My Two Cents - Recording Engineers and Music Theory

This is a subject which has been annoying the hell out of me over the last six months, because in the recording technology program at the school I currently attend, McNally Smith College of Music, all recording technology students have to take at least one level of music theory, which at this particular college, because of the school's input, goes roughly from 'This is a staff' to 'That's what a dominant seventh chord is'. Now I realize a lot of people have trouble with music theory. But I'm continuously hearing Recording Tech students bitching about how they don't see why they should have to study any music theory; in one extreme case, the individual pointed out that he had computer programs which can tell him all the information that he'll learn to recognize in Theory I, and do all the stuff he'll learn in Ear Training.

*sigh*

Alright, here's my two cents on this subject, for posterity.

Let's assume for a second that you're studying recording technology in order to, say, record music. Now, in order to do this, you're going to have to interact with musicians, and it helps to have at least a little bit of a common vocabulary, and it is immensely time saving. For the musician, it's rather disconcerting when they try to talk to you and you have to reorient half the stuff they say into layman's terms. Being able to tell if someone is in tune with the rest of the music is important, and if they're in tune with themselves. If it's the sound they're going for, then that's good. But what start out as small issues during a recording session start getting bigger and bigger as the process continues, and don't forget that while the artist is the one whose face ends up on the cover, you are still credited somewhere, and if those problems end up with a major flaw on the record, then people within the industry are just as likely to give a stern look at the engineer as the artist (depending on how wildly successful the artist is, possibly moreso)

And just to reiterate a major point, musician's like to be able to talk about what they're doing with the engineer without having to repeat themselves a half dozen times, and may even ask you for your opinion on something, and it makes a good impression if you can just answer without having to dumb the whole thing down.

And I'm glad that there are computer programs out there that help people figure this stuff out, but do they tell you what it means? Let's say a piece is in the key of F major. Alright, your computer program spits that out at you, and what do you do with it? Without a knowledge of music theory, it's just useless data. Moreover, audio recognition software is getting better, but it is still far from infallible, and if it spits out a wrong piece of information, then you could end up getting completely screwed.

And don't forget, there are two phrases that the client/artist never likes to hear during a session. The first one is 'I can't do that'; while not always avoidable, it should be avoided as much as possible. And the second, more applicable one here, is 'I don't understand/know what you're talking about.'

And finally, let's not forget that the people who say that you should know this stuff have been doing this for a hell of a lot longer then you have, and they probably have a better idea of what'll help you be successful in the industry then you do at this point. What appears to be busywork does in fact have a purpose, especially when it comes to the application of music theory.

For those of you who still think I'm crazy, check out this interview with Craig Alvin; he's a Nashville based recording engineer, and he talks a bit about what it takes to be an in-demand recording engineer (in other words, a gainfully employed one.

And that is all I will say on the subject. Hopefully my next post will be about something of more interest to everyone.

Beepity Beep And Other Foolish Things - Chiptunes!

I have for some reason had in my life an attraction to chiptunes, those devilish things, and to 8-bit music in general; unfortunately for you, whomsoever you may be, you will probably hear about this attraction every once in a while.

Chiptunes are music that has been created in the vain of classic video game music, often using hardware to create this effect, rather then software. They vary greatly from individual from individual; one of the best repositories I have found of chiptunes is the rather magnificent 8bitpeoples, and it is also a great example of how they vary. My first experience with the genre was while playing the rather graphically magnificent and conceptually stimulating game 'Darwinia', which takes place entirely inside a graphic representation of a computer network gone themepark; for the soundtrack, Introversion grabbed a few tunes from the rather magnificent electronic musician Tim Lamb, stage names trash80 and tresk. Now as one quickly discovers, his tunes are not usually hardcore chiptune, but rather an amalgamation of electronica and chiptunes, but they're easily a gateway to the harder stuff, such as the just as if not more magnificent Anamanaguchi (and now, seriously, if you haven't clicked on a single link yet, that one is the one that you should) and Bit Shifter (again, worth checking out).

I have had many debates with people about this genre of music; the classical musicians, especially, tend to argue that chiptunes lack expressiveness or feeling, to which I say you have obviously never heard True Fidelity by Twilight Electric; within it there is an expressiveness of a sort that I have never heard elsewhere. Chiptunes have a sort of purity about them; they harken back to a more innocent age when video games didn't have to have majestic scores behind them, sounding all too much like Pirates of the Caribbean (for those of you not in the know, I'm talking about the score to Oblivion- during the title screen I've literally had people wandering into the room going 'PIRATES! OOooo... oh... nevermind...') Instead, you had a simple 8-bit soundtrack coming through a tiny speaker, which still evoked emotions of joy, and when the inevitable speeding hi-hat combo came along to signify a boss, dread.

Chiptunes have a strange sort of power over a certain selection of us; they transcend analog, and are a thing of the purely digital realm, for they are nigh impossible to recreate with analog. Oh, you can play them on a guitar or a keyboard, but they then aren't truly chiptunes. Here is one of the few bastions in the musical world where the digital vs. analog argument has no footholds, because it is a thing of such purity and clarity, and yes, because it is only digital. I'm not saying that analog has no business anywhere, and some people even combine the two (such as Anamanaguchi) but for some of us, the realm of the purely digital is a nice place to vacation every once in a while.

Process Planning? - LyricsLyricsLyricsLyrics

After last weekend spent working/socializing with the better half of the band, we now have shape for the entirety of what is hoped to be the upcoming album. I say shape, because what we have is the basis for a lot of the songs. The musical basis. The lyrical basis exists for several of them, and is... 'in potentia', shall we say, for the rest. I've spent a certain amount of time talking to people and generally thinking about this lack of product on my part (I am the lyricist/writer of the pairing).

The other night I attended a concert/Q&A session with one of the songwriting/composition Prof's at McNally Smith College of Music, and was amused when he refused to share his songwriting 'method', citing it as rather private; that I completely understand; the process of writing a song can be extremely personal, and privacy is a nice thing to have, both in the moment and in the general sense. The piece he did feel capable of sharing was that it starts with doing everything possible to do other then write a song.

This got me thinking about my own drive for writing songs, and especially my specific area for the moment, lyrics. I have only, to my memory, managed to actually sit down and completely write a song in one sitting twice (not including revisions). Normally a song is a fairly pained affair for me, with lots of scribbling on pads of engineering paper (an affectation left over from my days as an engineering student), a great many cups of earl grey consumed, and lots of cursing of out of tune guitars, my personally poor piano skills, my lack of inspiration, my sudden lack of pencil lead, batteries for my tuner, and especially cursing of that greatest of drains of productivity: The Internet (with video games coming in a close second). Also involved tends to be lots of digging around in old notebooks from highschool, and in my 'random writings' folder in which lie many sheets of bad poetry and random metaphors and similes which occured to me in the middle of the night (or in the middle of a calculus class). I tend to write things, then start working on a song, and when I run out of inspiration I start flipping through the folder; the lyrics for at least one of the songs we're finishing up is pulled together almost entirely from about six different sets of poetry, random lyrics for songs that never happened, and in one case, a rather bad short story involving some random and rather tasteless linguistic play; (un?)fortunately, the linguistic play wasn't what made it into the song.

When I get really beaten down and can't find any inspiration, I flip on the playlist on my computer made up of all the stuff I've listened to over the years which has suddenly inspired me to write stuff; Leonard Cohen, Missy Higgins, David Bowie, and Mostly Autumn all turn up and I sit down and just write.

When even that fails, there's still one option left: Go to a concert.

Now, that seems rather contrary to many people; normally one goes to a concert to listen, not to write. But for some reason, certain concerts cause me to just become inspired. George Maurer, Storyhill, Cliff Eberhardt and Lucy Kaplansky just to name a few, have all been concerts which have made me suddenly dig around for scraps of paper and pencil. The most recent, a sadly rather less well attended concert by fledgling but already extraordinary singer-songwriter Allye Gaietto was single-handedly responsible for completing sets of lyrics on two songs (one of which, unfortunately, is not slated to go on the album, due to complete narrative discord). Still, these sudden spurts of productivity are incredibly useful. Now if I could only isolate a real cause for them, and somehow utilize that elsewhere.

In any case, progress is slooooooooooooow but steady. This whole writing music via e-mail thing is working, though. And sooner then I probably think, King Arthur and the Bearded Lady shall ride forth and shall (metaphorically) give birth to what shall likely not quite be a magnum opus, but should hopefully be an interesting and somewhat philosophical good time, if not for anyone else, then at least for us.