Putting "Excellence" Into Perspective

One of the hard lessons learned while working on an episodic TV series is that there is neither the time nor the budget to make everything "perfect." It's been said that a show is never finished, just abandoned when you run out of time or money or both.

In a recent blog entry on the ProTools Expert site, editor Russ Hughes wrote, "Perfection is said to be as much a curse as it is a blessing, especially for creative types. We record, edit, mix audio or shoot, cut and grade video and often we just can’t leave it alone, or indeed be satisfied with the end results.

"Our clients often never know the lengths we go to when working on their projects; they certainly won’t pay for half the work we did in the name of perfection. It’s a difficult balance being a creative professional with a budget on the one hand and a personal desire to do the best we can on the other. It’s the little things that take a project from good to great, as I’ve already alluded to most of us seldom feel we have done that, despite our best efforts," he said. (http://bit.ly/11IioLh)

One of the areas that causes us the most grief is all those annoying, unwanted noises that plague our recordings, especially production tracks for film and TV shows.

As supervising sound editor on 66 episodes of Relic Hunter a few years back, I calibrated our edit rooms to 82 dBA SPL and worked on eliminating unwanted noise perceptible at that level, and not at a higher level, since 82 was the level set in the mix theatre at Deluxe. Of course you would hear every little glitch and tick if you were to boost the monitor pot, but the average audience won't, and we're not going for absolute perfection, just doing the appropriate job for our client, the production company, within the available time and budgetary constraints without killing ourselves.

One takeaway from this is that for picture work, calibrate your monitor level appropriate for the program type and then DON'T TOUCH IT AGAIN. That's how it's done on the mix stage. In fact, I've seen film consoles with the monitor pot removed. Seasoned mixers know when dialog is at the right level just using their ears and never looking at a meter. If you mix consistently to, say, feature film level of 85 dB SPL each and every day for as little as 4 weeks without ever changing the level, you'll soon train yourself to accurately gauge level, and you'll love the freedom this brings to the work, along with a concomitant lack of stress over little things that will never be heard in the intended listening environment.

This is also the antidote to level creep in music mixes, where the monitor level goes up as the hours stretch on, and ultimately changes the track's spectral content due to the way we perceive the amount of bass and treble at different listening levels (due to the equal-loudness contours). Try to avoid this temptation at all costs and leave the monitor pot alone. Failing that, calibrate it to something like 85 or 90 dBA SPL and remove the knob. Try it. You may like it.

Listening in on the Words and Music Demo Panel at Canadian Music Week

Canadian Music Week wrapped up last Saturday with a special Words and Music Demo Listening Session at the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre. I have attended a few Date With A Demo sessions before under the auspices of the Songwriters Association of Canada, but this was by far and away the best yet, for a couple of reasons.

First, the 23 songs auditioned by the panel during the two-hour session were, as a group, of much higher quality than I had seen at any SAC session before; and second, because the panelists themselves, drawn from different sectors of the industry that are all relevant to aspiring songwriters, gave such precise prescriptions for making good songs great.

Moderated by SAC’s Ania Ziemirska, the panel included Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter Melanie Doane; radio promotion and music director Andrea Morris; Juno Award-winning producer Gavin Brown; and internationally acclaimed producer-songwriter Brett Rosenberg. As Brown said, their job was to provide analysis, not criticism. For those who were unable to attend, here’s a distillation of their advice, in no particular order.

General production advice

1. Keep intros short. This was hammered home many times during the session. Listeners will give an unknown song about 40 seconds, at most a minute, before moving on to something else. This is particularly true for radio programmers, who need to be grabbed immediately. No one will get to hear a great bridge if they’re not hooked by the first verse and chorus.
2. A demo produced for other people to sing should sound like a finished hit. Try not to allow the production to sound dated. However, a very simple demo, such as piano and voice, may allow a creative producer to imagine the song as it might be produced for different genres
3. Leave room at the beginning to build up excitement as the song progresses. A song that doesn’t change much from beginning to end will tend to sound boring. Make it quieter and louder, not just loud the whole time.
4. Ensure that the low end isn’t muddy. Roll off the low frequencies in the mix and see if that improves the song.
5. If singing from a first person singular point-of-view, maybe it’s best not to have multiple voices harmonizing on the word “I” when it comes around.
6. Make sure the lyrics are always clear. Don’t bury the vocal in the mix.

Lyric-writing

7. Ensure that the singer’s point-of-view is clear and unambiguous. Be careful not to slip from a first person (“I”) to a second person (“you”) or a third person (“she”) point of view as the lyrics unfold, unless the story demands it.
8. Above all, make sure the message is clear. A song is a vehicle for communicating. If a line isn’t communicating anything or isn’t amazing, it shouldn’t be in the song. The re-writing process is tremendously important. As the panel pointed out, prose writers rewrite constantly and have editors who help them revisit the text many times.
9. Look at the building blocks of the song and ask what emotion is in each part. Make sure the different blocks don’t contradict each other.
10. Avoid clichés. Don’t sing what you wouldn’t say. Extend the lyric to its logical conclusion and make sure you haven’t left anything important unsaid.
11. Always avoid awkward lyrics. If a line sounds weird or stilted when spoken out loud, then consider recasting it for the song.
12. Lyrically, something has to happen more than once, or else you’re writing a poem. If working with an extended metaphor, try to milk every association out of it, and make the whole song relate to that one thing.

Verse and chorus

13. Work on the melody. Then work some more. Don’t just sing over the chords. Try singing different notes of the triads or scale. Make the melody memorable.
14. Work on different melodic elements in the music track and the vocal so that they are different but complementary, rather than parallel and similar. For example, the guitar or piano should not be playing the melody in unison with the voice.
15. The title should be the hook. Make sure the song title is clearly stated, perhaps as the last line of the chorus. If you can’t fit it in naturally, then add a beat or two to let it fit. Or if that doesn’t work and it doesn’t fit in the lead vocal more than once, then try to have it sung in the backing vocals.
16. Don’t take too long to get to the chorus. The lift or pre-chorus should be followed immediately by the chorus without being repeated.
17. The chorus should be set up convincingly—most often it is set up on the fifth or dominant chord. A chorus should be awesome. Make it soaring, triumphant. If a chorus doesn’t sound triumphant, then keep trying. Experiment with big interval jumps. Big intervals are exciting.
18. Differentiate between the chords in the verse and the chorus.
19. Take care not to go to half-time or drop beats in the chorus.
20. Don’t let the drummer play over the payoff or the song’s title line in the chorus.
21. Scream it and mean it.

Writing for radio

22. If you’re going to write songs for radio, make sure the song fits the conventions of radio. Listen to the radio, and figure out what stations and formats you’re targeting—even if not every song you write is intended for radio. If you’re new, you can’t start out by doing your own thing—you need to have already established your identity as an artist to pull that off.
23. If sound effects are absolutely essential to the song, then keep them for the album version and provide a stripped down remix for radio play, especially if the effects are at the beginning of the song.
24. Beware of using sexually-tinged lyrics; even a word as innocuous as “virgin” may limit a song’s potential for radio play.
25. Jump into the lyric right out of the gate and make the intro short. A radio programmers’ music meeting is not likely to listen past the first minute of your song, if that.

The quality of the songs was truly impressive. Due to time constraints, only the first verse and chorus of each song was played, but on several occasions, the panelists expressed a desire to hear more of a song. A few songs even elicited spontaneous applause from the audience: Kat Leonard’s witty, off-the-wall I’m My Own Asshole; David Keeble’s liberating, stripped down demo Maybe Freedom; Steve Onotera’s The Field of White with melodic acoustic guitar accompaniment; and—illustrating a soaring, triumphant chorus—Catherine Bacque’s Stand.

Moderator Ania Ziemirska laboured valiantly through a lingering cold to keep panelists on track and play as many songs as possible, skipping songs if the writer was not present. Noting that some of the other CMW sessions were running late, she graciously returned to songs that were skipped, after the writers were able to join the session.

Speaking with the participants after the wrap-up, I can say that most were deeply appreciative of the depth and originality of the advice offered by the panelists, and the gentle candour with which they analyzed each song. There were no bruised egos in evidence, but more than once I heard a writer say, “That was great—now where do we go from here with our songs?”

From that, it’s clear that most found this version of Date With A Demo to be both motivating and inspiring. Given the other sessions that were on offer at the CMW Songwriters Summit, like How Artists Are Being Discovered and Publishing 101, SAC’s Demo Listening Session provided an excellent springboard for writers to move forward with their songs.

Seller Beware—When You're Being Shopped for a Price

I got an email last week asking how much I would charge to mix 5 songs for a band's EP. I wrote back asking whether I'd be recording the original tracks, or just mixing tracks that someone else has already recorded for the band. Both, came the reply, and how much would it cost?

I wrote back to ask about the band, number of players, what instruments, etc., so that I could price out the job using the appropriate recording facility, and asking for a couple of possible dates when the band wanted to start recording. This is an important question, because in sales, there's a strong relationship between price, availability and delivery. You can sometimes get a better deal on studio time that would otherwise remain unbooked.

At this point, the answers started to get vague. What was clear, however, was that I was being shopped for a price. In other words, the prospect (not yet a client) had no intention of coming to me for the job, but was only trying to get a handle on the price of a job that most likely he was bidding on himself.

This happens to everyone from time to time, and is one of the reasons why it's not a great idea just to shoot out a price in response to an inquiry. Every job is different in some way, and a big part of the sales process is asking questions to qualify the buyer.

Asking questions not only keeps valuable business intelligence—your pricing policies— out of the hands of your competition, it also saves you from wasting time with tire kickers who would otherwise take up a lot of your time, but never end up buying anything.

The 80-20 rule seems to apply here: 80% of your business comes from 20% of your prospects. This is further refined so that in turn, 80% of your income comes from 20% of them. In other words, 4% (20% of 20%) of your potential clients are responsible for about two-thirds (80% of 80%) of your business.

Asking questions is your best line of defense here, and a genuine prospect will appreciate that you're drilling down in order to provide the best possible service.

MIDI Orchestration

I've just finished a first read-through of the 4th edition of Paul Gilreath's The Guide to MIDI Orchestration, published by Focal Press. Coming in at 600 pages, it's a pretty thorough introduction to the subject of orchestrating a musical composition using MIDI-based equipment and instrument sample libraries.

Several topics of interest to non-MIDI orchestrators and project studio folks alike are covered here, including instrument ranges and playing techniques, notation, voice leading, distribution of melodies and accompaniments to different instruments in the various sections, combining instruments to create different sounds, and achieving specific moods with orchestrations.

For the MIDI producer, there's a wealth of information on equipment, software, choosing sample libraries, and sequencing strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, piano, harp and voices.

The author illustrates portions of the text with screenshots from his favourite digital audio workstations: Cubase/Nuendo, Logic, Digital Performer and Sonar. Unfortunately, Gilreath dismisses ProTools, saying it's "still working to catch up" in this area, which is too bad, given its market penetration together with the strides that ProTools has made in the whole area of MIDI sequencing and sampling since version 8 was released at the end of 2008.

In any event, readers working with ProTools can easily adapt the material to their way of working, which, in most respects, is not too different from the others.

Supplementary material is available online at www.midi-orchestration.com, including reviews of several good instrument sample libraries, supplementary tutorials, and audio examples, but you have to sign in to access it.

Much of this material—including several full-length, uncut chapters—is still freely available for download as a single zip file from Focal Press at www.focalpress.com/midiorchestrationfiles.aspx.

The book is a terrific reference, and it's refreshing that the author combines description and prescription in almost equal amounts, which is a rare feat. Anyone looking for a grounding in MIDI orchestration would do well to own this book, and will check in with it on a regular basis, if not frequently. It's a beautiful volume, well designed and easy to read, with a crisp and clear layout, and it should be on every music producer's reference shelf.

My criticisms are few. There are numerous errors relating to missing or misplaced illustrations or examples, including a missing reference section with bibliographical apparatus that the author himself refers to twice yet, strangely, is nowhere to be found!

There are also too many proofreading errors, not many of them spelling mistakes, which leads me to believe that spell-check may have served as a convenient substitute for a thorough proofing. This is a tad disappointing in a 600-page book priced at US$82.50 ($86.50 Canadian).

Fortunately, these shortcomings are overshadowed by the author's monumental achievement in turning out what was surely the crowning achievement of his career as a composer for film and television. May his new life as a dentist in Atlanta be as fulfilling!

The Guide to MIDI Orchestration, 4th Edition, by Paul Gilreath, published by Focal Press, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-240-81413-1