#90 - How DID we record during the pandemic?

There are two illusions that many music lovers think happen when you're in the studio. One is that all the musicians are set up. We put up a couple of mics and the musicians just play to perfection as you hear it on the recording. The second is that the singer is in a vocal booth with headphones on, eyes closed, while the engineer and producer are hunched over the mixing console hitting the talk back saying, "Can you do that one more time with more feeling?"

There are many variations to those visions, especially during the pandemic. I was in a Zoom meeting about audio production for a wonderful local college with several of my friends in engineering where we discussed how we handled the pandemic year without going into the studio. To my surprise, many had found software (as we did) that allowed us to work with the musicians while they were in their house and the engineer worked from home.

Yes, we all ran into the same issues. You can tell the musician how to do this or that with their voice, but having the equipment to record, set up a microphone correctly and treat the room so that there's not too many reflections or extraneous sounds, well, that's best left to professionals. But we all dealt with the situation. Lawnmowers, motorcycles, kids screaming in the background, hums from who knows what, things that most of us had spent years eliminating all coming back as we teach our artists to be engineers and set up a studio.

Yes, it was a pain in the arse. Yes, we had to do a lot of reconstructive surgery and in many cases we just left in the extraneous noise.

For me, it wasn't so bad. I love recording at the audiophile conventions in the hotel rooms or catching the artist in a spontaneous moment. Hearing the sound of a cell phone going off during an incredible take was something I learned to live with. But my engineer buddies who were used to perfect sound over perfect take took some adjusting.

To my surprise they all said, despite the extraneous sounds, overall they enjoyed the performances much more. And plan to record in a more "live" manner in the future. None of us see this current state of production changing.

Hmmm... well, finally they've come around to my way of thinking. :) Maybe the passion will come back to the music. I hope so.

Have a great day and take a musician to lunch this week. :)

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