February 23rd, 2011 – Lately, I’ve been working on mixing a small musical that will debut this Friday. It’s definitely a step outside of my comfort zone as mixing live is very different from mixing in a studio, and mixing a musical is very different from mixing a band. Here’s a compilation of some of the things I’ve learned and things that are different from studio work.

For one, there’s a lot of waiting around, but when the show is live, it’s very stressful. In fact, I don’t sit down for the entire performance, constantly monitoring levels and riding the faders. I am communicating constantly with the stage manager, a partner that cues music, and another that cues multimedia portions. Great communication between all of us makes the job flow a lot smoother.

One of the things that makes mixing theatre particularly difficult is different actors coming on and off scene at different times in each act which requires muting and un-muting their wireless microphones on the fly. This requires learning the scripts very well to know who needs what at any given time. Additionally, the actors have very different levels when singing versus speaking. This can be partially combated by subtle compression, but to remain dynamically interesting I prefer to manually adjust levels as the situation requires.

Occasionally all twelve of the main actors sing together. We have the use of stage monitors but not in-ear monitors. This means that for the actors to hear enough of themselves to work out their sometimes complex harmonies, the monitor mix must be loud enough for them to hear, but quiet enough to not feedback into their sensitive wireless microphones. Because they’re dancing and moving around quite a bit, there is no ideal position for the monitors. I must EQ out the natural feedback tones of the space to reduce the occurrences of feedback, but I cannot eliminate it.

This musical moves pretty quickly between acts and scenes with no intermission. This means that I have very little time to set up audio for the next scene. Luckily, the venue I’m mixing in has a digital mixer which allows me to save mix settings. I’ve found that saving presets for each significantly different scene helps a great deal. I can set up default mutes for actors that aren’t onstage at the beginning of a scene, and I can also set mutes and un-mutes for the monitors for when the actors are just speaking and not singing. The downside of this is that if I want to adjust say the pre-amp setting of an actor’s microphone, I must do it across all preset scenes which can’t exactly be done on the fly. If I need to adjust more than one actor’s settings, that multiplies the work. Take the amount of changes you need to do across the board, and multiply it by the number of presets. You can see how one small change could be a big problem.

For this particular musical which lasts just an hour and a half, I have 19 different scene presets. Even with the presets, I have a copy of the script beside me that I’ve written all over that includes my own scripted movements. For example, when one actor goes into a whisper, I have a note to myself to raise the gain on his channel and bring it back down again after that short section. As well as I think I know to make certain changes, I write everything down because when it’s showtime, I can get caught up in the moment and forget. I never want my mistakes to kill the actors’ flow.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is to let things out of my control go. In a studio setting, you can control almost everything in the environment down to the performances that are recorded for posterity. In live situations, anything can and does happen. Sometimes an actor will position their microphone in a position that pops when they move in a certain situation. There’s nothing you can do during the performance except compress their channel so that pops don’t feedback into their microphones and maybe ride the mutes along with their dialogue.

Coming from a studio background, the “in the moment”-ness of live sound mixing is a refreshing change. It’s definitely been an eye-opening experience. I was a bit apprehensive when I first took on the project, but I’m glad I had a chance to be a part of it. And then there are great moments when I can forget about what needs to be done, and just lose myself in mixing the music; it’s fantastic.

If you’ve mixed live sound, do you have any tips to share?

February 7, 2011 – As you may have noticed, my posting hasn’t been as regular as usual. In fact, I haven’t even had a chance to check out the changes that were completed last week on the collaboration project!

There are some pretty big changes happening in my life right now, and some of it is music related. Even though I’m easing back into a music schedule, it’s hard to find time to actually write. Finding an appropriate time to work on writing has always been a problem for me. How do you find time to write music? Do you schedule regular Saturday afternoons? Do you work on it evenings after your day job? In between baby feedings?

January 23, 2011 – A new year, a brand new product review! Audio-Technica was kind enough to send me a set of their DJ headphones, the ATH-PRO700. I’ve been itching to try out a good set of headphones since the ones I’ve used to mix and listen with for the past 10 years, have begun disintegrating.

Because I check my mixes with a couple sets of in ear monitors, one of them being the Ultimate Ears Triple-Fi I reviewed last month, I haven’t been in a rush to replace my old headphones. When the ATH-PRO700′s arrived, however, I was eager to see if they would be a good replacement.

It helps to know that the ATH-PRO700 has been categorized by Audio-Technica as for DJ’s. As I’m sure you know, DJ’s are pretty rough with their headphones and need something that can withstand the punishment of gigging professionals. When I picked up the ATH-PRO700′s I was surprised by their weight. I normally look for the lightest set for comfort but I was surprised at how beefy these headphones are.

The headband is especially thick and feels like it could take a bullet. The closed ear capsules both fold and rotate completely which means that the headphones are easy to store (they come with a vinyl bag for storage) and are more likely to rotate than snap when put in an awkward situation; definitely a plus. I’ve heard that some have had issues with the swivel portion of the headphone cracking, but since I haven’t had the headphones for that long I can’t comment on that; they seem pretty well-built to me so far. The ear cups isolate the sound well, but a bit more foam would be nice as. For me at least, they pressed on my ear a bit.

The audio wire only comes off of one side which makes it more convenient to wear, especially when monitoring each ear separately. It’s a decently thick gauge, with an eighth inch stereo plug (a screw-on quarter inch adapter is included). The cord is sufficiently long for personal listening, but you might want an extension if you’re the dance-while-dj’ing type.

Ok, so how does this set of cans sound? Super bass flavour! These things have a tonne of bass, and pretty decent treble as well, although I found the mid-range lacked a bit of clarity. The ATH-PRO700 also get plenty loud, and with the good isolation from the cup design (although it could be improved even more with increasing the padding size as I stated before), these things are great for a noisy club environment.

The soundstage was distinct, though not as wide as I would have liked in some situations. Would I use these to mix on? Probably not, as the frequency range is boosted for a DJ’s ears. I would definitely use them to reference on when creating dance or hip hop music. These two genres are what the ATH-PRO700 are clearly designed for and while classical music might not sound great through these, dance and hip hop do.

The bottom line is that DJ aren’t necessarily worried about the same things as an audio engineer or audiophile; they want a loud, and great sounding set of headphones and the ATH-PRO700 delivers on those counts. DJ’s also want something that is rugged, and the ATH-PRO700 seem to be pretty well built. As some others have had issues with the headphones breaking, I will update this review if anything happens to my set, but so far they’re working out great. With a very affordable street price of around $115, I’d definitely check them out if you’re in the market for a set of headphones for dance and hip hop.

Audio-Technica ATH-PRO700

January 17th, 2011 – I hope you guys have gotten a great start to the year. Mine has been quite busy and I have big plans for the site. For one, I’m working on a visual overhaul, but as regular readers may have noticed, I’ve stopped posting as many articles on new gear coming out.

I will still continue to post about new gear if I find it exciting, but I’d like to focus this site on more DIY engineering, producing, and songwriting articles, as well as product reviews. I feel like I can provide more value that way. You may have noticed that the site has already started moving in that direction.

Our joint collaboration project has been coming along quite well with many readers from around the world collaborating, with many more to come. If you haven’t already, check out the progress so far at the link above.

For those of you who are participating in the project, I really appreciate your hard work. I’m hoping to run more collaboration projects with different criteria and hopefully you’ll meet people you like working with and you can splinter off into your own collaboration projects. Would anyone be interested in a forum associated with this site that would allow you to collaborate with other readers, and perhaps ask for creative advice? Let me know in the comments.

I’d also appreciate it if you could tell me what direction would you like the site to take? Are there certain posts you like more, are there posts you would like less of? I can’t promise I’ll be able to incorporate all suggestions, but I’ll do my best.

I received a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-PRO700′s and I’ve been itching to write a review, so look for that to come out in the next couple days!

December 29th, 2010 – Hey everyone, hope your holidays are going well. With all the hubbub these past few weeks, I haven’t had much time to write music. The other day however, I got to record a bit with some friends which was a refreshing change from my normal work week. Yesterday, I sat down to polish a couple of my own songs, and it got me thinking about the phrase “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!” (I often get cerebral with songwriting when I’m not in a particularly inspired mood).

I’m sure that if you’ve ever read tips on songwriting, they often suggest getting to the meat-and-potatoes of the song as soon as possible. Usually this means getting to the song’s title lyrics, or it could mean the chorus. Whether it’s a memorable lyric or musical phrase or sound, the idea is to grab the listener as soon as you can or risk losing their interest.

Of course, this advice really only applies for those who are trying to write hit songs. If you want to write songs for other people, the easier it is to sell it, the better. If you are writing songs to express yourself (the best situation to be in IMO), then ignore all of this and write from the heart.

Gary Ewer has posted a blog article (linked below) that examines the top 10 songs in the Billboard Hot 100. He breaks down when both the title of the song first appears in the lyrics, and when the chorus first appears. His examination seems to show that having your song title and/or chorus occur early does help a song’s initial popularity.

Is “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus” Fact or Myth?

December 19th, 2010 – With the amount of cool apps coming out for iOS, there hasn’t been a whole lot of good hardware solutions for getting great sound in and out of the iPhone/iPod Touch. Sure there are some for plugging in a guitar, but they aren’t exactly the highest quality. New Signal Process, a boutique shop out of Portland Oregon, has released the NSP BreakOut to remedy that situation.

The BreakOut has an input to get your audio into whatever music apps you’re running in iOS, and an output to send to your outboard gear. There’s a gain knob and an on/bypass switch and that’s pretty much it; no muss, no fuss. You can buy the BreakOut for $115 at the New Signal Process website.

NSP BreakOut

December 13, 2010 – I recently received a set of Ultimate Ears TripleFi 10 IEM’s (in ear monitors) and I’ve had a few days to put them through their paces. The TripleFi 10s, as the name suggests, contain 3 drivers, each corresponding to the low, medium, and high frequency ranges.

Many earphones claim to go down to super low frequencies, lower than the normal range of human hearing in fact; in the TripleFi 10s Ultimate Ears says the can get down to 10 hz. While I have no way of objectively measuring if they can back this up, I can say that the amount of bass energy they were able to provide was surprising.

Over the years, I’ve owned dozens of earphones and headphones. I even had several iterations of the Panasonic portable CD players and tape decks (remember those?!) that had a motor in the proprietary headphones to shake them off your head. Honestly though, it was all for show because the bass distorted pretty easily.

I could almost feel the bass in my chest with these IEMs. Will they replace a nice set of speakers? Of course not, but when they are well sealed in the ear cavity, they provide a nice rich bass that’s quite warm. To ensure that you do get the best fit, Ultimate Ears provides 3 sizes of rubber tips, and a couple sets of expanding foam ones. While I use similar rubber ones in my Shure IEMs, the Ultimate Ears foam set is so comfortable, it has me thinking of installing a set on the Shures.

Aesthetically, the TripleFi 10s are beautifully designed. In practice though, I find the earphones a bit awkward. I realize that they must be big enough to support the 3 drivers and the proper porting, but they are about an inch long and don’t sit flush against your outer ear; in fact, they stick out a bit. I’m not sure why they did this as the competing Shure SE530 sits more flush inside the ear and looks better on your head.

But looks aren’t why you’re paying $400 (MSRP but retails for much less), for a set of IEMs; you buy them for the sound. In that department, the TripleFi 10s excel. These IEMs are the best sounding earphones I’ve ever used. At $400 they are a good buy, but if you find them for less, they are a MUST buy.

As I touched on before, the bass is rich and warm, but at the same time not overpowering. There is great detail in the mids and highs, without being overly boosted. The best part of the aural experience is that everything sounds cohesive. When I say this, I mean that everything sounds like it’s playing together in one room rather than all in separate booths and then stuck together.

I used an Apple Lossless file and compared the output to a set of Shures (to be fair, they are less than half the price, and not a class competitor) to see the difference. Formerly the Shures sounded damn good for their price, however when compared to the TripleFis, I found that the frequency range was sharply boosted and cut in certain ranges. This made the instruments seem more isolated from each other.

In contrast, the TripleFi 10s had a very smooth frequency range but still retained great detail across the range. This is not to say that they have have a flat frequency response, but they sounded very pleasant. If I were to fault them aurally, I would say that they show off a bit too much in the low to mid range. In some lusher mixes I found it a little overwhelming.

One thing I might mention is that if you aren’t used to IEM’s, you may find the vocals too far forward. While the vocals sound great on speakers with the appropriate space away from you, IEMs sometimes bring the vocalist into your head spacially. This is not a mark against the TripleFis as all IEMs and earphones suffer from this, but it’s something to keep in mind if you are considering taking the plunge.

While a nice headphone amp would definitely help, I feel that the TripleFi 10s can be used on a daily basis without. They’re quite comfortable (if a bit awkward when putting them in), well constructed, sound great and are well-priced at most retail outlets. If you are in the market for a set of nice earphones, I strongly suggest you check them out. Also, if you work in a noisy office like me, they block out a lot of ambient noise without even being plugged in. You also get the benefit of people not bothering you as much because they think you’re listening to music.

December 9, 2010 – Ok, we are a go! Participation for this project is closed, and I’ve sent out invitations to the Dropbox account to everyone who showed interest. If you missed out on this project, we’ll get you on the next one. Hopefully this will all work out awesome, and will be the start of a cool collaborative community.

First off, I want to really thank you guys for your enthusiasm. I started this site a couple years ago, wanting to get a musical dialogue going. I wasn’t really sure how I was going to do that but I hope this project will be where it all ramps up.

Alright, enough with the sappy stuff, and down to the meat and potatoes of how I think this will go down. I’ve uploaded the starting loop into the Dropbox folder. It is a glockenspiel melody I recorded last week. In the course of this project, you are allowed to do whatever you want to it. I’ve CC-licensed it under Non-Commercial so if you want to use it for something else as long as you don’t sell it, I’m cool with that. I’d appreciate the attribution though.

Since I’ve never done anything like this before, the way this works may change as we see how everyone reacts. To make this truly collaborative, everyone will have a specific task in relation to this song. Whether that is laying down a drum or bass line, or mixing the track, tasks will be delegated by me. If you want to fill a specific roll, please let me know in the comments and I’ll try my best to accomodate. Please keep in mind that I still may not be able to give you the task you want. The list of tasks will change as the song begins to take shape. I will attempt to manage the project and keep everything in check, but I want you guys to feel free to cut loose.

Off the table currently are drums and mixing. The former claimed by Travis and the latter by Jon. Of course, the starting loop is also taken…after all I already recorded and uploaded it. For those who will be writing and recording melodies or filling in, you are able to do whatever you want as long as you respect the work of those who came before. In other words, feel free to create, but don’t bury others’ work.

As suggested by Jon over at AudioGeekZine, we will be working in Reaper. Reaper is a cross platform DAW that is available with full functionality even in the trial version. You can find it at www.Reaper.fm. If you need to pull the project into your own DAW to leverage your tools, go ahead, but be sure to export what you’ve done and re-import it into Reaper for the next person who works on the song.

If you are not part of the mixing team, please do not mix the track for the next person and especially do not “print” the mix so that it cannot be undone. As well, please keep the effects to a minimum unless it is a part of the sound you’re adding. Not everyone will have the same effects which will undo your work. If you must use an effect for a certain sound, please keep the original version without effects (muted of course) and “print” a version with the effect recorded on it.

As everything progresses, I will post updates on how the song sounds at every stage, probably using Soundcloud. This allows everyone to see what everyone else is doing, and also serves as a chronological timeline, which I think will be pretty cool in the end.

I’m very interested to see how this all turns out. When I produce music, I usually do everything from the songwriting all the way to the final mix. It never gets done the same way, or in the same order. With all the different ways we all create music, it will be interesting to see how our talents and weaknesses will fit together.

Ok, so the loop is out there. The first person to work on the track will be Travis Whitmore. I realize that the loops is simple and short, but I’m hoping his drums will bring a feel that the rest of the song can be built on. I expect the drum work will be short, and will only be played over the initial loop. After that, the song can be built, and we’ll bring Travis back near the end of the writing to flesh out the drums with all the other instruments.

So far the following people other than myself are in this project:

Darren Levy
Travis Whitmore
Jon Tidey
Jamal from True Brew Records
Dan Foley
Mr. Fresh
Bryan from the ImaginationConsultant
TC Helentjaris
Moveair
Andreas
CD
Paul Schaeffer
Doug

For all those listed, please confirm your interest in the comments, and if I missed any of you in the Dropbox invitation, please let me know. Also, let me know what your preference is to work on.

I would like this track to be accessible to people who aren’t music nerds like us, so while it doesn’t have to be commercial, it would cool if it wasn’t too out there in the end. I’m also going to provide a theme that we should think about as we get to our tasks. The theme will be music you would enjoy listening to while driving. Could be a plane, train, or automobile; whatever works for you.

Ok, the track is now in Travis’ hands. Who wants to work on melodies next? Let me know in the comments. Goooooooo team!

Collaboration Project Loop for KeyOfGrey.com by keyofgrey

Update Jan. 17, 2011 – Here is what the project sounds like as of 1/10/2011. Sounds great so far guys! Jan 10 Rough Mix of Collab Project by keyofgrey

November 22nd, 2010 – Lately, I’ve seen a lot of crazy instruments being created, and especially a lot leveraging MIDI in interesting ways. Some of it is interesting in an eccentric and fun way, and then there are some that have the potential to be straight up game changing.

The most exciting I’ve seen in a long is Dylan Menzies’ O-Bow. In a nutshell, an optical sensor tracks an object, in this case a “bow” made of wooden dowel, and provides feedback for a modelled stringed instrument. In the video embedded below, the result sounds much like an urhu.

We’ve had wind controllers for ages, allowing more realistic modelled wind instruments, but even though strings are so common in productions, I’m not aware of any commercial device (I don’t really consider touch strips the same) that has attempted to emulate a string player’s bowing. Seems to me that bowing technique would be one of the first things that people attempted to bring into the DAW world.

Definitely check out Dylan’s video below to get an rough idea of what the O-Bow can do. Very exciting stuff!

O-Bow via Engadget

November 21st, 2010 – The multitudes of other “instrument” shirts from ThinkGeek must have been immensely popular because they keep cranking out new stuff. On the tails of such classics as the guitar and bongo shirts, comes the Synth shirt. It seems someone over at ThinkGeek has been paying attention to the Rockband 3 news.

The shirt ranges in price from $30 to $33 depending on size, and comes with a little belt-mounted “amp”. It’s back-ordered right now (on account of the awesomeness) but if you order now, it’ll ship by November 30th. Video embedded below of the shenanigans.

ThinkGeek via Engadget