From demo to mastered mix

On 9th November we are going to launch a new EP with four songs aimed at private devotion.

The tracks were produced and recorded by David Nicholas, and have just been mixed by Allen Salmon in Nashville and Mastered by Jim DeMain at Yesmaster.

We thought we'd give you a little sneak peak at the process these songs have gone through, by showing you the evolution of one of these tracks (code-named 'Time') from a rough iPhone demo through mixing and mastering. You can hear what each of these processes adds to the quality of the finished product.

Why spend so much money on producers and studios

In a few weeks Garage Hymnal will be spending a fair chunk of your money (that is, money which was yours if you support our ministry by buying CDs or making tax deductible donations!) recording a couple of tracks towards a new album. We are rehearsing and writing for the next few weeks and God willing will then head up to the central coast to record at the Grove Studios with our longstanding friend and producer David Nicholas.

Are we wasting our money?

A lot of people aren’t using studios or producers any more. I spoke to a friend yesterday about the declining studio and production market – globally, but particularly in Sydney. He reckons it goes in cycles. Ten years ago the record labels were letting all the bands record themselves and self-produce. Then they realised the bands were bringing out sub-standard albums and started employing producers again. The cycle has flipped back to self-produced again.

I think it’s worth us resisting the fashion and spending money on a studio and producer.

While computer setups in our bedrooms have advanced, and reduced the cost of recording hugely for everyone, studios are still worth hiring. They do make for better music. No matter how good your software is, if you’re recording music with real human involvement (vocals, drums, real pianos, etc) at some point that music has to be made in a room, into a microphone, gained up by a mixing console, and converted to digital form. All those processes can be done cheaply, but they will sound less like the real instrument or voice. You can record your band in your bedroom, but few people have the space to record a whole band at the same time, meaning music is more pre-planned and less interactive because you can’t be all in the same room at the same time making the music (like writing out a conversation with someone before you talk to them, you can’t interact you can only guess what they’ll say).

Of course, some forms of music thrive in the bedroom – things with programmed drums and highly processed vocals, for instance. And I like that type of music – sometimes. But it’s not the only type of music.

The other thing we think is worth our while is bringing in a producer. Anyone can call themselves a producer. There is absolutely no reason why a band can’t produce themselves. Our band has several members who have produced records for other bands! But what our band doesn’t have is an experienced, impartial coach to bring the best out of us. Self produced records are all the rage – but it takes maturity to recognise you have things to learn, and to seek out people who can develop your talent. We are hugely grateful for what David has done for us as a band in honing our sound and helping to get the best out of our songs. Most of what he does is actually to do with song structures – helping the listener’s experience to flow through the song so they are always left wanting more. You’ll never know the difference – you can’t hear his work, as such. But we have made better albums because of him!

Can’t wait to get into a nice big studio with our favourite producer!

Now THAT'S a good PA

On Friday night we played a gig for the Bush Church Aid Society at St Barnabas' Anglican Church, which is on Broadway, just down from Sydney's Central Station. A historic church building, it was destroyed by fire six years ago. Our gig was the first official public event to be held in the new building.

Needless to say we were very keen to check out many aspects of the new building. It's an elegant design which draws you in off the busy Broadway. It's an accessible building - lifts, accessible doors, and clear entrances and exits. You're never in any doubt where to go - the building draws you in. And, of course, it's got much better fire safety than the old building!

But the thing we were most nervous to check out was the acoustics, and the installed sound system.

The verdict? Hats off to the good people of St Barnabas for one of the best sounding church sound systems I've ever heard. What you hear in the auditorium is exactly what it is meant to be: evenly distributed to every seat (no bright spots, or black spots), smooth across the frequency ranges, speech was very clear, and music was accurately reinforced coming off stage.

This is all the more impressive given the challenge of the room itself. A big space, with many oddly shaped reflective surfaces, we did fear a difficult environment. Contemporary music quickly becomes unbearably loud and unbalanced in a reverberant space (which is why most churches are better suited to classical, unamplified music). And certainly the space could be described as live - there is a decent reverb time which is noticeable on the snare hits - but it doesn't get out of control. The only challenge is the stage, which without carpets is definitely on the loud end. We brought extra carpets to soak up some of the sound, and wore earplugs on stage. Apparently during services the church musicians play using headphones to try to minimise on stage noise.

The three lessons I think should be learned from the hard working and wise wardens, staff and consultants on the Barney's project are these:

1. The church incorporated thinking about acoustics into the design stage. As a result, I suspect that some comrpomises were made to the architect's design (as a friend of mine puts it, architecture is a deaf science: you can't assume that they will have thought about, much less care about, acoustics. Bringing an acoustics consultant in early is imperative). Acoustics is the kind of thing that you have to get right before the concrete is poured, because it is notoriously hard to fix later.

2. The church was clear on its brief to the acoustics consultants. Many consultants come with strange ideas about what actually happens inside a contemporary church. One guy I spoke to was convinced that our youth group rock band would need nothing more than two choir mics. For a modern service the two priorities must be: (1) speech intelligibility,  and (2) ability to facilitate the type of music you actually have (a rock band is a very different proposition to a choir and needs very specific acoustics and equipment).

3. The church budgeted the sound system installation into the building project. Sound systems are often left off in the final stages of the project to cut costs in the short term - which ends up meaning a cheap and nasty system is installed which never works properly, hampers the ability for speech to be intelligible and music enjoyable, and requires constant bandaid repairs to keep it running. The error is made because it's usually the last thing to go in, and the easiest thing to say "we'll do that at a later stage". Of course, it never happens - once you've raised money for a building it's hard to turn around in 6 months time and ask for more. And this is a silly error, because hearing things is not an optional extra for a church building. I would have thought it's pretty core to our business (more so than carpeting, air conditioning, food preparation areas or aesthetics ... yes, even staff offices).

Good on Barney's for doing these things right! (Oh, and thanks for hosting the concert for Bush Church Aid!) You should be very proud of your new space. May God use it for the proclamation of his word (both spoken and sung) for many many years to come.

Why do we have to have bad sound?

A little warning - this is going to be a tiny bit of a rant. You see, I was at the wedding of a dear friend yesterday in a Sydney church. It was a wonderful service. The songs were well chosen and the service superbly led. The preaching was clear and biblical. The decorations were beautiful. The crowd was happy to be there, and happy the rain had held off. A wonderful celebration, which nothing could have spoiled.

But during the vows, we did have to put up with some pretty woeful sound. "I Jack*...[feedback]...in the presence of God [squeal] take you Jill [static then squeal] to be my wife [low roar then shreak]...". In fact, it was so bad that the always good humoured groom mentioned it later in his speech (through a much better microphone) at the reception when he reflected on the "vows we made to each other through that dodgy microphone". 

 The poor sound guy was struggling the whole time to make it work without feeding back, but the system (cheap, underpowered, badly installed) was always against him. There was nothing we could do but laugh about it.

 Can somebody explain to me why we have to have such terrible sound at so many of our churches? If church meetings about at least partly about hearing God's word, then it seems a little silly to skimp on the very equipment which makes things (like vows, or a bible reading, or the words of a song) audible to lots of people at the same time.

 I don't think it's an isolated problem. There must be something going wrong in terms of process for so many churches (with apparently the resources to pay for carpets, hall redevelopments, rectory upgrades and central heating) to end up with sound systems which plainly are not up to the task.  What is going wrong, time and time again?

•  - Is it a problem of process? (Perhaps a well meaning but unqualified parishioner taking control of the system and not allowing outside help?)
•  - Is it a problem of the right consultants or suppliers? (I hear too many stories of companies with excess stock of a particular device offloading it at way too high prices to gullible churches)
•  - Is it a problem of the brief? (I worked on one project where the system designer wanted to spend most of the money on choir mics...for a church that didn't have a choir)
• - Is it a problem of values? (I heard one minister describe how it used to be a source of pride for his church that they had a bad sound system - because it proved just how focussed on the scriptures they were, not the flashy show!!!)

 On the flipside, I wonder - has anybody's church managed to get decent sound for their gatherings without taking out a second mortgage on the rectory?

 Over to you, blogosphere....

AJ

 

*- not his real name, of course.