All information in these pages is copyright (c) 1989-2003 by Roger Nichols.
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EVERYONE IS ON SMACK!!
Except me, and I'm not sure about You!
by Roger Nichols
It seems as though there must be alien beings putting something in the water
supply. No one can remember anything, and everyone walks around like they
have one of those brain implants you see in low grade science fiction movies.
I called a local music store to ask if they had any ADAT tapes. They said
that they had plenty of them, so, I jumped in my car and cruised downtown
to get the tapes.
When I got to the music store I went in and told the salesperson behind
the counter that I called about some ADAT tapes. He said "Do you want
blank ones?" I said it would be nice if they were blank. He said "Yeah,
well we have lots of them that we use here in the for demos, but we haven't
had any blank ones for over a week." Talk about 'on smack', I would
have liked to smack this guy a few times.
I had a mastering client come in with his DAT tapes and I proceeded to load
them into Sonic Solutions for mastering. After the third tune that ended
abruptly because the DAT machine that recorded it was apparently stopped
before the fade had finished, I asked him if this was the condition of all
his masters. He said "These aren't my masters, these are just ruff
mixes. I was hoping that you could master these, and when I get the real
mixes done you could just substitute the good mixes." Now this guy
was definitely on smack.
Summer NAMM, Some 'er not.
The Summer NAMM show just ended today here in Nashville. It used to be in
Chicago, but I could never make it because I was so busy. A few years ago
they moved it to Nashville so I could attend more easily. Nice, huh?
There were more digital audio work stations scattered around the show than
there have been in the past. Some of them are pretty inexpensive. Remember,
this show was for music retailers, not pro audio dealers. The price of hard
disk recording has dropped to the point where just about everyone with a
project studio can afford some for of random access editing.
I went to a press function at Yamaha's suite. I was really impressed with
the strawberry Danish they served. They also had a new four track optical
disc recorder based on the data version of the Mini Disc. You have all seen
those little four track cassette recorders with the built-in mixers, well
this is a digital four track with a built-in mixer. Besides sounding great,
it can do things that are impossible on the cassette based units. Think
of how many times you filled up all four tracks and then needed to add one
more harmony part. Well now you can.
I like to tell the story of how Gary Katz (Steely Dan's producer) was sitting
next to me at the console in Village Recorder's Studio A, when we were working
on one of those records, and we were trying to find an empty track for an
overdub. All of the 24 tracks were full and Gary looked at me very seriously
and said "Why can't we just store one of the tracks over here on 25
just for a few minutes, and if the overdub doesn't work out we could just
put it back?" I have razzed him about that incident for 20 years. Now
I have to call him up and tell him how far ahead of his time he was.
The Yamaha MD-4 will let you do just that. You can fill up all four tracks
and then bounce them down to one of the tracks, or you could combine two
of the tracks to open up just one, or you can take the vocal on track one,
add a harmony to it and have the new vocal with the harmony go right back
onto track one. It just lifts off the vocal, adds the new one to it, and
re-records it.
Here is something else the cassette can't do. Random access editing. Each
song can have up to eight markers. You can then build an edit list that
will randomly play between any markers. If the first chorus wasn't any good,
then just replace it with the second chorus. After you are satisfied with
the edits, you can save the results as a new song on another part of the
disc and go to work on it. What a nice little machine, and I haven't even
told you about the built in MIDI sync for lock up with your sequencer. What'll
they think of next?
T.c. electronics was introducing their new addition to the Wizard line of
DSP units. This one is called the Finalizer. It can be used to "Master"
between two DAT machines digitally, or as a piece of outboard gear in your
analog studio with its built-in converters. It has a three band compressor-limiter-gate,
four bands of digital EQ, digital level adjustment, de-essing, stereo enhancement,
automatic fades, and plenty of other bells and whistles. It may be in the
stores by the time you read this, so go check it out.
Apogee (the digital converter guys) were showing their new blank (I asked)
CD-Rs that have been added to their recordable media line. As I have mentioned
in the past, Apogee also has Master Tools, a TDM plug-in for Pro Tools that
does noise shaping to increase the resolution of your Pro Tools mixes. I
have been a big fan of Apogee's UV-22 process, and now here it is right
at my Pro Tools finger tips.
Last but not least, Rane had a new piece of gear that will fit nicely in
your project studio rack. It is a one rack unit that includes a mic pre,
limiter, compressor, EQ and de-esser. Here it is, everything you need for
vocal overdubs with the minimum of gear. Perfect for anyone with patch bay
phobia.
So, aah... Next month should be fun. I am going to do a workshop at the
Banff Centre for the Arts. I think what they really want is for me to come
up there with my computer and use Spell Checker on their name! I was thinking
about driving up to Canada, and on the way I could do a survey of the background
music systems in all of the Tastee Creme donut shops along the way. Is it
true that the custard filled donuts with powdered sugar suck up more 4kHz
than the ones with coconut sprinkles? I'll let you know.
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