Published Work – Aaron J. Trumm

Tune That Room

November 4, 2019 by Aaron

aaron trumm, acoustic treatment, acoustics, budget acoustic treatment, home recording, recording, recording magazine, soundproofing

The art of DIY Accoustic Treatment

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

Ask an amateur recordist where they spent the most in their studio, and the answer is likely a piece of gear. Ask any PROFESSIONAL audio engineer what the most important thing in the studio is, and they’ll say acoustics.

Anyone who’s mixed in a boxy room knows how hard it can be to hear what’s going on, and plenty have experienced the sadness of a poorly translated mix that’s boomy, tinny or muddy in other places. Or, you may have noticed the terror of vocals recorded in an empty room – that hollow, boxy sound that should be reserved for bad indie movies and tele-conferences.

The reason for these problems is sound reflecting and interacting, creating nodes (where a given frequency is cancelled by its out-of-phase reflection), peaks (the opposite condition), comb filtering, ring, flutter and plain ‘ol reverb. The size and dimensions of a room determine where and at what frequencies problems occur, but any normal room has 3 pairs of parallel surfaces, which is the worst possible situation for acoustic interaction.

These facts are becoming more apparent to musicians, and there are fewer square boxes with $10,000 DAWs and no treatment. There are still plenty of expensive studios built to spec, but what about bedroom studios, renters and low budget recordists? Can they build a trustworthy space they can use to get great results? Yes, and it’s not that hard.

Before We Begin

First off, let’s distinguish “acoustic treatment” from “sound proofing”. “Sound proofing” means ISOLATION, which is different than treatment. Isolation means making a room that lets no sound in or out. Doing this effectively takes structural work (which renters can’t do), and is a very different physical phenomenon than treatment. Treatment is making a room sound and function better as an acoustic space, by taming or eliminating reflections INSIDE the room that cause problems. We’re talking about treatment, not isolation, and the great thing is we can do all of our acoustic treatment ourselves.

We also won’t talk about measurement. While measuring a room’s acoustic response with testing equipment and by calculating modes and resonances using room dimensions can be useful in some situations, generally the solutions are always the same. So measurement is outside scope of this article.

Low Frequencies First

Figure 1 – The author’s incredibly terrible early attempt at treatment

Often home recordists just tack a lot of acoustic foam or egg shell mattress on every wall (figure 1). This can be ugly, and it doesn’t work very well. In a room like that, you might clap your hands, hear no reflections and think you’re done. The problem is clapping can’t tell you what’s happening with LOW FREQUENCIES. When you tack up acoustic foam, you’re only dealing with high frequencies. To illustrate, consider this chart:

Material	125HZ	250HZ	500HZ	1000HZ	2000HZ	4000HZ
OC 703	0.17	0.86	1.14	1.07	1.02	0.98
OC 705-FRK	0.60	0.50	0.63	0.82	0.45	0.34
Sculpted Acoustic Foam	0.11	0.30	0.91	1.05	0.99	1.00

Absorption coefficients – 2 inch thick material applied directly to a wall.

Absorption coefficient is a number that represents how much sound is absorbed by a given material at a given frequency. In this small chart you can see that at 2 inches thick, all these materials have pretty pitiful absorption below 250HZ. You can also see that Owens Corning 703 and 705 rigid fiberglass (or equivalent) does a better job than typical acoustic foam.

There’s a better approach, and that’s to build from the ground up, frequency wise. Start your design with LOW frequencies. Low frequencies (below about 200hz) behave differently than higher frequencies, so the solutions are different, and it’s low frequency reflections that cause nightmares like boomy rooms, weak low end response, or untranslatable mixes.

There are a couple of common misconceptions to address here. One is that if you listen at a low volume with near field monitors, the room isn’t a factor. Actually, sound is always reflecting and interacting, and those reflections must be dealt with. Another is that low frequencies don’t have time to “develop” in a small room and thus aren’t a problem. In reality, low frequencies are always present and reflecting off walls, even in a small room.

So what to do? For all frequencies, there are two options: absorb or diffuse. It’s mostly impractical to diffuse low frequencies, so we need to absorb them. Since that’s not a matter of throwing up some foam (unless it’s 10 inches thick or spaced 16 inches from the wall), we need other solutions. First, start with the corners. Low frequency build up occurs in corners, so the first and most obvious place to start absorbing is vertical corners. There are several ways to do this, but they all boil down to spanning and/or filling the corner.

An easy, relatively inexpensive and effective way to do this is by spanning a corner with Owens Corning 705-FRK rigid fiberglass (figure 2). These come in 4’ by 2’ foot panels, so in a typical room, it takes two to go from floor to ceiling. 705-FRK (FRK is a paper backing with a foil face) is dense – 6lbs per square foot – and isn’t as good for high frequency absorption as 703 (3lb density), but spanning a corner with it is great for low frequency absorption. A 4 inch thick panel is best here, but 2 inches works too. Optionally, fill the space behind the panel with fluffy fiberglass. Face the backing into the room to reflect high frequencies if you don’t want the room too “dead”, which will improve low frequency absorption a little.

Figure 3 – Fiberglass triangles for a superchunk bass trap

Another method, the “superchunk”, is more costly, but it’s even more effective and easier to make pretty. A superchunk is made using OC 703. Cut the panels into triangles (figure 3) and stack the triangles into the corner. Then cover the entire structure with some kind of acoustically transparent material (muslin, burlap, anything breathable) to make it attractive and keep the fiberglass contained (figure 4).

A warning: Fiberglass, while not toxic, is itchy and breaks off into airborne pieces. Wear sleeves, gloves and a mask when working with it.

There are also commercial “superchunk” products. Auralex makes a “bass trap” which is a corner piece of acoustic foam and RealTraps make a corner trap which is exactly a superchunk module with the addition of a “limp membrane” face, which increases low frequency effectiveness, just like the FRK.

If your budget’s REALLY tight, and you’re willing to compromise on effectiveness, you can fill a corner with a lot of things. I once filled a corner with old clothes and contained it using pegboard (figure 5). This isn’t as effective as a superchunk or 705, but it’s certainly better than nothing. You could also stack fluffy fiberglass bails in corners without even removing the packaging. It’s ugly, but effective if you have room.

Figure 5 – An odd bass trap in the author’s former studio

Vertical corners aren’t the only corners in a room. There are also the floor/wall corners and wall/ceiling corners. In most rooms, you should absorb as much low end as you can afford to, and you really can’t do too much, so consider doing something there (figure 6).

Figure 6 – A drum studio with corner traps and ceiling traps

Corners are a great start, but probably not enough. Especially with LF absorption, effectiveness is about treating a high percentage of the surface area in the room. As mentioned above, it’s effective to put up very thick material or space it out from the wall a good ways (think 4 inches with a 16 inch gap). That takes a lot of space and still isn’t very effective below about 125HZ, but there are other solutions.

Figure 7 – An untreated beam ceiling is a great opportunity

In an unfinished space with support beams (figure 7), you can put a couple nails in and rest a piece of 705 on them, creating a ceiling trap. You should probably cover that with fabric (figure 8).

Figure 8 – Beamed ceiling in process of treatment

Optionally, fill the space above with fluffy fiberglass. For a no budget alternative, foam and old clothes might work (figure 9).

Figure 9 – Poor man’s beamed ceiling treatment

Panel Traps

All of the solutions we’ve discussed so far are called “velocity absorbers”, because speed drives sound into the material, and that’s dampened when waves hit it. Panel Traps work on a different principle and are called “pressure absorbers”. Placed at room boundaries, they take less space and can be effective to lower frequencies (figure 10).

A panel trap is a little more complex to build, but it’s decently cheap and easy. The main difference is that a panel trap is a sealed box with a thin plywood face and fiberglass inside (figure 11). They’re usually sealed to the wall, but can be made to stand alone, as long they’re located at a boundary. I’ve built several, once with futon slats I found in a dumpster! While panel traps take a little more effort to make, they’re an awesome way to increase low frequency absorption with little space, and since they’re reflective at high frequencies, won’t make a room too dead sounding. Plus, you can paint on them and make them pretty.

There’s a great tutorial on how to build panel traps by acoustician Ethan Winer. I highly recommend referring to it: http://ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html

The Highs

Once you’ve dealt with the lows, it’s time to deal with highs and mids, and the physics here are much easier. High frequencies can be thought of like a ray of light – they bounce off of reflective surfaces at the same angle they come from. Any surface that shouldn’t reflect, you can absorb or diffuse.

Diffusors spread reflections in an even manner. They’re a great way to even things out while preserving liveliness. You can build several types of diffusors or buy them, sometimes for a decent price (figure 12,13). If you’ve got no budget, you can create some semblance of diffusion with book cases and other random items. While an acoustician would say this isn’t true diffusion, in practice it works ok if things are various sizes.

Real diffusion is a great way to even out the sound of a room and keep it live, but it doesn’t work in small spaces. A typical bedroom is too small for effective diffusion, so strategic absorption is often the best bet. For that reason, that’s all we’ll say about diffusion.

High frequency absorption is the easiest to deal with. 2 inch OC 703 absorbs beautifully down to about 400HZ, and there’s a trick you can use to increase absorption even more. Mount panels away from the wall. The ideal distance is the same as the thickness of the material, so mounting 2 inch panels 2 inches away from the wall or ceiling is perfect (figure 14).

Figure 14 – Absorbing panel spaced from surface

Where to mount them depends on the room and your needs, but if you’re treating a mix/control room, you should start with a “reflection free zone” (RFZ) around the main listening area. You can see where to treat with a mirror, or just sit in your chair and look left, right up and down. These are parallel surfaces you should treat. You should maintain left-right symmetry, and you should treat that area of the ceiling, but leave the floor alone. If there’s carpet you’ve got some high frequency absorption already, but that’s not ideal for various reasons, so leave the floor as is if it’s wood or another hard material. You can always throw a rug down for extra deadening.

There are a few options for materials here, and if you have to settle for egg crate foam, do it. If you have to nail a bunch of blankets to the wall, go for it. Ideally, make panels using OC 703, and cover them with an attractive but breathable fabric. Spacing of these panels from the wall can be as simple as four wood blocks from a scrap heap (figure 15).

Figure 15 – Spacer blocks salvaged from scrap heap

If you’re treating another kind of room – say a recording room or home theater – then you probably want an even sound everywhere. If you space high frequency absorbers around, alternating with either panel traps or plain wall, you’ll start to create a kind of “pseudo diffusion”. If you have no budget, don’t be afraid to nail blankets to walls, just remember: the thicker the better.

Creating a booth is pretty easy if you have a closet. You can pack the closet with clothes, hang blankets from the walls, or use a more professional approach and install fiberglass panels. In a booth, you want the deadest sound possible, and that’s about all there is to it.

I keep mentioning rigid fiberglass because it’s the best sound absorbing material and it’s cheaper than acoustic foam products, but if you can’t spend money, there are plenty of alternatives. You can even go around your neighborhood and ask if anyone has anything “soft” they need to get rid of! This can work great – but it may not lead to the prettiest space.

Modularity And Aesthetic

We’re talking about DIY acoustic treatment here, rather than permanent professional studio installations. So you may have to move your studio when you move to a new space. Or if your “studio” is a shared space, you might have to try for a pleasing look. Even if it’s not, you may tire of working in a space that looks like the inside of an egg-carton or a construction site. There are plenty of ways to treat a room and make it ugly, and plenty of ways to permanently install treatment and effectively ruin the room once you leave, but it’s just as easy and not necessarily that costly to do things in a way that doesn’t leave a mark, is easy to move, and is nice to look at.

Figure 16 – High frequency absorbors designed to hang like paintings

In my current space, everything is built to move. All of my high frequency absorbers are small painting size boxes with pretty frames and colorful fabric faces (figure 16). They hang just like any picture (figure 17).

Figure 17 – HF absorbors hanging like paintings.

Ceiling treatments are lightweight and hang from tiny hooks (figure 18).

Figure 18 – HF ceiling panels in author’s studio

My “superchunk” is really 4 small modules that I can take out and move (figure 19), and my panel traps are standalone boxes set on the floor or hung with picture wire, with decoupage designs by an artist friend (figure 20).

Figure 19 – Modular superchunk corner trap.

Figure 20 – Author’s panel trap with art by an artist friend

The room doesn’t necessarily look normal (figure 21), but it’s certainly not crazy making like my first attempts 20 years ago. In fact a lot of people mistake my HF panels for art.

Figure 21 – The author’s one room studio space.

Just Do It

Nothing we’ve talked about here is much different than what would be done with a big budget, except structural work. Other than that, acoustic treatment on a budget can be as good as any expensive installation. You can hire contractors and consultants to design and build, or you can follow some pretty straightforward principles and do it yourself. It’s one place where you really needn’t compromise, and it’s the one place where you really shouldn’t. So have fun and get your room tuned up!

A Transformative Weekend

August 19, 2019 by Aaron

music business, music licensing, pay to submit, recording magazine, sync, taxi, taxi music, taxi.com

How The 2017 Taxi Road Rally Exceeded All Expectations

This article first appeared Recording Magazine in January 2018. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

Two disclaimers: Recording Magazine and Taxi have a great relationship, so I understand if you expect a bit of bias; I personally was a Taxi member for a short time 15 years ago, and not since. (2019 EDIT: I actually did become a Taxi member for the year after I wrote this, and did not renew, which doesn’t mean I don’t think you should. It’s one of the only pay-to-submit companies I would recommend.)

Now that that’s out of the way, GO TO THE TAXI ROAD RALLY. I went this past November for the first time, and I started the weekend with at least a small amount of skepticism. I’ve never liked paying any kind of membership fee for anything, and I’ve always especially distrusted anyone who asks for money from artists. So although friends were telling me Taxi’s great, I was really only going to the rally to network.

Boy was I wrong. I haven’t been this excited, juiced and sparked since my first National Poetry Slam, which if you’ve never heard of it, is 5 days of the 300 best performance poets in the world going head to head. It is one of the most intense, beautiful and transformative experiences you can go through. So is the Taxi Road Rally.

First off, take the breakout sessions. 4 time slots a day, with at least five different options for classes from industry pros – and I’m talking people who will melt your face with their credits, and then melt the rest of your body with the depth and clarity of their knowledge – on topics spanning from how to reverse engineer an instrumental cue to how to deal with stage fright, to how to master with new LuFS standards, to how to decipher music business contracts, to how to achieve balance and success without messing up your marriage (that last class, taught by Jill and James Kocian, revolutionized my career in a single hour and is easily the best thing I’ve done for myself in 20 years).

Next let’s talk feedback. One-on-one mentoring sessions and group mentor lunches where you can bend the ear of producers, sync agents, radio promotors, other musicians, and so on. Not to mention several listening panels with industry pros who will tell you in no uncertain terms what’s right and wrong with your music (from their unique industry point of view), and do so in an empowering way that truly helps.

You know all this though. You can see it in the back pages of this magazine quite often, and you can read it on the Taxi website.

What you may not know about, and what made me want to go back next year, and re-join Taxi ASAP, is the incredible community of like-minded, supportive and positive dreamers that Taxi members are. Members lift each other up, encourage each other, collaborate with each other, eat together, laugh together and make the big bad L.A. music industry feel like a huge beautiful slumber party – with millionaire mixers and hot shot producers in the next sleeping bags.

Not once did I hear a piece of feedback that didn’t start and end positively (I call that the sandwich method). Not once did I witness any sort of competitive vibe or see anyone stepping over each other to get up. The whole tone of the Taxi Road Rally, to borrow from Marc Smith (the inventor of Poetry Slam), is “pull the next one up”. The result is a collaborative energy that has clearly resulted in success AND happiness for countless members, and a level of overall quality that was frankly mind boggling.

AND I got to walk around with a guy who mixed and produced Christina Aguilara and Will Smith (Rob Chiarelli) and the guy who wrote Every Which Way But Loose (Steve Dorff)! That was a funny story! Not to mention men and women who have written with, produced, mixed, played with and known almost every artist I’ve ever heard of. To hob-nob with great people in the recording industry and have it be not only NOT intimidating, but absolutely invigorating, is, to me, high achievement.

As to whether I would recommend you join Taxi, I couldn’t say. That depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and where you stand in your career. Taxi, like any such company, can help you a LOT, but only if you’re ready to utilize that help. If you’ve got a good sized catalog, or you’re good at writing or producing music quickly and to spec, AND if you have the right attitude about feedback and being willing to grow and change, then Taxi could be great. If you’re not willing to change or your skin is too thin, or maybe you’re a beginner starting out, I’d say wait. But I encourage you to get on their list and check out the listings they send out (for free). That alone can teach you a lot. And when you’re ready, get yourself out to Taxi’s Road Rally – maybe as a guest of a member, like I did – and bring your tunes, your good vibes, and a REALLY big, empty notebook!

In the meantime, you can go check Taxi out and see if you like the vibe at www.taxi.com.

Happy recording!

Keeping Track

August 12, 2019 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio, metadata, metatagging, metatags, recording magazine

Meta-tagging and the data you need to keep

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

It may not be a glamorous notion, but handling data properly is one of the biggest differences between a professional and an amateur in music production. When it comes to selling music to other professionals or making sure your image is awesome when fans find you, good tagging and tracking of recordings is of the utmost importance. So we’re just going to dive into the where, how and why of keeping your metadata.

Metatags

Simply put, metadata is data about other data. In our case, it’s data about audio data. Metatags are how files embed this metadata into themselves. This could be anything from the title of a song to the format of a file. Audio file formats include various amounts and types of metatags, and you’ll want to fill in this data where appropriate. We’ll talk about what you’ll need in a bit, but let’s start by talking about a couple of file types and their metatags.

WAV

Wav files are our most common uncompressed audio format. Technically these files have metadata in them, but it’s all technical data about the file (more on that in an upcoming article), and nothing you want to touch. From our point of view, WAV files contain no extra data. Don’t confuse this with the metadata that gets amended to a Red Book CDDA file, which is the way CD Players know things like song title and artist name. This data is stored in the Red Book file, not in the .wav itself.

MP3

MP3’s are currently the most common compressed format, which is usually how we deliver downloads to fans and associates. Mp3’s ubiquitous nature may change, but probably not soon, and since Mp3s carry so much useful metadata, they’re good for getting the concept down. There are a couple of different metadata formats associated with Mp3s – ID3v1 and ID3v2 – but we really needn’t concern ourselves with that right now. What’s important right now is what data we need.

Others

Many other audio file formats exist for audio, including AIFF, OGG and Flac. Some carry useful metadata and some don’t. We’ll be diving into file formats in more depth in a later piece, so for now, let’s stick to the basic concepts and use Mp3 as our basic guide.

What You Need And Why

So what data do we want to associate with a song? Obviously the title and artist name would be a good start, but there’s a lot more than that. To start to understand what you really want to embed in a file, you just need to think about the purpose of a recording. There are a few potential purposes. You might be selling the tracks to fans, you might be giving the tracks away for promotion, and you might be using the tracks for business-to-business transactions, such as licensing.

That last scenario is the big one. When you pitch a track to an agent or a music supervisor, there’s a wealth of information they need to make it easy to potentially use a song. Fortunately, some of it is the same stuff you want your fans to have, and all of it also serves the purpose of creating a professional look and feel to your work. So, let’s look at some information from the extended Mp3 standard that we might want.

Title
Artist
Album
Album Artist (could be different than the track artist)
Grouping
Composer
Year
Track number (# of #)
Disc #
Genre
Comment
BPM
ISRC (a unique identifier for a given recording)
Publisher
Copyright
URL
Album Cover
Lyrics

Title, artist and album are pretty self-explanatory. If your song has a featured artist, put that in the TITLE, not the artist. This way, programs like iTunes don’t separate the song from your others, creating organizational havoc for your listeners. Album artist might be different, say if you’re a guest on a compilation or something.

Fill in the year, track number if the song is part of an album, and if the album is some sort of multi-disc set, fill in the disc number. This is kind of an antiquated notion unless you’re also releasing a physical product like CDs.

If you fill in your genre, make it as accurate as possible, and don’t overload it. Use no more than 3 genres (most of the time, it’s a dropdown anyway). Especially when it comes to licensing, your agent or music supervisor or indie film maker needs to be able to find you in a genre search and not be way off.

Grouping was intended originally for movements in classical music, but you could use this for subgenres, or some people use it to identify the companies clearing the mastering and publishing sides of a song, which just means who a person has to deal with to pay for a licensing.

In the composer section, you can list all the composers or the main composers, and if you have writer information, such as writer’s percentage and performing rights identification number. This is also a good place to identify a public domain song, or if it’s a cover, the original writer.

Comment may be the most useful section. Here’s a good place for contact information, which is especially important if you’d like somebody to license your music and pay you! It’s a good idea to put your website in here, writers splits if you don’t put them in composer, the key, time signature, or any songs or artists the song sounds like. Also helpful is any identifying info from your performing rights organization, such as BMI # or ISWC (an international standard song identifier), or even the ISRC, which, if you have one, is a unique identifier connected to a given recording. Another useful thing to do if you’re pitching for licensing is include a link to an instrumental version somewhere on the web. The comment section is limited, so be judicious with your character count.

BPM, or tempo, can be important for anyone looking to use your music in a video production, or for DJs who’d like to work your song into a set. If the song is published, or you have a publishing company, you can enter that info and your copyright info (you can do this even if you have yet to register), and you may find a separate URL tag. Use that, but also put your website in the comment section.

Album cover is super important. Imagine when you open an mp3 from a pro – there’s always an image. Make sure, if your track is for sale or any kind of public consumption, that you get some kind of cover image in there. Square is best. Pro tip: album cover, title and artist are the only things you will see in every mp3 player.

Of course, lyrics are also an option. It’s up to you whether to include lyrics, but if you intend to pitch the song, the lyrics are quite helpful, and it’s a nice thing for fans to have. Not all players will show the lyrics, but iTunes does.

How To Do It

If you’re wondering how to fill in your metatags for, say, an mp3, it’s not difficult. Many software packages do this. Some mastering software will let you create tags right in the software, some audio software such as Audacity have metatag features, and there are dedicated tagging packages such as Mp3Tag, TagScanner (both free), Tag & Rename and MediaMonkey, to name a VERY few. A lot of packages support various formats like AIFF, as well. You can even add metadata when using command line mp3 encoders, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Probably the easiest thing to do is open your song in iTunes, click “info”, and edit the tags to your heart’s content. When you do this, you’ll notice that you can do this to any mp3, which means that anybody can change your tags around. You’ll have to live with this. It’s how people organize their collections.

If you try a few different packages, you’ll see some variation in what tags are available. iTunes doesn’t include the ISRC, URL, publisher or copyright tags for example. This doesn’t mean they aren’t there, but if you were to open the file in a package that does use those tags (TagScanner, for example), you’d see they’re blank.

TagScanner – the Author’s favorite free MetaTag Editor

In any case, you’ll edit your tags, and hit save. The metadata is embedded into the file.

But Wait…

You can keep a lot of the data you need to associate with a track in the metatags embedded in the file, but you may find that you need more data at your fingertips. For example, if you submit your track to a few micro-licensing libraries, you’ll find yourself entering in a description and mood over and over. So, it behooves you to keep some information somewhere connected to your songs, so you don’t have to dig around every time you need it. You can keep a simple spreadsheet, use a database, or there are a number of software packages and online solutions that can help you keep organized.

You should keep all the data you would put in a metatag handy, plus more – here’s a big list of data you might want to keep, if you were to use a simple spread sheet:

Credits – any players, engineers, studios, etc that should be credited.
Title
Artist/Act Name – you may have more than one, so keep track if you do
Description – a short description of the song that tells people the basic topic, mood, genre and instrumentation
Moods
Release date – you’ll get asked for this a lot
Album – if it’s part of an album, keep track of which
PRO # – the id number assigned when you register the song with BMI, ASCAP or your PRO.
ISWC – the international song identifier used across PRO’s, issued by your PRO.
ISRC – the unique identifier for the recording, issued by the RIAA in the U.S., or your ISRC agency, or your distributor (this is easiest).
Publisher – if you have a publisher, or if it’s your own publishing company, or none if neither
Writers splits – who owns what percentage of writing
Master splits – who wants what percentage of the recording
Genres – a short list of genres
Time – of the track, not the day!
BPM – tempo
Time signature
Key
UPC – if you have a UPC for the track, keep it with the track info. Keep the album UPC with your album info. UPCs are issued by the GS1, or your distributor (this is easiest).
Keywords – a comma separated list of keywords so you can copy/paste when asked for them on a form
Lyrics
Toggles – whether you’ve registered the PRO, copyright, Soundscan or SoundExchange. You can use Y/N, Yes/No,1/0, whatever feels best to you.
Notes – some general notes

There You Have It

There you go! The topic may not have been as sexy as some other things, but metadata is the nuts and bolts of efficient communication, and it makes all the difference when you’re building a business out of music. Keep your data clean, handy and up-to-date and you will find it a lot easier to spread the word, engage your partners, and make money. Even if you don’t plan to build a music business, it’s nice to know where everything is. So, fire up the computer and get organized!

Studio Deliverables

August 5, 2019 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio recording, deliverables, recording, recording magazine, recording studio

Come away from the studio with more for your money

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

When people talk about making money with music, they talk about two sources: Gigging and CD/Download sales. If you have a great live act and you’re very popular, gig money can be significant, but it’s no secret the sales side is hardly ever big, and much has been made of its imminent demise. That part’s debatable, but it’s a fact that record sales have never been the main revenue stream for major labels or the companies that own them. Not to mention, few of us are rock stars, and believe it or not, some people don’t want to be! In short, the rock star business model is non-viable, and even labels know this. Thankfully, there are many other ways to generate revenue from music.

Alternative music income is talked about a lot, but what can musicians DO to maximize income? In this piece, I’ll focus on the first part, the part without which nothing else can happen: the product. Specifically, what do you need to leave the studio with in order to maximize earning potential? Or, what are the studio’s “deliverables”?

When I think about all the hopeful bands that have come and gone in studios I worked at, who went away with only stereo mixes, I cringe. They’d leave the studio with a brand new set of 10 songs, mixed to perfection, hoping to make it rich. Not only is that not enough, that’s the ONLY part of the recording that probably isn’t valuable financially!

So if beautiful amazing songs sung with passion and purpose, mixed by the best mixer in town aren’t what you want to leave the studio with, what is? First off, of course you need those main mixes. You might refer to these as album or straight mixes. These are the songs that go on your CD, go out to iTunes, go your website and go on the radio…right? Not quite.

Radio mixes

Your album mixes aren’t necessarily the ones that go on the radio. So your first new deliverable is radio mixes. Obviously, you need mixes with no cuss words. With a DAW, it’s no problem to do a “save as” and save a radio mix, where the engineer cuts words from the vocal, or reverses them, or does some other magic to “censor” your song. Even better, write a version of the song with no cussing, and when you’re overdubbing vocals, record the “clean” version with the same mic setup, same vocal style, etc. This is the method Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg used to make palatable versions of otherwise un-airable songs, which also didn’t sound edited or censored. The benefit was multiplied when anyone who bought the album heard a new, harder-core version of the lyrics.

Lyrics are not the only thing at play though. While not universally true if you include avant-garde shows, you might as well tell yourself that no one will ever air a song over 3 minutes. That doesn’t mean the 4:20 album version needs to be cut. That’s another opportunity to give a fan something more. But whenever possible, do yourself a favor: do another “save as”, and edit a version with less intro, a shorter guitar solo, whatever it takes to get in the 3:00-3:10 sweet spot. Just like with lyrics, it may help to perform this ahead of time.

Next up…

Alternative mixes

One of the biggest possible revenue streams requiring the least amount of fame, as well as one of the best ways to develop great industry connection, is licensing. This is another hot topic lately, and for good reason, but all you have to do is watch TV for an hour, and you will realize that however clean you made that previously raunchy lyric, you probably won’t hear it behind a movie or TV scene. You may want to write instrumentals, but first do another “save as” and print your mix without vocals. You can do one with the backing vocals in, but make sure you’ve got one that has zero words whatsoever. Great lyricists may resist this, but a song WITHOUT words is usually more valuable to a video production. Why? Two reasons: one, movies and TV shows have dialog, and lyrics clash; and two, your lyrics tell a story, and that story probably doesn’t fit. Without words, though, your track might go great with the story.

As an added bonus, if you’re a vocalist with no band, you can use instrumentals as performance mixes for live shows. If you’re very detailed, you might print an instrumental with less reverb on the instruments, for venues where the room is already pretty live. Don’t forget that DJs like to have acapella versions they can pair with alternative beats, so print a vocal only mix.

That’s not the end of alternative mixes. Remember when you edited the length of your radio mixes? You’ll want to do that again for licensing libraries. Start with 30, 60 and 90 second versions. While you’re at that, you probably want some 30-45 second promo clips for your website. Make both vocal and non-vocal versions of these.

That’s not all. Let’s say a big movie needs a song about being crazy, and your song is actually CALLED “I’m Crazy”? It’s perfect, but it has a horn solo, and the movie wants a bridge, no solo. No problem, if you’ve done another edit or performed a version that has a bridge and no solo.

You may also want an acoustic version, or, my favorite, a bunch of ready-made breakdowns. Do just the drums and bass, just the drums, a drumless mix…use your imagination. Remember to pay attention when you’re editing breakdowns to keep things sensical. A fade in may have worked in the full mix but not now. Maybe there’s a four bar drum solo which will turn into inexplicable silence in a drumless mix. Track wisely in anticipation of this. If your drums bleed into your vocals, you can’t use that track for your drum-free mix. You might have to TRACK multiple versions to have multiple versions available later. (For more flexibility and responsiveness, see the sidebar where I talk about separations.)

When it comes to alternative mixes and breakdowns, the point is to leave the studio with a lot of material in hand, so you can respond to industry needs quickly. You don’t want to be stuck waiting for studio time to reprint an instrumental if you’re asked for it. Not only is that inefficient, it’s not as cost effective as leaving the session with what you need.

The point is to maximize the amount of valuable material that comes out of what you were doing anyway. To that end, there are a couple of other things to consider; things you may not need to spend costly studio time on, but could prove valuable.

Lead sheets, tabs and sheet music

It took me a long time to see any value in having written music as part of the package of material that goes with a release, but they can be crucial. If you’re a solo artist who needs musicians for live settings, lead sheets or sheet music are critical for efficient learning. Tabs and sheet music are also publishable, giving you a possible new revenue stream, and if you’re submitting demos to publishing companies, they often require lead sheets and lyric sheets. It’s very valuable to have proper musical documentation. For natural improvisers, this can be tedious, but I highly recommend putting in the effort.

Video and photos

Behind the scenes footage or footage of performances in the studio may not always be directly monetizable, but it’s well known by now that YouTube is a critical part of a musician’s promotional arsenal, and there is SOME possibility of revenue from YouTube advertising. Not to mention that pictures and video clips are a huge value-add for websites and other promotional material. Heck, you might as well shoot your next 8×10 glossy with a cool mix desk background while you wait for the engineer to set up mics.

Surround

I’d be remiss not to mention surround sound. It would be false to claim that surround mixes are a necessary part of a production’s deliverables, because for the most part they’re not asked for, and there’s virtually no consumer market, but if you happen to be in a studio that has the capability, doing another “save as” and creating a 5.1 version of a mix could be a cool addition to what you offer. I highly recommend starting with the finished stereo mix and enhancing from there (although one could argue other methods), since you want to create the same basic musical experience. Especially if you’re going after movies, 5.1 versions could be valuable. But do consider your potential cost/benefit ratio before doing surround.

Documentation and project files

Last but not least, never leave the studio without copies of ALL your project files, raw tracks and any notes or documentation. Copy the folder the DAW project is in, and make notes of the software version, hardware, and especially the plugins used. You need this material in your hands, not just stored at the studio. You never know if the studio will lose your stuff, or if you may be halfway around the world needing to fix something at the last minute. Unless it’s owned by a label (in which case this advice is for them), you put yourself in a much better place by keeping your material on hand.

Hopefully now you can see how much more value you can pull from your studio time. If you’re efficient, it won’t cost much more to get everything you need. Then your living needn’t be tied to your fame, and that, in my humble opinion, is a huge relief! Happy monetizing!

SIDEBAR: Separations

Since I work in various DAWs, I’m a huge fan of separations. I leave the studio with full separations of a mix, so I can call it up and deliver breakdowns or alternate edits at will in any software, without going to the studio. I also sometimes send full separations to the mastering engineer, so he has better control.

Full separations means every track is separated; kick, snare, guitar, vocal, etc. These tracks can import into a DAW, set at zero with no processing, and the mix sounds exactly like the finished stereo mix. It’s easy to mute a few tracks and create a breakdown, or edit an new version. You can also take the separations to a totally different studio to do surround versions later.

With separations, even if you don’t have the same rig as the studio, you can do breakdowns and re-edits to your heart’s content without having to go back. This is a great way to be able to quickly deliver what’s needed to a client without having to own a full-fledged studio yourself.

Exporting full separations, however, can be a long process. Some software (and tape) can only mix-down in real-time, which means you have to mute all but one track and mix-down over and over to achieve full separations. 24 tracks equals 24 passes, which for a 3 minute song is 72 minutes – over an hour of studio time. Also, if you’ve got processing like EQ or compression on the final stereo buss, running just one track through that processing will hit differently than the whole mix, so your final set of separations may not be what you thought. Some software like Sonar allow you to export all busses at once, so strategic buss assignment can speed things up, but you still need to be careful about overall processing.

So, proceed with caution, but consider the value of getting separations, or the alternative: get your own copy of the software and plugins in your favorite studio, so you can call up projects as is and deliver new edits. You don’t need the whole studio to do this, only the same software.

Caging The Beast

July 8, 2019 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, piano, piano micing, piano miking, recording magazine, recording piano

How to mic pianos

First appeared in the May 2016 Recording Magazine, reprinted by permission.

I have a lyric, “88 ebony and ivory blisses”. Many people feel that way about the piano – until they have to record it. The piano is big, complex, has a frequency range as large as human hearing. Plus, there are hundreds of different kinds. It’s a beast, and caging it is said to be the most frustrating thing in recording, but I think of it differently. For me, it’s the instrument with the most possibility. But “possibility” means variables, and that can be overwhelming, so I’ll try to get you started here.

I won’t go into the history or construction of a piano; you can look at previous articles by Michael Schulze and Nathan Rosenberg for that. I’ll just dive into miking it, and try to cover as many bases as possible. I’ll focus mainly on grand pianos, but I’ll give lip service to uprights.

The way I think about miking the piano is to first visualize the instrument and the room it’s in. I picture all the places a mic could go, and think about what that will sound like. I might even have someone play while I put my head in those spots.

Next, I think about how the piano can be manipulated. There are four basic states: open, half stick, closed lid, and lid removed. Where the instrument is in the room, the room itself, and playing style are also factors I lump into this category. I also put “problems” in this category: noisy pedals, overly bejeweled player, clicky fingernails, rattling keys, creaky benches, tuning issues, etc.

Next is context. Is it a concert or a recording? Is it a solo or group piece? Are there other instruments playing in the room? Classical? Pop? Rock? Where on the piano will we be playing? All of these factors influence your choices in miking up the beast.

Last, I think about the mic, pickup pattern and technique. Dynamics are rarely used in piano miking because the heavy diaphragm lacks the ability to capture high end nuance, but it’s not unheard of. Both large and small diaphragm condensers and ribbons are common, usually with an omni or cardioid pattern. Techniques boil down to spaced or coincident, and there are several flavors of each.

To review the overview, we’ve got: Placement, Instrument, Context, Mic(s).

I’ll center around placement, and consider other variables around that.

Room Micing

Many engineers would disagree with this, but I think there are no wrong places to mic a piano. It depends on what you want to hear. For example, if you want a muddy sound, you could go behind the lid, but usually the accepted place to mic any instrument is in front of where it fires. With a grand piano, that’s in front of the open lid, which is a large area. As with anything, the closer the mics are, the less room sound you get. This is a place to consider context. In classical recording, it’s typical to place mics in the room. You will notice the piano sounds even and live this way. How far back depends on the room, but try 2 or 3 feet back for a relatively close sound in a decent room, and go back from there. Try head high when you’re closer, or draw an imaginary line along the angle of the lid. Place the mics around where that would line would be – higher if farther away. This can help with capturing high frequencies reflecting from the lid.

With the lid at half-stick, high frequencies reflect more downward than into the room. So you won’t get as much high frequency brilliance with a half closed lid and room mics – a duller sound. Closing the lid and room miking really won’t work, unless you want major high frequency attenuation and a muddy sound. In the classical context, we usually leave the lid fully open.

As far as mic choice, small diaphragm condensers work great. Large diaphragm condensers are awesome too, but small diaphragms have a better off axis response, which is nicer for capturing reflections. You can do a cardioid pattern here, but if the room is nice, an omni pattern might be better. Even in omni, point the mic at the source (downward toward the strings), because there will always be SOME off-axis coloration.

You can choose between a single mic, a spaced pair (Figure 1), or a coincident pair like an X-Y (Figure 2). A spaced pair is straight forward but comes with two potential problems: phase and “hole in the middle”.

If they’re spaced too wide (Figure 3), you could get a feeling of having a hole in the middle of the stereo field. You can bring them a little closer, or you can try adding a third in the middle.

The other potential issue is phase. As your spaced pair is summed to mono (which still happens quite a bit in broadcasts), you could find a major change in tonality based on complex phase interactions. Careful placement and checking in mono can help, or you can change your technique to an X-Y placement. This will create a more natural stereo image, eliminate any “hole in the middle” issues, and (mosty) take care of phase and mono compatibility issues. That makes X-Y configuration seem superior, but I myself am more likely to use a spaced pair.

In front of the lid or way out in the room is not the only room miking option. You can also try a behind the player placement. An X-Y slightly above the player’s head, pointing down toward the strings (not the keys) is good, and I like to put a spaced pair 2 or so feet behind the player, 3-4 feet apart (Figure 4).

Figure 4 – Behind The Player Spaced Pair

There’s no reason not to try various locations in the room or multiple mics simultaneously. You’re under no obligation to use all the tracks in your mix. One of my recent sessions was miked with 4 spaced pairs of small diaphragm condensers. One was 2 feet apart at the edge of the piano, another was 4 feet apart about 4 feet back, another was about 10 feet back, 8 feet apart, and another was a pair behind the player. I varied my use of the tracks in the mix, but I found that the farthest room mics added nothing, because the room was fairly dead. Don’t be afraid to experiment, and throw away what doesn’t work.

Close Miking

Close miking a piano is more typical of pop and rock music, and is, to me, more complex and interesting. There are a million ways you could achieve something cool with close miking.

Any placement starting at the edge of piano and moving in toward the strings we’ll call close miking. I like a spaced or X-Y pair right at the edge of the case, where it curves, about two feet above the edge. Another set up I like is a spaced pair of 414’s a little deeper into the piano, but still a good 2 or 3 feet above the strings. As you move toward the strings, you’ll find more distinction, ie: certain strings will be emphasized more. This isn’t always good, so you want to play with placement and think about where the song is mostly played.

Another technique is to use an X-Y pair in the middle of the piano, using cardioid patterns. The directionality of the cardioid pickup in this situation can pick out the high and low strings.

Recently I put an omni 414 deep into the piano, about 6 inches above the low strings and 3 inches behind the dampers, to emphasize a line that was played only on the lowest octave. This track I centered in mono, but there were 3 other tracks to mix with: a 414 a foot above the highest strings, and a spaced pair at the edge of the case. The latter 3 were for overdubs higher on the piano, but I recorded all the tracks on all three takes.

All of these placements use an open lid, and I’ve used both cardioid and omni patterns to great effect. With a half stick lid, shoving mics inside gets trickier, but this might be preferable when other players are in the room. It’s also typical to use blankets to help isolate from the rest of the band. Half-closing the lid changes the acoustics inside the piano, but not THAT much.

Closing the piano entirely is another story. First off, you can’t stick booms inside a closed piano, and as I mentioned, room miking a closed piano doesn’t work. A traditional solution is PZM mics taped to the underside of the lid. With care, you can get cabling out of there without too much disturbance, and you can even pile on more blankets for isolation. The problem with putting PZMs inside a closed piano is a boxy sound. The inside of the piano is an insane place acoustically with the lid closed, and decent PZMs do an ok job, but it’s still tough.

There is a solution I like for that dilemma. It’s the Earthworks Audio PianoMic (reviewed in the September 2011 issue). The PianoMic mounts inside the piano (Figure 5), allowing the lid to fully close. The mics attached to the adjustable boom are what’s called “random incidence” mics, which means they “don’t care where the sound is coming from”. Basically, they’re “super duper omni directional”. This matters because sound inside the piano comes from all directions, making locating a specific source difficult.

Figure 5 – Earthworks PianoMic mounts inside the piano

Earthworks was kind enough to send me a loaner for this article, and I did some testing in an environment not ideal for recording: a showroom. Alex Boggs at 88 Keys Piano Warehouse here in Albuquerque (88KeysPianoWarehouse.com) generously lent me their space, where I installed the PianoMic on a baby Yamaha. The environment was relatively noisy due to street traffic and air conditioner noise, and I was curious how well I could isolate by closing the lid. I also tested with the lid open and at half stick. The playing masked the room and traffic noise, so isolation became less of a question. I really liked the sound; I did notice that with the lid closed, it was slightly darker and boxier, but less than I expected. What impresses me about the PianoMic is that it takes the guesswork out.

Figure 6 – PianoMic goosenecks can be re-posititioned

The mics sit on tiny goosenecks so there is some play (Figure 6), but really not that much choice in the grand scheme of things. This makes miking the piano less overwhelming. You sacrifice some flexibility, but I like the efficiency. I especially like that notion for live situations, and lo and behold, Earthworks makes a touring version of the PianoMic which breaks down more for easier transport.

Even with great mics, a closed lid is the least desirable scenario, but when you must close the lid, I like the PianoMic.

For an open lid, I already described spaced and X-Y pairs placed either at the edge of the case, or deep within the piano. I tend to gravitate toward the player, and I’ve spaced two 414’s as wide as the width of the piano, 2 inches from the strings, right up on the hammers. Another option is to bring that pair together, or X-Y a pair of small diaphragms right up near the hammers toward the middle. This will yield a percussive sound with a lot of attack. Any of these techniques might get you a lot of pedal noise, though, and depending on the player and piano, that may be too much.

You might solve that problem by going to an overlooked spot on the piano: the foot. In Nathan Rosenberg’s article on our website he says, “there is a wonderful place at the tail, just about where the back leg is, or often just outside the case. Here, the various registers tend to project in a surprisingly uniform manner.” That’s a good place for a mono recording, too. Thanks, Nathan!

Another accepted technique is to place one mic toward the middle of the group of high strings (toward the music stand) and a second more toward the foot of the piano. Typically these would be condensers in omni configuration.

Another extreme option is what Elton John producer Gus Dudgeon did – remove the lid. This allows you to hang mics above the strings almost anywhere your heart desires. It can result in a considerably brighter sound with less low end power, and that may not be for everyone, but some people swear by it. A spaced pair of omnis about 2 or 3 feet above the strings would be reasonable.

Of course there are the “sound holes”, which aren’t really sound holes, but can yield some interesting results. One technique involves an X-Y pair about halfway between the lid and case, pointed diagonally toward the strings. People have also been known to stick a directional mic right down into a hole, usually as a supplement to more traditional techniques (Figure 7). This is the one situation where a dynamic might suit you. I once put an SM57 in the middle hole, ran its cable directly to two guitar pedals (delay and distortion), ran that to a vintage Fender amp, and miked that amp like I would a guitar. I put the amp in an isolation booth across the room and closed the door and it was STILL feeding back! The point is, there are any number of creative things you can do, like miking under the piano to help bolster your low-end or for a mellow sound (Figure 8).

Indeed, there’s an endless variety of spaced pair, X-Y, mono and multi-mic configurations you can try. We’ve talked mostly about condensers because that’s more common, but in any of the situations I’ve described, you could substitute ribbons. We’re not done though. We haven’t talked about the mid-side pair, which can be a great way to use ribbons.

A mid-side pair makes use of two mics to create 3 tracks. Mic 1 – the “side” – must use a figure 8 pattern. Mic 2 – the “mid” – is a cardioid, pointed at the sound source. The side mic is perpendicular to the mid, so the figure 8 is left-right of the source direction. Once recorded, the side is doubled and one side is phase-reversed. These two tracks are panned hard and the mid is placed in the center. You can then mix to taste. A mid-side pair can be quite beautiful on a piano, and is perfectly mono-compatible since the 2 sides will cancel when summed. Placement of an effective mid-side pair for piano is similar to other placements – there are plenty of great possibilities. The other day I set up a mid-side pair at the edge of the case (Figure 9), right where I would normally put a spaced pair.

Figure 9 – Mid-Side pair at the edge of the piano

I loved the result. I also loved the result when Houston engineer Rock Romano recorded me with a mid-side of ribbons placed about the middle of the piano, with the cardioid pointed right at me. However, I do find that a mid-side can go wrong a little easier than other techniques. The experimental set up in Figure 10 was placed near the edge of the case a little higher, and I found the result lacking depth and character. I ended up killing side two and panning the mid left and the original side right to salvage the take.

Figure 10 – Mid-Side pair higher near the edge of piano

That brings me to a point on mixing. It may seem there’s no room to play in mixing a piano, but that’s not true. Especially if you use multiple mics, there are many ways to experiment and adjust. For example panning an X-Y closer together is always an option. A spaced pair will start to change tonally as you bring the panning in (because of phase issues), but that tonal change may be something you like. Just as there are no wrong ways to mic a piano, there are no wrong ways to mix it.

Before I end, I’d like to give my promised lip service to uprights.

Upright pianos aren’t recorded nearly as often as grands, and the reason is simple: they don’t sound as awesome. But that doesn’t mean it never happens. Some general concepts still apply. Condensers and ribbons usually work better, spaced pairs have more phase issues than X-Y pairs, and close miking yields less room sound than getting farther away. The upright is physically different though. So where do we place mics? There are three basic possibilities: Inside or above the top (with the top open), in front of the piano underneath the keys, or behind the piano. Upright pianos are often shoved up against a wall, and it’s probably best to not do that. It’s also probably best to remove panels either in front or in a back, to give better acoustic access to the sound board and strings. My personal preference would be a spaced pair of cardioid condensers placed about 2 feet off the ground, right about even with either side of the bench, so the piano player kicks them when sitting down or getting up, with panel removed. I once shoved a cheap dynamic into a 100 year old out of tune monster and the result was…magnificent…in its way.

By now you’ve got the picture that piano miking is a complex and variable task, with a lot of room for creativity. I’ve covered as much as I could, leaving out one big possibility: surround. That’s a can of worms that I think deserves its own article. Talking about piano miking is by no means simple, and neither is getting what you want from such a complex instrument, but I hope you’ve at least got some places to start now, and at best, a better idea of what to expect when caging the beast named Piano.

In case you’re wondering, I put together a bunch of notes and samples from my session with the EarthWorks PianoMic – you can get all that stuff for free right here.

Changing Of The (Pick) Guard

June 14, 2019 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, guitar, guitars, modern music, nquit music, recording, recording magazine

Modern use of guitars is changing

This article appeared in the December 2018 (I think) issue of Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

A curious thing has been happening lately in my studio. I’ll hire a killer guitar god, bang out a session, throw down a great mix thinking “ohhh yeeaahh” and when I seek feedback, I’m told the track sounds dated or old. For a little while, it was every time there was any kind of guitar involved. Once it was pointed out, all those tracks sounded stale to me too. What gives?

Needless to say this was quite disturbing, because I love a sick guitar track. I love putting one on a record even more, but that’s mainly because I can’t play the guitar to save my life. I’ve had guitars since I was 16 (that’s 27 years but who’s counting?), but I can play an e chord and that’s it. So maybe this whole trend where guitars aren’t as central is good for me?

This really got me thinking, and almost immediately, I started seeing article after article about the decline of guitar sales (over the past 10 years, electric guitar sales have gone down to about 1 million annually, from 1.5 million), the death of rock and roll, and so on. Everyone has an opinion about why, and the guitar-making giants have their opinions about how to slow or reverse their apparently imminent demise. I’m more interested in making hot tracks, telling amazing stories and moving people to dance, yell, sing or cry.

So the question for me became “why does this instrument sound old?” and “what do I do about it?” Do I remove guitar from my productions? Do I use it in a different way? How do I coach a guitar player who wants to keep up with the latest trends?

Well first, let me say this: Trend chasing isn’t always important. Straight forward, guitar driven rock and roll will be relevant as long as there’s someone who’s moved by it, which, Beethoven will tell you, will probably be forever. Trend chasing is also dangerous to creative flow, and can be detrimental to originality, leaving a person forever one step behind the edge. In other words, I don’t copy the latest hot acts. I AM the latest hot act, and I encourage you to think the same way.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about the role the guitar plays now, as opposed to the role it played 10, 20 and 50 years ago, and more importantly, some ways to keep it fresh in the studio.

But Why?

First it might help to understand why my track with the shredding 16 bar guitar solo and nifty keen twice dubbed, stereo spread distorted rhythm track sounds old, and why I would gravitate toward that, even though I don’t play guitar. Well, because it IS old. It’s something that we’ve all heard a thousand times. That’s not a bad thing at all! But that’s the basic reason.

A rock band has this basic line up: Drum kit, electric guitar, electric bass, vocal. There may be piano, synths, other vocals, but that’s been the foundation for long on 70 years. I haven’t been around THAT long, so why would I be slave to that? For the same reasons I make music that’s very different from that, and there are two big ones:

1 – Guitar driven rock-n-roll has been the most important musical thing in the world for longer than I’ve been alive. Of course I want to emulate that, it’s what I think matters.

2 – Guitar driven rock-n-roll is hard to record. Until maybe 10 or 15 years ago, you really had to BE somebody to have the money and access to record that music. Of course I love it when I can sound like that, it makes me feel successful.

Ironically, these are also reasons that straight forward guitar driven rock seems to be getting less and less important. New musical trends are often initiated by people who lack the resources to do things the old way. Hip-hop is a great example. Grand Master Flash used two old turntables because that’s what he had. EDM is today’s version of hip-hop. Samples, synths and “fake” drums are easy and cheap to create, and an intrepid kid with a crappy laptop can make music that way. She may not even have the resources to learn how to play a guitar, let alone the scratch to get a big ol Marshall stack to play with, but she’s got a laptop.

And of course, the young and creative tend to want to push past what they’ve heard before.

So, now the pop landscape is dominated by sounds other than your basic 4 piece rock band band.

But the guitar isn’t dead by any means. I didn’t say sales had gone down from 1.5 million to 0 – a million is still a lot! But at the cutting edge, it’s being used differently. So I’ll spend the rest of this piece talking about how, and present a few ideas for using it in fresh ways in your productions.

Acoustic

While I have noticed a drop off of new and hot electric guitar driven rock, I have noticed a significant pick up in the number of acoustic driven acts and songs. Ed Sheeran uses nothing but an acoustic guitar and a looper on stage. Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson are older examples, but they’re still relevant, and they’re acoustic guitar people. Satellite radio has an entire channel dedicated to “coffee shop” versions of hit songs. And in my productions, my favorite killer guitarist has recently given me a few latin influenced nylon string acoustic tracks that absolutely no one said sounded dated (even though THAT tradition is way older than rock and roll).

So idea one is pretty simple: go acoustic. And if you can get creative with technology like looping, effects and genre mixing, you might discover a completely new sound. Tommy Emanuel is incredibly creative with a series of effects pedals and wildly different playing techniques, all using an acoustic guitar. For another older example, look to Ani Difranco’s array of oddly tuned acoustics.

Even a plain acoustic guitar somehow remains a more timeless sound, probably because it’s another example of something that a creative person with no money and no band can use to show up anywhere and move people.

Texture

Matt Bellamy (front man for Muse) was quoted this year by the BBC as saying “The guitar has become a textural instrument rather than a lead instrument, and I think that’s probably a good thing.” That’s an astute statement, and if you listen through a bunch of hit music today, even hip-hop, you’ll be able to pick out guitars that sometimes don’t even sound like guitars. Big, reverby swells and pad like sounds, boops, beeps, noise tracks, even crazy effects and odd techniques that sound like synths are all possibilities. After all, the guitar is actually a super versatile instrument. You can bend the strings, you can break all kinds of fretting rules, and you can add effects like crazy. And the cool thing is, a great guitarist can switch from texturing to rhythm to traditional lead relatively easily.

Check out “Last Danger of Frost” by Steve Kimock for some crazy textural yet melodic guitar work, or listen to U2’s “Beautiful Day” for textural work that also serves to create a groove.

Throw Back Farther

One of the problems those of us of a certain age have is that we throw back – to our youth. That’s the surest way to sound and feel old. But throw back art is almost always in vogue, when it’s ACTUALLY old. Instead of throwing back to your youth, throwback farther. Throw back to your parents or grandparent’s youth. Think at least 40 years back. Have you noticed that 70’s movies are getting cool now? 80’s rock hasn’t made it back just yet, but it’s starting to poke it’s head in the room.

So when it comes to guitar, try thinking back to the 50’s. Portugal The Man.’s “Feel It Still” uses a really 50’s feeling spring reverb’d bass/guitar combo to give the track a retro feel, but the use of newer technology and drum technique in combination with that, as well as a very un-fifties lyric set and modern female vocal makes it feel weird, fresh and cool. Bruno Mars’ entire act is a purposeful throw back to old school funk R&B and it works because there are slight differences in the production style and culture that connect it to now. The guitars in these productions are clean and funky. They generally aren’t distorted or bluesy sounding. Take off the distortion, throw in a wah pedal, and see what happens.

And of course, if you or your guitar player friend are steeped in older traditions like classical guitar or flamenco, you can come up with brilliant new combinations that ground themselves in the past yet pull you forward into the future.

Jump Forward

Here’s another idea. Use the guitar as a tool to create EDM-like grooves or technological wonders that combine recording technology with the instrument. Recently a radio promoter and artist manager told me that a song sounded great except for the guitar, which he said would be an easy fix, just use the guitar in a new way. He pointed me at an act called Nvdes, which is ostensibly guitar driven, but on many tracks you wouldn’t necessarily know it. Their use of the guitar doesn’t always sound like a guitar, but it’s not necessarily textural or secondary. Often a guitar creates their groove, but it’s just – well, different.

Post Malone’s “Better Now” starts with a barely identifiable guitar which forms the foundation of the groove, similar to The Edge’s work on “Beautiful Day”. At least – I THINK that’s a guitar!

Or…Metal It Up

When I talked about guitar driven rock’n’roll before, I neglected something important. Metal. Metal is still metal. It’ll always be metal, and metal is for guitarists. But even then, the genre has been pushed, morphed and split. Metal guitars combined with rappers ala Rage Against The Machine, Limp Biskit or Linkin Park, ethereal female vocals like Evanescence, or even with traditional Scandinavian folk are all examples of odd metal pairings that push that genre. Try Cellar Darling for a curious mix of these things like textural work, ethereal female vocals and traditional driving metal guitars. Or if you want a true blending of genres, try The Sidh (one could even argue against calling them metal). The point is, if you want you can just go ahead and double down on guitar and metal things up, and you can still be inventive!

Mix Up The Mix

It’s not just about playing style. You can experiment with new mix techniques too. Right now, minimal and spacious is trumping big wall of sound kind of material, so instead of a double tracked stereo guitar, you might try a mono track, panned just a little left or right. Instead of a huge full spectrum distorted guitar, try just a little fuzz, eq’d tightly into a smaller frequency footprint, to leave room for other instruments to play a bigger role in the overall picture. Or go bigger than ever, or super reverby, and neglect the other elements of a traditional band, to create something that’s truly and only guitar driven. The idea here is if you haven’t heard it, try it.

Other Elements

Finally, as you try to freshen up your guitar sound or tweak a dated sounding track, you might consider that the culprit may not be your guitar at all. The guitar may be the most important element of a traditional rock band, but it’s not the only element. What would your song sound like with a blues-rock guitar track, but a drum machine style rhythm track? How about no drums, or a cello instead of a bass guitar? The possibilities are endless.

Speaking of drums, this conversation is larger than the guitar. Drums have also seen a similar shift in their usage and role in modern music, and next month, we’re going to tackle that subject as well. We’ll talk about how a drum kit can sound dated, and what to do with that, as well as alternatives to the traditional trap drummer that could freshen up not only your tracks, but your stage presence as well. Don’t worry drummers, we won’t leave you behind!

Until then, happy shredding, all you six string samurai!

Aaron J. Trumm can play e-minor and sometimes a version of a minor on a guitar. Check him out at aarontrumm.com and talk to him on social media @AaronJTrumm.