ok,
Day 3Sorry it's taken me so long to finish this. I probably should be sleeping right now, but since I won't get more than 3 hours anyways, what's a little less, eh?
Honing Your People SkillsDon Zientara, Pete Weiss, Dave Trumfio, John Vanderslice, Larry Crane (moderator)
As you can probably guess, this panel dealt with interfacing with the clients to help the session run more smoothly. I'll just outline some of the suggestions made.
Teach the clients - sometimes it's helpful to teach the band about the recording process so they 1) are not so intimidated by it, 2) feel more comfortable in the studio, and 3) can make more helpful, informed suggestions/choices regarding how to go about making the record.
In the interest of keeping the singer fresh and relaxed, it sometimes helps to spread out vocal tracking over the course of the whole project, rather than doing them all in one long stretch.
Emotional coaching - if certain members of the band perform better when in a particular mindset (e.g. angry, sad, happy, etc), it may be a good idea to try to induce that state. Care must be taken, though, when intentionally pissing them off.
If the situation is devolving into chaos, try pulling aside the "Alpha" member and recruiting his help in reorganizing the situation.
Here's the one that they mentioned that I'd been trying to work on - confidence. Something I've picked up from watching a lot of war movies is that in order for an officer to effectively lead his troops, he has to be confident and resolute in his actions. He can't running around screaming "OH NO!!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!" That's a pretty good way of guaranteeing that you will lose.
I've been trying to keep this in mind when I run sound - two of my natural tendencies in life are 1) be casual and jovial with whom I'm working and 2) joke about things that are going wrong.
Trouble is - buddying up with the band and then joking about how nothing works and our mic selection is pitiful does not lend itself to getting the band to put on a good show. All it does is stress them out and get them uppity.
This also applies to management.
So I've been trying to keep any of my technical problems to myself and keeping everybody else unaware of anything they don't really need to be worrying about.
Using the Studio as an InstrumentLarry Fast, JD Foster, Steve Fisk, Hillary Johnson, Jon Brion, Craig Schumacher (moderator)
This panel was kind of broad. The overall theme was just to be always on the lookout for anything that can make crazy sounds. Ya never know what'll wind up sounding cool.
Producers on ProducingAllen Toussain, Jim Dickinson, Tony Visconti, Joe Chiccarelli, Mark Bingham, Billy Anderson, Larry Crane (moderator)
This panel was interesting, but wandered off-topic quite a bit, so my summary will be brief.
The topic was basically what goes into producing. The two main things I came away with were:
* Surround yourself with good people
* When you can solo a vocal track for 4 minutes and still have it keep your attention - then you've got a good song.
On a side note - a weekend of PA problems (primarily low-frequency feedback) came to a head when Tony Visconti bitched at the soundguy from the stage. Yeah, it probably should have been fixed earlier, and the feedback was fixed as soon as this happened, but I think Mr Visconti could have handled it better. The way he addressed it, which riled up the whole audience of the soundguy's peers, was kind of shitty.
The Future of MusicAlex Maiolo, Steve Turnidge, Larry Fast, Tim Mitchell, Bill Putnam, George Massenberg, Andy Hong (moderator)
This panel dealt mainly with current and future changes in the music publishing/distribution paradigm rather than the stylistic future of music. Specifically dealt with were the impacts of mp3's, related portable devices, and internet distribution schemes.
I didn't take a lot of notes, because much of what was being discussed was opinion and speculation. But being a bit of a geek, I thought it was very interesting. The general idea was what many of us have been saying for a while - there's a lot of potential money to be made by selling digital audio online. It's just a matter of making the system convenient, affordable, reliable, and widely compatible and then promoting it well.
One of the guys did take a jab at the mixing panel from the previous day. During the mixing panel, most of the panelists said that they checked their mixes on cheapo boomboxes, but when somebody asked if any of them mixed to headphones, the answer was almost a unanimous "no." The guy on the Future panel (I forget who it was, maybe Alex) asked why they weren't checking their mixes on headphones when so many people listen on portable devices. I haven't mixed much on headphones myself, so I don't know how well they translate, but it's something to think about.
---------------------------------------------------------
Well, that's about it. I didn't check out much music on Sunday night, since I was pretty tired and had to leave my hotel at 3 for a 5AM flight (which, incidentally, didn't wind up leaving until almost 8, because of bad weather in Atlanta
) But all-in-all, it was a great time. Met some cool people, learned a few things...
I'm not trying to be a kiss-ass, but I gotta say, this advice Fletcher gave me about listening to a song like you listen to a woman... I keep thinking about it. I don't know about you guys, but I have a tendency to be fairly straight-forward and analytical about most things. So when it comes to mixing I have a tendency to go into robot-mode where I say to myself, "ok, this is the situation, this is how you mix/handle/fix it" and that's the end of it. But you can't do that with music. You have to first sit back and listen to the song and take it all in before doing anything. It seems like an obvious thing, but I imagine I'm not the only one who does this (at least I hope I'm not the only one...)
I do some computer science tutoring and now that I think about it - it's the same thing I tell my students - don't touch anything until you know what you're doing. Everybody wants to go messing with their code w/o first figuring out what's actually wrong with it. Then they screw everything up and have to start over.
This is how I mix. I guess sitting back and listening is actually a
more analytical way of approaching things, but I think it's also more artistic.
Thanks again to everyone who helped me get there. You guys are awesome.
Anyways, it's - ugh - 4:30. I should probably go to bed.
-Dan.