On 12/24/2012 3:39 PM, Steve King wrote:
It was interesting to track the average
per-project customer billings over time. As we added more tracks and more
and more outboard equipment, billable time increased exponentially. My
colleagues and I often asked ourselves if the quality of our recordings was
increasing, were we happier with our 24-tack mixes than with earlier mixes
of similar arrangements, did the days of over-dubbing and mixing time save
money vs. hiring additional musicians for the original sessions, etc.
Generally, we concluded that our earlier sessions and mixes were just as
satisfying...maybe more so.
That's been the story for me. I think many of the recordings
I made direct to mono or stereo in the 1960s are more
enjoyable than 16- and 24-track recordings I made through
the 1990s. I think it was mostly a matter of getting the job
done quickly so neither the musicians nor I got tired of it.
To some people, spending hours cleaning up drum leakage,
experimenting with different guitar sounds using EQ, and
tuning vocals is both fun and billable. I think it's just
tedious and, if it's necessary, calls for another session
with the players, perhaps after more rehearsal time, or
brining in a good guitarist who can actually play the part.
I'm not adverse to a few fixes here and there with punch-ins
or edits, but I don't feel that it's my job as the engineer
to built a song out of scraps that we've recorded.
I used to do it enough so that I was familiar with the tools
that I had (it was rare that I added anything new) and could
work pretty efficiently. But now I don't spend enough time
in the studio to learn a DAW very well. I have to spend too
much time looking for the tools to do what I wan tto do. I
just don't have the attention span to learn which EQ plug-in
is which, and it's so easy to get distracted and install a
new one to play with, and then download the latest version
of the DAW and find that the user interface has changed in a
way that makes me re-learn that little bit that I remembered.
But a Record button and an EQ knob are there forever. I'll
let the young folks and those who have to do this for a
living do all the tedious work and keep up with the computers.
--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson
http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff