October 2004
Saturday evening, Oct. 30
Ending yesterday afternoon, the preceding two weeks featured works of unusual interest. A person from Anode called and said that they were organizing a sales meeting/media event for Bridgestone Tire. The presentation would feature live speakers, audio-visuals, and four twenty-four second movies, that would serve as transitions between set rotations. My job was to create a soundscape for each transition movie.
The movies featured simple, sharp graphics that simulated intensely fast motion on a road-like and serpentine black line, along with titles and other graphics swooping in and out. I loaded up sounds from some of the usual sources, and a couple not-so-usual, and spent the afternoon putting something together to determine direction. Very soon after beginning, I thought it would be really good with a drum track. So I found a good, fast, African one in the Killer Tracks library. (Next time, I want to create one myself.) After loading it in, I fashioned an ending to match the picture. Angie (from Anode) came over and listened, said she liked them, and took a Quicktime back with her. Next day, she and Adam, the video artist, came by and listened to some further additions. She then asked me if I could take the individual elements of an existing music track that had been planned but no longer used, and create some degree of musicality for each of the four movies. I said, bring them over and I will take a look.
The elements were simple, yet good and clean. There was an echoey guitar loop, three or four discreet synth sounds, and four pairs of piano notes. The guitar loop's tempo was a lot slower than the persussion track I'd laid in, so I set up a tempo grid and time-compressed the loop to a one-bar increment. I did the same thing with the piano hits.
I made extensive use of some Waves plugins: Enigma, Mondo Mod, Metaflanger, Super Tap delay, and Ultra Pitch. I like the Enigma a lot. I was too busy treating sounds with it to figure out exactly what it does.
At the end of the following Monday, they had four finished pieces they were happy with. Hopefully the pieces will serve their purpose with great elan, or at least prevent people's attention from wandering during a twenty-four second stage rotation. Here's one, and here's another. They're Quicktimes, 213 X 120, around 2.5 megs. The data compression algorithm that was applied for online viewing stripped some detail and fullness from certain sounds. I think it cancelled out a lot of the heavily flanged and phased stuff, with its own special brand of flange-y phasiness.
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This past week, I had three show tapings for XM Radio's "Bill Anderson Visits With the Legends." (No link to the show, but here's a link to Whisperin' Bill.) The shows' featured quests were Riders In The Sky, Earl Scrugggs, and George Jones. The Riders show was taped in a lovely small theatre in the Country Music Hall of Fame, in front of some hundred and fifty elderly tourists. For Earl and George, we went to their homes. (The Homes Of The Stars, baby.) It's a real eye opener to get a firsthand look at what old-time country music megadollars can buy.
Earl Scruggs is eighty. We set up in their "front room", actually one of two living/entertaining rooms, on big sofas. In a semi-circle were Bill, Earl, son Randy and wife Louise. Earl and Randy picked some and it was great. Their home is lovely, but it felt like all money and no warmth. We're talking two elderly people occupying an enormous, opulent house. I stepped beyond the cavernous foyer into a stone-floored hallway wider than an average bedroom, and wondered if such vast living space could ever be made to feel like a home.
George and wife Nancy's house, outside of Franklin, was a warm and friendly place. Enormous, and fit for a king (or George and Nancy). A huge house perched on a low hillside surrounded by eighty acres, it looked like something from the TV shows "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest." I spent the afternoon at the Jones residence. First we recorded Bill Anderson's show, with George and Nancy, then stopped and ate a tasty lunch they generously provided. There were a few other personally and business related people present, and it was very comfortable. The house is great big, but felt very much like a home, and one could get used to it pretty quick...huge rooms with soaring ceilings, outsized plush furniture and flat-screen TV's. After lunch, I recorded a show segment for a different host, Bill Mack.
Sitting on a plush carpet recording personal interviews between American music royalty...one could do worse.
Tonight, we roll back the clocks by one hour. I am very happy; I need the extra rest. Maybe this debilitating cold will go away now. Throughout the week, I have been compelled to ingest a drugstore concoction of dextromethorphan (for nasal decongestion) and pseudoephedrine (for cough suppression). Actually it's a house-brand version of Vicks DayQuil. Your basic symptom-inhibiting chemical syrup, bright orange in color and a taste like impending death. It was necessary for me to ingest the stuff because of all the live recording, to quell my constant hacking coughs and relentlessly productive sinuses brought forth by this BITCH of a cold. It worked, but as I was merely suppressing the body's healing actions, I could not become well. I think I will feel better by Monday....just in time for Tuesday, November second, two-thousand four....
Saturday, Oct 30
WHO'S COOLER?
...it's cool to be determined and decisive. It's not cool to be muleheaded and never wrong....It's cool to love Jesus. It's not cool to shove religion -- or have your underlings shove religion -- down the throat of a secular nation.
- read the article -
Friday, October 15
The Week in Review...
Sunday:
Mixed two songs for MFG (Muldoon Felton Goold) at the Vortex. Other than a couple of small details that I'll address later, we're happy. I am a proponent of mixing "in the box", meaning applying all effects and signal processing within Pro Tools. I did that this time, although in future mix situations I will use hardware sends/returns to employ the outboard gear there.
Monday through Friday, Media Production World:
From music on Sunday, to commercials for automobiles and sausage on Monday. God, what an exciting life.
On Tuesday, a two hour booking resulted in five and one half hours' work. Why? My client's client had only one year, as in three hundred sixty-five days, to approve and make changes. Nothing was done until the night before, and the scheduled time was largely spent re-writing copy and making new decisions. Bad for them, good for me. Hit 'em where it hurts; bet they're a bit more prepared next time.
Later on (still Tuesday), another client had booked two hours for the following day. Called and wanted additional time, which was only available tonight. Turns out he needed that much time all along, but failed to anticipate correctly, and naturally wanted the finished results the following afternoon. For this adventure, I needed DigiTranslator to convert OMF files. I had to dig out the original Pro Tools disc and drag the files DigiOMM.dll and OMF.dll into the Pro Tools folder, to activate the trial version of DigiTranslator (thanks to DC for getting that from Digi tech support). Except I had to do this in Studio B, because I already expired the one in Studio A. Got it going, converted the OMF files and created my sessions. Then, back to Studio A and restart. It was around eight o'clock before I actually got started on the job. Left for home around ten PM.
Wednesday was equally slammed, but without any untoward circumstances. Ten and twelve hour days suddenly feel like the norm. I did, however, set a time limit so I could get home and watch the third Kerry-Bush debate.
Thursday: arrived at seven-thirty AM. I needed to be ready for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to dial in via ISDN, for a live segment with a Quebec-born artist named Jim Corcoran. All went well.
Later that day, we had a multiple ISDN session: talent one in North Carolina via Telos Zephyr, talent two in Florida via APT, client in Nashville. A pretty simple procedure, actually. Sent each talent a feed to the other via aux sends one and two, then duplicated all Pro Tools tracks for the spot's music and their playback, sending those duplicates from hardware outputs three and four and fed to the aux sends to each talent, which also provided individual level control for their playback tracks. Other than the inherent line delay, all went well.
Later that day, more radio. I had to pick some library music ahead of time, according to client notes sent to me earlier. I have a distant history of difficulty with this client, in trying to find The Perfect Music Track for their spot, with ten more people's presence and opinions than necessary. This time, only two agency people, and they liked the first one I played. Thank god for small favors.
Friday morning began with a session to replace an on-camera guitar and vocal performance. It was originally recorded in an outdoor field somewhere, and there were guitar tuning issues. The performer, Cowboy Dan, nailed a replacement performance in three or four takes, in sync with the Quicktime movie. We EQ'd it some, to match the flavor of the original audio.
Afterward, discovered a left-over mistake on the appointment book, and what it said was booked had already been done. YAY - that meant a nice break for me, to eat, drink coffee, and play on the internet - three of my proficiency highlights.
In a few hours, the work will be done for the week (I think). That's a good thing; I'm fighting off a cold.
Sunday, October 10
"A British friend asked me: Who is your favorite candidate in the US presidential race? For an Arab, both parties are hopelessly Israeli captives. Kerry might be more inclined to seek multilateral if imperfect solutions. On the other hand, he is either too naive or a greater appeaser of Israel at the expense of Americas best interests with Saudi Arabia."
- read the article -
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