Creative Audio Processing
12 - Music production strategies

 

 

 

 

This last chapter doesn't deal with the audio side of music production, but with the music side of it. We'll try to give a few ideas on how to influence music production as a producer. Why would a "non musician" try to influence music production in the first place ? (no, it doesn't have anything to do with ego...) First, the producer can also be a musician : Robert Smith is often producer on his own records, for instance. So, when he's playing the producer, he'll still want to influence the music by doing so. Also, during music production in studio environments, it's quite common for people to get "lost". Sometimes, nobody knows what to do anymore, there are already 52 tracks in the session, and it doesn't seem to go anywhere. In those cases, a "musician producer" is practically a life saver. If you happen to read their biography, you'll see that the guys from Radiohead know that situation very well. And anyway, it's always interesting to have unusual methods that can get to unexpected results. Brian Eno is a pioneer in the field. For quite a while, he's been commonly using oblique strategies and scenarios that can help during recording sessions. We'll also propose more personal methods that are slightly more technical, and which can be useful in many different situations.

 

- Brian Eno's oblique strategies   After a few hours working on a piece of music, it's common to see people look a their computer screens with a blank stare, wondering how to make the whole thing more exciting or beautiful, or even wondering what to do ! Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt have devised a set of sentences supposed to bring new sparks of initiative when needed. The idea is that people have to randomly pick a sentence when in trouble. Originally, those sentences were written on cards, nowadays they rather come in widgets ;-) A few sentence examples : "only one element of his kind" "tidy up" "look at the order in which you do things" "would anyone want it ?" "find a safe part and use it as an anchor" This is an interesting idea, that can bring disorder when the brain is stuck in its own patterns. Funny and quite useful in music production.

 

- Scenarios   Another idea, also described by Brian Eno in his diary. Let's say you are the producer on a music project, and there is a saxophone solo to record. The solo is not written, only the playback is, so there is going to be a lot of improvisation. Sometimes, everything goes smoothly : the player's got a lot of inspiration, a lot of ideas, all you have to do is to press play-rec. But sometimes it doesn't go well, and the instrument player needs help, or extra inspiration. That's where the producer can propose a scenario to the player. Such scenarios are short ; usually, they're something like : "year 2020, you're playing for an all-girl audience in a Seoul club - recent mankind history is (....) - tonight you're planning to nonchalantly play sparse sound clusters that (...). - you're still influenced by the solo in Pink Floyd's 'Us and Them' etc." Those scenarios are supposed to give the player ideas that he wouldn't have had in the first place. If they're really helpful when there is trouble, they can also be used for fun, to get a result that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. David Bowie's "Outside", produced by Brian Eno, is a good example of a record on the making of which this technique was used.

 

- Sound scenarios   Another method. More technical, quite funny though. Let's consider the saxophone recording example (from chapter 1). The recording session is in a studio, the saxophone player's got headphones. In the headphones, he's got the music playback, plus his own saxophone part. Often, engineers add a slight reverb to the headphone's saxophone part, so the musician feels more comfortable. The principle here is that we're going to add much more than a slight reverb, and purposely, not just for comfort. For instance, let's say I add a very long reverb to the saxophone player's playback in his headphones : he will have the tendency to play games with the reverb, letting more silences for instance... his way of playing will be different. And that's the idea : instead of using a written scenario to influence the musician's way of playing, we use effects - naturally, what goes "on tape" will be the dry saxophone sound only. Such a method can be really interesting, and can lead to unheard of results. Another example : Let's decide that in his headphones, the player can hear the part he's playing hugely compressed. This can modify his way of playing in many ways. First, he will spend more time playing very softly. Also, he will take extra care of the details. On the other hand, it's unlikely that he'll do much fortes. Overall, the part is likely to be softer, more sensual. Variant : It's possible to be more drastic, for instance by compressing headphone playback a lot and using open headphones. The rules will be as following : if the player stops playing, the [open headphones + mike] system will feedback. Thus, the player will be quite anxious to play continuously. The "feedback start time" is actually the compressor's release time, and the shorter it is, the more anxious the player will be. This may seem a bit barbaric, but results can be very interesting in a context of very "tense" music. ... and many other ideas based on those techniques are possible. NB : those methods are also suitable to speech recording, in the field of contemporary theater, for instance.