Educating the Educators
Last evening, a couple of my new tenants held an open house at the studio. It was a party to celebrate their move to my building and to show off their room and their capabilities to a group of young producers, songwriters, and friends. The two guys are both highly motivated, talented, and graduates of the Berkley School of Music in Boston. I’ve been very impressed by their energy, their attention to detail, their knowledge, and their very pleasant attitudes. I’m sure they’re going to succeed in the music business…and I’m going to try and help them.
Among the people at the event last evening were some of their former faculty members from the Berklee School. It’s AES weekend and they’ve all come to Los Angeles to check out the latest gear, visit with students, enjoy another party at the Village for Berklee graduates, and to present papers at the convention. I met four or five of the group last evening. Years ago I gave a presentation at Berklee and had a piece of mine performed at an electronics music festival. It was performed by one of their faculty members. I haven’t been in touch with anyone at the school in over 15 years but thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the studio playing my Blu-ray HD-Audio 2013 sampler and watching their reactions to the tracks.
They were enchanted…and full of questions. They were particularly interested in my use of ORTF stereo pairs on a lot of the instruments. They notice a stereo pair of U-87 microphones on an acoustic bass and questioned why I employed stereo on the bass. “Don’t you experience a lot of phase cancellation?” they wanted to know. I explain my philosophy of recording depth using ORTF stereo pairs. A stereo pair captures the area of sound not the specific point source. When I played the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, they had even more questions. On the 146″ screen was an image of the quintet with 10 microphones positioned around the ensemble. Over the upper string players I used multiple XY pairs and ORTF pairs on the clarinet and cello.
These recording and production faculty were fighting for the choice seat right in the middle of the studio. From their reaction, I don’t any one of them had ever seen that type of miking used AND they had never heard that level of detail and intimacy from a classical recording. They mentioned that a colleague had once tried something similar but rejected the attempt because of phase issues and an “unfocused” sound. I assured them that it took a lot of trial and error to work out the problems, but that I had been using this technique for over 15 years.
Upon seeing and hearing the solo piano recording by Bryan Pezzone, they became intensely interested in checking out the microphone placement. They were uniformly complimentary about the sound and wanted to know where I place the mikes. I explained the use of two stereo pairs and why having them inside the instrument provides a sound that I prefer. Apparently, they preferred it as well…although they had never tried this technique.
As you would imagine, I was thrilled by their reaction and told them that I would be glad to come to Boston and present a session or two on my approach and the world of high-resolution audio. I polled a couple of the faculty about what they knew about HRA and was somewhat dismayed to get the usual “anything better than a CD” response. I shared the definition and the descriptors developed by the DEG, CEA, and NARAS with the group. Talking about analog sources and CD sources in higher spec PCM got them thinking.
If the faculty at recording and music production programs don’t have a thorough grasp and knowledge about HRA, how can we expect the next generation of engineers/producers to do the right things?
Hej Mark,
Greetings from Sweden where your daily words warm the hearts of at least a few hi-res wannabees;) Mainly I want to congratulate you on your success “showing off” your recording talents. Typically you openly share trade secrets and then volunteer to help others learn how better to do it hands on. My first response is, don’t do it, you’re crazy! But a breath later, I see the light and remember that you are who you are — smart, generous and dare I say wise?!
Ha det så bra,
bill
Thanks Bill…I’ve never held anything I’ve done as proprietary or secret.
Hi Mark,
By way of affirmation, I think you are really onto something in this article. Here is a little story to illustrate. My wife is the author of an early literacy children’s program. She has been promoting it locally in BC, nationally in Canada and recently internationally in India. To begin with she taught young children in her own preschool. Then she moved on to teaching other teachers using her approach – educating the educators. For the last six year we have gone to India where we have gotten into a teachers’ college to bring our good news to the “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed” students there. These are our keen adopters and in the long run we think they will be our best promoters. More recently we have been training a specially selected group of Indian teachers from across the nation to be able to handle their own training of Indian teachers. When we started on this journey we had no idea of how it might develop. But it just took off on us. Talk about developing ownership of a program with these Indian folk! It is fun!
I hope this little summary of our experience will be an encouragement to you. Educating educators is really where it is at, as far as we are concerned. My wife is 78 and I am 73. Educators still going strong.
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend to you and yours!
Jack
Sounds like fun Jack! Congrats to both you and your wife.
Hi Mark,
I enjoyed talking with you and seeing your students feeling so excited to find you at the AES Show/Hi-Res meeting hall. Did you attend the buggy late afternoon Hi-Res panel in (I think) 405AB room? Some good demos there, but it lasted until 6:30pm. I’m glad I stayed to hear the discussion. I felt the “big guys” at the major record labels wanted to deliver a “recording engineer/control room” experience with the latest HD audio/download formats and I was excited by that.
So, I sincerely hope the latest HD Tracks/Pono download things won’t just be up-res’d 16/44.1 content. I asked about the lack of 5.1 content but there was an underlying hope that future delivery formats might provide a “demanded by the customer” means of delivering that. They want to share it, but it has to make them some $$ and I can accept that.
Are you going to CES 2015?
Rick, Mesa, AZ