Use your ear!

I have had the pleasure to work with and be around some tremendously talented audio technicians in my life. I am constantly gleaning how my mentor engineers are doing things and what makes their work sound so good! One of my first real audio teachers was Loren Barton, a worship leader and recording engineer at my home church growing up. I ate up every little thing he said in regard to audio and media and really got my start trying to emulate him! In college I was fortunate enough to work with some great live engineers who came through- Andy Barker (my first real audio teacher), Cam Drake, Les Batts, and the now famous Brian Farina who continues to work for grammy award winning artists! I was enveloped into the world of studio recording with the amazing kalamazoo engineer/musicians John Campos and Ian Gorman and watched how they were able to capture and create such stunning sound.

Along with working in both volunteer church and amateur production settings, I have gotten to hear and see those who, in my opinion, didn't quite get it right. In my very limited experience, I have been able to watch and see what works and what doesn't in regard to the live sound and recording world. I thought for todays blog, I would offer this list of a few of those things. I hope some of my mentors and friends from the audio world will contribute to this list as most of their experience and brilliance FAR outweighs my own:

1) Use your ear stupid!
This is the title of the blog and I only include the "stupid" here because it is something I say to myself often. I feel like I hear all of my mentors say this in their own way at some point during their processes. You can take measurements, and that is helpful; You can set the "typical" EQ and that too is helpful. You can route and send and process the way you are "supposed" to, but what it all comes down to is, "does it sound good?" USE YOUR EARS. This is something John Campos and other mentors have drilled into me. John listens to mixes, he doesn't watch them on the computer screen! Train your ears to hear what music and audio are supposed to sound like, and then develop the strategies to make it happen. If you are doing a live sound gig, GET OUT OF THE HEADPHONES and listen to the house. The room is what needs to sound good, not your cans. If you are in the studio, listen to whats pumping out those monitors, not to what your preset says is supposed to work. You can buy the best gear in the world and get all the technical training to make it work, but what takes from a simple technician into an artistic contributor is the willingness to use your EAR.

2) For recording, get it right while tracking.
I found in my early recording projects that if spent a lot of time during tracking saying "I will just take care of that in post (production)" things ended up sounding somewhat less that ideal- even so far as "bad". Get it right while tracking. Even if you have to track that line 100 times; even if you have to reset that mic 20 different ways; even if you have to change preamps, mics, cables, locations etc. if you track it right, it will sound the best. I always get frustrated with myself when I ignored a problem or I let a note slip and didn't take the time to track it right. I start adding plugins and software that slowly wear down the sonic integrity and suddenly... it all starts to sound... bad...

3) Good equipment is good, but a good engineer can make bad equipment sound good... (and vise versa).
I see this in a lot of churches. I have learned that one of the biggest spenders on live sound installation is the contemporary Christian church. Churches will spend 1s 10s and 100s of thousands on state-of-the-art audio equipment for their worship center/sanctuary but then will not have anyone who knows how to use it. What you end up having is a bunch of volunteers who know how to make the gear "work" but nobody who goes to the next level in the art and instrument-like skill of being a live sound engineer... and the sound is still lacking. On the contrary, I have been to a few places that had sub-par gear, but have a person in place who makes that gear sound amazing. Don't get me wrong- good gear can make life a WHOLE lot simpler for a volunteer sound team, but that gear is no replacement for training and skills. It doesn't really matter how great your music sounds, if the audio is bad in the house, nobody will know...

4) Cheap doesn't mean terrible.
There are a variety of reasons prices can be high. A Dodge Caravan may sell for $20,000 because it costs a lot of man-hours, and material to fully produce it, but an Aston Martin costs $200,000+ because... better parts... more intricacy and detail... better design... but also the name has built value over the years. An Aston martin may be great, but you can't take the carpool to the soccer game with it! We buy Neve, Neumann, and Meyer because we (and their marketing and sales departments) have come to realize that the parts, skills, and designs associated with them are high in value and will always give the best results. If I see "Neumann" on a mic, I know that I can expect top-notch German engineering from some of the finest minds in audio. However, not all of us can afford a $5000 large-diaphragm tube-powered condenser microphone, but rather only have the cash to purchase an AKG Perception series mic for around $200! Obviously, Neumann mics are going to out-perform a low-end mic in an A/B shootout, but don't poo-poo a cheaper mic just because it isn't expensive. Again, USE YOUR EAR... what sounds can you get with that lower-quality gear? Try it out; listen; experiment; strategize... you may find that you can get some very effective sounds with gear you can afford (until you CAN afford the high-end...). Look at the trusty old SM57... $100 and you can get some wonderful sounds... some groups have even recorded entire albums using ONLY this go-to inexpensive classic!

5) Musical training can go a LONG way.
There are so many idioms for recording in todays world, but a vast amount of them involve music in some capacity. One of the reason many musicians like to come to me for a project is not because of my gear or audio ability (many audio professionals have these) but they know I have a Bachelors and Masters in Music. They know they can ask my opinion about violin performance technique, or the pocket of the rhythm section, or if they played an E-flat or E-natural in the pickup to bar 34. Learning the language of music, being able to speak to a professional musician in their language, and giving honest and knowledgable "musical" feedback (and not just technical feedback), is an invaluable skill in the audio world.

Again, I am young and my experience is VERY limited, but I would LOVE to hear what some of my other audio professionals and mentors have to add to this (or even if they disagree!).