Beats Working

Spent about 6 hours yesterday doing mindless drum edits on a couple of songs. All the while I was thinking that I need to hire an assistant to do this kind of work. I still do not forget the days of tapes and razors but I also do not think we were quite as fussy about timing back then. I often spin pop CDs against the click and I am amazed at how many producers are working in bullet time. In some cases the drums are absolutely and totally locked. Which, of course, is not humanly possible. Oh the power of Pro Tools.

Young Talent These Days

We had a young player in the studio recently who demonstrated a certain level of arrogance. I suspect this is due to the prevalence of computer-based multitrack software. Armed with Cakewalk and a Shure SM-58 and anyone can become a fully qualified and experienced audio engineer. This made me think back to the many years I have spent trying to learn this craft. Over 25 years now and what strikes me more so today than ever before is the overwhelming body of knowledge much of which I still have to learn. Perhaps that is the difference as we age. We begin to understand that experience and wisdom really matters. I reassured this young player that I had a pretty good idea as to which microphones to use and where to point them. He played reasonably well.