Archive for March, 2010
A ‘must watch’ for aspiring engineers
Mar 14th
To begin: While skimming through posts on Twitter the other day, I found one that really excited me from Dave Rat of Rat Sound. Dave’s work was brought to my attention when I did a two day trip to Hartford, CT and Columbia, Maryland to see Blink 182’s summer 2009 reunion tour. At both shows I was in complete awe over the band’s sound. Travis Barker, being the technical drummer he is, had a kick drum that sounded more like a doomsday cannon and the clarity of the entire performance was evident even through the lower end of the audio spectrum. Fortunately, through my ability to follow people on Twitter, I tracked down the man responsible for exposing my ears to a live sound I have never witnessed before. To my luck, Dave documents his work well online. After discovering his blog following Blink’s summer tour, I spent almost an entire day reading through his technical details. While the majority of it is out of my league, Dave has become a great influence towards my aspirations.
And now to the next: While researching room acoustics, I was introduce to the company RealTraps based right here in New Milford, Connecticut. I first heard of RealTraps while reading through Mastering Audio by Bob Katz (Big thanks to Tom MacLean for providing me with a copy of this book). RealTraps came to my attention again several weeks ago as I began a more in depth look at the art of treating rooms for better acoustic accuracy. The owner of RealTraps, Ethan Winer, has proved himself to be a seemingly endless amount of knowledge to any level of recording engineer or audiophile. Ethan Winer tops my list of the ‘most helpful’ and I look forward to meeting him one day (fingers crossed).
Onto the connection: As I stated, I was stumbling through Twitter posts and came across Dave Rat’s latest. It was a YouTube link to a ‘must watch’ video for anyone in the industry. I fixed myself a delicious bowl of mac n cheese and prepared myself for what would most likely be some great new insight. To my surprise, the owner of the video was none other than Ethan Winer. I gave myself a pat on the back for looking up to both of these greats and dove right into the video.
To get to the point: Ethan’s video is from an Audio Myths workshop lead by himself, James Johnston and Poppy Crum that took place at AES 2009. Like many before me said, this video is a ‘must watch’ and I couldn’t agree more. Here it is:
Angels & Airwaves – LOVE
Mar 11th
Disclaimer: I am not a professional critic. This review is solely based on my own opinions.
I’ll start right off the top by admitting I’m a Blink fan first, a Plus 44 fan second and an AvA fan third. After catching wind of Tom DeLonge’s mastermind free album download, I became an instant skeptic to the word “free.” With much surprise I was caught off guard when Modlife actually allowed me to freely download all eleven tracks (paying only for a bonus Hoppus remix). None the less, a free AvA album sits right in tandem with DeLonge’s view on the music industry and his attempt to change it. Whether or not he has been successful at doing so is debatable.
As I burned my free copy of LOVE, I was struck with a feeling of hope that this could be the AvA album that refreshes my opinion of their music. Settling behind my steering wheel, I replaced The Offspring’s Americana (ironic) with AvA’s third attempt. As the first track faded in with a typical-confused-crawling-intro, I felt my hope dim and knew I would have to force myself to keep focus on the music.
What’s unfortunate is that AvA’s follow-up to I-Empire refuses to take hold of any theme such as found on We Don’t Need To Whisper. I felt bombarded by a mix of different genres, all seemingly fit into lengthy, run-in songs which were unwillingly forced to match AvA’s own style. There are songs that would fit better into albums of surf rock, punk rock and even pop. DeLonge leads the band with an overuse of effects, synthesizers and auto-tune that might cause a song to suffer more than the listener. However, it is necessary to point out that these effects really light up on a hi-fi stereo. Because the album is mastered to match the loudness war there is not a great range of dynamics provided between soft and loud passages which leaves me wondering if the music could benefit from less processing. However, even with an array of different effects there is a significant lack of energy that fails to keep the song entertaining.
DeLonge’s Angels & Airwaves is truly a LOVE or hate band. I’ve never easily written off their music, but there isn’t much about it that impresses me other than how well it matches visuals as more or less ambient noise (and I don’t mean the soon to be AvA film). Perhaps there is merit in the lyrics, but to understand such a message means interpreting what you can through an assortment of unruly reverb and delay. The bottom line is that AvA might be a self-fulfilling legacy for Tom DeLonge, but Blink is still together for the kids.
