BTW, the old landline still works… (049) 534-5429. There’s an answering machine where you can leave your message in case nobody answers.

Thank you and have a nice day everybody!

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It was in my freshman college years when I bought Joe Satriani’s Not of This Earth, and in that album there’s this one particular track that always bothered me. It’s a very strange song (with a very strange melody) called “The Enigmatic”. Click on the YouTube link below if you’ve never heard it yet.

We will not analyze the song itself here, or discuss any of those trademark whiz-bang guitar techniques, but rather focus on the scale that inspired the song. If you think our Lydian-dominant lesson from last time was quirky, wait till you hear this one!

I can feel that Joe was trying to stretch the boundaries of conventional melody and harmony in this song. The melody is carried mainly by doublestops on an E pedal point, accented by some eerie arpeggios. And what makes it sound so strange is primarily the scale he used to build the entire song. This scale is known as the “enigmatic” scale, and was originally used (at least according to Wikipedia) in the late 1800s by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi.

The enigmatic scale is actually an artificial or synthetic scale, being that it is not based on any of the traditional major, harmonic or melodic minor modes, and at the same time is also not rooted on any of the ancient, traditional or cultural intervals (such as the Byzantine, the bebop, or the various Japanese pentatonic scales). It is more an artificially-constructed scale built on an arbitrary interval of notes.

On C, the enigmatic scale is spelled C – D-flat – E – F# – G# – A# – B. Thus you would notice immediately that the scale lacks a dominant (the G-note) and subdominant (the F-note), and this is what primarily gives the scale its stinging character. Add to this the Phrygian-like flatted 2nd, which relative to the major 3rd, gives a wide interval of three semitones. And then add some more quirky elements like the Lydian-like raised 4th, and the raised 5th and 6th, and you’ve got one really twisted-sounding scale.

As originally used by Verdi in his “Ave Maria” of 1898, the scale ascends as is, but when descending, the raised 4th (i.e., F#) is replaced by the natural (F), which gives another three-semitone interval, this time relative to the raised 5th. In contrast to these wide intervals, there is a long four-note chromatic “section” too, which begins with the #6, going to the major 7th, and then the tonic, all the way to the minor 9th. It’s so enigmatic indeed!

Further analysis will lead you to think that the scale is somewhat a derivative of the “hexatonic” or whole-tone scale (again in C, spelled as C – D – E – F# – G# – A#), like a whole-tone scale with a major 2nd and missing a leading tone.

In a construction or soloing context, it would be difficult to think of anything traditional with the application of this scale, except for the fact that the raised dominant hints us of trying out this scale over an augmented chord progression. One different way of looking at C enigmatic is in the context of an E-major, C#-minor or an F#-major triad, but be careful about adding the chromatic notes that result when you use the scale like this. On the tonic, it is possible to use this scale over altered chords such as the major-flat-5th, the augmented-major-7th and the major-7-flat-5th.

Most of the time, I find it best to use the enigmatic scale as a substitute for an altered scale in a freer vamp setting. That is because the chromaticism that is introduced by the scale does not disturb anything in context.

I will try to come up with some audio examples when I get home, so please try to come back to this post in a few days.

Practice, persevere and conquer!

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1. The Lydian-Dominant Scale

The guitar sound on this album reminds me of an audio “secret” that I’m going to share with you today. While we usually multi-mic the guitar amp on most sessions (even for demo recordings), for some reason, Myko used only one mic on many songs here. I was going for a dry and massive guitar sound, primarily because the arrangements were very sparse, and so I wanted to really push it as far as it can go. And so the main problem I had was to create a good, convincing stereo sound from this single source, and because I really hate these pseudo-stereo processors (because they all sound like a bad ice-cream headache, and collapses really bad in mono), I went old-school and used the Haas effect while I crafted most of the guitar sounds.

Here is the song “Against the Wall” off the album for your listening pleasure. Try to focus on the guitar sound and how its stereo image is presented. (With special thanks and permission from Rodney, Sidhart, and Barry of Ammunition.)

The sounds of silence

Let’s set aside the song for a while… Close your eyes for a minute and listen intently to the sounds you hear all around you. There could be a lawnmower coming from the outside the window, to your right, while you could hear your dog barking somewhat to your left, at 10 o’clock, and your TV is airing the news dead center. How do you know exactly where all these sounds are coming from? And how do you know how far they are from you?

Well, we have two ears separated by our head by about 18 cm facing opposite directions. And when sound comes from a certain direction, it reaches our ears at different times, and with different intensities. If the sound was coming from the median plane, like the TV, then it would arrive in both ears simultaneously, at almost the same loudness. If it was off to the right, as with the lawnmower, the right ear would receive the sound before the left (and vice-versa as with the dog barking), with the louder side obviously coming from the the ear facing the sound source. It really gets a lot more complicated that this, but this knowledge should be sufficient for our topic today.

In the perception of sound, we can think of our ear-brain system as some kind of audio processor. And in the 1940’s Helmut Haas found out that when two identical sounds originate from two sources at different distances from the listener, the ear will only recognize the sound that arrives first, and will combine the second source as long as the delay between them is around 40 ms or less. Any other sources of the same sound arriving within this time window (for instance, the reflected TV sounds from the room walls surrounding you as in the example above) will fuse with the main initial sound, and thus we essentially hear just “one” sound, and only a loudness enhancement occurs. Only reflections arriving later than 40 ms will be heard as distinct echoes.

Down deep into the pain

In the audio recording world, depth, or the three-dimensional image of a mix, is one of the hallmarks of a great mixer. It is one of these things that separate the seasoned professional from the amateurs. Depth is this wonderful listening experience where each instrument seem to occupy a distinct location within the sound field, all the while realizing that this feat is done in stereo, that is, with two speakers only.

And here is where the notion of sonic depth comes in… The Haas effect allows echoes within 40 ms to enhance the original sound without confusion as to where it’s coming from. While all these sounds and reflections coming in from different directions are fused, our brain continues to recognize the location of the initial sound as *the* source without confusing its directionality.

Dolby Labs use this trick to create what they call the “magic surround”. They found out that when a stereo source was duplicated in the rear speakers, and delayed by a certain amount, the ambience within the stereo recording became more prominent. It seems as if the natural reverberation from the original source was extracted into the rear speakers when the delay was introduced. They use some other mid-side tricks as well, but this is the essential gist of the technique.

The sound of one hand clapping

When a snare drum is hit, the sound picked up by a mic placed over it will be the combination of the direct sound and all the reflected sounds from the room (i.e., the walls, ceiling, floor, and other furniture and objects within the room). All these reflections, within the Haas limit, are directly correlated with the original sound, and supports the initial direct hit, without interfering with its left-to-right orientation. The longer reflected sounds (e.g., reflections if the room was sufficiently large, or secondary reflections, and so on) beyond the Haas limit are uncorrelated, and this is what we call the natural ambience of the room. This group of early reflections as it’s also called is what gives us the perception of distance, a sense of space, but they don’t help us locate the original source in space.

This is the reason why the sense of location of the original sound is usually destroyed when synthetic reverb is added to a single-miked source. Compare it to a stereo-recording of the same source, where early reflections are now binaurally captured, and you’ll see that when the same reverb is added, the sound remains convincingly natural and the spatial location is preserved.

Frequency response also affects our sense of distance. Air absorbs high frequencies, such that the further down a sound source is, the more its high-frequency content is reduced. And our ears have been trained to interpret distance like this. As with our lawnmower example above, the direct sound coming into our right ear contains more high-frequency content, than the softer sound coming into our left ear. The combined Haas effect is thus interpreted in our brain as a lawnmower that is as far right of our sound field as can be.

Back to the egg

And thus with this newfound understanding of this particular aspect of the psychoacoustics of hearing, and its myriad possibilities, we come back to our mono guitar example. What things were done to the original guitar sound that resulted into the mix you heard above?

Ok, for starters, there were a few things, such as adaptive noise reduction, EQ (to sculpt the basic sound) and compression, that are totally unrelated to our topic (but had to mention as well, so there!). As far as creating that stereo sound, the original track was hard-panned on one side, and duplicated onto the other side, which was hard-panned as well. This duplicate track was then delayed by a certain number of samples, corresponding to a certain time delay within the Haas specification. How much exactly depends on the resulting spread and tone in stereo, and how the stereo sound behaves (or misbehaves) when collapsed to mono. I find that there is no general rule we can follow here, because the nasty comb filtering effects vary with the program material, and in the case of guitars, these things actually change the timbre and tone as well.

A common mixing trick you can further try out (prior to delaying the duplicate track) is to detune the duplicate track (using a pitch-shifter) by a certain amount, usually no more than 10 cents. This increases the stereo perception even more. I sometimes do this with vocals, but in this case, this technique was not employed.

The two guitar tracks are then fed to a stereo-buss where further EQ (this time to complement the vocal track) and compression are added. A tiny amount of plate reverb was added at the very end, just enough to glue the elements, but whose amount you can barely hear. It is also important that the reverb doesn’t wash away the attack transients of the guitar.

And so there you have it folks. A mono guitar track turned into rich stereo. Have fun everybody!

For additional reading, please check out the following:

• The article Haas effect – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia discusses the basics.
• Haas Effect (Precedence Effect) is another good introduction to the topic.
• In Stereo Perception, the various listening perceptions related to our anatomy are dissected. Things such as front-to-back and elevation perceptions are also explained.
• In Depth and Dimension, mastering engineer Bob Katz discusses the various psychoacoustic phenomena (including the Haas effect) as it relates to our sensation of depth.
• The paper ASC, The World’s Best Studio Acoustics – SOUND FUSION AND THE ACOUSTIC PRESENCE EFFECT, discusses the complex differences between the Haas effect, early reflections, comb filtering, and the phenomenon of masking.
• In The Birth of the Array: Part 5, knowledge of the Haas effect is used extensively in speaker placement and delay compensation in big concert venues that use multi-array loudspeakers.
• An excellent Haas effect mixing tutorial described in step-by-step detail may be found in the article Turn a mono track into rich stereo « benvesco.com.
• Another ultra-cool mixing tutorial may be found in this article Pro Mixing Series: Episode two: The Haas Effect | EMusicTips.
• TAP-plugins hosts a nice freeware Linux plugin Tap Stereo Echo that achieves the Haas effect (among other delay capabilities). Too bad I’m using Windows!
• Another great freeware plugin HaasCheezburger may be found in this article Native Instruments Kore, Komplete, Reaktor @ Create Digital Music » I Can Haas Stereo_ Lolcat Reaktor Delay FX.

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J.S. Bach is perhaps the greatest composer of the Baroque era. He was widely regarded for the intellectual depth, technical facility and artistic beauty of his compositions. His output of works was prolific, and he was often commissioned to compose a lot of music for the Church during his time. He also paved the way for the next generation of giants that included Mozart, Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelsshon and even Frederic Chopin.

Bach was also the greatest proponent of the sophisticated art of the counterpoint, and specifically the canon and the fugue, which incidentally I first heard from the Swedish guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen’s compositions (although I had been listening to classical music too (and Bach specifically) since I was in high school).

The canon is a compositional style whose foundation is in fact the counterpoint but with some very strict and specific requirements. J.S. Bach’s Canon 1 a 2 is an example of an infinite or perpetual canon that is also a retrograde canon (and hence the nickname “Crab Canon”) because it can be played forward or backwards in time indefinitely. I will not go too in-depth about the anatomy of contrapuntal composition and the canon itself as it’s too intricate and technical. Just click on the links below if you need a deeper explanation.

Now, many mathematicians (and some others like Xantox, and John Leys who did the YouTube illustration above) became very intrigued by this melodic snippet, because aside from being a strict canon alright, and an infinite and retrograde canon at that (which means can be played endlessly and backwards too), it is also possible to play it simultaneously forwards and backwards in time. In their own words,

In each of these canons a musical line is played twice (or four times in Canon 10). The second version is always transformed with respect to the first by shifting in time, but it may also be shifted in pitch, turned upside-down, stretched, or played backwards. Each of these transformations occurs in the mathematics of elementary functions; they are examples of how new functions can be made out of old and of how a function can be tailored to fit a new situation.

If you listened intently on the amazing combination and interaction of the contrapuntal melodies, you will realize why it becomes so mind-boggling. The fact that it can be played indefinitely (as in the Möbius Strip transformation) makes it all the more appealing to mathematicians. It’s as if Bach himself composed this seemingly simple piece with the very intention of it being discovered later on (after centuries in fact!) of all these amazing possibilities.

For additional reading:

• Wikipedia: Canon
• The Canons and Fugues of J. S. Bach
• Math and the Musical Offering

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Here’s my BLIP.fm page btw… Blip.fm | Blips by AjiCoronel

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So what is this all about? Auto-Tune is actually a computer software made by Antares that is used in many studios around the world to correct out-of-tune recordings of *anything*. It’s most important application however is with what is perhaps the most delicate and important component in any typical song: the human voice. Auto-Tune made its popular debut with Cher’s megahit “Believe”, where a very extreme setting was used not for pitch correction, but to create that characteristic keyboardy, robotic effect on her voice.

When it first came out, it has been hailed as the “holy grail of the recording world”, because finally it became possible to fix singing imperfections without adding any distortion or artifacts. If you don’t realize how powerful this software is, imagine asking somebody to sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, and being able to change the melody that was sung into… uh… let’s say… “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

Well, the “without any distortion or artifact” clause is not totally true, because I think the trained ears of producers and audio engineers will always be able to detect a vocal track that has been Auto-Tuned, however subtle and skilled the processing was. I cringe whenever I get to hear “that” sound on the newest top ten hit, and I can’t help but laugh whenever some kid would sing this artist’s song and try to imitate “that” sound. When a recording is all very well-done however, the mere fact that the vocal performance on this new song was perfect makes me think immediately that is was Auto-Tuned. I know it’s wrong, but I would never give credit to the singer’s brilliance right away.

And in case you’re wondering why I would tend to think this way… It’s all simply because pop music that has been released (for the last five years especially) *all* use Auto-Tune. (Believe it or not!) It has become *the* sound of this generation, whether you like it or not. The obsession about perfect pitch is just too much now that producers cannot accept even a single microscopic, momentary, microtonal dud.

It is no secret that some big music artists have a problem with their singing technique. For instance, Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon, while being a talented songwriter and brilliant performer, had a problem with controlling his vocal pitch. That is why if you listen closely to his recorded vocals, you’ll almost always hear “something” done to his voice to “hide” this fact, such as mixing in several pitch-shifted tracks of the same vocal take, or some weird reverb or mangling effect.

Auto-Tune used to be a well-guarded secret in the audio world (or at least we thought!), simply because the listening public would be shocked if they would get to know that their favorite singer in fact cannot sing (or sing worse than they do)! (Did somebody say Britney Spears?) Well, for those that *can* sing, Auto-Tune is still very useful in some ways, because, for instance, instead of wasting so much studio time to do so many takes of the same song, we can make do with just a few. Should there be that one elusive high note that just cannot be nailed properly, Auto-Tune can instantly be called to the rescue!

Truth is, every human being, no matter how skilled, will not be able to sing perfectly in tune. This is just fact. Just listen to any great singer, from Enrico Caruso, Placido Domingo, to Frank Sinatra. They will mostly be in the pocket, but you will inevitably hear pitch imperfections. One sliding blue note here, one slightly sharp note there… I guess it’s also intended in the performance too.

When we did U.P. Madrigal singer Joy Gain’s project in the Studio, I got goose bumps during the recording phase. I couldn’t believe how much control she has on her voice. She was just on-pitch all the time. (And consider how I sensitive I am with pitch and intonation on the guitar!) Well, it’s no surprise really, considering her classical upbringing and that level of talent she got. But later on during the mix, just out of curiosity, when I tried to put her vocal takes on the grid, I realized the takes weren’t that perfect after all. (I didn’t Auto-Tune her BTW!) For all our ear-brain’s pitch sensitivity, there was still way more stuff that only the computer can detect.

For me personally, I think it’s all just a fad. Since those times I banged my head in disbelief listening to Rod Stewart’s The Complete American Songbook album, or even James Hetfield’s vocals on Metallica’s Death Magnetic and how they all got Auto-Tune-infested, I hope the day will come when we return back to our artistic sensibilities when we create music. Would-be pop artists should all learn how to sing, or at least live with what they can do vocally. Bob Dylan comes to mind… While he is not the greatest of singing voices, he has become like a musical prophet of our age, and his vocal performances while not perfect, carry his complete message across to us, intellectually, philosophically, emotionally.

And coming back to Auto-Tune, I think we should all try to learn to use it wisely. For starters, why not just apply it to those sections where it’s obviously needed?

And now, the cat is out of the bag…

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1. What is happening to the music industry?
2. To click, or not to click, that is the question…

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1. Creative Commons

But whose fault is it really? Well, for one, the pirated CD/DVD business is certainly wrong, because some other people are making money from the music that is the rightful property of the artists. But regarding the internet and file sharing, for a long time now, I have always believed that since technology will only progress further, and over the years when we all have faster connections at home, what took hours will take a few minutes, and it will be impossible to police the entire internet and prosecute websites and people who download music (and movies, and books, and software, and PSP games, etc). The digitization of information of any kind, and the omnipresence of the internet, will only put further pressure on copyright as we understand it now. And nope, I don’t think DRM (digital rights management) will stop it either (ever heard of those supposedly uncrackable AACS keys for Blu-Ray discs?)…

I just finished reading a blog by Curt Smith (yep, *the* Curt Smith of 80’s mega-band Tears for Fears!) where he described his decision to release his latest album Halfway pleased not through a record label, but under a Creative Commons license. I had been aware of CC for some time now, but largely ignored it, and so I really didn’t know what it was really and what it meant to Curt’s album, and what potential it could serve to musicians.

Let me highlight some of Curt’s insights in his blog:

• Musicians want to *share* their music. They want it to be heard by as many people as possible.
• Copyright’s “all rights reserved” dictum restricts the ways music should be consumed, because it means that you cannot play or perform it in school events, or even lend a CD to your friend. Realistically, it’s impossible to enforce.
• Creative Commons allows relaxing copyright to “some rights reserved”. An artist can now select which rights he wants to retain, for instance, rights from commercial exploitation. As Curt said, “You don’t have the right to use my music in a way that generates revenue for you without my permission.”
• Again, I quote him here, “One misconception I should like to clear up about Creative Commons is that all music released under a CC license is free. Some is, to be sure, but not all. Some artists choose to release their music for free and concentrate on other revenue streams (such as live performances) for their income, others (like myself) do not. I invested a great deal in the recording and release of Halfway pleased, and charging for it is a way for me to recoup those expenses and to have the funds to invest in making more music.”
• And lastly, I think he couldn’t have said it any better… “That being said, I think I’ve been as democratic as possible in the way I charge for it. You can buy a track at a time from digital services like iTunes, AmazonMP3 or thesixtyone. You can buy the entire album digitally, or on CD. And you don’t even have to buy it to listen to it, since it streams for free on my website. If you’re a registered member of my site, you can download a track for free. That’s all pretty fair, don’t you think?”

From the CC website, it says, “Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.”

I was thinking that the logical conclusion to the problem is a complete overhaul of copyright as we know it today, a new world order perhaps, but maybe there are other inevitable endings. Maybe Creative Commons is *the* solution, or something along the lines that they advocate. I certainly hope so…

For additional reading:

• Get Creative is a fun and lazy way to understand what I have written above. You might say, “And now you tell me this after I’ve read your stupid blog!” LOL! Whoops!
• In Curt Smith on the (Musical) Value of Sharing, Curt discusses the pros and cons of music sharing today, and the pros and cons of the use of the internet in promoting yourself as a new artist.
• The article Help Key: The Essential Guide to Piracy explains it all.
• In Psychology of Internet music piracy, the problem of music piracy is given critical thought.
• In the article Greg Kot: The Music Industry Caused Piracy, and iTunes Isn’t the Way Out, offers a different perspective on the music industry’s collapse.
• The article How to make money as an independent artist? describes the hard life of being an indie artist today and offers some solutions.
• I found Creative Commons Philippines from this article: Arellano University launches Creative Commons in the Philippines. All the best!

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The “subscribe by email” feature has just been tested and is now fully working. Incidentally, RSS feed subscription for both blogs and comments has been working for some time now too, which means that you can now subscribe to us using plain old email, or via RSS using your Google Reader or Newsgator account, or through popular reader clients like FeedDemon and RSSBandit.

We also managed to fix the pesky oversized Google ads from weeks back. Way cool!

Have fun everybody!

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1. Hello World!

Some intricate mastering details have been posted here by the Abbey Road engineers themselves. It’s very interesting to note how they approached this project, starting from the analog reels some of which are more than 40 years old, and how the latest digital technology was used during the process. It reportedly took four years to complete this undertaking!

I personally own original vinyl pressings of *all* the stereo albums (this was from the 1980’s and I was still in high school back then!), and this I consider some of my most prized possessions. The sound of these albums simply cannot be matched in my opinion. I have the original CD releases as well, but they just sound trebly thin and lifeless by comparison. Later on, I got hold of some remasters (some Japanese premaster of Abbey Road, and all the Dr. Ebbetts remasters on FLAC), but as far as my ears can remember, the vinyl still blows them away. Nope, I don’t want to join in that CD vs. vinyl debate anymore!

Let’s just hope these new versions will turn out to be the best listening experiences we can ever have of these works of art, in any format for that matter. I really share the sentiment of Mr. Guttenberg as he expressed in his CNET blog.

I have high hopes though, primarily since I think only recently has the converter technology began to mature enough such that analog to digital conversion is now as transparent as can be, compared to even a decade ago or less. (Mastering engineer Bob Ludwig used to complain about this so much in the past!) But the $8,000 Prism box Abbey Road allegedly used is the current flagship of the company, and while I have never heard any Prism ADC’s yet (I used to use Lavry’s in the U.S.), it still is way up there, at the very high-end of things. Combine this with an excellent analog front-end, and some intelligent use of digital processing (especially noise reduction and final limiting), and the infinite knowledge and wisdom of the Abbey road engineers and hopefully we have a winner. Can’t wait to hear them!

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“The Rizmala Connection”

with performances from Last Lie Told, Intolerant, Badburn, Piledriver, West, t.a.s.a., Sucket Seven, One Day Old, Curse of Lita & Apostate.

Saturday, September 5, 2009
Cuerdas Bar, Pasig City

P80 gets you in with a beer!

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The paper says, “A discussion of the significance of these results describes others’ work on perception of air- and bone-conducted ultrasound; and points out that even if ultrasound be taken as having no effect on perception of live sound, yet its presence may still pose a problem to the audio equipment designer and recording engineer.”

There’s actually a lot of hot debate going on regarding the benefits of high-sampling rates for recording audio, and also a lot of marketing bullsh*t for new products that are capable of recording at such frequencies. But really, higher is not better, and Dan Lavry tells you why. The old Oohashi paper actually concluded that while audio is surely inaudible beyond 20kHz, the ultrasonic frequencies trigger some electrical brain activity in the listener’s head that changes the overall listening perception, or something along those  lines if I remember correctly.

Here’s the link to the Caltech paper… http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm. Have a read if this interests you.

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He was the pioneer of the solid-body guitar, and invented *the* guitar used by legions of greats, from Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons to Slash. (No kiddo, Les Paul was actually the *inventor* of the guitar you’re holding!)

As an engineer and inventor, Les was also responsible for many ground-breaking innovations in the recording studio, such as multi-tracking, overdubbing (recording sound on top of sound), and various tape-based effects such as delay and phasing. After his introduction of multi-tracking, recording as we know it would never be the same again…

Goodbye and thank you Les!

And here is the link to the Jazz.com article… http://www.jazz.com/features-and-interviews/2009/8/13/guitarist-and-inventor-les-paul-passes-away-at-94

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Here’s that list:

1. Jimi Hendrix
2. Slash
3. B.B. King
4. Keith Richards
5. Eric Clapton
6. Jimmy Page
7. Chuck Berry
8. Les Paul
9. Yngwie Malmsteen
10. Prince

And while were at it, Gibson.com posted an addendum of some sort…

8 Great Electric-Guitar Players Time.com Overlooked

And here’s that list:

1. Jeff Beck
2. Duane Allman
3. Eddie Van Halen
4. George Harrison
5. Steve Howe
6. David Gilmour
7. T-Bone Walker
8. Pete Townshend

Notable mentions: Buddy Guy, Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Iommi, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, Bo Diddley, Brian May, Robert Fripp, Randy Rhoads, Mick Ronson, Joe Perry, Angus Young

Don’t you just love (or just downright hate!) these Top Ten lists…

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1. Rolling Stone: The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time
2. AOL Radio Blog: Steve Vai Unveils His 10 Favorite Instrumentals

Is music a purely human experience? What exactly makes us human beings experience music the way we do, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually? And now, since we are able to immerse ourselves into the music, we also usually like to participate, and the simplest way to do this is through singing. But what is it inside us that lets us do this properly, and what is missing in less fortunate people that eludes them from singing in tune?

A very interesting read… http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327223.300-tonedeaf-people-have-fewer-brain-connections.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

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1. Santana: “Europa (Earth’s Cry Heaven Smile)”
2. Jeff Beck: “’Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers”
3. Jimi Hendrix: “Midnight”
4. Joe Satriani: “Is There Love In Space”
5. Mahavishnu Orchestra: “Meeting of the Spirits”
6. Frank Zappa: “Black Napkins”
7. Allan Holdsworth: “Devil Take The Hindmost”
8. Stevie Ray Vaughan: “Lenny”
9. Yngwie Malmsteen: “Black Star”
10. The Champs: “Tequila”

Here’s the link to the original post… http://www.aolradioblog.com/2009/08/21/steve-vai-unveils-his-10-favorite-instrumentals/

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1. Time: The 10 Greatest Electric-Guitar Players

Since then (well, in fact, since Kurt Cobain!), things have cooled down a bit. Now we’ve got the guitar “torch” passed on to the young guns like John Mayer, John 5 and Jack White who, while making things technically simpler, put into the instrument more musicality, and further cemented the guitar’s role as a key instrument supporting the song. There would still be occasional flashes of intensity and virtuosity, but they are now there only to enhance the song. It’s not a guitar solo played for its own sake anymore. I guess it’s a wake up call of some sorts.

And so with this, I’d like to share with you a fresh article from Rolling Stone magazine titled “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. Though it’s too bad one of my favorite idols ever wasn’t included in the list. Well, he’s not mainstream so it’s just wishful thinking on my part really… And why the hell is EVH down there at #70? WTF!?!??

Incidentally, while we’re at it, there’s one more link right there, this time, it’s “The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time”. Enjoy!

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1. Time: The 10 Greatest Electric-Guitar Players
2. AOL Radio Blog: Steve Vai Unveils His 10 Favorite Instrumentals

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Anyway, speaking of Paul Anka, would you be able to imagine him by any chance singing a Nirvana song? You think I’m kidding eh? No sirree, but he really did! Have a watch at this…

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1. Time: The 10 Greatest Electric-Guitar Players

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In our last article we talked about the click track and the various problems it presents to drummers. Production-wise, we also discussed the importance of capturing the groove and keeping good time. To summarize, we noted the following drummer-specific issues:

• Drummers will tend to play the verses slow, and slightly speed up on the choruses.
• They will slowly speed up towards the end of the song. Play back the song right after it ends and you’ll immediately notice this.
• Every drum fill they do will slightly shift the tempo either forward or backwards in time, depending on the complexity of the fill.

Today we expand the topic to discuss the rest of the issues an engineer struggles with when recording drummers.

Cymbals, cymbals, and still more cymbals…

Record producers will almost always agree that what primarily separates an amateur from a pro is how much cymbals the drummer is hitting, and this is generally true regardless of genre. Consummate drummers will use crash and ride punctuations sparingly. Notable examples are the drumming styles of The Eagles’ Don Henley and U2’s Larry Mullen. These guys will actually make you *wait* for their cymbal hits!

A fellow audio engineer of mine told me once that cymbals are like exclamation points. You do not want all your sentences to end with them. Nice metaphor, eh?

Hit the lights! (and mic the overheads)

Another issue regarding cymbals is how hard the drummer hits them. Drums are usually miked with a stereo overhead pair, in addition to individual mics placed on each drum piece. And if you’re like me, in most cases, the overheads are my primary mics, i.e., I use them to capture a balanced sound of the whole kit (and not just the cymbals). This can be quite difficult to accomplish, given that the cymbals are obviously the nearest things to these two mics. (This is actually a huge subject that requires a separate article of its own.) But what makes it even more frustrating is the fact that most drummers will hit the cymbals harder than they would hit the toms and the snare! When this happens, the drum sound becomes a mad wash of searing treble coming from the crash and the hi-hats. (Blink-182 anyone?) This is perhaps the recording engineer’s worst nightmare. Yaiks!

The really good players never play like this. They know how to control their touch, and they would hit the drums really solidly, and the cymbals oh so lightly.

(Our focus in this post is about drummer problems. And so we will discuss the nuts and bolts about drum miking techniques in some other article soon.)

Even Steven

And speaking of touch, there is one more related problem. No drummer can hit the drums perfectly even, and while again, this is what makes the playing “human”, we engineers desire the individual hits to be as constant in volume as possible (except of course for sections where let’s say a soft hit is intended).

The best drummers will always have the most consistent drum hits. And one more critical thing: they will almost always hit the drum skins in exactly the same location (which is ideally the very center of the drum surface). As you may know, hitting the drum skin at different places will change the tone and timbre of the hit, and nothing is more amateurish than a drummer whose snare hits all sound different tonally. It sounds like a horrible mess.

As an example, try to pay attention whenever a drummer makes a fill. Again, depending on how complex the fill is, he will usually trade-off complexity with how hard the drum is hit, and where. The busier the fill, in general, the lighter the drum hits become, and the more off-center the hit is made. Thus when the drummer comes back to the basic beat, the snare would sound louder, compared to the snare hits during the fill.

Regarding differences in volume, or velocity as it’s called, engineers will summon from their arsenal the ubiquitous compressor, whose primary purpose is to reduce the dynamic range (i.e., the loudest and softest hits) of the track. This way, we control the big differences in volume of the drum hits, resulting into a more professional-sounding drum track. Engineers would automatically compress the kick, snare, and tom mics as they are being recorded.

(Similarly, we will forego discussing related stuff here like drum tuning and using compressors in a drum setting in future posts.)

Name that tune!

This last item doesn’t really concern about mechanical aspects but rather about style. Let’s talk about fills for a moment again… Seasoned pros will usually think hard about what fill he needs to do for certain sections of the song. He would play the same exact fill for verse sections that lead to another verse section, another one for verse sections leading to the chorus, and another one for chorus sections leading back to the verse. Sometimes he would put little variations, but he would always stick to the same fill template. This way not only the song has an identity, but also the drum track itself. He would never do random fills here and there.

Incidentally, this is one essential production philosophy for Nile Rodgers, who produced megahits like Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl”, Duran Duran’s “The Reflex” and “Wild Boys”, the B-52’s “Love Shack” and “Roam”, and so many other great 80’s albums. He also happens to be Chic’s guitar player.

Some drummers I really admire are masters at this. In his concert DVD, John Mayer has said that Steve Jordan’s style is unmistakable: anyone will be able to recognize what song he’s playing just by hearing the drum track.

Confucius said…

Drummers are a unique bunch of musicians. Sure they keep time, but by being so used to play ever-so-slightly ahead of everybody else in the band all their lives, they are not used to “follow a master”, like when they are suddenly asked to play to a click track. And many will concentrate on playing technique, and emulate master technicians like Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy or Rush’s Neal Peart. But for us recording engineers, pyrotechnics is just one thing, and the most primitive playing aspects are still the most important: keeping time, making the song groove, the drummer’s touch, and consistency in hitting the drum pieces. Perhaps these things are also the most difficult to master.

Well, that’s all for today folks. Ooops, but we didn’t really tell you how we should fix all these problems yet, did we? LOL!

Supplementary reading

In Use Crash Cymbals Sparingly, the author likens cymbal hits to cursing. According to him, if you curse all the time, then no one will care anymore.

The Prorec article Drum Miking Techniques pt. 2 discusses some basic overhead miking techniques.

Drum Tuning Bible is perhaps the definitive guide for tuning drums.

In How to compress the snare and kick drum, basic drum compression techniques are discussed.

The blog site Troy’s Drum Tips for Young Drummers is an excellent resource for beginning drummers for everything related to the craft.

© 2009, Aji Coronel. Nyquist Recording Studio. All rights reserved. If you need to copy content, please provide the link to this original post.

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1. To click, or not to click, that is the question…

"A. Here goes… Watch over 100 bands at the Fete dela Musique event l8r 2nyt June 20 at d Metrowalk Ortigas, Pasig City. Witchtreesymbol plays d rock stage at around 8pm. Let’s get it on .!..!"

All the best and God bless!

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Nope, I’m not spoofing Hamlet, I’m actually talking about this little contraption… As you may know, the metronome is a device that creates audible pulses at regular intervals of time, in order to establish a steady tempo in the performance of music. It can be this antique wooden thingy that looks like an inverted pendulum clock, or its more modern electronic version, or even the ephemeral tick-tock you only get to hear on studio headphones.

Metronomes are used by serious musicians to aid in their practice regimen, usually to instill a strict discipline of maintaining a constant tempo when playing their instruments. The objective here is to keep accurate time. For instance, violinists use the metronome to constantly push their playing abilities. They will practice difficult lines very slowly at first, and then set the metronome faster and faster until they can play the same line cleanly and accurately at lightning speed.

Why record to a click track?

We humans are notoriously unable to keep good time. As an example, most drummers will have three common problems:

• At the beginning of the song, drummers will play the beat at a certain tempo, but during the chorus parts, they will usually speed up, only to slow down again when the verse comes back.
• In most cases, they will almost always unknowingly play faster towards the end of the song (unless it’s something that’s done intentionally, e.g., Mahavishnu Orchestra’s “Meeting of the Spirits”).
• Depending on complexity, any improvised drum fills done on the last beat of the measure (let’s say the “4” in 4/4 time) will either take a slightly longer or shorter time to return to the “1” of the next measure.

Recording process and philosophy

For a typical recording session, one of the very first things that is done is that the tempo for the song is determined, and click tracks are prepared either via a simple metronome, or programmed via software inside the DAW. Then guide tracks are recorded, with the drums being one of the first instruments that are actually printed (since drums carry the rhythm of the song). Drummers who are not used to playing to a click track will never be able to sync to this beat, however hard they try, and the end result will always be a disaster: a drum track that for all intents is unusable.

Now, as a solution, you decide to let the drummer play without a click, but now the big question comes: Can he keep good time?

There is a reason why session players are paid handsomely, and only these very few can do it with class. Really. Think about the groove masters like Manu Katche, Billy Cobham, Jeff Porcaro, or Steve Jordan.

Producers debate endlessly about click-tracking… On one camp, they believe that fluctuations in tempo are natural and actually help the music, in that small tempo increases build up tension and excitement, while corresponding decreases provide emotional release. On the other hand, the other camp believes that the best musicians keep perfect time, and unless the music is supposed to be played rubato (i.e., free-time, flexible tempo), then it should always be played as precise in time as can be.

But maybe even playing to a click track is not enough, and some crazy producers take their obsessions too far…

Bar-beat editing

In this day and age, it is possible to edit drum tracks that were already recorded such that they are made perfectly aligned in time. This is done quite easily in Pro Tools. Tools such as Beat Detective and Elastic Audio can automatically quantize drum hits all the way up to the 16th note! (There is actually a dangerous trend happening lately with the overuse of bar-beat editing, especially with bands whose drummers are not known to play great time!) Now, even the sloppiest drumming can be made tempo-perfect, and while for some this is good, for the rest this means taking away the emotion from the playing. Not to mention that this is also a quick and dirty way to hide poor playing skills! And you thought Auto-Tune was the only scourge of our generation!

And this is the answer…

I think that there is no final answer to the question above. It takes a lot of maturity and good taste from the producer to determine which option works better for the task at hand. The ideal situation for me is a good drummer who can play and groove to a click track, but bar-beat editing? Forget it man!

The groove is a much sought-after human element to playing, but even a bitchin’ groove is never tempo-accurate. I mean, if I just wanted the perfect drum track, I would just use MIDI and feed it to BFD! Why should I squeeze a human player to do something that is technically impossible?

In the end, I think that what distinguishes man from machine is ironically the very thing that he wants to achieve: machine perfection. If some mortal can somehow do this, then it will be the ultimate contradiction, because now, he will sound as perfect and lifeless as MIDI.

Having said this, though, I still believe that the best musicians are the ones who can groove and play good time. The pursuit to playing perfection should always be top priority for every serious musician. As Steve Vai has said, “I’m fearless in my heart. They will always see that in my eyes. I am the passion; I am the warfare. I will never stop… always constant, accurate, and intense.”

Examples, opinion, and analysis

And finally, here are some classic examples:

• AC/DC’s Back in Black, produced by Mutt Lange, did not use a click track at all. It was all played in free-time, believe it or not!
• For Nirvana’s In Utero, Steve Albini takes the recording philosophy above one step further… Aside from no click tracks whatsoever, most of the songs were tracked with the whole band playing at once. It’s all live, raw, and it burns!
• George Martin and Geoff Emerick used a click track on the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”, but only in order to sync the open middle parts where the orchestra is supposed to come in. You can actually hear Ringo counting in this section!
• Tempo analysis of Green Day’s American Idiot appears to indicate that the whole album was heavily bar-beat edited to fine perfection. Maybe that’s why it hits me hard but somehow I feel it doesn’t groove at all…

With these examples, do you think the songs groove and burn, or were they sloppy bad? Maybe our opinions here will all be different. Try to listen and feel the songs like a consummate musician. Go figure!

For additional reading, please check out the following links:

• In Be gone ye click track! | Drummer Talk, the author talks about the groove that he believes only happens when the click track is not used at all.
• In the forum entry Click Tracks, the poster talks about some philosophy as utilized by producer/engineer Michael Wagener.
• In the article In search of the click track – Boing Boing, the author uses software to identify whether click tracks and bar-beat editing were employed on certain songs, in this case, the Beatles’ “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” and Green Day’s “American Idiot”.
• The article Make: Online : Click track detector makes a similar analysis as above, this time, the same Green Day song and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”, which reveals that Lars Ulrich could’ve played the song without using a click.
• Who Uses A Click Track? Music Machinery Doesn’t Really Tell You! – Musformation does a more comprehensive analysis of the above.
• In the article In search of the click track « Music Machinery, which is similar to the above analyses, it is spectacular to see which drummer did the wildest tempo variations of the bunch. (It was in fact the great John Bonham!) (Edit: I noticed later on that this is in fact the parent article of all the other ones above! Sorry for that Mr. Author.)

All the best!

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1. Tracking drummers

The Lydian-dominant is named as such because it it is fact a Lydian scale (a major scale with a raised fourth) with a dominant seventh (like a regular dominant 7th chord).  In the key of C, it is thus spelled as C – D – E – F# (the raised 4th) – G – A – B-flat (the dominant 7th).

Theory-wise, the Lydian-dominant is in fact the fourth mode of the melodic-minor scale (which is like the regular Aeolian or natural minor scale, but with a raised 6th and 7th). The melodic-minor is a rather “happy”-sounding minor scale (as if that makes sense!), primarily because of the raised 6th and 7th intervals, but it also sounds quite unorthodox, because it ascends as is but descends like the natural minor.

When the great classical composers started to incorporate the melodic-minor into their compositions (Mozart used it quite a lot!), it opened so many new sound avenues for them. In the jazz world however, the use of the various melodic-minor modes is commonplace, most notably from bebop players like the virtuoso Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins (of Miles Davis’ band).

My ears twitch every time I hear this scale, because for the moment the line emphasizes the Lydian sound, it gets suddenly knocked off every time the flat 7th is invoked, and vice-versa. Thus for me at least it sounds kinda edgy, like a pushing-pulling kind of thing.

To illustrate, here is a goofball E Lydian-dominant lick I recorded on acoustic guitar. I played this with a low open-E drone in order to anchor the rest of the line into a firm harmonic foundation. Please have a listen.

As with creating lines in any other scale, the best way to present the distinct color of this scale is to highlight the raised 4th and the flat 7th, and put this in the context of moving melodies that anchor the dominant and the subdominant (which, in this case, is the B and the A# notes).

Now that you have an idea how it sounds, how do we actually use it in a song context then? Well, I find the easiest way to incorporate this scale is to substitute it for the Mixolydian in a dominant chord setting. This means that if I have a song in the key of E-major, then during the progression where the V-chord (that is, B7) is played, then I can in fact replace a B-Mixolydian line (spelled as B – C# – D# – E – F# – G# – A) with a B Lydian-dominant one (spelled as B – C# – D# – E# (or F-natural) – F# – G# – A). This in essence changes just one note, and that is the E-note (!), which creates suspension that “disturbs” the calm Mixolydian into a tension-filled F-note.

In fact, the scale can be used in any dominant chord setting. This makes sense because the (unaltered) dominant chord is spelled 1 – 3 – 5 – flat-7, and this is where Mixolydian is normally utilized.

Additional reading and resources:

• Wikipedia: Lydian dominant scale discusses the basics.
• In chrisjuergensen.com: The Lydian Dominant Mode, the author discusses some excellent soloing approaches.
• In Music Theory: Jazz Scales: Melodic Minor Harmony: Lydian Dominant Scale, the possibility of interpreting and using the scale as a 7-flat-5 chord rather than a 7-raised-fourth (or 7-raised-11th) is explored.
• In Lydian-Dominant Theory for Improvisation, the possibilities for using the scale are expanded into the “freer” no-holds-barred territory of the symmetrical whole-tone and 12-tone row. (Warning: This page contains some hardcore music theory stuff!)

Try it yourself. Start slowly. I guess it gets a little disorienting at first, but eventually your ears will learn to become familiar with it. Practice, persevere and conquer!

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1. The Enigmatic Scale

These artists spent their hard-earned cash to get their music recorded. We took their songs to greater heights, rearranged them, embellished them, orchestrated them, you know, put all these little hooks, bells and whistles. We made their songs sound like a record. I asked for the opinion of fellow engineer and producer friends in the U.S., even posted their songs on several Pro Audio forums, and most if not all of them agreed that these records should ring the cash registers. But why oh why can’t even a single label give these artists their much-deserved break? Is the material not good enough? Or are they just not trying that hard enough?

It gets even more perplexing when I turn on the radio. (I don’t do it often though…) I get to listen to a lot of music performed by actors who don’t even know how to sing! Yes it’s true… Anybody can be a singer now and even release a whole album, thanks to Auto-Tune and the many other wonders of the modern age. But doesn’t anyone even realize that all we get to hear now are never-ending covers of classic songs that don’t even have a sliver of artistic innovation added?  I mean, I don’t think anybody can just do a Beatles cover without adding anything musical to justify covering it in the first place, right?

What happens now to the current crop of these talented people we call musicians? Do we allow them to just give up and stop doing what they do, because they are planning for their futures, or trying to support their families, but they could not because music cannot earn them enough money and give them a decent quality of life? Are the major labels content on putting their money on the more easily bankable “artists”, those whose faces are already famous and whose acting talents are excellent, but whose musical skills leave much to be desired? Are they just not willing to develop new talents anymore?

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1. Creative Commons

We are currently in the process of moving the old stuff on here, so please give us some time to update all the pages, links, and contents.

Regarding Studio operations, we are on extended hiatus right now. Aji is currently working outside country, as well as Meong, who has embarked on an FOH engineer job in a luxury cruise liner. (He reportedly had the wonderful experience of engineering for Rosie O’Donnell and Gloria Estefan!) Myko on the other hand has been busy lately in Batangas, setting up a print advertising shop there. Niko is now broadcast engineer for a major TV station. And Allan is working as security at SM City Santa Rosa, where you’d normally see him at Tom’s World. Some good news though: Allan and his wife Vea will also be proud parents soon. Congrats!

We will resume normal Studio operations sometime before the end of this year. We promise to be back. Please stay tuned.

In the meantime, have a look around the site and discover useful stuff that the Staff will be posting every now and then. Please join us in the blog discussions and add your comments. Also, feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed.

God bless and all the best!

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