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Editor Mark Davie mark@audiotechnology.com.au Publisher Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Editorial Director Christopher Holder chris@audiotechnology.com.au Editorial Assistant Preshan John preshan@alchemedia.com.au Art Director Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au
Regular Contributors Martin Walker Paul Tingen Guy Harrison Greg Walker Greg Simmons Blair Joscelyne Mark Woods Chris Braun Robert Clark Andrew Bencina Brent Heber Anthony Garvin Ewan McDonald
Graphic Designer Daniel Howard daniel@alchemedia.com.au Advertising Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Accounts Jaedd Asthana jaedd@alchemedia.com.au Subscriptions Miriam Mulcahy mim@alchemedia.com.au E: info@alchemedia.com.au
AudioTechnology magazine (ISSN 1440-2432) is published by Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd (ABN 34 074 431 628). Contact (Advertising, Subscriptions) T: +61 2 9986 1188 PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086, Australia. Contact (Editorial) T: +61 3 5331 4949
PO Box 295, Ballarat VIC 3353, Australia.
W: www.audiotechnology.com.au
All material in this magazine is copyright Š 2016 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process with out written permission. The publishers believe all information supplied in this magazine to be correct at the time of publication. They are not in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. After investigation and to the best of our knowledge and belief, prices, addresses and phone numbers were up to date at the time of publication. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements appearing in this publication comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974. The responsibility is on the person, company or advertising agency submitting or directing the advertisement for publication. The publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, although every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy. 07/04/2016.
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COVER STORY
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REGULARS
Ed Space Drugs & Music More Linked Than Ever Column: Mark Davie
Editor Mark Davie mark@audiotechnology.com.au Publisher Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Editorial Director Christopher Holder chris@audiotechnology.com.au Editorial Assistant Preshan John preshan@alchemedia.com.au
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Proofreading Andrew Bencina
With the value of recorded music slipping, who actually gets to decide the worth of music these days? There’s the sliding scale between new release retail price and 2-for-1 discount bins, an RIAA algorithm, and Pharma Bro’s expense account. But does anybody really have control over it anymore? I’ve got a theory that there’s some secret underground moves being made to wrestle control back, and put some real monetary value back into music. Hear me out. Recently, the RIAA, which doles out Gold and Platinum status to American artists, decided to add streams to its count. Its math has slowly been encapsulating digital sales: 10 iTunes downloads equates to one physical album sale, and one million physical sales makes you Platinum. Though because hardly anyone actually buys albums anymore, the RIAA decided to add streaming to its count; it now considers 1500 streams equal in value to a physical copy. It’s a metric Billboard adopted for its chart positions a couple of years ago, but this latest move ratifies it. Some artists and labels are stoked about the move. They’ve instantly been upgraded to Gold or Platinum status and are screaming it to the world from their Twitter accounts. Others aren’t so impressed. For one, the top dawg of Top Dawg Entertainment, Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith, was pissed the RIAA changed its beancounting method. Which is odd, considering his biggest artist, Kendrick Lamar, immediately ‘went Platinum’ with the news. Fundamentally, the RIAA is consolidating the dollar value of its unit count. One physical album might retail for $9.99; an iTunes download should be about 99c for a single, so 10 of those roughly makes an album; and 1500 streams comes out to roughly $10 on Spotify. But this is art! Am I right Top Dawg? We can’t have no AT 8
industry body slap some arbitrary 21st century low dollar value on it, we need to take this into our own hands! Luckily a different game plan has been set in motion. Enter the music industry’s pawn, Martin Shkreli. Step 1 — Pharma Bro sets himself up as the world’s heel by astronomically boosting the price of Daraprim overnight. Dick move, according to everyone including Hillary Clinton. Step 2 — He comes out as the $2m high bidder for WuTang Clan’s one-off album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, and Ghostface Killah calls out the “Michael Jacksonnosed” white boy to give it back to the people. Shkreli tries to escalate the situation with a video of his own. Caressing a glass of rosé while flanked by a trio of masked goons, he demands Ghostface Killah send him a… 500-word written apology. Um, that’s some street-level schooling right there. Fact of the matter, now the world wants to get this album they’ve never heard, or previously cared about, off this villain at any cost. Maybe more than two million? Step 3 — Shkreli fronts a congressional committee to answer the public outrage over Daraprim’s inflation and smugly pleads the Fifth to even the most innocuous lines of questioning. The video-bites further outrage anyone that had started to forget the whole Daraprim thing; heel status well and truly established on the world stage. Step 4 — Pharma Bro tweets Kanye West, offering to buy his new album Life of Pablo for $10m in exchange for exclusivity. Mission accomplished! Now, like an price-inflated drug, the world will pay whatever it takes to keep music out of Pharma Bro’s hands. Including tuning in to a lousy Tidal stream to watch 300 bored models listen to Kanye’s new album in the middle of Madison Square Garden. Good news for studios everywhere!
Regular Contributors Martin Walker Paul Tingen Guy Harrison Greg Walker Greg Simmons Blair Joscelyne Mark Woods Chris Braun Robert Clark Andrew Bencina Brent Heber Anthony Garvin Ewan McDonald Distribution by: Network Distribution Company. AudioTechnology magazine (ISSN 1440-2432) is published by Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd (ABN 34 074 431 628). Contact (Advertising, Subscriptions) T: +61 2 9986 1188 PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086, Australia. Contact (Editorial) T: +61 3 5331 4949 PO Box 295, Ballarat VIC 3353, Australia. E: info@alchemedia.com.au W: www.audiotechnology.com.au All material in this magazine is copyright © 2016 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process with out written permission. The publishers believe all information supplied in this magazine to be correct at the time of publication. They are not in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. After investigation and to the best of our knowledge and belief, prices, addresses and phone numbers were up to date at the time of publication. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements appearing in this publication comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974. The responsibility is on the person, company or advertising agency submitting or directing the advertisement for publication. The publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, although every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy. 18/02/2016.
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GENERAL NEWS
SOUND PRODUCTION 101 COURSE New to the list of audio schools and education courses is 90Degree Studio’s Sound Production 101 course, hosted by music retailer Musos Corner in conjunction with Hunter TAFE. It’s the first ever nationally recognised Skill Set for Recording and Mixing in Australia, apparently providing over $8000 of education and training value for just $399. As you’d hope, the Newcastle-based course puts a lot of emphasis on hands-on experience, and less so on theory and textbooks. It’s great value considering you also get $349 worth of free gear when you enrol, including an interface, microphone,
four hours of studio time, and exclusive discount offers at Musos Corner. The course itself is described as a ‘pathway to the Diploma of Sound Production’, and provides 24 hours of recording training in the 90Degree Studio. Each course is delivered by an experienced producer and teacher and successful completion of the assessments nets you a Certificate of Attainment towards a Diploma of Sound Production. Musos Corner: (02) 4929 2829 or www.musoscorner.com.au
APOGEE RELEASES SECOND ONE Apogee’s latest mini interface is the 24-bit/96k One for Mac. It’s a cheaper version of the One for iPad & Mac — originally released in 2013, and supplanting the original 2009 One — without the iPad connectivity, but with pretty much the same spec list. It’s a 2x2 USB interface in a die cast aluminium body with a built-in omnidirectional condenser. Apogee’s interfaces seamlessly integrate with OS X, and One for Mac is no different. It’s designed to offer low latency and direct monitoring with complete input/output control via Apogee’s Maestro software. You can connect via XLR or 1/4-inch inputs via a breakout cable, with 62dB of gain on the mic preamp. There’s also a 1/8-inch stereo output for headphones or powered speakers. One for Mac will work with all major DAWs. Apogee also includes exclusive offers on Waves plug-ins available upon registration. When you purchase a qualified Apogee interface (One included), you’ll be entitled to 35% off Waves bundles and 25% off individual plug-ins, plus receive a $100 voucher. Sound Distribution www.sounddistribution.com.au AT 12
FOCUSRITE MASH UP Focusrite has announced the Red 4Pre, its flagship 58 in/64 out interface that can be used with both Thunderbolt 2 and Dante network audio connectivity. And, would you believe it, you’ll actually find two Thunderbolt ports on the back! The new Red Evolutions mic pres in the Red 4Pre are designed to deliver clear and honest audio performance The mic pres can be controlled digitally for recall and stereo linking via Focusrite Control. They also come equipped with ‘Air’, first introduced on the Clarett interface range that recreates the sonic signature of the ISA preamps by changing the impedance in the analogue domain. Focusrite also reckons the Red 4Pre has boasts
the brand’s best converter performance yet, with a ‘parallel path summing’ configuration for low noise, as well as lowest round trip latency. Dante connectivity means you can easily expand input count over Ethernet with Dante-enabled hardware. And the Red 4Pre will drop right into a Pro Tools HD system, thanks to its DigiLink connectors. The interface comes bundled with Focusrite Control software and plenty of plug-ins, including Softube’s Time and Tone Bundle, Drawmer S73, TSAR-1R Reverb, Tube Delay and Saturation Knob, and Focusrite’s Red plug-in suite. Electric Factory: (03) 9474 1000 or www.elfa.com.au
JBL’S MONSTER STUDIO SUB JBL’s new 18-inch SUB18 studio subwoofer provides response down to 18Hz with a peak output of 137dB. SUB18 wears the ‘studio’ sub title due to its linear frequency response, making it suitable for mixing and production applications for dance music producers and engineers, not to mention post production for film. The 8000W peak power handling capability meant special technology was required for heat dissipation. The Differential Drive design incorporates two
four-inch voice coils that share the thermal load to reduce power compression and non-linear output. The 2269H transducer is housed in a 24-inch-deep birch plywood enclosure. JBL says the highest possible output and performance are obtained by powering the SUB18 with Crown iTech HD series power amplifiers. Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or www.jands.com.au
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LIVE NEWS
AKG’S C7 CONDENSER HANDLES NOISE AKG new C7 reference vocal condenser microphone is designed for good feedback rejection, minimal handling noise and plosives, and rugged durability. The C7 boasts an all-new supercardioid capsule intended to handle extremely high SPL and provide ‘studio-quality sound on stage.’ AKG has put a new level of effort into tackling handling noise on the C7. The mic features a ‘mechano-pneumatic’ shock absorption system with a rubber layer surrounding the capsule to keep housing vibrations from being
transferred to the capsule. Apparently the company searched high and low for the right rubber to meet the spec, and finally found a patented material with such strong absorptive properties that it lands completely flat when dropped. Pop noises are tamed with the mic’s grill, a foam layer behind it, and a layer of mesh atop the capsule. Hills SVL: (03) 9890 7477 or www.hillssvl.com.au
SOUNDCRAFT Vi2000 WITH SPIDERCORE Soundcraft’s Vi2000 combines the unique Vistonics-based control surface with Soundcraft SpiderCore, an integrated DSP and I/O engine based on Studer technology. SpiderCore is a 40-bit, floating-point DSP engine that mixes FPGA and DSP technology to maximise I/O routing and DSP mixing capability. The Vi2000 is configurable up to 48 mic line inputs and 16 line outputs, using combinations of 16-channel XLR modules in four rear-mounted slots. The total I/O count of AT 14
the console is 246 in and 246 out if you use the expansion slots. Dante integration is taken care of with a built-in 64x64-channel Dante interface. Further audio networking potential is provided by the optical MADI interface. Soundcraft has managed to pack all this into an impressively compact frame-size — only 1.15m wide, with 16 input faders and eight output faders. Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au
SMAART 8 SMARTENS UP LOOK Rational Acoustics’s Smaart v8 update offers better control of the software environment while making the measurement configuration, control, and data handling processes easier. Many regard Smaart as the industry standard for acoustic test and measurement software. Jamie Anderson, Rational Acoustics CEO: “Since the release of Smaart v7 in 2010 we have learned a tremendous amount about what features are important to users in a multi-measurement capable environment, and how they integrate Smaart into the workflow of their daily audio engineering tasks. With
Smaart v8, users will be much better able to adapt and expand Smaart to match their specific applications.” Key new features include a new tabbased interface, multi-window capability, hide/ show interface control bars, broadband metering for all input devices, Smaart-to-Smaart API remote control, improved stability and security, better performance on the latest operating systems, and native support for high-definition displays. Production Audio: (03) 9264 8000 or www.pavt.com.au
ANTELOPE AUDIO CLOCKS UP 3 NEW PRODUCTS Antelope Audio’s new LiveClock is based on the company’s Acoustically Focused Clocking (AFC) technology and designed for live sound applications. The 1U unit supports up to 192k sample rates, distributed via four Word Clock outputs on BNC and two pairs of AES/EBU and S/ PDIF outputs. You can use it to simultaneously clock multiple devices, enabling synchronisation of multiple components. And while Live Clock is tailored for the stage, it’ll work just as well in a studio too. Antelope has made it easy to configure using its touch interface, and all device functions are controllable via a cross-platform software control panel. “Many of our customers in [the live sound] sector have sought a competitively priced, compact product specifically tailored to their use,”
said Marcel James, Antelope Audio Director of U.S. Sales. “LiveClock meets this demand with Antelope Audio’s trademark analogue-like sonic integrity in a pocket-sized, rackmountable package.” On top of LiveClock, Antelope has announced another two new products at MusikMesse. The aptly-named Goliath is a Thunderbolt, USB, and MADI I/O audio interface with 36 analogue ins and 32 analogue outs, including 16 channels of mic pres. Goliath’s two MADI ports allow a total of 128 MADI channels. The interface also features built-in DSP effects. Antelope has also announced a smaller, portable and affordable USB interface. Stay tuned for more details. Audio Chocolate: (03) 9813 5877 or www.audiochocolate.com.au AT 15
SOFTWARE NEWS
NEW TRIO FROM BRAINWORX Audio plug-in developer Brainworx has announced three new plugs at MusikMesse 2016. The first is the Brainworx Panoramic EQ, with three parametric bell-curve filters and all the usual equalisation controls. The twist is its unique ability to boost or cut EQ at discrete pan positions in the stereo field. That means you can select what part of the stereo field you want to affect — allowing for some pretty full-on flexibility in both mixing and mastering applications. The new SPL EQ Ranger Plus differs
from the original EQ Rangers Vol. 1 by having 181 EQ modules with a heap of genre-specific settings by Craig Bauer and Brainworx founder Dirk Ulrich. Third is the new Acme Opticom XLA-3 compressor, designed as a flavourful compressor that imparts a ton of ‘harmonically rich’ vibes onto whatever it processes. Brainworx says the XLA-3 is capable of smooth LA-2A sounds “with the additional benefits of even-harmonic distortion when needed.”
iZOTOPE RELEASES MOBIUS FILTER PLUG-IN iZotope releases another plug-in, this time it’s the Mobius Filter. According to iZotope, it “creates the sensation of infinite movement through the perpetually rising or falling effects that can be easily manipulated with a playful X/Y pad.” Sounds like fun. Similar to the company’s recently released DDLY, Mobius Filter is designed for out-of-theordinary treatment of tracks. The plug-in can act as an alternative to a flanger or phaser to create sonic
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movement or motion. You can even draw your own sweeps with the X/Y pad, making fluid adjustments to both centre frequency and resonance controls. It might be just the thing to add some flair to a track that’s bordering on boring. Mobius Filter is available from the iZotope website for US $49. Electric Factory: (03) 9474 1000 or www.elfa.com.au
EVENTIDE’S BOWIE VERB TRIBUTE Tverb is Eventide’s new plug-in made in collaboration with Tony Visconti to mimic the sound of the title track of David Bowie’s album, <Heroes>. Visconti famously recorded Bowie’s vocals in Berlin’s Meistersaal with three microphones placed varying distances from him, gated to open as he sang louder and louder. Tverb integrates three completely independent reverbs with compression and selectable polar patterns on microphone 1 and adjustable gates on microphones 2 and 3. “I have plug-ins that emulate rooms but this concept, to
have the set-up all on one page, I never thought it was possible” commented Tony Visconti. “The three microphones are correct, the room is correct, and now that it’s in stereo, you’re actually hearing something that I never got around to doing when I was in Berlin. It’s just great.” The plug-in includes presets created by Tony Visconti and other artists. Tverb is available for AU, VST and Protools AAX for Mac and PC at an introductory price of $149 until the end of May.
AMPLITUBE DOES THE MESA BOOGIE IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube MESA/Boogie for iPhone and iPad lets you process your guitar or bass tone with some of Mesa Engineering’s instantly identifiable amps and cabs — the tight crunch of the Dual and Triple Rectifier, the sustain of the Mark III and Mark IV, to the mid-gain tones of the TransAtlantic TA-30. Each model has gotten the tick of approval from the team at Mesa. In addition to the amplifier models, the app also includes six versatile stompboxes for more
tone-shaping flexibility — Noise Filter, Metal Wah, Sustainer, Obsession (delay pedal), Surfer (flanger) and Monster Booster. There’s also a single-track recorder, built-in drummer, an optional four-track looper, tuner, metronome, preset browsing system and more. AmpliTube MESA/Boogie is now available from the App store. Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com
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COLUMN
Tech - No Babble Mastering with a Master Algorithm? Column: Preshan John
Is mastering an art or a science? Bob Katz’s book suggests it’s a balance of the two, and if you’re going to take anyone’s word for it, it should be the man himself. Pro mastering engineers always seem to be one part creator, one part mathematician — with the ability to be artistic and experimental, while judiciously keeping within certain boundaries. To quote Katz, “mastering is the art of compromise.” Computers rock at the scientific, mathematical stuff. They’ll do what you tell them to do; accurately and lightning fast. But software is not creative — it can’t make something out of nothing. It can’t feel emotion or react to it. People are still better at the touchy-feely stuff, which is why great music is made by people. So what’s the deal with ‘algorithmic mastering’? It claims to provide high-quality mastering of your song with nothing more than ‘intelligent’ software. When sites like landr.com materialised, I, along with most of the audio community, wrote them off as bait for passionate, naive music creators eager to produce ‘radio-ready’ tracks without paying the local guy’s rate. We collectively scoffed at the notion that algorithmic mastering could interpret the same musical intent as a professional’s ear. It felt rather troubling to leave a song — a pure expression of human artistry and ability — in the virtual hands of a computer algorithm at the final stage of production. With the level of technology around us today, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume a well-made software algorithm could analyse a music file and successfully alter it according to an experienced (software or mastering) engineer’s predefined parameters. Still it seems near impossible that software could make musically mature decisions in every scenario. Where a mastering engineer might say, ‘yep, it adds a nice tension leaving that violin part soft and stripped back before the big outro’, a mastering algorithm might be programmed with the response, ‘it’s gone really soft here — better turn that part up so it matches the rest of the song.’ While the algorithms may work fine 90% of the time, surely the effect is bound to be detrimental
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for some songs that don’t call for such a calculated approach. Nevertheless, I was still keen to hear one of these algorithms in action. MaximalSound.com is a new website offering instant online mastering services so I figured I may as well put it to the test. Three songs were submitted; one solo acoustic guitar, one acoustic song with percussion and a singer, and one fullband rock song. The mastered files I received back (about four minutes after uploading them) were commendably musical — better than I expected for sure. It was a pleasant surprise hearing a tasteful amount of dynamics in all three tracks. None were slammed to a rectangular waveform. Things got loud at the heat of the rock track, but there was no audible pumping or clipping. In other words, it got some way towards sounding like a decent mastering job. Yet for discerning ears, not close enough. It was apparent that the algorithm treated all three tracks with similar sonic brushstrokes — scoop the mids, turn up the highs, and accentuate the lows. This smiley face curve worked for some tracks, but it made others sound shrill and hollow. Also sudden changes in a song’s dynamics seemed to ‘confuse’ the algorithm, resulting in audible level adjustments that weren’t always musical. There are a couple of things you don’t get with algorithmic mastering. Firstly, there’s no human interaction. Your song is injected into a website, processed, and discharged in a few minutes. The process is 100% impersonal. You also don’t get to ask for changes. Mastering engineers I’ve worked with in the past have all been super accommodating when I request little tweaks. That doesn’t happen with algorithmic mastering; though maybe in future they’ll add a chat bot that will cop some constructive criticism. So why would you choose to master your song with a cloud-based algorithm? Convenience is the selling point for me. If you’re just keen to share your track with the world as quickly as you can, attaining a decent master in a matter of minutes is probably worth the sub-$30 price. Or maybe you
feel like a track you made — a musical sketch, or a demo with the band — doesn’t warrant a $150/ song mastering job, but you still want a finishing touch before loading it into your iTunes playlist. Algorithmic mastering fits the bill. Speaking from the other end of my first experience with algorithmic mastering, I’m optimistic. It’s inevitable that, as technology progresses, so will the success rate of ‘virtual mastering engineer’ software. It’s unlikely I’ll submit my final mixes to a mastering algorithm anytime soon, but that’s because I feel like I have enough of a handle on bus EQ and limiting to get me by for any non-critical ‘mastering’ requirements. If you feel like you don’t have the chops, getting a computer to have a second listen might still be better than none. Ever made a mastering date with an algorithm? Hate the idea? Send your human responses via computer to preshan@audiotechnology.com.au.
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REVIEW
UAD AKG BX 20
$199 | www.uadio.com
Spring Reverb Plug-in Review: Greg Walker
The AKG BX 20 spring reverb made its first appearance in the late 1960s and quickly became a favourite among studios worldwide. The lush sound of this complicated German combination of mechanical and electronic technologies all housed in a unique wooden box has graced countless tracks since, and has now been digitally emulated for UAD Powered plug-in users. The original BX 20 was a dual mono device but the UAD BX 20 plug-in has expanded its options with a slightly unusual mono/stereo matrix that can either run with the original Tank A and B topology, an A+B setting that cascades the two channels together, or in new ‘stereoised’ modes for tank A and B as well as linking the two channels’ controls for more balanced A+B stereo use. There are a simple range of controls on both channels including treble and bass EQ (borrowed from the earlier BX 10 model), continuously variable pre-delay and wet/dry as well as buttons for direct mute, wet solo and low frequency roll-off. After much searching for the perfect specimen, UA chose producer Jon Brion’s original AKG unit to emulate. The sound of the BX 20 plug-in can best be described as lush, dark but detailed with a retro character to it. It has none of the ‘ping’ and boxiness that you may associate with the sound EMA_AT111_[Print].pdf
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of some other spring reverbs. There’s a quality to the BX 20 that really draws you in, and I noticed that unlike some other reverbs where you hit a definite ‘that’s too much’ threshold, this one offers valid effects at quite an extended range from subtle to extreme. There’s some beautiful evolving detail in the tails on sparser material and, despite the limited set of modifiers, it offers quite a lot of control over how the sound responds to musical instruments in different contexts. The BX 20 has a strong ‘voice’ in more spacious arrangements and adds nice low mid timbre to vocals and other instruments where it can act as an extension to the body of the sound. It works beautifully on guitars and percussive instruments and I was able to totally transform a fairly dry existing mix into a 100% valid new ‘wet’ version with tons of BX 20 on just about everything; it’s great on kick and snare, bass and electrics. With a maximum time factor of 4.5s and a minimum of 2s, the BX 20 is far from being the most flexible reverb around. Two seconds is, sadly, a fair bit too long for more subtle ‘body building’ short reverb techniques that can add invisible weight to vocals and guitars, although a touch of the BX 20 can work on drums in this manner. As a final experiment I tried inserting it across a whole mix on a faster rock track by Melbourne band Canary. With the pre delay set
to zero, minimum bass and maximum treble EQ, the low cut engaged and the dry/wet balance set to about 30% (it’s a bit hard to tell with the sparse legending) the track took on an expansive, sparkling texture without sounding too hollow or wet. Again this was a surprisingly useable sound and another sign of a quality reverb. Up against my previous favourite UAD reverbs, the EMT 140 and the Lexicon 224, the BX 20 holds its own and will be first choice in some contexts from now on. It’s a positive point that it doesn’t really sound like the others and does its own ‘thing’, meaning those who buy this plug-in will find new creative options waiting for them. Of course, you can use the 14-day plug-in trial period to really suss out whether it floats your reverb boat.
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FEATURE
From his first engineering credit on INXS’ Shabooh Shoobah to commissioning the first SSL knob that ‘goes to 11’, and co-producing Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting all at the same time, David Nicholas has been on one hell of a ride. To celebrate 2015 ARIA week, AudioTechnology and Studios 301 gave him the inaugural Producer’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Story: Mark Davie Photos: Wendy McDougall
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Overnight, David Nicholas went from being a musician on the dole to owing a quarter of a million dollars. It was the ’80s, the only time in musical history when even a broke guitarist from Surry Hills with a bad case of GAS* could convince someone that investing in a studio was a good idea. “There was a lot of venture capital going around in the early ’80s,” remembered David. “I learnt that getting $250,000 from somebody was no different from getting $2000, you’ve just gotta be talking to the right guy.” Luckily Andrew Scott, David’s business partner, had a father who was the financial controller for Yates Seeds. He guaranteed the loan that, at the time, was enough money to pick up a handful of Sydney properties. With it, David and Andrew bought the first SSL console shipped to Australia — an SSL 4000 series — and set it up at their newly minted Rhinoceros studio in Sydney. Neither of them had any idea it was the start of something big in Aussie music. RHINOCEROS REBUILT
Up to that point David, like most sound engineers, had been a reasonably successful musician. He’d been touring the support circuit with his band, Limousine. They’d drive the M1 down the coast from Queensland to Port Pirie, occasionally stop to unload the truck, set up the PA, make some mischief and leave before anybody noticed. On the way home, they’d head back inland to places like Albury, Dubbo and Orange. Some of David’s more memorable moments included kicking off shows for Cold Chisel on their Set Fire to the Town tour and supporting Midnight Oil at the Royal Antler. Back in Surry Hills, Limousine’s lighting guy owned a rehearsal studio called Rhinoceros that doubled as their home base and demo studio. But changes to Ordinance 70 meant all those tinderlined wooden buildings had to get up to code by installing fire extinguishers and sprinklers. One day a contractor walked in and drilled two-inch holes through all the walls. It was a total disaster for acoustic isolation; he may as well have gutted the place. Which, the more they thought about it, sounded like a great idea! Shortly after, they invited all their mates to a ‘trash the studio’ party, turned the whole thing into matchwood and left. With no place to go, a group of them decided to build another studio called Rhinoceros in a building on the corner of Goulburn and Riley Street, directly across from the looming Surry Hills Police Station. “Once, when we were doing INXS’ X album, there was a knock on the door at two in the morning,” remembered David. “I went downstairs to open the door and there was a guy dressed in full SWAT gear with a gun, balaclava, the whole lot. I just shut the door and ran upstairs. It turned out to be Mark Pope’s brother. He was a tactical response policeman and was coming for an interview with Hutch about doing security for their next tour! They thought it would be a really funny joke.” With barely a pamphlet’s worth of knowledge about studio design between them, the rag tag collective lucked out when acoustician Richard Priddle agreed to help point them in the right
direction. His lasting contribution was to instil in them the notion that good design is more important than exotic materials. They read magazines about studio design, aped the live room from The Town House studio in London and, having never got along with claustrophobic Westlake designs, decided to build the first Live End/Dead End control room in the country. “We were reading an article about the Tubular Bells guy who’d built the first Live End/Dead End room in England,” said David. “It made perfect sense to us because the only other studio I’d been into was Paradise, which had the Westlake design. That tiny, cramped space with rocks everywhere just didn’t sit well with me at all.” For a year, the group of musicians lived onsite, slowly massaging the building into a studio. David even put his electrician’s apprenticeship to work wiring the whole place up: “The only things we didn’t do were lay the carpet and put the glass in.” Because they were living in the studio while working on it, any jutting out corners were sawn off, and any niggly areas re-flowed. The end result was a studio built for musicians that had a control room big enough to fit 50 A&R guys, big windows, and the ergonomics of a Herman Miller chair. It also had a live room that had a knack for delivering incredible drum sounds, just listen to the deep rumbling punch of the kit on INXS’ Never Tear Us Apart. In the early days SSL designer and tech at the Townhouse, Chris Jenkins, let them in on why his studio sounded like it did. “It used to be a stage where they shot those films with all the girls diving into a swimming pool, so it was built on top of an enormous concrete box,” recalled David. “People always think live rooms should be bright, but it’s the depth that gives them the sound. We spent a lot of time making sure our room had that bottom end. It was all wood and we had big resonators that reinforced the low end.” The other two elements that gave that big ’80s sound were ambient miking and digital reverbs. David: “Before that it was all that close-miked, Fleetwood Mac, West Coast sound. Ambient mics weren’t a thing, apart from Led Zeppelin who were really the instigators. It was also when digital reverbs first came out. We had the first Lexicon 224, and it just had that sound.” SSL TOUCH DOWN
Now, of course, in those days you needed a console. They picked the SSL because they knew Jenkins, and felt more in tune with how UK studios, like the Townhouse and Olympic, were working at the time. At a quarter of a mil, it was a big risk, but you only take those sorts of risks if there’s a proportional upside. Even with such a big outlay, that upside was wilder than they could imagine. For the next decade, Rhinoceros was booked six months in advance — seven days a week, 365 days a year. There was a career upside too. Because they were the only in-house engineers in Australia with an SSL to play with, they were also the only ones who knew how to operate it. David had previously only engineered demos on his friends Tascam Portastudio, and now he was in charge of one of
the country’s biggest studios. It was a big leap, but David said engineering came quite naturally to him: “It always seemed quite logical. If you know what your endgame is, technology is just a tool. The end goal is to capture a performance as well as you possibly can, and usually, as clean as you possibly can. I always try and generate the sound at the source because performers react to what they’re hearing. We had really great producers come from overseas, so we watched and absorbed how they did it, and they all did it the way I imagined you would.” Rhinoceros’ rooms and the SSL console
As far as I’m aware, it was the first totally tapeless album ever released by a major label, and it was a nightmare
attracted a high level of clientele, which benefitted two young Rhinoceros members in particular, David and Al Wright. For the next decade they tag teamed on Rhinoceros sessions, resulting in a collective discography that almost covers the history of the decade in Australian rock ’n’ roll: INXS, Noiseworks, Hoodoo Gurus, Australian Crawl, Models, Midnight Oil, Jimmy Barnes, GANGgajang, Mental As Anything — the list goes on. The first record Nicholas ever got an engineering credit on was INXS’ third album, Shabooh Shoobah, which ain’t a bad first job. Nicholas went on to engineer most of INXS’ catalogue, including the Chris Thomas-produced, Bob Clearmountain-mixed Kick. David was nominated for ARIA Engineer of the Year every year from 1987 to 1991, winning it twice in 1987 and 1990. “I think I got on with a lot of those people, and ended up working on all of [producer] Chris Thomas’ records for eight years; because we had the same mindset on how records should be made,” he said. “It was also the commitment I learnt, that there should never be a technical excuse to have to do something again. People devalue performance now by being able to hit Apple+Z and do it 60 times. We were working with people that expected to only do it once or twice. There’s that story of Aretha Franklin coming in the studio and singing through the song, then the engineer says, ‘Okay we’re ready now.’ She replies, ‘I only ever sing it once,’ and walks out. “Over 40 years, I’ve been an hour early for each session, ready and prepared. I always try to make the process as invisible as possible so all you’re thinking about is the music.” *Gear Acquisition Syndrome AT 23
David Nicholas: "It's in… the whole Rhino crew admiring our new baby."
David Nicholas: "I'm sure the oil goes in here."
GOOD OL’ DAYS END
With the studio pumping along, over the next 10 years David and Andrew filled the racks, bought pairs of every Neumann, two $80,000 Studer tape machines, and another SSL, this time costing $750,000. “It was a 5.5m-long E, the last of that series they made because they discovered the buses weren’t balanced,” said David. “You had to un-bus a whole lot of channels you weren’t using otherwise it got spongy. After that, they brought out the G. “The console cost around $600,000 when we ordered it, but we had to pay for it when it landed. Andy and I were watching the television one night, when the Australian dollar crashed. We sat there with a calculator, and overnight our console went up almost $200,000 — so did our Mitsubishi tape machines. We ended up going half a million dollars over budget on the second studio.” Rhinoceros blossomed because of the unequivocal local support for Australian music that spurred the industry on. “It was a really magic time for radio support,” said David. “We would mix a song and go up to Paul Homes at Triple M in the middle of the night and he’d play it on the radio. It didn’t have to be researched. If DJs liked it, they could play it. There was so much Australian music on the radio. Triple M was the catalyst for why the industry was so healthy in those days. David said there was plenty of stereotypical ’80s excess too, it just happened after the day in the studio was done: “The culture was that everybody worked really hard — start at 10 o’clock in the morning and go until we’d reached our used-by date — then go out to our own bar in The Cross, let our hair down and get absolutely trashed. We were young, and didn’t need much sleep, so it would all start again on time the next day. “There wasn’t a lot of excess in the actual studio until the very end of the ’80s, when it really got stupid. A lot of times the label A&R guys were the instigators; they would just use the studio to have a party.” It was around that time that Rhinoceros’ dream run flamed out. The pair had sold off parts of AT 24
the business over the years to finance the second studio. Being relatively naive musicians in a time when Wall Street corporate raiding was a buzz phrase, they never realised those previously minority shareholders could amalgamate their holdings into a controlling interest. It was right at the end of the ’80s, midway through the making of INXS’ X, when David and Andrew walked into Rhinoceros only to be told they no longer owned the business. “I never really understood it because they didn’t know how to run a studio,” said David. “It was also bad timing because that’s when the music business turned down really sharply. In a year, Rhinoceros went from having both studios booked three months in advance to being empty, and we’d never been empty. I had to be restrained several times from burning the building down. We built it with our bare hands and it was our whole life. I was very bitter for a long time.” The memories of Rhinoceros were too strong to handle. It wasn’t just the records. Inside that building sat the second SSL console they purchased; the one David commissioned with a monitor pot that ‘went to 11’. He paid a premium for it, and it was the first of its kind but would feature on every SSL thereafter. There was also the memory of first ever setting eyes on a strobe guitar tuner when Joe Walsh and Waddy Wachtel brought in a mystery box with spinning wheels. Literally unable to be in the same country as the dead shell of his life’s work, Nicholas packed up his bags and took Chris Thomas up on his offer to follow him back to the UK. LONDON CALLING
On the way to London, David stopped over at Puk Studio in Denmark to engineer Elton John’s Sleeping with the Past for Thomas, the perfect tonic for such a bitter pill. Sitting on the plane, David kept mulling over the surreal turn in events and one question kept popping into his mind, “Am I good enough for this?” Slowly he turned the question over, until he remembered how it had never mattered before. Everyone
questioned them about building Rhinoceros, and it was booked out for a decade. By avoiding the question, ‘What have you worked on before?’ the first record he ever engineered was a major one. He knew he had the ability, it just always came down to other people’s perception of him. After losing Rhinoceros that invincibility had taken a hit. “It was pretty scary, but I’ve always liked a challenge,” David reminded himself. In the end, he was more prepared than he knew. All those years of dealing with one-take wonder singers like Michael Hutchence, had readied him for Elton. “Michael was more a performance kind of guy,” said David. “With Mediate, he walked in with a piece of paper and sang that whole vocal (which is a million words) in one take and went, ‘Thanks very much,’ then walked out. “Elton was the same. He would write the song in the studio sitting at the piano with a bunch of drum beats and editing Bernie’s lyrics as he went. Then he would say, ‘Okay, I’m ready!’ and play it. After that, he would sing it three times as if he’d sung it his whole life and it would be perfect. Then he’d lie on the back couch and we’d spend the rest of the day making the song.” It wasn’t to say the experience was entirely familiar, it was still eye-opening for a Surry Hills boy to be working with international musicians of that calibre in a field in the middle of Denmark. “The drummer, Jonathan ‘Sugarfoot’ Moffett — who used to drum for the Jackson Family, Michael Jackson and early Madonna — would come in from the field in his jodhpurs, listen to the song and play one take. It was bizarre.” From there, David continued on to the UK, and one of the many records he engineered was Pulp’s Different Class. “The very first song we did was Common People, and it was a magic moment for them,” recalled David. “They used to be a folk band, but then they got a new bass player who had the same sort of intellect as Jarvis, and the lead guitarist who started the record ended up getting kicked out for the guitar tech who’d been replacing all his tracks at night time. “Common People starts at 80bpm and ends up
David Nicholas: "That's Andrew Scott in the white T-shirt with the glasses on."
I had to be restrained several times from burning the building down. We built it with our bare hands and it was our whole life
David Nicholas: "Bloody hell… $750k sure weighs a lot!"
at 160, but none of it was done to a click. We had a magic end and magic front, but we were up till five trying to edit together the middle takes to get between the two. Then Jarvis put one acoustic guitar take over it and it glued it together. “Jarvis reminded me a lot of Hutch, he was very connected to pop culture at the time and just new what was cool. Common People was a big hit, and that’s when Jarvis got up onstage at the Brit awards and disrupted the Michael Jackson concert. It was a British show and Michael got three quarters of the production budget; Oasis, Blur and Pulp got nothing. He ran onstage, pulled a bit of a brown eye, and the security were chasing him. It was like the keystone cops, guys are running after him and they’re silhouetted against the backdrop. Jarvis got arrested — he bumped into one of the kids in the choir, and they tried to get him for assault but eventually let it go.” Throughout the ’90s, David was based in London, but worked throughout Europe and the US with artists as diverse as Ash, Soul Asylum, Marcella Detroit, Heroes Del Silencio and Johnny and David Hallyday. He achieved numerous No. 1’s as a mix engineer for UK producers Chris Thomas, Chris Kimsey and Phil Manzenera, and French producer Pierre Jaconelli.
David Nicholas: "Phil Manzenera and I at his Gallery Studio in London with Spanish Artist Heros."
David Nicholas: "How the f**k are we going to get that in there?"
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
David’s ‘craziest session ever’ has to be the time he played D’Artagnon to Rod Stewart, Sting and Bryan Adams. Trying to assemble the three musketeers to track All for Love was almost impossible. Bryan Adams was the linchpin of the deal, having written the song, and he was adamant about singing in the same room as the other vocalists. Unfortunately, Rod Stewart couldn’t make it back to the UK. So after recording Sting and Bryan and the drums at Air Studios, they got on a plane to record Stewart and landed in LA the same day they’d left, then finished the session and flew straight on to Adams’ studio in Vancouver. “It was all over the space of 10 days,” said David. “We didn’t sleep for the first three days, we just went from one session to another. “Because Bryan insisted on singing with the other
David Nicholas: "Peter Murphy (chief wire for Rhino) watching Mick prize open the SSL box. Niven Garlen (in the background) went on to have a stellar mixing career in London, leaving Rhino about the time I did."
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artists, we had two tracks of every take. We spent a week up at Bryan’s place in Vancouver comp’ing hundreds of vocal takes, because everything was pairs. We had two 48-track Sony DASH machines full of vocals and a mix of the track. We had two of everybody singing the whole song multiple times so it was just the most incredible headf**k.” David’s not a huge Bryan Adams fan, he was in it more for Sting and Stewart, but he didn’t talk much to either — Stewart never even made it into the control room. He did get to have one star struck moment though: “One of the bands that really had a huge influence on my life was Little Feat, and Bill Payne was playing piano on the record. When I was 16 or 17, I remember listening to Feats Don’t Fail Me Now driving down the coast to go surfing. It was a pivotal moment in my upbringing. I got really pissed with him in his hotel room. It was one of those few times I’ve been a total groupie. “It was my first U.S. No. 1 as a producer, and an absolutely mad 10 days.” DATES WITH EARLY DIGITAL
Another strange session, this time of a self-inflicted nature, was the occasion he and Matt Vaughan co-produced Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s Universal, and thought it would be interesting to make a tapeless album. One of, if not, the first. Not the first digital album, mind you, but completely tapeless. Rhinoceros had already taken the plunge with digital in the ’80s, bringing in an Otari 32-track digital tape machine to record Kick. “With analogue tape you had crosstalk, you had to be really careful about what you recorded on adjacent tracks, and every time you bounced you’d have regeneration loss,” said David. “Over the course of a record, the drums never sounded as good as the first week or so. As an engineer, a digital machine was this magic box. I could bounce things AT 26
endlessly, put the vocal next to the bass drum, and nothing was lost. All the restrictions disappeared. With digital it was like I had a word processor — I could chop, edit and move things around without losing any quality.” He would end up being a little less enthusiastic about the state of tapeless digital. Stability was a state that hadn’t quite been reached. The tipping point was when Andy McCluskey from OMD arrived and had all the songs already written on Logic. They just decided to go all in with it. Matt had worked as a programmer for David and Chris Thomas on a lot of records, so he was already proficient with Logic and had bought himself 16 channels of 16-bit/44.1k Pro Tools running on a Power Mac. Just to be sure they’d stick with it, David and Matt took some precautions to deter them from trusting their better judgement. “We actually got the studio to take the tape machines out so we wouldn’t be tempted,” said David. “We didn’t even back up to them, because we knew we’d end up using them if we did. We had some absolute disasters. Pro Tools was very unstable; we’d lose songs because they wouldn’t start up again, and we’d have to spend hours reassembling them from audio files. It was torturous, but we stuck to our guns. “This was when a 250MB hard drive would cost you a fortune, and they weren’t that robust. We had to keep copying them because they’d get fragmented. We went digital all the way, it wasn’t even mixed to half-inch. As far as I’m aware, it was the first totally tapeless album ever released by a major label, and it was a nightmare.” PRODIGAL SON RETURNS
David moved back to Australia in 2000, and things have changed a lot since the Rhinoceros days. For one, everything he’s done since then has been in
We would mix a song and go up to Paul Homes at Triple M in the middle of the night and he’d play it on the radio. It didn’t have to be researched. If DJs liked it, they could play it
Pro Tools. He still records to tape every now and again, when he can find a machine that’s been maintained, but always transfers back into the DAW. “We did the George record on two-inch before bouncing it,” said David. That was Polyserena the platinum No. 1 record David produced in 2002. He also produced the No. 1 album Silencer for New Zealand band Zed, and won ARIA Producer of the Year for the Drag album The Way Out in 2005. David’s still active today, though he doesn’t have a fixed studio address. As good as the ’80s were to him, he couldn’t imagine owning a studio again. Besides, these days, most of what he needs can be found in two pieces of gear — a laptop and his Szikla Prodigal. It’s a hardware unit that David developed with Andy Szikla, pulling together two channels of everything an engineer needs to record most things. Who knows, it could be David’s next big contribution to the Australian music industry.
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FEATURE
When Christmas Day bushfires rocked up on the doorstep of Falls Festivalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lorne site, the team had just 40 hours to relocate a festival that usually takes weeks to set up. AT went along to find out how. Story: Mark Davie
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It wasn’t the Christmas present Falls’ organisers were hoping for. Instead of a cruisy setup day, they were faced with the biggest call they’d ever had to make. Either stay; transplant a music festival for 15,000 people just two days before doors open; or call the whole thing off. Unfortunately, just as music festivals go hand in hand with the Australian summer, so do bushfires. The odds of the two meeting one day was probably significant. Recently, that number came up twice. On Christmas Day, Falls Festival was chased off its traditional stomping ground in Lorne, and then, across the other side of the country in Perth, bushfires also forced Southbound Festival to cancel its main event. You don’t play with fire. Especially when a mass exodus would make the only road out of your music festival look like a balloon artist was squeezing its midsection. Sure there was a fire plan, there always is. “But you can’t take that risk,” said Falls’ production manager, Ade Barnard. “Not with one person’s life, let alone 15,000.” Arriving at Mt Duneed Estate after midday on New Year’s Eve, it was obvious that electing to relocate was the right move. There were supposedly 16,000 people on site but not one was out in the open. Bands hadn’t started playing on the main Valley Stage yet so everyone was either watching Money For Rope in the Grand Theatre tent or huddled under one of the shade canopies to escape the 40-degree heat. Even as far back as Boxing Day
when the fire was still seven or eight kilometres — away from the Lorne site — New Years Day was the one organisers were really worried about. “The CFA said if it did kick,” said Barnard. “It would cross the ground really fast.” The decision to move a festival isn’t made lightly. Sure, the losses from cancelling a festival are heavy, but so is the responsibility of delivering a quality event in a short timeframe. It’s not just a question of, ‘Should we?’ But also, ‘Can we?’ Apart from somehow communicating the news to every festival-goer, you have to set up a completely new campsite — including toilets, showers, water, power, fencing, amenities, the list goes on — deliver all new staging and production, brief all your crew about a new set of protocols and how to direct people around a site they’ve never set foot on before. There’s loads more than that, and it all had to be done in a couple of days. Not wanting to make things too easy, Falls also ran off 1200 extra New Year’s Eve-only tickets that raised over $120,000 for the Great Ocean Road bushfire relief. The organisers of Southbound Festival also managed to put together a benefit concert that raised over $150,000 for bushfire victims. AudioTechnology sat down with Ade Barnard (who co-owns Monitor City) on New Years Eve to run through the order of events. Here’s an outline of the Herculean effort by all involved.
Usually at Falls we have two setup days to tinker with the PA… here, we officially couldn’t make noise until the first band came on
19th – 28th December 2015
DECEMBER 19TH
DECEMBER 23RD
Lightning strikes kickstart a fire in the Otway region, but it’s held behind containment lines. The Lorne site has already been festival-ready for a week, just waiting on production to load in.
Grand Theatre tent and staging goes up at the Lorne site in preparation for rolling in video and audio a day before kickoff on the 28th.
Production kicks off at the Lorne site with the Valley Stage lighting going in. DECEMBER 22ND
Midday: The fire jumps containment lines and Lorne is evacuated. Ade Barnard: “There was talk of it possibly moving or staying in Lorne, no one knew. Lorne was pretty much ready to go. There were a few text messages during the day between the three promoters, general manager, myself, site manager Chris Burton, and the other heads of department, sharing information about what was happening. I do production, and Chris takes care of everything else — and there’s a lot of everything else. Chris’ job was huge: facilities for 15,000 people. We just had three stages.” CHRISTMAS DAY
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BOXING DAY 2pm: AB: “We got the word it was moving, but didn’t know where.” 5:30pm: AB: “We got the word where it was moving to. We needed a stage, so I rang up a bunch of staging companies, and Jeff at Powa had a stage that was available and sort of ready to go. I said, ‘Go!’ He went from his house to his factory, and started packing his truck.” Four crew from MPH Australia head down to the Lorne site and start pulling down the lights and Grand Theatre stage. AB: “Like anything, it’s in the planning. Once we had all the bits, Andie, the stage manager, and I spent the night of the 26th writing schedules — trucking schedule, crew schedule, production schedule. ‘This is what we’re doing, and the order we’re doing it in. You’ve all got enough time to do it, so this can work.’”
DECEMBER 28TH 6am: MPH Australia has finished setting up the Grand Theatre stage and production starts loading into the tent. 11:30am: Production is set up and ready to go in the Grand Theatre. Midday: Weird Al Yankovic’s team turns up to start pre-show checks. 3pm: Doors open. 4pm: The first band, Mighty Duke and the Lords, starts on time at the Grand Theatre. AB: “We had a little hiccup with one of the lighting generators being sick, but other than that, it ran beautifully all night. We were off! The Valley Stage was still getting built, but it’s not in use on the 28th anyway. There was a
5:30am: Powa Stage finishes packing the truck and heads out of the factory. 8am: Powa arrives at Mt Duneed Estate and starts setting up the Valley Stage while the Grand Theatre tent starts to go up. AB: “We booked another eight local crew from Lock and Load to come and help here. The 16 guys who were due to go to Lorne went to Lorne anyway and took the stage out of the Grand Theatre.” DECEMBER 27TH
MAIN STAGE TUNE UP The main Valley Stage PA was JPJ’s d&b J Line rig. It’s a pretty consistent appearer at festivals these days. Josh from JPJ managed FOH for the Valley Stage, which housed a couple of Avid Profiles. Because the site changed at such short notice, Josh said it just made the setup more like a tour day. Josh: “We loaded in at 6pm the night before with the same six of us it was going to be at Lorne. Usually at Falls we have two setup days to tinker with the PA. It was the same sort of tuning process here, it’s just that we had to rush it a bit and we officially couldn’t make noise until the first band came on. We’d do little bits at a time and have a listen. “The biggest change was we couldn’t place the subs where we wanted. You can’t put anything in front of the PA towers and half a metre to each side because there are massive concrete blocks there. Normally it would be an even spaced array across the front with alternate J-Subs (frequency response down to 32Hz) and J-Infras (down to 27Hz). This time we had to squash them up in the middle and do a bigger block either side with a J-Sub stacked on top of J-Infras. It worked out really well, but it wasn’t predictable. There’s no way to model that because it’s not what anyone would intentionally do. “The other thing is, it would be better to have side hangs on this site like A Day on the Green would. We don’t use them at Lorne, which is why we didn’t have any available for this show.” AT 30
barrier in front and a FOH structure built making it look pretty normal from the outside. Pro Stage turned up and built an extension platform at the back of the stage, and the tenting guys from Atmosphere put a big hocker over the top of it.” 6pm: Production loaded into the Valley Stage. AB: “They were up by 10pm because everyone was at it. Lighting programmed most of the night, and the first band walked on stage the next morning.” Phew!
5pm: The Lorne crew arrives onsite at Mt Duneed Estate with the Grand Theatre stage. The Valley Stage roof and two PA towers are finished. MPH Australia crew head off for a sleep. 10pm: The Grand Theatre tent is up, and MPH Australia start erecting the stage.
KURT VILE LIVE Tommy Joy has been mixing FOH for Kurt Vile & the Violators for four and a half years. AT recently interviewed Kurt and band member Rob Laakso about the new album, B’lieve I’m Goin Down, so we thought it'd be interesting to find out how they translate that on the road. Joy says the band does a lot of the work for him: “The guys are really good at getting the tones they want. I add as little s**t as I can and try to convey that to the people out there. I don’t compress it or EQ it if I don’t have to.” In all, there are about 26 channels coming off stage. The drums have mostly classic mic positions, with kick in and out, and snare top and bottom. But the drummer prefers having the right overhead in more of a Glyn Johns’-style position, out past the floor tom. Joy says he’s fine with it as it gives him more floor tom definition anyway. Every instrument, including the keyboards and acoustic guitar goes through an amp. “Kurt likes the tone of his acoustic better when it’s played through an amplifier,” said Joy. At Falls he used a Vox AC30 they’d rented, and a Fender Deluxe for his electric. To contrast the amp tones, they also DI everything, including what comes out the end of Kurt’s pedal
board. While the band prefers to only hear their amps, Joy finds it handy, “because I can use it in the mix if I need a little more definition.” Kurt’s voice is the only heavily effected element in the mix, with Kurt preferring slapback delays and space echo effects on his voice. Joy used to use an Eventide H9 pedal, and is still trying to convince Kurt to let him take his Eventide H8000 on the road, but for now he’s mostly using whatever’s on the console. “I just need a delay with a tap,” said Joy. “Then I just try and make it sound as least digital as possible.” Even though two Kurt Vile sets are never the same, Joy still prefers to ride Vile’s voice rather than compressing it. “I ride the effects channels and everything of Kurt’s,” he said. “A lot of people try and make their job easier by crushing everything with a limiter, but I’ve been working for Kurt for so long; I know exactly when he’s going to scream or do something on the mic. I don’t like what compression does to his voice, so I don’t add it. I ride the effects with my left hand. I don’t mute them because it sounds a little weird when he’s talking and it’s completely dead, especially in a festival situation. Keeping a little delay in the background makes it sound more live.”
You can’t take that risk… not with one person’s life, let alone 15,000
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KEEPING IT IN THE TENT Monitor City provided half of its Nexo STM inventory for the Grand Theatre; six a side with an underhang. Ade Barnard said that was more than enough boxes to generate 110dB at FOH. “I only want it to go 70m,” he said. “At Falls in Lorne, our most sensitive house is down the hill, 2.5km away and right in line with the tent. If you get the tent wrong, it’s on their door step in a heart beat. We’ve worked out a really nice design that keeps it all in the confines of the tent. We use the single 18-inch S118 subs that come with the STM, not the double-folded horn RS-18s because they throw sub frequencies for miles. With a reasonable pattern design, you can get the single 18s to drop off fast so we don’t get complaints. “STM is a great system for rejection. We do Unify, a metal festival in a paddock in the middle of a village. The nearest house is only about a kilometre away and we have it stonking. “In Lorne, you’re in a bowl surrounded by trees, which soaks it up really fast. The only reason the sensitive dwelling is a problem is because it’s down the road. Around here, we have someone driving around to six different properties every two hours and sitting outside with a noise meter. Our management policy is a lot more involved than Lorne. But they were nice enough to let us come here and I don’t really want to ruin it for Day on the Green.”
Guitar rocker Harts onstage in the Grand Theatre with his psychedelic hand-painted Strat, ready to rock out on the Nexo STM PA.
FALLS IDENTITY CRISIS
Barnard had a little inside help to get him over the line. His friend, Steven ‘Stig’ Moore is the production manager for A Day on the Green, which regularly holds gigs at Mt Duneed. As luck would have it, he’s also part of the Falls team at Marion Bay. Even closer to home was the site manager for A Day on the Green, who was already part of the Falls Lorne team. “He’s done six or seven shows at Mt Duneed Estate,” reckoned Barnard. “And this is his third Falls. Anything we needed to know, he knows it.” In any case, Barnard stressed, Falls isn’t A Day on the Green. Putting on Falls Festival primarily requires Falls insider knowledge. Each festival has its own identity, and Falls has been running in the same slice of Otways forest for over two decades. While they couldn’t replicate the exact conditions, it was important that the layout was familiar to as many long-term festival goers as possible. “This is almost a replica of Falls Lorne,” said Barnard. “The AT 32
tent and main stage are laid out as close to normal as we could get it. That way, the people who always come to Falls experience the same vibe.” Barnard held two different perspectives of the festival relocation. On one hand, “it’s easy, we just had to duplicate it again,” he said. “The promoters were great, ‘The doors open at midday on the 28th. Go! How many people do you need? Just get them.’” But there’s also a sense of disbelief that they actually pulled it off in time. “My lot did an amazing job,” continued Barnard. “There were only 40 hours between when we heard we were moving to when we opened. I don’t know how the site guys did it. Their doors opened three hours before mine, so in 37 hours they had to deliver toilets, showers, parking and three and a half kilometres of fencing, which is hard work. “Everyone did amazing work, they just did it. At any one time, there would have been 40 people working on production. So when there’s one lot not
working, they’re sleeping. “Everyone has been great. No one in production has profiteered. People took my phone calls on Boxing Day. To be fair, I’m not going to ring them up on Boxing Day just to say, ‘How’s it going?’ People enabled me, in the course of three hours, to find a whole new set of pieces. Without such a great team: the Mediatec broadcast guys, the MPH Australia guys, JPJ, my guys from Monitor City, all the Engine Room stage guys — without that willingness we wouldn’t have been able to do it.”
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FEATURE
A T L E G M U G I T N A I G R R S O F Heavy guitars haven’t gone out of style. Churko shows us how it’s done at No.1. Story: Paul Tingen
CHURKO’S HIDEOUT
Kevin Churko works from his own studio, The Hideout, in Las Vegas, which is Pro Tools-based, and also has a healthy amount of mics and outboard, used purely during the recording stage, and M&K 2510, Meyer Sound HD1 and Yamaha NS10 monitors. The Hideout is a bit of a family affair. Churko is helped out by engineer/producer son Kane and studio manager daughter Khloe, while his wife designed some of the studio’s aesthetic. The Canadian cut his studio teeth working with the legendary John ‘Mutt’ Lange from 1999-2003 clocking up credits like Shania Twain, Bryan Adams, Britney Spears, Celine Dion and The Corrs. Churko first stepped into heavymetal terrain after going independent, in 2004, when working with Ozzy Osbourne, and has since become one of the world’s go-to heavy metal producers.
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There’s been a worldwide flurry of high-charting heavy metal albums recently. In one week, the top three best-selling albums worldwide were by Bring Me The Horizon, Slayer, and Iron Maiden. This trio of high-flying metal successes came hard on the heels of two other very successful metal albums, Disturbed’s Immortalized and Five Finger Death Punch’s Got Your Six went No.1 and 2 respectively. Both those bands operate in a similar metal vein, with low-ish screamed vocals; tuned down guitars and basses; busy, hard-hitting drums; and, most of all, monolithic walls of distorted rhythm guitars, at times overlaid by virtuoso guitar solos. The similarity in sound is not entirely coincidental, as both were engineered, and in varying degrees co-written, mixed and produced by Kevin Churko. From his hideout, Churko shared his expertise on how he went about recording, mixing, and producing the red-hot rhythm and solo guitars on Got Your Six and Immortalized. 4 RHYTHM GUITARS BETTER THAN 1
Churko: “FFDP were the first band I started doing four rhythm guitars with because they always brought in demos with four rhythm guitar tracks. Now I do it with many of the heavy metal bands I produce. “I have the guitarist play the same part four times: twice with one sound panned left and right, and twice with a slightly different sound, again panned left and right but not quite as wide. This really widens the rhythm guitar and makes it sound huge across the audio spectrum. One sound will be brighter and pointier, the other will be warmer and fatter. I blend these sounds according to what the song needs. Of course, the guitarist has to be exceptionally precise in his playing! It’s all about
articulation, and the guitarists play a lot lighter than many people assume. It also takes a lot of work. It’s not like recording a band in a room, live with a few mics. You’re building a wall of sound, brick by brick.”
If you put a mic directly on the cone, the sound gets smoother and warmer, but you lose a little bit of articulation. I want to pick up enough of that brightness and articulation without it sounding overly bright.”
MIC SETUPS
EQ ISSUES
Churko: “Disturbed brought great demos to my studio recorded at [guitarist] Dan Donagan’ s and [singer] David Draiman’s home studios. Dan played all his rhythm guitars through the Kemper Profiling Amp, using one patch that came with the Kemper and one patch I had created at my studio. “This is my fifth album with FFDP, so I know what they like, and I know what has and has not worked in the past. Zoltan [Bathory] tracked his rhythm guitars at my studio, and I go to Jason [Hook]’s studio to record him. I tend to record guitar cabinets with a Shure SM58 and a Royer 121, sometimes a Sennheiser 421, and then a Vintec 500-series mic pre, and API 550b and Radial Q4 EQs. I DI the guitars as well, just in case we want to reamp them. “Of course, you first set up the amp and the sound coming from it. In that situation you’re also hearing the ambience in the room, and when you stick mics close up, it sounds very different. I don’t use ambient mics to record rhythm guitars. The rhythm picking styles are very immediate, very tight, and you want to be able to hear all that fast picking. “Where I place the mics is still a little bit of trial and error, but usually what works best for me is to place them close to the circumference of the cone, slightly facing in with a little bit of angle. That will give me a little bit more attack and articulation.
Churko: “While recording guitars I’m already thinking of the big picture, going for a good guitar sound, but also making sure it will fit in with the rest of the arrangement. The EQ I use during recording is usually cutting low end and high end over 10k and boosting mid-range. At the recording stage I’m mostly just trying to take away problems, because I will be EQ’ing again later on in Pro Tools. “I’ll EQ each mic separately and record the two mics on each amp to one track. I could, of course, record each mic to a separate track, but that would double my track count. It just gets messy and running Pro Tools becomes an administration job. SESSIONS GET COMPLICATED ENOUGH THESE DAYS. I LIKE TO COMMIT TO ONE AWESOME SOUND FROM ONE AMPLIFIER! I don’t really compress guitars during
recording, because the guitars already have so much overdrive on them. If you add compression, they’ll just sound smaller.” DEALING WITH LOW END
Churko: “Recording and mixing bands like Disturbed and FFDP can be quite challenging, because there is so much going on in the low mids and low end. I struggle with that constantly. In the old days everyone was playing in the key of E, and maybe they dropped the low E string to a D, but now the lowest strings of both the guitars and basses are dropped down to A. This can make it hard to even get a tone, because the string is rattling
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and loose. The drums are also tuned low, and altogether it makes maintaining definition in the rhythm section a big issue. “Urban music has a big bass, but other than that there’s nothing going on down there, so bass drops will sound awesome. You can’t really hear bass drops in the bands I work with because the sonic space in the low end and low mids is already full. Because the guitars today tend to be in the range where the bass used to be, I have to make them brighter and add more mid-range. Many riffs are played on the bottom two strings and the only way to get definition is through brightness and distortion.” RECORDING LEAD GUITARS
Disturbed: Rhythm guitars in Eye Of The Storm Churko: “This track mainly consists of a washy bed of rhythm guitars with a lead guitar over the top. It took five guitar tracks to get the rhythm guitars right. The inserts on the first rhythm guitar, which is a DI track, are the Line 6 Pod Farm 2, McDSP Channel G, and SoundToys Microshift. The EQ is taking off all low end and notching at 400Hz. It’s a lo-fi sound to go with the ‘Dollar Store Cassette’ Pod patch. The Microshift spreads the guitar in the stereo field, acting like a glorified chorus effect. The sends are the Pitch, which goes to an aux track with the Waves Doubler, and two Manny Marroquin delays, because I wanted the guitars to be lush and musical.”
Churko: “Recording lead guitars is different. The solos from most of the bands I work are very musical, melodic pieces. It needs to sing, with enough sustain for long notes to be hanging for a bar and a half, so the guitarist needs to play with more gain and distortion. At the same time you also want to be able to hear every note when he’s playing fast, so you also want articulation and clarity. “The solo is the brightest thing in the production, and you don’t want to hide it. It’s all about making the solo sound good. I tend to record the lead guitars with the same mic chain as the rhythm guitars, the main difference in the sound comes from the guitarist turning up the gain or using an additional pedal. But when EQ’ing on the way in, I’ll again cut the low end, but I’ll boost higher frequencies.” MIX TREATMENTS
Churko: “I mix as I go, all in Pro Tools, using only plug-ins. I’ll get them in their final shape very quickly after recording. I like them to sound the way I want them as early on as I can, because everything is interactive. I MAY HAVE A GREAT BASS SOUND AND A GREAT GUITAR SOUND, BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT THEY WORK WITH EACH OTHER.
I want to know what I have almost immediately. With a lot of the bands I work with, EQ is both technical — as in being able to hear every note — and artistic, in the sense that I may want it to sound more nasty here or more abrasive there. I may want the listener to be almost angry when listening. “In general, you EQ things so that everything can be heard. If rhythm guitars are too bright, they are trampling all over the lead vocals in these two bands. Luckily they both have singers with voices that really cut through, but I still often have to cut holes in the guitar frequency spectrum to make space for the vocal. Strangely, you don’t have to make the solo guitar brighter than the rhythm guitars, because it is naturally higher, brighter and louder, so what you tend to do instead is add more body to the lead guitar, which helps it to poke through the mix. Overall, the effects I use on the vocals often also work on the lead guitar. This can include things like doublers and delays.”
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Disturbed: Solo guitar in Eye Of The Storm. Churko: “I used the Sonnox Oxford Suppresser DS on the lead guitar to take out some grouchy high-end frequencies that were hurting my ears. The Slate Digital Virtual Tape Machines soften and widen the guitar tone, and the McDSP Channel G EQ mainly takes out high and low end. The Pitch and Delay sends go to the same aux track as the rhythm guitars. I tend to use pretty similar delays in each song, so I prefer to have them as sends, rather than on the inserts, because I figure that if I use it on one track, I’ll use it on other tracks as well.”
FFDP: Solo guitar in Jekyll & Hyde. Churko: “The Virtual Tape Machines plug-in adds a little bit of saturation and bottom end, in a subtle way. It smoothes the rough edges at the top. The Channel G again rolls off low and high end and takes out the nasty bits. I rarely boost with EQ. To me it really is about subtractive EQ. I’m trying to be true to the natural sound of the instrument and amplifier, and just remove frequencies that get in the way or threaten to overwhelm the song. The Waves L3 MultiMaximizer is used to make the guitar as loud as possible. As with the Disturbed track, the Pitch send goes to the Waves Doubler. The vocal also goes through that. It’s very simple, a delay of 20ms on one side and 40ms on the other, panned left right with a little bit of top end added. The Manny Marroquin delay is the ¼-note delay.”
Disturbed: Rhythm guitars in The Vengeful One. Churko: “I got the sound mostly right with the McDSP G Channel EQ, taking out low and high end, and boosting a bit at around 8kHz. When it came to the mix I felt it was still a little bit too abrasive, so I notched out some really biting frequencies with the Eiosis AirEQ, and added a soft overall boost in the same range. The four rhythm guitar tracks are all sent to the aux track, just above them, which has the Slate Digital Virtual Channel on it.”
FDDP: Clean chorus guitars in Wash It All Away. Churko: “The intro clean guitars are similar in sound, but took eight guitar tracks to get right. The clean chorus guitars consist of just four tracks. They have another G EQ, cutting out low and high end and boosting at 3.5kHz and 10kHz. The clean sound was a little bit dull, which is why I gave it a boost with the EQ. The P&M Tremolo Pan is like a tremolo on a Fender Deluxe. P&M do a bunch of plug-ins that do very simple things very well, and it worked great on this track. Like the other tracks, the Pitch in the send goes to the Waves Doubler plug-in, also here on a 20ms/40ms setting and adding high end. One side is tuned down and the other tuned up, so it also acts like a chorus. Finally, the Manny Marroquin delay shown here is the 8th note one.” AT 37
FEATURE
DMA’S LOVE FOR DIY
When DMA’s guitarist, Johnny Took’s, relationship ended, he replaced his girlfriend with audio gear and made a Britpop-inspired album with a singer who’d never heard his voice recorded. Artist: DMA’s Album: Hills End
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Review: Mark Davie
The emptiness inside DMA’s guitarist, Johnny Took’s bedroom needed to be filled. A new love to replace one he’d just lost. When he and his girlfriend had moved into their Newtown sharehouse in Sydney, they’d commandeered the largest room — there being two of them and all. Now that they’d broken up, Took was alone and getting swallowed up by the empty space. So he did the only thing a musician can do; he filled it up with gear! “When she f**ked off, I replaced her with a recording studio and drowned my sorrows in audio gear,” said Took. “It was pretty conducive to writing tunes too.” It was the start of a three-year DIY process that’s resulted in the DMA’s debut album, Hill’s End. It’s a 10-song collection with heavy traces of Britpop, including the necessary bits; killer choruses and a singer with that sound. The DMA’s style fell into place almost by accident. Both Took and Matt Mason, also a guitarist, played together in a bluegrass band called Little Bastards. It sounds like a big leap to Britpop, but Took says it didn’t take much. Even the songs were interchangeable, Little Bastard used to play So We Know before it was added to the DMA’s repertoire. “The tunes were always there,” he said. “The only thing that made it sound Britpop was Tommy’s voice. Then you just replace banjos and fiddles with noisy as f**k guitars.” That’s Tommy O’Dell, the DMA’s singer who was previously the drummer in another band — this time psych-rock — Took used to play bass in. “I remember Tommy was asking about a part in a song and started to sing it,” recalled Took. “I thought, hold on this guy’s a better singer than both these dudes and he’s behind the kit.” Took didn’t do anything about it at the time, but early on in Took’s recording endeavours O’Dell dropped by, and seeing that Took was working on a new folk tune asked if he could have a stab at singing it. O’Dell had never heard his voice before,
said Took: “He said, ‘Wow, do I really sound like that?’ ‘Yeah dude, f**kin’ oath!’ It was the reason it all started, from there we just started writing tunes together.” It’s more than just the tone and style that O’Dell has nailed, it’s the intangibles too. “You can give him a basic melody, and he’s naturally going to put his own inflections on it,” said Took. “He’s got a great pop sensibility. He’s one of those guys who you can play any chords to and he’ll pump out something pretty huge. “He used to be a painter — not like Van Gogh — and he would record phone voice memos on the job then bring them to Mason and I to work out the chords. He came home from work one time, and he could only play three chords on a guitar, so he’s playing Em to G. He says he’s been working on a new song and starts singing Lay down, give me… then struggles to form a G …something new. We thought, ‘whoa, that’s pretty sick’ and finished that tune in the next 15 minutes.” It became one of their latest singles, Lay Down. For three years DMA’s was just another side gig. The three of them kept playing in other bands while they recorded more tunes, and it wasn’t until their circle of friends started talking and asking about DMA’s that they thought something could come of it. TOOK TO IT EASY
Took wasn’t always sure he wanted to record his own material. When he finished school, his old man bought him a handful of recording gear — an interface, Digital Performer 5 and a Rode NT1. He messed around for a few years, but it wasn’t until he hit his 20s and living in The Cross that he started to get serious. The move to Newtown just made it official. “The main reason I got into it was that I found it was the best way to write songs,” explained Took. “If you’re wondering if a part will sound good, you
just grab it and cut it.” Took says the DMA’s have a name for their songwriting process: “We call them drum machine anthems. Either in Ableton, or Boom in Pro Tools, we’d pull up some simple beats, and build it up from there. On the EP, we did the drums last. We’d record the whole song to click tracks, and work off our old sessions. “I use Pro Tools now, and I’ve been slowly accumulating gear. With our EP and album recording budgets, I’ve just been purchasing gear to make more albums rather than going to a real nice studio.” These days he’s got a re-racked pair of Quad Eight channel strips he bought off Richie Belkner at Free Energy Device Studios, a UA LA610 channel strip, and a handful of mics. He mostly recorded the album, including some drum takes with his Coles 4038 ribbon (“alone a pretty amazing drum sound”), an AKG C414 and a Shure SM57 on snare. All the drum tracks were recorded differently. They recorded a number of bed tracks at producer/ engineer Dylan Adams’ Coogee studio, mainly so Took could be free to create instead of plugging things in. But the drum takes for the song, Blown Away, were recorded in Took’s bedroom using just those three mics. “Liam, our drummer now, played on most of it, but Tommy actually played drums on that one,” said Took. “30 seconds into the drum take, bloody John Velvet, this wanker hairdresser living below me calls me up and starts abusing me. Which is bulls**t, because I’d been in that space for five years. He’d only moved in four months before and ended up getting me evicted. Still, we ended up using that drum take. I just chopped it up. If it works, and it sounds good, f**k it.” It’s a pretty good motto, and the edited take fit perfectly with the song. The slight variations from hats to ride added just enough movement to another ‘drum machine anthem’. “It’s been mix ’n’ match,” said Took about the drum sounds. “But the final result kind of sounds the same. Which is the sign of AT 39
COMFORT MOOD While Took isn’t a stickler for specific mics and positions, there’s only one mic that O’Dell will sing into; a Shure SM7B. Took: “He refuses to use anything else. He hates hearing his voice really clearly. We rented a Neumann for some of the acoustic stuff, but we tried it on his voice and he hated it. He could hear the saliva in his mouth; it was too real. “He doesn’t like using a mic stand either. He tried to do some vocals when we were in that Coogee studio. But we had to go back to my bedroom because it was the only place he felt comfortable in. He doesn’t feel comfortable talking to someone through headphones and not being able to see them. “The best scenario was both of us in my bedroom with him holding the SM7 and just going for it. I had a few issues, because I lived on King St which is pretty busy. There was quite a bit of noise, but I think we got away with it. Its lack of sensitivity was probably another reason we were using it in the first place. Plus, Michael Jackson used it on Thriller, so it must be sick.”
a good mixer. Spike Stent is so good. He’s a wizard.” That’s Spike Stent, who’s mixed everyone from Beyonce, to Coldplay, Ed Sheeran’s X, Madonna, and Britpop stalwart’s Oasis. “When I first met him,” said Took. “I was on the Santa Monica pier playing a show and I was a bit pissed. I was saying, ‘oh dude, I didn’t have that much gear.’ I was freaking out because he probably works with people who go to lots of studios and use the best stuff. I was ranting on a bit and he patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘Johnny mate, don’t worry, I’ll make it sound good.’ Which is exactly the reassuring stuff you want to hear from someone mixing your debut album.” BRITPOP GUITARS IN CHORUS
Took isn’t a stickler for mic position, he’s more interested in the sound that’s coming out of the instrument. “As long as I’ve got all my pedals and my guitar’s going down, I’m sweet,” he said. He typically uses two mics to record his electric, the Shure SM57 and AKG C414 in figure eight shoved right up on the speaker and feeding his pair of Quad Eight 403s. “We were using an Orange cab with a Fender head for a while in the studio,” said Took. “We also used those Roland Jazz Choruses. I love those amps, they’re so clean and you can actually hear the pedals. We play them pretty loud. It depends on what you’re going for, but you have to turn them up to get them sounding how you want them.” At one point, towards the end of the recording, he even DI’d his electric guitar straight into the Quad Eight. “You try and make sure every part’s not recorded through the same amp or pedals, otherwise everything just starts sounding the same,” explained Took. “At the end point of the AT 40
album, when you need something refreshing, it was nice to get away from the amp. “Most of the distortion is a Tubescreamer TS9, which is a great studio distortion because it’s quite inoffensive and can be textural but ballsy. I also had a Harmonic Percolator for a bit and I use a Maxon Chorus. “I use the Line6 DL4 delay for some funky things, and the Boss DD7 for textural stuff. I steered away from those Boss digital delays for ages, because I wanted to find something crazier but ended up coming back to it recently. “The hardest thing about recording is learning to make the stuff you can’t really hear. There’s the guitar parts in the foreground, but all the guitar parts in the background — the textural stuff — are my favourite. The Line6 Auto Volume Echo is good for making guitars sound like synths. If you mix that with the DD7 and the modulation setting on the Hall of Fame reverb, you can pretty much make the guitar sound like a synth pad. Because the acoustic guitar is so rhythmic and always playing the chords, you can get away with that sound on the electric. You’re not really sure what that sound is — it’s a bit paddy, airy, and makes it all kind of washy.” Acoustic guitar drives a lot of DMA’s tunes. Partly because it’s such a hallmark of the Britpop sound, but also because most of the songs are written with just a drum machine, vocal and acoustic. “I can’t really record with any acoustic guitar other than a Gibson J100,” said Took. “I’ve used some dreadnoughts, even some some nice Gibsons, and small bluegrass guitars, and they all sound a bit too thin and bright for me. I like a real warm, lush acoustic sound that wraps around your head. Acoustic guitar can be quite nostalgic, which I like. It’s kind of dreamy and ballady.” Again, he
tries not to overthink the mic positions; he just puts the C414 up in front of the guitar and plugs it into the Quad Eight. “Sometimes I don’t really know what I’m doing,” said Took. “Which, to be honest, in some ways is a good thing. Occasionally you can be too deep and think about it too much. At the end of the day, a s**t recording of a good song is going to trump a good recording of a s**t song.” SPIKE FINISHES IT OFF
Took didn’t want to simple rely on good songs for their debut, he wanted the end result to sound like it was far beyond his bedroom. “I was a bit worried,” said Took. “When you record the way we do, it’s so easy to have this washy DIY sound. It can sound cool and I love that stuff, but it’s not what I wanted for this first album. Spike really stepped up and made everything sound great, with a beautiful sense of space. There are a lot of guitar parts in there I’d almost forgotten were there; in particular, really interesting parts that Mason had played. “And the drum sounds he got from some of the garbage I gave him were amazing. I’m being harsh on myself, but he made some incredible drum sounds. Everything sat together perfectly. It was so stressful at first, because we were doing it on the road via email. Everyone’s really silent in the van, but freaking out over email. No one’s saying anything, but they’re all typing, ‘OMG!’ After the first couple of songs, he understood what we were going for, and it was so much easier to mix the rest of the album. “I was also getting pretty sick of the songs until he started mixing them. He brought back that love for our own tunes, remembering why we wrote those songs, and I really thank him for that.”
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TUTORIAL
Story: Paul Tingen
Artist: Justin Bieber Album: Purpose Song: Sorry
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If there’s one thing America does right, it’s the comedy roast. Sure, it’s a completely see-through public relations stunt, but if you’re attempting to endear yourself to the public by inviting celebrities to dig at the base of a fellow tall poppy, at least everyone gets to laugh about it. In the saga that is ‘Justin Bieber Growing Up’, Comedy Central’s roast was a hit. Beliebers should be old enough to handle a bit of satire by now but for any residual die-hards, armed with ‘I will kill you for Lulz’ on their Tweet speed dial, the roast was staged prep for them to get onboard with Biebs’ new grown-up image — and his new grown-up studio album, Purpose. During the last two years the tabloids have eaten up any example of Biebs’ 101 on how not to grow up in public. He was the prima facie example of teenage pop idols ‘struggling’ with too much money and fame. Bieber turned 21 early in 2015 (finally, he can drink…), and as if to atone for his teenage indiscretions, there’s been a surprising new addition to his mien: contrition. There’s the song Sorry, of course, but also every time he’s appeared in the media lately, he’s taken the time to apologise and promise to ‘do better’ — the roast included. It’s as if Biebs, against all the odds, is actually trying to grow up. He even attributed his latest ‘meltdown’ to fans not taking him seriously while trying to scrub some muck off the stage. That’s right, Biebs was cleaning up after himself. Come on people, the guy lives on tour, so it was basically like interrupting his midweek cleaning regimen! Purpose is his first album as a fully-fledged adult, and the singer decided to take full creative control. In short, Purpose
was likely to be a career-defining album; a make-or-break proposition. To dramatise things further, the press whipped up a story about a sales race between Purpose and One Direction’s Made In The A.M., released in the same week. The Bieber camp needn’t have worried. Purpose turned out to be an enormous commercial success, the singer’s most successful album yet in terms of chart positions worldwide. At times, his four major hit singles, Where Are Ü Now, What Do You Mean?, Sorry and Love Yourself were battling amongst themselves for the highest chart position, and Bieber now holds the title of most songs in the Billboard Hottest 100 at one time — 17, besting even The Beatles by three songs. Purpose won the pseudo-battle with One Direction hands-down. FITTING PURPOSE
Purpose’s proliferation of songwriters and producers is impressive even by sprawling 21st century pop/R&B standards. Skrillex, Diplo, Ed Sheeran, Benny Blanco, Soundz, Mike Dean, Michael ‘Blood Pop’ Tucker, Jason ‘Poo Bear’ Boyd and Ian Kirkpatrick are among the dozens involved. Normally so many cooks is a warning sign of a scattered and disjointed album, but Purpose hangs together pretty well. Mainly because Bieber reduced his core team to the absolute minimum; one man, Josh Gudwin. Gudwin was at Bieber’s side throughout the entire production process, earning him the unusual credit of Album Producer. The role involved album A&R, engineering almost all Bieber’s vocal sessions, mixing or comixing 12 of the deluxe album’s 18 songs, plus songwriting
SORRY SESSION
I edit the vocals as I go, and groove them in real time. I like things to sound as good as possible when Justin walks out of the vocal booth
The Pro Tools mix session for Sorry consists of a hefty 125-odd tracks. Although Gudwin stressed his sessions don’t look ‘well-groomed’, the session is fairly well-organised. Below the master, print and group tracks, there are nine drums and percussion tracks, five bass tracks, and a mishmash of 16 tracks of horns, auxes, outboard effects, more percussion, piano and strings. Clear order is restored with Bieber’s lead vocal tracks and associated delay tracks, live room and outboard prints, and then tons of backing vocal tracks; 11 by Bieber, 30 by singer Trevon Trapper, and four by co-writer Julia Michaels. Notably, Justin Bieber’s lead vocals have by far the most plug-ins. “This is an actual working mix session, and yes, it is big,” agreed Gudwin. “My sessions don’t all look pretty and organised. When you’re on deadline, you don’t always have time to label out the session from a visual standpoint. The stem sessions that I create from my mix sessions are superclean though. Yes, most effects and treatments are on Justin’s vocals. The other tracks didn’t need that much.”
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BASS Gudwin: “There are only three keyboard bass tracks active. They’re all the same part, but I pulled them onto different tracks so I could effect each differently. I prefer that over automating just one track. I’m MS processing the first bass track with the Brainworx EQ and adding some sub with Little Labs’ Voice Of God. The second track has Waves’ RCompressor, which is not doing much, and iZotope’s Ozone for widening and EQ. The third bass track has the UAD LA2A compressor over it.”
HORNS Gudwin: “I’m lightly EQ’ing the two horn tracks with Pro-Q, then compressing lightly with the LA2A, and adding some more EQ with the Manley Massive Passive and MS EQ from Brainworx.”
GROUPS
DRUMS
REVERBS
Gudwin: “The drums, bass, and keys group tracks each have the Waves L2 on them, but barely touching the compression on that, and they go to the Master track at the top, which has the UAD SSL E-Channel, Manley Massive Passive, Oxford Inflator for a touch of processing, and the FabFilter Pro-L compressor. Tom Coyne mastered the album with Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound. I gave them the option to use the mix with and without my mastering bus treatments; sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn’t. The Skrillex songs were already hitting in a certain way, and many of the mixes were done through the mastering chain that we already had because it was hard to match.”
Gudwin: “Skrillex’s and Blood Pop’s drum and percussion tracks sounded pretty good when they came in. I use a lot of UAD SSL E Channel instances. I have it on the two kick tracks, and can get a great overall sound using just the compressor and EQ from that plug-in. The first snare also has a FabFilter Pro-Q, while the second has the Xfer Records LFO Tool and SoundToys FilterFreak, both to get the snare pumping.”
Gudwin: “RevP and REV2 are returns from Bricasti reverbs, Aux 4 is a Waves Manny Marroquin reverb which Wu (Andrew Wuepper) put on the percussion.”
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VOCALS Gudwin: “vcls is a vocal sample that Blood Pop made of Justin’s vocal. I’m just touching that with the LFO Tool for a bit of pumping and taking out some high frequencies with Pro-Q. I then use Soundtoys’ Microshift for a slight pitch-shift/chorusing effect. “$JBU is the main lead vocal bus, over which I put the UAD 1176, Waves De-Esser, Manley Massive Passive and Metric Halo Channel Strip. The sends are generic: verb, ping-pong delay, and Roland Dimension D. Below that is the print track of a Bricasti outboard with a London Plate reverb sound. “The five green tracks are all vocal throws and delays. I don’t automate throws through aux tracks, I prefer to put them on separate audio tracks. The top green track is the master track for the delays — JB Throw All — and it has a compressor and SPL Vitalizer on it. “Track 1147 has the UAD Cooper Time Cube,
with a quick ping-pongy flutter delay that I widen, and 1167 has a basic eighth-note delay from Echoboy. “The A insert is Autotune, but it’s not working on these tracks. When needed, vocal tuning is normally done by Chris ‘Tek’ O’Ryan in Melodyne. I sometimes do it myself, if I have the time, in the standalone version of Melodyne. “The blue vocal tracks have the UAD SSL Channel Strip, UAD LA2A, Waves C6 multi-band compressor, and sometimes the Pro-Q EQ. The DLYP track has a delay pan effect, with the SoundToys Primal Tap delay and Panman autopanner, SSL Channel Strip, and the P&M Vinylizer. “White and Master are printed reverbs recorded in two rooms at Henson. They are my main vocal reverbs, and the green tracks below are pitched with the Elastic Audio Xform and effected with the Waves HCompressor for a pumping effect. I pitch
the reverbs up an octave, or two, and I’ll mix them in very low. The PCM and PC1 tracks are prints from pingpong delays from the Lexicon PCM42 outboard. “Justin’s backing vocal tracks all go to the group track called JBG1, on which I have a Waves Deesser, an SSL Channel and the C6 multi-band compressor, plus there are a number of delays and reverbs via the sends. Trevon’s backing vocals all go to JBTR, which has similar effects. I wanted to fill the song up a bit more, and sometimes it’s not the most enjoyable process for an artist to sing all those background parts. Plus, a different vocalist will add a different texture to the song, as long as it complements the lead vocal and the record. “Julia added her vocals during the final mix in New York, and her group track also has the De-esser, SSL Channel and C6 on it.”
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The rough mix is often more important than the final mix, because it sets the direction for the song
and production credits on a couple. Gudwin took care of the technical detail, while he and Bieber held the artistic focus together. With such a large party of creatives, there was some serious pressure at the top. “The workload got so heavy towards the end that I had to bring in someone to help me with the final mixes,” recalled Gudwin. “My buddy Andrew Wuepper, who came up under Dave Pensado, came in for the last one to two weeks, and mixed seven songs with me. Even together we were doing 16 to 20 hour days! We’d go to and fro taking turns mixing a song for a few hours at a time. Mixing together was a treat, because normally our job is so self-obsessed.” PLANTED IN LA
Gudwin has enjoyed a fairly meteoric career, studying at Florida’s Full Sail University during 2005-6, interning at Track Records Studio in LA, working with songwriter Esther Dean, and studying for two years with America’s number one vocal producer, Kuk Harrell. Gudwin has clocked up a set of very respectable credits, including T.I., Lionel Richie, T-Pain, Quincy Jones, Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, Carly Rae Jepsen, Celine Dion and Pharrell Williams, but meeting Bieber in 2010 turned into a long relationship. Since then, Gudwin has worked with Bieber on Under The Mistletoe, Never Say Never: The Remixes, Believe, Believe Acoustic, Journals and Live At Madison Square Garden. Gudwin’s credits on Purpose are the most wideranging in his work with Bieber so far. Talking from his in-the-box home studio in Los Angeles, Gudwin elaborated on the album’s gestation and the various roles he played in it: “Justin didn't want outside people around who he doesn’t really know. I was fortunate to be in a position to take his vision and help him create a solid body of work. Over the years I’ve developed a sense of what music he likes and what type of songs he would want to write when he’s in a particular mood. Poo Bear also contributed greatly, and wrote many songs we knew Justin would really like. In all, Poo Bear and I AT 46
brought the majority of the songs to the album. “We began work on the album in late 2013 and worked full-time for more than a year. I kept an overview of the entire project, and managed all the files, contacts and exchanges with the writers and producers. We wrote and recorded in various studios in LA, Atlanta, New York and Toronto — even as far away as Greece — but it was mostly recorded at Record Plant in LA. Justin loves that studio, SSL 3 is one of the best sounding rooms in LA and was a bit like home base. Sessions can take place anywhere, but you need a place where you have consistency and the sound is always the same. Though I mixed some songs at Henson Studio D and Jungle City in NY, I mainly mixed at Record Plant. When I’m finalising a product for the best outcome I prefer to be in the same room for a couple of days. “I did all Justin’s vocal recordings apart from a couple of songs when I was not available. Usually it’s just him and I. It’s a pretty easy process. Because Justin has been doing this for so long he has a very good knowledge of how to sing in the studio and the techniques that are used. SOMETIMES WE WILL DO A FEW TAKES AND I WILL COMP THAT LATER, SOMETIMES I RECORD HIM LINE BY LINE. BASICALLY MY JOB IS TO CAPTURE HIM IN THE RIGHT WAY, AND THEN I DESIGN HIS VOCALS AND PLACE THEM IN THE TRACK.
“I use various microphones, like the Sony C800G, Telefunken TLM 251, Neumann U47, or U67. It depends on the sound we want. It’s pretty intuitive. We simply pick a mic, he starts singing and if it isn’t right, we try another one. We like to keep it moving. The mic pre is usually a Neve, and I like to use the Tube-Tech CL1B compressor on the way in, because it’s smooth and gives me the control I’m looking for. After that everything is in the box, apart from some hardware effects I like to use right at the end of the mix. ALL MY SESSIONS ARE DONE INSIDE MY LAPTOP, SO I CAN TRAVEL ANYWHERE. I HAVE AN EXPANSION CHASSIS WITH AN HDX CARD AND TWO UAD CARDS, AND CAN EASILY PLUG INTO ANY STUDIO.”
ROUGH EXPERIMENTATION
A lot of sound design went into Purpose, not dissimilar to another 2015 hit, The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind The Madness, which also was almost entirely created inside a laptop. That elaborate in-the-box sonic experimentation and polishing lets producers and artists chisel out their own sonic identity. Gudwin is no different. He explained how designed the sound of Bieber’s album was, including the singer’s vocals: “Often a major part of the sound design already comes from the producer. Skrillex is really good at creating his own sounds, and I then create vocal sound designs to go with that. But with other tracks I often go in heavy to create sounds. Once I get the songs from the producers, it’s pretty much just me. I record Justin’s vocals and I then try to get the vocal sound dialled in very quickly and start adding stuff during the mixing process. I use a lot of plug-ins! Justin gives me full creative freedom when it comes to mixing his vocals, but if he doesn’t agree, he’ll let me know. “The vocal on every song is different, and requires different verbs and delays. I edit the vocals
as I go, and groove them in real time. I like things to sound as good as possible when Justin walks out of the vocal booth, then I’ll dial in the finer details during the rough mix. I learned that from Kuk. When I worked with him he’d have the vocals recorded, edited and loaded into the track. Then it would take me two hours to do a rough mix. Kuk would say, ‘Just take 30 minutes, bro.’ So I learned to do a rough mix very quickly, and at the end of the day, that’s often the sound of the record. THE ROUGH MIX IS OFTEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE FINAL MIX, BECAUSE IT SETS THE DIRECTION FOR THE SONG. IF THE ARTIST LIKES THAT DIRECTION, YOU DON’T WANT TO LOSE THAT BY REDOING SOUNDS AND SO ON. My final mixes
are almost always refinements of the rough.” MIXED EMOTIONS: SORRY
Sorry, the second single from Purpose, is a good example of Gudwin’s mix approach and the way the album came into being. The track was co-written by Bieber, Skrillex, Michael ‘Blood Pop’ Tucker, Justin Tranter and Julia Michaels, and produced by Skrillex and Blood Pop. According to Gudwin, the song was “cut at Roshambo Studios in Orange County, and Wu Wueper and I ended up mixing it together. “Originally Skrillex was going to do his own mixes, with me just doing the vocal mixes and sending him the a cappellas. But he was on tour in India and didn’t have time to do anything. He sent me all his sessions in Ableton, which I loaded into Pro Tools for the mix. I did a rough mix first, which involved me digging in for 30 minutes to an hour until it felt good. I’m not paying a lot of attention to the technical aspects at this stage, I’m just putting on plug-ins quickly to get them to do what I want them to do. I do a lot of EQ-ing, mostly carving out frequencies and rarely boosting. “I’ll start at any place in the track where I feel inspired to start. Basically I’m going in and start scrubbing, like washing a car. I go all the way down the session adding EQ, effects, and drops and filters — whatever is needed to create space and movement — then I’ll really dig into the vocal design. Once I can listen to the session without anything bothering me, that is the rough mix. I’ll put it in a folder and I’ll send it to Justin, and he’ll listen to it 1000 times. Sometimes the rough becomes the final mix. If we’re going with the rough, I’ll just do some final detail at the very end. For example, with What Do You Mean? we literally went with my rough mix. The beat and song are very straightforward, there is nothing crazy, and the rough had the feel, the vibe, and that was it. But with Sorry, Wu and I spent quite a bit of time working on the sounds and creating the final mix.” The very end of the final mix of Sorry was tourde-force, with Gudwin working on two sides of the US: “We started the final mix at Henson studio D and worked on it thru the night. I took a 6am flight to New York and went right to Jungle City and finished the mix that same day/night. Julia Michaels came to the studio to listen and she added some quiet background vocals in the hook. Once I got her parts in, the mix was done. The song was mastered the next day.”
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TUTORIAL
Bridging that impedance knowledge gap to make sure youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re choosing the right DI for your guitar. Tutorial: Joe Malone
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Have you ever thought about picking the ‘right’ DI? Or have you just been plugging into the closest available ¼-inch socket? I’m here to tell you that DIs aren’t all created equal. I’m not selling you a load, but someone might be. Tech joke! First off, what’s a DI? Quick answer: It’s an impedance buffer/converter usually with unbalanced to balancing conversion as well. Nontechnical version: it helps interface instruments to your DAW without killing your tone. Unfortunately, impedance is never what people think. It’s a complex beast that’s a measure of the opposition a circuit presents to a current when a voltage is applied. And it’s all over the shop. If it wasn’t all over the shop, they’d just call it resistance. And this here is the key to this whole DI conundrum. We’re not sending a DC signal through a DI. It’s not one straight line of voltage, it’s a beautiful soundwave that represents a constantly changing voltage. Hence the impedance changes as your frequency does. In electronics world, to keep pieces playing nicely, we play a matching game (it’s actually called voltage matching, but forget that for now). The rules go something like this: the input impedance of the piece of gear that follows should be much bigger than the output impedance of the preceding piece of gear. Say, about three to 10 times the amount at least. While the number sounds high, it’s actually putting a very low ‘load’ on the input, meaning all of that precious voltage gets through with very little current (electronic ‘push’) required. A passive electric guitar pickup has a high impedance output of around 5-10kΩ at low frequencies to 50-70kΩ at high frequencies, give or take. This output is already loaded down, usually by a 250kΩ volume pot and 250kΩ tone pot in series with a 22-47nF tone cap. So even with the tone fully open, the high frequencies have a load of 125KΩ. To make sure its voltage gets through intact, we need an even higher impedance input. Which is why 90% of guitar amps — Fender, Marshall, you name it — have an input impedance of around 1MΩ! So does that little box on the floor, or jack on your interface do the same thing? Let’s find out. PASSIVE PICKS
The most basic and passive way to make a DI is with a step down transformer, which offers a higher input impedance — usually 10kΩ to 100kΩ — with a lower 150-600Ω output impedance. The greater the impedance difference between the input and output, the greater the dB level loss, as the impedance conversion doesn’t come for free. The first thing you would have noticed is that a passive DI’s input impedance is not the same as a guitar amp inputs. Furthermore, transformer DIs will sound completely different when driven by different guitars or loaded by different mic pres. So when people talk about liking the ‘sound’ of a transformer DI, what they often don’t realise is its sound or tone will be greatly changed depending on the instrument feeding the input or the mic preamp attached to the output. Whatever happens on the output of the transformer DI is reflected
back onto the input. Its frequency response doesn’t remain the same. We talk about impedances like it’s going to hold 100kΩ from DC to 5MHz, but that 100kΩ is pretty much only in the lower audio range — it’ll have bumps and lumps all throughout the spectrum as the impedance changes. At 50Hz the impedance might be down to 20kΩ, then as you go up to the midrange, it’s 100kΩ, then over the top end, it’ll load down because of the capacitance of the guitar cable. If you use a transformer DI, it’ll load your pickups in a way so your guitar doesn’t sound anything like what it should. I went through all this with Kinman when we were working on his noiseless pickups. When we loaded the pickups like a guitar amp would with a 1MΩ impedance, you could see it push a lump in the Fender pickup design. If you went into a DI with an impedance higher than 1MΩ, that lump would either peak higher or flatten out and it’d have no bite or aggressive sound. And if you went into a transformer DI, it would push that lump way down into the low mid, so you’d get an almost muffled guitar. Everyone loves the Radial passive DI, they say, ‘it’s got the best sound.’ But it actually doesn’t have a set ‘sound’. Any changes to what’s driving it or what’s hooked to the output will completely change the frequency response and colour you get in between. A transformer does that because it’s weak, basically. It gets pushed around; its frequency response changes, it gets bumps in the response, it can roll off early. Loading a passive bass with a transformer DI can completely change the sound of your bass, because of the way it reflects the load — often for the better. I usually love transformer DI on old synths as well. I’m not saying transformer DIs aren’t good. They’ll either work for what you’re doing, or they won’t. Passive DIs have another great advantage in that they’ll never have a flat battery. ACTIVE LIFE STYLE
Active powered DIs — tube, transistor or op amp — on the other hand, can give you a fairly set ‘sound’. Active DIs are a lot more constant, because they isolate the high-impedance input from the low-impedance output almost 100%. They don’t see each other’s value and react to that. It means that whatever the designer’s intent for the device’s tone — varying from pure to highly coloured — will be relatively fixed. Greater impedance differences can also be achieved — 1MΩ-1GΩ input and 20-200Ω output — with no dB level loss due to active buffering and/ or gain stages. We make all of our DIs 1MΩ so your guitar thinks it’s plugged into a Fender or Marshall amp. Everything will sound exactly as it should, which is important if you want to reamp. They run right before the mic preamp’s input transformer so they keep the tone of the preamp. On some devices, like the API512, when you plug into the DI socket, you’re actually behind the input transformer, so the major tonal element is removed from the chain.
WHEN TO GO TO GROUND People always ask me when you lift it, and when you don’t. It’s dead easy. If it’s 50 or 100Hz humming or buzzing really loudly, then flip the switch. If it was open, it might have needed the ground sent through, and if it was closed, it might need the ground lifted. It either doesn’t have the ground at all, or it’s got two coming from different places and it’s making a loop. Flip the switch and one way will be quiet, it’s that simple.
We use FET DIs because they’re very simple and pure, with a very high input impedance. If you use transistors, you end up with more capacitance, which can roll off the top end. FET and valve DIs can load 1MΩ with very little capacitance to ground. PIEZOS PREFER PLENTY
The circuit in a valve mic is essentially a superhigh input impedance, phantom-powered DI. They just happen to make the DI input impedance 200MΩ to 1GΩ so the element can drive it. The amplifier is usually a FET with gain, and a stepdown output transformer working as a superhigh input impedance DI. When that’s emulated in the outside world — pushing the input impedance up to 500MΩ or 1GΩ — it can really help take the bark out of piezo elements that have direct passive outputs. It’s not so critical these days, because a lot of piezo pickups in guitars have onboard preamps performing that role. But when you add a piezo under a saddle, it has a very high output impedance, so even 1MΩ is a heavy load. Placing a really high impedance input up very close so there is no cable capacitance can make a piezo sound much better. They basically want to have super high input impedance so the element doesn’t know it’s driving the DI at all. And that’s the trick at the end of the day, picking a DI with the right impedance so it keeps your guitar sounding exactly the way it should. Maybe try something active, or look for something with switchable input impedances to give you a variety of tones. After all, it’s the guitar that makes the sound, not the DI.
THE LEAD UP Impedance in guitar amps is pretty pure, but your leads can have a big impact. The biggest rolloff in high end is to do with an unbalanced lead going to the DI. There’s a certain capacitance in a 10-foot guitar lead that tunes your pickup in your guitar to a certain type of peak. The impedance of the pickups works with the cable capacitance to make an RC filter which will typically put a bump in the top end before rolling it off.
AT 49
MEASURING IMPEDANCE Measuring impedance is not easy, you have to graph it out with test gear. It’s usually why active DIs are technically easier, because you know it’ll work as advertised due to the isolation. Here’s a frequency graph I made to show you what a Fender Strat looks like when plugged into 100kΩ, 1MΩ and 1GΩ FET DIs, alongside a very cheap 100kΩ
passive step-down transformer DI. The passive transformer in this case has a peak (yellow) but depending on the transformer and mic pre used, it could be anywhere between the 100kΩ resistive load rolloff (green) and this peak, or more. The graph was generated from a Strat pickup simulation with volume pot on full and tone pot wide open.
CONTROL YOUR CAPACITANCE Guitar lead capacitance isn’t a small influencer on your guitar tone; it’s the secret sucker of your high end. Unfortunately, capacitance increases with the length of your guitar cable, so getting the most high end out of your guitar tone typically means standing at arm’s width from your amp, or wearing your pedal board like a ball and chain. When Eric Valentine discovered this capacitance phenomenon he became obsessed with changing guitar cables to find the right match. He’s produced and engineered records for Slash, Queens of the Stone Age and Lostprophets, so is naturally a stickler for great guitar tones. So much so, he even built a robot to let him monitor his mic positioning from his control room. He also owns Undertone Audio, a boutique audio electronics company that builds large format analogue consoles, EQs, preamps and compressors. One day, he was letting out his frustrations over having to constantly swap guitar cables to Larry Jasper, who does all the circuit design for Undertone. Jasper proposed a simple idea. Why not build a cable with variable capacitance? Hey presto, the 10-foot long Undertone Audio VariCap Instrument Cable was born. After a few years of trying different form factors the final product has Neutrik connectors, and a little box that sits towards one end of the cable with a simple knob for adjusting the cable’s capacitance. You can vary the capacitance from an ultra-low 180pF (including the cable, connectors and circuit) to a heavy 1780pF in fifteen 100pF steps. A good ‘low-capacitance’ guitar cable these days is usually around the 28pF/ft mark. So for a 10-foot cable, you’re up around 300pF. Other cables can be closer to 800pF. Valentine: “180pF is a sound a lot of people have never heard before unless you’ve tried to plug your guitar in with a three-foot cable.” Valentine isn’t necessarily advocating that the lowest AT 50
setting is always going to be best. While it can open up the sound of some guitar tones, other times it can reveal too much high end and the result can be a microphonic mess. He’s just saying that it’s worth experimenting with, and hearing your guitar in a way you never have before is worth the price of a cable. He used Slash as an example: “I was working with Slash around the time I first discovered the benefits of low capacitance cables. So I pulled out some of my great low-capacitance cable and plugged it in with his rig. But it didn’t work at all! It just squealed out of control with super, high, feedback oscillation. “It turned out he was using this particular Monster cable that had an extra-high capacitance to it — in the 1500pF range — and it’s part of his sound. He has a modified Marshall head that has a ton of extra high gain blasted into it. The cable was compensating for that and giving him this mid-range push that is part of that scratchy attack he has in his rhythm guitar sound. “At that time I made a little box that would add capacitance and he and I experimented with different amounts of capacitance for different guitar parts. There were some clean guitar parts where we would take all the capacitance away and all of a sudden his Les Paul would sound more like a Strat. Then you put it back and you have that cool, attacky, mid-rangey sound he uses for his gainy stuff. It’s a big deal.” The Vari-Cap cable circuit is purely passive so you don’t have to put batteries in the little cablewart. But there are some particulars worth noting. To get the capacitance really low, Undertone used a particular cable that’s a tiny bit stiffer than your average guitar cable — not coax install stiff though. “I think people would find it a little too stiff to be walking around on stage and a little too short,” said Valentine. “Short and stiff! Not super desirable.” In the studio though, it could be your secret tone weapon. You can grab the Vari-Cap cable from Undertone Audio’s site for US$89.99.
Strat guitar on single pickup emulation into load: Green — 100kΩ resistive load Blue — 1MΩ resistive load Purple — 1GΩ resistive load Yellow — 100kΩ impedance cheap isolation transformer load
CAPACITANCE CURVES This graph shows five cable capacitance steps from flattest to highest peak — 220pF, 330pF, 510pF, 680pF and 820pF — to demonstrate how much your lead varies your pickup tone or EQ. The graph is generated from a Strat pickup simulation with volume pot on full and tone pot wide open. Cable capacitance across Strat guitar on single pickup: Green — 220pF Yellow — 330pF Red — 510pF Purple — 680pF Blue — 820pF
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REVIEW
ASTON MICROPHONES ORIGIN Cardioid Condenser Microphone You’ve probably already heard — there’s a new microphone brand in town. Review: Preshan John
NEED TO KNOW
Aston’s Origin doesn’t need to be treated like a baby. The body is covered in the tell-tale patina of its hard knocks beginning, courtesy of being tumbled with random metal shrapnel for a tough, almost galvanised look. It also has a unique deformable grille, so if you accidentally drop this bad boy, you can press it back into shape rather than crying over your baby’s dented head basket.
PRICE Expect to pay $499 CONTACT Link Audio: (03) 8373 4817 or info@linkaudio.com.au
AT 52
PROS Natural, polished sound Lots of value for the price
CONS Direct stand mounting can be inconvenient
SUMMARY The combination of a unique development process, British design, and attention to detail has resulted in the Aston Origin being truly a one-of-a-kind mic. For the price, it’s an excellent utility option to have in the mic locker that’ll perform reliably on almost anything.
This is no anonymous ‘soft launch’, Aston Microphones is going hard. The British company is excited, and it has a story to tell. Aston’s founder, James Young, was a co-founder and Global Sales and Marketing Director of sE Electronics, who also had his hand in the design of the original Reflexion filter. In 2015, James and some mates decided to go solo, birthing the Aston Microphones concept and philosophy. One year later the team has made solid progress. Not only have two microphones and a ‘new-andimproved’ reflection filter been designed from the ground up, but the gears have promptly been cranked on worldwide distribution. Still, in a crowded microphone market, folks won’t throw their money at you unless they’re convinced a product has X-factor: something special, different, unique. So what sets an Aston microphone apart from the rest? NOT ANOTHER MIC BRAND
For a start, it’s clear that James wanted the mics to have a place with the big names. To get a seat at the table and acceptance by the industry he devised a stringent development process based on repeated blind listening tests with acclaimed British engineers. More than a PR push, James is adamant he placed faith in these golden ears to be the final arbiters of the mic capsule and PCB design choices. Secondly, Aston isn’t a British company with Chinese manufacturing — no, every Aston microphone is actually hand-assembled in the UK. And you can acquire one for under $600. While China’s QC has certainly improved, it’s still a big deal when you can buy a product that’s made entirely in-house. AT was sent the Aston Origin for review; the first to arrive in Australia. The Origin is a fixed cardioid, transformerless condenser microphone. There’s nothing unusual about the specs, though some may consider the self-noise of 18dBA high by today’s ‘race to the bottom’ standards. An 80Hz high-pass filter and -10dB pad can be engaged with the two switches on the side. The mic is smaller than you expect but has a decent weight to it. TRULY ORIGIN-AL
There’s nothing shy and retiring about the industrial design of the Origin. The outer grille features a wavy honeycomb pattern that's designed to warp under stress. During a phone conversation with Young, he asked me to smack the mic against a table. Since he made the mic, I obliged — ignoring my fear of single-handedly dispatching the first of its kind in Australia. As I struck the headstock on the edge of my desk, the network of metal reinforcers bent to absorb the shock, skewing the top half of the mic. James then prompted me to knead it back into shape, leaving it no worse off than before. I’ll let you decide the usefulness of this design trait, but one thing’s for sure — your Neumanns and T-Funks won’t take blows as gracefully.
Another quirky design feature is the mic stand mounting thread that’s drilled directly into the base of the Origin. Nice as it is to not lug around a shockmount, I’m yet to be sold on this idea. The direct mounting means the mic becomes a rigid extension of the stand’s boom arm, sacrificing the rotational and angular adjustments possible with a mic clip or shockmount. Positioning the mic becomes awkward, and making fine adjustments often means moving the entire stand. Some kind of threaded adapter with a pivoting joint would be a welcome inclusion to the mic’s packaging. However, Aston does provide the option of purchasing the mic with a Rycote shockmount. The stainless steel body undergoes a four hour ‘tumbling’ process with other bits of metal shrapnel, giving it an industrial, heavy duty-type look. A very fine random-weave metal mesh lines the inside of the metal protector wires, which is supposed to double as a pop filter. It works reasonably well if a singer keeps their distance, but any closer than six inches and I’d recommend using a dedicated external pop filter. If the stainless steel mesh does get gunky from plosive shrapnel, it can be removed and washed under a tap. Neat. There’s also internal shockmounting to keep the capsule isolated, which is why the mic can be screwed directly onto a stand and not suffer the negative auditory effects of acoustic coupling. While the mic does a decent job ignoring floor vibrations, you’ll still end up with a ‘thwumpf ’ if you knock the stand. SOUND IT OUT
The Origin performed admirably during my time with it. You can check out its very first spin on AT’s YouTube page — a standard, 12th-fret acoustic guitar recording. Next up was alto sax. Saxophones are complex instruments, and it took a fair effort finding the sweet spot for the Origin; with the instrument varying substantially between a rounded or anaemic tone, depending on these subtle adjustments. Up against a pricier BeesNeez Oliver tube condenser the Origin sounded slightly thin, though its high-mid presence provided a nice push forward in the mix. It was prone to harshness when the sax really growled though, so the Oliver was my pick. By contrast, the Origin more comfortably held its own on vocals. On a female singer, the result was a very natural vocal tone with plenty of warmth and weight; but not at the expense of a commanding mix presence. The mic’s ability to handle a large dynamic range also impressed me — the tone was close and intimate for the whisperquiet lines, but maintained body and fullness when the singer belted it out. The vocal track sat in the mix with ease, only requiring some compression and saturation to sweeten it. Rarely do I feel like I’m happy with the sound of a recording without even a smidge of EQ, but the little British mic proved such a scenario is indeed possible for under $600. Next up was a Steinway grand that lives in
Ballarat’s Wendouree Centre for Performing Arts. It’s a magnificent instrument in an acoustically underwhelming hall, nevertheless the Origin delivered clean and balanced results about three feet from the strings with the lid open. And because we love a good shoot-out, the Origin was pitted against our favourite affordable condenser — the thriftier Rode NT1, which has become something of a standard. The Aston came out sounding slightly clearer, with a transparent and extended top end; whereas the NT1 had a more enveloping low mid response that drew you in. It’s worth noting that the Rode required about 5dB less gain than the Aston. Again, check in on AT’s YouTube page for a squiz at our Steinway session. But by far the stand-out experience I had with the Origin was the way it handled acoustic guitar. Impressed with the mic’s performance after that initial video, I multi-tracked a few acoustic guitar takes in a better sounding room. It was like a match made in heaven. The mic yielded a delectably balanced recording that sounded rich, polished and delicate all at the same time. Hearing the guitar tracks sound so ‘finished’ without even a touch of EQ was just stunning. ASTONOMICAL VALUE
The Origin was given a whirl on plenty other sources too — percussion instruments, a guitar amp, male vocals — proving it’s a great all-rounder. As a final test, I used the Origin as the sole microphone for an entire song with around eight tracks. It doesn’t take long for any nasties in a mic’s AT 53
response to expose themselves when stacking up multiple EQ-less tracks. Yet with each new layer tracked with the Origin, the overall mix gained more finesse and clarity — something I haven’t experienced before. It’s a great feeling recording a whole song with one mic, and bragging to your audio mates that there isn’t a single EQ plug-in in the session. The Aston Origin’s motherland is evident in its refined sonic signature — like a tweed-clad Englishman sipping an Earl Grey. To translate, the Origin’s recordings are presented with a beautifully creamy frequency response that’s entirely inoffensive — no lumpy low mids or sharp, grating highs. In saying that neither is it a boring sound — the Origin certainly has character for a transformerless mic. It’s difficult to conjure up a ‘sounds like’ example, because it really does have its own thing going on. It mellows out zing on brighter sources, but remains detailed and airy on vocals — what you’d expect from a quality condenser. That ‘expensive’ sound comes by way of its threedimensionality — that unmistakable quality that feels like you can hear into the recorded track. This British startup is onto something special here, and I suspect the more I use Aston mics, the more they’ll impress. Expectations were high, and the Aston Origin proved it’s got the goods. Get your hands on one — you won’t be sorry.
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REVIEW
AUDIO-TECHNICA BP40 Large Diaphragm Dynamic Microphone Audio-Technica’s first large diaphragm broadcast dynamic behaves like a dynamic but sounds more like a condenser.
NEED TO KNOW
Review: Mark Davie
PRICE $499 CONTACT Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 info@tag.com.au
AT 56
PROS Plenty of low end Built-in pop filter Hypercardioid pattern cuts out room
CONS Not internally isolated from stand
SUMMARY Audio-Technica’s BP40 large diaphragm dynamic microphone comes pre-tuned for speech. Its hypercardioid pattern and scooped response give you plenty of definition whether you’re up on the mic or backed off.
I’m usually quite partial to the look of Audio-Technica’s microphones. While it typically doesn’t wheel out the super-fine mesh work and gold inlay — the gorgeous AT5040 aside — I’ve always found its condensers struck a healthy balance between wanting to use them and admiring their looks. I’m not so sure about Audio-Technica’s latest mic: the large diaphragm dynamic BP40. It looks like the first thing I ever turned on a lathe in high school woodworking class. There’s eight concentric gouges in the body with only two having an intended use — one to locate the ringmount and the other to hide the low-cut filter switch. On the plus side, it certainly gives you something to hold onto, which is handy for a relatively heavy mic like this. The BP40 is technically designed to be a broadcast vocal microphone, like the Shure SM7 or the (equally ‘ugly duckling’) Electrovoice RE20. But will the BP40, like the SM7 and RE20, be versatile enough to escape life on a spring-loaded boom arm from time to time? The first thing I noticed when plugging in the BP40 alongside a Shure SM7B, was the difference in output. It was around 10dB more than the Shure when right up against the grille, depending on what was feeding it. The Shure’s lower output helps it handle the occasional Howard Stern-esque outburst but it does require a decent preamp to gain up the quiet bits. There aren’t any rules dictating which mics you can and can’t use in a radio station studio. These days you’ll find presenters spitting into everything from low output dynamic mics to sensitive large diaphragm condensers. The quieter, more controlled the studio, the more sensitive the mic you can have. A studio with less acoustic treatment or if you’re likely to have a bunch of guests all talking at once, might lend itself to having a dynamic where you have to be ‘on mic’ to be truly heard. Presumably, that’s what Audio-Technica is trying to offer with the BP40, a mic with the robustness and control of a broadcast dynamic but with an output level closer to a studio condenser. DIAPHRAGM DISPERSION
The two mics have a few similarities: the frequency response of both mics starts to dive pretty quickly beyond 15kHz and they both have a large diaphragm, switchable high-pass filter, humbucking coil, built-in pop filter and rugged metal construction. From there, things start to diverge pretty quickly. There’s roughly the same amount of foam between your mouth and diaphragm on both the SM7B and the BP40. Probably slightly more on the Audio-Technica, with the SM7B’s being of a finer grade. But the difference is in the spacing. The cage around the SM7B’s diaphragm puts a substantial air gap between the foam and the diaphragm — about an inch and a half. The BP40 barely has any gap. When you place your mouth against the screen of the Audio-Technica, compared to the Shure you get more proximity effect, more level and more power from plosives. Thankfully the internal pop filter on the BP40 works fine; you do get a little more power coming
through, but you’re not going to distort the diaphragm. What I did find interesting was the slope and corner frequency of the high-pass filter. It’s a 100Hz rolloff filter, with a 6dB/octave slope. It doesn’t make much of a dint in the low end boost of the proximity effect and functions more as a catchall for low-end intrusions, like air conditioning units. The SM7B, on the other hand, has a high-pass filter that’s gentler in slope, but begins much further up; closer to a 3dB/octave, 200Hz rolloff. It provides more of a gentle roll out to counter proximity effect if required, though this is mostly controlled by the cage’s separation. The SM7B also has a mid-boost switch, which gives a gentle boost centred around 3kHz. The BP40 has a more defined boost centred around 4kHz, but it’s built into the response; you can’t switch it in or out. There are a couple of other major differences between the two: vibration transmission and polar pattern. Tapping the stand connected to the BP40 gave a healthy bump in the mic pickup, while the SM7B was virtually silent. It’s part of the beauty of Shure’s Unidyne design that no one’s really matched. Squeezing the BP40 into its optional AT8484 shockmount will kill any stand-borne niggles. The BP40 is also hypercardioid, while the SM7B has a cardioid pickup pattern. Because the BP40’s diaphragm is so wide, if you stay in front of the mic and don’t talk into its side, you’ll still be in the sweet spot. It does pick up the room a little less, but the Shure’s lack of sensitivity has this effect anyway. SCOOP IT UP
The two mics sound completely different; the Shure SM7B is a very flat mic, with a slight low-end shelf cut that gives a full vocal sound without being too muddy. The Audio-Technica BP40 is much more scooped, with that built-in high-mid boost and a healthy response around 100Hz that makes a slight, lopsided smiley face. The bass response of the BP40 can be a nice feature. It’s not excessive, and on spoken word
can give everything a bit of weight; though it does feel like it’s lacking a bit in the crucial 1kHz range. The scooped sound gives a more finished quality to some voices but isn’t as much of an all-rounder. Nevertheless, the combination of the BP40’s frequency response, diaphragm location and hypercardioid pattern means you can pull off the mic a bit while keeping the overall tonality relatively the same. It’s handy for chortling presenters that like leaning back in their chair. I spent a bit of time recording the verse and chorus of a song twice, using the BP40 and SM7B in as many positions as possible. That included vocals, backing vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar amp, bass amp and kick drum — all places I’ve used an SM7B before. The BP40 wasn’t very friendly to either guitar sound, it was just too peaky on the acoustic, resulting in a bit of an annoying, grating pick sound. While it brightened up the electric guitar tone, it made the valve amp sound a bit more transistor-y. Adding some mid-high boost to the SM7B gave a similar result while still retaining the more classic guitar sound. On the bass amp, the scooped sound of the BP40 was preferable, giving more bite to the attack and enhancing what was coming out of the cab. It was also a solid kick drum performer, delivering that modern ‘click with doof ’ sound from inside the drum straight off the bat. Listening back to both tracks though, I tired of the layered BP40 more quickly but felt the SM7B version could do with a little more presence. A mix between the two would have fared better. It’s hard to beat the SM7 on vocals, it’s a classic for a reason. But Audio-Technica isn’t trying to fill the roles mics like the SM7 and Electro-Voice RE20 fell into, outside of their intended use. It doesn’t sound like the BP40 is trying to beat them either, but rather offer a completely different flavour in a very established category — a supertight, pre-scooped broadcast dynamic with a bit of condenser flair.
AT 57
REVIEW
ABLETON PUSH 2
Live DAW MIDI Controller Ableton upgraded the screen on its second generation Push, so you wouldn’t have to look at your computer again.
NEED TO KNOW
Review: Anthony Garvin
Back in 1997, I was a high school student with a newly developed passion for electronic music, and as a result, samplers. I saved my pennies up for the entire year just so I could buy an Akai MPC2000. Since then I’ve owned a significant chunk of the MPC range. So in 2013 when Ableton debuted its Push controller in collaboration with Akai, I was like a kid again, witnessing the perfect union of where I was, and where I’d come from. The melding of Ableton’s powerful software with Akai’s MPC-style hardware. But the original Push never quite lived up to
the fantasy for me. While it did inspire an army of Ableton users with new ways of interacting with their favourite DAW, I never quite gelled with it. I found Push’s workflow a little too cumbersome; constantly going back to the mouse and computer screen, rather than being immersed in the ‘instrument’ in front of me. When Push 2 was announced I was optimistic it would fulfil my original hopes for Push, but my skepticism returned when I opened the box — it looked very similar to its predecessor while in stasis. Once I powered the unit up, however — and the multi-coloured screen came to life —
PRICE $1099 $770 with trade-in
CONS No save button No touch screen
CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or info@ cmi.com.au
AT 58
PROS High-res colour screen Now manipulates audio Logical layout improvements Easier navigation
things started looking different. Perhaps Ableton has learnt a few things from its first attempt. ABLETON STANDS ALONE
While Push 2 is slightly larger than Push, from a physical perspective it’s got a load of similarities — hence the unboxing double take. It has the same 8 x 8 pad layout, roughly the same number of buttons, a similar touch strip, and has stuck with 11 encoders (now all laid out in a line across the top). The chassis also appears to be made from the same rubber-coated plastic shell, although the top-plate is now constructed from
SUMMARY The second stage evolution of Ableton’s Push ‘instrument’ has a layout that pays big dividends in navigation. No more mouse wrangling required, and the high-res colour screen brings with it plenty of new audio manipulation options. If you know Push, you’ll appreciate the upgrade with little learning curve. If Push previously frustrated you, many of those frustrations will be alleviated.
AT 59
ABLETON’S NEW iOS LINK Over the last couple of months I’ve been playing with a beta of Link [now out of beta in 9.6 - Ed]. It’s Ableton’s new method of syncing multiple musicmaking devices — Macs, PCs, iPhones and iPads — wirelessly, reliably and with solid timing. Link works via a peer-to-peer method, rather than a master-slave relationship, which allows various devices to join or leave a ‘shared’ timeline at any point. Any device can stop and start, and players can come and go without disrupting the synchronisation of the other devices in the Link jam. Ableton is freely sharing the Link SDK with other developers, and third-party apps already support it — at least 17 iOS apps from Korg, Akai and numerous others that have Link’ed up to-date.
aluminium for any highly active Pushers. I’ve also been informed that Push 2 is now entirely made by Ableton, having ended its partnership with Akai after production of the original Push ceased. From a user perspective, this seems to be a minor detail, especially considering manufacturing is still based in China. But now that design is wholly Berlin driven, it means Ableton’s software and hardware are better linked than ever. It’s actually the accompanying Live 9.5 software update that paves the way for Push 2’s fundamental workflow updates. Only some of these updates apply to the original Push, which Ableton says it will continue to support for the time-being. INITIAL SCREENING
Ableton hasn’t revolutionised the Push concept with version two, instead opting for a large number of more subtle changes — button changes here, encoders shifted there. With one obvious newcomer; the large, high-resolution colour screen, which replaces the old monochromatic display. Ableton has said goodbye to the dot-matrix printer look but hasn’t gone so far as to embrace smartphone technology — it doesn’t have touch screen capabilities. Although it’s somewhat ironic that a hardware controller needed a better screen to improve its hands-on experience, the new screen is a major step up that gives Push 2 a more elegant feel than its predecessor. And it’s all about the feel with hardware. The screen has a resolution of 960 x 160 pixels, is apparently brighter, and viewable from almost any angle. While brightness never felt like much of an issue with Push, this wider angle of view was a revelation; no matter where I stood, or sat, in the studio the screen was clearly visible and readable. Now you can still keep a visual connection with Push even when you swap to a synth in the corner of your studio. In practice, the colours and higher resolution means Push 2 doesn’t just look better, it works better too. Importantly, it also allows you to get your head around it much faster. New tracks in Live 9.5 are automatically assigned a colour, which AT 60
flow straight through to Push 2’s display. It’s the same with Devices, they also replicate the colour-coding in Live, making it much easier to navigate and keep track of where you are in the session. Flipping over to Mix mode, the metering on Push 2 arguably looks better than in Live itself! The screen also has a new party trick — it can display audio waveforms in great detail. In fact, the original Push had no audio-manipulation features, whereas Push 2 has many. There are now software-assigned buttons both above and below the screen (Push only had buttons below). Rather than adding complexity, doubling the number of automatically assigned buttons makes using Push 2 easier and quicker. For example, in Mix mode, the buttons below the screen are assigned to track selection, while the buttons above allow for switching the encoders between volume, panning and send levels. In Device mode, the lower buttons allow for instant switching between tracks (like in Mix mode), but now the top row of buttons allows for instant selection of the instruments or effects within the track. One button that would really put some distance between me and my mouse though, would be a Save button. It’s still not there on Push 2! BUTTON PUSHERS
After the screen, the buttons on Push 2 are the next most obvious hardware upgrade. Overhauling their design entirely, Ableton has made the buttons lower profile, backlit in an easy-to-read white, and they now have an obvious ‘click’ when pressed. Whilst ‘clickiness’ might not be at the top of anyone’s feature requests, it is another subtle workflow aide — no more second guessing yourself. If ‘clickiness’ wasn’t on your list of assessment criteria, I bet ‘squishiness’ wasn’t
Using Ableton Live is optional when you’re syncing multiple iOS devices. Though where computers are involved, whether in a combination with iOS devices or not, Ableton Live is still the only DAW sporting the technology. Ableton isn’t opposed to other DAW developers incorporating Link into their platforms, it would just be a matter of enough DAW users convincing their manufacturers to get on board. By ditching the concept of master-slave, devices can boot up and ‘see’ the timeline, then drop in at a synchronised tempo on the down-beat of the next bar. Each linked device constantly refers to the shared timeline to ensure its own timeline remains in sync. For example, if you add a high latency plug-in to a track in Live, the delay relative to the shared timeline can be compensated by temporarily increasing tempo without affecting other Link hosts. By eschewing MIDI, Link also ditches MIDI sync hardware. No more USB-MIDI interfaces, cables or adapters for your portable devices. To use Link, firstly ensure all devices are on the same wireless network. Then turn Link on in the preferences or settings in your app… and that’s it. When you hit play, the app will wait for the next down beat to roll over and then start playing. If you own a Korg Volca or Monotribe, the associated SyncKontrol app will now allow you to sync other iOS devices (or Ableton Live) to the Korg hardware via Link. If you have any other MIDI-syncable hardware that you wish to sync with your iOS apps (or Ableton Live), then Alexandernaut’s Link to MIDI app is a little gem. There are more ways to sync MIDI hardware with apps, but Link to MIDI offers a key difference; it allows you to stop or start the hardware whenever you want, and resume in perfect sync. If you’ve ever been deep into a synth-jam or live performance with MIDI hardware, then you’ll know how valuable this simple feature is. It’s been over half a decade since the iPad was released, and it feels like Link is a big step forward in serious iOS music production. More info on Link and currently supported apps at ableton.com/link
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either. Nevertheless, that’s what I like about the new pads on Push 2. While they superficially appear the same as the original, their ‘squishier’ response feels just right. When finger-drumming, the pads are more dynamic allowing for more performance finesse, and you don’t have to bash the pad to get higher velocities. The backlighting of the pads is also more pleasing to the eye, adding to the device’s overall elegance. It’s amazing how much rearranging some buttons and adding a screen can alter workflow. A lot of my reasons for guiltily returning to the laptop when using the original Push are no longer a problem. Browsing has become quicker, simpler and more powerful, and the screen delivers a much more detailed level of navigation. The re-organised arrow buttons on Push 2 allow for much faster folder navigation than the sometimes slow and fiddly process of twisting an encoder. The biggest browsing development is being able to load AU/ VST plug-ins via Push 2 as well as audio files. It seems a little crazy that this wasn’t possible until now, but adding audio to a Live project via Push 2 really unlocks the other 50 percent of Live — audio manipulation — that wasn’t previously accessible from hardware. AT 62
OWN AN ORIGINAL PUSH? If you want to upgrade to Push 2, trading in your original Push before May 1st will snag you a 30% discount on the new hardware. Your old Push will be refurbished and distributed for free to those undertaking “music education projects for young people”. If you are an educator or institution, you can get in touch with Ableton to plead your case for these. If you’ve become fond of your old-school Push
SLICE ’N’ DICE
In Live 9.5, when adding audio into Live via Push 2, the sample turns up on a MIDI track inside a newly designed Simpler. From here, there are a number of options for manipulating the audio via Push 2. The default ‘Classic’ mode puts the encoders in control of the audio in a similar way to an MPC; sample start and end points, looping, etc. But the fun really begins when working with loops and changing the mode to ‘Slicing’. Rather than playing the loop at various pitches,
and its dot-matrix-ey orange screen, rest assured that support will continue. Some of the new improvements in Push 2 have also been implemented in the original Push. These include loading plug-ins, browsing samples, previewing in the browser, Scales saving with Sets, and a few more workflow improvements. More info here: www.ableton.com/en/help/article/push1-live95/
Slicing mode distributes slices of the loop across an 8 x 8 pad grid that are playable, recordable and sequence-able. The screen displays how Live has sliced the audio across the waveform, and you can adjust slice sensitivity and nudge the slicing point with the encoders. Pushing the Layout button then allows each of the slices to be step-sequenced on Push 2’s pads just like a Drum Rack (though it’s still Simpler, not a Drum Rack). Push 2 also has a ‘Pad Slicing’ feature, which allows for real-time slicing of loops via the pads. Simply set the slicing sensitivity to 0%, turn Pad
Re-organised software-assigned buttons, both above and below the screen, do away with dedicated Mute/Solo/Stop buttons. The new Mute, Solo, Stop buttons now work in almost any mode. Press once to control currently selected track, or hold down to use the soft-buttons to control up to eight tracks at once. Convert loads audio from a track into Simpler on a MIDI track. It also converts sliced Simpler tracks into Drum Racks. More dynamic pads with just the right amount of ‘squishiness’. Dedicated setup button adjusts screen and pad settings, as well as switching between two workflows; Scene (default) or Clip. In turn, that determines the behaviour of the Duplicate, New and Arrow buttons. Add Device and Add Track buttons have been relocated closer to the browsing section.
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New high-resolution 960 x 160 pixel colour screen makes browsing faster, navigation simpler, and opens up access to sample editing from the front panel.
Because of the improved screen and neighbouring soft-buttons, all mix functions can now be accessed via one button. Press once for eight channels, or twice for one expanded channel.
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It’s not a new button, but Scales are now saved with Live Sets, rather than globally.
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Re-positioned arrow buttons now continue working whilst browsing Devices and samples, which is very useful.
The Octave buttons are now easier to find, while the Page buttons move the Mixer display and Session pads in blocks of eight.
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Overall, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Push 2 — the refined design has relegated many of my gripes with the original Push. Push 2 is much easier to get around, the pads feel good, and the larger screen eases any menu confusion. All of which adds up to making music faster and more intuitively from the hardware, or should I say, ‘instrument’.
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With only eight soft-assigned encoders, the original Push’s ability to tweak instruments or effect devices was limited. Operator was an obvious example. It’s a feature-packed synthesiser, and eight parameters was never enough. The extra soft-buttons in Push 2 organise the various synth parameters into paginated soft-buttons like Oscillators, Oscillator Envelopes, Filters, etc. Now it actually feels like you have the whole device right in front of you, not just a preset. Also along those lines, tweaking third-party plug-ins with Push has always been doable, but quite clumsy. Plug-in parameters had to be mapped every time a new plug-in or preset was loaded. With Push 2, default configurations can be set up and saved with each plug-in. While a little cumbersome to initially program, once done, it allows every parameter to be controlled via Push 2. Furthermore, the parameters are paginated in banks of eight, like Live’s more complex instruments. Unfortunately it’s presently not possible to name the banks in the same way the native devices do.
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Slicing on and hit the first pad. The loop plays in entirety, but as you hit subsequent pads, the loop is divided up as per your triggers. From here you can re-program loops in infinite ways. After discovering these new audio manipulation features, I’ve been ‘wasting’ hours going back through old loops and finding new ways to use them.
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For Drum racks, the new Layout button switches the pads between the hybrid 16 drum pads/step sequencer mode, or 64 drum pads. For other instruments, it switches the pads between step-sequencing or real-time playing.
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REVIEW
YAMAHA REFACE Mini-keyboards
The Yamaha Reface range of keyboards look a little toy-ish. Which is fine, because they deliver on the fun. Review: Preshan John REFACE CP The Reface CP emulates a number of vintage electric pianos including the Fender Rhodes, CP80, Clavinet and Wurlitzer. Of the four, this keyboard probably made the biggest impression. It dynamically responds to touch with a sensitivity and maturity that far surpasses its toy-like exterior. And to really get the most from the sounds, the CP has a sustain pedal port on the back. Don’t let the minimalistic and retro controls fool you — tons of tones can be pulled from this thing. Wind up the Drive knob to get some tasteful break-up when you dig in, or flick the Wah switch for some groovy funk jams. Yamaha has nailed the analogue delay emulation — chuck on the Wurlitzer sound and dial in a slap-back setting to be time-machined into a ’60s jazz bar. Get some cans on, close your eyes, and you might just think you’re playing the real thing.
NEED TO KNOW
When four battery-powered baby keyboards with mini-keys and built-in speakers arrived at the AT office, no one was expecting much. To be honest we could barely muster the energy to bust them out of their boxes. But, boy, are we glad we did. The office is hooked and I can say the Yamaha Reface is the most fun I’ve had with a keyboard in years. The Yamaha Reface family consists of four mobile mini-keyboards, each based on a classic Yamaha keyboard from yesteryear. They all sport four octaves of mini-keys, and are capable of an impressively broad spectrum of sounds. The back panels feature USB and MIDI connectivity, an Aux In port, headphones output, and two 6.5mm line outputs for stereo. Reface isn’t for the purists — although plenty of synth nerds will
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PROS Authentic, big sound Great fun to play
CONS Mini-keys best suited to mini fingers
indulge, no question — rather, they’re built for portability, playability and fun. They hit a sweetspot where you’ll be just as happy popping one in a backpack, jamming with friends around a campfire, or laying down synth lines in your studio. No one is suggesting Reface will replace your hammer-action 88-note controller keyboard or even the synths they’re emulated on. In fact, whether they’re an utterly faithful recreation of the vintage original or not is irrelevant — start playing with one and you won’t care in the slightest. They’re endlessly tweakable, portable, solid, and boast a very impressive sound.
SUMMARY The Yamaha Reface keyboards are portable, fun, solidly built, and sound great. The price might seem excessive for just four octaves of mini-keys, but acquiring any of these keyboards will guarantee a thoroughly enjoyable jamming experience.
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REFACE CS
REFACE YC What’s a family of mini-keyboards without an organ; and the Reface YC fits the bill magnificently. Sporting a Nord-like maroon paint job, the YC has five voices (or waves) that emulate different vintage organs, including the Yamaha YC-45D. Its tone has oodles of power — dropping down the octave switch reveals a big, punchy low end. The lever on the far left toggles the speed of the Leslie rotary cabinet, modelled realistically in stereo. The Percussion switch spices up jazz organ tones, and the adjacent slider and switch adjust the percussion length and type, respectively. Nine drawbars give you harmonic control over each voicing. Pair the second or third voicing with some distortion to get a dirty ’90s rock organ sound, or pull all the drawbars down and crank the reverb slider to create a majestic church organ. The possibilities will keep you tinkering ’til the cows come home.
The Reface CS is an analoguemodelling subtractive synthesizer, taking after the Yamaha Motif XF. Its single oscillator has five waveforms with separate Texture and Mod sliders, giving you a pretty diverse sonic platform right off the bat. It’s also got what’s probably the most userfriendly built-in looper I’ve come across in my life, freeing up both hands for some radical on-thefly tweakage. There’s a fair bit of functionality in the CS — more than you’d expect from something that’d fit in a backpack. It instantly ignites the creative hemisphere of your brain. The controls are refreshingly ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ — no menuscrolling here, just a well laid-out dashboard of sound-creating potential. The LPF Cutoff and Resonance sliders are responsive and musical, and the Portamento is smooth. Depth and Rate sliders adjust the built-in effects, though the lack of reverb leaves a small void.
REFACE DX At first glance, the Reface DX oozes ‘hi-tech’ — and given it’s an FM synth, I guess it should. Not quite as grab-’n’-go as the CP or CS, the DX requires a little persistence to crack its code — but it’s sure to please once you put some time into it. It excels at warm or airy pads, gritty techno leads, DX7-type electric piano tones, wobble synth bass, tubular bells, marimbas, and heaps more. The four red-lit touch buttons assign themselves to tone-specific FM-synth settings, displayed on the screen. There’s an effects section too, and a built-in looper. You can hook up a sustain pedal to fully enjoy some of the tones. The DX may be the most complicated Reface, but it’s also the most full-featured; I reckon it’s close to gig-worthy — as long as your fingers can navigate the mini-keys.
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