One of the primary visions behind the TOGETHER festival is to showcase how connected music and technology are. I think I’m now starting to realize that when I was involved in this weeklong series of events last year, I didn’t get the full 360-degree experience because I only attended the events where alcohol was present (go figure!) Taking the week off work was a good decision because the daytime panels and workshops are rammed with useful information, not only to curious hobbyists, but also full-blown professionals looking for new avenues of inspiration.
Now with all the droning I just did in the last paragraph out of the way, yesterday ROCKED! It felt like it was more of an electronic music pub crawl, if you will, because there were so many overlapping things going on at once. With some proper calendar skills (thanks iPhone), little time was wasted in attempting to document and photograph as many of them as possible.
(Let’s fire up the ProTools and T-Racks, shall we?)
First off I have to say I am impressed with the staff at Bristol studios, most notably Chris and Jason. They gave a real informative demonstration on the art and science of mastering. With their permission and credit due, I would like to share some of the important nuggets they touched on during the workshop:
- Your mastering skills are only as good as the environment you mix in. A properly mastering facility has to be treated, and because every space is different, specialists need to custom-design and properly treat your studio if you ever decide to open one up for yourself. (And get ready to open up your wallet.) Chris demonstrated how design limitations in various studios can cause phase cancellation, which causes the engineer to hear sound different than the way it actually sounds.
- The “loudness” issue was one of the biggest focal points of the workshop. People in general like hearing a song that sounds “loud”, so less experienced producers often tend to turn things up way too loud or apply too much compression, ruining the dynamics of the music. When an experienced producer mixes down their project, they know what bits to turn up, and what bits to turn DOWN, to compensate. They also compress frugally, and finally, before the mix-down version is handed off to the mastering engineer, they leave a good amount of headroom (around -6db) for them to work with, ensuring distortion doesn’t become an issue.
- When applying compression, it helps rhythmically to time it to the tempo of your song. This is accomplished by setting the release time of your compressor (in milliseconds) to the following formula: The song’s BPM, divided by 60,000 (number of milliseconds in one second). Chris also mentioned that he often works with a 30ms attack on the compressor, which gives the signal that extra impact while retaining the dynamics at the tail start of something like a drum hit.
- There are 3 important frequency ranges of your song to check when mastering: 300-320 hz (a lot of instruments can fill this space, causing muddiness as they are all competing against one another to be heard), 1 khz (the upper fundamental of most instruments), and 7-10 khz (this area can be EQ’d to add what Chris calls “sparkle” to the overall project)
Bristol actually provides several different courses in audio engineering. These include courses that teach the fundamental concepts, along with specialized courses that train in various programs, including Digital Performer, Pro Tools, and Reason. Check out the link if you want to find out more.
(These guys know what they’re talking about.)
I also attended a panel at Northeastern on bass music. This discussion, moderated by David Day, included several well-known local DJ’s, including Red Foxxx, JustIncredible, Leah V, and Deanna. Also present was Alex Incyde, who works for well-known dubstep label Hotflush Recordings.
The “bass music” sound is hard to define, but is considered to be at the forefront of electronic music at the moment. It is considered a descendant of bass-heavy genres such as dubstep and garage. However there is no defined template when it comes to the rhythm, arrangement, types of samples used, and overall song structure. The panel agreed that its only real tradition is in the sense that the majority of it is non-traditional. The rules are constantly being re-written, so the sound itself is changing and evolving at a pace rarely seen in dance. It can be summarized in a quote from Red Foxxx: “Bass is good music for novelty junkies, and especially for people who get bored quickly.”
(No, they don’t take requests. No, not even G6.)
Another topic they touched upon was how to play this, or any sort of “new” music to the average crowd of people in a club, while still catering to their tastes. Alex Incyde said the biggest challenge is to “be appealing and exciting at the same time.” JustIncredible added that when he plays, he tries finding that balance between what he wants to hear versus what the people want to hear. This can be entirely different on any given night. They also touched on the fact that one of the reasons why bass music is evolving so rapidly is due to the immediacy of the social media revolution, online collaboration, and channels like Soundcloud and Twitter where content can spread virally overnight.
Redfoxxx said that he will soon be making a decent amount of his work available on Soundcloud, so check out his page here. Incyde also mentioned a busy release schedule on Hotflush, so if you’re into dubstep be sure to stay on top of that via his Twitter and main Hotflush page.
As for the evening festivities, the Hearthrob reunion was re-donk-ulus. I was entertained just by watching people try to work their way around all the black balloons in the doorway. The lighting was completely in-your-face, as was some of the heavy tracks Baltimoroder and Dev/Null got away with playing!
SBTRKT at Great Scott was phenomenal. Basically, Jeff Mills with Ableton and a mask, end of story. He was triggering hundreds of clips in Ableton, spanning dozens of songs across multiple genres and tempos. He didn’t spend any more than a half second not touching a knob, fader, or button on his APC. And regardless of all the knob-twisting, the way he was reconstructing songs on the fly was unbelievable, often layering 4 or 5 together at once. The video I grabbed is unfortunately poor sound quality (iPhone), but I had to get at least some footage of him doing his thing.
Throwed was fun as always, and I had a chance to head over to one of the live band shows Together was promoting at Church, early on. I saw the last half of noise/experimental group Fjords early on, along with 3-piece rockers Endless Wave for about a half hour. UK headliners Spectrum headlined, and am curious as to how their show went. Here’s a video of one of the Endless Wave songs; again, I apologize for the shite sound quality.
And of course, PICTURES. There are plenty, dig in.
Endless Wave & Fjords :: Church :: 4.19.11
Throwed :: Middle East :: 4.19.11
Hearthrob Reunion :: Middlesex :: 4.19.11
SBTRKT :: Great Scott :: 4.19.11
TOGETHER Daytime Activities :: 4.19.11
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 9:24AM 
