Audio Technology - Issue 21

Sunglasses at night There is a great story about Elvis Costello when he was working on a record with Paul McCartney. Apparently, Elvis waltzes into the studio at the crack of 7pm, and turns to meet his engineer on the session for the very first time. The engineer, a young lad in his early twenties, is wearing a very cool pair of Ray Ban sunglasses. Elvis says," For Pete's sake it's 7pm, it's dark outside and it's dark in here, why the hell are you wearing those sunglasses?" The young engineer says, "Well, I'm 22, and I'm recording Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney. I figure my future's so bright I have to wear shades." Elvis says: "You're fired".

I thought that might make you smile. I have a special thing with sunglasses at the moment because I have happily settled into my new pair. No biggie for the average Joe but I have to confess I'm only on my second set of sunglasses ever - yep, that's ever.  For some reason I didn't fall into the teenage trend of wearing sunglasses. A bit like cigarettes, I could never see the point. Sure,'. know they shield your eyes from the sun and I know they make you look cool, but somehow I managed to get through my I teens and twenties without ever owning a single pair. My main drama with sunglasses is: I have always felt when I wear them that I hear differently. Well, not just 'differently', but better - more acutely - and therein lies my dilemma. If I put a pair of shades on when I'm driving, guess what? Instead of just being able to see with less sun glare, I can hear with better resolution. The previously comfortable drive, with a little glare in my eyes, becomes a nervous distraction as I become aware of the sound of every rattle and bump in the road. (I have a vintage car and any new rattle is a bad rattle!) It's quite amazing: drop the shades, down goes the noise floor; put 'em on, up come the rattles. It has always been too distracting for me to drive safely so I never got sunnies. Yeah, yeah. Before you write this off as complete madness, I would just add that I currently have 20/20 vision and I'm being very serious - until now, I have never ever owned sunglasses.
 
I used to keep quiet about my little affliction for fear of being told to check in for a long quiet rest in the loony bin. But my soon-to-be wife has a Masters in psychology, and flipping through her various psychology textbooks opened me up to the theory of Diminished Sensory Perception. I won't bore you with the technical details but the point is: lose one (or even a part of one) sense and your brain makes up for it with the manipulation or amplification of another sense. For example, lose your sight and your brain starts using your other senses in a much stronger way - you learn to hear and define sounds better and you learn to touch and feel things more acutely, your brain does this through a combination of clever 'rewirin acquired sensory learning skills.
 
This acquired sensory learning is one of the reasons some of us get really good at mixing after many years. After all, a good mix is a blend of subtleties lost on the beginner - a blend only discovered after many years of subconscious training.
 
There is a famous story about Cat Stevens who, in the '70s, drove his engineers to distraction by insisting on mixing his records with the lights off because he could hear better in the dark (erm... I was trying to explain how I was not going mad, so maybe Cat Stevens isn't the best example!) But, you know what I am talking about: turn off the lights for the final playback and your record sounds so much better. The same theory applies to why it feels so good to close your eyes for a few seconds when you're drunk - the loss of one sense makes the others work a little better.

I guess this point about sunglasses is a little odd if I don't confess to the underlying pretext of how I experience sound. The psychology books describe a condition where a small percentage of people experience sound and words as colours ['synaesthesia' is the condition, I believe - CH]. Mostly those folks are the ones with perfect pitch and end up supremo artists (or supremo nutters... or both). Well, I don't 'see' words and I don't have perfect pitch (thank God) but I ply my trade making records and I definitely see sound as colours and images, no question. I don't see these images in my actual sight, but they're not confined to within my head either - if you follow. Let me explain.

When I hear a record for the first time, it seems I conjure up an image of that song. Sometimes it's very detailed - like a video clip -and sometimes it's more of a single abstract thought. It happens every single time I hear any record I am working on, and I seem to be able to turn it off when I am not at work.

If you play me a mix when I am doing something else and ask me how it sounds, I will probably answer with a plain honest, "umm, I don't know". It's not a cop out, it's just that my sonic judgement method switches off - it is the only way I can survive in the outside world of noise. Now this skill (or affliction) is something that has developed over time and I can only figure it is some kind of acquired sensory thingy. When I first hear a song I'm working on I may immediately think it's kind of 'red' with a touch of 'rainforest' and a hint of a 'satin sheet'. I hear how wide it is, how deep it is and what's inside and outside the soundstage. As I mess around with an EQ or compressor, images come and go, and, in a cause and effect-type operation, I zone in on just what to do to a song to keep it working.
 
It's when I'm producing (and not mastering) that I actually realise this is how I work. If I'm producing a record, it's the same process except I get a more elaborate image of the song. Like, maybe I'll see a guy walking on the white sands of a beautifully lush tropical beach. I see that image the whole time I work on the track, but quite often, when I'm recording vocals the image will suddenly change to, say, a red double-decker bus appearing out of the surf for no reason. When I look up, sure enough, the singer will say, "sorry, I hit a bum note". I don't really hear the pitch crash as much as my mind's eye sees a colour or image crash. Then when I focus in on the hi-hats, or whatever, the image kinda changes - a bit like the zoom function on a camera. Sometimes it's an easy change of focus, but sometimes I get a bit lost in the detail and it takes me a while to see the whole sound image again.
 
Now all this talk of visions and apparitions is not much use if you still don't understand where I'm coming from, so I'll tell you how I figure this stuff started with me in the first place.

I used to cut vinyl records. Mastering engineers used to be called 'cutting engineers', and, to be frank, it could be seen as an incredibly boring job. Ask any cutter about working the night shift alone with eight already EQ'd production album masters to process and they will tell you all about the glamour of mastering vinyl! Basically, you set up the lathe, put on a lacquer, press 'Go', and try not to miss the spiral for each tune and try not to fall asleep. Quite often a hard cut was made dreary by the fact that you had to cut the whole side just to check if your changes were working. All those records, thousands of sides, and all sitting in a dim dark room, alone, with no one to talk to, and nothing to look at except the speakers (because if you looked at the lathe spinning you'd soon get hypnotised and miss the gaps.) It's no wonder I started seeing things in the sound, it just seems now I can control and use them.
 
One more thing while I'm on it. Computer monitors are evil. I have been working with digital editors since their inception and about eight years ago I bought a Sonic Solutions system to replace the AMS Neve AudioFile I was using. I figured a good, ergonomic place for the Mac computer screen was right in front of me so I wouldn't have to look away from the speakers to work. It seemed to make sense... but, boy was I wrong. Recently, as an experiment. I hooked up a small 15-inch screen instead of my 19-inch and put it off to the side, almost in my peripheral view Wow, what a surprise! The good ol' stereo soundstage came on stronger than it had for years. Now I have my SADiE screen on one side of my desk, the ProTools monitor on the other - nothing to look at except the speakers and a dark blue wall - and I'm seeing sound better than ever! Screens in front of you are all the rage but I have done it for years, and now I will never ever go back. Get them out of your direct line of sight. Try looking at the sound, not the edit page. I hope you get it, I hope this helps, I hope it's not just me...
 
And what about my new pair of sunglasses? Well they are special super-polarised glasses made especially for fishing. They're like X-ray specs for water, and you can just see right through it - spot the fish way down deep. Now if only fish would just break out into song more often, I figure I'll have it made.
 
Rick O 'Neil runs Turtlerock Mastering in Camperdown, Sydney. He's not sure if this is another one of those columns that he should have kept to himself.

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