Video Illustrating a Recording Engineer’s Function

[Herb Hunter]

For those with little understanding of a recording engineer’s role in music production, a just-over-one-minute video:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151294720927330

[dirkronk]

I just got s-o-o-o-o-o-o suckered into that.



Dirk

[fazool]

I enjoyed that.

[patchmcg]

I posted this same video a long way back, but from a different source. It's every bit as funny now as it was then.

[Glennwillow]

That was fun! Thanks Herb!

- Glenn

[Bob Womack]

It makes me laugh every time.

Incidentally, I spent the afternoon recording vocals -and- I used to mix on that very same model of console (Solid State Logic 4000 series).

Bob

[Herb Hunter]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

That was fun! Thanks Herb!

- Glenn

Your welcome; glad you enjoyed it.

[Herb Hunter]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

It makes me laugh every time.

Incidentally, I spent the afternoon recording vocals -and- I used to mix on that very same model of console (Solid State Logic 4000 series).

Bob

I trust you didn’t have to work as frantically as the engineer in the video to achieve the results you needed.

[Bob Womack]

Someone sent that video to me on Facebook and ask if it was really like that. My response? The stuff you do to correct vocals isn't done in real-time during the recording. However, mixing on the generation of consoles just prior to that, such as the Neve 8068 series, many of which had no automation, could feel just like that. Imagine mixing a sixty-second jingle on a twenty-four track recorder where instruments have been "checker-boarded" (multiple elements recorded one after another on a single track so you can get more than twenty-four instruments on a recording). You could easily be expected to remember and manually perform one hundred mix cues (fader, mute, or EQ moves) in sixty seconds. Producers would sit down at the end of the console with their arms folded and listen to, say, your thirty-fifth mix pass and say, "Okay, you've got most of it right but lets add two db to the two tom hits at forty-five seconds." You'd try to pull that off while remembering all the other ninety-nine cues and they'd say, "No, that isn't it. Pop up the high-hat sneeze on the four beat at forty-six seconds instead." You'd try to do that and they'd say, "You got it, but the fader duck on the guitar at twenty-two seconds wasn't as good as last time. Let's go back and get them both now."

I can remember sessions where I simply ran out of memory. Even with the producer taking some faders I'd get to the point where the producer would ask for, say, the 101st or 102nd move and I'd know inside my head that I wasn't going to remember something. Subsequent tries at the mix weren't going to get any more precise, they would only be different. I remember finishing up sessions of this poop with my mind being so fatigued that I could barely stumble out the door and navigate home because my brain was so numb with fatigue from trying.

Thank GOD for the advent of console automation and eventually for DAWs. Now we have repeatability and pin-point precision without stress. I can do far more with far less stress.

Bob

[slewis]

I gotta get that guy's name....