Since attending the AMCL meeting last month there have been quite a few questions rattling around in my head – and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, given the amount of chatter among my fellow SCORECasters both online and at studios, restaurants and coffee shops around town. Unfortunately podcast No. 24 failed to shed a great deal of meaningful light on the subject. And in fact, in many important ways I found it to be profoundly counterproductive. So I took a step back to consider and calibrate my thinking a bit. The general “vector” that I’ve been reading and hearing has been the following: In the past, the music making part of the film and television business was much better, and therefore the music was much better. And over the years both the conditions under which that music was produced and the resulting quality of the music has been undercut. You’ll even see some numbers on the AMCL site that echo that sentiment. Long ago=better; recent=worse; now=disaster. Simple and direct, it’s easy to grasp and difficult to argue against. Or is it?
This is a quick post to congratulate my friend David Miles Huber on his Best Surround Sound Album nomination this year. Colabs is an excellent electronica album – totally aside from the fact that it’s a great example of how surround can be used as an extra-dimensional musical environment. Every time I listen to a track on his album there’s something new to discover or re-discover. As a product of collaboration the album is still a remarkably cohesive work, and that’s not only a tribute to David’s artistry but also his mastery of the craft of recording. I hope that we get a chance to collaborate on a project at some point in the future.
I just bought a gem of a plugin – Plogue’s chipsounds. In a way, it flaunts the never-ending-cycle of increased sample resolution and esoteric synthesis methods. This virtual instrument represents a throwback sound set captured from some of the classic game and computer consoles of years (and in some cases, decades) past. It may *seem* like a lo-fi walk in the park, but the process that the mad geniuses at Plogue went through to faithfully capture these retro sounds is pretty astonishing. Then they wrapped those tones in their own ARIA engine that allows composers and producers to do a wide array of sonic gymnastics. I’m pretty stoked about having this in my kit, since it’s both faithful to grungy kitsch while allowing for a great deal of modern experimentation. Below is a set of demos they produced to show what it can do. At some point (relatively soon) I’ll also be dropping chipsounds into some of my productions and will post clips under the category “Delayed Gratification“.
Larkin Gayle’s voice is the kind you just fall for. She has an effortless quality in the way she delivers a song. Her sound comes across as both rich and ever-so-slightly breathy, with the right balance of musicality and spontaneity. The music has a touch of sophistication that, like her voice, will slide right by and lull you into simply enjoying the moment. I arranged some string parts for a few tracks on “Two Hands”, roughly at the same time I worked on Tim Hockenberry’s “Back in Your Arms”. While each album had its own tone and vibe, both possess really top notch production quality. I feel lucky to have had the chance to work with such talented musicians.
Larkin Gayle: Two Hands
click on this image to go to her site
