Day #15

Jim was in the process of mastering for a client, Robert. This means that he was making the songs the same volume, deciding how much time there was going to be between each song, the order of the songs, adding fades, maximizing levels, and he turned up the bass in one song. I wondered why it shows the song in blue above the same in red below on the mastering program that Jim uses. I imagine that there are probably many different types of software. As an engineer, do you have to be familiar with more than one program?

Jim explained to me that he has more of a mellow song of Robert’s so he physically made it a mellower volume on the CD. Jim made Robert two masters. There is only so much that Jim can do when he is not part of the tracking or mixing process. He said that Robert recorded in a home studio so the music image was very small. The band recorded the tracks and did the mixes elsewhere. Lastly, Jim printed the name of the band, the title of the record, the date, and Allusion studios on the CD with a CD labeler.

A lot of the music industry is about image and not about the music. Even though I wish that people liked music because they actually liked the music and not just the person singing it, I know it won’t ever change. However, it is cool to think about how each city pretty much has its own music scene. In Tucson, I think it has changed negatively. I wonder what influences the changes. I also wonder how the music scene in Tucson differs from a city in California.

Day #14

Jim, Joe, and Chase discussed major business ideas. I realized just how much Jim does with balancing his engineering career at Allusion Studios and managing Pure Wave Audio. It has to take up a lot of time, work, and energy in order to keep up with it all. It is motivating for me to witness Jim’s eagerness to always be moving forward and prospering in a positive way! I can’t imagine how complex thinking of business ideas could be, it definitely requires creativity. Something I have observed while interning at Allusion Studios is that Jim often says things are “a learning process.” I am comforted by that because I don’t feel as intimidated coming into a different environment. It makes me believe I can make mistakes and not be looked down upon for them. Jim states that he wants to progress and move forward to be the ultimate, but at the same time, he has to be cautious and think about what he is doing. For instance, money is always a burden on someone’s shoulders, and I bet even more when you own a business. However, when Jim believes in something, he says he will put money behind it. I am confident that he is a strong business owner and knows how to run a successful business.

Day #13

Jim was playing the drums in the live room with a guitar player and a bass guitar player. I wondered if it was ever distracting recording with multiple people rather than just playing by yourself. Chase informed me that sometimes it is actually easier because you have that “live feel” and the musicians can play off the other musicians. In some cases, the clients may want to play in the live room to get the sound and the dynamics of a “jam band”, which is a band that plays together for fun and because they love it. I made the assumption that they all had different mixes that they were listening to through the headphones. I questioned how Jim could control the actions he usually does in the control room if he was in the live room playing the drums. Chase explained that he was using something called a wireless transport controller which allowed him to have some control over what he did from the other room. Editing-wise, Jim doesn’t have as much control. The transport controller has a playback button, rewind, fast-forward, and record buttons. I understood that this was a convenient device for engineers who participate in the session as a musician like Jim did. Jim edited the tracks to make them sound the way he wanted them to. Fernando, the guitar player, did a solo at one point in the song. His amp was in the guitar room so that it was isolated from the other instruments. Jim mentioned he could “de-noise” the buzz of the guitar and I didn’t comprehend what he meant by that. Chase told me Jim could take the frequency of the buzz, and then figure out what it looked like then subtract it from the wave. That would be removing the noise from the signal. Also, when the bass player came in late on the intro, Jim could essentially fix that so that it was the correct timing. The bass player was Jim’s client and he wanted the one song burned audio CD.

Jim explained to me that all clients are different as are his relationships with them. Some book the studio for two weeks, some for only three to four hours, and some every two weeks. Inconsistency is something you have to be familiar with if you work in this business.

Later I decided to ask about everyone’s education levels. Chase said that he went to college and the types of courses he had to take included music theory, ear training, and music history. In addition, he took guitar lessons, music business, economics, accounting, and piano. It was very interesting to hear about the classes. It is something for me to consider when I think about pursuing audio engineering as my career. I know that I would be extremely fascinated in classes like music theory and music history! Joe explained that also went to college and took a lot of the same courses as Chase. His degree was in music composition but I notice that at the studio he also does a lot of web development and communications. Jim achieved his degree in electrical engineering. I suppose that I could choose from several areas in the music field as long as it is something I am passionate about.

Day #12

The project that Jim was working on when I got to the studio was for his client, Wes. The client was in the process of making a rock oriented album. Jim was starting the mix for the first song so when Wes came in to sing he would be able to do it. The song has a lot of guitar tracks and too much of it could be distracting or not what Wes wants to hear while he sings. While Jim edited the song and listened to the instruments on the program, he sometimes muted one instrument in order to hear another better. He did that to hear what it sounded like as a single instrument as opposed to hearing all of the instruments together. Perhaps he also did it to get it to sound exactly the way he wanted. There were timing issues with the guitar that was played and recorded on the song. There is a lot that Jim could do, but since the chords were “hanging over” he couldn’t do much to fix it. Jim prefers to re-record the musician in order to capture best performance, rather than having to do a lot of editing. That is a great thing, in my opinion. What he decided to do was create an effect by putting in a delay. There was a part in the song that was “dead” and “dry” so Jim decided to add reverb/delay to it. He explained to me that messing with multiple effects to mask issues was not his favorite part, but sometimes has to be done.

Jim explained to me that this was a nine song project that had not been worked on in a couple of months. In addition, it had taken a while to even do the guitar parts, which makes the editing process a bit more challenging. He says usually it is easy for him to remember exactly the style and sound the client is hoping to achieve, but it gets difficult when hasn’t worked on a project in a long time and works with other clients in between. I can definitely understand why that would be complicated. In the second song, Jim edited out the “noise”, when the guitar is not playing, by deleting it. After adding effects to the guitar parts and making sure they sounded the way he wanted them too, he rendered it. Next was the third song, and it sounded different than the others. Jim said that he used mixes from a different song as a template for this song. I didn’t know you could do that, but it seems like it would save time during the process. For two of Wes’ songs, he has raw vocals. That means he recorded a vocal track before the final and perfect one, so he could remember the melody and specific way he wanted to sing it. Wes now has to come in and record the vocals to complete the songs.

Another client, John, came in for an appointment. He talked about his background and let Jim, and the bass guitar player, Chris, know why he wanted to start a project possibly at Allusion Studios. He had made a few songs for his family in his home studio. What he wants to do now is take the original songs but make them more professional maybe even more modern sounding. It was interesting for me to see Jim and Chris interact with this new client. I had never seen a new client start at the studio before. I really enjoyed hearing how much this meant to John and why he wants to make his music better. When we listened to some of his songs, I noticed that they only had lead vocals and a limited number of instruments. What Jim discussed with him was prices, dates for the project to begin, and the number of musicians needed to help with the songs.

The last client to come in today was Alisha. This day really showed me how packed and crazy one day at the studio can be! Jim and Alisha went through all three of her songs and listened to them. I could see the positive changes from the beginning of the process to what it has become now! Both Jim and Alisha made final edits on the song while listening. For example, in the first song, Alisha noticed when she sang the word “face” you could not hear the “c” sound. Instead of having Alisha sing it back in, he went to the trash can, on his computer, and took out one of the old tracks that she sang from the same line. He edited in only the word “face”. Then Jim rendered all of the virtual stuff and the first song was complete!

For the second song, they listened all the way through and then make final touches to see if there was anything they wanted to change, just like they did for the first one. I saw how Jim is a fair and professional person. He allowed Alisha to have so much say in the decisions made for her songs. I was not surprised because he had done that during the entire process but it was just exciting for me to see someone close to my age accomplish this. Once they finished, Jim rendered the different parts of the song, and then the whole song.

Lastly, they edited the third song. For example, at one point Jim asked Alisha if she liked the vocal volumes and she did. Jim mentioned that he thought he heard a wrong chord in the song. It turned out that he didn’t, but I wonder what would happen if there really were any wrong chords. Would she have to re-record them? How often does that occur? There was a certain part in the song where Alisha kind of sing/screams, and after that she wanted to add an interesting wind sound. Jim went to a website online and typed in what sound he was looking for. Many options were available and some sounded a lot better than others. Jim saved the one they agreed on liking and added it into the song. It was added like any other track would be and Jim faded it in and out. I believe this is called cross fading. In order to hear the new sound better, Jim put on the headphones, which he does from time to time. Then he had to make sure he and Alisha liked the volume of it. Finally, Jim rendered the song and mastered the CD. When doing this, the artist has to consider the order of the songs, meaning how they will appear as a final product. Also, Alisha had a picture that was going to go on the CD. The songs were finished and they sounded great!