Weird…

It seems that I am allergic to Apple plastic. To be more specific, my ears get infected from Apple earbuds. And that’s too bad because I find that Apple EarPods, AirPods, and the new PowerbeatsPro have really decent microphones, certainly much better than any other headset I have tried.

I first discovered my affliction in 2017 and in the fall of that year I had to go to different doctors several times before I was able to figure it out. It got so bad, at one point, that it was super painful to wear my IEMs during soundcheck and concert.

That I spend quite a while on the phone each day may have something to do with it, but it’s certainly strange that my ears are only affected by Apple products. It has to be the plastic, I figure. It also has nothing to do with Bluetooth, because the wired EarPods make a mess of my ears as well, and a Bluetooth headset by a different brand does not bother me.

I hoped the rubber tips of the new Powerbeats Pro would mean that my ears would like them. I wore them for a couple of hours the first day I had them… and they affected my ears badly. It must be that the plastic touches my outer ear… it’s the plastic, damn it. Has to be. I gave away the Powerbeats Pro and the new owner LOVES them. Of course, because they sound pretty good, Bluetooth works flawlessly, and the mic is great!

I wear my IEMs on tour around 2-3 hours per day but they must be made from a different kind of plastic because I have never had a problem. I also often wear Shure 535s for hours without a problem.

I have, so far, only found one other person that is affected by Apple earbuds, and couldn’t find anything relevant on the internet. (sigh)

Streaming

No, Streaming Is Not Saving Us. Revenues still down by Half. | The Trichordist:

We’ve been hearing an alarming narrative that “record labels are making more money than ever from streaming, but they’re just not paying musicians”. To be clear, we certainly have our issues with major labels, however we also need facts and to be truthful.

The truth is, that a decade after losing half of it’s revenues due to piracy as reported by CNN (click here), record labels are now only getting back up to half of what the peak business was in 1999. Half of where we were in 1999, twenty years later. Let that sink in. As unpopular as he was twenty years ago, Lars Ulrich was right.

Software

I have been meaning to mention a couple of items I find very useful. One is a phone app, available for iOS and Android, and the other is an email provider, available for all platforms.

I use the CloudBeats app for iPhone to listen to music I put on Dropbox. Dropbox is great for listening to CD-quality music, but one can only listen to one individual song and can’t listen to an album or a playlist. That’s where CloudBeats comes in. It lets me stream or download an album on Dropbox to my phone and I can create a playlist for any number of songs. Very useful when I am working on the sequence of a new album. And CD quality is, of course, better than the 250kbps files I can hear on Apple Music.

I was looking for an email provider that is safe and efficient, and has an encryption option. For the past year I have used Protonmail. I am really happy with them. If you want to free yourself from Google or Apple, you should check out Protonmail.

PS: this is not an ad and I don’t receive anything in return for mentioning these two

Recording a Flamenco Guitar

Today I was asked about the gear I use to record my guitar and I wondered whether it would be of interest to leave that information here as well…

I have already recently mentioned that I use a 2002 Macintosh G4 computer. That 2002 computer runs at the awesome speed of 1,25 Ghz!! For comparison, my 2018 phone runs at 2,5 GHz! Ha! The latest version of the Pro Tools recording software that can run on this Mac is PT 6.9.1. I believe PT is up to version 12 by now. My computer is very stable and PT 6.9.1 is very stable, and I have no desire to upgrade.

In the studio I use a Neumann M149 microphone, which I have had since sometime around 1997. Around that time I also acquired a Martech MSS-10 microphone preamp, after testing and comparing a dozen different preamps. All in the room immediately knew that the MSS-10 was the best of the bunch, certainly for my guitar.

I think microphone and preamp are far more important than the recording device. One has to start out with the best possible signal.

For concerts I have the Earthworks SR40. I have used this microphone for a few years now and absolutely love it. Great sound, great feedback rejection, and plenty of gain.

Mixing

I am in the late stages of creating a new album. As of this past week I am pretty certain that all of the music has been recorded and that I am now simply fine-tuning the mixes. Almost every morning I walk about five miles and listen to the music, making notes as to the changes I might want to make in the afternoon.

Working digitally has changed the mixing process radically for several reasons. One of these reasons is that everyone working with a computer can recall any aspect of a mix, from the volume of each track to the panning (left-right location), the EQ and Reverb settings. Movement can also be automated, for example an instrument can move in the left to right matrix, or can move up and down in volume.

This kind of automation came at great cost in the mid-Nineties, and wasn’t available at all before then. An analog mixing console with total recall might cost up to a million dollars. Renting time in a studio that had such a console was quite expensive, so I don’t have much experience using one. The only time I would see such a mixing board was when I played guitar on other people’s records.

We found ways to simulate some of the effects of recall. I remember delegating jobs to band members, and the engineer, who were tasked to move a fader up or down at a place in the song, or pan a certain track. In essence we were playing the mixing console. And since we didn’t work in a studio with a total recall board, every mix was original. We had to keep making changes manually until we got it right. And if I later heard something I didn’t like, we had to set up the mix from scratch. I would fill pads of paper with numbers, trying to make note of a basic mix in case we had to revisit it.

Another big change is that in the Nineties mixing commenced when recording was completed, as it meant switching to a different playback head on the analog tape recorder. Working digitally I constantly make mixes and the computer remembers those mixes. I can make a copy of a mix and then make any changes to it without losing the mix before. Nowadays nothing much happens when recording is done because I have been mixing since the first day.

This digital process has become natural to me. In many ways I prefer it to the analog process. Working with a tape recorder I always needed an engineer, but recording with a computer I can handle by myself. I can experiment and get as far out as I want to, and can instantly go back to a different mix. I also do prefer working by myself in the studio, my laboratory. Being alone in the studio feels more like a painter’s process.

So, now I am finalizing the mix of each piece of music and it is curious how a song comes together. I always know the moment it happens. I am sitting at the console and am listening, either on two old Tannoy speakers I love or on headphones, Stax or Audeze… then I make a tiny change, and it could be anything, like turning up a drum or the bass, or moving a rhythm guitar to the other side, and suddenly I am jumping up and it’s happened. I dance like nobody is watching, because nobody is watching!! Before my brain figures out what’s going on, my body already knows. I love that feeling. Happened again this evening.