Rick's Articles

Audio Technology - Volume 2 : Issue 4

Virtual Reality or Virtual Memories The other month I was in Melbourne doing some business, and I stayed at the home of talented producer Andy Stewart. Somewhere in among all the chit chat and mindless drivel that studio guys have a habit of spinning, Andy relayed a theory he had been developing - something he hoped to work up into a magazine article. Now the thing about his theory was it was very, very close to a long line of thought I had been fooling with. But credit where it's due, this month's column was Andy's idea.

Imagine if you will, you're recording a band. Let's say you're recording to 24-track two-inch tape, but because you're a hip producer, you've got a Midi+Audio sequencer synced up to the two-inch master - the sequencer/hard disk recorder is handling all your samples, loops and all that sort of stuff. You've realised that your hard disk recorder is going to make life a lot easier - you can cut and paste bad for good, add a little magic, save some time etc. Hell, let's just cut to the chase - you're using Logic, ProTools and a Studer two-inch tape machine. Now, because I've already told you how clever you are, you realised early on in the piece that after you've got the basic tracks down on the two-inch (drums, bass and a few guides), it's going to save a lot of friggin' about to just transfer everything into ProTools and overdub one thing at a time, then dump it all back to two-inch when it's time to mix.

Okay, so you're doing vocals on ProTools, and the singer is a little off pitch. Rather then make him go through the torture of recording the perfect take, you do seven passes of the vocal, tell him you've got enough, and invite him into the studio as you compile the best of each take into one master version. It's still a little 'pitchy', so you run it through an Autotune plug-in; it's a little too dynamic so you redraw a few words - no crime here, the singer never knew he could sound so good, in fact, he comments how wonderful technology is and wishes he could have done all his records this way. You feel kinda cool for showing him the path to easy, stress-free records and everybody moves on.

Let's say you realise the bass player messed up the end of the last bridge before the chorus. Again, no problem, you go to the first bridge, cut and copy the correct part and paste it into the end.                                                                                                                                 

The session moves on in much the same way, you do a run of takes and when it's feeling right you compile them into one master. The band loves it, but there's something wrong. That last bridge! It shouldn't be there, the song is too long for radio! The band's real concerned, what do you do now? Well cos you're 'the man' and technology is your slave, you suggest the bleedin' obvious. Let's just cut and paste, all 24 (or 124?) tracks and really nail the arrangement. Ah, but you can't do that', says the drummer, because he played a different fill into the last change. No worries, let's cut and paste an earlier one, it's a bit different but if you push this cymbal, nudge that, slide the kick... and voila! Now the song is under four minutes, perfect for radio and the band are cheering - you're doing good work, this is free money!

That's a normal session today... frighteningly normal. It's all about virtual tracks and virtually anything goes. Whatever it takes to get the tracks is okay, and, you know, most of us think it's a neato way to work. But there's a problem. The problem comes in ten years time or maybe even next week. What's the problem? Nobody is going to have an individual memory of recording the song, not the singer, not the drummer, you or anybody else - because, in case you haven't grasped it, modern digital recording (with its virtual tracks and its cut/paste and erase), means the actual performance never happened! It's the ghost in the machine who made the song and machines don't remember emotions. The real problem is nobody seems concerned about the loss - "it sounds great buddy, what's your problem?"

Let me tell you something: if you make enough records, you only end up remembering the big ones or the bad ones or the weird ones or the truly special ones, the rest become a blur. Why? Because nothing interesting happened, there's nothing to recall. Now, if as a rule we are going to alter or remove the actual individual performances, I'm starting to wonder what's in it for the guy who owns the music, let alone the poor fool who records it? There will be no real events to remember, just a bunch of virtual memories collaged into a facsimile of the event. Let me give you a more tangible example of what I'm talking about. Let's say I'm recording a band and we figure out that the chorus would sound excellent if we added some kind of percussive noise - some sound that you wouldn't expect. Well, in today's ever-increasingly computerised world, I'd just dial up my sound library, zoom to 'metallic percussion' sounds and start auditioning noises till something sounds good. Click, click, click, cut, copy, paste... and I turn around and play the band this cool crashing noise perfectly in time with the chorus.

Everybody is stoked... but something very wrong is developing here. Everybody might be happy today, but what's missing won't become obvious for years, or, worse still, we may never realise that the memories of the actual event are missing. Nobody in the band will ever remember playing that part. Do you see what I'm getting at? There will be no owner of that performance memory.

So what's the big deal? Well let me tell you how it could be. Let me tell you about a record I made sometime in the '80s. Similar scenario: the producer decided that we needed a metallic sound in the chorus. But these were sampler-free days, so the whole band and the producer downed tools, picked up an acoustic guitar, left the studio, walked downstairs to a metal work factory in the basement of the building, and started bashing every piece of metal in the shop. When we found some good ones, we strummed an E chord on the guitar to see if the rusty sheet metal was more in tune then the painted stuff. Then, after about one hour, we staggered up to the studio with enough metal to build a small U-boat, settled on the rear door of a 1968 Peugeot and started rolling tape - bashing every single note in by hand with a 12-inch spanner. This whole process took about four hours, and today it would take four minutes. Nobody in today's virtual world is going to recall me dialling up a metal percussion sample, but I'd be willing to bet that there are still five musos recalling those crazy, car door-whacking days more than 10 years on. Long after their 15 minutes in the spotlight, those guys still have something to qualify the time they spent in the studio. They have those extraordinary memories of creating that record and there's nothing virtual about them - they're real and they own them. And as for me? That session became another in a long line of, "honey, you'll never guess what we did today at work" stories. That kind of stuff gets me out of bed in the morning.

It seems very obvious to me, after discussions with lots of producers, that computer-based recording means hours and days of non-interactive data crunching. Some people enthusiastically call this 'programming', but try talking to the famous programmers - the guys that work all the time - and they'll all tell you about the 'missing years'. They'll tell you how they can clearly remember the '80s, when the technology was real new - that was when you had to work real hard to make the gear do anything at all, let alone what you expected. But it seems most of those same guys are not sure what happened to the '90s - when they talk, they skip huge tracts of time. I do it myself, and I don't think it’s necessarily a case of fried brain cells. I'm starting to feel that by making things easier, faster and better, we're missing out on the stuff that enriches our lives - that human experience. Years roll past without anything significant to report. What a drag life could become, you might as well get a job in a bank.

On the other hand, do you remember when that tape machine started to break down and you heard your first analogue flange? And you felt just like the Beatles as you rocked the reels trying to get it to happen again? The reason you remember something like that is because it was just like the Beatles... it was the same real event. They used to write books and documentaries about all the cool stuff that happened during recording sessions. People told, collected and traded recording stories, and magazines were full of that stuff -that was what made you want to do this for a living in the first place. Maybe you're new at this and maybe you're reading about my memories looking for some path of your own, who knows? But please make sure you don't give your memories away cheaply just because it looks easier - believe me, you'll collect far better material to tell your grandchildren when you don't know what's going to happen next.

Here is the wake up call. Sure, cool stuff still happens - different, unimaginable cool stuff. I know the modern studio is pure science fiction compared to what it was like when I started in 1984 - which, in itself, was incredible compared to 1964. And sure, there has always been evolution... but have you ever wondered what the attraction really was (and is) with retro gear? It's the memories, the dreams, and the stories - and I fear those kind of experiences are becoming rarer and rarer. In the future you won't remember the sound of the record you're making now, you'll only ever remember the feeling of making it. And without human interaction or human experience, there are no feelings. I mean, if you can't even recount a two minute story from that session, well, I'm sorry... Perhaps it sounded great, but when you're not getting paid as much as your mate at Grace Bros, your brother's just bought a nice new car, your sister's touring France and your girlfriend's just left you, look me straight in the eye and tell me you do it all for the sound... "cos you love sound, man". That's a load of crap. We're doing it for the human artistic, creative collective experience. Some of us give it, some of us get it, and it's as damn addictive as drugs, but the payroll we put in the bank is in memories. That's what this job amounts to.

Think about it, think long and hard: what can you do to make your next session more involved for everyone present? Maybe not every time and not at the expense of the obvious benefits of digital recording, but think about the future. What are you working on today? What will you remember about it? Play it one more time Sam, just for the memories...

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