Finding gigs at the computer store -- Delaware musicians get wiredBy Terry Plowman
For many musicians, a "gig" used to be a job, a keyboard was an onstage instrument and a hard drive was the long trip home after breaking down the equipment.
But for today's wired musicians, gigabytes, keyboards and hard drives are crucial elements of a new musical world -- a world dominated by computers.
Forget about garage bands. Many musicians have moved into the living room or bedroom or wherever they can fit a computer and a few microphones. The plummeting cost and rising quality of music-oriented hardware and software have given Delaware's home-based composers some of the same tools used by major recording studios. And that digital revolution has leveled the playing field for small recording studios like Mid South Audio in Georgetown and Target Studios in Elkton, Md.
"You can't get along in this business without computers. They've definitely changed the whole industry," says Mid South owner Kevin Short, whose studio uses them to edit, refine and create recordings.
Mid South's production specialist and engineer Gino Bailey says, "Computers have changed the editing process drastically. What people used to do with tape and razor blades would take weeks or months. Now it's as simple as cut, click and paste."
These changes have accelerated as studios and musicians have adopted computer-based recording and editing in the past few years. Not that computers-as-musical tools are new. They have been an intrinsic part of the industry since the 1980s, when MIDI technology (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) spawned synthesizers, sequencers, drum machines and other computer-driven devices. But the latest musical evolution came about when digital recording technology allowed the capture of sound without the magnetic tape so familiar to cassette-deck users.
The technology, like all new products in the computer world, was expensive at first, but soon dropped in price, even as the software and hardware improved.
"Think of the computer you were using 10 years ago," says Junior Wilson, a Milford-based performer. "We had little, slow computers with all their limitations. Now those limitations don't exist."
Well, one major limitation does exist, he notes: the massive computer memory required to store and manipulate digital recordings. Wilson's studio has 16 gigabytes of memory -- and he still needs more to store his many projects, which include jingles and other commercial work, original compositions and backing tracks for his solo performances.
So how does the new technology work? Wilson describes it as a "musical 'word processor'" because digital recordings can be brought up on a computer monitor and edited just like the text in a document. Single sounds or whole verses can be seamlessly cut and pasted elsewhere in a song, an off-key note can be nudged into tune, flubbed performances can be repaired and good takes can be enhanced. "Let's say you have a perfect take, but a guy creaked a chair," Wilson says. "You can slice and dice and fix it."
But the ability to repair bad takes easily troubles Wilson and musicians like him who have spent years working to improve their musical skills. Marc Moss, a musician and owner of Target Studios, says, "A lot of bands are getting corrected in the studio. You used to have to spend years learning to play your instrument. Today there's more laziness. Instead of rehearsing, [some musicians] just say, 'Can't you fix that?'"
Scott says that at Mid South Audio "we constantly argue about whether we've improved the song" in the computer editing process. "It's not necessarily a good thing to have all these options. You can lose some of the live feel. The hard thing is knowing when to stop."
But the infinite options that digital recording provides can open a lot of creative doors, says Rehoboth Beach guitarist Keith Mack, who has performed and recorded with such stars as Joe Cocker, Paul Young and Matthew Sweet. "It enables you to be more reckless, to experiment a lot more, because you don't have to discard any takes," he says. "Back in the old days [of tape recording], you often had to record over something to make a new take."
Mack notes that another advantage of digital recording is that musicians can collaborate over long distances much more easily than they could before. Instead of having to risk the original recording or sending a low-quality duplicate, musical partners can exchange exact copies of computer files on small digital tapes or CDs. There's no degradation of the sound and no problems with varying speeds of tape players that could ruin a long-distance collaboration.
The ability to copy and carry recordings with no loss of sound quality has been a boon to home-based recording artists like Cliff Hillis, of Rehoboth Beach, and Ken Herblin, of Newark, who use the ubiquitous ADAT, a recorder made by Alesis Digital Audio Technologies. The ADAT has revolutionized home recording by making a high-quality digital system affordable. A few years ago, Hillis and Herblin would have used a small multi-track tape recorder, with its limited frequency range, tape hiss and other drawbacks. Now they, and many other Delaware musicians, use the ADAT, an eight-track device that records digital information onto small VHS tape cartridges that resemble those in 8mm video cameras. Because the system is so popular -- Alesis has sold more than 150,000 ADATs -- musicians can find a compatible machine almost anywhere. Because the information on the tapes is digital, copies lose no sound quality.
The affordability of ADATs has made it possible for almost any musician to make an album, says Hillis, guitarist for the John Faye Power Trip. His new solo album is proof. Hillis recorded parts on an ADAT at home, then later added parts by musicians elsewhere in Delaware, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Finally, he mixed the songs with Herblin's ADATs in Newark. The resulting CD, "Be Seeing You," was released in May.
Herblin, a member of Hillis' band the Forward Thinkers, The Knobs and I'm Not Sally, says, "Before, when we were working on four-track cassette recorders, you couldn't get anywhere near the quality you can get now." He also notes that it's common practice to link eight-track ADATs to create 16- or 24-track systems for just a few thousand dollars.
Songwriter and performer Mary Arden Collins of Arden uses digital technology not only for recording, but also as part of her creative process. She records songs-in-progress directly to her computer's hard drive, then develops them through experimentation with drum and guitar loops and other musical sounds she downloads from the Internet. Writing a song inspired by a hip-hop drum loop, for example, is one way to bring a new feel to her music. "Being able to experiment like this has really broadened my horizons," she says. "It's neat to combine newer technology with raw organic music."
She also uses computer editing functions to revise the structure of new songs, moving parts around by cutting and pasting digital data. "The possibilities are endless," Collins says.
Using computers in songwriting isn't the exclusive domain of pop musicians, as Rehoboth's Jim Grant proves. In his 20-year career as a composer for orchestras in such countries as Japan, England, Australia and the United States, Grant has logged many hours writing musical notation with pencil and paper. Now he uses software that can generate musical scores as he plays parts on a MIDI keyboard. "What used to take three months I now can do in four or five days," Grant says.
The software helps Grant create the complex score that a conductor uses to direct a full orchestra, then allows him to extract each instrument's part -- as many as 30 musical layers. "The process would be slow (when composing required notation by hand). Now, by virtue of the process speeding up, the creative juices flow more readily," Grant says. He still writes the initial parts on piano and notes the music by hand, but once he transfers it to his hard drive, he can access any section of the composition for further development.
Although digital recording has become common, either directly to computer hard drives, as Grant and Collins do, or on devices like ADATs, magnetic tape is still used. Target Studios uses the traditional industry standard: a 24-track recorder that uses 2-inch magnetic tape. "It has a certain sound that's very appealing," says Moss. "It has a higher-fidelity, more realistic sound than digital."
Whether recordings are made on big 2-inch tapes or little digital audio tape cassettes, they can be transferred to computers, where all elements of the songs can be edited in many ways -- adjusting volume and pitch, adding effects such as reverb and delay, mixing in additional instruments and voices -- all of which can be accomplished quickly and easily with clicks of a mouse. Once the songs are completed (a point that's difficult to determine when you have unlimited options for tweaking), they can be assembled and "burned" to a CD right from the computer.
Although musicians have embraced digital technology, many miss the "warmth" of magnetic tape recordings. Tape recordings -- called "analog" by sound engineers -- seem to have a richness many musicians do not hear on digital recordings. Thus the quest for the best recorded sound has come full circle, as musicians try to put back into digital recordings the elusive "fatter" sound of the analog recordings they've abandoned.
At the forefront of this quest is former Delawarean Dave Derr, whose Empirical Labs in Montville, N.J., makes devices designed to help computer users get analog sound on digital recordings.
Derr's flagship product is the Distressor, which, since its release in 1996, has become one of the most popular devices for bringing analog warmth to digital recordings. His newest product, FATSO (Full Analog Tape Simulator and Optimizer), is a step beyond the Distressor. FATSO offers a broader range of sound-processing options.
There may be another intangible element missing from digital music. Musician Keith Moss, Marc Moss' brother and co-owner of Target Studios, says that because computer-aided recording makes it easier to get a great sound, budding musicians aren't working as hard on their music. "Something gets lost when you don't have to work hard. Call it 'energy' or 'soul' or whatever you want. There's no replacement for talent and a great performance."