When you first walk into Lighthouse Studio you are greeted warmly to long corridor adorned with platinum, Riaa-issued records, indubitably spoils of a long and arduous hunt within the infamous music industry. These records hang proudly showcased like a professor's long sought after doctorate or a soldier's Purple Heart. Narrative after Narrative praises the same name in a polished chrome luster: Ray Alexander. Yet as you continue your trek down into the operate room, it becomes apparent that the best of these trophies are kept inside the operate room itself. What Ray values most is not the formal display of manufactures recognition but rather the sentimental memories encased in an autographed Rolling Stones poster, an old backstage pass, or even greater, a particular picture of a far younger and more youthful Ray Alexander standing in a crowded hallway next to none other than John Lennon himself. I am sure that every morning Ray sits down he takes a very brief second to look up at these frosty memories and remember how far he has come.
Having said that, my short stay with Ray Alexander and Lighthouse Studio has led me to the closing that these achievements are not indubitably won and that it takes a safe bet type of person to be able to build such a prominent empire out of nothing. Ray has the privilege of having a much sought after job, whose manufactures faces extinction each and daily by the Great Equalizer that is the Internet. The role of the music producer has been romanticized in today's beloved culture much like the role of the "rock star" has been. We connect this role with an image of a quiet genius teetering over a console of knobs and faders, green and red Leds, turning something this way, sliding something that way, listening to some divinely-inspired muse trying to get "that sound." You hear about the distinguished and innovative ideas of George Martin, The Beatles' producer, and think of what fun it would be to have such a creative arduous job. I learned my very first day that all things I had come to believe was a fantasy. I theorize that if Ray were to indubitably spend 4 hours experimenting with a harmonium sound, he would be out of a job the next day. Not only that, but Ray already knows how to get that sound. That is essentially what citizen are paying him for.
The predicted rise in affordability of recording technology these days makes it inherent for roughly anybody to run the same software a expert recording premise uses on their Macbook Pro at home. I've witnessed quite a few clients come in with sessions that they had recorded themselves at home and brought in to be touched upon at the studio. While the studio does have a fully acoustically treated room, an impressively high-priced variety of vintage microphones and amplifiers, the main asset that the studio has to offer is Ray's experience. What separates Ray from the clients is that he knows exactly what combination of microphone, preamp, compressor, and software plug-in to use for any given situation. This is something that makes his job so extraordinarily unique. This is what makes the recording manufactures one of the hardest industries to get into.
To get into any other typical career, there roughly always exists some linear path of a university education involved. I perceive that this is not the case for audio engineering and it never will be. The first theorize being that recording technology is changing by the day and a curriculum teaching a version of Pro Tools 7 will become obsolete in Pro Tools 8. Sure, the theories will always remain, but there's always a gap between system and practice. Secondly, a new graduate of such a agenda will find it incredibly difficult to find a job in an already scarce job market. Logically, as a musician, are you going to want a person who just graduated with no palpate under their belt or a seasoned veteran who produced several of your beloved records producing yours? palpate is the lubrication principal to voice a smooth-flowing session. With a profession so heavily dependent on technology, the potential to question solve is highly crucial in those tasteless situations when a microphone fails to pick up any sound. It takes about thirty seconds for a client to become uncomfortably impatient (they are, after all, most often paying by the hour). While the new engineer stands there, fumbling to replace the microphone and then the microphone cable, Ray heroically strides in, takes control, and in a matter of seconds troubleshoots the question down to an incorrect patching of the signal flow. He mutters to me under his breath,
"You see, a ,000 education and they can't even teach basic troubleshooting."
I realized then that the best way into the manufactures was straight through that of the Tea Boy. All great recording engineers, much like The Beatles' Geoff Emerick, started off in the same place as I was-getting tea. In my case, this meant getting coffee-and a lot of it. The more I hung around, the more my responsibilities grew. First I was getting coffee, then I was running to the bank, next I was wrapping up cables. Before I knew it, I was starting to set up microphones, scrambling to make note that a Royer 121 ribbon microphone sounds great straight through a Vox cabinet speaker and a hollow-body Gretsch guitar. On one occasion, I even had the opening to man the large town console but declined out of sheer intimidation. The biggest thing that a school cannot teach an engineer is the most prominent asset, one that has created principal reluctance in me to continue in the field, and that is how to deal with clients
One of the many joys that I experienced was the diversity of clients that came straight through the studio. I rarely ever met the same person twice. While Ray's particular expertise tends to be in Rock and R&B musicians, he caters to anybody he can get; for example, he had clients fluctuating from spoken word artists to children's music to hip hop and even a 3 piece jazz ensemble. I took great delight in being exposed to so many separate styles and the changes that were required for each situation. However, there is a very fine art in dealing with people, an art that I haven't necessarily mastered. For the most part, clients ordinarily come into the studio with an idea, a loose framework of goals and expectations, and work with Ray to achieve them. And then you have the small percentage of high maintenance clients who view themselves as artists over anyone else. These citizen are particularly hard to deal with and wish you to remain humble. You forget very indubitably that you are dealing with other person's art, a very personal, creative expression of their self. No matter what the situation is you are required to remain as humble and objective as inherent and hold indubitably all judgments. I find that this is the most difficult thing to do. other great myth of the Narrative producer is that, straight through the grace of twisting a knob, they can make anyone sound good. It then becomes a very awkward situation when a client comes in assuming that. You can only go into a session with a great sense of hope that the performer will be skillful adequate to meet up to their expectations. The most troublesome situation is this: a singer comes in and is flat on every note. They then ask you, "was that a good take?" There's only so many times you can advise to them to try other take before you perceive that they could sing the same line a thousand times and never get it. The singer blames the engineer and the engineer blames the singer and in the end there's nothing either of them can do.
The worst thing I have seen that is increasingly tasteless today is that assumption vocalists bring in that "we can just Autotune it later." Because technology now allows us to take a bad singer and digitally tune each and every note to be in key, the carrying out of some musicians is decreasing. In the very early beginnings of recording technology, the role of the engineer was simply to put a microphone in a room and capture a performance. It was up to the musician to nail an whole song in one take. This seems absurd today. In the 60's came the technology to overdub cut off tracks to form a composite track and thus revolutionized how records were made. Jimi Hendrix could play both rhythm and lead guitar on his records and The Beatles could sing over an whole orchestra. A newfound leisure was created. However, with this leisure for the musician came a new accountability for the engineers who had to indubitably then mix these tracks together to generate one continuous piece of music. As the technology has increased, the role of the engineer has too and the role of the musician has decreased in the process. I've witnessed firsthand the grueling and monotonous job it takes for an engineer to sit and go straight through a poorly-recorded vocal track, note by note and adjust each and every line to definite the pitch. In extreme cases, if a track is so drastically out of key, pitch revision produces an follow that makes the singer sound robotic and artificial. Modern hip-hop generally uses this follow intentionally.
When these unpleasant confrontations arise, it is good to be able to pause for a occasion and look up at a picture of your younger self standing awkwardly next to John Lennon and remind yourself why it is you are doing what you're doing. At first glance, you might think of Ray Alexander to be a very lucky private to have succeeded in this extraordinarily difficult industry. However, it comes at a principal price. There were many times where I would come in the morning to find Ray already at his desk, telling me, "I just left this place 5 hours ago." He's been known on opening to even spend the night. The only time he gets to see any new movies is if somebody brings it on Dvd to watch while they are recording. The reduce to running your own thriving recording studio is that you don't get a particular day off. While there are several other engineers employed at the studio, Ray must obsessively oversee everything. Being away from the studio at all seems to generate even more anxiety for him. If an engineer fails to patch the signal flow correctly or doesn't know how to deal with a high maintenance client, he's going to potentially lose money. He will always remain forever cursed by the reduce of spending time with his family or the anxiety of being away from the studio. This is all just a day in the life of the Modern Narrative producer. The romanticized version tends to leave out all of this inner conflict in replace for a glamorized achievement of having a platinum record. It takes a lot more than sheer hard work and estimation to get this far. At the end of my short stay behind the curtain, I am left with only one question-is it worth it?
Tales of a Tea Boy: The Reality Behind Today's Recording manufactures