Just patching shit in

[@?,*???&?]

A rant.

It is so easy to simply accept ANY sound one gets as finished.

It is so easy to simply patch in ANY device in to get a sound.

Where does the spark to keep searching to find a new sound come from?

Anybody suffer from complacency or sameness or routine?

This audio engineering thing ought to be anything BUT routine.

Do not accept digital skinny-ness as done.

[audiogeek1]

Dear Mr Cartoon Swareword.

I agree with you. Accepting mediocrity is a big problem. Getting into a rutt sucks. I have to work hard at not getting into a rutt, it becomes hard when you bands that are not origonal and want something they have heard on someone elses record, and it is the same thing as the last band you recorded.

Mike

[rydaken]

Anybody suffer from complacency or sameness or routine?

I just went to Yosemite for the weekend for these very reasons
I just went through a tough month of fixing someone elses HACK job an a big pop record.
Consolidated regions w/ pops and clicks.
Decaying sounds cutoff and consolidated, unused regions deleted!
Hard drive space is so cheap, why do this........anyway.
happyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplace

[drewbass]

i thought it was warmhappyplace

[cgarges]

I never patch in anything unless I've got a reason to. When I find a reason, I determine what I should patch in. If it doesn't give me what I wanted or something surprisingly useful, I go to something else. That way, I never have a routine that predetermines what a project sounds like. Sure, I have some methods that will get me certain results, but I don't default to those all the time.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[Red Rockets Glare]

Anybody suffer from complacency or sameness or routine?

I just went to Yosemite for the weekend for these very reasons
I just went through a tough month of fixing someone elses HACK job an a big pop record.
Consolidated regions w/ pops and clicks.
Decaying sounds cutoff and consolidated, unused regions deleted!
Hard drive space is so cheap, why do this........anyway.
happyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplace

that is litearlly what they teach students to do at the end of each session at many larger recording schools. Want me to find video proof? I will....

[drumsound]

Its weird, because I do have things I tend to do. If have certain pieces that get used for the same duties. The artists change and thus the results are not the same. I also get a little bored and I randomly change things, to see what might work in that and/or future situations. Sometimes it's inspired by a situation at hand and other times its just me thinking "what the hell?"

[high five]

Want me to find video proof? I will....

Yes, I would like to see that. And rydaken, I think your avatar is great.

[Mane1234]

It is a big temptation to use something that worked before in a simular situation. There is a reason for that but I totally get your point. If we never try anything different how will the art ever advance....I make it a habit if I'm inspired to try something to ask the band if it's ok to wander down a path for a bit as long as it doesn't kill the vibe. Otherwise I find bands I can experiment on from time to time. Usually end up doing stuff like that for free as a tradeoff. Good point tho. Get out there and stretch.......

[bluesbaz]

Hell Yeah, fuck mediocrity, I always try to aim hight comparing my mixes to some of my favorite work. Just a/b'ing usually keeps me on my toes, it can definitely sting but it helps you grow.

Oh, and heres my rant about feeling under-motivated

Spend some time messing around. This gig is so much fun when you don't let the dumb shit get you down. Now, Im going to say some stuff thats going to start a flame war, but here it is. When I have a band come in telling me how do do thing on a recording with the mics and all that, I stop and think: Do I go over there and tell them what chords to play; Did I tell the drummer what beat he could play and how do do it; No, so fuck them for trying to get into my shit. That being said I never let on, but i do my job the best I can, its an industry of results. In the end, when you put the love in, it shows, and most bands who want to sound like everyone else lack vision, so when you show a little they tend to feed of the energy. Its those moments with the great bands that give you goose bumps on playback that Im here for and think everyone else is too. So don't Let it get you down,

[Johnny B]

I just went through a tough month of fixing someone elses HACK job an a big pop record.
Consolidated regions w/ pops and clicks.
Decaying sounds cutoff and consolidated, unused regions deleted!
Hard drive space is so cheap, why do this........anyway.
happyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplace

that is litearlly what they teach students to do at the end of each session at many larger recording schools. Want me to find video proof? I will....

I don't need proof, I believe it. When I was going to school, some cheap fool decided that the video students using the computer editing setups (which was everyone, I think) would edit on Jaz drives. Not back up their work on Jaz drives. Edit on Jaz drives. This was to save money so they wouldn't have to put decent sized hard drives in the Macs. There were a few of us who saw disaster on the horizon. Anyway, anyone who has ever used a Jaz drive knows the "click of death." The click of death was responsible for a few school TV shows not being broadcast that first semester and some very upset video students losing some big projects.

My thinking was that it was a good time to be an audio student. My PT sessions were small enough that I could put them on the tiny hard drives while I was working. Not that I used PT if I didn't have to, but that's another matter entirely.

This all happened in the communications school. Interestingly enough, when I took recording classes in the music school, we were specifically instructed to copy sessions to the hard drive to work on them, then dump it all back to the Jaz (or Zip depending) drives when we were done.

[Red Rockets Glare]

Want me to find video proof? I will....

Yes, I would like to see that. And rydaken, I think your avatar is great.

At the end of almost every session they do it this University;
http://www.mtsu.edu/~nadam/downloads/downloads.html

[Professor]

Jeff, I'm with you most of the way as always, but it's probably no surprise that I also feel inclined to say, 'it depends'.
Yes, innovations are important, even critical, to our development as artists and to our continued enjoyment and sense of fulfillment within the career.
On the other hand, there's no reason to feel absolutely compelled to reinvent the wheel every damn time we push record.
I do my best to listen to every instrument I record acoustically, in the room where I'm recording, on that day, playing that piece of music, before I decide on a microphone and placement strategy. And since I only barely mess with preamps and never track EQ or compression on the way in, that is a critical but relatively fast approach.
Unfortunately, I don't always have the luxury. Yeah, I know that sounds like a weird statement, but sometimes the task is to record quickly and have everything in place before the musicians arrive. I hate it when that's the case, especially considering that I'm working at an "educational" facility, but it happens.
Here's a good example - This Sunday I have a 5-hour session booked in the concert hall where 10 individual performers will come in and record audition tracks for the concerto competition at the local community orchestra. 10 people, one-half hour each, $10 per session. They walk in, they warm up for a couple minutes with their accompanist. They run through their concerto or opera aria 2, 3, maybe 4 times, and then they leave the room and the next person comes in. I trim the track starts & stops, add a final limiter and start the Masterlink burning while I patch into the second machine to run the next session, and the disc is done within 30-minutes to hand to the performer at the next break.
It's like assembly-line surgery in communist Russia, but it's cheap, fast, and they get a much better recording, under a somewhat pressured scenario, than they would get in a practice room. No editing, no fussing, they pick their best take, copy that to their own disc and submit it for the competition.
My approach is simple and straight-forward, I get a nice pair of mics, set them in a good configuration for the room, record clean maybe with just a hint of compression & EQ direct to CD.

Would I better serve the music and the musician by carefully selecting the best mic and pre combination for each individual instrument or voice? Or would I just be making it cost more, take longer, and sound a little better.

Don't get me wrong, I'm the first in line to rail against the guys who sit there and say, "I only ever mic a snare drum with an SM-57" or the folks that spend 6 hours micing a drumset and then through a single 57 in front of the guitar cabinet because they've never tried anything else. Every chance I get I will put at least 2 or 3 mics on an instrument, even if I'm not intending to have options at mixdown, I want to hear how different mics react to those instruments so I know for next time. If I ever have any doubt about a particular mic choice on an instrument, then an extra mic goes up. No fuss, no complaints, and no constant trial and error that frustrates the musicians either - I capture both options and don't have to second guess my decisions.

As for that little bit at the end about not accepting "digital skinny-ness as done" well come on now, isn't that the same attitude as the "just put a '57 on the guitar amp and it will sound good" crowd? To say something like, "as long as I don't patch mic to pre to digital it won't sound thin" sounds dangerously close to "if I track to 2", everything always sounds good so I don't need to innovate".

But enough ranting, I'm heading home.

-Jeremy

[Randy]

I just went to Yosemite for the weekend for these very reasons
I just went through a tough month of fixing someone elses HACK job an a big pop record.
Consolidated regions w/ pops and clicks.
Decaying sounds cutoff and consolidated, unused regions deleted!
Hard drive space is so cheap, why do this........anyway.
happyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplace

I hear you cousin,

I spent a year recording someone (scattered evenings and weekends) and when the tracking was done they found someone to mix it (thankyou jeebus.) The mixer dude wanted me to provide him with one file per instrument track, consolidated. No alternate takes, no unused regions.

I tracked with flexibility in mind. I kept all useful takes. I also like to track with a few mics on a couple of amps with the mics set up so I can use comb filtering instead of equalization. He wanted none of that.

I left the decays and made double-sure there were no pops or clicks, but I just know one or two got by. They ALWAYS do, that's why you just don't consolidate regions...

happyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplace...

[LVC_Jeff]

It's threads like these that make the TapeOp forums worth reading.