Short blog this time. It's really more of a question and a reminder to myself.
God has given us the greatest gift of all time. Nothing can exceed the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross and the hope we have in his resurrection. What have we given in return? There's really nothing that can compare.
One morning when I was praying before work, a question popped in my head. "Are you bringing your A game?" Am I bringing my best everyday? Honestly, no. It is easy to coast in this world. Too easy. It is a tough road to cut out the slacking, but it is worth giving my best effort.
To be clear, bringing my A game isn't out of a sense of obligation. I want to give my best to God. I'm not any less deserving of His forgiveness when I fall short and my salvation isn't dependent on how well I do.
We all need to bring our best to God. Bring your A game. Bring it on!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Recording & playing 'in the moment'
I stumbled across this video a while back looking for recording videos. This is an interview with Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield and Bob Rock discussing how the drums were recorded on Metallica's 'black' album. There were a few very strong points from the interview. - Yes, we can learn from Metallica. -
Point one. The drums were tracked in many, many takes and spliced together. The band recognized that Lars could not maintain the level of intensity they wanted for an entire song. Lars wanted to take the thought out of what he was doing and just 'play' and be 'in the moment.' Let's recognize that Metallica plays more in one tour than most of us will play in a lifetime. They've been doing it for better than 15 years. Why would it be difficult for any of them to play a single track in its entirety? Because it is not that easy. Stare at something in the room you are in now. Think of nothing but that object. How long until you notice something else in the room or your thoughts drift away? Likely not long.
Can weekend warriors and beginning students expect to play with this level of focus? Probably not. Can they learn? I believe it is possible. Take a look at a book called, "The Inner Game of Music." It applies sports psychology to music. We can learn to play our absolute best, just like Metallica or your favorite athlete.
Metallica tracked one portion of the song at a time. When they were done, they spent countless hours sifting through the sections, picking the best take for the song. This brings us to point two. What we hear on our CDs is the absolute best take (or composite take) out of who knows how many days. There was a tremendous amount of work that went into making something sound so natural and raw. It is easy to miss how much work went into each song.
The average player needs to realize it may not be easy to immediately copy part of a song. Even once the individual notes are copied, the feel and attitude of the song could still be missing. Refer back to point one. Attitude is a huge component of music performance.
Point three. Metallica used 40-50 mics for the drums and ultimately about 20 individual tracks. Again, a lot of hard work to make a song sound so natural. The average musician is not going to sound exactly like a recording. We don't have the same equipment, the same recording studio, engineers, etc... And we're also different people playing differently.
And our last point. Bob Rock commented that Lars plays to the music. He doesn't just play through a song. He plays to/with the song from deep down inside. This is something we could all examine in our own playing. Do we play the song or do we really play the song? Do we play our instruments or do we really play our instruments? It's all about feel. It's about soul.
Point one. The drums were tracked in many, many takes and spliced together. The band recognized that Lars could not maintain the level of intensity they wanted for an entire song. Lars wanted to take the thought out of what he was doing and just 'play' and be 'in the moment.' Let's recognize that Metallica plays more in one tour than most of us will play in a lifetime. They've been doing it for better than 15 years. Why would it be difficult for any of them to play a single track in its entirety? Because it is not that easy. Stare at something in the room you are in now. Think of nothing but that object. How long until you notice something else in the room or your thoughts drift away? Likely not long.
Can weekend warriors and beginning students expect to play with this level of focus? Probably not. Can they learn? I believe it is possible. Take a look at a book called, "The Inner Game of Music." It applies sports psychology to music. We can learn to play our absolute best, just like Metallica or your favorite athlete.
Metallica tracked one portion of the song at a time. When they were done, they spent countless hours sifting through the sections, picking the best take for the song. This brings us to point two. What we hear on our CDs is the absolute best take (or composite take) out of who knows how many days. There was a tremendous amount of work that went into making something sound so natural and raw. It is easy to miss how much work went into each song.
The average player needs to realize it may not be easy to immediately copy part of a song. Even once the individual notes are copied, the feel and attitude of the song could still be missing. Refer back to point one. Attitude is a huge component of music performance.
Point three. Metallica used 40-50 mics for the drums and ultimately about 20 individual tracks. Again, a lot of hard work to make a song sound so natural. The average musician is not going to sound exactly like a recording. We don't have the same equipment, the same recording studio, engineers, etc... And we're also different people playing differently.
And our last point. Bob Rock commented that Lars plays to the music. He doesn't just play through a song. He plays to/with the song from deep down inside. This is something we could all examine in our own playing. Do we play the song or do we really play the song? Do we play our instruments or do we really play our instruments? It's all about feel. It's about soul.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Dynamics and compression in contemporary music
Hello again! We're going to take a quick look at dynamics and music and the current trend of over compression.
Music is a lot like a conversation. When we speak, we naturally include pauses in our speech. There are also inflections in our voice and the pitch of our voice can raise or lower depending on our mood. We also speak louder and softer. These elements are also found in music. There is call and response, variations on a melody, loud and soft moments. The music can speed up and slow down. All of this can create for very dramatic and emotional music that touches us.
Rarely do we speak in a monotone and rarely do we run all of our words together in one long string of words. Why? Because it is difficult to understand. How many of us had that one teacher in school that just rambled on and on in a monotone? What happened? We tuned him out or spaced off.
If that is the case, why do we compress our music so much? This is regularly done with music played over the radio. Our digital music is compressed for space and is rarely lossless. Yes, information is lost in the translation.
Here's a good illustration:
Music needs to 'breathe' for the lack of a better word. In the future, we will look at compression and how it can help tighten up music. However, please be aware too much compression can result in listener fatigue. Just like we tuned out that one teacher we *all* had in school, our listeners begin to tune the music out.
Music is a lot like a conversation. When we speak, we naturally include pauses in our speech. There are also inflections in our voice and the pitch of our voice can raise or lower depending on our mood. We also speak louder and softer. These elements are also found in music. There is call and response, variations on a melody, loud and soft moments. The music can speed up and slow down. All of this can create for very dramatic and emotional music that touches us.
Rarely do we speak in a monotone and rarely do we run all of our words together in one long string of words. Why? Because it is difficult to understand. How many of us had that one teacher in school that just rambled on and on in a monotone? What happened? We tuned him out or spaced off.
If that is the case, why do we compress our music so much? This is regularly done with music played over the radio. Our digital music is compressed for space and is rarely lossless. Yes, information is lost in the translation.
Here's a good illustration:
Music needs to 'breathe' for the lack of a better word. In the future, we will look at compression and how it can help tighten up music. However, please be aware too much compression can result in listener fatigue. Just like we tuned out that one teacher we *all* had in school, our listeners begin to tune the music out.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Mixing in 4-D
Earlier today our youth group 'took over' the main services at our church. The change in band, music styles and presentation was quite a departure from our regular worship service. It was awesome to see our next generation of worship leaders on stage. For some, I have no doubt it was too much of a change and they're probably looking forward to a return to our regular service. Hopefully, most will have been able to worship despite the different style of music.
There are many different styles of worship music. Some I like more than others, but I certainly respect any music that is well written, performed and produced. A good mix can make simple music beautiful. A good mix can clean up little irregularities and tighten up average playing. Unfortunately, it cannot make up for plain bad playing.
Many years ago, I learned the concept of mixing in 3-D and it has governed all of my mixes and engineering. Mixing in 3-D is mixing tall, deep and wide. I've added one more dimension to what I originally learned and that is called mixing true. That gives you mixing in 4-D; tall, deep, wide and true. Let's look at each dimension.
The first dimension is tall. If we look at the sound a musical instrument makes, there will be fundamental frequencies and overtones. These will fall somewhere in the frequency spectrum. 0hz - 20khz is what we will consider tall. Each instrument, or voice, will occupy space in this frequency spectrum. If many instruments, or voices, occupy the same sonic height the sound can be muddy or indistinct. That is, unless they're very well in time with each other and on pitch. In an amateur performance this can be difficult to achieve however. The mix can be cleaned up by cutting certain frequencies from the individual instruments. The difficult task is to determine which frequencies to cut. Experience and knowledge of instruments and their frequency range is of major significance here.
The second dimension is deep. We can create space by making instruments seem closer or further away. Each instrument will maintain its own distance from the listener. Effects are commonly employed here, particularly reverb and delay. A dry instrument will seem nearer. Adding reverb to an instrument and sending more effected signal through the mains will make the instrument seem further away. That is very much a simplification of the process. Effected signals are also commonly EQ'ed to further enhance the effect.
The third dimension is wide. Width is the distance between FOH speakers or the apparent stereo spread between two sound sources. One of the major challenges occurs when one speaker is significantly louder our closer to the listener. In this situation, a mono mix becomes more appropriate. Panning instruments left and right will give them their own sonic space between the speakers. Instruments like bass or the kick drum and snare are generally left in the middle of the stereo spectrum with other instruments panned right or left to various degrees.
So far, we've learned about tall, deep and wide. Instruments can occupy their own space with the frequency spectrum, depth of effects and stereo spread. Overlapping instruments can build a stronger mix as long as they compliment each other.
The last dimension I added isn't really a dimension. I call it true. The short explanation to true is that after making any of the above changes, the instruments still sound like what they are. By that, I mean the guitar still sounds like the guitar onstage, the vocalist still sounds like a vocalist and so on. It is important to avoid being excessive in cutting frequencies from an instrument. If it becomes necessary to heavily EQ a sound source, we may need to look at the sound source and change micing. That will have to wait for another discussion.
There's over 20 years of mixing in a nutshell. The concept in itself is very simple. It still takes time and practice to put these concepts into practice. It can help to try visualizing the mix in three dimensions. See what instruments overlap or hang out in their own space. Listen to your favorite recordings and try to visualize the mixes. Learn what you like!
There are many different styles of worship music. Some I like more than others, but I certainly respect any music that is well written, performed and produced. A good mix can make simple music beautiful. A good mix can clean up little irregularities and tighten up average playing. Unfortunately, it cannot make up for plain bad playing.
Many years ago, I learned the concept of mixing in 3-D and it has governed all of my mixes and engineering. Mixing in 3-D is mixing tall, deep and wide. I've added one more dimension to what I originally learned and that is called mixing true. That gives you mixing in 4-D; tall, deep, wide and true. Let's look at each dimension.
The first dimension is tall. If we look at the sound a musical instrument makes, there will be fundamental frequencies and overtones. These will fall somewhere in the frequency spectrum. 0hz - 20khz is what we will consider tall. Each instrument, or voice, will occupy space in this frequency spectrum. If many instruments, or voices, occupy the same sonic height the sound can be muddy or indistinct. That is, unless they're very well in time with each other and on pitch. In an amateur performance this can be difficult to achieve however. The mix can be cleaned up by cutting certain frequencies from the individual instruments. The difficult task is to determine which frequencies to cut. Experience and knowledge of instruments and their frequency range is of major significance here.
The second dimension is deep. We can create space by making instruments seem closer or further away. Each instrument will maintain its own distance from the listener. Effects are commonly employed here, particularly reverb and delay. A dry instrument will seem nearer. Adding reverb to an instrument and sending more effected signal through the mains will make the instrument seem further away. That is very much a simplification of the process. Effected signals are also commonly EQ'ed to further enhance the effect.
The third dimension is wide. Width is the distance between FOH speakers or the apparent stereo spread between two sound sources. One of the major challenges occurs when one speaker is significantly louder our closer to the listener. In this situation, a mono mix becomes more appropriate. Panning instruments left and right will give them their own sonic space between the speakers. Instruments like bass or the kick drum and snare are generally left in the middle of the stereo spectrum with other instruments panned right or left to various degrees.
So far, we've learned about tall, deep and wide. Instruments can occupy their own space with the frequency spectrum, depth of effects and stereo spread. Overlapping instruments can build a stronger mix as long as they compliment each other.
The last dimension I added isn't really a dimension. I call it true. The short explanation to true is that after making any of the above changes, the instruments still sound like what they are. By that, I mean the guitar still sounds like the guitar onstage, the vocalist still sounds like a vocalist and so on. It is important to avoid being excessive in cutting frequencies from an instrument. If it becomes necessary to heavily EQ a sound source, we may need to look at the sound source and change micing. That will have to wait for another discussion.
There's over 20 years of mixing in a nutshell. The concept in itself is very simple. It still takes time and practice to put these concepts into practice. It can help to try visualizing the mix in three dimensions. See what instruments overlap or hang out in their own space. Listen to your favorite recordings and try to visualize the mixes. Learn what you like!
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Why yet another blog on the internet?
Why should there be yet another blog on the internet?
That's a tough question. The short answer is there is too much data on the internet and not enough information. I'd like to share some relevant information with others. I think God has given me some knowledge that is of value to others and that should be shared.
What's the difference between information and data? Information is data in context. For example, if I told you there are sunny skies somewhere, I would have given you a piece of data. Yes, there are sunny skies. If I told you the sky is sunny outside my window, you would have received information. The sunny skies are in the context of being outside my window. There are gigs and gigs of data on the internet. Enough that it can be difficult to quickly gather information.
Let's take this information concept one step further. If you were planning on coming to my house, knowing that it is sunny outside could lead you to leave your umbrella at home. Information that enables you to make a decision becomes knowledge. Just as there is too much data on the internet, how much information is there that could become knowledge for me and you?
Pretty lofty goals, huh? So what has God given me? We'll discuss that in time. For now, I'll just say I plan to write about music and sound; also my experiences becoming a Christian, a husband and father.
Thank you for stopping by. Please feel free to share your thoughts and feelings. We're all in this crazy world together.
-Eric.
That's a tough question. The short answer is there is too much data on the internet and not enough information. I'd like to share some relevant information with others. I think God has given me some knowledge that is of value to others and that should be shared.
What's the difference between information and data? Information is data in context. For example, if I told you there are sunny skies somewhere, I would have given you a piece of data. Yes, there are sunny skies. If I told you the sky is sunny outside my window, you would have received information. The sunny skies are in the context of being outside my window. There are gigs and gigs of data on the internet. Enough that it can be difficult to quickly gather information.
Let's take this information concept one step further. If you were planning on coming to my house, knowing that it is sunny outside could lead you to leave your umbrella at home. Information that enables you to make a decision becomes knowledge. Just as there is too much data on the internet, how much information is there that could become knowledge for me and you?
Pretty lofty goals, huh? So what has God given me? We'll discuss that in time. For now, I'll just say I plan to write about music and sound; also my experiences becoming a Christian, a husband and father.
Thank you for stopping by. Please feel free to share your thoughts and feelings. We're all in this crazy world together.
-Eric.
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