The client in the studio today was Zia Aslamy, he is an engineer and said that making music was just his hobby. He spent time in the vocal booth singing in a language I was not familiar with; Afghanistan. I noticed Jim was correct when he said that the beats for the music change every measure so you can’t try to keep on the beat, it won’t work. This was obvious to me as I continued to listen. The effect that Jim had on his vocals sounded like an echo. It was an interesting sound and I hadn’t heard it before in the studio. I enjoyed the way it sounded. To me, it was truly exciting to see a song being recorded in a different language. It made me realize that no two sessions in the studio will ever be the same. There are so many different people in the world and they all have a unique way of expressing themselves through their music. Also, it takes each client a certain amount of time to correctly do what they want to a song depending on the song and the client’s ability.
A question I did have was if a client comes in the studio, like today, and records in a language you don’t speak, does it pose any problems during the process? It doesn’t seem to me that it does, in the session at least, especially considering the fact that both the client and Jim speak English. Zia decided he wanted to add harmony and Jim offered his opinion on it. I wonder how it would feel to know you influenced even a tiny part of a song and you loved it, or maybe it became really popular!
There was a part in the song where the client described as “empty.” Jim said this meant one instrument was dropped at this point and the client wanted to add a different one. So Jim copied the instrument the client preferred from a separate place in the song, into the “empty” part. Then, Zia was pleased with the way it sounded. The last step of the process was mastering the song. Jim explained that he used a program for making CD’s to do this. I believe that Jim controlled the volume and matched it for both of Zia’s songs. He made it consistent and balanced. Jim made the time between the tracks what he wanted. The other program that Jim used while recording and editing dealt with vocals and instruments. While the one for mastering dealt with each track that be would on the CD. Think of it this way, if one song was done in a home studio and one was done at a different studio, mastering would make them basically match in sound. If one song had too much bass, you could add bass to the other songs, or put less bass on that one.
In the office, I asked Joe about a few terms that were not easy for me to understand. He informed me that a fade-in fade-out was exactly what it sounded like. Also, that cross fades were used to smooth transitions so they were not audible to us. Compression, he clarified, was an audio process that takes a wave file, squishes it down and averages it out to the same level, then compensates the volume. For example, Joe stated that most pop music is over-compressed. And classical music actually has dynamic contrast, a difference in loudness and softness. He was truly insightful and opened my eyes to something he called volume wars, which is occurring today. A lot of people in the music business are competing for the loudest song on everyone’s iPod and radio. They are not focusing on the beauty of music, such as dynamics in the songs. It is kind of sad to me that music has gone down so much that they just want their songs to be the loudest, instead of simply trying to reach out and help others while sharing their love for music.
