hi electrical,

let's say if i think im a pretty good producer, programmer and sound designer (for a 26 year old) .. how would i be best to go about finding management or someone to help me obtain and negotiate professional work.

thanks for your time.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be so rude. It was just annoying to me that everyone was complaining about that.

Was that a choice made beforehand for that song or did it happen while the session was happening? Damn great song, probably my favorite.

G7 Welcoming Committee in Canada recently decided to stop pressing music onto a physical disc and release everything strictly as digital downloads. Do you think that this will catch on and become the norm for independent labels?

I do not have a manager, I have never needed one, and I don't recommend them.

In this business, except for generic dollars-an-hour hack work (where you, rather than somebody else, records 100 iterations of the word "stop" for a talking traffic cop doll), an engineer doesn't find work, the work finds him. People use you for a session because they specifically think you will do a good job, and for them to think that, you need to develop a working clientele who will say your name out loud.

I can only advise you in the manner that I eventually became a full-time engineer. You should start by hanging out with people whose music you understand, and who think like you do. Make yourself available to them, and those people will let you help them make recordings.

First you work for free, then they cover your expenses, and eventually you will become valuable to a peer group who also compose your client base. Through word of mouth, your work will eventually become worth something (in real money terms) to them, and they will pay you what they can afford.

The time lapsed between the first free demos I recorded for bands and the moment I could afford to quit my straight job and work in recording full-time was about 8 years. I don't see how I could have done it faster.

You can also just wait for somebody to throw gigs at your feet. Good luck with that.

This then puts the label on exactly the same terms as a novice band with nothing but a demo and a Myspace page. If I were a band faced with the choice of a label who would sell nothing but downloads and selling those self-same downloads myself (and keeping all the money), I'd have no use for the label.

Just hit Amazon on your recommendation. I realized I didn't really have an excuse not to have it.

I have not heard them. Although he took great pains to erase the human element of his pieces, one of the great satisfactions of listening to his more demanding pieces is thinking about the poor bastards who had to play it, and the very rare performance nuance that sneaks in emphasizes the real human accomplishment.

Digital recording and editing were probably a godsend in the mind of the "pure" composer, in that they allow literally "perfect" transcriptions to be recorded, but I remain more impressed by music actually performed by people. Raymond Scott used to pine for a machine that could play his compositions, and even made a crude electro-mechanical sequencer to play some backing parts for tape recordings, because he was frustrated by the struggling of his band to play to his exacting standards. As it turns out, the struggle is one of the most engaging parts of a Raymond Scott tune. I shudder to think how awful his music would be if actually performed by samplers in perfect lockstep.

Conlon Nancarrow embraced the mechanical player piano for his compositions, but he had to adapt his notation and composition to the quirks of the piano, and this is where the tension between composition and performance displays itself and makes his music worth hearing. Take a look at his scores sometime -- they're like somebody shot two barrels of birdshot at a page of staff rule. If he could just type it into a sequencer and have it come out like water, I doubt he would have come up with any of his little temporal innovations like the constant accelerando, or the simultaneous regressing/accellerating lines. In particular, I wonder at what he called his "X-shape," where two themes played simultaneously; one playing forward accelerating in tempo, while another played in reverse, de-celerating, creating a central eddy motif where the two lines synchronize for some time.

This "X-shape" must have resulted from the discovering that he could punch a roll and then re-thread it in reverse to punch a counterpart composition. Perhaps he accidentally threaded a roll without rewinding it one day. These little epiphanies are only possible if your band or performance device once-in-a-while occasions accidents, and I am grateful Nancarrow did his work before midi sequencers and digital pianos were available.

Hi
Whats your opinion on the overuse of technology in today’s rock music? To me the lacks of authenticity and a sense of realism.

How would you feel about working with Nickelback? What would you do to improve upon their already amazing sound?

You are aware that I'm a tuba player. One thing that I cannot stand is when some sound guy wants to stick a microphone in my bell. The sound of a tuba is the sound it makes as it fills a room. Judging from your comments on recording strings, I'm guessing you appreciate where I'm coming from. Apparently, you've recorded at least one tuba player. How do you mike a tuba?

How do you really feel about Urge Overkill?

Man, don't mess with the formula.

Any idea why no outtakes from the In Utereo sessions were on the Nirvana box? I was hoping to get at least a few alternate takes from the Pachyderm sessions. Do you know if the alternate takes have vocals?

Thanks in advance.

Attributes of individual instruments can make them easier or more difficult to record accurately. Tuba has about four bummer characteristics, making it a bigger bitch than almost anything short of a temperemental soprano:

1) Low fundamental frequencies correspond to long acoustic wavelengths. These need a large acoustic space to avoid self-cancellation or booming ("wolf" tones). A low E natural is about 40 feet long, and cannot be properly resolved without either a very good bass trap or a large acoustic space, and both bass traps and empty space require real estate.

2) Extremely wide frequency response. Simultaneous with the low fundamental frequencies are a blistering array of higher partials, harmonics and violent transients typical to horns. Picking this stuff up requires a microphone and signal path that can comfortably pass (phase-linear) components in the 30kHz range. That's where the "fraap!" resides. Appropriate microphones are somewhat esoteric, and don't necessarily have a lot of other utility, so investing in microphones appropriate for horn recording is often a marginally -EV business decision.

3)The instrument is physically large, and sound radiates not just from the bell of the horn, but also from the body, and an isolated pickup pattern is not very accurate, so it needs to be recorded from a distance. A distant mic will by necessity be exposed to every other sound in the room, so it becomes not just a "tuba" mic, and the penalty for trying to record a tuba is losing control of every other sound in the session.

4) Tuba players are weird.

So how do I record tuba? In a big room, with a ribbon mic (specifically an STC 4038 or a Royer 122) not too close to the bell, through a wide-bandwidth mic preamp (GML most recently) and a separate distant microphone to pick up the room sound.

Pretty much like everybody else.

My other question that I forgot to ask is if you've ever seen anyone fry a ribbon mike.

We have a couple hundred budgeted each year for re-ribboning microphones. Accidents (and inexperienced freelance engineers) happen.

yeah, i know - first time poster, linked from stereogum, how annoying. but i read this:

"I think you're a defeatist and you are destined not to enjoy music. If you wait for other people to thrust music under your nose, you'll be listening to nothing but crap for a long while, because that's what gets thrust at us. Music is not a spectator sport."

and had to repeat it. well said steve. see you at the tables - FT name: antiexplode.

heart - dave

steve, what do you think of sheryl crow's "anything but down"?

it's awesome, isn't it

Steve,

I don't know much of Nancarrow - heard one piece played live at Carnegie Hall this year - but you've convinced me to check it out.

Some of the best innovations in music definitely came by accident - Steve Reich's discovery of 'phasing' and Brian Eno's tape loop experiments come to mind.

Steve, can you ask the people who are going to post for the first time in this thread, before they do so (or even after), to please sign up at a poker site and post their screen names?

I see that member 'antiexplode' has already had the foresight to do so.

Two more questions:

What's your motto?

What does every girl really want?

Thx, and nice title.

how did you like working with serena maneesh?

i heard a rumour that you'll be working with silver as well.
what do you think of what you've heard of them before?

-a curious norwegian

this has turned into a "State an obscure band or musician that Steve Albini has worked with" thread

i'm not sure if foresight is the right word, arbuthnot, since i've been playing as antiexplode on FT and pokerroom for something like 4 or 5 years now, but i do get what you're getting at. which also made me think of a couple questions:

how has your game changed since the chris moneymaker won the WSOP? do you play in enough public tourneys or public games to make it rich/get extremely frustrated by lucky newbies?

in NLHE, how do you play low pocket pairs? this question is kind of for every poker player, i couldn't find a thread on here for it (maybe someone can post a link?).

heart - dave

Do artists mostly come to you to with work, or do you ever actively seek out a band you'd like to record with?

Do you think you could make a great album with a band like Tortoise?

Favorite album of all time?

Best concert moment?

I would love to hear about anything having to do with your work with Barkmarket. I've been a huge fan of them since the mid-90s and, for a while, ran the only Barkmarket webpage that I knew about. Unfortunately, I was unable to see them live when they were still together; I do have a small collection of live video/audio material from them, but that's about it (other than the studio releases).

They're one of the more underrated bands of the 90s. Their grooves, time signatures, non-stop Dave Sardy growling -- the whole thing was really something else.

So, yeah -- anything related to Barkmarket, I'd LOVE to hear it!

your comments on Urge Overkill make me think they're Bitch Slap!

of course I know you aren't mixerman, but you must have some similar stories of recording sessions gone wrong, anything in particular?

I seem to remember you writing a diatribe on the loudness wars at some point. Any thoughts on how to stop the mangling of music and allowing dynamics back?

How has your experiment with the different quality levels of downloads worked out? do you see people care about sound quality anymore?

Does it ever frustrate you to know that you take such time and dedication to getting "that perfect drum sound", and the vast majority of people listening wouldn't know the difference if it took you an hour to set up the snare mic or just taped a plastic realistic mic to the head? (of course, that just might be the perfect drum sound, studio experimentation sure is fun!)

thanks for still making records on tape. though I've recorded digitally due to convenience, there is nothing like a properly recorded analog recording. If only there were more like you.

been checking out 2+2 for years, never expected to be posting about drum recording here!