overloaded you can usually smell it because the tubes start to fry. So I let my nostrils tell me where the faders should be. I rarely look at a VU meter.
I learned to direct and edit music videos because Steve Barron overslept one day and didn’t show up for a production meeting for the ‘Science’ video. But I fancied his sister so I suggested we continue with me at the helm. I learned to engineer albums because Bill Bottrell announced on a Friday that instead of starting Monday on a 3 months long project on my album ‘Astronauts and Heretics’, he was going to work with Michael Jackson instead. I was pretty incensed at the time, though anyone in the music industry would probably say Bill made the right career move. My point is, magic happens in the studio or it doesn’t–you don’t necessarily need to know what you’re doing!
If you decide you want some nice menus or interactives for your DVD, you might check out Click Active Media (clickmedia.com). They’re in SoCal, and the lead designer, Claire, worked with Peter Gabriel on the Explora CD-ROM back in the day. Her company has transitioned into dvd stuff lately, and one of her video and game developers just moved back to Houston if you decide you need to check up on Mr. Dekam’s work. (I worked there some years ago, and moved back to Houston last year myself, so I’ve kept up with their goings on…)
(Also, might be worth adding Houston to a future tour. We feel left out fairly often.)
Great to haer that things are progressing. I am so looking forward to the DVD! Leave an easter egg somewhere please!
Now I’m not usually a geek. Especially a musical geek but I am an engineer so as far as dB is concerened I feel duty bound to offer a simple explanation.
dB stands for the unit of sound pressure audibility (decibel) and it is the unit which is used to measure the sound intensity. The dB scale is logarithmic instead of linear because the human ear is so very sensitive. Example: Your ear drum can pick up everything from the tiniest insect flying past to a violent explosion.
When you consider the power of sound intensity of an explosion probably several trillian times more powerful than the quietest audible sound. the differential is so huge that a linear scale would be just too, well, long.
n+3dB indicates a doubling of sound intensity, so a sound measured at 63dB is twice as loud as a sound measured at 60dB. It’s probably easier to understand if we work in multiples of 10…
On the dB scale, the quietest audible sound (virtually but not quiet silent) is 0 dB. A sound 10 x as powerful is 10 dB. A sound 100x as powerful than virtual silence is 20 dB. A sound 1,000x as powerful than virtual silence is 30 dB. All measurement are taken close to source as we know that sound diminishes over distance due to air resistance and inertia. (I’ll be asking questions later so pay attention at the back!)
To paint this up into a picture…
Virtual silence – 0 dB (Silence is actually only possible in a vacuum)
Whispering voice – 15 dB
Average speech – 60 dB
Heated argument – 80 dB
Passing motorbike – 90 dB
Police siren- 110 dB
Max permissible public concert – 120 dB
Explosion, e.g. gunshot – 140 dB
So there you have it. Sound. Aint it lovely!
Incidentally sound over 90dB is harmful in any length of exposure so be careful with that iPod. Headphones should be banned.
geek-sign-off!
Cheers,
Jon
Experience IS the best teacher. Technical know how is probably not always needed but I’m sure you do need to know what you’re doing or else you wouldn’t know when it’s finished! This seems to be the case with some artists, they procrastinate over what they have produced striving for perfection and the work doesn’t get out!
Your shows evolved and took on a life of their own so I’m sure you and Johnny (living the experience) have captured the ‘feel’ of the concerts. I hope some of the warmth of the crowd comes across in the video. We were all so pleased to see you return to the stage.
I’m really looking forward to seeing the DVD. I think we’re all gagging for new material. Every MP3 and Podcast just gets eaten up!! All the best. W
Hmmm, I just re-read the title of the blog entry. It happened too me too once.
Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.
Thanks Thomas, it’s fascinating to understand how you approach these things
Time and again when music production is being discussed online and elsewhere, The Golden Age of Wireless is cited as a classic example of a well produced album, and I’ve always wondered whether you had had any formal training or whether it was all just by feel
And as for sniffing the tubes frying – I guess that explains the intake of breath at the very start of Windpower!
Well, this sounds like a fairly labor-intensive project. I guess it could be just as simple or complex as you want it. But just to be basic with some raw footage is sometimes quite satisfying (i.e., some meet n’ greet footage at the end of DVD, if available). By the way, which concert are you highlighting? If there are any shots of the audience, I could try to visualize some of the forum members!
Thanks, White City, for your explanation of dB. Your concise explanation was easy to follow — even for a non-geek like myself!
Mmmm… The DVD will be out soon.
Editing about done.
Who’s doing the soundtrack?
Dhoh! :red:
.
Excellent work, sirs!
I have to say it would be great to have some sort of commentary track on the DVD – are there any plans to do this? I mean it would be great to hear you talk about the songs, performance…anything really!
BTW, Is that you in the Prefab Sprout video “Looking for Atlantis”? Just wondering…
Thanks, as always, for the continuing blog updates.
J.
White city, that’s the most pithy explanation I’ve ever seen. Would you mind if I borrowed it for my classes?
Agreed. I worked in a recording studio for several years, doing all the CD mastering and all I had was my brain and a Mac.
2hello, it’s good idea…
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