Studio Ears And Studio Eyes

I've got my "studio ears" back. Unless you're in the studio every day non-stop, it takes a couple of weeks (at least for me) to get them back.

What are studio ears? It's the ability to hear deep inside a track - to hear all the details, good and bad. At the beginning of a project, it's easy to hear major mistakes and flams, but it's difficult to hear the really small ones. Things that sound perfectly acceptable during week one drive me crazy by week three.

How do you develop studio ears? For me, the best way is by editing the tracks after basics. Regardless of the musicians, there are always fixes in timing that are necessary to tighten things up.

As a producer, I'm a big one for working it out during preproduction, getting it close during recording, and fixing it during editing. This keeps musicians from feeling beat up from too many takes, as long as they're playing with feeling but just not laying perfectly together. But it means that I'll have at least several days per song fixing things up later, which is where my studio ears get bigger and bigger. Now a 10 millisecond flam, which is about as little as you can perceive, will drive me crazy until I fix it.

A bad habit that many engineers and producers fall into is studio eyes, which means that you move things so they perfectly line up just because they look like they're not aligned, even though they sound perfectly fine. This is when your experience kicks in. You close you eyes and let your heart and brain take over. If it feels good, it is good!

Coke And Live Nation Have A Drink Together

The Coca-Cola Company and Live Nation, the world's biggest concert promoter, have announced a multi-year strategic sponsorship and marketing alliance that will make it the official soft drink of the promotion company’s venues, and the 36 million music fans that attend shows there. The sponsorship will begin this holiday season when the 12 million members of My Coke Rewards will gain access to bid for Live Nation tickets, artist merchandise and VIP trips to House of Blues shows across the country.

But what lies beneath this deal is something that must be driving the artist's that are tied to Live Nation's crazy since it also gives Coke access to their relationships with their fans.

The problem lies in the concept of unintended co-branding. It's difficult enough for an artist and a consumer brand to partner up in such a way that that it really benefits the artist. Too often it's seen as a sell-out by the artist's fans. Even worse, a co-brand can totally ruin an artist's career if the sponsor's public perception is totally opposed to that of the artist's fans. That's why Live Nation's artists must feel rather uncomfortable about this deal today. Even though Coke's image is somewhat benign, just the fact that the artists don't get a say in the matter is a warning of what can possibly come to pass at a later time.

It's always a big temptation for an artist to co-brand since everyone except the superstars really need the financial support these days (although the superstars seem to be the ones doing it the most), but it's a deal with the devil that usually affects the artists relationship with his fans, and in the new world of Music 3.0, that relationship is far more valuable than anything a sponsor can bring to the table. But having a sponsor foisted upon you whether you want it or not is truly a worst case scenario.

The Sound Guy

I love vocal groups, having been in many during my club days. And I love arranging vocals in the studio, so this video hit a sweet spot with me since it's performed so well. But it's also a clever and funny ode to the sound man, one of the most under-appreciated people in an artist's sphere of influence.

I hope you love this as much as I do.

Instant Effects Setup

Ever wondered what effects to dial in so things sound good during tracking without getting into your head turned around by the infinite possibilities available? Here's a quick and easy setup that will sound great on just about any kind of music without having to pull you hair out over parameter settings.

• For drums - a reverb using a dark room set to about 1.5 seconds of decay with a predelay of 20 milliseconds

• For all other instruments - a plate with about 1.8 seconds of decay and a predelay of 20 milliseconds

• For Vocals - a delay of about 220 milliseconds.

It's amazing how well these settings work without any tweaking, but if you can't help yourself, you can time the delay and predelays to the song, but keep the parameter close to the settings above. For instance, if the only delay in the 220 region is a 232 ms quarter-note-triplet, that's the one to use. The decay is set so that the decay of a snare drum hit just about fades out by the time the next one comes around.

Remember, these settings are to be used as a quick way to get your mix sounding really good during tracking. For mixing, they may be a starting point, but you'll probably want to get a lot more sophisticated. We'll cover that in another post.

The 4 Reasons To Add Effects

One of the most difficult things for a novice mixer to get a handle on is when and how to add effects. Most of the time, the mixer will become enamored of the sound and pour too much on just about everything, which usually makes the mix a washy mess.

That's one of the cool things about working with a top mixer. A pro usually adds just enough that you notice if it's taken away, but not enough to stand out. But before you can develop a strategy for adding effects to a mix, it's a good idea to know exactly why you're adding them in the first place.

There are four reasons why a mixer would add effects to a track:

• To Create An Aural Space. One of the reasons why we record elements in stereo is to capture the natural ambience of an instrument, or the “aural space”. Since we can’t record everything this way due to track or storage limitations, a limited recording space, or because we’re close-miking, we usually just create this aural space artificially.

• To Add Excitement. Sometimes a delay or modulation effect added to an instrument or vocal will be just the thing to make it the hook or a major focal point of the song.

• To Make A Track Sound Bigger, Wider And/Or Deeper. This is the usual reason that a successful mixer will add effects to a track, but one of the hardest for a neophyte mixer to grasp because it can be so subtle. You can’t really tell the effects are there until they go away, but they never do, so how do you know?

• To Move A Track Back In The Mix (give the impression it’s farther away). One of the easiest ways to keep instruments from fighting each other for attention is to layer them by moving them back in the mix.

We'll look into the use of effects more in a future posting.

Online Video Viewing Up, But TV Viewing Isn't Down

comScore's Video Metrix service recently reported that 161 million Internet users watched more than 25 billion online videos during the month of August in the United States, an all time record.

So what are the most popular video sites? It shouldn't be a surprise that Google's various sites surpassed 10 billion views and that represents about 40% of all videos viewed online, and as expected, YouTube accounts for 99% percent of of that. Microsoft sites ranked second with 547 million, which represents just 2.2%, followed by Viacom Digital with 539 million videos viewed (2.1%) and Hulu had 488 million (1.9%).

There are some other interesting findings in the report:

• The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes.
• The average online video viewer watched 582 minutes of video, or 9.7 hours.
• 120.5 million viewers watched nearly 10 billion videos on YouTube.com (82.6 videos per viewer).
• 44.9 million viewers watched 340 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 12.7 videos, totaling 1 hour and 17 minutes of videos per viewer.
• 81.6 percent of the total Internet audience in the States viewed online video.

What's most interesting is what's not said in the report though. According to Larry Gerbrandt of Media Valuation Partners and a former Neilsen senior analyst, you can take the massive number of views enjoyed by YouTube in one 24 hour day and they still wouldn't equal a single hour of prime time television viewing on one network! That means that although the power of Internet video is increasing and television is decreasing, Internet video still has a way to go to catch up. Just because Internet viewing is up doesn't mean that we're consuming less television, we're just watching more video in more places.