Recording Gear is Nice, But There
We all tend to get seduced pretty easily by technology. I remember the first time I was able to do drag and drop editing of a section of a song in a digital audio workstation. I was blown away! And like many who have been fascinated by the speed, power, control, and flexibility offered by the ongoing digital recording revolution, I looked more and more for the secrets to a great recording in the power of the processor and software. What’s missing from this line of thought is that before anyone can begin to consider a career in recording, as an engineer, producer, or musician, they must first develop their own innate critical listening skills. That’s right, as has been said quite often, “Your most important musical instrument is your ears.” This definitely also applies to engineers and producers. The good news is that if you're like most of the AHM crew - you are a music junkie - you most likely are well on your way to becoming a discriminating listener, a junior “golden ears.” In his outstanding autobiography, Make Mine Music, renowned engineer, Bruce Swedien, talks about how he starts teaching his UCLA summer master class in recording. Surprisingly, he doesn’t go into a recording studio with the class. Instead, he takes the entire class to a concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and he seats them front and center. The reason for this is to create a mental “snapshot” of what a great orchestra sounds like naturally, with no mics, no signal processing, no recording artifacts, and no editing. Bruce believes that until you know what every instrument and voice sounds like au naturel, you have no business trying to make a recording of that instrument. At our school, we offer a class called Sound Recording Fundamentals, a survey class designed to familiarize a mostly non-technical student population with the process, tools, and lingo used in the recording studio. Again, one of the first assignments students complete is an Active Listening assignment which requires them to spend 20 minutes outside, late at night, identifying and localizing ambient sounds in their 360-degree listening environment. For the most part, they come back astounded at what their ears can pick up late at night in an urban environment. Your ears are in fact, more sensitive to sound pressure than any microphone ever invented. So before you get seduced by the latest recording devices, plug ins, and esoteric microphones, figure out just how you will develop into a discriminating listener. After all, if you can’t distinguish proper timbre, pitch, accurate rhythm, or balance in an ensemble, the speed and power of your recording system probably won’t matter. (You can find bibliographic info on Bruce’s book in the Artists House bibliography.)  
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