Crosstalk, bleed, out of the box!

Today’s lesson was on crosstalk, and how to prevent it. My group has been tracking drums, bass, piano, guitars, and vocals all over again, for the 4th time because we had click track bleed that was recorded onto more than half of the drum tracks. Just for a simple demonstration, we put 1 overhead AKG 414 cardioid over the kit. We set up a headphones monitoring pathway. We set up a click track and recorded a little bit of drums. Listening back, there was no bleed. When monitoring in the control room, the click track should be very low in volume, almost inaudible. My group had apparently been tracking with the click at a volume loud enough that two signals running next to each other had crosstalk.
Today we also learned how to route outboard processors through the board, and record a master mix running the audio through the board. The initial audio from a track or audio file runs out of the computer through its core and excel cards. It then travels into the interface (192’s) with AD/DA conversions happening. The interface is directly routed to the patch bay. Group all the drums together and send them to a stereo aux track labeled drums (input bus 3-4). Send signal out A 1-2 into line inputs 39 and 40. Route 2 more cables from channel insert sends 38-40 to Distressor 1-2, and then route out of the Distressor into the channel insert returns 39 and 40 Route the kick drum from interface’s output (A-1) into line inputs 1 on any channel, in this case, we are using channel 39 and 40. On channel strips 39 and 40 on the board, make sure faders are at unity gain, center pan, and the line 1 and mix bus buttons are pushed in. Create a stereo audio Master track. Input is B 1-2, Output is A 7-8 because A 1-2 is being used to monitor. Adjust the amount of distressor using the aux knobs on the master output and channels 39 and 40, and on the Distressor itself.

The amazing Tom Dowd

In class on wednesday, we watched a documentary "Tom Dowd and the Language of Music". I have not heard of this man before today, but I know of and own many things that he has contributed to or helped create. Tom was growing up and going to school in New York. His mother was a singer, and his father staged big shows and theatres like the Roxy and the Capitol. Among being the member of the school band, he was highly interested in the study of Physics. After high school, Tom was drafted into the military, and he later on began to work for what was known as the Manhattan Project, the driving force behind the A-bomb that was dropped on Japan. In hopes to get his work for the nuclear industry credited towards school, the denied him and he thought about going back to get his degree. The school was going to make him take a bunch on classes based on the principles of 30's physics, but he was well beyond that, contributing to the discovery and development of 1950's physics. He decided not to continue on with school, and got a summer job at a recording studio, were he found his true passion. Shortly after, Tom started to engineer mixes and work with artists like Aretha Franklin, The Drifters, The Allman brothers, just to name a few. Tom was noticing that studios had many limitations of capturing a good recording. Back then, while recording you had to mix on the fly, or while recording was happening. From the lack of equipment, to the unprofessionalism of the musicianship Tom saw many things that needed changing. Later on in the DVD I would find Tom in the studio with an artist, and he could just listen and know what chord the song needed to go to to sound right. Many artists commented on what an amazing ear he had, not to mention his ability to get a great sound. He would walk around in the studio, having people playing, listening, then he walk back into the control room and tweek something he thought needed it. He later began working with Jerry Wexler of Atlantic studios, and convinced Jerry that they should be recording with 8 track! Dowd was one of the first people ever to mix 4 track down to 2 track, and to begin recording with 8 track. Tom was working with Cream for a while, and continued on his musical and production journey with Eric Clapton. Some of the most important things to Tom for making a good record, was great players and a good vibe. Wether in the studio or backstage at a show, Tom was always pumping up artists to play their best, like a sports coach. If you do not have a good vibe, a good performance will not be captured. Tom was pretty much the most significant person in the music production industry as we know it today. With out him many of the options available to us today would be non-existent.

Tracking Vox and Drums

This week in our labs we spend our first chunk of lab re-tracking vocals with a new singer. As noted in earlier blogs, we had screwed up our production schedule by hiring a singer that wasn't fit for the job. We went ahead and tracked with this singer anyways, and of course, the tracks came out unusable. With a new singer ready to record, we set up the vocal booth in room 100. We put sonnex on the top of the booth as a sort of roof, and behind the singer was a thick blanket creating a third wall. Our vocal set up was triangular shaped, and the singer was going to sing directly into one of the corners of it. We decided to use two mics, just so we'd have the option to choose between which mic we liked best. The AKG 414 was our first choice, followed by the Royer 121. We routed the mics into the Neve preamp. Tracking the vocals ended up going really well, with only a few takes needed to capture what we were looking for. After finishing tracking we still had about 30 minutes of lab time, so we tried a few different harmonies over the melody. After bouncing and saving our session, we backed up or files. Some how the harmony tracks got corrupted, but the song was still great with the main melody.
Our second section of lab time was spent tracking drums for our new piano song. Early in the morning, we set up the kit as we normally do in room 100. We put 2 sides of the vocal booth on either side of the kit, and a sound panel behind the kit. The d112 on the kick, the Josephson e22 on the snare (top and bottom), two MD-421's for the toms, and two AKG 414's for the over heads. We also did mid-side miking a few feet away from the kit with the 4050's. 8 recording tracks for a 4 piece kit! After we got all set up and ready to track, we uploaded a scratch piano track that I had programmed at home on Logic and put it on an audio track that was sent to the headphones mix. Everyone was very helpful in the set up and take down of all the mics, mic stands, cables, patch cables, and the whole deal. It took a few times to get the drums down, and in the end the drummer was still stressing about how it could have been tracked better. Although this song is considered completely written, some are still wanting to add parts to the song that just dont seen to fit with the song. We all still need to discuss this and make sure that we are doing what is best for the song. I'm not trying to shit on anyone's ideas here, I encourage them. However if a part doesn't fit the song, it just doesn't fit the song.
This week in class we started going in depth about channel strips and the gadgets on them. The routing buttons at the top allow sends to the group bus. The mic/line inputs are the next thing down on the channel strip. Here, a gain stage at the mic pre happens. THere is a button for phantom power as well. Right below that is a four band EQ with high, high mids, low mids, and lows, and it has a low pass filter button. There are 8 aux sends, 4 mono and 2 stereo and can be switched between pre and post fader. This allows you to send effects through the board, affecting the signal before or after the fader. The mute button on the channel strip mutes the signal, making it inaudible until it would like to be heard again. A signal peak LED indicator shows when a signal is reaching between +10 to +18 dB.

(Audio Terms) test

Sound waves can be simple or complex. (Propagation) is the production or movement of something. Wave propagation is just a complex way of describing how sound waves move in the directions that they do. (Waveform) is a visual realization of sound waves, generally represented by a graph. These waveforms have different shapes and lengths including an s-shaped wave (the sine wave), square waves, triangle waves, sawtooth waves, rectangle waves, and even more complex shapes. When many simple waves create a complex wave, they are called (partials). More in depth, (overtones) are triggered when a fundamental pitch is sounded. (Harmonics) are other tones that occur when a pitch is heard because their frequencies double, and when they are doubled we hear the octave. (Wavelength) is measured in feet. A (sine wave) is a simple sound wave, generating a monotone. Waves travel at a (velocity) of approximately 1,130 ft/sec. (Wavelength = V/f) is the equation for calculating a waves length in feet. (Frequencies), synonymous with pitch, are measured in cycles per second and are represented as (hertz (Hz)). The (fletcher-munson curve) is a graphical representation of how we hear frequencies and how sensitive we as humans are to certain frequencies. Low end frequencies around 60hz are less audible to us than mid range frequencies around 1,000Hz. A (cycle) is one complete revolution of a sound wave from its positive state to its negative state, then back to 0. (Sound pressure waves) are the movement of sound waves through the air. Vibrations in the air are cause a change in air pressure. The sound pressure waves are measured by a microphone in air or a hydrophone in the water. Sound pressure waves are then transduced into electrical waves by the diaphragm of a microphone. (SPL or sound pressure level is a measurement of sound pressure in (decibels (dB)). Decibels are a measurement of the amplitude of frequencies. On the x – y axis, y represents dB, and x represents frequency. Amplitude is a measurement of how loud a frequency is. Frequencies have (harmonic content), which means that they are sonically attracted to one another. The higher the amplitude, the louder the sound is going to be. According to the laws of pressure, when pressure is doubled it will increase by 6dB. As the speed of sound changes, rarefaction occurs. (Compression) is the physical act of sound waves being squeezed into a certain space. Compression of sound increase as sound travels closer to the ear. (Rarefaction) happens when a sound changes environments, and is the actual bending of sound waves. This will change how sound is perceived by the ear. (Phasing) is when sound waves come in contact with one another. When sound waves cross at the same points, they are in (phase). If the signals cross each other at different points on the 0 line, they are considered to be out of phase, also called (phase shifting). When a signal is out of phase it may start sounding thinner and washy. (Acoustics) are the different characteristic qualities of sound in space. Many variables include but aren’t limited to: (reflections) of sound, which are sound waves that have bounced off of surfaces at various angles, known as (angles or incidence/reflection), and when waveforms come in contact with one another, it can create (standing waves) which are measured as a difference in air pressure, not to be confused with phase which occurs before reflections. (Flutter slap echo) is when a sound bounces off of many walls before reaching the transducer. After standing waves comes (room modes) which are disturbances in low end frequencies. Bass traps in the corner can minimize bouncing off of the back wall. (Acoustic isolation) is removing all the acoustics and sound characteristics of a room by insulating with walls of concrete, and layers of professional sound foam, creating a “dead” room sound. (Vocal booths) are a way of acoustically isolating a singer to capture the closest possible sound, and a dry sound as well, with little acoustics. (Reverb), or reverberation, is the tail end of a sound that you hear in the room after its release (explained later). If you yell in a bathroom, after you stop what you are hearing is reverb. If you do the same thing outdoors the woods, chances are you will not hear much of a reverb because the sound did not have surfaces to bounce off of. (Diffraction) of sound waves happens when the wave travels around a corner or down a hall, or through a doorway. (Diffusers) are devices made of wood or Styrofoam that deflect waves in a mathematical process that will keep them in phase and allow their cycles to complete. Every sound wave has an attack, decay, sustain and release creating a sound (envelope). The (attack) is the start of a transient, or sound, until it peaks in amplitude. The (decay) starts when the signal descends from its peak, and settles into the (sustain) portion of the envelope. This is where the sound wave has a smooth, gradual amplitude decrease. The (release) is the point when the signal comes back to 0dB. (Timbre) is the same as the quality of a sound. How a snare drum sounds versus how a bass or piano sounds are differences in timbre. (Beats) are the organization of sound in real time, on a grid in an aurally pleasing rhythmic fashion. (Frequency balance) is the attenuation and amplification in frequencies, also known as equalization. To attenuate a frequency means dip certain frequencies. An example of (direct sound) would be listening to headphones. Sound is only a couple of inches away from the eardrum, and sound is perceived obviously, directly. (Panning) refers to the stereo image, and hearing audio from the right or left perspective. Pan to the right or left to hear the right side of sound picked up by the microphone. (Near field monitors) are speakers that are placed near the producer, and (far field monitors) are placed significantly farther away. This allows the sound to develop more fully because it has more distance to travel to the ears.