File Sharing

As this article on Billboard.biz shows, the music file sharing debate still rages on with more and more artists voicing concern. In my view the problem is, at this point, largly out of the music industry's hands. Failure to act promptly 10 years ago on the emerging problem (Napster) has seemingly created an entire generation of music lovers that either don't view file sharing as illegal and stealing, or don't see the point of paying for something they can get for free.

Microsoft failed to see the potential of the internet in the late 90s. By the time it did it was too late and it had to resort to uncompetitive behavior to try and bring back its lead of the market- which it paid dearly for with huge fines and an endless struggle to compete with Google. The music industry also failed to see the potential of the internet and MP3 encoding. And it too paid dearly with huge losses of profits and endless lawsuits against file sharing clients and random users.

It seems that convincing existing illegal downloaders simply not to download music illegally is futile. But rather educating the new generations and developing new technology to make it appealing for music lovers to purchase music online might yield a change in attitude for the long term.

The Apple iTunes Store is one of the few glimmers of hope for the future distribution of recorded music. A user can pay $1.69 to download a track they like and with it they get the cover artwork and credits that appear in iTunes and their iPod. But perhaps more can be done to entice more legal downloads.

A Timeless Record & Technology as an Aesthetic.

Like many people around the world, I've listening to a lot of Michael Jackson's records of late. When thinking about the audio production values of his catalogue one thing comes to mind for me; the timelessness of Thriller (1982). But for an album that was released in the middle of a digital revolution where much of the application of emerging technologies did not stand the test of time, how was this timeless album achieved?

The advent of digital recording and digital effects in the early 1980s created a whole new palette of options for musicians and producers to work with. Particularly with the excessive use of digital effects, this became almost an aesthetic in various popular mainstream styles.

The curiosity with this new technology echos what happened in the 1960s when records were commercially available in stereo. Songs like We Can Work It Out by the Beatles (Produced by George Martin) feature hard left and right panning of instruments (notably the vocals were panned hard right). This concept, with good reason, became extinct in charted records with in a couple of years, but it was an example of when new technology can be used as an aesthetic to radically change a song (in the Beatles case, the stereo image) rather than to subtly correct problems in the recorded media - or so the men in white coats who designed the technology thought! Indeed, the songs of the Beatles were timeless and many of Martin's production techniques were too. The strange panning techniques, though? Not so much... Another example of this was the excessive use of pitch correction on Cher's late 1990s hit Believe.

Michael Jackson and producer Quincy Jones used the new digital recording and effects, but unlike much of the forgotten recordings of the 1980s, the application was not abused nor applied in excess. The result was an album where the instruments aren't drenched in effects, so there was nothing in the production to make it awkwardly stand out once new technology surfaced. When Jackson and Jones used synthetic sounds, they were clearly careful about using good quality sounds. It was the age of General MIDI, but somehow they overcame the challenges of this and its often hideous bank of sounds.

But like the advent of digital recording and stereo, are we using technology as an aesthetic today? To some degree, yes. Now days the dynamic range of audio on CD releases is considerably smaller to what it was 10-20 years ago. Listen to a recording released in the 1980s and one released 2009 and you will notice it is louder. Without getting too deep into how audio compression works, this increase is achieved by reducing the loud parts and increasing the soft parts then increasing the overall output volume. An article What Happened To Dynamic Range? by Mastering Engineer, Bob Speer discusses the lack of dynamic range in modern recordings (read article).

In my opinion, there is no technological reason for these recordings to have to sacrifice dynamic range for loudness. Modern HiFi systems and Mp3 players play uncompressed music at adequate levels, and certainly I have never felt that I was not able to achieve a desirable volume. Artistically, I think this makes the music dull and lifeless, and will in retrospect make a lot of recordings of the past decade sound ridiculous in the next 20 years.

In saying all this, I'm not suggesting muscians and producers should not seek new and innovative uses for emerging technologies, but rather I believe unless a degree of moderation is used recordings will have a out-of-date feeling to it in years to come.

It will be interesting to see where audio technology be in 10 or 20 years. Will audio fidelity continue to advance at the rate it as over the past 20 years? How will today's music be judged?

I look forward to finding out...

New Studio Gear PART 1: Plugins

A couple of months back I felt it was time to get some outboard gear and plugins for my Project Studio. My setup was a one-year-old Mac/Pro Tools/Reason platform with a Digidesign 003. I had enough outputs and inputs on the 003 to set up a few outboard configurations and enough computer grunt to handle high-end plugins. So I thought - why not?

Before I go on, I should mention I'm not a "tech head". I'm a singer/songwriter/producer with a passion for recording songs. I'm not loyal to any brands, so much so I often struggle to remember the model names of my gear, but I'm also very critical of audio gear and demand great results.

Firstly, for Part 1 I'll discuss the plugins.

In the past I had used Waves plugins for various projects and although I was never happy with the complete bundle, the Ultramaximizer limiter can prove to be quite valuable in any studio application - and used by most studios (even if they don't admit it, I'm told!). My main concerns with Waves were the compressors and equalizers. However, I was growing to prefer the sound of tubes, so perhaps I was a little biased.

At Macquarie University (where I'm doing a Master of Recording Arts) I had some experience with UAD DSP plugins. First reactions: The reverb was amazing!! There was so much control with so many parameters within the plugin; superb, accurate sounding reverberation. Bare in mind though, at this point I had been persevering with D-Verb in Pro Tools for about a year, and it was testing my patience well beyond its limits. You might think perhaps some of my reaction to UAD was clouded by the fact I had been working with this poor excuse for reverberation for over a year! Listening to the recording just the other day, I'm still just as impressed by the quality.

The equalizer and compression plugins in UAD were equally as good- although admittedly I didn't have much use for them in the project I was working on (soft acoustic vocal/piano song with a lot of dynamic range, but at the same time a lot of room to work with), so I didn't get a proper chance to try them out. I had them running though for subtle dynamic control and frequency manipulation (the singer I was working with had a lot of presence at 250Hz - something most male vocalists lack!)

At this point I was convinced to get UAD over Waves. This was until I found out the iMac doesn't support DSP plugins. My understanding was the advantage of DSP is it doesn't drain the CPU on the computer, rather has a separate external processor assigned for coping with the quite hungry plugins. One day (in a far away fantasy world) I hope to get a Mac Pro which I can slowly build into a super computer (with DSP), but for now I'm stuck with my iMac - which despite its fault is light years ahead of anything commercial Windows systems have to offer.I did my research and Waves was really the only other option. This would have to be my most reluctant $2000 purchase ever. However, I took the view even if I wasn't happy with the equalizer and compressors in Waves Gold the Ultramaximizer was very useful, and I had also heard the reverbs had improved in the past couple of years - I was never really critical with the reverberation to begin with though.

A couple of months has passed and I couldn't be happier with Waves Gold. The equalizers do the job and the compressors are also more useful than I thought they would be (although I mainly prefer my outboard compressor - which i'll discuss in my next blog). I've found the compressors struggled when pushed hard - i.e. you want a large dynamic range reduced to relatively small one. But maybe that is more of a personal issue than a limitation of the application.If you're not gonna have a recording professionally mastered the Ultramaximizer is a must. It stops the audio from clipping and lets you get the volume up to a sufficient level for hi-fi systems or mp3 players. Which is basically what mastering is!

The new reverbs in Waves Gold are amazing. A lot of reverbs struggle between 15kHz -20kHz, but the reverbation in Waves handles it great....so far.Next blog I'll discuss outboard gear.

Record Companies vs Downloaders.

This is ridiculous: "32-year-old woman to pay $US1.92 million ($A2.4 million) in damages for illegally downloading 24 songs in a high-profile digital piracy case" (see full article at smh.com.au). Put it in perspective: if I went into Sanity and got caught stealing 2 albums what would happen? Not a $2 million fine!

Ridiculous Facebook & MySpace Research

An article on News.com.au refers to research by social analyst Danah Boyd who suggests that social networking site MySpace has become a "ghetto" for "non-white" people after an exodus of white people who embraced Facebook.

I joined MySpace in 2006 by setting up a musician page to promote my music. Then Facebook came along. It had a better interface, was more interactive, provided interesting information on friends right to my home page, and didn't let users play with the HTML which resulted in hideous profiles that are impossible to read.

The features of Facebook appealed to me more than MySpace. The colour of my skin or my class had nothing to do with it. Why on earth someone would be interested in collecting these statistics is beyond me. Does it really matter? Despite the level of truth behind the statistics, research into trends based on the colour of people's skin only creates negative division society.

Tribute to Michael Jackson

There are five musicians that have fundamentally shaped me as a musician. One of them, Michael Jackson, died on Thursday 25 June at age 50. In his passing, he leaves an incredible body of work, a massive musical and cultural influence that will be felt for many years to come.

Firstly with the Jackson 5 and then as a solo artist Michael Jackson became one of the most well known people on the planet. Although his personal life never strayed too far from intense controversy and endless rumours, his music was innovative and trend setting. A brief listen to any of his records, and one can instantly recognise an incredible attention to detail and a polished sound which sets such high standards for all of us who follow in his footsteps to live up to.

Together with producer Quincy Jones, Jackson created some of the finest work in popular music. Albums like Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad are truly classic records, which in my opinion are masterpieces that set a framework for what popular music musicians still follow today. Thriller still remains the most successful album in history at just under 50 million copies sold. An incredible achievement, and one unlikely to be surpassed any time soon.

Hopefully his troubled private life will not overshadow his tremendous talent and unparalleled contribution to popular music in the later part of the 20th century.

Susan Boyle On Britain's Got Talent

I was blown away by Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent (view clip). When she walked out on that stage, she was met by a hostile audience and sarcastic judges that made judgments on her based on her age and the way she looked. She bravely overcame that and gave them a truly amazing performance of 'I Dreamed a Dream' from Les Miserables'. She made fools of them. It's as simple as that.

As a performer, I know there is nothing worse than a hostile crowd that seem to judge you before you begin, but there is nothing better than proving them wrong. Good on her!