Listen Different

August 6, 2020 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio monitors, audio recording, home recording studio, home studio, listen different, listen differently, monitor speakers, music, music recording, nquit, nquit music, recording, recording magazine, recording studio, speakers

This article first appeared in 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!

There’s nothing in the world like a great pair of…monitor speakers. It’s true. Whether you’re into Adam, Genelec, K-Rok, Events or Mackie, even if you’re old school and can’t get by without your trusty NS-10s, whether sub or no sub, there’s nothing like a beautiful set of monitors (in a properly treated room!) with an incredibly clean, accurate sound to not only get you in the mood, but make that mood shine through when other people hear your brilliant opus. You need that accuracy, and you need to be used to your go-to monitors. You need to know their ins and outs, their strengths and weaknesses, and what tends to happen to a mix when you use them. You need to be loyal enough for long enough so that you really feel comfortable and master your monitors.

But comfort can be a dangerous thing, and no one, not even your mom, will ever listen to your mixes on your monitors in your room. Maybe not even your client. So your loyalty, while strong, should flex. You may need, as they say, to have an open relationship with your monitors. In fact, in order to really get your mix right, you might need to be rather promiscuous with your listening. Of course that includes the obvious: if you’re in a big studio, you’ll have loud speakers, mid fields, near fields and great headphones to check mixes against. But don’t stop there. If possible, how about another set of nearfields, maybe an alternate pair of mid fields?

Of course, that kind of buying power is rare, and in reality, you might have to settle for one set of really great, perfect-for-you monitors. That’s ok, because there’s more to do anyway. Check the mix on your go to headphones. Check on it $10 computer speakers. Check on the laptop speakers. Download an mp3 to your phone and listen with earbuds, then listen without. Does it still sound like a record? Listen on a boom box – a crappy one. A famous studio/label who shall remain nameless is said to have had a small broadcast station, which they would tune in to while sitting in an old truck in the front. Listen in mono. Get a cheap “pillow” speaker and try that out. DEFINITELY listen in your car. Listen a LOT in a LOT of cars. Make a CD and take it to every boom box in every department store in town.

When you’re not in the studio, make a lot of notes. When you are, make small tweaks. Return to your favorite monitors and check to see that your adjustment didn’t throw things out of whack there. Usually you can find a balance between disparate systems with small tweaks, but be careful of chasing your tail. Just check and check and check, and at some point, stop.

This advice is especially for those self-mixed musicians, producers and dreamers who don’t have access to the Bob Clearmountains and Chris Lord-Alges of the world (or their gear). Your lack of the absolute BEST resources need not stop you from achieving great and translatable mixes, and where that begins is with multiple listening environments.

While you’re at it, go ahead and get multiple ears on the mix too. E-Mail an mp3 link to some people who will listen differently than you. If you can stand it, bring somebody into the studio who is NOT an expert. Yes, bring the lay people in on it! Let your kids, your mom, your dog and your neighbor’s best friend’s plumber in on the fun. Don’t try to get technical terms out of them, just listen for their reactions. They won’t say “the vocal is a bit muddy, can you trim 100 HZ a bit?” They’ll say something like “what’d she say?”

That’s not to say you should leave your expert friends out. Don’t be afraid to send the mix all around, including to feedback groups you trust out in the social media world. Just make sure you make small tweaks, and remember that you may not be able to please EVERYBODY. But try. And listen, listen, listen.

Oh, and that means listening to other music. That’s obvious, right? Certainly you tune your ears a bit with known tracks before starting a mix session. But have you been listening to those tracks on those other systems too, learning what the mixes you like do in those situations? That can be quite enlightening and pretty encouraging too, because no, the great mixers’ stuff doesn’t necessarily sound that great on a pillow speaker! If it sounds better than yours though, think about why. What do you hear, and how can you get it?

This kind of critical listening is just that – critical – and you will be glad you upped the ante on perspective. There is a limit, and at some point you need to go ahead and finish and move on, but there’s great value in listening around, as it were. Try it, you’ll like it!

I’m a producer, vocalist, pianist and listen differenter. Look for me on Twitter or Facebook at @AaronJTrumm.

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File This

July 30, 2020 by Aaron

5.1 surround, aac, aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, ac-3, aiff, audio, audio file types, cdda, lossless, lossy, m.c. murph, mp3, nquit, ogg, recording magazine, wma

A Brief Discussion of Audio File Types

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!

In my article “Keeping Track”, we covered data. We talked about the information you need to keep with your songs in order to sell, license and organize them. We covered metatags; data about data that gets embedded in files. We talked a little about the file types that carry metadata and how to use them, and that brought up a wider topic: audio file types.

There are hundreds of audio formats and an endless variety of settings and options. So, without a whole lot of fanfare, we’ll dive into some of the formats that exist as of now, but first let’s delineate a few traits and categories.

Compression

An audio file (or a video file for that matter) is either compressed or uncompressed. What this means is the file is either whole and complete or it has been squashed down to save space, like using a .zip file; or in physical terms, like using one of those infomercial vacuum bags to suck the air out of your Christmas sweaters. A WAV file is uncompressed; an MP3 is compressed.

Don’t confuse compression or the lack thereof with the terms lossy or lossless. Lossy and lossless are two types of compressed files. If a file is lossy, it means some data has been thrown out because in theory that data isn’t necessary, usually because the human ear can’t hear it. That data cannot be recovered. On the other hand, a lossless file is compressed, but no data has been thrown out. Think of the difference between cutting off the sleeves of your sweater (because it’d be fine as a vest) and sucking it in Mr. Popeil’s vacuum (lossy), and simply sucking it in the vacuum, but leaving it intact (lossless). As you might guess, lossless files are generally bigger. MP3s are lossy. FLAC files are lossless.

File Format and Codec

You may never need to know this, but there is a difference between a file’s format and it’s codec. The format, or file type, is simply the wrapper in which the audio data is kept. The codec is the meat of how it’s encoded. Not all file types support all codecs, but there are some surprising possibilities. A WAV file might not be encoded with PCM, for example. We don’t have room here for a comprehensive list, but it’s likely you’ll only ever need to worry about a few possibilities. We’ll say more on those big ones momentarily.

Sample Rate, Bit Depth and Bit Rate

These are the main measurement of audio quality, and there can be some confusion about what they all mean.

Sample rate is used to refer to an original or uncompressed recording. It’s how many times per second a snapshot of the signal is taken. 44.1k means 44.1 kilohertz, or 44,100 times in a second. You probably know that CD quality is 44.1k, 16 bit.

Bit Depth is how many bits are in each sample. If you record at 44.1k, 16 bit, you’re taking 44,100 16 bit samples every second. Crudely, more bit depth corresponds to more dynamic range.

Bit Rate can be a bit fuzzier. Bit rate simply means the number of bits that are processed over a given amount of time, and it is a measure that can be applied to any file. A CD quality file is 1,411 kbps (kilobits per second), for example. In practice, though, bitrate is more often used to refer to the quality of a compressed, lossy file. To be crude again, it comes down to a measure of how much data we’ve thrown away. The highest bit rate for mp3s is 320 kbps, and the default iTunes rate is 256. A 128k MP3 is noticeably smaller than a 320k file, but in many situations, not all that different sounding. A 32k MP3, however, would sound awful, except in special circumstances (audiobooks, for example, often use low bit rates, because that doesn’t much affect a spoken track).

The Big Ones

While there are actually tons of audio file types and different combinations of format/codec possibilities, there are only a few you’re likely to see very often. In fact, we can narrow that down to three. WAV, AIFF, and MP3.

WAV (Waveform Audio File Format) files are Microsoft’s format, used in PC applications, and based on RIFF (resource interchange file format). Usually WAV files are encoded using PCM (pulse code modulation) encoding, which is uncompressed and the same basic encoding used in CDs, but it is possible to encode a WAV file with other codecs, even compressed ones. A “RIFF Wav” is a normal WAV file, and a “Broadcast WAV” is a WAV file with extended headers, originally used by broadcasters. WAV files have .wav extensions.

AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) files are Apple’s uncompressed format, also based on RIFF, and usually using PCM encoding. The only practical difference between WAV and AIFF files is that AIFF files allow more metadata by default (so you can see stuff like album covers in iTunes), but you will notice that certain DAWs won’t deal with both. That’s not a problem, as you can easily convert between them with something like Sox or FFMPEG, or free software like Audacity. AIFF files typically carry .aif extensions.

MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer III) files are compressed, lossy and very common. MP3 shouldn’t be confused with MPEG-3, which is a video format. MP3 compression is done by throwing away data which isn’t needed, mostly due to a phenomenon in human hearing called auditory masking. That’s a pretty fancy way of saying we don’t hear everything in an uncompressed file anyway, so we might as well throw some away to save space. There’s no shortage of debate there, but it seems to work pretty well. MP3 was a proprietary format, owned and licensed by the The Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Circuits, and that’s why not all software could make an MP3, at least until very recently. The Fraunhofer Institute declared MP3 an obsolete format in May of 2017, and terminated its licensing program. Whether this means the MP3 will die or proliferate further remains to be seen. For now, it’s still the de-facto compressed file format, and typically what you get when you rip a CD with iTunes or other software, or download that free track from your favorite polka band.

Other Major Formats

There are so many audio formats, we’d be hard pressed to talk about them all here, but there are a few you should know about.

CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) is the format for compact discs. It’s just an AIFF file with different headers. If you happen across a .cdda file (probably ripped from a CD), you’ll probably be able to play it in anything that can play a WAV or AIFF.

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a compressed, lossy format created by Dolby which was designed to be a successor to MP3. Apple subsequently developed a copy protected version that uses DRM (digital rights management) for iTunes, and that’s generally the format of files you buy from iTunes.

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is exactly what it sounds like, a free, lossless, compressed format. Great for archiving files, since it can reduce size up to 60% without losing any quality.

WMA (Windows Media Audio) was originally a compressed, lossy Windows format designed to compete with MP3. It’s been expanded to include a lossless version, a multichannel version, and a lower bit rate version used for voice. You may encounter Windows system files or other similar things in WMA format. WMA files can be copy protected.

AC-3 is a lossy 5.1 surround sound format used by Dolby Digital in DVDs, HDTV and DTV (digital television). Its highest sample rate is 48k. A side note: The “point one” in surround sound refers to a Low Frequency Effect (LFE) channel which has less bandwidth. The LFE is where the shake your boots BOOM in movies comes from.

What To Use?

At this point your question may be why should I care, or what should I use? The truth is, audio is audio, and when it comes to format choice, utility is the main consideration. Your DAW will do what it does, and I recommended letting it do that. When you’re deciding what to export, think about the use at hand. You’ll want to export either WAV or AIFF for mastering, making CDs, importing into a video project, or other continuing full resolution work. They’re really the same thing, so think about the software you’re using next, or what the person on the other end needs, and use that.

When it comes to delivery to the general public, think about the end user rather than entering into an endless debate about the perceptual quality of various algorhythms or codecs. If you’re selling downloads to normal people, you’ll probably want to use MP3s. If you’re delivering files to a digital distributor, you’ll probably be asked for CD quality WAVs, and in some cases, distributors will take AAC files for iTunes. If you want you can also distribute lossless files in FLAC format, or give people access to WAVs, or even distribute OGG/Vorbis files, which is an open source container/codec combination very similar to MP3. Beware, though, that not all players support these less common formats, and your user may end up with no way to listen.

As far as bit rate, I like to give my loving, devoted fans the highest quality MP3s I can, so those are encoded at 320k, but it’s also a good idea to make a 128k version for web-based preview listeners, because the smaller size will load faster and stream better. Some submissions you make (say to internet radio or licensing folk) may have size limits, too, so those smaller MP3s are useful. In the end, this is a judgement call, and if it’s for your own personal listening, then do whatever you like best.

One other consideration is something we addressed in “Keeping Track”, which is metadata. There are many situations where you’ll want some data other than audio in your file. Whether it’s so consumers know who you are, or licensing agents know who to contact, you’ll need some extra info in there, so the file type you use to send to certain people needs to contain that data. That’s what we covered in “Keeping Track”, so if you haven’t seen it, check that article out.

Resources

As with any very technical topic, an exploration of audio file types can go quite deep, and we don’t have room here to cover everything we could think of, so here are some recommendations for further reading:

Principles of Digital Audio by Ken Pohlmann
The Audio Expert (chapter 8 especially) by Ethan Winer
Mastering Audio by Bob Katz
How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt (for a great history of the MP3 format)
Any Wikipedia page about “audio file types” or specific types – google “WAV Wikipedia”, for example.

If you’re new to audio or recording, then hopefully we’ve helped you at least begin to sort out file types in digital audio, and if you’re a veteran, I hope you’ve reminded yourself of a few things here. For the most part, file types are pretty straight forward, but you can run into confusion at times, especially when a DAW or other piece of software gives you a thousand choices. It’s nice to remember a few basic tenets, cut through the noise, and get back to creating. So file this away, and we’ll see you in the studio!

Did you know I have a master’s degree in “Music, Science and Technology” from Stanford University? That means I can go back and forth between Macs and PCs in the studio, and talk at length about debt. Find me on Facebook and Twitter and other various stuff @AaronJTrumm.

Tweak Your Own

July 28, 2020 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio computer, audio pc, build your own windows pc, music computer, nquit, optimize windows for audio, recording magazine, sound computer

Studio computer, that is…

Optimizing your Windows computer for audio

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!

If you read my “Roll Your Own (studio computer, that is)” article, you’ll remember I promised to talk later about setting up that computer for optimal audio performance. Even if you haven’t built your own machine, you’ll still want to optimize audio performance, so this is for you too.

Before we dive in, make a note of a few things:

We’re talking about Windows. Macs and Linux boxes are different beasts.
Screenshots here are from Windows 8. Instructions apply to both Windows 10 and Windows 7/8 machines, but your screens may look a little different.
We’re assuming you’ve got your hardware set. If not, you can refer to “Roll Your Own” for some guidelines about specs (even if you’re not building it yourself). Most modern, good machines will work. 4GB RAM with a 2.5Ghz multi core processor would do.
We’re just covering the system here, not setting up audio software.
Finally, not everything is necessary, especially if your hardware is great, so you can use your judgement and adjust your settings to taste. Think of this as a list of things you CAN do, some of which you probably should.

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Basic Optimization

We’ll start with the easiest stuff. First of all, make sure all your drivers are up to date, as well as your plugins and software (both audio and other). Outdated drivers especially can cause performance problems.

Next, uninstall unnecessary software. If your computer is ONLY for audio work, this can include Office products, accounting software, extra browsers – anything you don’t need. You can uninstall Windows components that aren’t necessary like games, or apps like extra music players, painting programs, etc. This really just saves space and distraction, but it’s a good start.

Next disable programs running in the system tray. These are the pesky items here:

Right click on those items and you should be able to find a settings section (you may have to actually open the program) where you can tell it not to run on start up. You don’t want to disable your virus protection or system critical applications, but you can trim the fat.

Next, defragment your hard drives, if they need it. The easiest way to get to this is open the control panel and put “defrag” in the search box. You should do this whenever that utility says the drives need it.

Next up, tweak your screen saver. Fancy screen savers take up resources. Disable it or set it to just turn off the screen. Increase the time so it doesn’t kick in while you’re recording. This can happen because Windows doesn’t consider audio activity “activity”, so you could be singing your heart out on that 10 minute rock opera, but if you’re not touching the mouse or keyboard, the screen saver could come on, cause a glitch, and ruin your life.

Next, disable system sounds. You don’t need extra dinging and binging, but more importantly these sounds can grab control of the sound device. Search for “sounds” in the control panel and click “change system sounds”. Pick “no sounds” from the system scheme dropdown.

Next tackle visual effects. Windows has some cool animations and transparencies which you don’t really need. They’re actually not that bad, but it could make some difference. Search for “visual effects” in control panel, and choose “adjust the appearance and performance of Windows”. It’s easiest just to pick “adjust for best performance”, but you can pick and choose which effects to keep.

Next, you could disable automatic Windows updates, or tell Windows to “check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them”, so that Windows updates aren’t running when audio should be prioritized. If you fully disable automated updates, be sure you remember to periodically check for updates manually. To do any of this, search for “Windows update” in the control panel. You can pick “turn automatic updating on or off” to change automation or “check for updates” to manually update.

Now look into your virus software. Disabling virus software is definitely not recommended, but you might be able to tell it when to do scans and otherwise tweak its behavior so as not to interrupt audio processing.

Next, if you’re not using it, consider disabling the onboard sound card. The onboard sound drivers don’t always play nice with other audio drivers, and to boot, they sometimes introduce noise into the system. Search for “device manager” in control panel, click “device manager”, find the sound device in the list, right click and pick “disable”. Note: I didn’t do this on my laptop, because I want that device working if I’m not in the studio with my interface. I did do it on my desktop.

Next up, if your system is a 64 bit system and your Windows is 64 bit (find out at control panel->system), AND your DAW has a 64 bit version AND your plugins are all 64 bit, run at 64 bit! This allows the software to access a lot more memory. Beware though, because 32 bit plugins generally don’t work in 64 bit DAWs, and vice versa. If you’re starting from scratch though, you might as well stay in 64 bit mode. You do this by simply installing and using the 64 bit version of your software.

Finally, consider using hardwired keyboard and mouse devices instead of Bluetooth (wireless) devices. Bluetooth communication can affect audio performance.

Advanced Optimization

Power Options

Here’s where the fun begins. By default, Windows is set up to balance between power saving and performance by doing things like putting the computer to sleep, throttling down the processor and other tricks. This is a great place to get a significant boost.

Go to control panel and search for “power options”. Click on “power options”. Start by picking “high performance” under “choose or customize a power plan”. Now click “change plan settings” to further tweak this plan. You’ll see two settings: “turn off the display” and “put the computer to sleep”. If you’re using a laptop, there will be an “on battery” option and a “plugged in” option. You can leave the “on battery” option alone to conserve power, but for “plugged in”, pick “never”. Next click “change advanced power settings”. Here you have a whole bunch of options.

For the plugged in options, use these settings:

Hard disk: turn off hard disk after “never”.
Internet explorer: JavaScript timer frequency, “maximum performance”.
Desktop background settings: slide show, “paused”.
Wireless adapter settings: power saving mode, “maximum performance”.
Sleep: sleep after “never”. Hibernate after “never”.
Intel CPCC energy efficiency settings: enable energy efficient operation, “disabled”. Energy efficiency aggressiveness 0%.
USB settings: USB selective suspend setting, “disabled”.
Graphics settings: graphics power plan, “maximum performance”.
Processor power management: minimum processor state, “100%”. Maximum processor state, “100%”. If you do nothing else, do this. It prevents the processor from throttling down when it’s not active. It can take a long time to throttle back up when an audio process needs the processor.
Display: turn display off after “never”.
Multimedia: when sharing media, “prevent idling to sleep”. When playing video, “optimize video quality”.

Here’s a very advanced extra. Under “processor power management”, you probably DON’T see an option called “processor performance core parking min cores”. This is a feature which allows Windows to turn off (aka “park”) cores in a multi core processor to save power. This can affect performance because it takes time for the core to un-park. It’s turned on by default, and the option to change it is usually hidden, but you can just turn it off, which I’ll tell you how to do.

Warning, this is advanced stuff. Do not attempt if you’re not comfortable with advanced configuration and paying attention to detail. Even then, attempt at your own risk!

Make sure the “high performance” scheme is selected in power options (you probably just did this).
Click the Windows start button, and in the search window, type “cmd”, which should pull up “Command Prompt”.
Right click on this and pick “run as administrator”.
A command line window will appear. Type the following on one line:

powercfg –setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 100

Hit enter and then type:

powercfg –setactive scheme_current

This will turn off core parking, but it won’t give you the new option in your power options window.

Other Options

Besides power options, there are quite a few more things you can do boost audio performance. Try these on for size:

Processor scheduling: Search for “performance” in the control panel. Click on “adjust the appearance and performance of Windows” and go to the “advanced” tab. Under “choose how to allocate processor resources” select “background services”. Note: this is usually the better setting because most audio processing is done in the background, but there are times when it actually harms performance, so if you change this and notice a dip, change it back.

USB hub power: Search for “device manager” in control panel, go to device manager, scroll down and click on “Universal Serial Bus controllers”. There should be one or more items called “USB root hub” or similar (look for the words “root hub”). On those, right click and pick “properties”. Click on the “power management” tab and UNCHECK “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”.

While you’re in device manager, you can disable devices you don’t need, but be careful! Don’t disable a device if you don’t know what it is. In general, don’t disable devices in the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, processors, system devices, universal serial bus controllers or computer groups. Some devices that are usually safe to disable are batteries, Bluetooth, imaging, network adapters (wireless especially), sensors and sound, video and game controllers. Obviously you don’t want to disable devices you’re using (the network adapter, for example).

Don’t actually uninstall device drivers unless they’re for hardware that no longer exists in your system. Instead just right click and pick “disable”.

Drive properties: In windows explorer, right click on your hard drive, pick “properties” and uncheck “compress this drive to save space” and “allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties”. If you have an extra drive that’s JUST for storage and isn’t getting accessed by audio software, you can go ahead and use “compress this drive” to save some space.

Graphics card: Some graphics cards have a throttle setting much like the processor setting, which allows the card to throttle down when not in demand. This can cause the same problem of lag when it throttles back up. If you can, turn this setting off in your graphics card settings.

Page file settings: The page file is also known as the swap file. Basically it’s how Windows uses the hard drive as additional random access memory when it needs to. Windows dynamically chooses the size of this swap file unless you tell it not to. That dynamic sizing takes time, so while you’re still in the performance options window, tell it not to by going to the “advanced” tab. Under virtual memory, click “change”. Uncheck “automatically manage paging files size for all drives”. Next, for each of your drives, select “custom size” and enter in your desired initial and maximum size values. If your RAM is small, use about one and a half times the size of your RAM memory. Eg, if you have 4GB of RAM, use 6GB (6000MB). If you have more than 8GB of RAM, you probably don’t need a paging file that big. On my desktop, which has 16GB, I use a 6000MB paging file.

Finally, pay attention to things like backup software or other tasks that run regularly. Make sure they run when you’re not working on audio. You can use the task scheduler to dig into that further, but be careful. The task scheduler does a lot of necessary work and it’s a bit out of this article’s scope to dig into it.

Testing

If you have problems, or if you’d just like to get a bench mark before and after you do all this optimization, there are a couple of highly recommended (and free!) programs that can help you get a gauge on how your system is performing, what applications are hogging memory, and even which drivers might be causing issues.

LatencyMon is a free and thorough program that monitors latency issues and CPU load and reports on problematic drivers and software. You can find it here: www.resplendence.com/latencymon.

DPC Latency Checker is another similar tool. It’s a simpler tool which doesn’t point out problematic drivers and the like, but it’s great for checking whether your audio stream is getting interrupted. You can find it at www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml.

Ok Go For It!

We’ve covered a lot here, but it shouldn’t take you long to make these adjustments. They’re foundational adjustments, and you’ll find yourself tweaking settings in your DAW and other software to taste, but you should be in a really solid place at this point. There are some other more advanced things I haven’t discussed, like spread spectrum, Nagle’s algorhythm and digging into Windows services and startup apps.

If you’d like to dig deeper, I highly recommend a free PDF download called “Glitch Free”, by Brad Robinson of Cantabile. Brad goes into great detail and gives wonderful background information on this topic. His book is one of the best resources on this topic I’ve come across. You can get the book for free (you don’t even have to sign up for anything) at www.cantabilesoftware.com/glitchfree.

Even if you don’t want to dive deep, you’ve got plenty here you can do to get your machine rock’n’roll ready. Have fun with your new computer!

I’m a singer, producer and recovering developer. I’ve built a lot of computers, but I love people more. Contact me on social media at @AaronJTrumm

Roll Your Own

July 16, 2020 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio computer, build your own computer, nquit music, recording magazine, studio computer

Studio computer, that is…

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!

I went to a tiny elementary school in Taos, NM called Vista Grande, which we affectionately referred to as “roll your own academy”. The meaning should be apparent, but I took something else away: a DIY ethic that stays with me to this day.

You may have that ethic, or you may just find yourself in need of more power for less money, but in either case, if you’re mindful, your studio computer is a great place to apply the roll your own philosophy and save some serious scratch. I thought I’d lay out the process, based on my latest build.

Basic Pre-Requisites

Let’s talk basics first. First of all, we’re talking about PCs here. Building a Mac is another story, pretty much untold. Second, you’ll need a basic understanding of computer hardware, some tools, a clean work surface and time. Keep your current machine in operation, and plan on transitioning slowly, over weeks. Keep an attitude of learning and problem solving and you’ll have more fun and do a better job. If things don’t work at first, don’t be discouraged, they almost never do. Just like you almost never nail the mix on the first draft. Right??

You will also need SOME money, but less than you would to buy a machine with the same specs. Do remember, though, that a build may NOT be the right path for you. Consider the opportunity cost of spending your time versus your cash flow and when you need the machine. If you do decide to build, think of it as educational and fun (appeal to your inner geek) as WELL as potentially useful and frugal.

Tools

Your main tool is a Phillips head screwdriver. You may need a couple sizes, and depending on the case, a right angle screwdriver may be useful. An anti-static grounding device that you wear on your wrist is a good idea, or at least something grounded and metal nearby (like a rack). You’ll want to touch that to release your static build up before touching computer components. Some compressed air might also come in handy to blow away dust, but be careful about too much force on small internal parts.

Finally, make sure you have your reading glasses. You’ll want to be methodical about reading manuals and instruction sheets. Trust me on this one – don’t be flip. You know who you are!

Cost

You probably want to know what this’ll cost. As mentioned, it’ll cost some time, and I recommend a slow process, even if you can spare some focused time for the bulk of the work. Financially, your mileage will vary, as there’s no limit to how much you can spend on doo-dads. As a very rough guide, though, I built my current machine for just under $1000, matching the specs and power of machines that generally cost $2000-$2500 when bought outright. So I cut my cost in half.

Parts

Some of this may be obvious, but let’s go through all the parts you’ll need:

Essential (can’t run without):

Monitor (if you don’t already have one)
Keyboard (obviously)
Mouse
Computer case (the basic housing – you may want a case built to be quiet – Figure 1)
Mother board
Processor
Internal hard drive(s)
RAM (memory) (Figure 2)
Power supply (Figure 3)
Operating system

Optional (but probably a good idea):

DVD or CD-ROM
Extra cooling (Figure 4)

Optional:

More hard drives
External hard drive(s)
KVM Switch
Graphics card (probably essential if video editing is a goal) (Figure 5)
Extra monitor(s)
Fancy cooling or neon things

Specs

So what specs are we looking for? Well this machine isn’t just for email and Farmville. You need some power, and you need decent storage. How much you go for is mostly a matter of budget, because if money were no object, well…you see my point. There are some minimums to think about though. First, decide what your goal is for the machine. How many tracks you intend to be able to record or mix at once, how many soft synths and plugins you have, and whether you intend to do video as well. The more you intend to push it, the more power you need.

If you’re just doing audio, what you need is actually pretty minimal by today’s standards. Common DAW minimum requirements hover around here:

Windows 7 or later
2.5GHZ processor multi core
4GB RAM
5-20GB space for the DAW software itself

It’s never a bad idea to beat the minimum specs, so I might opt for an i5 quad core chip, 8GB of RAM and maybe 120GB hard drive, with some kind of extra hard drive storage. As a matter of fact, I do a lot of my audio work on my Sony tablet, which is a 1.5GHZ i5 chip with 4GB RAM and 120GB drive. With the right system tuning, I’m able to record 32 tracks and more simultaneously at 96k 24 bit and mix with plenty of plugins without a glitch. Video editing – not so much – and some DAWs are more processor intensive than others. Mixbus, for example, does a lot of work, and therefore needs a lot more power to work well at 96k than Sonar.

As far as storage is concerned, bear in mind the size of audio files. 44.1k 16 bit audio takes up 5.292 megabytes per track minute. So a typical 3 minute song, 24 tracks, recorded at CD quality takes up 381 megabytes. 10 of those is 3.81 gigabytes. At 96k 24 bit, those numbers jump to 17.280 MB per track minute, or 1.22 GB per 24 track pop song – 12.44 GB for a 10 song collection (not including mixdowns, mp3 versions, etc).

Sample libraries of course take up space, as does software, presets, notes, Word documents and so on. So depending on how much you do, you might want anywhere from 250GB to 2 terabytes and up worth of space. My advice is to get as much storage as you can afford. You may also consider an SSD (solid state drive – Figure 6), at least for your main drive if not storage drives, as SSDs can be quite a bit quicker. They are more expensive though, so bear that in mind.

If you’re doing video work, your specs need to be quite a bit higher, and you probably need a video card. That video card should have at least 1GB of its own memory, 2GB would be a better minimum, and 4 or 8GB would be even more awesome. Your CPU needs to be faster and you probably need 8GB of RAM at minimum. Here are the basic specs of my aforementioned build, which I use for video and audio:

Intel i5 3.0 GHz quad core processor
16 GB DDR4 3000 RAM
GeForce GT 730 video card with 4GB RAM
250 GB SSD Hard Drive (for OS and software)
2 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive (for project and sample storage)

Were money no object, I would have gone a lot farther, but that machine serves beautifully for anything I can dream up to do with audio, and has been doing great with video footage for music videos and such, with the proper workflow. I would probably need a few upgrades to make a feature film for Warner Brothers, but for me, it’s a great machine.

As far as which parts to buy, specs are your main concern, but read carefully about compatibility. Not all motherboards work with all chips, for example. Another common problem is skimping on the power supply and not having enough juice for all your components. Read carefully before you order, and here’s a little trick: Use a custom build site to “fantasy build” your machine virtually, then note the power supply and other components. This is also a good way to track how much money you’re really saving.

The Build Itself

The build itself is pretty straight forward, but you want to be accurate, respect the delicacy of components, and there are a couple of areas you want to be especially careful. Here are your basic steps:

Open the case
Install the power supply
Install the motherboard
Install the CPU and cooling
Install the RAM
Install the video card
Install the hard drives
Install extra components (DVD, etc)
Connect data connections from drives to the motherboard
Connect the power supply to the motherboard and drives
Connect LED and front panel connections
Close the case
Connect power, monitor, keyboard, mouse and audio interfaces
Power up for first test
Scream in frustration
Open case
Use manuals, wit and Google to figure out why it won’t power up
Kill yourself over your stupidity
Fix problems
Close case (repeat steps 14-19 ad nauseum)
Power up for umpteenth test and achieve victory
Install operating system and drivers
Configure and tweak OS
Install software and configure
Pay credit card bill
Rejoice

The order you do steps 3 through 8 doesn’t matter much, but be aware of your layout. In many cases, it’s necessary to install the CPU and cooler before the RAM, simply because of the proximity of parts. If you find a component is in the way of another, you can always take it out and put it back, but in the case of the CPU, that can be a can of worms. Better to get the CPU installed first, and then everything else.

While we’re at it, be extra careful with the CPU. Make SURE you have it oriented right (refer to installation instructions, which should show you an arrow), because you can bend pins and ruin the part pretty easily. Also pay close attention to instructions on mounting the extra fan, or the extra awesome cooling tower you’re replacing that stock fan with. You’ll be applying a cooling gel onto the chip itself, so do that carefully, as you don’t want that stuff all over the motherboard. Remember to connect the CPU fan to its power source (a 2 pin plug on the motherboard). CPU cooling is quite important, and I highly recommend springing for a super awesome better cooling tower. If your CPU heats up too much, your computer will intermittently power down, or worse yet, you could damage or destroy the CPU itself.

In addition to that, here are some other common mistakes you can avoid, most of which will cause the computer to not boot up:

Forgetting the 4 (or 8) pin CPU power connector (Figure 7).
Forgetting power on the graphics card
Seating components incompletely or incorrectly (especially RAM)
Not plugging in CPU fan (Figure 7)
Loose screws or incorrectly screwing down the mother board
Forgetting to turn on the power switch on the power supply

If your computer doesn’t boot, start by checking those.

Don’t fail to discharge your static energy, work in a clean space, or be careful with the parts. Apply gentle pressure rather than force, and pay attention to notches in your plugs and components. Don’t force something that doesn’t seem to want to plug in.

Configuration

Once you’ve got your computer built and booting up, you can start having fun with your software. Install your operating system first (probably some flavor of Windows, or Linux if you dare), then tweak your system for audio performance, then install your hardware drivers (such as audio interfaces), DAW, plugins and other software. Prioritize audio performance over fancy look and feel stuff, and make sure your DAW is humming alone before you start with stuff like word processors and games. Be especially careful about high end games – they can do a number on your system, from an audio/video point of view. I advise leaving games to another computer entirely.

We’ll get into more depth about configuring a machine to really kick tail for audio and video in another article, but until then you’ve got plenty to do!

Resources

There really is a wealth of information out there on this subject, so I’d like to refer you to some online reading that you can keep pulled up on another computer while you build – these resources will give you another perspective, which will be really valuable.

Tom’s Hardware – a great resource for building and troubleshooting, especially this page: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems
PC World – has another handy “common mistakes” page: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2049100/how-to-avoid-common-pc-building-mistakes.html
CNET – also has a “rookie mistakes” page that’s quite a handy reference: https://www.cnet.com/news/how-to-fix-diy-pc-common-issues/

There you go. Hopefully you’ll have a blast building your own custom studio machine, and while you’re at it, save some money and put together a box that suits you perfectly. Have fun!

I’m a singer, producer and recovering developer. I’ve built a lot of computers, but loves people more. Contact me on social media at @AaronJTrumm

Keeping The Rhythm

July 16, 2020 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, diy drum recording, diy drums, do it yourself drums, drum recording, drums, home recording, nquit, nquit music, recording drums, recording drums at home, recording magazine

DIY Drums – Part 1 – Acoustic

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’s a common problem. You’ve got some mics, great chops, a decent voice, cool songs, and decent recording gear. You’re even happy with your space, now that you’ve referred to my DIY Acoustics article from October 2016’s Recording. You’re ready to rock some tracks, and whether you’re recording songwriting demos or an honest-to-goodness record, you run smack dab into a major stumbling block: drums.

It’s a rare rock or pop song that gets away without percussion, and often that’s what separates the women from the boys on a record. It’s easy to tell a low or no budget production immediately by the sound of a stock MIDI snare, and nothing screams “lazy” like throwing down a default loop from a synth or Session Drummer and calling it good.

On the other hand, booking a drummer and studio time is expensive, especially if you’ve got a lot tracks (Figure 1). You can hire drummers with their own studios for decent rates, but even that may be out of your budget. You can still achieve a cool percussion track, though. It just takes creativity and work, and even if you hire a drummer and book studio time, you still want to think creatively, or you may yet get something generic.

Figure 1 – A great but expensive drum studio

There are myriad options when creating a rhythm track, but in the most general sense, they break down to two: acoustic percussion and programming. Which direction you need to head is mostly a matter of genre and style, but there’s nothing wrong with a little genre bending if it’s done well, and you may be surprised how much crossover happens in any genre.

In part one of this two part series, we’ll focus on acoustic tracks. You probably want to go this direction if you’re doing any kind of “natural” music like singer/songwriter stuff, world music or even rock and roll. On the whole, the subject of drums and percussion, and the role they play in a production, could cover volumes, so the main thing I’d like you to take away is inspiration. Be creative and resourceful (Figure 2). After all, relentless pursuit is the key to great tracks even when resources are unlimited.

Figure 2 – Resourcefulness – Step ladder, vacuum, and cymbal stand as mic stands

Trap Kit

“Acoustic tracks” partly means actual “drums”, or more precisely: trap kit. Recording a kit is a whole art unto itself, but it needn’t be so daunting that you can’t do some things yourself. If you’re a drummer (Figure 3), hey, you’re a step ahead, but you needn’t be. If you can play an instrument, you (hopefully) have plenty of rhythm. So, if you happen to have an old drum kit laying around, or even a good one, or can borrow one, or just have a drum or two, this part is for you!

Figure 3 – A drummer in his natural environment

Obviously you’re dealing with some limitations here, or you wouldn’t be reading this. But just because you don’t have Dave Grohl or Animal’s direct line doesn’t mean you’re lost. And just because you can’t keep time with your feet doesn’t mean you can’t have a kick drum! Think outside of the box and you can do any number of things with the drums and skills that you have. You can hit one drum at once and overdub others, ala Fleetwood Mac. Purists would scoff, but we’re not trying to be pure, we’re trying to be cool. Try arranging a kick/snare combo so that you can slam the kick with a mallet and whack the snare with a stick in a pattern of your design, then overdub a hi-hat. Create a simple pattern with two sticks and a tom. When it comes to musicality and drums, your limitations can be your greatest asset. Producers sometimes fight with virtuoso drummers to get them to keep it SIMPLE. If you’re not a drummer but you’ve got a little rhythm, you HAVE to keep it simple, so that’s an advantage! You can make things more complicated with overdubs.

Figure 4 – Drums moved into a living room

A limited drum selection is ok too, as that can also force creativity. Try moving drums to different rooms (Figure 4), retuning, or augmenting to achieve different timbres (Figure 5). Try the living room, try the bathroom, try a closet, or try outside. Music is often about searching, so search for inspiring timbres and sounds, and think about how your environment and drums interact.

Figure 5 – Snare augmented with foam to ring less

You can also do plenty in the mix. Try using extreme EQs, crazy compression, and one of my favorite things to do, pitch shifting! You can use delay to create new patterns and reverbs, phasing and other plugins to create drum insanity.

Figure 6 – 2 capsule kick mic plus condenser on snare

What about miking drums? Much has been written on the subject and you can refer to previous Recording articles for more detail, but here are some basic tenets that might help as you search for cool:

Close mics on drums are usually best handled with dynamics, because their slower response will help smooth the transient nature of drum hits.
You might want to keep your ribbons away, as high SPLs could destroy them.
Condensers are good for room or overhead mics, but don’t count them out for close miking too. When I first started recording, my boss would routinely record kick drum with an AKG 414, placed right in the hole like a normal kick mic. It sounded great!
Try using mics in un-orthodox ways. (Figures 6, 7)

Figure 7 – 2 capsule kick mic, 57, and overhead small diaphragm on floor tom

If you ARE a drummer or you have one, and your limitation is mic selection, remember that less can be more. Many great drum tracks were recorded with one mic (Figure 8). The key here is experimentation with what you have, and close attention to what the drums are doing in the room. Don’t be afraid to move things around and manipulate the acoustics. Blankets in corners or on walls can help deaden a room, or, perhaps you want to remove furniture to liven the room. Next, move your mic or mics around and listen. If you have to record test swatches, do that. What sounds awesome won’t necessarily look right. Do bear in mind, as you play with rooms, that once you record the sound of a room, you can’t take it out, so a really dead space might be want you want. Think ahead about the overall acoustic space you want for the song.

Figure 8 – Heart mic – also mic stand resourcefulness!

Beyond The Kit

Figure 9 – Bundle sticks on kitchen table

You may have a drum kit and a drummer, but if you don’t, you’re not doomed! You can create rhythm tracks out of almost anything, and sometimes a big drum track isn’t even right. If you can hit it and it makes a sound, you can create rhythm. Some sounds may not be all that awesome, but others could surprise you. You can start with traditional percussion instruments: bongos, conga, shakers, cajón, etc. If you haven’t got any of that (even if you do!), plenty of household items have potential. Sticks, tables, sinks, buckets, and your body all make sound when you smack them! (Figure 9) I once made a decent high frequency snare sound out of an upside down coffee can, and there’s no shortage of hand claps these days. Try tracking 3 or 4 tracks of those. In some cases, you can thump on a cardboard box and come up with a kick sound, or use the body of an acoustic guitar to thump out a rhythm. If you have a piano, you can bang on that in several places. If the “instrument” is loud, see how it sounds in the room, and try a room mic, or a combo of room and close miking. If it’s a quiet thing, close miking might work better. Don’t be afraid to try a combo of mics, because whereas less may be more, sometimes more is more! (Figure 10)

The important thing is to think about the FUNCTION of each drum. If you picture a drum kit, and think about the functionality of each part, you can create that same function with alternative means. Kick would be some kind of low frequency element, lower in pitch and with less crack than the snare function, which operates as your back beat, or the two, with requisite creativity. A hi hat functions as a more constant rhythmic bed in some even higher frequency, and sub-divides your beat so the listener stays in the groove. Cymbals are for annoying producers. Try stepping on the cat to simulate (Figure 11).

Your thinking outside the box shouldn’t stop there though. You don’t necessarily need to simulate the functionality of a drum kit. You can create a rhythmic bed that shirks that convention, or you can use the other instruments in a production to create the foundation and use percussion to add spice, emphasis and flavor.

The main thing that’s going to give your production a feeling of legitimacy is doing things on purpose, and spending the time to find unique and interesting sounds that serve the purpose of the song.

Programmed Drums

In part two next month, we’ll talk about creating cool rhythm tracks with synths or computers, but it is worth mentioning now that you may want to augment or support a mainly acoustic track with something programmed. The most common and obvious version of this is drum replacement, which happens a lot more than you might think. Programs like Drumagog or Steven Slate’s Trigger can replace the drums in a performance with sampled drums, and this technique is used all the time to help engineers mix drums. Most often, it’s kick or snare that gets replaced, but other drums are candidates as well. Replacement can be used creatively too. You could replace a normal snare with a crazy one for a measure, or create a layered sound. You could flip the beat by replacing snare with kick! My favorite augmentation is a simple addition of a nice crisp kick drum to augment a trap kit or other track that lacks the character I need to fit the mix. I do this often, because kick drum recordings often sound bad, and in a lot of tracks, an electronic kick doesn’t stand out as “fake” as easily as something like a snare. Most often, I don’t use replacement software, I just play or program a kick pattern that matches the kick or kick like element in the acoustic tracks. The possibilities here are endless, and we’ll go into more detail next month in part two: DIY Drums – Programming.

For now, keep using your imagination and experiment! There’s a whole world of variety you can find in your rhythm tracks if you just keep searching!

Oh – and now – go to part 2 – programming – and then mix and match between them!

I’m an awful drummer, but I keep a crappy drum kit stuffed in a corner, with a cajón for a throne. Some part of it gets used on almost every song. Talk to me about on Facebook if you want.

Capturing Your Voice

March 31, 2020 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, capturing your voice, do it yourself recording, home recording, music, nquit, recording magazine, recording on a budget, recording rappers, vocal recording

Vocal recording in a home studio

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’s a fine art, hearing your recorded voice and not dying of shock. But let’s assume you’re over that, and that you’re not accustomed to $500,000 recording budgets. You’d probably still like to record your vocal tracks professionally and efficiently. Whether you’re a crooner, a diva, a rapper or a writer recording demos, cutting a great vocal track at home is very doable.

Let’s dive into that process, so you have the tools to record vocals you can be confident about. I’ll talk from the point of view of a vocalist recording their own vocals, but everything applies to recording someone else in your space.

There are two major things you need to accomplish in any recording session, and it’s no different for vocals. First you need a killer performance. Next you need to capture it cleanly. Let’s tackle those in reverse order.

Recording

Before you think about your performance, let’s take away everything that would get in the way, and make sure when you hit your stride, it’s getting on tape. We’ll go from the ground up, starting literally with the room.

Acoustics

It doesn’t matter what your mic or voice is like, if your space isn’t right, your track won’t be right. There are a few ways you can go about adjusting your space, but the main is keep noise and unwanted room reflections out of your track. If you have a room that’s a little bit live and sounds awesome, that can be great sometimes, but I wouldn’t recommend printing a lot of reverb on most tracks. What I’m usually looking for is a super dead and even sound, so I have flexibility later. The best way to do this is in a booth. You can purchase a fancy vocal booth, or you can build one. I’ve always been fond of a coat closet, either treated completely, evenly and thickly with acoustic treatment like Auralex foam or ridged fiberglass, or chock full of clothes. My favorite vocal booth was a little bedroom closet we called “The Old Man Clothes Room”. It was full of about twice as many clothes as really fit, because I’d inherited a wardrobe from a friend of the same size who passed away. That “booth” was dead, quiet, and perfect.

What you don’t want is to stand inside a closet without a good amount of treatment. If you were to stand in an empty closet, for example, your track would sound incredibly boxy and probably nasally or wooden. You don’t want to stand in a normal sized bedroom with no treatment whatsoever, as you’ll have similar room reflection issues. No matter what you do, do not put yourself in a corner facing in. If you feel like you can’t treat your room at all, and you have no booth or closet, you could try vocal reflection filters like the sE Reflexion Filter or the Aston Halo Reflection Filter. These small “filters” surround a mic and block reflections. They’re ok, but they don’t really prevent reflections from the room behind and above you from coloring your sound. In a pinch, this may be better than nothing, but if you can, deal with your room. It’s not hard to do something quick and dirty like hang tons of blankets up or surround yourself in mattresses. Be creative.

The advantage of a booth over recording near your desk is that you can isolate better from gear noise. If that’s not an option, see if you can quiet your computer down by baffling reflective surfaces, or move your vocal position away, and/or use a directional mic aimed away from gear. If you’re in a booth or another room, you can use a remote or set up some lead in before the song so you can get into position. At home, where my mic is about 4 steps from the desk, I usually give myself 8 measures of click before the song, and then have the click turn off.

Speaking of noise, you will contend with noisy streets, barking kids and crying dogs. If you have the money, you can build a truly isolated room, but that’s rarely an option, so timing is your best friend. Understand when the quiet times are in your space and use that knowledge to your advantage. That may not be at night. I once had a studio that was very quiet EXCEPT at night, when crickets would blare outside the window.

Mic Choice

The “best” vocal mic is really the one you can afford that is compatible with your voice. That said, a large diaphragm condenser of some kind is probably your best bet. See if you can get a local music store to let you test some. I use an AKG 414, which I love for its detail, but sometimes I find it harsh for my tenor belting. You might find it perfect, or terrible. I’m quite fond of Rode’s selection of affordable condensers, and I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Slate VMS lately (that’s a mic and emulation package which could give you some nice options if you’re recording other people). It’s also nice to have a good directional dynamic on hand. Sometimes a classic Shure SM57 can surprise you. A ribbon might be a nice choice, especially for softer vocals, but try not to scream into it – most ribbons are very delicate.

Don’t just spend as much money as possible. A U87 is a pretty awesome piece of equipment, but it may not be right for your voice. When you’re shopping, start by asking friends or Facebook groups, and be sure to explain what kind of vocalist you are. Whatever you do, get a pop filter, or make one from a coat hanger and some panty hose. Of course, remember that the better your space, the better the mic will do.

Signal Chain

You can spend a lot of money on preamps and vocal processors, and there are a lot of really cool choices out there. The main thing you need is a preamp that you trust that delivers a clean sound, and a way of recording. I’ll assume you’re already set up with some kind of DAW and interface, and you’ve given some thought to the workflow and signal quality there. If you’re looking for a special vocal preamp, the advice is the same as for mic choice. Shop around, keeping in mind the type of vocals you’re recording, the style and your budget. I use a single ART Tube MP preamp, because I like the sonic flavor and the limiter comes in handy. That’s a pretty cheap piece of equipment, and most gear snobs would scoff, but it’s simple and effective. If you’re not planning on recording multiple tracks, you can save a bunch of scratch by going high quality, one channel. Don’t necessarily opt for a tube pre just because it’s cool. Again, test and ask, and find a mic/preamp combo that works for you.

Once you’ve got your gear in place, do a bunch of level checking, and get your gain structure right. Make sure you’re not sending a distorted signal to your interface, or too low a signal. Make sure your gear is clean and well organized, and while we’re at it, organize the space efficiently. Run your audio cables so that you don’t trip on them and keep them away from power cables and other noise sources. Standard studio stuff.

If you want, you can use a hardware compressor in your vocal chain. Put that between the preamp and interface. If you do this, I recommend subtle settings. You can compress more later, but you can’t “uncompress” later. Some subtle compression or limiting can help you keep your vocal signal even, and that can be nice. A lot of vocal preamp units come with built in compressors and/or EQs, and that could be handy, but I would be judicious about using EQ when recording.

In general, I wouldn’t print any other effects like reverb or delay onto your main vocal track, but if you want to use them to influence your performance, you can always record them separately if you have the channels. I usually just record dry and decide on effects in the mix.

Headphones

You’ll need some kind of headphones. For my money, the most important thing in your vocal recording headphones is that they make you feel inspired. It helps if you can hear everything, and it would be awesome if they didn’t bleed into the mic. This is truly a matter of taste. Some vocalists like to take one ear off so they can hear themselves better. I (usually) like to get a really great mix in the cans, so I feel like I’m already in a record. You might try an earbud type if you’re worried about bleed. I use the classic Sony MDR-7506s. The main point here is, do some work to get your headphone mix to the best place for you, in a way you can repeat. This isn’t a place I normally do a lot of experimenting.

Speaking of repeatability, work up front to get your setup wired in permanently. Create templates in your DAW, set up your tracks the same way every time, and permanently install your vocal station and signal chain. Having everything ready to go at the push of a button will do more for your energy and inspiration than any other one thing. The one exception is you don’t want to leave a condenser or ribbon mic up on the stand in the room. Just disconnect and put that away for protection, but don’t rewire the whole chain every time you want to record.

Performance

Now for the important part! Everything we’ve done so far is just ground work so the process of capturing is as transparent as possible and nothing gets in the way of what you have to say and how you have to say it.

You probably noticed by now that performing in a studio is vastly different than on stage (or in the shower). Some people thrive on a stage and shrink in a studio. Some people seem to be perfect in the studio and can’t find a pitch on stage. To get what you’re looking for in your recordings, you’re going to need to know yourself a little, and know what you’re trying to create. Are you trying to create a perfect replica of your live self? Are you trying to be perfect, clean and beautiful? Are you going for a sound that just can’t be done on a stage? This could be drastically different from song to song, but at least if you know where you’re headed and how you tick, you can get there.

Some things won’t change much. First of all, take care of your instrument. Recording isn’t different from performing in that you need to be properly warmed up, hydrated, and fueled. Some beginners make the mistake of thinking “oh I’m just doing the one song”, not realizing that you might have to sing for 3 hours solid to really capture that “one song”.

With that in mind, rehearsal is your friend. Earlier in my career, I felt a great pressure to cut a track the instant I figured out what I wanted to do, often while I was writing. While that method has some merit (spontaneity, etc), I no longer do that. I make a point of NOT turning on the mic when I’m writing. Instead, I “capture” the performance by rehearsing it a bunch while I write (which means I warm up even before I WRITE songs), and subsequently for a few days or even weeks until what I wanted to capture is captured IN ME. Later, I set up a session much like I might in a studio and perform what is now a well-rehearsed song. I need far fewer takes this way. Plus by this time its usually memorized, which gives me more room to “perform” and keeps me from rattling papers in front of the mic (a music stand solves that problem, too!). If you’re afraid of losing an idea, you can “jot it down” with a simple voice recorder app.

Of course, this may not work for you. You may feel an inexorable need to write (or learn, if you don’t write) and record simultaneously, and you may be completely happy with the results when you do. If so, do that but be willing to go back later if you need to. The great advantage of having a home studio is you can come back as much as you need to get it right.

The other advantage is comfort. As a vocal engineer, the job is largely to take care of the singer in the room so they’re comfortable and can perform their best. As your own engineer, the job is the same. Treat yourself well. Have tea, water or whatever comfort drink you need (but understand that slurring can occur with too much of certain beverages), record when you feel fresh, inspired and confident, and make the room the way YOU want it. Maybe you want cave-like darkness. Maybe inspired mood lighting. I generally like day time sessions, with plenty of light and nature visible. But this can change. Some songs require a new vibe, and it’s ok to give yourself the vibe you need.

You may also consider having an audience (or not). Once I’m confident with a song, a few people in the room or even just a video camera causes me to turn on my “performer” self a little better. However this can sometimes mess with my accuracy. Other times, I prefer absolute privacy, with no one else even in the building. You’ll need to find your own balance and listen to yourself.

As far as position, some singers like to sit or get on a stool, and some like to stand. It’s your choice, but in general I would recommend standing. It’s standard in studios to set the mic a hair above singers so they have to look up just a tad. This opens the chest for better breathing. I’d try this if I were you, but don’t crank your neck. Depending on your room acoustics, you may be better off stepping back 2 or 3 feet from the mic. You might feel a bit freer this way, and if the room is right, it can open up the sound. If you’re closer than about a foot and a half, use your pop filter. Even if you’re decently far away, you’ll want to cultivate the ability to really express yourself while not moving the position of your face, so you get an even recording. This is a tricky skill which usually causes stiff performances at first, but you can master it with practice.

Generally, what you want is to find the positioning and set up that gets your mind off the mic, the recording and the technical stuff as much as possible.

Finally, a word on editing and feedback. First, I wouldn’t edit too much while you’re in performance mode, unless you’re very comfortable with the DAW, such that being in that “techie” space for a second doesn’t take you out of “artist” mode. I tend to drag the front and back tails off my takes so I’m not cleaning noise later, but I don’t comp takes during a vocal session.

Next, once you’ve got it down, perhaps after an editing session where you’ve paired down to your best couple takes, or made a comp’d take using parts from your favorites, get feedback. Even though you’ve worked hard to get it “right” already, the best thing you can do for your quality in general is use feedback and be willing to revise. Since you’re recording in your space, it’s not like it costs $150 an hour to do so! That’s the biggest advantage you have.

Go Forth

It can be a challenge to be the engineer and artist simultaneously, and if you’re a vocalist and not an audio person, setting up your studio may seem daunting, but the truth is it’s all very doable. Just do some diligent ground work getting your workflow right, do some good checking and rechecking to get your signal sounding good, then concentrate on your best performance. Ease and efficiency are all about preparation, and that’s something anyone can do! Go forth and vocalize!

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!

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.

Your Music Isn’t Special

July 28, 2016 by Aaron

aaron trumm, art, art business, business, music, music business, music money, nquit music, rock, rock music, special, success, unique

Your music isn’t special!

Oh no! I always hated that saying. People will say it all the time, either when they’re trying to get you to have less ego, or they’re trying to convince you to give up the pipe dream, or whatever. But MOST of the time when you hear that is when you’re learning the real ins and outs of music marketing and business. Straight forward business minded people in music will tell you that right away.

It’s mostly to let you know that you can’t just sit around thinking your some kind of genius and expect anybody to respond to that. It’s weird, egoistic, and most of all, doesn’t work. It was always a bit depressing to me but recently I got a very new take on it in my head.

Now I think that’s very GOOD news. At least the concept of it…see I feel like it’s a relief not to have to make every song some epic world changing thing that will certainly go viral. Going viral is like winning the lottery – quite unlikely. And it’s actually MORE depressing to me to think of pinning my hopes and dreams on something that unlikely.

So, it’s really a good thing to realize, it’s not really the music that makes the success. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t want to suck, and the music is really moving and makes a difference, but success in any business is about relationships. Yes you start with a great product, but you don’t have to worry so much about your product being somehow better than everyone else’s, or when you go on stage being super competitive about standing out or making sure every time you sing a song, it’s this insane transcendent experience for everyone in the room and people are like “holy fuck what did I just SEE??”

That’s crap. That’s the surface facing internet culture and our American tendency to go for the icing and not the cake that tells us that every little thing has to be “special” and everything worth consuming has to be world shattering and like nothing ever seen before. That’s an overwhelming thought because it’s impossible. A song is 3 minutes. There are rules you follow, no matter how avant-garde you are, and there’s really only so much one tune can do. Sure, it moves people, sure there may be transcendence. Sure, you can do a concert that just takes people away, or a video that’s just wildly powerful or moving – but that will never be that special in the grand scheme of things. There’s always that stuff. There’s 7 billion creative people on the planet and there’s no end to the powerful, moving, transcendent material out there.

Part of the clickbait strategy is to sell every damn page or video as some kind of crazy amazing hugely weird thing – headline formulas include “you won’t believe what this guy did..” and whatnot..and you do see a lot of “wow!” – 7 year olds playing drums, dude jumping off buildings, whatever. But who cares? No matter how amazing you are, you’re not the only one.

So trying to be special is weird and overwhelming and it’s really not effective because the more you act like you’re special, the more you alienate people. Really, to succeed as an artist is about building a network of like-minded folk, collaborating, and putting your mark out there. No one can do what you do and in that sense YOU are special. But you don’t really need your music to be special, and you certainly need to understand that it won’t be perceived as all that special for the most part. But you can still build a business, and a fanbase, and take your place among the other badass artists that you have something in common with. And that actually will be enough, in fact, it’s even enough to build to rock star status and become famous.

So yeah – your music isn’t special – that’s not because you suck – it’s because music is small – powerful, but small, and everybody does it – so your music isn’t special. And it doesn’t need to be, because YOU are. So you can relax 🙂

— A

Hey – it may not be special, but I think some of my stuff rocks and maybe you will too – easy to find out by getting some for FREE at aarontrumm.com – LOVE!

aaron-trumm

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Your Music Isn’t Special