[Frank Stearns]

"Steve King" writes:

"Richard Webb" wrote in
message ...
On Sat 2012-Feb-18 17:29, hank alrich
big snip
You should publish this stuff.....Priceless!
Guffaw. Thanks! Maybe I'll do that one day.

Frank, what he said! People from the trenches don't put out enough
info about the mud down in the ditch, and your experience is well
worth sharing widely.

iNdeed, would agree with Hank. I also find that, if i"m
going to be doing the producer's gig, or recording the folks live,
attending rehearsals, even with the surprises helps me have an idea what
to expect, and adapt to those last minute
gotchas. Even when I was doing the studio I'd attend a
rehearsal if i had the chance. When you mentioend that
earlier in this thread Frank I was ready to chime in then
and state how important it is to me and the way I work.

Regards,
Richard

When I was a studio engineer, I tried to go see every band I was about to
record live; I'm talking R&R, Blues, Jazz here. If you haven't seen a
performer or group when they are really connected to their audience, then
you can't know if what your getting in the studio is the best they can do.
I know that's normally a producer's job, but with groups new to recording
the engineer usually had to also play the producer's role.


Steve is absolutely right.

But even if there is a producer, by catching the "live vibe" at a show you, as
engineer, can get a sense of a "musical arc" about the group -- how they perform,
how they relate, what they communicate -- even their "out of frame" personal and
group histories that influences who they are and what they do. (It's always good to
chat up the band a bit too, hopefully inspiring confidence and not unease! -- but
also quietly getting more background on their music and playing, perhaps even
getting some initial clues about their instruments/voices.)

It's conceivable the producer might miss some of that during the session; you can
gently back-stop that "loss" and try to make sure it's all being captured.

While I'm busy with my stuff, when needed I'll try to toss out a single word or
phrase that will remind or help the producer with something. (I know we all often
must produce and engineer at the same time; and that can be fun. But these days,
looking back, for anything but the simplest sessions I'm not so sure that's the best
way to go, even when it seems to have worked... YMMV)

Ya gotta be careful, though. Some producers start deferring to you, and that defeats
their purpose and distracts you. Or, they can start to wobble a bit if there's a
stronger personality out on the floor.

At this moment, in fact, I'm taking a break from editing an orchestral project where
the conductor got out in front -- he started producing from the podium. It sort of
works, though because at times there was not optimal production guidance from a
single authority -- the actual producer -- some of these edits are going to be
crazy, and it'll be interesting to get a final mix. (So far, the music is holding
up.)

But it's not ideal because while producing from the podium it felt as if conducting
duties might have been short-changed; and while the producer deferred to me or the
conductor, HIS job was perhaps short-changed -- things like watching tempos,
intonation, togetherness, etc.

This was a complex series of sessions with new clients; I wanted to make sure the
tech end was squeaky clean. Also, I did not want to overly and suddenly change the
session flow that had been established, quirky as it was good work was getting done.

But there will be some moments pulling digital rabbits out of hats (already had to
do this with some tempo mis-matches -- too many artifacts with PT's time stretcher
for this type of music, so tempos of some inserts were corrected manually: break
just in front of a beat transient, slip 10 or 20 ms, back-expand pre-transient of
the slid chunk and cross fade. Lather, repeat. Tedious, but at least it sounds
natural, believe it or not. (That's the solution if the insert was too fast; if too
slow you tighten chunks in a similar fashion.)

But I digress.

Thanks to Hank and Richard and others for their suggestions to recount more.

Actually, there are a few things along these lines in the works. I've been turning
down a fair amount of work lately in favor of doing some more teaching and writing.
It's a ways out, but coming. Thanks for the comments.


Frank
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