Seven Second Sunset

About a year ago I met a band called Fjord while judging the 10th Annual Boothe Brother’s Battle of the Bands. They were a newly formed band of 15 year old guys.

They came in last place.

But, there was some definite talent under the tuning issues, timing issue, and bizarre presentation of the band.

I offered to give them some tips. They changed the guitar line up, found a new singer, and worked diligently to correct many of the mistakes they made at the Battle.

Today they are called Seven Second Sunset and this year they came in 2nd place at the battle of the bands! Great job guys!.

They are working on their debut album hopefully to be completed and released at the start of summer 2012.

It’s been a blast working with them. Their drummer is amazing; the bassist a visionary; the singer – a good front-man; and their guitarist dedicated to music. They have catchy, simple songs that get to the hook, and keep bringing you back in time and time again.

Here’s their first single:

“Like” them at their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/sevensecondsunset?sk=app_2405167945

I have been asked to be a judge in the 11th Annual Boothe Bros. Battle of the Bands this year! I had a great time last year judging some awesome talent.

The band line is:

4:00 4th Dimension
4:30 Strobe light Ave.
5:00 Wired For Havoc
5:30 Ghost of Syd Barrett
6:00 Sevens
6:30 A Sci Fi Romance
7:00 Seven Second Sunset
7:30 Gerade
8:00 America’s Little Headache
8:30 Jhonny K and the Krew
9:00 Buttkutt
9:30 Passing Faces

UPDATE – Congrats to

1st Gerade, 2nd Seven Second Sunset, 3rd Buttkutt.

Here’s a video of Buttkutt playing

Vocal Recording

Home studios can make recording and mixing a chore, especially when it comes to mixing vocals.

Imagine the singer coming in doing his thing and now you try mix the song. Frustration sets in. You ask yourself, “Why can’t I get this vocal part to sit in the mix right?” Hours are spent trying every EQ, compressor, and plugin you own and the end result is like having no windshield wipers and driving in a rain storm – a real blurry mess!

As with everything in life, you are only as good as the source allows you to be. If the vocal track you are trying to mix sounds like poo-poo to begin with – good luck! Once you record poo-poo, you can’t remove it, you can only hide it, but even hidden poo-poo smells bad.

Mixing starts with recording. Did you get that? Let me say it again. Mixing starts with the recording. If your recording chain is not up to par you will struggle to mix the vocals no matter what tips and tricks you learn. Trying to mix and fix a bad recording is like trying to polish a turd. The arrangement, the room, the singer, the microphone and its position, the pre amp, and the levels going to tape (or your DAW) all play a critical role in getting a good vocal take to mix.

So assuming you have a decent enough vocal performance, and created a passable recording, let’s talk about the work you need to do before you mix.

You will need four tools to start this process

• Good headphones – I like the Sony 7506 model
• A note pad – any piece of paper will do. I use a ruled yellow pad with pre-punched holes so I can put it in a three-ring binder with track sheets and other notes about the song.
• Critical listening skills – if you don’t have this tool yet, work on it!
• A clean EQ for corrective adjustments

Singers move around when they are performing. Sometimes they snap their fingers, slap their thighs, hum when they aren’t supposed to, click their dentures, and smack their lips.  Then there is the singer’s environment – low frequency rumble, air-conditioning sounds, footsteps, and other ambient sounds.

All these performance sounds can create issues later when adding compression, they can eat headroom, and they can cause EQ to be difficult. They need to be removed.

You are looking for all these sounds. This is why you need a notepad and headphones and critical listening skills. You need to be able to hear the junk between phrases and you need to be able to hear the junk in the vocal line itself. Find them and eliminate them, use alternate takes if they are in mixed in with the words (you did do multiple takes right?) Using headphones will make this task easier

Once you clean up all the performance noise, it’s time to listen to each word. Are there some that were slurred, mispronounced, mistimed? Replace them. You want to have a solid performance. Sometimes there is artistic intent in how words are said, but generally you want to have a clear sound. Note if you need the singer to come back and re-record a part, if possible (hopefully you took notes about mic, placement, preamp settings, etc)

So up to this point you have cleaned up the noise and replaced any poorly said words. Here is where I usually bounce to another channel in my DAW and label it “cleaned vox”

Time to take the headphones off.

Now it’s time to massage the sound of the take which means I need to listen on my monitors so I can get a more accurate frequency response.  In this pass I am listening for tonal consistency. When the singer goes up an octave and starts using their head voice does the tone become strident? What about when they get too close to the mic and sing an octave lower? Does it become too muddy? Does the verse sound closed in and the chorus sound open? Are there ad lib words? Once I note these (often using markers in my DAW) I will split the take onto multiple tracks for separate EQ treatment (bussed to a single AUX track in the mixer). Again, I am going for tonal consistency. The end result is to have a clean vocal take with a consistent underlying tone throughout the song.

Once you have a clean, articulate, and tonally consistent track bussed to an aux channel, you can then begin the mix process which will include some additional EQing to sit the track into the mix, level, pan, and send automation, reverb and delay treatments, and compression. I’ll cover those in a future post.

Recording

I have bands contact me all the time to record their CDs. Many of them realize that they only have a budget for a few songs, verses a full 11 to 13 song album. But often I find myself in the role of accountant with many bands helping them understand the economics of recording a sellable production.

For most bands that are just starting out, the reality of the amount of time needed and cost involved to actually record, edit and mix a full band is totally unrealistic.

Prolific producer and recording engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies) sums this attitude up best:

“Recording a band might seem like a straightforward task to the layman – just plonk a microphone in front of each instrument and off you go to the mixing desk.”

However, the it’s not quite that simple. There are many pieces that have to come together to get a great sounding recording. The room, the mic, its position, the instruments used. The performance and how it will be mixed with all the other elements. Each one of these pieces takes time to get right and as we all know – time is money!

If a band wants to release a full album of songs to sell and possibly get some radio play, it will take time to do it right. A typical cost to an indie band to record, edit and mix a 24 track song could be around $560 per song on the low end. More tracks and creative editing will drive the cost up. This means a 12 song CD is going to run $6,720.

So the question I ask a band when they are calculating their budget and how many songs they want to record is:

If I were in a band and had a 12 song album and spend $6,720 recording and mixing, and another $2000 mastering it; spent $2 per disc pressing it, and $1,500 on promotion, could I sell over 2,000 copies at $10 a pop to make my investment back?

For most bands the answer is no.

Every so often I am asked which audio editors I use (Soundforge, Pro Tools, Cubendo); when the person asks how much they cost, they usually spit up a little. The next question is always, are they any free editors/DAWs?

Yes.

Here are 3 that I know of and tested:

1 – Wavosaur is a free sound editor, audio editor, wav editor software for editing, processing and recording sounds, wav and mp3 files. Wavosaur has all the features to edit audio (cut, copy, paste, etc.) produce music loops, analyze, record, batch convert.Wavosaur supports VST plugins, ASIO driver, multichannel wav files, real time effect processing.The program has no installer and doesn’t write in the registry. Use it as a free mp3 editor, for mastering, sound design. The Wavosaur freeware audio editor works on Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Wavosaur

2 – Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

Audacity

3 -  Traverso DAW is a GPL licensed, cross platform multitrack audio recording and editing suite.

Traverso

If you know of others, let me know.

Audio Books

Audio books are becoming more and more popular, thanks in large part to society’s fast paced life and instant demand for information. Narrating, recording and editing an audio book can be financially rewarding if its priced correctly.

I have read about many methods to calculate pricing. I’m going to share the formula I use. I would love to hear from other people how they charge.

Tracking and Editing

Most narrators that I have worked with typically read at a speed of 100 seconds per page (1 minute, 40 seconds). So the first thing I do is multiply the number of pages by 100 seconds. For example:

300 pages time 100 seconds = 30,000

I also add a buffer of 20% to the time which gives us 36,000 seconds, or 10 hours.

So now I have the studio time needed to actually record the narrator. Editing is pretty easy to calculate; I just double the tracking time. So the total billable studio time will be 20 hours.

Talent Fee

Talent fee pricing varies depending on who does the reading. Not all voice over talent is the same, and just because someone is great at doing reads for advertisement, does not mean they are a good choice for an audio book.

Some voice talent are members of a union, if so, and you hire them, there are all kinds of rules and price points you have to follow. Most of the talent I use is non-union.

A pretty standard rate will be the hourly talent fee times the final running time of the material.

In our example above the 10 hours of recorded material will be edited down to about 8.5 to 9 hours. My voice talent fee is $65 per hour; in this example the VO fee will be $585

The Total Price

Here’s the breakdown for a project I recently did.

Studio Time:

• 25 hours X $35 = $875

Talent Fee

• 10 hours x $65 = 650

Total = $1,525

There are many other things to consider when pricing out an audio book, sometimes the publisher will want to negotiate a lower price upfront for payment on units sold.

Like anything, everything is negotiable. One thing to keep in mind – NEVER SELL YOURSELF SHORT!!!

Royalty Money

There are many ways to make money with your music. One way that is often overlooked is submitting your music to royalty-free music libraries; often because there is usually no performance royalty being paid on the back end. It’s all upfront money, and on a per sale scale, it is a pretty small amount. But you make up from the lower per sale payments in volume.

I have compiled a Top 10 List of the most useful recommendations for successfully navigating the world of royalty free music.

1. You need at least 30 good, full length tracks to be considered for most RF sites.
2. Do not sell your music exclusively. You want to be able to have your music placed at many RF sites and to be sold and used many times. If someone wants exclusivity make sure you get a lot of money upfront.
3. Never work with RF sites that fingerprint or trace your music.  Sites will use this so that they can make extra royalties from plays on YouTube and other online broadcasts. It will create problems for you. The first question you want to ask a RF company is if they use GoDigital or other fingerprinting services to track music.
4. Quality sells! This goes without saying, if your production, your mix, your samples sound like poo they will sell like poo.
5. Full length songs sell better. That nice 1:00 cue you did may work for the short indie film you worked on but it will not sell. People that buy RF music like longer songs. 3 to 5 minutes are ideal.
6. Positive, uplifting music sells a lot better than mystery, tension, drama themed music. The people buying RF music are more often than not trying to attract customers and want to use optimistic music. So don’t submit music that would scare people away.
7. Use one style of music per track, keep it simple. People buying RF music are typically looking for a specific mood or feeling per track. So don’t jump from happy to sad in the same track. Keep it one mood, one tempo, one key, and one time signature.
8. You don’t need 500 tracks to sell; you need 30-50 good quality tracks that sell. A single track might sell 30 times which might make you $300 plus in one month! Listen to the top selling tracks and make music that sounds similar.
9. RF music is about commercialized music. It is not about expressing you musical abilities. Sell out if you can live with it, you’ll be making money every month. Make the music sounds good and commercially accessible and don’t get emotionally attached to it.   If you get upset that your music might be used in some cheap porn movie or used in some poorly produced home video then don’t bother with RF music.
10. Anything sells. That cheap pan flute you bought on your last vacation to Cabo played over some distorted guitar drones might get bought for something. You never know.
11. Keywords are king. Describe your music with as many as you can. People don’t search for Ode to The Clowns of Paris, they search for circus or clowns. Make sure you have those words in the description. So think about every possible scenario that your music could be used and make sure those keywords are in your description.

Good luck!

TV

Writing songs or underscore for TV shows can be a lucrative way to make money from your studio. I have musicians ask me all the time “how do you make money with TV placements?” It can get confusing. Hopefully this helps clear some things up…

There are basically three ways to make money from TV placements:

1. Upfront money paid from a music library or a publisher
2. License fees paid when your song is placed in a production
3. Performance royalties paid when your music airs on TV

Upfront Money

The upfront money paid by a publisher or music library typically ranges from nothing to $1,000 per song. The average I experience is between $350-$500 per song; I personally don’t know of anyone that has seen more than $500 per song. If you are paid upfront money expect the publisher to own the song which means you will not get paid any licensing fees – you will still be entitled to your performance royalties. Sometimes the upfront money is treated like an advance and is recouped from any license fees – much like a record label recoups advances from record sales.

License Fees

In order to use a song in a TV show, the production company must have license from whoever owns the song – you, or the publisher/music library. There are actually two licenses needed: 1) a Sync License and a Master License. These two licenses are usually lumped together.

License fees are all over the place ranging, again from nothing, to $5,000. I have been paid license fees ranging from $300 to $1500. Keep in mind this license fee is divided among publishers and writers, according to their agreements. If you are both (as I often am sometimes) you keep it all.

Performance Royalties

This is where it gets really complex.

If your Song airs on a Major Broadcast Network during Primetime for at least 45 seconds the writer’s share of your PRO will be over $1,000. If you are the publisher you get twice that. Notice I said Song, Major, Primetime and 45 seconds. These are variables. An instrumental pays out about one-eighth that amount ($125). If the song airs outside of prime time the payout is a little less. If it is on a smaller network is will be about half as much as a major network. If the music is played less than 45 seconds your pay goes down as well.

Here’s the kick in the pants; if it airs on a cable channel it pays FAR less! The exact same use as a network broadcast may pay around $30 on a cable channel. The main reason is because the cable channel’s transmission is one broadcast nationwide, whereas in a network broadcast each affiliate station counts as a separate transmission.

The good news is that you get paid a performance royalty each time the production airs. If a show goes into syndication it may generate royalties for years.

So keep pluging your songs. Build up a solid library of music and you might just make a living!

Film

One of the most frustrating things about preparing a good dialogue track is conveying to the producers how much time is going to be needed to do a proper job. Addressing the challenges outlined in my last post is not as simple as running the dialogue through a noise reduction filter and automating the volume and EQ – although the time and money available for post production sometimes dictate that you do little more than this and hope for the best.

Editing a reel of film (approximately 18-20 minutes of video) requires a lot of separation of scenes and shots within scenes. Within a scene there might be a wide shot with all of the actors conversing, a close up of each actor, and sometimes an angle shot or the “art” shot. Each of these shots will most likely have different sonic characteristics that require blending and smoothing. When you think about how many different scenes are in a 90 minute film you can begin to see how much work has to be done in order to do a proper job and end up with a crisp clean dialogue track.

As written in my previous post a layered approach seems to work best when editing dialogue and may require several layers of work to get a great dialogue track; again time and money will dictate the level of cleanup and editing you can realistically perform.

After taking the time to split scenes and shots to different tracks, my first pass is all about making the transitions from the different shots within a scene sound smooth and believable. Smoothing scenes is a constant trade-off between noise and evenness; this is where room tone becomes invaluable. In an ideal world each scene will have 30 seconds of clean room tone; in most cases you have to carve room tone from the scene itself trying not to get any production FX (clothe rustle, prop sounds, etc) mixed into the room tone you are trying to piece together. A tip I learned was to take small snips of room tone from the shot, reverse it and cross-fade it with itself to create a longer piece of room tone – this works for small transitions – longer transitions might sound like a loop and distract listeners. It cannot be said enough: Room tone is the single most important tool of dialogue editing! Without it you cannot create a convincing and smooth dialogue track. It is used in every stage of editing to transition between shots, to remove noise from clicks, pops and other unwanted human related sounds, and to “place” ADR into the shot. It amazes me at how “clean” a track will start to sound once you have smoothed the transitions between shots.

During this pass I make note of trouble spots that need particular attention – such as poor signal to noise ratio and hunt through alternate takes (if there are any) for replacement and then discuss with the producers about replacing the dialogue with ADR (if the ADR is not already available to drop in). If that is not possible you really have to work hard at creating convincing transitions between room tones and use multi-band expansion along with noise reduction to bring the voices up and the noise down.

Once I have worked through all the scenes and smoothed and added room tone the next thing I tackle are noises – the clicks, the clacks, the whispers from crew personnel, the sounds of extra footsteps from camera men, and the sounds of tools or zippers hitting a boom pole or being dropped. This takes a lot of time, listening, stopping and scrubbing. There are really only two ways to deal with these types of unwanted sound – fill with room tone or replacement. I will also reach for the main tools that are used for most cleaning – EQ, Multi-band Compressor/Expander and the Noise Reduction filters.

The EQ is used at this point to notch out noises such as rumble and buzzes and hum. The MB Compressor is used a broadband processor. Set up as an expander you can remove a lot of noises such as wind, rumble and high frequency hiss. The Noise Reduction I use sparingly – the artifacts, if used too aggressively can ruin a scene. The key at this point is to process less. When the dialogue is mixed in with the Foley, FX and music the remaining noises are usually not noticeable and additional light processing can still be used without over-processing the track

Now that the dialogue track is smooth, balanced and free from strange noises the process of bringing life to the track can start – this is where it gets less boring and tedious. This is the pass where you can bring focus to a specific character or to a group and bring perspective to the scene. It is also during this pass that I create telephone or radio type dialogue splits, placing the regions on their own tracks for further cleaning and processing.

At this point the dialogue should sound pretty good and for an average low budget video this is about as far as I can get (before starting the mix). Going back and reading this post – it seems easy, but it never is. The important thing to remember is that you don’t want to produce one scene and have crud in the next scene – keep a level of quality throughout the entire film. Another tip I learned: Don’t start with the first reel. The first and last reels are the most important in the way of sound quality. The audience will judge the film based on the first few scenes and the will remember the last few scenes. Start editing the first and last reels once you have “learned” the sound of the film.

I probably didn’t cover everything that I have learned or do (blending ADR for example), and as I continue to do more dialogue editing I will post more tips.

Again, one of the hardest things to accept is that you’re not going to fix all the things that you think you need to, especially if you’re stuck with less than ideal dialogue. Do the best you can with the limits you face.