future of recording engineer?

[realdynamix]

Originally posted by sosayu2:
...but if you want killer drums, gtr, vocals, piano, hammond etc. this is definately the place to be.

Good point! :D It's is so timley you mentioned all the killer stuff, when he played one particular song, it had a great (fast speed) Hammond & Leslie sample.

I said, "hey!...that Hammond is a nice touch" He said "Hammond?" I said "yea, that sample is a Hammond organ with a Leslie speaker" He said " oh!"...Someone had to do the sample! He thought it was just another effect added to his loops.

So I threw on some cool music with real Hammond happening..hee hee

--Rick

[slicraider]

Audiogaff mentioned

you can always buy some DAW or outboard gear and re-mix it which is easier and cheaper than the tracking/recording part which requires much more skill to do well, more gear and a good room to do it in.

Well having assisted many mixers whose business it was to only mix big label records I must disagree. While the art of the recordist is one that takes time, great gear, and a great room (as well as something good to record) mixing takes years to truly get good at. Why do you think that's all these guys do is mix? Why labels are paying certain mixers over $10,000 a song and delaying projects release to ensure the right guy mixes it. Check out some CDs. See how often a different guy mixed it. And how many times have you heard a different mix for the single which blew away the original mix? I think you give these musicians a misguided view of what is possible.

:p:

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Originally posted by slicraider:
Audiogaff mentioned

you can always buy some DAW or outboard gear and re-mix it which is easier and cheaper than the tracking/recording part which requires much more skill to do well, more gear and a good room to do it in.

Well having assisted many mixers whose business it was to only mix big label records I must disagree. While the art of the recordist is one that takes time, great gear, and a great room (as well as something good to record) mixing takes years to truly get good at. Why do you think that's all these guys do is mix? Why labels are paying certain mixers over $10,000 a song and delaying projects release to ensure the right guy mixes it. Check out some CDs. See how often a different guy mixed it. And how many times have you heard a different mix for the single which blew away the original mix? I think you give these musicians a misguided view of what is possible.

:p:

Lets face it. A quality recording is the sum of all the parts. The project has be done well from the start. The writing and playing have to be good, the recording and tracking have to be good, the mixdown has to be good and the mastering has be good for the CD to sound good. PERIOD. If you fall down in one of these areas the CD is not going to sound as good as it could have.

Too many people start out with the highest intentions then due to a big dose of the "cheaps" decide to either do it themselves or to find someone "cheap" to do the mixing or the recording or the mastering and then they wonder why their album does not have the magic and the sound of a top selling professional album.

In mastering I get a lot of people who want to do the final polishing of the album on the cheap and they say "we are out of money and time so could you master this album in a couple of hours and do the best you can with it" My answer is I will always attempt to do my best but you are asking me to do in 2 hours what normally would take 5 and the end results are not going to be as good.

When I get a project in that was well done from the beginning it is very easy to master. A tweak here and there and some minor eq changes and the album is done. Unfortunately what I get from many people is a project that is not yet ready for prime time but due to circumstance it has to be made ready for replication and I wind up doing a lot of sonic surgery to the project before I can master it. This is what takes the time and this is what people are unwilling to pay for.

I get a lot of people who tell me that the recording engineer "mastered" their album while he was doing the mixdown and now it doesn't sound good and what can I do to "fix it"? When I listen to the material I find that the recording engineer simply ran the whole mix though a Finalizer and squashed the heck out of their mix so their is nothing I can do with it. When I ask the person if they can get an unsquashed version they tell me that the master tapes don't exist anymore since they were using rented ADAT tapes or that the hard drive got erased when the project was over or that there was no automation on the console and the engineer never wrote down any of the setting so there is no easy way to recall the mix.

If you want a professional project do things like the pros do. Have backups of everything you do, make sure everything is documented, don't "rent" tapes and have the mixer do the mixing and don't have him or her try to master the project at the same time. Also learn to play your instrument and don't use Pro Tools to help you play in tune and on the beat. Think the project though from the start and don't start the project until you have the capital needed to do it correctly. (and have about 15% more ready because nothing ever comes in at or below budget) This is what it takes to do a PROFESSIONAL project. This is what it takes to be a professional. If you are doing this recording for a demo then by all means try and do it as inexpensively as you think you can away with and still have it sound good but when it is going to be sold to the masses then do the project correctly from the start. Think quality not quantity. If you can do a good job on six songs then only do six songs don't "pad" the album with 15 additional songs that are not ready for public consumption. Wait until the fist batch is well received, have more material waiting in the wings and do another album with new songs that you are polishing even as the first album is being sold.

Hope this helps


MTCW and FWIW

[henryrobinett]

It's not impossible to track with very good results. When I started out doing it myself, I consulted a lot of my friends who were pros in the audio engineering buisness. I bought 8 channles of Millennia HV-3 and rented and borrowed other pres (GML, Neve, etc), mics, compressors. convertors. This was in 1994. Unfortunately I tracked to black face Adats, but I've heard many pros tell me they've never heard Adats sound like that.

The nay-saying is a little ridiculous I think. It is not impossible. I'm a professional and have been for many, many years. Everyone has to start somewhere.

I agree that each chain is crucial. But where there's a will there's a way. To a young writer/performer there's simply no way to come up with 10k to record essentially a demo. But piece, by piece gear can be aquired and one can learn to engineer. Like it or not this is what is happening. Sure 99% sounds like crap and if they don't know it now (it's amazing how people can't hear how bad their own stuff sounds!) they will soon enough.

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Originally posted by henryrobinett:
It's not impossible to track with very good results. When I started out doing it myself, I consulted a lot of my friends who were pros in the audio engineering business. I bought 8 channels of Millennia HV-3 and rented and borrowed other pres (GML, Neve, etc), mics, compressors. converters. This was in 1994. Unfortunately I tracked to black face Adats, but I've heard many pros tell me they've never heard Adats sound like that.

The nay-saying is a little ridiculous I think. It is not impossible. I'm a professional and have been for many, many years. Everyone has to start somewhere.

I agree that each chain is crucial. But where there's a will there's a way. To a young writer/performer there's simply no way to come up with 10k to record essentially a demo. But piece, by piece gear can be acquired and one can learn to engineer. Like it or not this is what is happening. Sure 99% sounds like crap and if they don't know it now (it's amazing how people can't hear how bad their own stuff sounds!) they will soon enough.

I am talking about the "garage band" that is ready and willing to put up $3,000.00 to have their stuff replicated and 1000 CDs produced. Call it a DEMO or a CD for RELEASE. They have some equipment (maybe a Mackie mixer and a couple of ADATs and a couple of microphones plus some outboard effects that are from Behringer or worse and they have not had a chance to learn to play their instruments let alone use any of the gear.

Yes they will eventually get better and maybe buy some better equipment but they need someone with professional ears and professional skills ( and someone who knows what sounds good and what does not) to show them the ropes and not just go out a purchase more equipment. It is not like learning a computer - you can't just keep pushing buttons on the keyboard until something happens.

If you put a really top flight engineer into a room full of inferior equipment he or she could do more with it than most people can even imagine. If you take a person who knows nothing about recording and give him Neumann microphones, a Neve console and a Studer tape deck feeding into a Pro Tools HD system he or she is NOT going to know what to do with the equipment and from what I have personally witnessed will not take the time to learn how to use it correctly

Although I am a gear head I don't think just owning good gear is the way to go. I have seen too many people with more equipment that they know what to do with turning out lousy songs. As I said in my earlier post turning out a good CD is a process that every step has to be done well in order for the whole album to come out sounding good. That same $3,000.00 could be better spent hiring a pro engineer to do the recording, mixing and mastering (if need be) than by giving it to the replication facility to turn out a pile of plastic that no one cares about or wants to listen to because it is so badly done. You can't get anything for free and the people at GC are the ones that keep telling the musicians the same thing you are saying. By more gear and you will sound better. I am saying that you need to learn the gear and learn to hear what sounds good - just having more gear is not going to get you a thing except a bigger VISA or Master Card balance.

Hope this clarifies my earlier statements....

[AudioGaff]

Originally posted by slicraider:
Audiogaff mentioned

you can always buy some DAW or outboard gear and re-mix it which is easier and cheaper than the tracking/recording part which requires much more skill to do well, more gear and a good room to do it in.

Well having assisted many mixers whose business it was to only mix big label records I must disagree. While the art of the recordist is one that takes time, great gear, and a great room (as well as something good to record) mixing takes years to truly get good at. Why do you think that's all these guys do is mix? Why labels are paying certain mixers over $10,000 a song and delaying projects release to ensure the right guy mixes it. Check out some CDs. See how often a different guy mixed it. And how many times have you heard a different mix for the single which blew away the original mix? I think you give these musicians a misguided view of what is possible.

If you read the original posted question, then you also read that I suggested to do the whole project in a professional studio. The main concern was cost and time. It is far wiser to get your songs and material at least recorded and tracked and then worry about mixing. No doubt there is a high cost to get results from someone with advanced skills in mixing. Until you have the time/money and are willing to commit to achieving that level, there is certainly nothing wrong having the raw tracks to play with, work with, practice on and to learn from as a way to develop your own mixing skills. After all, that is how you learn. As a mixing engineer myself, I can learn from and get a sense of what the client is after or the musical statement they are trying to make by hearing their rough mixes. And just because some expensive mix jockey fiddles with your material that surely doesn't mean that it is destined to be a hit or make any real difference in your final outcome from what you spent. They are just as capable to turn out plenty of turds as well as anybody else. A quick listen to the radio and to many of the top 100 hits easily confirms that.

[Michael Fossenkemper]

Tracking is very important if it's a live band. If it's coming out of a box, then anyone can do it but it takes a real mix engineer to make it into something special. But if it's a live band then tracking is the key and the mix becomes less important. A classic example is I witnessed a mix that Eliot Schiener did on a project he was producing. It took him about 2 hours per song and he only used 2 spx90's. all the rest was a little console eq and bring up the faders. Sounded incredible and I didn't even have time to finish a sandwich. The reason why mix jockey's, i was one, get paid the big bucks to mix is because they are there to save a project. They are hired to take a mediocre project and turn it into something. The project has been taken out of the hands of the producer and artist and handed over to someone more capable to produce something, in most cases not all. If it is tracked well and produced well, then this wouldn't be needed because all you would have to do is bring up the faders and you have a great mix. Safe engineering has been taught and ingrained in most engineers now because they don't have the skills to make the right decisions while they are tracking it. "don't eq and compress and by no means print effects to tape just incase you want to change it later". This is bullshit and a waste of time to a skilled engineer and was not an option to old school engineers. there were no supprises at the mix stage, the song and the mix was done when the tracking was done. The only reason why mix jockey's have a job is because the tracking engineers don't know what they are doing. You cannot improve a great recording. Just like a mastering engineer doesn't and can't do much to a great sounding mix. On budget projects, which are nearly all of them now, the buck gets passed from the tracking engineer to the mix engineer to the mastering engineer.

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Originally posted by Michael Fossenkemper:
Tracking is very important if it's a live band. If it's coming out of a box, then anyone can do it but it takes a real mix engineer to make it into something special. But if it's a live band then tracking is the key and the mix becomes less important. A classic example is I witnessed a mix that Eliot Schiener did on a project he was producing. It took him about 2 hours per song and he only used 2 spx90's. all the rest was a little console eq and bring up the faders. Sounded incredible and I didn't even have time to finish a sandwich. The reason why mix jockey's, I was one, get paid the big bucks to mix is because they are there to save a project. They are hired to take a mediocre project and turn it into something. The project has been taken out of the hands of the producer and artist and handed over to someone more capable to produce something, in most cases not all. If it is tracked well and produced well, then this wouldn't be needed because all you would have to do is bring up the faders and you have a great mix. Safe engineering has been taught and ingrained in most engineers now because they don't have the skills to make the right decisions while they are tracking it. "don't eq and compress and by no means print effects to tape just incase you want to change it later". This is bullshit and a waste of time to a skilled engineer and was not an option to old school engineers. there were no surprises at the mix stage, the song and the mix was done when the tracking was done. The only reason why mix jockey's have a job is because the tracking engineers don't know what they are doing. You cannot improve a great recording. Just like a mastering engineer doesn't and can't do much to a great sounding mix. On budget projects, which are nearly all of them now, the buck gets passed from the tracking engineer to the mix engineer to the mastering engineer.

While I agree with most of your premise that in the old days "the mix was done when the tracking was done" a lot of people in my generation (baby boomer) learned how to record in the days of analog. You had to do things correctly from the start and make many decisions along the way that would guide the final outcome of the mix. This was especially true when you were doing multitrack mixes and bouncing them to two tracks to free up other tracks. This was a BIG STEP and one you could not repeat so you needed to do it correctly the first time though there were no "second takes" You also had to leave head room and at the same time optimize your levels so you did not get a bunch of tape hiss or distortion.

Today a lot of engineers go directly to Pro Tools or Sequoia and to them it must seem archaic the way we use to do things. I don't really want to go back to those days of analog tape for recording and tracking but I do think they taught me an awful lot about the professional art of mixing.

Today too many people don't take time to read the instructions or take time to learn anything. They think that it is like playing a video game and that by scoring points you will get to the next level. Sorry but no points and no next level UNTIL you really learn what you are doing.

Since I am a mastering engineer I get to see the end results of this thinking when they bring their new masterpiece in for mastering and there are nothing but blocks of sound showing up on my DAW after down loading their stuff. When asked why there is no dynamic range and everything is squashed they look blankly at me and say "I thought that this was the correct way to do things by always being at 0 db. Yea but......not everything all the time. Where do they learn about mixing?...not on sites such as this but by asking the salesman at GC or their friends who know just enough to be Dangerous.

There are also a lot of people who take the time and the trouble to learn what they are doing and they are well on the road to becoming professional audio engineers and to them I say "welcome to the club"

My advice is to take the time and learning how to do things BEFORE you do them not learn how to correct those mistakes later. It takes a lot less time and the results will be SOOOOOOOOO much better.

The other way I learned an awfully lot about mixing, and what you were alluding to, was going direct to two track where there were also no second chances and no chance for a retake. There is nothing like going direct to two track to really tell how well you know your stuff. It is scary and at the same time exhilarating to be sitting there committing to tape a nights concert and flying without a parachute.

Hope this helps

[ February 29, 2004, 03:34 PM: Message edited by: Thomas W. Bethel ]

[johnwy]

Originally posted by reddb:
[QBdirection do you feel the recording engineer position is going? What are your own personal experience, or what you have heard. [/QB]

becoming in a word: obsolete

now I know what a radio shack trs-80 feels like!