Sometimes I can see on video that what a guitarist play in a studio recording booth differs in the sound from the final mix. Why does it happen? (Part II. Sound Engineer.)
Part II. Sound Engineer.
Oftentimes those who record and mix are different people. I have never understood that from the musical point of view. Everything is clear for me as a “production process”. There are people who record, and they have got preamps, microphones and other equipment. And there are those also who have got a mixing console and many dynamics and another processing units. These people mix the prerecorded material. Sometimes all those people work in the same building, but different studios. But it also happens that they are separated by miles from each other, and sometimes they even located on different continents.
Today I will describe how the process can look like with those who record.
If you happen to work with a person who knows why he works as sound engineer, you are lucky. He will listen to your sound and then arrange microphones so that the recorded signal would be completely identical to the original one.
And here it does not matter whether he records the reflections of the studio itself or a conditionally dry signal. He will provide you with a comfortable environment. Whether you will play in headphones or listen to your sound directly, he will make himself inconspicuous and unobtrusive. And all this in order for you to get into the correct state for creation of the musical image. You cannot dream of anything better. It is the highest level.
But more often it happens completely the other way. The sound engineer thinks that he should be the main figure in the process and instead of providing for the comfortable environment, he does everything the opposite way!
Never listening to what sound you’ve got, he arranges microphones in a clichéd pattern where he finds it correct. And his correctness stays the same for everyone. However, the sound is not the same for each person.
Why everything should be “correct” in the same way? When you ask him what is going on, he starts to talk to you as you were a servant that came at the wrong time. He tells you that he once recorded someone, who was a reference for him. And that person was very satisfied. If you say that it doesn’t matter to you how someone else recorded, since now you are there, and not the person from the example, then you risk listening to a treatise that you have chosen the wrong instrument, amplifier… and in general you play in the wrong style.
And if you ask him of his ability to play, provided that he knows everything in such detail, then he either plays so that better nobody would hear that or blurts out that it is not necessary for him to know how to play to understand it in detail. And your troubles with not end there. You can run into a “modern specialist” who will ask you to play without gain or drive, although they shape your timbre. He even can say that you do not have to connect to the amplifier. After that he will add everything you play with as plugins and that will be much better (in his opinion) than your equipment. He will make a re-amping. Or he can allow you to play with your equipment, but sends you the dry signal only, since, you see, he records the dry signal, and you are obliged to listen to it the same way. And the fact that it is not comfortable for you to play this way, that you have never played in vacuum, and that there is no such thing as completely dry signal, since you always play in the room, and it has sound reflections, all this does not touch him at all. He will answer your resentment with a treatise on your musical abilities. There is much more could be listed here. Starting with how to arrange microphones (how much of them and why in those locations), why he uses those exact microphones (having specs that never allow you to hear the original sound), why he uses those exact microphone preamps (again chosen due to their ability to change the original sound), why he adds the compression and thus kills all the dynamics… and if you deserve an answer you can hear something like: ‘Because it’s right, and it will be better this way’. But in the process of listening, even the deaf will notice that the sound does not correspond to the original at all. It is simply “improved”.
Could you call such an attitude on the part of the sound engineer correct? Or professional? Does such a person really creates comfort and contribute to the correct state for the development of the musical image?
That is pure rhetoric. And all that because these people consider themselves the main figure in the creation of the product. They do not consider themselves what they really are. I understand that their name comes up in the final product. And if the product does not come out right, it will not be good for them. But if a person comes to them with a lot of noise and an imperfect signal due to electricity or wires, they could fix it all. However, it does not happen. Most of the recordings are full of noise, although sometimes it seems that all sound engineers are interested only in it. And if it so, then what indeed is their occupation? To record “correctly”? And “correctly” is a cliché. And that cliché comes from an artist whom they have recorded some time ago, and he is still their reference. But can this reference of theirs play correctly? If sound engineers play poorly or cannot play at all, how do they know?
With such an attitude on the part of those people, however you play and sound, the final product will be very far from what you hear inside your head.
