This is something I ran into today, and though its about music recording, I believe is some interesting exercise all of us as musicians should go through.
“I love big, empty churches.
I’m not particularly religious so that’s not why I go in them. I like to listen in them. They’re amazing acoustical spaces. And I’m intrigued by the un-natural tone of voice people use when they’re at church.
The library in my town is huge. It’s all carpeted and has gigantic curtains that soak up ambience and high frequencies. People use a funny, quiet tone of voice in there, too. But people seldom talk to each other in the library.
But everybody talks and laughs loudly at crowded restaurants. For some reason, restaurants are seldom designed with acoustics in mind – so the ambience level becomes overpowering. When the place is busy, we’re all shouting at each other. This also adds to the experience. We become energized and boisterous in crowded restaurants…”
…”Music listeners are looking to relate with the ‘experiences’ contained within our work.
Sure we get their attention with ‘ear-candy’ but they buy our record because of the way it makes them feel. (Yes, that’s obvious – but stay with me.) Places and situations they’ve experienced can directly relate to the emotions we are trying to evoke in our recordings….” I should add, songwriting or playing.
…”Recently, I was mixing a rock tune about a guy who was in complete anguish because he cheated on his women. His guilt was killing him. And there were wailing lead guitar fills between his lines in the verse. Since rock music is pretty ‘dry’ these days, my first thought was to throw a little ‘slap-back’ delay on the lead guitar – but it didn’t seem to have enough emotional impact.
So I thought about “guilt” for a second and came up with an idea. People sometimes deal with their guilt at church – so instead of a ‘slap-back’ delay on the lead guitar, I found a nice ‘hall’ reverb that sounded like a church hall to me – and drenched the guitar in it. I took the pre-delay out of the reverb patch which made the guitar sound like it was being played in the back of the church. It reminded me of a someone crying – releasing their guilt and asking forgiveness.
The anguished vocalist was mixed fairly dry and intimately up-front. And the weeping guitar was filling his lines from the back of a church. The idea worked really well. Somehow, there was a much stronger emotional impact this way.
It’s highly doubtful that any listener would hear this track and say “Wow. That guitar sounds like it’s in a church!” But the unconscious emotional connection is instinctively made by anyone who’s ever experienced being in church.
The music we make is all about trying to relate with our listeners – to evoke feelings and share personal experiences. By using my imagination rather than just technique, I find that this helps me “think outside the box” and makes me a better producer…”
Im guilty of this as much of you probably are or have been. Its a rock tune, so you put some nice distortion on your guitar and play all the right (sometimes amazing notes), but never think twice of what the words are trying to evoke.
Keep it mind, I sure will tonight when I get home and re-arrange my latest song.
- Frank
