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ARP 2009 Abstracts: T to Z

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The Fifth Annual Art of Record Production Conference

hosted by the Division of Music and Sound,

ATRiuM, University of Glamorgan, Cardiff, S. Wales

on November 13th – 15th 2009.

Thorley, Mark

Coventry University

Performance And Recording In Uganda

The recorded product is now so established that a musician or performer is likely to view performance in the studio with equal importance as in a live environment. In some cases, musicians and performers have established careers based on performance in the studio primarily and have been found to have limited performance ability in the live environment.

In contrast to this situation in European, American and some Asian markets, the area of Busoga in Uganda has had little exposure to music recording. Live performance of music and dance is however crucial and plays a large part in most peoples’ lives particularly on special occasions. The lack of recording facilities and underdeveloped recorded music product distribution means that different areas have very disparate styles of music and tend to remain so.

This paper examines the establishment of a small recording facility in Iganga in the Busoga region of Uganda. It will firstly outline the styles of music and performance already in existence. It will also look at the existing music industry infrastructure such as distribution and radio, attitudes to copyright etc. Finally, it will look at the effects on musicians’ performances by being exposed to the recording process. For example, are they likely to move beyond the ‘capturing’ of a performance and include the recording process as part of creative decision making? Will the recording process help them preserve their unique styles of music or encourage homogenisation? Will owning their own recordings have the potential for them to derive economic benefit and raise the social standing of musicians?

Toulson , Rob ( & William Campbell)

Anglia Ruskin University, UK

The Life And Death Of Dynamic Range: Who Decides How Loud?

It is common practice for produced audio to be mastered with the aim of increasing the perceived loudness for the listener. This can allow one record to stand out from another, by delivering an immediate impact and intensity. But who actually decides how ‘loud’ a piece of reproduced music is or should be? The mastering engineer can control the level of dynamic range of a piece by manipulating the peak and RMS values of the audio stream. And record labels often dictate to the mastering engineer that recordings require an immediate impact for the listener in order to stand out above the competition. A general assumption is that the listener perceives loudness as the RMS value of the audio, with the actual peak levels adding transient quality, but with no major contribution to perceived loudness. So to achieve the greatest possible loudness within a given reproduction headroom, the RMS can be raised if first the peaks are reduced – i.e. through compression or limiting. So there is a trade off between loudness and quality. But who is the listener? Do they have a roll to play in this process? If the listener has a home reproduction system with suitable headroom, they can dictate the loudness by simply turning up the volume. This raises both the peak and RMS – the best of both worlds.

So, is compressed audio really needed? Recent commercial releases have seen passages of audio with a dynamic range (the peak-to-RMS ratio) of just 2 dB. And the methods of limiting to this extent generally result in the distortion and reduction of transients. Therefore, conversely, a loudness enhanced piece of music can actually lose impact by the fact that transient and percussive instruments are reduced and left weak in the mix. However, the battle for success in the commercial world, radio distribution methods and the use of poor quality and low headroom consumer reproduction systems make heavily compressed masters the current norm.

A recent initiative by The Pleasurize Music Foundation (www.pleasurizemusic.com) is to educate the music industry and music consumers in the values of higher dynamic range audio. A future goal is to define industry standards for the dynamic range levels of mastered music, in a similar manner to those associated with the film industry. The authors’ current research is in the gathering of evidence and data to quantify listeners’ response to different levels of dynamic range in reproduced music: How do listeners adjust the listening volume with respect to the dynamic range? What are the effects of listener fatigue with respect to over-compression and excessive distortion? What are the listener expectations of dynamic range for different music genres?

In this paper the history and changes in trends with respect to dynamic range are discussed and results of initial listening tests will be presented and evaluated. The roadmap and challenges for further and wider research will also be described and discussed.

Dan Turner

University of Glamorgan

Outlining The Fundamental Production Aesthetics Of Commercial Heavy Metal Music Utilising Systematic Empirical Analysis

The research field of record production in academia is currently a relatively new field of study, spanning approximately the last fifteen years. Even a cursory glance at this area highlights a lack of any comprehensive study into the field of record production techniques and aesthetics in the genres of contemporary heavy metal. As a precursor to further research activity, this paper will demonstrate how the commercial production of this style requires higher levels of precision, in regard to both musical performance and engineering technique, when compared to other genres that fall under the broader umbrella of “rock music”.

Owsinski’s “The Mixing Engineers Handbook” categorizes a mix into having six key elements: Balance, frequency range, panorama, dimension, dynamics and interest (meaning the elements that make the mix “special”). From this basis, my research will examine the extreme usage of equalisation, sample replacement and strict tempo adherence often required for this genre in order to fulfil these criteria by analysing Pro Tools sessions used for the recent Cradle of Filth album “Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder” (kindly donated by Roadrunner/Warner Brothers). This album was produced, engineered and mixed by the acclaimed metal “studio sensei”, Andy Sneap and provides an excellent vehicle for research due to the extensive nature of the primary source material.

These multitrack masters are particularly comprehensive because Sneap records and mixes entirely within the Pro Tools environment. Therefore, all the plug-ins, their settings and instrumental balances remain intact and allow the researcher to perform comparative analysis of the original source recordings and their effected counterparts. Equally as salient is the existence of drum outtakes within these Pro Tools session files, which give a unique insight into the decision-making processes undertaken when compiling master takes, as well as indicating possible use of beat correction utilities, such as Digidesign’s Beat Detective.

The analytical processes will be both systematic and comparative, and will consist of the employment of FFT frequency analysis, sonograms, amplitude and panoramic analysis.  These will provide empirical data that will demonstrate the relationships between the sources that make up the final mix, highlighting the extreme uses of equalisation and compression utilised by the producer during the mix process. The master drum compilation will be compared to the outtakes, with the relationship of the performed drum hits to the songs strict metronomic tempo analysed. This will provide insight into the “feel” of each take, and go some way toward explaining why these particular takes were chosen for the final drum master compilation. Finally, a thorough comparison of the timing relationships between the guitar and bass performances will be undertaken; highlighting that heavy metal production requires extreme synchronicity between all the elements of the rhythm sections in order to achieve maximum sonic impact.

Walther-Hansen, Mads

University of Copenhagen

The Influence of Music Technology on the Perception of the Performer in Phonographic Space

 This paper focuses on creative designs of phonographic spaces in modern popular music recordings and explores how spatial effects influences on the listener-performer relation. Spatial effects obviously alter the perceived acoustic space of recordings, but it seems that we know more about how these effects are applied to represent a given physical structure of space or create metaphorical meaning, than we know about the relation between the use of spatial effects and the changing perception of the performer. Various approaches in the realm of phenomenological philosophy describes how the ‘other’ in space is percieved visually, but it is still unclear how these philosophies of intersubjective encounters relate to the auditory perception of the performer in a mediated virtual space. This problem will be discussed by focusing on how the distinction between real spaces and virtual spaces corresponds to the idea of real bodies and virtual bodies, and further, how actual locations of humans in space corresponds to virtual locations of performers in phonographic space. Elaborating on Serge Lacasse’s notion of vocal staging, I will discuss different spatial staging techniques, to demonstrate how spatial effects shape the perception of the performer and the spatio-temporal relation between the performer and the listener. Creative designs of phonographic spaces and their effect will be exemplified in tracks from experimental rock and electronica, e.g. distorted spaces, ‘rotated’ spaces, and illusions of two diegetic spaces.

Alan Williams

University of Massachusetts Lowell

Charged Encounters: The Mercurial Nature of Role Formation in the Recording Studio

The division of studio labor into particular roles developed with electrical recording technology in the mid- 1920s, and became further codified as multitrack recording became widely adopted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. As tasks in the recording process became allocated to these particular roles, a social hierarchy emerged. Shifts in the definitions of these roles also transform the social hierarchy in the studio.

The occupants of the roles of producer, engineer, musician, and artist each must develop particular skills related to the specific duties associated with each position. Mastery of these skill sets secures an individual's studio role and place within the social hierarchy. In many cases, individuals from one position not only master the skills of their respective role, but also begin to master skills associated with a different role. The acquisition of additional skill sets bestows a considerable measure of mobility within the studio environment – the roles are established, but the assignment of these roles can be fluid.

The economic hierarchy associated with popular music makers, with stars at the top of the mountain is not necessarily reflected in the hierarchy of recording session participants. This was especially true during the era of major label budgets and exclusive professional facilities. The star system that guaranteed substantial income to hit-makers via royalty payments, ironically contributed to the artists' low standing in the studio. Though artists stood to make the most money from a record's success, it was the other studio participants who were paid for their services regardless of how the end result fared in the marketplace. Artists might come and go, but session musicians, engineers, and producers were still making records day after day, year after year. Artists were interlopers in an ongoing process, tourists with limited visas.

By the 1970s, many performers were given the opportunity to produce themselves, and many of these artists endeavored to do so with middling success. Yet even now, most recording artists continued to employ producers and engineers to provide the necessary skills and direction in the studio. The roles and their "job descriptions" have been maintained, but the rigid divisions between them have been relaxed. Musicians sometimes sit at the mixing console, producers and engineers occasionally play instruments, and everyone is free to voice an opinion, as long as proper etiquette is observed. Yet, despite the congenial nature of these collaborative efforts, the divisions and role distinctions continue to exist, though in less visible ways. Based on extensive field observation and interviews with recording musicians, engineers, and producers, this paper examines how roles established in generations previous continue to govern recording practice, and questions whether power in the recording studio can truly be held or shared, but rather contested, taken, or lost.

Williams, Justin

University of Nottingham

Music Production and the Automotive Environment: Dr. Dre’s ‘G-Funk’

The automobile represents one of the most important mobile technologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, transforming time, space, ‘the everyday,’ mass production, as well as urban and emotional geographies. While the automobile has been discussed and theorized as the “quintessential manufactured object” of the twentieth century (Urry 2005: 26), little has been written on the cross-influences among recorded music, technology, and automobility. This paper begins to outline the intersections between music and the automobile by investigating the role of the automobile in popular music production, namely, the hip-hop production style of Dr. Dre (Andre Young).

Dr. Dre’s creation of a style labelled ‘G-funk’ in the early 1990s, according to him, was created and mixed specifically for listening in car stereo systems. As borrowing, sampling, and other forms of intertextuality are central to hip-hop’s ethos, Dr. Dre’s production reflects how musical materials become re-used for a new space, updated and customized for the automotive listening experience.

The automobile sound system has been an important listening reference in many styles of music production since at least the 1960s, with the advent of Top-40 radio and the car’s role in youth cultures. As producers would tailor their mixes to the car stereo, the needs of automotive listening arguably helped to shape the timbre and volume of the music produced. For automobile-centric hip-hop producers such as Dr. Dre, Jermaine Dupri, and DJ Magic Mike, consideration of the relatively small space of  the car interior in production and mixing affects elements such as dynamic compression, how frequencies are equalized, and, in particular, the focus on low-end frequencies (both the aural and tactile sensations from subwoofer playback). While the opinions of music producers are far from homogeneous, testing music mixes in car audio systems has been a rarely acknowledged practice; and if we then consider both the playback spaces and speakers involved, we can better analyse the ecology of how a music recording interacts with the listener in particular environments.

Woolfe, Paula

Liverpool University

"Face It Guys, She's A Genius" (Kitty Empire The Observer Review 2007) Production, Gender And The Independent Music Industry

I have argued elsewhere (Wolfe, 2005; Wolfe, 2008) that self production practices amongst female independent artists have opened up potential routes for women to enter the male dominated field of popular music production (Negus 1992; Theberge 1997; Whiteley, 2000; Mahew 2004). The ‘traditional’ route of tea boy to engineer to producer has long been acknowledged in academia (Porcello 2004) and lamented over anecdotally in production conferences but the manner in which such career building strategies have marginalized aspiring women producers has been overlooked.

New routes now established, however, this paper aims to address current practices of independent female producers in the UK. In order to assess what such practices tell us about music production and gender in the context of today’s industry, I will be drawing on interviews with a select number of female producers and the artists they work with as well as assessing the markets they target and the strategies they employ to market both their work and themselves,

Zagorski-Thomas, Simon

London College of Music, TVU.

Recording Technology and the Conceptualisation of Music

Nicholas Cook, in Music: A Very Short Introduction, points to the fact that the development of the western music notation system was instrumental in shaping the way that composers and musicians conceptualised music as well as being a key factor (pun intended) in its conservation and communication. All of the tools we use in making music also affect the way we think about it and, therefore, the ways in which we’re likely to produce it.

The move from linear, tape-based recording practice to non-linear, hard-disk systems had a powerful effect not just on recording practice but also on the way that artists and producers conceptualise a piece and envisage the creative process. Many of the historical developments that Zak mentions in The Poetics of Rock can be seen as creating music through what might be described as ‘organic development’ (in terms of progressive growth), whereas the ‘cut-and-paste’ methods of desktop systems have encouraged composers to work in a modular fashion. It is becoming less common for any musician to play their part from beginning to end during the recording process – especially in popular music. Non-linear practice often involves the producer or engineer aiming to record a ‘good chorus’ and a ‘good verse’ which is then copied and pasted to create the arrangement structure. Has this change in working practice led to many composer-producers conceptualising session musicians in the same way as they might envisage a sampler: as a sound source that generates modular units to be assembled and manipulated in the creative process? Sampling has to some extent altered the idea of composing to include collage and assemblage in ways that were previously perceived to be the domain of the DJ (the editor, the selector, and the impresario), driving changes in the way that non-linear recording is used. Indeed, the most successful software packages in this field have evolved out of MIDI sequencing software, thus further reinforcing the idea that non-linear recordings should be manipulated in the same way as MIDI sequences.