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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 Assistant Editor Preshan John preshan@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 Ewan McDonald
Art Direction Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au 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 info@alchemedia.com.au www.audiotechnology.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.
All material in this magazine is copyright Š 2017 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. 09/08/2017.
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COVER STORY
How To Produce a Record Today
30
ISSUE 40 CONTENTS
22
Brace Yourself: Bottrill Grounds Birds of Tokyo
Xylouris White Live
20
QSC Touchmix-30 Pro Digital Live Console
Maschine Jam Controller AT 6
Studio Focus: Underground Audio
38
48
18
Izotope Neutron Assistive 42 Channel Strip Plug-in
Yamaha Montage Synth Workstation
28 44
World Class Recording Interfaces for Every Application
AudioBox USB96 – 2× mic preamps & MIDI
iOne – USB and iPad – 1× mic preamp
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iTwo – USB & iPad – 2× mic preamps & MIDI
Studio 6|8 – USB – 4× XMAX mic preamps & MIDI
Studio 192 Mobile – 2× XMAX remote control mic preamps, USB 3.0 & adat expansion to 22 × 26
Studio 192 – 8× XMAX remote control mic preamps, USB 3.0 premium quality interface, dynamics & FX & adat expansion
QUANTUM – 8× XMAX remote control mic preamps, THUNDERBOLT 2 – Low latency & adat expansion to 26 × 32
All PreSonus interfaces come with Studio One Artist DAW software and the Studio Magic premium plugin suite.
PreSonus products are proudly distributed in Australia by
Ph: 03 8373 4817 www.linkaudio.com.au AT 7
GENERAL NEWS
AT’S FLAGSHIP 50 SERIES MIC Audio-Technica’s respected 50 Series ushers another microphone into the fold with the new AT5047. The mic looks the part with a classy aluminium and brass housing. Featuring the same capsule as the AT5040 but with a transformercoupled output and optimised electronics, the AT5047 has a wide dynamic range of 142 dB, 1kHz at max SPL. The transformer-coupled output maintains a constant load output impedance, even when capturing sources at extreme SPL, ensuring a stable relationship between the mic and the preamp or console it’s plugged into. Like
the AT5040, the AT5047 has four rectangular twomicron-thick diaphragms which function together to provide a combined surface area twice that of a standard one-inch circular diaphragm. Internal shock mounting decouples the capsule from the microphone body, and the included AT8480 shock mount provides superior bump insurance. Each AT5047 ships with a custom hard-shell carry case with die-cut foam compartments. Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au
MACKIE MR SERIES Mackie’s back in studio monitor world with its redesigned MR Series, targeted to home studio owners budget-conscious recording enthusiasts. The MR Series is available in 5-, 6.5- and 8-inch models, plus the 10-inch MRS10 companion sub. Mackie MR monitors feature a logarithmic waveguide which provides an ultra-wide listening sweet spot and better stereo imaging for higher fidelity and consistent sound over a wide listening area. Acoustic Space Control and HF filters let you
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optimise them for your environment to ensure a flat response. There are three different acoustic space settings that adjust for monitor placements close to walls, in corners, etc. Plus, the highfrequency EQ control allows for further adjustment to ensure an accurate response for your room. Each monitor comes with an acoustic isolation pad that decouples the monitor from the desk. CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au
OUTPUT MAKES A DESK In an unexpected shift from its usual M.O. of creating software instruments, Output has come up with a studio desk called Platform that hits a sweetspot for home producers and musicians. It delivers both form and function at a very reasonable price of US$549. You’d be hard pressed finding comparable studio furniture in that price bracket. Uniquely tailored for music production, Platform has a bridge for studio monitors, 9U of vertical rack space, sleek cable management,
and an optional pull-out keyboard tray. It’s got a clean, modern look that’s available in natural wood or hand-stained finished. One of the coolest facts about Output’s studio desk is it’s made out of real wood from renewable sources. Proceeds from every desk sold go to a foundation started by Ryuichi Sakamoto called More Tree, to support reforestation and carbon offset projects. Currently, the desk is only available in the US, however, global shipping is surprisingly cheap at just US$59.
CUE THE RADIAL STUDIO-Q The Radial Studio-Q is a desktop talkback/cue system. A simple cue switch turns on the built-in microphone or the ‘producer’ mic XLR input. Each mic is equipped with an individual trim control along with a master mic volume. These can also be remotely activated using a remote JR1 mute footswitch. Once depressed, the signal is routed to the studio headphone system while it automatically shunts the program to the desired level. The program signal path is balanced for easy integration
with any console, and features a fully variable level control on the front panel. When the band is full-on, a remote output may be used to send a dry contact to a beacon to attract attention. Radial CEO Peter Janis, says, “The need for a simple talk-back system has become evident. Yes, there are other cue systems on the market, but the Studio-Q manages to do it all in a super compact design.” Amber Technology: 1800 251 367 or sales@ambertech.com.au
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LIVE NEWS
ADAMSON S10n & IS-SERIES Adamson adds to the S Series lineup with the S10n line array cabinet, as well as introducing the IS-Series loudspeaker family. The S10n is a narrow-dispersion (80° x 10°) version of the popular S10 two-way full-range line array cabinet. Other than that, its specs are identical to the S10 but it’s tailored more specifically for the touring world. The IS-Series will debut with the two-way full-range IS7 line array cabinet and complementing IS118 subwoofer. IS7 has two ND7-X5, seven-
inch neodymium drives and an NH3, 1.4-inch exit compression driver. The waveguide produces a slightly curved wavefront with a nominal dispersion pattern of 100° x 12.5°. The IS7 is equipped with NL4 connectors and screw terminals, where the IS118 has screw terminals available on demand. A plan-and-screw rigging solution is recessed in the interior of the rear rigging fins for easy installation. CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au
BOSE PANARAY & MB210 SUB Bose’s new Panaray MSA12X steerable array features a slim, unobtrusive acoustic design with 12 full-range, 2.25-inch transducers in a column line array configuration. 12 internal power amplifiers provide 50W to each transducer. Onboard DSP provides digital control and steers the array’s vertical coverage beam, while the articulated array configuration gives a horizontal coverage of 160°. Independent level and EQ control is supported for two separate beams per array, and onboard memory stores up to 10 user-selectable presets. Dante AT 10
network connectivity is supported, or you can hook it up via the line-level analogue input. Design, setup, and control of beam coverage is provided by Bose Professional Modeler and ControlSpace software. The MSA12X is available in either black or white finish and is paintable. Bose also released the MB210 dual 10-inch compact subwoofer designed for small sound reinforcement systems that require low frequency extension down to 37Hz. Bose Professional: 1800 023 367 or pro.bose.com
EV LANDS X-LINE FLYING SUB The flying subwoofer for EV’s X-Line Advance line array family has touched down. The X12-125F sonically matches the X1 and X2 full-range boxes, and uses the same integrated rigging system to get thumping low-end up and in the air quickly and safely. The sub can also be used in ground-stacked configurations, making it a versatile choice for rental companies and mobile applications as well as fixed installations for live performance venues and houses of worship. Compact and lightweight,
its 18-ply Baltic birch enclosure is finished in EVcoat for maximum durability. The X-Line Advance family currently consists of two-way vertical line-array loudspeaker elements providing 90° or 120° horizontal coverage, the high-output dual 18-inch X12-128 ground-stacking subwoofer, and a comprehensive package of rigging and transport materials. Bosch: 1300 026 724 or stsales@au.bosch.com
MARTIN COAXIAL LE MONITORS Martin Audio’s new LE range of coaxial stage monitors consists of the LE100 (1 x 12-inch LF) and LE200 (1 x 15-inch LF) models. They’ll handle a wide range of applications — from gigging bands, houses of worship, rental houses, to corporate events, and fixed installations. With compact enclosures and the same Coaxial Differential Dispersion drivers as the CDD-Live range, the LE Series monitors have a broad, consistent coverage pattern that allows
greater freedom of movement on stage. Instead of the typical ‘hot-spot’, LE Series produces a nearrectangular coverage pattern over a listening plane at head height — with a wide horizontal coverage close to the monitor that reduces gradually as distance increases to maintain consistent SPL and tonal balance. Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au
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SOFTWARE NEWS
SAMPLE MORE SAMPLES Many of you will already have a precious stash of samples collected over the years and tucked away on a hard drive — your go-to source of inspiration when a song needs a little something extra. And if you’re into electronic music, chances are you’ll have more than one hard drive’s worth of sliced and chopped audio chunks. AudioTechnology has teamed up with Lucid Samples to give away a custom-curated pack of high-quality audio samples that cover a broad range of sounds, like percussion, kicks, snares, claps,
synths, build-ups, sweeps, loops, and more. In other words, you’re sure to find something useful. To get your copy, head over to audiotechnology.com. au and subscribe to our mailing list. Or type www. eepurl/wJrn directly into your browser. Check your email to confirm your subscription and you’ll be sent a download link to the exclusive samples pack. Trawl through the files and spice up whatever you’re currently working on. Enjoy! www.audiotechnology.com.au www.eepurl.com/wJrn
PRO TOOLS 12.8 OUT NOW The latest Pro Tools 12.8 is officially Dolby Atmosready. Until now, mixing in Dolby Atmos required extra plug-ins and convoluted routing workflows to accommodate the multi-channel and object-based audio format. Avid and Dolby partnered closely to bring an inclusive suite of Dolby Atmos workflows. New features include built-in Dolby Atmos panning, support for 7.1.2 stems, deep Avid mixing control surface integration, advanced automation with the Dolby Rendering and Mastering Unit (RMU), and more. Support for Avid Nexis shared storage
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simplifies moving files between systems for faster turnarounds. Pro Tools First users haven’t been forgotten, with Avid Cloud Collaboration now available on the entry-level free version so you can make music with your mates from around the globe (or the dude next door) over the Internet. Track Freeze, lets you quickly freeze or unfreeze all plugins on a track — or just up to a certain insert — to free up processing power. Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com
HELIX GOES NATIVE Line 6 has brought its powerful Helix amp/cab simulation and guitar processing to the DAW realm. The 64-bit Helix Native plug-in supports AAX, AU, and VST formats. It features more than 200 vintage and modern amps, HX Hybrid cabinets, 16 microphones, 23 recording distances, and a luxurious selection of effects emulations. Gigging guitarists can create sounds with Helix Native in their DAW and easily port them over to Helix Floor, Helix LT, or Helix Rack hardware for the stage. The
GUI is designed for speed and simplicity. View your entire signal chain at once and easily jump in to edit a parameter on any processor. Helix isn’t an entry-level guitar plug for laying down demos, and at US$399, it’s priced as such. If you’re in need of a quality ITB amp alternative and the type who enjoys poring over guitar tones for hours, Helix Native is probably the plug-in for you. Australis: (02) 9698 4444 or www.australismusic.com.au
WAVES SMACKS & ATTACKS Some cool plugs have come floating in from Waves’ direction recently, including the new F6 FloatingBand Dynamic EQ. With six fully-adjustable parametric bands, it can function as a normal EQ, or each band can dynamically respond to the source signal. Rather than EQ’ing a frequency the same way for an entire track, you can make the HPF kick in only when the singer cosies up to the mic, or let that 7kHz cut dampen the trumpet’s harshness just for those high notes. Obviously you can use it
as an expander to boost portions of the frequency spectrum too, and mid-side processing gives another way of manipulating tone over the stereo image. The new Smack Attack transient shaper is a handy tool that lets you quickly and easily add ‘bite’ or ‘smack’ to a guitar, drum loop, synth, or percussion sounds. Use it in the opposite way to tame hypersnappy snares or other aggressive transients. Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com
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REVIEW
SHURE MOTIV MV88
Digital Stereo Condenser Microphone
NEED TO KNOW
Shure has released a smart stereo condenser mic that plugs straight into the Lightning port of your (compatible) iPod/ iPhone/iPad — the Motiv MV88. The stereo mic capsule pivots 90° and rotates to optimise your stereo image (there’s also a left/right flip you can perform in software). It looks very professional and feels secure when plugged into the device. I was immediately attracted to the MV88 for a trip I was taking to Indonesia where I would be doing interviews and shooting video. I was planning on taking a Zoom recorder but I liked the idea of the MV88 for stereo recordings because I knew I’d always have my phone with me and the Shure solution represents minimal additional packing; doesn’t require batteries and the file management all resides on my phone. I was also taking an Osmo Mobile smartphone gimbal and thought the MV88 would be a perfect mic for that application. Unfortunately, the Osmo Mobile would only accept my iPhone 6 in an orientation that resulted in the Lightning port being occluded by the Osmo gimbal’s cradle — no dice, in other words. I took both the MV88 and the Zoom. I recorded a number of ambient location recordings which I’ll use in my video edits. The 24-bit recording quality is excellent: there’s no noise floor to speak of and the detail is outstanding. Given the MV88 is plugged into/ attached to the device, you need to be careful
PRICE Expect to pay $259 CONTACT Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au
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PROS Excellent sound Good number of stereo and mono polar patterns Lovely app
of handling noise — this is a setup that benefits from being hands-off/stationary when in record. Naturally, there’s a Motiv app (a free download from the App Store). It looks a million bucks and is easy to use. In the File menu you can top and tail your recording and then select how you want to share your work. When you have the mic plugged in, you can adjust the width of the stereo image, or indeed you can choose a cardioid or figure-8 polar pattern. The easter egg is a raw mid-side mode, which you can manipulate for width and focus later in post. The more standard stereo setting has some width presets or you can pinch the screen to adjust the stereo width graphic. Additionaly, (beyond from the primary gain adjustment) there’s a compressor you can tweak, and wind reduction. The kit comes with a nifty protective case and a mini 3.5mm extension cord. Even if your headphone connector can share the space at the bottom of your iDevice, the floppy extender cord reduces the risk of the minijack rubbing up against the MV88’s windshield, which can create unwanted noise. The MV88 is ideal for sound recordists scouting stereo ambiences. It’s also a good fit for recording demos. For example, I’ve sat the MV88 on top of my piano when I’m bashing out some song ideas (guitarists will love it as well). It’s also perfect for anyone using their iPhone/iPad as a
CONS Not optimised for selfiestyle vlogging Handling noise will be an issue at times
video recorder, with one small caveat: you need to be aware of how the MV88 might fit into your selfie-stick/gimbal-style apparatus. The base of the MV88, which presumably houses the A/D converter, is not symmetrical. Plug it in one way and it leaves space for my iPhone 6’s headphone jack to be accessed. Plug it in the other way and it partially covers the headphone socket. That’s fine, I hear you say, simply plug it in the way that allows you to access the headphone jack. Sure. But the MV88 pivots 90° in only one direction. So if I’m doing a selfie video with the mic pointed at me rather than away from me, I have to plug the MV88 in a way that covers the headphone jack. Again, not the end of the world, but it’s an inconvenience needing to pull the MV88 in and out to check the audio of a take, and not being able to monitor the audio during setup. If I could have explained the above paragraph in one short sentence I would have. But the broader point is, ensure the MV88 comfortably fits with your device and your existing setup. If, in all likelihood, it does, then the results are clearly superior to anything possible from your phone. In fact, being a Shure small diaphragm condenser capsule, it’ll rival any standalone coincident pair stereo mic setup… and so it should. At around $300, the MV88 is a primo alternative. But it’s worth it.
SUMMARY Got a recent iDevice? The MV88 negates the need for another stereo recorder in your kit bag. Sound recordists, journos and musicians looking for a superior alternative will find the MV88 desirable. Until Apple supersedes the Lightning connector!
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REVIEW
ALLEN & HEATH ZED6 Compact Mixer
Price: $269 Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 info@tag.com.au
I’ve been taking some kinda baby-mixer challenge for a while now. My rationale is every sound guy or gal should have a mini mixer in their kit bag. It can potentially get you out of all sorts of problems; problems that, in and of themselves, may well be trivial, but 30 minutes prior to go-time can disproportionately occupy your mind or even scuttle an otherwise great gig. A mini mixer can act as a stand in sex changer on a lead, or provide a quick extra monitor send, or be a defacto signal splitter etc, etc. So we’re agreed then: a micro mixer is a good thing to have in your back pocket. Fortunately there’s no end of choice and the options are good. Generally these mini mixers will all have a couple of mic preamps and a couple of instrument inputs and/or stereo inputs. The mixer will have some basic EQ. There will be main output metering and headphone monitoring. This leaves you with some choices to make: Do I want channel faders rather than level pots?; Do I want XLR main outputs or jacks?; How much metering do I need (channel metering as well as AT 16
main output metering)?; Do I want an internal power supply? Allen & Heath’s Zed range has been around for a while and the GS mic preamp is a proven performer, so the Zed6 sounds good and is a safe choice as far as build quality and reliability is concerned. I was immediately reassured when busting the Zed6 out of its packaging. There’s something about the fairing around the folded steel mixer that feels good. The knobs all feel solid, everything is as it should be. I was also immediately pleased with the fact it had an internal PSU. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a ‘lump in the lead’ PSU but it is potentially another thing to lose or otherwise be separated from the mixer during a pack down. I don’t mind the fact the Zed6 has level pots on the channels rather than short-throw faders. I don’t see myself actively mixing on the Zed6, it’s more a set and forget unit. Thankfully the main fader has some resistance to it, as this mixer will find itself in situations where it’s more likely
to be knocked and the traditional A&H ‘hair trigger’ fader unit would give me constant lowlevel anxiety. The preamps sound good and there’s plenty of gain. As you’d expect there’s a global 48V phantom switch, an HPF on each mic channel and serviceable two-band EQ. A headphone button allows you to solo a channel through your cans. There’s no per-channel mute on/off button — something I missed. At around $220 street price there are cheaper mini mixers on the market — Mackie, Behringer, Yamaha and Soundcraft all have capable offerings. Nevertheless, the Zed6 is an excellent choice. It’s a good-looking mixer, with the internal PSU being a real drawcard, as are the Hi-Z switches on the mic channels (especially handy if you’ve run out of DIs). I wish it had channel mute switches, and RCA inputs would have been handy. But this comes down to individual requirements and building your own personal checklist of ‘must haves’. Certainly the Zed6 ticks most of my boxes.
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REGULARS 24-track Ampex MM1200 two-inch tape machine 32-channel AMEK Einstein Super E console Pro Tools 10 SSL Alpha-Link conversion
STUDIO FOCUS:
UNDERGROUND AUDIO Chris Brownbill has so helplessly succumbed to the audio bug that he’s now working three jobs to lease a space near central Brisbane, just because it’s a great room for tracking drums. Growing up in Brisbane, Chris ran a DIY community recording space for a few years. After it was shut down by the council, he freelanced for a while with his eyes peeled (ears, actually) for a spot that would produce a magical drum sound. Brisbane doesn’t have a shortage of commercial recording spaces, but they can often fall out of the average indie artist’s reach. Especially if their music appeals to a very narrow audience — precisely the type of artists Chris works with. One day he lugged his gear into a small space near central Brisbane to track drums, and was delighted to discover the spot he had been waiting for. The lease was “almost affordable”, so he took the plunge and leased it on a shoestring budget. Acousticians and scientific remedial tactics weren’t a part of the fitout exercise. Instead, Chris got a mate to bang drums around the room, found where AT 18
it sounded best, and chucked up some panels to optimise it. The same approach was repeated with different instruments until there were happy ears all round. Underground Audio, as it became known, is an analogue recording haven. An Ampex 24-track tape machine is fed by an Amek Einstein Super E 32-channel console. Having picked up a few things from Steve Albini at a Mix With The Masters course in France, the analogue recording workflow has become second nature to Chris, and he’d have it no other way. In fact, his time with Albini was what sparked the idea to go ‘all-in’ and lease a recording space, with little to no thought of making it profitable. The tape machine feeds into a Pro Tools rig, which functions as a digital recorder and not much more. Mixing involves little more than level balancing and the odd touch of processing. Chris is a minimalist. While Chris produces and engineers 90% of recordings at Underground Audio, the studio space is available for freelance engineers to man their
own sessions. You won’t find a wall full of outboard in the control room because Chris’s philosophy is all about getting it to tape with as little hindrance as possible. The Underground approach is to make the recording sound like the band in the tracking room. Chris doesn’t care for polish and commercial sheen as much as authenticity and honest reproduction. He’d also rather get out of the way of the music than for Underground Audio to have a distinguishable ‘sound’. You might’ve guessed — his stuff doesn’t get much radio play. Underground’s bread and butter genres are far afield — stuff like black metal, punk and other classifications that are an acquired taste. Not long ago the studio was filled with over 60 punters who were there to watch some local bands record and film the process. The event was put on by West End Festival, a celebration of local music in the same suburb as Underground Audio. www.undergroundaudio.com.au
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AT 19
FEATURE
XYLOURIS WHITE LIVE Cretan lute with rock drums is not your average gig combo. But hey, it’s the Melbourne Recital Centre, where the fringes of culture suit up on the main stage. Report: Mark Davie
Although the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Elisabeth Murdoch Hall was purpose built for chamber orchestras, every genre makes its way through the doors at some point — blues, jazz, techno, avant-garde, world music, and rock ’n’ roll, too. This time, it was Xylouris White, a combo of lute player/vocalist George Xylouris, and Dirty Three drummer Jim White. Though far from the hall’s ideal source, FOH engineer Jake Martin isn’t a stranger to drums, and he reckons Cretan lute isn’t all that unfamiliar either. When a live drum kit appears onstage, it’s usually ensconced in carpet and 10m-high drapes. This time, with only a duo, the dressing is limited to a couple of rugs on the floor. There are operable banners hanging around the perimeter, which were fully deployed, but only shave off a fraction of the reverb time. Jake isn’t worried about the liveliness, though: “The beauty of the space is you hear and feel what’s happening out in the room,” he explained. “Jim’s a pro, so he’ll play to the space. Plus, the acoustic is beautiful, so it’s nice to have it open.” On the night, the duo’s dynamics ranged from slow, lightly-picked numbers with droning vocals to full-blown strumming accompanied by pounding rhythms. Jake worked the PA brilliantly to reinforce the stage sound. “I don’t really want to hear the mics and PA working, I just want to hear the music,” he explained. “Putting it through the PA in a big room like this actually helps diffuse it and makes it sound like it’s in the room again.” The natural quality of the mix left the crowd to lock into the humorous dichotomy of George’s quiet intensity and Jim White’s idiosyncratic stage presence — walking around shoeless and dropping his sticks over his drums with flair. Not your average gig, but entirely entrancing.
The neatly laser cut mic storage lockers are a sight to behold; rows and rows of Neumanns, DPAs, AKGs, and Shures perfectly laid out and ensconced in blue surrounds.
The d&b T series PA is configured into left/ centre/right hangs, with adjustable heights, with two T10s and B4 subs ground stacked on each side. The centre also recently acquired larger d&b V series ground stacks for gigs requiring some serious SPL. “National Audio Systems spend a lot of time with us in here time aligning and tweaking,” said Jake. “We’ve got Meyer Sound Galileo in line doing all the processing, which we’ve got networked out the front. When we use the powerful ground stacks, the array is timed to those, otherwise everything is timed to the array. A lot of guys just bus the centre, -6dB down from each side. I often use it in a heavy mix to get vocal clarity. If there’s detail missing it helps to get it away from the walls, but I never separate it fully.
AT 20
Jake: “The sound doesn’t change drastically with a full house, the temperature change is the bigger factor. The seats are supposedly acoustically designed to soak up sound exactly like a human body.”
If anyone can handle obscure instrument combinations its freelance engineer, Jake Martin. “I’ve miked up everything here.” He was previously employed full-time at the Recital Centre, but after moving back to Bendigo, makes the trip back for shows a couple of times a week. He’s sitting at the Digico SD5 at FOH in the hall. They also have an SD8 for monitors and an SD11 which typically services the smaller Salon. It was a bit of a nightmare start. There were two brown outs during the day, one which tripped all the amp breakers and took out the wireless network just prior to the show, resulting in a short delay while Jake got everything back online. Once everything came back, it was smooth sailing from then on. The mix position at the back of the auditorium is situated under the balcony, so there’s a little bit of mid range buildup to be aware of. “I almost never do additive EQ; I avoid it like the plague,” he said. “I used a graphic on the vocal to tune the SM58. I’ll tickle some instruments with compression, and put a bit on the overheads. I do have a parallel vocal channel that’s getting slammed. I used a really short delay as a thickener for the lute blend, which is an easy way to get presence in here. I’ve got a Lexicon PCM96 hall on the vocal and a plate on the snare bottom.” Jake: “I don’t usually use Sennheiser MD421s on the toms, but it was on the rider. I’m not really into gating drums, I like them live with spill and bleed. The Beyer M88 on the kick drum is a favourite of mine, and AKG C414s as overheads are standard here. I tend to keep them fairly low because the room is live. Jim wanted something dark for the hi-hats, so I brought in a Line Audio CM3 pencil condenser, which is pretty wide, but I just put it close.”
George plays a Cretan lute, which, he explained, “has four double strings, the tuning is in fifths — E, A, D, G — opposite to a guitar. It’s a half pear, long neck, with moveable frets. I do different open tunings throughout the show, changing maybe a couple of different times during the show. The Cretan lute has more bass and body than other lutes in Greece, we strum a lot of in Crete, so it suits.” George’s lute had two pickups inside, which are combined and sent straight into the DI. Then the link out fed his pedals — an Echoplex preamp driver and Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb — which was then split to the two Fender Twin amps (one as foldback for Jim White). The third lute channel was fed by a Neumann KM184 pencil condenser. “I thought the blend of the DI, the mic and amp was nice,” said Jake. “It’s got dirt as well as finesse.”
AT 21
FEATURE
a heavy n r u t o y k o e Birds of T wave Karate-Tim d e lp e h l re ril ave Bott e from their Squa D r e c u d Tool pro ping back. Asid rip leaf by st d, that is! un Guitar So Story: M
ark Davie
Artist: Birds of Tokyo Album: Brace
AT 22
It was the day after the final US Presidential debate, almost three weeks before Trump came home for the upset win — upsetting half the US population, overconfident polling pundits, and liberals everywhere. Birds of Tokyo singer Ian Kenny was agitated and bored by the payoff after such a momentous build up. “In a way, who cares? But of course you care,” he said. “How often do you want to be part of the circus?” That sentiment flows through the band’s latest album, Brace. On one hand, you want to detach from the political circus, but on the other, there’s a responsibility to engage. The album seems uncharacteristically heavy — musically and lyrically. Whether Kenny’s calling for revolt, predicting destruction, or warning about the outcomes of selfish desire, his bandmates are laying down an equally crushing soundtrack. “That weight of music has always been in our bones and language when we talk about songs,” said Kenny. Indeed, after re-reading the lyrics for the band’s biggest commercial pop hit, Lanterns, it’s right there for anyone to see. Though the call for an uprising feels more like a subtext cloaked by the anthem’s natural uplift. “It feels like we got it across the whole record this time,” said Kenny. “We push the production side to emphasise what the band is at the time. This time round we thought, ‘F**k, this carries a different weight.’ We want to point the finger at a few things; hold some people accountable, and ourselves accountable as well.” Birds had always seemed like the light-hearted outlet for Kenny, who’s other band, the progrocking Karnivool, has never been afraid to work in darker shades. But talking to Kenny, the two have always had mutually exclusive creative paths and after almost a decade together this was just Birds’ time to get heavy. “I don’t think we could have stopped it to be honest,” continued Kenny. “It was one direction and one direction only for this record. I mean, what the f**k? Adam [Sparks, guitarist]’s actually playing a tap solo, dual solos on some of the bits, and does a blinder in Harlequins. I was so pumped, he never really breaks out and creates space where it’s purely him exposed on his instrument. He’s done that on this record and nailed it. It’s so metal.” BUILDING THE BIRD CAGE
Birds have developed a writing and pre-production system that’s become habitual, but is designed to get them out of a routine. FOR EVERY ALBUM THE BAND RENTS A NEW SPACE TO WRITE AND DO PRE-PRODUCTION IN. SOMETIMES IT’S A STUDIO, BUT MORE LIKELY A HOUSE OR TERRACE APARTMENT LOOSELY CONVERTED INTO A TEMPORARY STUDIO. A layer of acoustic treatment
goes up, holes are punched through walls to run cables between rooms and the band’s collection of recording equipment and instruments is installed. It’s about the fourth time the band has gone through the process, so they’re all comfortable rolling up their sleeves and getting the plaster saws out. In fact, when I was talking to Kenny, they were in the throes of patching up plaster and slapping a coat of bond paint back on their latest pair of townhouses on Parramatta Road in Annandale.
“I’m pretty sure it was stuck between two brothels,” reckoned Kenny. “It’s an okay area, but it’s not great. We gut the house without knocking down the walls. Then move a whole bunch of gear in, soundproof it, and set it up so we can write the bulk of the record there. We’re just getting rid of it now the record’s done. With touring coming up, we don’t actually need the studio. When we come to make the next record, we’ll get another place.” When I asked Kenny why they don’t just lock in a lease for a permanent space, he explained: “It’s not the space at all. It’s making a record there, investing in the writing, investing your time, the emotional connection to it all. By the time we’ve made the record, we’ve really chewed up the space. We welcome a fresh space each time we go in to make a record.” When it comes to engineering during preproduction Birds have some in-house talent. Sparks — who had some production credits on their previous album, March Fires — provides the bulk of the gear and know-how. He’s been a student of audio engineering since starting an SAE course in 1997, dropping out of uni courses after that, then starting another music and production course at WAPA in 2003. At the end of his student life, Sparks “started working illegally out of the studio there,” he said. “That became my full time job. I was recording and producing metal and prog bands in Perth, even though I’ve never been a metal and prog guy.” Though he did grow up listening to Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins and a lot of early Nine Inch Nails, so he was well acquainted with heavy music. “Then I ran my own little place in Perth up until around 2008 when Birds started taking off.” Sparks explained that the terrace house setup is broken up into a main room — which housed all the synths, Neve and API preamps, a Womog Audio 1176 clone, some JLM pres borrowed from assistant engineer Nathan Sheedy, Barefoot monitors and the Pro Tools HD rig — and a secondary writing room. While the bulk of the record was tracked at Studios 301 and Jungle Studios in Leichhardt, the band likes to keep recording quality high from the early writing stage, in case those parts make it onto the album. “It doesn’t really make sense for us to print everything then redo it when we go to another studio,” explained Sparks. “We like to have our own environment where the sessions are constantly open and tweakable until the very last minute when we have to print and send the mix in.” Often it would be the happy accidents they would keep, whether sound design elements, a Moog patch or guitar configuration they couldn’t quite reproduce at the tracking stage. HEAVY PRODUCER LOAD
Birds went looking for a producer who could help them carry the heavy load and shortlisted Dave Bottrill, who has produced Tool, Dream Theatre and King Crimson; and had some hand in half the albums they brought in as references. It was a no brainer, but the band still got on Skype well before pre-production to make sure they’d get along
before they flew him over for three months. “Man you could find yourself three weeks into a situation where you’ve flown a producer in and it’s just not right,” said Kenny. Thankfully, their hunched played out. “We knew that if we could get access to this guy, we might be able to achieve the results we’re after. We totally got it, then some more. Dave really pushed the performance side of things, drilling whoever needed it to get the right part at the right time. He was fairly relentless,” and Kenny says he was all for Sparks ripping on the guitar. “Not because Dave’s made heavy records, but because he knew this was a new welcome space for the band. He wanted to do it well and expose new parts of what the band can do.”
We push the production side to emphasise what the band is at the time. This time round we thought, ‘F**k, this carries a different weight
Bottrill embraced the Skype back and forth to help bridge the divide between Toronto and Sydney. It’s difficult to fit six to nine months of international travel into the schedule and budget, he stayed in touch for most of pre-production then came out for roughly three months. During pre-production he wanted to make sure the record was as “tight and taut” as it could be, making recordings of the progress to refine the lyrics and song structures. “I find it very exciting when bands step out of their comfort zone,” he said. “The whole band wanted to push their level of writing to inspiring new peaks. I brought a level of experience from doing more heavy music; a way to mic guitars and record things in a way that keeps the heaviness of it. The exciting challenge for me was to keep it heavy but feature Ian’s great melodies at the same time.” At Studios 301 in Sydney, “we did all the drums, most of the bass, some guitar and some key parts together,” said Kenny. “Then we built the rest of the record around that at Jungle, including the vocals.” While Sparks noticed Bottrill was happy to let 301 engineer Simon Todkill get on with his job, it was still very much under Bottrill’s direction. “I like to make sure the bottom end is solid in the rhythm section before I start overdubbing any part of it,” said Bottrill. “There’s nothing worse than building on a weak foundation. “When I go into a studio to record drums, I try to make sure the drummer knows how the part goes, and how it’s played. I think musicians really want to push themselves to be the best they can AT 23
Playing a Yamaha SK-20 part in the control room, where the guitar amps are stacked ready to make some Squarewave Karate-Time Guitar Sounds.
be, and I always try to help them achieve that. FOR DRUMS, I WANT EVERY SNARE HIT, EVERY KICK DRUM, EVERY TOM HIT TO BE CONFIDENTLY HIT. NOT NECESSARILY HOW HEAVY IT IS, BUT YOU’RE MAKING THAT HIT WITH THE DYNAMIC AND THE CONDITIONING YOU INTEND FOR IT. ONCE THAT’S THERE, THE ENERGY REMAINS.
“Once we’ve got the drums I try not to edit too much. I love to keep the performance from the musician and the spirit of humanity to be involved as much as possible.” “It was surprising how little Dave would get anal about the bits and pieces,” noted Sparks. “A little sharp or flat doesn’t matter, just let it be natural and let the performance come through.” Bottrill went on to detail how they captured the drums at the recently closed down Alexandria version of Studios 301. “The drum room at 301 was really good when you put the drums on the back wall, facing out to the big room with room mics if you want a really big sound,” he recalled. “I like to have at least three microphones on a kick drum; one inside, like an AKG D12, one outside, say a Neumman FET 47, and a sub-kick. I mic each tomtom with one on the top, usually a Shure SM57, and one underneath, a Sennheiser MD421, out of phase, so I can get the resonance and full sound of the tom. SOMETIMES I PUT A COTTON WOOL BALL INSIDE THE TOM AND CLOSE THE HEAD DOWN ON TOP OF IT. IT LIFTS UP WHEN YOU HIT THE DRUM BUT SETTLES ON THE BOTTOM HEAD SO IT DOESN’T RESONATE FOR TOO LONG AND CLOUD THE REST OF THE DRUM SOUND. Snare is usually
an SM57 on top and bottom, and I’ll often use a Neumann U87 for room mics and have a couple of AT 24
overhead cymbal mics. “Simon and I would check the phase of each mic. With a close mic you check the phase in and out and move the mic back and forth two inches here and there. I often get a string or mic cable and measure how far each microphone is away from the snare drum, for example.” Bottrill likes to make decisions at the tracking stage, blending the bottom and top mic of the toms and printing them together. However, while he might occasionally print the kick and snare blends, he kept his options open since it had been a while since he’d worked at 301. “I do like to make commitments,” he said. “For instance, I’d blend the mics on each of the guitar cabinets, but keep each cabinet separate.” SQUAREWAVE KARATE-TIME GUITAR SOUND
The guitar mic and cabinet scheme Bottrill is referring to is one he and Sparks developed that they called the Supersound or Squarewave KarateTime Guitar Sound! “It was basically a combination of nine mics all summed down,” explained Sparks. “We’d have a Diezel amp, a Marshall and this Morgan, which is an AC30-leaning amp without the stacky, tubey, weird glassiness, made by a
Ian Kenny letting out his frustrations into the Soyuz SU 017 microphone.
boutique guy in Orange County. Then we’d have three mics on each cab — like a Shure SM57, a Sennheiser MD421 and a Royer 121. THEY’D ALL GO THROUGH MY RACK OF NEVE AND API PREAMPS, AND WE’D FIND A BLEND WE’D LIKE OUT OF ALL THE COMBINATIONS AND SUM IT DOWN IN PRO TOOLS.
“The Diezel would have a certain type of lowend and high-gain, whereas the 800 was more mid-range, and the Morgan was really classic clean.
It was basically a combination of nine mics all summed down. We’d have a Diezel amp, a Marshall and this Morgan, which is an AC30-leaning amp. Sometimes it’d be a blend of all three, which was the Supersound.
Sometimes it’d be a blend of all three, which was the Supersound. We didn’t want to have options when it came time to mix. Once we got it going, we didn’t EQ anything going in, Dave would just find his balance of the three and that would be the guitar sound.” “We start by getting the best guitar sound we can and then tailor it to each part,” continued Bottrill. “That way when you’re at the end of the record, it doesn’t just sound like the same lead guitar all the way through the record. It will also change with the key you’re playing in or the part you’re playing. You’ve got to make sure the part you’re playing is supported by the sound. Each of the rhythm tracks on the album have subtle differences in their sound. “I try not to compress too much because I’d rather have the player play the part as evenly as they can. But I do like 2-3dB of compression to take the edge off and even it out a little bit. I’d EQ a little bit of bite into the top end after the compressor too.” “Similar to the guitars, we used two amps for the bass; an Ampeg SVT for the big bottom end and
a smaller amp for the grit and distortion. He also used a few pedals along the way to add a little bit of edge so it bites through again and blends in with the guitars.” STRIPPING BACK
Despite the elaborate Squarewave Karate-Time Guitar Sound setup, the band actually kept to a strict diet of core instruments. “It was more about stripping back,” explained Kenny. “Adam’s got dozens of guitars and Glenn’s got a dozen synths. We’ve actually built an arsenal in our studio, but Bernie gave himself two bass guitars to use for the record, Adam gave himself four guitars, Westy stuck to the one kit for most of the record and made a hybrid kit just to flesh out a few parts, and Glenn stuck to a very minimalistic approach to the keys. Even Bernie’s pedalboard now is basically two pedals and a channel switch. It’s the same with Adam, just really basic from the floor up.” Sparks said the actual number of guitars he ended up pulling out of his quiver was just two for
the whole record: “Dave wouldn’t really let us edit anything; he didn’t want to do all different guitar voices. It was about picking a left channel guitar and a right channel guitar, do one take for each side, play it again, play it again, there you go, that’s your sound.” Similarly, Glenn’s keyboard setup was primarily a choice between a Yamaha SK-20, Moog and DSI OB-6 synth. “We ran it all through a Pi-Phase, which is a little Mutron Bi-Phase replica pedal and two Fulltone OCD guitar pedals,” said Sparks. “We’d get this sweeping wide, late ‘70s psych sound out of it. We didn’t EQ much, but we ran that through a pair of old API 550s to shape how much midrange we wanted in the keyboard sound. “THE CORE OF A LOT OF WHAT YOU HEAR IN THE RECORD IS ONE OF BERNIE’S P-BASSES THROUGH AN AMPEG, THE MOOG THROUGH OCD PEDALS, AN ESP GUITAR TO THE LEFT AND A FENDER WITH BAREKNUCKLE PICKUPS ON THE RIGHT. THAT’S PRETTY MUCH IT AND DAVE MANAGED TO MAKE IT SOUND SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT.”
Kenny’s a man on a mission when it comes AT 25
Getting stuck into building a patch on the Moog Voyager, one of the key synths on the album.
We gut the house without knocking down the walls. Then move a whole bunch of gear in, soundproof it, and set it up so we can write the bulk of the record there.
to vocal takes. His Karnivool band mates were always impressed by his ability to nail the take, and he takes a similar approach to the Birds material. “I understand what it means to record and I enjoy getting things down,” he said. “I don’t like wasting my time or other people’s time in there. I want to get in there, nail it and move on. I like perpetual motion, so I try and work my hardest to keep that going.” To keep things humming along, Bottrill and Sparks landed on one vocal mic early on. “I bought this Russian mic — a Soyuz SU017,” said Sparks. “I also had a Bock 241 that we really liked for Kenny, but when we put the Soyuz up without any processing, Dave said, ‘There’s your vocal sound.’ The vocal chain was that into a Chandler LTD pre/ EQ then my Tube-Tech CL1B compressor.” BOTTOM UP MIX APPROACH
These days Bottrill mixes in his Canadian studio, where he works in-the-box. “I’ve got every Waves, UAD, McDSP, Soundtoys plug-in on a very powerful system,” described Bottrill. “It’s so AT 26
much easier to go between songs, especially when mixing remotely for people in other countries. I can send mixes to people then run through another song. With a console I’d be stuck for days waiting for feedback. “In this day and age I see no loss in quality. I like to think how I use the equipment has a unique quality to it. I have excellent quality converters, an excellent quality computer system, and I know how to operate it. It took me a long time to get familiar with in-the-box but I did a lot of referencing and A/B testing and found that for the most part it really wasn’t a problem not running things out to a console for summing.” Bottrill says when he pulls up a session it might have 2-300 tracks to work through. It can’t just be a matter of throwing it up on the board and balancing, there has to be a lot of carving out involved. He usually starts by figuring out the bottom end that fits the record and working from there. “When I’ve got that right I can fit the guitars and vocals in around that. If I try and build it from the top, I lose my way. I’ll usually pull up the
rhythm section then the vocals, because those are the foundation. “I’ll generally high-pass guitars but only at 20Hz to start with and then if it needs more I will. It’s really dependent on the part. If it’s up high then I can knock off a lot. But if it’s a low, chuggy part, you want that air moving and to feel the energy at the bottom end when they’re palm-muting. “With Birds and other heavy acts I’ll tend to add samples to the drums. However, I won’t use those samples necessarily to replace sounds, but I’ll use them to open gates. THERE’LL BE A GATE ACROSS THE SNARE OR TOMS, BUT THEY’LL BE TRIGGERED OFF A TOTALLY CLEAN SAMPLE. THAT WAY I CAN SET THE THRESHOLD LEVEL AND HOW FAR THE GATE GOES DOWN TOO. It doesn’t
actually turn it right off, but just lowers it down. So you still have the feeling of live drums but you’re not getting a lot of the bleed and the rest of the drums on tom mics. “If I get to the mix point and I need a little bit more bottom or a little bit more attack on my tom, then I’ll use that sound to fulfil that role. But I never use it as a replacement, I’ll use it as a supplement.”
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Dave Bottrill writing notes on the Brace sessions, and (opposite, bottom right) enjoying the process.
It’s very much de rigueur to add harmonic distortion to tracks in a mix, but Bottrill prefers to keep things clean. “I don’t tend to use much distortion to blend things,” he said. “I work very hard to balance the mixes so that things are working together. I’ll use some great simulated analogue compressors to gel everything together, but I’ll only ever limit very gently.” SENSE OF SIZE
Kenny says they would do another record with Bottrill in a heartbeat, if it was the right musical fit. Far from a hard-edged heavy metal producer, Kenny described him as “a sweet Canadian dude, really well-versed in the best way to approach records and handle people. Dave’s best role was knowing where to pull back and keep things in reserve. Sometimes you can overload the textural
dressing and make it a bit too thick, which can constrict certain songs. He was very aware and attentive of when to leave space.” “What we learned most from him was just to play well and be a band,” said Sparks. “We talked a lot about not editing anything other than comping drums. If you grid everything up and it all falls on the beat, you’re going to sound small. Not editing has a natural push and pull, and it forces you to try to play really well. We got the sense of size from the blend of the two guitar channels, the Moog and the bass. It took a while to dial that balance in, but once we got it, that became a bedrock for everything around it. The more we added to it, the smaller it started to sound.”
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TUTORIAL
PART 1
The role of the record producer has encompassed everything from ‘label A&R guy’ to freelance megastar producer. These days, everyone calls themselves a record producer, so we unpack the skills you actually need to truly wear the hat. Tutorial: Michael Carpenter
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For years, when filling out my customs form to re-enter the country, I’d get to the occupation section and pause. Inevitably I’d go with the truth and write down ‘Record producer’, then brace myself for the customs officer’s inevitable list of questions. It always seemed to be a job people were impressed by, but never really understood. “So what do you do as a record producer?” They’d ask. Or, “Have you worked with anyone famous?” To something beyond New Idea-level interest, such as, “Do you play an instrument?” Followed by supremely false assumptions like, “I’ll bet you make lots of money!” It would go on and on, with every reply making the customs officer regret ever pursuing this line of questioning. When I finally got the stamp of approval I’d shuffle forward and remind myself, again, to just write ‘Musician’ next time. I reckon if you got 20 musicians in a room and asked them what a record producer does, most of them would have a vague idea, but generally speaking, even musicians don’t understand the breadth of this job. Producers are often misunderstood and misrepresented, which can be frustrating and work against them in a business sense. This series of articles will try to highlight what a record producer has done historically, and what part the record producer plays when making a record today. HISTORY OF THE RECORD PRODUCER
The traditional record producer clearly worked for the people paying to make the record; usually the label. In the earliest incarnations of the role, the producer was often the ‘A&R Manager’ — the person in charge of sourcing the material, putting together the ensemble, and manifesting the vision for a hit record from the ‘people upstairs’, to overseeing the technical staff working at the assigned studio, often chosen or owned by the label. In this situation the producer’s role was often musical, but not necessarily technical. There are famous stories of legendary record producers never touching the console because it ‘wasn’t their job’. In this early form of popular music the record producer was rarely working for the artist. There was no appeal to ‘manifesting an artist’s vision’. This was a job given to a person who worked for a higher business entity. To that end, producers needed to be well versed in a variety of styles, sympathetic to what was working in the marketplace, and have a team (engineers, studios, songwriters, publishers and musicians) of trustworthy collaborators who would make the job run more efficiently. In many ways, the producer’s role was to manage the talent at every stage of the creative process, while working within the constraints of the traditional studio structure. Those constraints included time-allocated session calls, and the label’s requirement to cut a certain amount of tracks in the budgeted time frame. More often than not, the least important part of this puzzle was the artist. There are stories of pop artists rarely talking with their producer about anything other than the sheet of music placed in front of them to sing.
Of course, it was never that cut and dry. Producers like Sam Philips of Sun Studios, Leonard and Phil Chess of Chess Records, and Berry Gordy at Motown started out as one-stop shops. They were the record label, often also the song publisher and writer, balance engineer, producer, and occasionally the artist’s manager. The constant was that the artist still worked for whoever bankrolled the sessions; the record label. It didn’t make a huge difference that the label guy was also the guy setting up the mics. As music, recording technology and the popular music industry evolved, so too did the producer’s role. Artists began to write their own material and felt the need to assert themselves more on the creative process and their career trajectory. In the ’60s, the cult of the artist became more powerful and the producer’s traditional role in the studio was undermined. Talented artists started to rally against the established protocols, challenging their producers to move with them creatively. As artists’ power grew through their own popularity, the producer had the predicament of appeasing creatively voracious artists while keeping peace with the hand that feeds them — the label. In many situations, the producer’s loyalty swung away from working for the label, and more towards working for themselves, and therefore the artist. By the mid/ late ’60s the role of the independent producer was born, which would shift the creative dynamic for years to come. The power struggle between label and artist often left the producer in a curious position. While carefully nurturing the creative adventures of a growing artist, an A&R Manager would simultaneously scream at them about budgets, deadlines and ‘not hearing a single’. Meanwhile, the role of technical personnel became a fixture on record sleeves and grew in media coverage. In the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, some of the world’s biggest artists blew millions of dollars recording mediocre albums in exotic locations. Amongst that excess, there were a raft of successful projects that transported a few record producers to stardom, with some charging exorbitant fees for their service. But that couldn’t last forever. In the early ’90s a few significant things happened. Digital recording meant that high quality records could be made anywhere. For the first time, artists could dismiss the producer and afford to self-produce a record that sounded competitive in the marketplace. It was the first body blow to the recording studio, which until that point had seemed essential to professional record-making. Secondly, because digital recording made record-making cheaper and CDs were more affordable to manufacture than vinyl, independent labels started to assert themselves. Bands would go into a ‘mate’s’ studio and come out with the master of their new single. The independent record producer was now on the outer. As the DAW emerged, the record producer was more lost than ever. Still in demand by some artists and labels, their role was marginalised even more by artists who felt they could do everything themselves. This creative purgatory is where we
find record producers now, trapped in a world where everyone who plays an instrument and owns a Macbook Pro is now a ‘record producer’. So what does it mean to be a record producer these days? THE MORE THINGS CHANGE
A few things I like to remember whenever I read people ranting about the dire state of the music industry today are: There’s never been a time when people consumed more music, and there’s never been a time when people made more music. While many people within the music industry are claiming the sky is falling, we’re having a high point of supply and demand for music. The great thing about that is everyone feels like the tools to make music are in their hands and they can do it, which can also be the blinding part. The process of delivering on your creativity isn’t as simple as owning the gear and churning out product. Whenever a discussion on the merit of record producers comes up, I always ask one simple question. “Why do the biggest artists in the world still contract record producers for almost every project?” You see, in an industry where almost everything has changed, the role of the record producer has remained largely the same. If you call yourself a record producer without understanding all the aspects of the role, you simply cannot bring out the best in an artist. Even if the artist is yourself.
WHAT IS THE RECORD PRODUCER’S ROLE NOW?
1
A record producer knows how to finish a project.
In most conversations I have about upcoming projects, the first thing we talk about is the last thing on the list. I find it absolutely critical to have some sense of the creative end point. Establishing a framework is crucial. Especially now that we have access to unlimited tracks, virtual instruments, loops, playlists and ‘studio’ time. In many ways, all subsequent decisions related to the project come from identifying this goal. I’m not just talking about what a record is going to end up sounding like. I’m talking about discussing with an artist what their expectations are for the project beyond the recording and release of the record. These conversations are usually reasonably informal, but they do give the prospective producer a sense of direction and expectation. It also gives the creative team a clear outcome to work towards.
TIP
Defining your creative end point, and the project’s release, before starting your project gives you a clear framework and outcome to work towards.
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3
2
A record producer knows how to manage time and money.
I’ll often be approached by an artist who’s spent two to five years trying to finish their record. Eventually they search out a producer like me because they’re unable to tie all the loose ends together to finish even one song. While there’s a select group of bedroom geniuses who can flourish working on their own, talented people eventually need others to bounce off and push their craft to a place they can’t go by themselves. However, as soon as you involve anyone else in your record, there will have to be a discussion about fees, budgets, release forms and time allocation. While these seem like perfunctory obligations, the amount of times I’ve seen an inexperienced artist misjudge all of these factors is astounding. While a producer is asking about the end point they will also be making judgement calls related to the mechanics of making the record. That can be as little as which mixing or mastering guy to use, all the way to which studio, which musicians, how many songs, how many days in which facility and so on. Easily, one of the biggest jobs I do as a producer these days is managing the budget. It is critical for the producer to find out from the artist — and/or the label/benefactor — what the realistic parameters of the budget are, and the timeline given to achieve the required result. A good producer will be realistic about timing; planning for worst case scenarios, rather than giving an artist a figure they know is unrealistic. One approach breeds goodwill and a positive embarkation of the creative process, the other does the complete opposite. Know the parameters of your budget and work within a realistic worst case scenario. If you involve other people in your record, make sure you understand your obligations. AT 32
TIP
A record producer will know how to manage the personnel involved in the project.
If you’d pulled me aside before I started producing records and said, ‘60% of what you do will be psychological.’ I’d have thought you were an idiot. In reality, it’s a conservative 75% of the job. Producing is not for the faint of heart. At the very best of times, an artist will be self confident, prepared, talented and at the peak of their game. In reality, creative people are insecure, conflicted by their life choices, distracted by something in the real world, tired, nervous, under pressure, and in a sense of denial regarding how important what they’re trying to achieve is. Multiply that by a band, or even a session player, and you have a powder keg of conflicting emotional states that must be carefully handled. The practical manifestations of this can be as simple as spending an extra minute crafting a better headphone mix, to knowing when to feed the singer to avoid post-lunch blues, to embracing a band member who feels like their ideas are being dismissed, to recognising the internal dynamics within the recording ensemble. It can be about pushing a good artist to become sublime, or cajoling a mediocre artist to perform above their own abilities. It can come down to making sure you’re delivering the artist/label’s vision of what the project is — the end point. Mostly, it’s about listening at all times and taking enough notes to keep sessions moving, especially when doubt invariably creeps into the process.
TIP
4
TIP
Knowing how your gear can achieve the required aesthetic is more important than having lots of it.
PRODUCER’S QUICK 5 We put together a little roundtable with some of the country’s best producers in their field to get some insight into the way different producers approach their role.
MITCH CAIRNS Mitch is one of the country’s top Blues & Roots producers, with a couple of Aria Awards under his belt. What is your greatest strength as a producer? I’d like to think my ears. Having been a musician first I’m fairly good at communicating with artists and musicians. I’m usually pretty good at disarming (except in extreme cases) difficult personalities and deciphering odd requests, like ‘Can you make it sound more lime?’ What percentage of what you do in a studio is psychological?
People make records. Knowing how they work is the key to getting them to finish the work.
It depends on the project. Sometimes it cruises along nicely and is only about 90% psychological! What’s the first thing you do when an artist approaches you about making a record?
A record producer will know how to make the equipment work for the project.
These days, the quality of recording gear makes it seem almost impossible to get a bad sound! However, it can be daunting for the novice — so many numbers to remember, and information from every ‘expert’ on ‘the only way to do things’. It’s easy to doubt you’re making the right choice, which can lead to insecurity, which leads to indecision, which leads to never finishing a record. Once there’s an understanding of the end point, the producer will use studio choices, tracking spaces, microphone/preamp/compressor selection, instruments, down to decision about the liveliness of a snare drum or when to drop the bass, to confidently push an artist towards the record they want to make. A producer’s experience of seeing projects through will mean they can think on their feet and make bold statements with less gear. One of the keys is to stay focused on the goal and not be distracted by possibilities that don’t work towards the required aesthetic.
Sit down and chat, get to know them and what they want from the project. I’ll try and get an idea of what their expectations are of me and the project. Do you ask for songwriting demos before you start? Ideally I like artists to sit with me and sing the songs in the barest form. It’s a good way to cut through everything and just get down to You, Them and The Songs. ‘Demo-itis’ can be one of the biggest minefields on a project! What percentage of work on an album (including admin, emails, listening, research) is done away from the studio? I’m not really sure on the average but a lot of work is done referencing mixes, taking calls and emails away from the studio. I still do quite a lot of admin from my studio and I haven’t had a mobile setup for a longtime, so I don’t really take my work home.
If you call yourself a record producer without understanding all the aspects of the role, you simply cannot bring out the best in an artist. Even if the artist is yourself
CHRIS VALLEJO Chris owns Linear Recordings and is responsible for producing multiple worldwide hit albums for Passenger among others. What is your greatest strength as a producer?
5
A record producer will have people he/she trusts.
Over time, producers ‘collect’ people. Having a team of people to call on empowers a producer to fulfil the countless parts of making a record. This doesn’t have to be fancier than being able to reach a musician by phone who performed well on a previous session. A good producer will have a number of players, programmers, singers, technicians and craftsmen at a variety of pay scales that can be called on to get the job done. It’s not just studio people. I’m also asked about graphic design, video, marketing, radio pluggers, legal advice, songwriters, photographers, repair people, computer experts and so on. When you’re a novice making a record at home, sticking points can undermine your confidence and cause a roadblock that may halt the project indefinitely. Even at the earliest stages, I encourage artists and producers to start building their team. At a time when you need them most, having someone to lean on that you trust can make the difference between delivering a record or not.
TIP
Gather a trusted team that can fill niche roles.
I don’t really believe in producers controlling too much. I think producing records should be fairly collaborative and if there’s something I know from experience isn’t going to work, I at least try and let them feel like we explored the idea and realised collectively that it doesn’t work. Sometimes it does. As I engineer most sessions I produce, I like making the technical part of the recording feel seamless and fast; I never want people waiting around. Gear and engineering is vitally important but I don’t want the artist to think that it’s the focus. What percentage of what you do in a studio is psychological? About 90%. I used to think the psyholgical side was minimal but realised that how a record ends up sounding (particularly from a vocal perspective) hinges on how confident they are feeling. Also, when we’re working on something, I want them to know it’s the only thing I’m thinking about. There is nothing worse than being in the middle of three projects at once and constantly being interrupted with things not relevant to the session. What’s the first thing you do when an artist approaches you about making a record? Have a chat about what they want, what they’re into and their vision for the record. Do you ask for songwriting demos before you start? Definitely, I don’t like going into the studio without the songs reasonably formed. Also I need to know that I can contribute to what they’re doing. If I feel I can’t, or I’m not into it, then I don’t do the project. What percentage of work on an album (including admin, emails, listening, research) is done away from the studio?
6
A record producer understands songs.
We can get so caught up ruminating over budgets, studios, and personnel when we conceptualise a new project, that sometimes we forget the most fundamental building block of record production — are the songs any good? This is an especially tricky one for artists making records at home. They’re often so caught up in the process of capturing the song, they don’t have the objectivity to hear whether the song is actually worth capturing. Back in the old days the producer was responsible for choosing the songs, or at least filtering the good ones from the bad ones! When I ask to hear demos, I may get sent 15 songs that are in contention for an album project. Listening through, you start to categorise songs into good finished songs, songs that need work, and then songs best left behind. This can be a confronting moment in the process that requires steady nerves. If an artist doesn’t like the response they get, they could question their choice of producer and possibly walk away from the project. Despite this, it is critical at this early stage that a producer is honest. You’re building up a trust with the artist, and just telling the artist what you think they want to hear is perilous. People skills come to the fore here and constructive observations are much more effective than brutal truth! You also need to back up your observations with a knowledge of song structure and development in the chosen genre, so you can see beyond the crappy iPhone/Garageband demo and find the unpolished jewel that lies within. A good producer will be able to recognise the strengths of a song at the same time as pointing out the flaws. A constructive conversation about changing the odd chord, finding a better lyric, changing the structure, or pulling key bits into focus can give an artist confidence in the producer and the creative process that lies ahead. Remember, confidence is a driving force that shouldn’t be underestimated.
Songs are the bedrock of any production, make sure you’re working on the right ones.
TIP
Probably about 10%.
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MATT FELL Matt is arguably the best country music producer in the country, with a few Aria Awards and a bunch of Golden Guitar Awards. What is your greatest strength as a producer? Arranging. Finding the weak spots and dead weight in a song in its raw form and shaping it into something cohesive that can make the production process that much easier. What percentage of what you do in a studio is psychological? That depends entirely on the artist. If they’re confident and relaxed then very little but if not then a great deal of psychological work is required. What’s the first thing you do when an artist approaches you about making a record?
About 90%. I used to think the psyholgical side was minimal but realised that how a record ends up sounding (particularly from a vocal perspective) hinges on how confident they are feeling.
I ask them to describe to me the kind of record they’d like to make, and what their references may be. From there I can give them a more accurate budget. Do you ask for songwriting demos before you start? Always. I find it’s almost impossible to properly budget a project without hearing the songs first. What percentage of work on an album (including admin, emails, listening, research) is done away from the studio? Depends on the artist. Some require a lot of TLC before a project starts, whereas others are very relaxed and aware of the process.
the schedule. I could sense that and kept assuring them it was ok, and that ‘I had a plan’. Finally, one of them had a minor emotional breakdown. I took them out in the hall, and calmly explained that I ‘had a Plan B, C and D’. I broke down about four different eventualities and the various costs involved in all of them if this session didn’t go to plan. Just knowing that I was on top of it as a producer calmed the talent down enough, and the session resumed as normal. The session turned out fine (we went with Plan C). An artist usually just wants assurance that someone is at the wheel. They’re usually emotionally invested in the songs, the risk, the finances, the personnel and a million other things. It’s the producer’s job to do the logistical heavy lifting!
Have more than one plan for every situation.
TIP
“EVERYONE IS A PRODUCER ANYWAY”
7
A record producer will always have Plans B, C and D ready to go.
This last point is one I only became aware of recently. For an artist — especially when the majority of records these days are self funded — making a record is a massive life commitment. They’re essentially throwing all of their eggs in this one basket, and hoping it’ll pay off down the track. One of the main reasons people go to producers is because a producer is experienced enough to be able to move with the events that take place during a session. As we all know, making a plan is one thing: knowing what to do and staying calm when things get off track is another. A good producer will be able to assess how every situation is going, and what to do when things go off track. I had a situation recently where a project was falling behind schedule. There were a lot of musicians involved, but a routine head cold meant one of the principal players was moving through the session a little slower than expected. As the session went on, the artist, and the person paying were getting a little more frantic about AT 34
I saw this posted on a friend’s Facebook page recently. Yes, it’s true. Anyone can be a record producer these days. Or at least can claim they are. However, as you can see, the full spectrum of a record producer’s role isn’t as simple as jotting it down as a job description. Being a talented sound person is barely enough to get started as a producer. A record producer is as much a ‘project manager’ as anything else. Like all management type positions, you need to earn the right to do that job. There’s no shortcut to that in any career. You have to get project experience under your belt, collect your people, and deliver results before you truly can wear the ‘producer’s hat’, and trust yourself with someone else’s songs, career and money. In the next issue we’ll talk more specifically about some of the typical approaches to working through a project, knowing what questions to ask to get the answers you need, and why it’s better to plan for worst case scenarios in every situation. Michael Carpenter works out of his Love Hz Studios in Sydney, where he produces, writes, makes videos, plays instruments and is perfecting the art of ‘producer talk’.
The world’s favourite little synth turns 15!
A bright new colour appears for 15th anniversary of microKORG It has been fifteen years since microKORG’s release in 2002, and now in 2017, a limited edition 15th anniversary platinum-colour model is now available. The stylish operating panel features a bright colour scheme unified by accents such as black wood panels at left and right, making it an exciting colour variation model new to the microKORG.
MicroKORG Mk1
MicroKORG XL+
MicroKORG S
Find your nearest KORG dealer: www.cmi.com.au/korgdealers AT 35
REVIEW
PRESONUS AR12 USB Hybrid Mixer Presonus’ new hybrid mixers live up to the StudioLive name.
NEED TO KNOW
Review: Mark Davie
PRICE $799 CONTACT Link Audio: (03) 8373 4817 or info@linkaudio.com.au
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PROS Super Channel takes 5 inputs Dual recording options Handy onboard effects Preamp & EQ sound good throughout range
CONS Limited stereo aux outputs Channel EQ not individually recordable
SUMMARY The portable AR series of mixers are true hybrids; equally at home in the studio and live. They are flexible desks, with two modes of recording, multiple inputs per channel, and a Super Channel that can handle five inputs by itself, including Bluetooth.
I’ve always thought Presonus’ StudioLive brand seems to have its priorities arse-about. I get that LiveStudio doesn’t have the same ring to it, but the consoles also seemed to skew towards a Live-centric mode, with Studio applications coming in a close second. By explicitly specifying that its new StudioLive AR series are hybrid mixers — equally weighted to performance and recording — Presonus is doubling down on the concept. I’ve been testing the StudioLive AR12 USB, the middle sibling wedged between the AR8 and AR16. On the Studio side of the coin, the AR12 is essentially a 14-in/four-out USB audio interface. It also has eight analogue outs. A pair each for main monitor outputs, control room outputs, a stereo headphone jack and two mono aux outputs. That’s a pretty handy audio interface, especially considering it operates at 24-bit/192k with eight mic preamps. You can also hot swap each channel to a line input by plugging a jack into the 1/4-inch socket, with the last four channels operating in stereo. On the last stereo channel you can also switch it over to become the 3/4 USB return from your DAW. Handily, while it does bypass the analogue input insofar as controlling it via the mixer is concerned, it still passes the input’s audio onto your DAW for processing. There’s also DI inputs on the first two channels, which you switch over from line by hitting the guitar switch, and inserts too. It’s a lot of I/O, and I haven’t even started on the ‘Super Channel’, which basically sums up the device’s flexibility. This single stereo channel can accept analogue inputs via RCA and mini-jack, it can also function as your USB or SD card return, or receive a Bluetooth stream — that’s five inputs in one! It’s also probably the best implementation of a USB return I’ve seen in a compact mixer. Sure, digital desks can flip channels to DAW returns and spit each track back down a fader, but with no fader automation that would be daft. A stereo return is good enough, but having the option for two on the AR12 means you can create alternative monitor mixes. Beautiful. Let’s jump over to the live space for a minute. The AR12 gives you nine channel faders to play with (including the Super Channel), with PFL and mute switching on every channel. You also get pan, two pre-fade aux sends, and a post-fade FX send. The aux sends each have a group fader, mute and an AFL button for monitoring the mix via cans. In the spirit of making this one flexible little beast, even though the FX send is routed to the internal effects engine by default, it also has a 1/4inch output. By plugging a jack in, you bypass the internal engine and are free to either plumb in an external rack unit or use it as a basic post-fade aux. You can also feed the FX send into the other two auxes to wet your monitors if required. FOUR A SIDE
The preamps and EQ are split into two camps, depending on whether they’re servicing a mono or stereo channel. The first four channels have 50dB gain (0 to +50dB for mic and instrument, and -20 to +30dB line), whereas the stereo channels have 40dB of gain (+5 to +45dB for mic, and -15 to
+25dB line). It’s not a huge difference, but I did find myself at the limit of the gain pots more often than I thought I would. Thankfully, I’ve always found Presonus’ preamps — even on their lower end units — to have a usable gain range that extends to the pot’s maximum, where other units get eclipsed by unusable noise. The mono channels exceed the abilities of the stereo channels in the EQ department too. While both channels have a fixed 12kHz high shelf and 80Hz low shelf, only the mono channels have a variable mid-band (140Hz–3.5kHz). The stereo channel mid band is set to 2.5kHz. The EQ was handy for broadly shaping sounds, with a smooth quality up top and healthy low-end bump, which is all you want for a desk this size. My one bugbear with the EQ — and a little hit to the dual purpose mantra — is that the EQ is bypassed by default when recording. I get that you don’t want to bake in the EQ you’re using at FOH when recording a multi-track live gig. However, if you’re using this mixer in the studio, it’d be a useful feature. It would have been nice to be able to switch it in or out of the recording chain. Of course, you can always track the fully EQ’d stereo main mix as well, and the HPF on each channel does get printed. EFFECTIVE AUXES
As I’ve already covered, the aux system is wellfeatured on this desk. I would typically expect a mixer this size to only have pots for the main aux level controls; faders are a nice touch. The only small issue is that despite having five stereo inputs — including two stereo USB returns — there’s only one stereo headphone output, and a control room pair. A typical interface would have multiple stereoassignable outputs, usually eight, for individual monitor mixes. The manual says aux mixes can output in mono or stereo. Not so, the 1/4-inch outputs are balanced mono, not stereo. All stereo inputs are summed to those outputs, which limits the ability to directly monitor channels in stereo. That said, there have been plenty of times when I’ve made do with mono headphone sends and it’s never been a deal breaker. Also, when you don’t have any PFL buttons selected on the AR12, the Phones output reverts back to the AFL main mix. It’s not out of line with other standards by any means, but I would prefer to switch the headphone send to a pure Cue output so it doesn’t start blaring content out through my headphones when I don’t want it too. Especially considering unity on the Solo Master isn’t at 12 o’clock, it’s easy to have the main mix crank in at a much higher level than your solo bus. The internal effects engine is a little better than other reasonably priced desks I’ve tried. There are 16 effects in all, and while most of the reverbs are usable at lower send levels, the chamber is quite nice. However, I didn’t really gel with the sweeping reverb, which just sounds like feedback in a bad room, and the slap back has a bit too much feedback on it for me. The delays are very useful, you can choose between short, medium and long, the tape echo is a bit quicker again, and Spacey seems to have a long echo, with some closer
If you’re looking for an audio interface, and are considering ever moving it off your desk, the AR series is definitely worth considering
recurring delays. The chorus immediately made me think of Jake Shears from Scissor Sisters, whether or not that’s a good or bad thing I’ll leave to you. It would have been nice to have some basic EQ on the FX return channel, but the ability to feed it into the aux mixes and use it as a post-fade aux is pretty flexible in itself. PLACE HOLDER
I’ve been using the AR12 as my main audio interface for the last few weeks, and it’s been a good reminder of how consoles were designed to serve the audio mixing process and may never be surpassed by a rackmount alternative. The advantage of having mute and PFL buttons at your fingertips makes auditioning sounds and checking phase much quicker than looking for similar software controls. Also, having everything laid out on a slight incline, rather than in a rack, is obviously easier to access. In a live scenario, sure the faders are short throw, but I’ve mixed local musicals with 60mm of travel and gotten by. For the majority of uses this desk will operate in, they’ll do. Likewise, for a small surface, the knobs are all generously proportioned and easy to access — no finger pinching placement here. Bluetooth pairing is super simple to use, just press and hold to pair. The light goes solid blue when it’s ready. I found it to have slightly more level and it seemed ever so slightly cleaner than the RCA input on the Super Channel, so I’d be inclined to use it for music playback when using a phone or computer as a playback source. There’s also an optional $89 backpack for toting around the AR12 or AR16, making it simple to grab off your studio desktop and carry to a rehearsal or gig. It’s also a serious podcasting desk, letting you capture a stereo mix direct to the SD card recorder. There are a few options I wouldn’t have minded to see, but overall it’s a hugely capable desk for its size and price. Probably the closest things to it would be Mackie’s Onyx-I series — though the Firewire standard is getting a little left behind now — and Allen & Heath’s ZED series, but you’re limited to stereo recording in most of the smaller models. If you’re looking for an audio interface, and want the option of moving it off your desk, the AR series is definitely worth considering. It truly is a hybrid mixer befitting the StudioLive name. AT 37
REVIEW
QSC TOUCHMIX-30 PRO Digital Console Can you deal without physical faders? We mixed a deaf gig to find out. Review: Mark Davie
PRE PAD — Despite being small, the preamp gain knobs have a nice resistance to them so you’re not going to whack on loads of gain in a hurry unless you’re really trying. They have 60dB of analogue gain, and ±15dB of digital trim. I appreciate the variability of a trim control at times, but most of the time I’d rather just have a -20dB pad I can flick on in an instant.
MUTE GROUPS — There are eight mute groups onboard, with fast access from this button. It’s sometimes a quicker way to get rid of a problem than trying to navigate through the fader banks.
NEED TO KNOW
NOT PHASE — This button with a phase looking symbol is actually a ‘zero fader’ command. Beyond the big knob, it’s the handiest hardware control on the surface. It lets you quickly reset a graphic EQ fader, return a fader to unity, or centre a pan control.
PRICE $3999 CONTACT TAG: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au
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PROS Big I/O, small package Full of handy wizards Direct-to-disk recording
CONS No stage box expandability No physical faders
BIG KNOB — The large controller can assign to any parameter you touch onscreen. Its standard mode is a coarse setting, but by holding down the knob as you rotate it, it moves in very fine increments. It also doubles as a tap tempo for the delay engine.
SUMMARY The Touchmix-30 Pro has every digital console mod con — room tuning, feedback suppression, direct-to-disk recording, etc — except for digitally-connected stage box expansion. It’s not hard to pull a great mix on this console, but it requires that you dig into the setup before getting your hands on the virtual faders.
I’ve used and abused a lot of touchscreenbased mixers in the last two years — from the whip quick Soundcraft Ui series to the disastrously slow Line6 Stagescape. These devices usually go from ‘packed with features’ to ‘packed back in their boxes’ based on how quickly the screen refreshes and how many times you have to hit an onscreen button before it functions. Either I’m getting more patient, or the Touchmix-30 Pro is fast enough to catch me before my ire is raised. It’s definitely faster than the Touchmix-16 we had in last year, though there’s still a small delay between press and reaction for some functions. It’s mostly contained to flipping between screens, and if the faders lag a millisecond, they quickly pick up your position without having to re-press them. All of the parameter selections are instant. To make it obvious you’re hitting the right spot, the channel’s background colour turns from grey to blue when selected, and you can drag multiple faders at once. Just don’t expect a quick five-finger grab, to nail the right positions it required the attention of two fingers per hand, which is enough digits anyway. I’m getting ahead of myself. What is this Touchmix-30, and why is it Pro? For starters, this is a touchscreen-driven digital mixer with an onboard analogue front end. It’s an interesting hybrid, as there are no hardware faders, but there are knobs for gain control on every input. Typically, digital consoles are the other way around, sporting a bank of hardware faders while gain is digitally controlled. There’s also no stage box expansion, all the I/O you get to play with is on the rear. That said, there’s a lot of it. 30 input channels total; 20 XLR, four combo XLR/¼-inch line, and three sets of stereo jack line inputs, with a mini-jack on the top surface doubling up duties with the final pair of jacks. On the output side, there’s the master and monitor output pairs, as well as 14 mono auxiliary outputs that can be paired — all on XLRs. There are a total of four headphone jacks too. Two of them are standard Cue outputs — one on the top of the surface, and one on the rear — while the other two can be sent signal from aux pairs 11/12 and 13/14 to directly drive IEMs or cans in the studio. Pretty handy. EASIEST GIG EVER?
I had an interesting gig come up I thought would be a good test for the Touchmix-30 Pro. It was a Hands to Communicate charity event to raise money for the Australian basketball team so they can attend the Deaflympics in Turkey next year. Putting on a gig was a first for the community. Even though the majority of people there had some level of hearing impairment, Hands to Communicate wanted to try something different than the usual deaf fundraiser. Five acts performed throughout the night, ranging from soloists and duos to a full band, each fully interpreted in Auslan. I know what you’re thinking. Pretty easy gig, right? Well, there’s a variety of ways deaf people can interact with music in rich ways. Check out Evelyn Glennie’s work if you need convincing.
WIRELESS OPERATION Configuring the network was a breeze with my little Netgear router. The same one I’ve used to test a whole host of touch devices. All I had to do was plug in an Ethernet cable, name the mixer, toggle the switch to wired and it connected in a jiffy. The first time I tried to connect my now ancient original iPad to the mixer, it wouldn’t work. When I went back to look at the Touchmix console it had a dialogue box telling me I’d downloaded the incompatible 16-channel app, not the new Touchmix-30 one. I thought that was pretty thoughtful of QSC, given how obscure an issue that would seem to be. Obviously I’m not the only dill out there. When a new device connects to the network and
Also, if you’ve never been to a gig interpreted in sign language, it adds a very enjoyable dimension. Even if you don’t understand sign language, all the five interpreters on the night were at least twice as expressive as any frontman or woman I’ve seen. The gig was at 1000 £ Bend in Melbourne. It’s a gallery and event space in the heart of the CBD that’s basically a big brick box. I hired the full production from Technical Events, who sorted me out with a Nexo PS15 point source system, stage and lights and were incredibly helpful every step of the way. Originally I’d planned to use a Yamaha LS9, then decided to bite the bullet and try out the Touchmix. I’m sure it was an odd request going back to Rob at Technical and asking for an analogue multi-core instead of the digital system. However, despite it being the busy season, he managed to unearth just enough channels to do what I needed. PATCHING IN
Setting up the Touchmix was relatively straightforward. The Touchmix’s Patch Matrix allows you to reassign physical inputs to different onscreen channel numbers. The limited channels on the multicore meant I was short two channels for the DJ at the end of the night. Rather than having to switch out both ends of the multi-core, during setup I was able to mult two inputs that were already in use to the DJ channels, then simply swap over a couple of XLRs at the stage end, unmute and I was away. You can also use the same technique to process the same input across multiple channels for alternative outputs like IEMs. Copying and pasting is contextual, so if you’re on a channel’s overview screen, it’ll copy and paste everything. However, if you’re just on the compressor tab when you hit Copy, it will only copy the compressor settings. You also can’t copy an auxiliary setting onto an input channel, which is probably wise. The Copy and Paste functions are preset to user buttons seven and eight, but you can change their function if you desire. There’s a dedicated talkback input, which is controlled by a hold-to-talk button on the surface
tries to access the mixer, it has to be approved by the operator at the console. You can choose between full mixer access or a personal monitor mix controller with loads of options for limiting the amount of parameters the user can manipulate. The app is almost a facsimile of the mixer’s touchscreen, just with the physical buttons represented onscreen as well. One thing to note is that the console still maintains its place at the top of the pecking order. You have to unmute channels at the console before you can fully unmute them on the app. I ran the network and app all night, and it never dropped out once. It was handy as a second screen, and incredibly useful for tuning monitors.
and routed via a menu. In that menu, you can also set the mic’s level and feed a pink noise generator into the same outputs. The screen works in banks of eight faders that aren’t freely assignable. That is, you can’t nest a DCA amongst a bank of inputs, or replicate your main vocal on every page. Navigation takes a little time to get used to, but it’s similar to other touchreliant mixers; it uses a combination of hardware and software buttons to dig in deeper or take you back out to a higher level of control. Across the top you have tabs for the three mono input channels banks, followed by tabs for the stereo inputs and playback, FX Masters, 14 Auxiliary Outputs, eight Subgroups, and eight DCAs. I couldn’t control subgroups via a DCA — which was a little limiting for parallel compression — but other than that, I could manage everything in a similar way to how I normally operate. Down the side are more tabs that let you easily flick back to the Main mix, or any of the aux mixes. You can also re-route the first eight auxes into the last six to get some really deep IEM premix control. You access channel controls by touching the channel name. From there, you have tabs for a fully-parametric four-band EQ with high and low pass filters, a compressor/limiter, and a gate, as well as FX sends for the six onboard engines, aux send level, preset control and a setup page. It’s all neatly tied together on a single overview page with the ability to easily access most controls in miniature from the one place. I generally found my operating style on the Touchmix to be a mix of touching a parameter and using the big dial to adjust it. Operating the same way from the overview page wasn’t limiting at all. The EQ was very useful, and the compression and limiting were both fairly transparent. I mostly used two delay engines; one for a little vocal slapback and a longer delay when desired. Delay throws aren’t the easiest to control when you’re using a dial, and forget about trying to nail it onscreen. However, other than one overshoot, the effects were fairly smooth. There’s two types AT 39
RECORDING I went for the direct to disc option, and carried along a portable USB-powered hard drive to the gig. It’s a simple process of arming each track (you can set a user button to arm all tracks), then hitting record. It happened pretty seamlessly in the background until I ran out of file space. It has to be formatted to a FAT32 system, which limits each file size to 4GB. At the moment, it’s not the smoothest system, as I found the drive didn’t want to begin recording a new file in that moment and there’s not a real file list, only a list of sessions. There’s also no eject function, though the drive hot plugged fine. All things QSC can refine in the firmware. After recording, you can toggle to track playback for a virtual soundcheck with one button press. This is sometimes made a lot more difficult on other, more ‘advanced’ consoles. After using the Touchmix, I’m not sure why that is. The console operates in either 44.1k or 48k sample rates, so you also have to make sure your playback matches the current session sample rate.
of reverb, Lush and Dense, but neither seemed to be based on an algorithm that helped my cause, whether at home testing and setting up, or at the show. I tried to adjust their output, but other than the high and low pass filters on the reverb units, there was only a two-band shelf EQ on the output. Sure you can make a smile to dig out the middle or vocal area and pull the entire level back, but in this case I was really looking for a simple parametric cut. There’s also chorus and pitch shifting engines for some added width. For anyone that wants to freestyle for 10 minutes just like Kanye, there’s also an onboard pitch correction control. Simply wind the speed dial up to Fast for an instant autotune effect. For more polite correction, a slower speed is best, but even with the appropriate musical scale selected the synthetic wobbles of live autotun-ing are inevitable. It’s best suited for use as an effect, or blending in a little with your dry signal for a doubling effect. FANTASY LAND?
QSC has built in a whole cast of wizards to step the user through a range of audio problems, or whisper suggestions into the ear of less confident engineers. There are four wizards in total, all wielding their powers over different fiefdoms of the Touchmix kingdom. There’s a room tuning wizard, a feedback suppression wizard, a gain wizard, and even an effects wizard. If another company didn’t have the rights to Mix Wizard, I’m sure there’d be one in there as well. The gain wizard is pretty standard, suggesting an appropriate gain setting based on input clipping. The effects wizard just gives you some suggestions based on the type of instrument, and hints on where to send it. The room tuning wizard is pretty simple and fast to use, with good results. You just stick a AT 40
measurement mic up in four different positions, then the wizard puts out some noise to sample each spot and gives you a Graphic EQ setting based on whether you want it to sound flat or scooped. You can toggle the correction in and out to pick the difference between your own settings and the Touchmix’s. The feedback suppression wizard does its job, but it can get a little filter hungry. There are 12 filters it can use to notch out problematic frequencies, but if you get to that stage, your output is going to sound terrible anyway. The wizard works by slowly creeping up the gain of the selected output until it detects an issue. It’s a process of inching forward, notching out the issue, then proceeding onwards. It does naturally slow down its efforts a few dB past unity on the output fader, but you may have to intervene before that point to stop it digging holes into your mix. If it does, you have bigger problems to deal with. In the end, I simply used the six-band parametric over my master output to carve a couple of small notches that dealt with some room build up. I wasn’t going to get too crazy with the output EQ given the room’s natural issues. TOUCHED BY AN ANGLE
Overall, I found the Touchmix-30 Pro a very usable console, despite not having physical faders. QSC has tried to bridge the gap between novice engineers and experienced users by including all those wizards while still giving quite a lot of control over the mix. To me this is a console more suited to the set and forget engineer who doesn’t need to be riding levels every second of a show. It’s also well-suited to the novice, as the wizards are really helpful and I’d say that the onboard room tuning module is one of the better models out there for ease of use versus results. I could see the console finding its way into loads of installs or for engineers
who want a lot of I/O in quite a small package. It’s also a really strong contender for monitor mixing as there are a lot of options in the aux bus and patching environments for that mode of operation. I can’t say I wouldn’t rather have real faders, but I was able to mix the charity event without any issues. At the end of the night, both deaf and hearing patrons gave plenty of good feedback and Hands to Communicate is already planning to go ahead with a similar event next year. As with any new console, the real work was in setting up the session and making sure I could navigate it with ease. In the Touchmix-30 Pro’s case, I spent a few hours familiarising myself with it and pre-building a session, by the end of which I was fully confident to walk into the show. It sounded great too; the preamps had lots of definition and there was no smudginess across a full band mix. The EQs were as good as you’ll get on any modern digital console, and the visual feedback from the console was spot on. The meters were highly visible, there’s an onboard RTA, and the dynamics sections have some unique graphs worth checking out. It also has the ability to be controlled wirelessly [see Wireless Operation box], and can record 32 channels either direct to disk [see Recording box], or feed your DAW on a Mac. While wireless operation and the ability to function as a DAW interface are almost standard on today’s digital consoles, the ability to record direct to a hard drive is not. Well worth considering if you don’t want to lug a laptop with you or dedicate a computer to that operation in an install environment. The QSC Touchmix-30 Pro will do it all. It’s just a question of whether you gel with the touchscreen mode of operation. It’s definitely a unique offering that may slot perfectly into your scenario. If it fits your style, it will likely give you more than you budgeted for.
See the big releases from all of our brands @ Integrate 2017 Visit us at Integrate 2017 to experience three Best of Show InfoComm products and many other new releases from Bosch, Dynacord, EV, and RTS/Telex. New product highlights include Dynacord amplifiers, Electro-Voice prosound, commercial and portable speaker families, conference and PA/VES systems from Bosch, and the ROAMEO RTS wireless intercom system. See you in Melbourne @ stand J32.
DYNACORD L & C SERIES FIR-DRIVE POWER AMPLIFIERS Best of Show at InfoComm 2017, the L Series and C Series Amplifiers highlight Dynacord's focus on best-in-class electronics. Four models for each series have been unveiled in a new industrial design with tour-grade features, protection circuitry and high-performance digital signal processing with easy-to-use remote control software. Packed with features usually found in more expensive amplifiers, the "Live" & "Contractor" amps ensure superior audio quality and reliability at a great price.
ELECTRO-VOICE PROSOUND, INSTALLATION, AND PORTABLE SPEAKERS Electro-Voice will feature four new loudspeaker families at Integrate 2017. These will include two new portable speaker families, once again offering unbeatable value-for-money feature sets and class-leading performance. A new prosound installation family will also be unveiled for mid-to-large applications. Additionally, the renowned EVID commercial speaker family will grow with the introduction of five new models that have won Best of Show at InfoComm 2017.
BOSCH DICENTIS CONFERENCE SYSTEMS & PAVIRO PA/VAC SYSTEM The new DICENTIS Conference System family features four models with increasing features as you move from the discussion device through to the multimedia device. The system is ideal for corporate boardrooms, local, state and federal governments. The PAVIRO PA/VES system offers a networkable public address system with call stations, programmable alarms and messages based on time or triggers, professional sound quality and ability to grow from 4 to 984 zones.
RTS ROAMEO CELLULAR DECT-BASED WIRELESS INTERCOM SYSTEM Best of Show at NAB 2017 and InfoComm 2017, ROAMEO provides a professional, easy-to-use and future-proof solution based on the license-free DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications) standard with a protected frequency band. ROAMEO allows full integration into all existing wired digital RTS matrices. The ROAMEO wireless solution allows users to address either individuals or specified groups, seamlessly roaming across wide areas. AT 41
REVIEW
iZOTOPE NEUTRON
Assistive Channel Strip Plug-In Need an assistant? Help is on the way with iZotope’s intelligent mixing plug-in.
NEED TO KNOW
Review: Preshan John
Being the control freak I am, when algorithmic plug-in wannabes try to take the reins of my mix with their so-called ‘intelligence’, I typically bow out with a polite, ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ When iZotope debuted Neutron with the bold claim it would be your ‘personal mixing assistant’ I was naturally skeptical. After using the plug-in for a few weeks now, let me say upfront: Neutron won’t mix your song for you… and that’s a good thing. iZotope’s marketing may allude to the automixing paradigm, but the real purpose behind Neutron’s artificial intelligence is to simply ‘assist’ by alerting you of potential pitfalls in your mix’s frequency balance and optimising each track to make it more mixable. While that sounds more tolerable than a plug-in getting its digital mitts all over the faders, I still approached the plug-in with suspicion. Would it be another one of those algorithmic mastering duds?
TRACK ASSISTANT
PRICE $299 Advanced: $399
CONS Track Assistant works in isolation
CONTACT Electric Factory: (03) 9480 5988 or sales@elfa.com.au
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PROS Excellent sounding plug-in Transient Shaper is a powerful tool Handy having two compressors
Neutron’s brain has two main assistive components; Track Assistant and Masking Meter. iZotope says Neutron’s Track Assistant “acts like an assistant engineer getting you to an optimal starting point so you can start mixing creatively.” Chris Lord-Alge eat your heart out! In use, the spirit of Track Assistant is to iron out wrinkles in a track, not to assume artistic license. You can choose between Subtle, Medium and Aggressive modes which affect the intensity of the created settings. Three more options — Broadband Clarity, Warm and Open, and Upfront Midrange — alter the flavour of Track Assistant’s settings. Overall, I thought it produced the most usable results in Subtle mode. What could be seen as an oversight is that Track Assistant doesn’t process your track from a whole mix perspective — it only bases processing decisions upon hearing a track
in isolation. More often than not you EQ an instrument very differently in solo than in the context of a mix. It does a respectable job, though the logical next step would be to have enough CPU power for the algorithm to weigh up each track in the context of the entire mix. MASKING METER
Masking Meter is a bit closer to that ideal. It only kicks in if you have Neutron instantiated on more than one track in your session; say the guitar and keyboard buses. By clicking the Masking button in the EQ processor on either track, you select which of the other Neutronloaded tracks you’re wanting to ‘investigate’ — in this case, let’s say guitars. The GUI changes to show two EQ curves, one for each track, and grey shaded areas appear to display where frequency collisions are occurring as the track plays. Naturally guitars and keyboards will occupy much of the same portion of
SUMMARY Though iZotope may be targeting newbies with Neutron’s assistive features, professionals will no less appreciate the channel strip’s exhaustive functionality and no-compromise sound quality. Basically, Neutron is worth a look even if you never use Track Assistant or Masking Meter.
Though iZotope pitches Neutron’s artificial intelligence as its main selling point, don’t let that lead you to believe it’s not a high-quality tool for audio professionals
the spectrum, so where these collisions are ‘problematic’, a little red exclamation mark appears. You can then carve out some space on either track’s EQ curve within the single Neutron instance. If you change the curve of the instrument not associated with the current track, it will automatically update the EQ curve on that channel’s Neutron instance. To be honest, I found this a tad gimmicky. It’s not much help if you’re comfortable mixing with your ears. It seems Masking Meter is primarily targeted to those who are a bit newer to mixing and might not be familiar enough with what different frequency ranges sound like to create space in a mix themselves. Still, the feature is well implemented and easy to use. EQUALISER
Neutron’s EQ is clean and musical. iZotope sure hasn’t skimped — you get eight fully parametric bands, plus a shelving EQ and filter at each end of the spectrum. The EQ is equally at home surgically correcting tracks or enhancing with broad-Q curves. Each band can be static or dynamic. Using the EQ in dynamic mode means each node responds to its own frequency point, or another node (think sidechain equalisation). This is useful in specific scenarios where you want the amount of EQ applied to a frequency to punch harder when there’s more going on in that frequency range: for example, a piano that sounds too rumbly only when the low notes are played loudly. Compress or Expand options let you select whether the EQ node boosts or attenuates when source material exceeds a variable threshold. Call me old-school but static EQ curves will keep me happy for the most part. But again, it’s a very musical-sounding EQ that’ll rival many other third-party plugs you may have. COMPRESSION
We all know the adage ‘mix with your ears, not your eyes’, so I’m generally wary of flamboyant visual readouts while mixing. That said, the GUI iZotope has employed for Neutron’s two compressors is slightly addictive. Gain reduction is graphed in real-time so a quick glance shows you not only how hard the compressor is working, but how often. If your source material is something percussive like drums or acoustic guitar, the drawing looks a lot like a heartbeat on a life-support machine. Attack and release times are easy to read as well. Faster
settings result in a spikier graph and vice versa. Say you’re wanting to lop off only the loudest transients on a pair of overheads — this kind of GUI makes it super easy to dial in visually. The compressors have both Modern and Vintage settings, and the graph display is only shown when Modern is selected (needle-style meters for Vintage). Like the Transient Shaper, you can use it in multiband mode (three bands), or as a single processor. Slower, smoother settings seemed to bring out the best in Neutron’s compressor modules. A little grainy break-up was introduced when pushed hard with quick attack/release times and low thresholds. Overall the compressors have a gluey character and love sitting on mix buses and stems. Both compressor modules have a Mix slider so you can easily add parallel compression. TRANSIENT SHAPER
Neutron’s Transient Shaper is a delightful little tool that’s, in my opinion, the highlight of the channel strip. You get the option to split the source signal into three frequency bands and apply very individual treatment to each. There are three settings to determine how the plug-in alters the audio — Precise, Balanced and Loose. Furthermore, each band offers Sharp, Medium and Smooth settings, and the ability to increase or decrease Attack and Sustain material accordingly. Don’t expect ‘point-and-shoot’ results with the Transient Shaper. Instead, imagine how you want your track to sound, consider what needs to change in the lows, mids and highs to get there, and tweak as necessary. I was mixing a song with an acoustic guitar track that sounded nice and clean in solo, but flat and lifeless in the mix. By increasing the Attack in the high band on the Sharp setting, the track instantly perked up. To keep it supported and full, I turned up the sustain in the low and mid bands using the Smooth setting. It worked a treat. Conservative settings brought about more natural results, but in busy mixes you can get away with heavy-handedness. EXCITER
The Exciter shares a lot with the Transient Shaper: it has the same three global modes; Precise, Balanced and Loose; and also splits into three bands if you choose. On top of these, each band has an X/Y pad where you can dial in your harmonic
distortion flavour of choice, from Warm to Tape to Retro to Tube. When split into frequency bands, the Exciter becomes a neat tool that can liven up a track with very little effort. NEUTRINO
iZotope released Neutrino as a freebie not long before the grand unveiling of Neutron. Spectral shaping applies low-ratio dynamic processing to different portions of each track’s frequency spectrum to create a more focused, clear mix when Neutron is inserted on every track in your session. Choose the type of source material it’s working on (Drums/Percussive, Vocals/Dialogue, Guitar/ Instrument, Bass), and it subtly works its magic. Neutrino is featured as part of Neutron, albeit a very small part, and Track Assistant intelligently figures out which of the four settings to use. If you’re really sold on what Neutrino does to your mix, I’d recommend sticking the smaller freebie plug-in on every track as a large session full of Neutron instances will hog CPU resources. MULTI-TOOL FOR MIXING
Neutron isn’t a mini utility plug; it’s a fat Swiss army knife. It’s probably one of the best channel strips I’ve used — and ironically, the assistive tools played little part in forming that opinion. Leaving Track Assistant aside, not only do you have a mountain of processing options within the one plug-in, but each processor sounds fantastic in its own right. I’d buy Neutron for the Transient Shaper and Exciter alone. Speaking of which, you’ve got two options if you choose to purchase the plug-in: Neutron, or Neutron Advanced. The latter gives you each channel strip component as an individual plug-in, plus surround support up to 7.1. Neutron also comes as part of iZotope’s Music Production Bundle 2. If Nectar, Ozone, and RX have taught us anything, it’s that iZotope loves to give us whopping great, borderline-overkill plug-ins that thoroughly cover every base, and then some. Neutron is no different. Though iZotope pitches Neutron’s artificial intelligence as its main selling point, don’t let that lead you to believe it’s not a high-quality tool for audio professionals. In fact, Neutron’s sound quality and functionality is what I found most attractive. Highly recommended.
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REVIEW
YAMAHA MONTAGE Music Synthesizer The Montage comes with seven times more sounds than its predecessor, but are they any easier to program? Review: Brad Watts
NEED TO KNOW
Yamaha Corporation — makers of motorcycles, jet-skis, sporting goods, grand pianos, speakers, and mixing consoles. Oh, and those horrid plastic woodwind things school kids are given as their first musical instrument. Yamaha also makes electronic instruments; home keyboards and synthesizers. The company actually started as a piano and reed keyboard manufacturer in 1897, so instruments are in its blood. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to think of an instrument Yamaha hasn’t manufactured. In more recent decades Yamaha moved into the electronic instrument game — with the behemoth CS-80 in 1976 becoming a venerable classic, along with the wildly popular DX7 in 1983. Fast forward to the current century and
PRICE Montage 6: $5499 Montage 7: $5999 Montage 8: $6999
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CONTACT Yamaha Music Australia: (03) 9693 5111 or www.yamahamusic.com
Yamaha is still creating keyboards for all levels of musicianship. At the more professional niche are Yamaha’s synthesizers, with a vast and successful history of development behind it. I’ve owned plenty of Yamaha synthesizers over the years, and while the company’s synths are capable of turning their sonic abilities to almost anything, they’ve always tended to be the bread-and-butter sound generators for me. Like many, I’ve never enjoyed editing Yamaha’s digital synths. Yamaha’s FM synthesis is a tough nut to crack; it’s complicated to say the least. From my long since gone DX9, forever set to an organ bass, through to various drum machines and TX sound modules, they’ve all pretty much used presets and third party patches. The only exception was
PROS Incredible sounds Huge onboard waveform library Crazy modulation options Seamless integration with your DAW
CONS Complex to operate Firmware updates Windows only
an RM50 drum module that housed my TR909 and 808 samples for years — admittedly not an FM synthesis device. MONTAGE OF ALL BEFORE IT
The successor to Yamaha’s Motif range is the Montage. Looking somewhat similar to 2010’s Motif XF, the Montage crams far more waveform data into its gizzards. Compared with the Motif machine’s 741MB of 16-bit waveform data, the Montage houses a staggering 5.67GB. You’ll need to upgrade the Montage’s firmware to 1.2 to get the downloadable ‘Montage Connect’ software working. This involves formatting a USB memory stick on the Montage itself, then copying the firmware update to the memory stick via your
SUMMARY Yamaha’s new flagship synth plays well with patches from its predecessors and wallops them for sheer quantity and quality of sounds. The onboard Super Knob and gorgeous keybed compliment the packaged software goods, just don’t expect the Montage to be scads easier to program than your average Yamaha synth.
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computer. Connecting the Montage directly to your DAW machine via USB allows all MIDI and audio information to be available in the DAW — no need for MIDI or audio cabling. Again, this didn’t work until I’d upgraded the unit’s firmware. Once up and running you can send 16 channels from the Montage to your DAW, and return three channels back to the Montage, all at 24-bit and up to 192k. Yamaha has gone to great lengths to make the Montage compatible with older instruments. It’s completely compatible with the Motif XF instruments. It actually includes all the Motif XF’s 1353 voices, 3977 waveforms, and 7881 arpeggio patterns. Worthy of note if you’re trading up. But compatibility doesn’t end there. Yamaha S90 XS and S70 XS patches can be transferred to the Montage, and DX7 lineage patches can be transformed via a web app on Yamaha’s site. This includes all permutations of the DX7 including the TX802 and TX816. That’s a damn fine feature. So already there’s a whole lot going on in the Montage. The enormous 5.67GB of AWM2 waveforms provide everything you could need in a complete workstation-style instrument, and if that’s not enough you have access to 1.75GB of user memory which will accept .WAV and .AIFF files. Maximum polyphony is 128 notes, along with the stereo audio input and USB streams, so you’re hardly going to run out of I/O. For more traditional setups there’s the full set of MIDI in, out, and thru, and inputs for sustain, two foot controllers and an assignable footswitch. For those looking for patches of the synthetic persuasion there’s the eight-operator FM-X architecture with 88 algorithms. Eight operators is a lot to comprehend when you consider the DX7 had six, and most lesser FM synths used four. Fortunately there’s the ability to edit common parameters over all eight operators, and these synthetically derived sounds can be mixed with AWM2 sounds into the one patch (a ‘performance’ in Yamaha parlance). EMA_AT111_[Print].pdf
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THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE KNOB
Up on the main deck there’s a plethora of control options. The Montage machines offer eight 60mm faders with LED ‘ladders’, and eight rotary pots with LED position markers. These controls can be assigned to virtually any parameter. There’s also the usual pitch and modulation wheels, accompanied by a 75mm long ribbon controller. What’s more interesting, and something that pulls the aforementioned controllers together is the Super Knob. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but this knob is actually quite super. Any parameter group can be assigned to the Super Knob. Alter pan alongside tempo and filters, volume and filter resonance, pretty much anything you can find can be relegated to Super Knob control. It also shunts out MIDI controller info so your super-duper tweaking can be recorded into the Montage’s sequencer or your DAW. It also glows and pulsates in various colours, which I found to be incredibly distracting until I found the settings to tone the Super Knob’s lighting theatrics down a little — ok, a lot. It looks cool and flashes in time, but it’s alarmingly distracting. Mileages will vary; adjust to taste. Similar in function is the Montage’s Motion Sequence feature. These are tempo-synchronised, customisable control sequences that can be assigned to any parameter. Motion Sequences are primarily dedicated to the controls on the front panel. All parameters are accessible via the unit’s seven-inch touch sensitive screen. Effects include various modern staples such as ‘Beat Repeat’, ‘Vinyl Break’, ‘Bit Crusher’, and ‘Analog Delay’. There’s also an array of signal processing options, including reverb, and an overall master effect which includes multi-band compression, five-band master EQ, along with insert effects. There’s even a vocoder if you must. While the Montage’s light-show and pulsating Super Knob seemed like the synth’s draw-cards
following boot-up, it’s not until you play the keyboard that you realise one of the Montage’s greatest features. The keybed is awesome. I was fortunate to have the 88-note model Montage 8, and the 88-key ‘Balanced Hammer’ keys are just wonderful. While not a true piano key, the Montage’s keys retain that slippery synth action while maintaining a balanced piano feel — the best of both worlds without a doubt. Yamaha obviously has many, many years of experience when it comes to keys, and you’ll be blatantly aware of this at first touch of the Montage 8. Lesser models — the Montage 6 and Montage 7 — both offer the ‘FSX’ keyboard, which is no doubt more synth-ish. I didn’t get to try one. Let it be known that all three key-beds provide aftertouch controller info. GET WITH THE PROGRAM
One cannot deny Yamaha has a behemoth of a flagship here. Just the number of sounds and the vast waveform memory is enough to get many players a little hot under the collar. However, there’s one bridge left to cross when it comes to Yamaha synthesizers. They are inherently difficult to program. In the case of the Montage I don’t believe Yamaha has made the immediacy of programming a flagship workstation synth any easier. Yes, I concur with the manual that the absence of the usual Yamaha ‘Mode’ layer of performance editing has been eradicated, but there’s still the good old ‘Job’ button. It’s a shame to mention this, but it’s best you know the truth going in before an audition. For the Yamaha uninitiated, there will be need for a good deal of orientation. For those used to flipping around in various jobs, states, and function centres the Montage will feel better than second nature, especially if moving on from a Motif model. If you’re prepared to look past this then the Montage’s sounds, insane modulation and performance features will be enough to get you in.
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REVIEW
NATIVE INSTRUMENTS MASCHINE JAM Hardware Controller Maschine Jam moves away from the traditional MPC model to step up its sequencing game. Review: Jason Hearn
NEED TO KNOW
When Maschine was originally released back in 2008, it was a game changer without peer; the first virtual instrument to successfully integrate a dedicated control surface while retaining the benefit of using your computer as its ‘brain’. Thanks to its 4x4 grid of super-sensitive drum-pads and built-in graphic displays, it offered the same hands-on approach to composition and performance enjoyed by Akai MPC users without being shackled to a preset amount of hardware processing power. Maschine Jam (I’ll refer to it as ‘Jam’ henceforth) is the newest iteration of this lineage, and it addresses an alternative approach to the original MPC-inspired Maschine concept, one which will be familiar to users of Push/APC/Launchpad with Ableton’s Live.
PRICE $549 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au
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CLICK TOGETHER
With Jam, Maschine users now have an 8x8 grid of ‘click pads’ for a much improved step sequencing experience that can double as a means for playing melodic parts. Its clickpad grid also provides rapid interaction with Maschine’s Scenes — at a glance, you can see which Patterns are active within each Group. Opposite to Live’s Session view, Maschine’s
PROS Hardware access to Maschine project unique amongst established controllers Smart-Strips enhance live performance Snap-shot parameter ‘lock’ functions
CONS Arrangement functions still lack sophistication
Scenes are presented in columns rather than rows, consistent with the existing paradigm of Maschine. It also comes with a full license for Maschine 2.5 and Komplete 11 Selection, making it a potential foundation product for new users to the platform. For owners of the traditional MPC-styled Maschine family, Jam will be a natural extension. Inside the packaging is a small bracket that attaches to the underside of the unit and elevates Jam’s profile so it’s flush alongside a Maschine or Maschine Micro controller. In tandem with a traditional Maschine controller, the two devices lock step — when changing focus to different Groups and Sounds on one controller, the other will update its status to reflect those actions. For example, you might edit the parameters of a Sound using a regular Maschine controller, while
SUMMARY Maschine Jam adds another control string to the Machine bow. MPC-style operation was the basis of Maschine’s previous hardware, but Jam adds powerful step-sequencing and performance features to the platform in a hardware unit that effortlessly integrates with and extends existing products.
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simultaneously step sequencing the same sound on Jam. Before Jam came along, users would have to flip in and out of step mode to edit sounds. Naturally, there’s some doubling up of controls when using two units, but that will only be an advantage for the super-dexterous, Maschinecentric performer. Jam provides a couple of conveniences previously exclusive to the full-monty (expensive) flagship controller, Maschine Studio. It has hardware level metering of the master bus (and ‘clip’ indicator) and convenient access to Group levels via its touch strip-based mixer. As a long-term Maschine user, I welcome the master meter’s inclusion since I’ve always found it very easy to inadvertently clip the master bus unless I’m staring at Maschine’s onscreen GUI. The master meter can also display the level of incoming audio and the output of the preview bus. Unlike its predecessors, Jam lacks on-board displays. It does cover a surprisingly wide gamut of Maschine’s interactivity, albeit with a reliance on the host computer’s screen. Conveniently though, when invoking functions that would traditionally call on Maschine’s displays, a ‘heads up’ onscreen display conveniently floats above all other windows, vanishing once a command or selection has been completed. PADDING OUT PERFORMANCE
Unlike Ableton’s Push, the pads on Jam do not offer velocity or after-touch response, effectively functioning as simple click switches. Although this is a disappointment when performing melodic and percussive parts on the grid in Keyboard mode, access to step-sequencing is the primary focus of Jam and here is where it excels! Maschine versions prior to Jam were equipped with only a 4x4 grid of pads limiting the number of steps available without frequent paging. Jam’s 8x8 grid realises the full potential of step mode, offering simultaneous step sequencing of up to eight sounds. It’s fantastic for step sequencing drum parts in context and is unique to the combination of Maschine 2.5 and Jam. In common with Ableton’s Push, when in Keyboard mode, Jam’s Click-Pad grid provides realtime performance of melodic parts chromatically or isometrically (only notes of the selected scale/ key being available for triggering). On-screen, a pop-up display allows selection of scales and different modes. In common with regular Maschine controllers, a Note Repeat function is available for repeated notes with on-the-fly selection of note divisions available on the Browse encoder. It’s implementation will be a boon for producers creating Trapinfluenced beats since it’s easier to edge back and forth between different note divisions with greater precision compared to regular Maschine controllers. An arpeggiator function is easily accessed via pressing Shift and Note Repeat, with various modes available on the encoder. SMART STRIPS
Along the bottom edge of Jam, you’ll find an array of dual-touch Smart Strips, each flanked by AT 50
CONTROL BEYOND MASCHINE Jam can be flipped into MIDI controller mode allowing control of other software and devices. For users of Ableton Live, an elaborate, deeplyintegrated control script is available providing much of the functionality of Push. More than a simple one-way mapping, full bi-directional
feedback has been implemented. It even provides the full step sequencing experience Push owners have access to when running Drum Racks. Control scripts have also been released for control of Bitwig Studio and FL Studio.
bar graph LEDs to indicate their current value. Cosmetically, it’s obvious these have been borrowed from NI’s S-series MIDI keyboards and they share similar performance concepts. While not only providing a means for rapidly balancing Group levels and a meter bridge in hardware (a first for Maschine users), numerous additional functions are on offer depending on the mode selected. Smart Strips allow Macro value tweaking (assigned to parameters within sounds), adjustment of sends to auxiliary effects, per-part tune/swing settings, and alternative techniques for playing melodic parts from the strips (strums, chords, etc). Furthermore, a DJ-mixer-style multi-effect called Performer has been added to the Maschine 2.5 software just for Jam. Stutter, Ring Mod, Filter, Flanger are all available, and designed for immediate real-time interaction with the Smart Strips.
to project playback. While this powerful feature offers tremendous possibilities for live performance, should you wish to imprint these tricks into the arrangement of your Maschine project, you’ll be disappointed to learn there is no means to record these actions as automation inside the actual project. You can work around this limitation if you’re running Maschine within a DAW. It is here that Maschine’s well-worn Achilles heel is exposed again — seven years on from its original release, its arrangement functionality lacks the sophistication required in order to complete a project from start to finish, without resorting to the migration of elements to the full production environment of an external DAW. I dare speculate that once Maschine’s software reaches version three, we’ll see substantial development of its arrangement functionality since it remains one of the areas that feels incomplete.
LOCKED & LOADED
MASCHINE ADVANCEMENTS
A criticism often levelled at Maschine by the MPC community is the absence of a Mute Group function typically used by MPC users to rapidly punch in/out several parts of a mix on the fly during a performance. Not only has this aspect of Maschine’s software been addressed with Maschine 2.5/Jam, but a sophisticated snap-shot functionality has been implemented encompassing all parameters available for automation in a Maschine project. At the most basic level, pressing the Lock button provides an easy way to perform all manner of tweaks to a project’s mix, virtual instrument and effects parameters. Then instantly return to their previous settings by simply pressing it again. This can serve both as a performance trick and as a Compare/Undo facility. Press Shift and Lock, and the click-pad grid displays the 64 Lock-state snap-shots in a project. Switching between these may be instantaneous or can be morphed over a user-defined period, either freely or in-sync, and you can optionally quantize it
For the Maschine-wielding live-performer, Jam provides exceptional innovations that will without doubt see it gain traction in that context. For owners of Maschine and Maschine Micro, yearning for more hands on control without going to the expense of purchasing the flagship Maschine Studio controller, Jam will be an attractive prospect. Even for Maschine Studio owners — who already have some of the fruit offered by Jam — the Smart-Strip innovations and immediacy of a step-sequencing on the 8x8 grid will be of immense benefit. Since Jam lacks two of the key hallmarks of the Maschine platform (most notably its large velocity/ aftertouch sensitive pads and graphic displays), without a traditional Maschine controller running in tandem, the essence of what the platform provides will perhaps be missed. Whether Jam will be responsible for attracting first-time users into the Maschine family is yet to be seen. However, for the existing Maschine-faithful, with a focus on liveperformance, its adoption will be a no-brainer.
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