Friday, May 20, 2011

The Banana Suit Sound Guy

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My radical idea to become the first truly universally known sound engineer. Call me crazy, but let me propose a scenario. You are at a large-scale outdoor concert with your friends and are excited to see your favorite band. You get to your seats, sit down, and wait for the concert to begin. You occupy the time by texting and talking to your friends. The concert starts, you sit through the whole thing, have a great time, see your favorite musicians live, then leave.

But wait, you missed something. That's me, the sound man. Face it, who ever pays attention to the guy running sound? It is viewed as a menial task and no one really stops to consider how complex the job is to keep every instrument and microphone precisely at the proper volume to ensure a good total mix. The reality is that the job is hard, and sound engineers across the country do not get the recognition they deserve for a job well done. I have run sound at countless concerts, and things do go wrong.

When they go wrong, they tend to go very badly wrong. This results in the entire crowd becoming disgruntled with you, the sound engineer, personally until you fix the problem, and they will probably continue to vent about how the sound was terrible long after the concert. This is unfair to sound engineers because, especially at small benefit concerts and such, sometimes sound systems are pieced together from a lot of various equipment which is not as professional as it should be. Things do overheat/break/cut out/stop working mysteriously and sometimes it is not an easy fix. This is the hardest part about being a sound engineer. Most of the time everything is wrong, but when Murphy's law rears its ugly head, all hell can break loose.

Anyway, back to my scenario. Picture the same concert over again, but what if this time, the sound man is wearing a banana costume? This is an idea I had at some point for a sound engineer to gain recognition. As far as I am aware, most outdoor concerts are relatively informal events and there is no set dress code for the sound engineer. Engineers are chosen based on their job skill, not their appearance (which admittedly at times is rather unkempt). Concerts are supposed to provide a fun atmosphere, and how would a sound man donning a banana costume not add to that? I mean come on, it would be hilarious.

So I would like to hear feedback on this idea. I really do think I could gain universal recognition by going on different tours with the classic banana suit, and I could even switch it up with different fruits and objects if I wanted. I could be the first truly famous sound man and strike it big with major deals all because of a simple cheap banana suit and the comical aspect. So what do you think?

P.S. Please don't steal my idea!

The Recording Studio as a Creative Outlet

I mentioned in my last post that I could never see myself working in a cubicle or traditional office, or even in the three-piece-suit-corporate-business world at all. After all, "park avenue leads to skid row!" in the words of the now infamous 80s band Skid Row. Anyone feeling particularly anarchistic should look up their song "Youth Gone Wild".

Anyway, to get back on topic, I picked the recording industry because I have always been fascinated with complicated technology and the technical aspects of music. To me, a recording studio is more an outlet than a workplace. I find that when it comes to traditional business tasks like reading paperwork and working in a highly structured environment, my mind simply does not want to work. In contrast, I could sit at a recording console literally all night (and have before) without getting bored, as every little thing that happens provides a new and exciting outlook on the project as a whole.

This image is borderline pornography to me. I could only imagine what it would be like to personally own such equipment, and I hope to someday. I have always been told to do what I love for a living, and I truly am pursuing that in a degree in Audio Engineering.

I'm not in it for the money, and definitely not for the fame. Average recording engineers do not make very much money, and face it, who EVER pays attention to the guy doing sound at a concert unless something goes wrong? It is actually this tough aspect of the job that I find pleasure in. A recording studio allows me to convey my emotion in the most powerful way known to man: music.

Even if I am not the musician being recorded or playing live, the simple fact that I have the creative control and artistic license to turn knobs, move faders, and apply sound processing tools, means that I have complete power to alter and mold those sounds however I see fit. Nothing compares to this feeling, and it is why I can't wait to get in the studios at college next fall!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

My Thoughts on the Modern School System

A lot of the people who currently know me or have ever known me personally, at least in a school capacity, would tell you that I am not big on school. As an 18-year-old about to graduate high school and move on, this is pretty much normal. However, even my early teachers would tell you I have never been enthusiastic about school. Perhaps I am different. Perhaps I am one of few very specific individuals who does not find schooling an effective way to learn. But I don't think that's it.

I think something is fundamentally flawed with the way learning is done in our schools, because I don't think there is actually much learning being done. There are select few who embrace the system and make it work to their benefit, but that requires a rare type of student. For the rest of us, we are merely forced to live by it whether it is effective for us or not. I just can't see a model in which one teacher who has merely studied the material, sometimes only a few more years than we have, can be seen as a universal authority with the power to command students on a whim.

The fact that modern Western schooling consists mostly of brute-force memorization also contributes to its lack of effectiveness. Mostly all of my fellow students study material not to learn, but to pass a test on it. While I do not think grades and tests are inherently bad, their overuse and exaggerated importance in our society truly has formed a generation that dislikes learning.

Ask any of my classmates, for example, if they read for leisure. I personally used to read more than most people will in a lifetime in months or even weeks, and that occupied most of my free time. The simple fact that I have been forced to sit in a room and be tested on material by teachers who do not find it interesting has sparked a deep-set dislike for learning and reading to me, which I do not think is right.

I am not entirely sure what system would work better than our current one, as I am more a thinker than a visionary, but the way things are being done right now is not working. I have grown up in private schools all my life, where the importance of learning is stressed over and over by parents and teachers, but it is all to no avail. The students grow tired of having information force-fed down their throats without any justification, and this causes them to simply abandon the pursuit of knowledge.

I find that I am personally interested in a wide variety of subjects, but literally none of them involve classroom learning. Kids need something more fun, more hands-on, and more interesting. After all, that is what they are: kids.

I am pursuing a career as an Audio Engineer because it has several appeals for me. First, I have always been drawn to music as an emotional form of art, and Audio Engineering allows me to create and collaborate to form new songs and even new types of music. Second, I like the idea of this career because it stems away from the traditional business person route taken by most. I could not picture myself sitting in a cubicle all day; that would only be an extension of the boredom and suffering I have found in school. A recording studio presents a fresh atmosphere that I can express myself through.

The only thing modern schools are good at is working to proliferate this endless rat race we run; they train students not to think by having a universal authority (the teacher) teach material and the subservient (students) simply memorize and recite. This creates a system in which someone else is doing the thinking for us. I genuinely believe schools need reform in order to teach man to unleash his full potential and think for himself. I have not bought into the school system in a long time, and this is why.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Vinyl: a dying tradition

What I'm listening to right now: The Clarke/Duke Project original vinyl press.

I am sure all of you are familiar with the age old standard of vinyl records, used originally before the invention of the CD and digital audio files. Early sound engineers needed a medium to release music to consumers on, and vinyl became that medium. It took a while for one size and speed vinyl record to gain universal use, but in 1931, the RCA record company (still one of the top international labels) invented the now-traditional 33 1/3 rpm standard for albums, and the 45rpm standard for singles. The vinyl record revolutionized the way music was made available to consumers and the music industry, and it immediately caught on as virtually the only option for commercial releases.
In 1950, all record companies agreed to use a standard of equalization called the RIAA curve. This essentially means that any acoustic material pressed onto the record would have certain low frequencies  made louder and certain high frequencies made quieter based on a standardized equalization curve. Record players were built based on this curve as well, except they worked in reverse to negate the effects of the curve upon playback. Vinyl as a material has the tendency to produce hissing and clicks on the needle used to play records, and this curve targeted frequencies where the noises were commonly found in order to provide smoother and more acoustically pleasing playback.

Keep in mind that the vinyl record was an offshoot of the gramophone, and thus was around long before the magnetic tape player. This rendered it the only viable option for record companies to release music with, and it remained so until David Bowie's complete discography was first converted to Compact Disc (CD) in 1985. Thus began the age of a new standard, but that is another story for another day.

This huge time gap, though, meant that vinyl was THE only commercially used standard for music releases  for a span of 54 years. Many of our parents and grandparents grew up with vinyl, yet it somehow possesses an air of familiarity even to those born long after the technology became obsolete.

Why bother to keep vinyl around if there is a newer and better standard, you might ask? First off, it has been scientifically proven that vinyl records sound better than digital files or compact disks. Ask any self-professed audiophile which medium has the best sound and you will unequivocally hear "vinyl". This alone is enough evidence to some people that vinyl is superior.


For those who are less convinced, however, I will offer a faith-based argument. The era of vinyl was an era in which the listener was physically connected to the music he or she was listening to, from putting the record on the turntable, to putting the needle down, then flipping the record after that particular side had ended. This is a very distinct experience that the CD and MP3 have never and will never provide. There is a reason top DJ's around the world still use vinyls. There is a reason that even today, with the vinyl record being virtually obsolete, that musical artists who produce silver, gold, and platinum records are presented with vinyl records in the respective colors by their record labels.

So if you have access to a working record player, I urge you to go find a record store that still sells vinyl records. I'm sure you'll find some familiar bands and artists, and it's also a great way to discover new music. Vinyl may be more expensive than digital, but it's oh-so-worth-it.