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President/Editor/Publisher: Kerry J Haps
Vice-President: Michael Kolar
Secretary: Chris Cwiak
Treasurer: Eric Roth
Volume 22 Number 6
June, 2007
EARS meets at the new SoundScape Studios
2010 S. Wabash (at the "Buckwild Records" building) Chicago, IL
Tuesday, June 26th 7:30pm
Hey Hey!
Well, this month we'll once again be guests of our esteemed V.P., Michael Kolar and his crew, always the capable hosts, on the occasion of the opening of their new facility. Read on for his invite and read further for a recap of last month's very interesting meeting at Experimental Sound Studios, a much deserved and proper farewell to Phil Bonanno, and even a bit of a related rant by Larry Crane of Tape Op, who I had the great pleasure of meeting just last week at TapeOpCon.
-KJH
This month's meeting!
Dear members & guests,
I would like to take the occasion of this month’s EARS meeting to welcome you to my new home for SoundScape Studios. We are located at 2010 S. Wabash, at the “Buckwild Records” building, home to a variety of entertainment businesses including Parrish Lewis Photography (R. Kelly, Twista, & Michael Jordan’s private photographer. www.parrishlewis.com), RM Media Group (Web & Video developer for Hustle Period, which manages Kanye West, Naledge and Crucial Conflict), and Buckwild Records (which houses super producer WildStyle who has produced songs for multi-platinum albums for artists such as Busta Rhymes, Twista, McKelly Jameson, 3-6 Mafia and Ludacris and home to his private production facility & record label offices). With my partnership with Buckwild records, serving as their in-house recording facility as well as offering my regular hourly services to non-label projects, I am able to provide my clients with a unique one-stop shop for all their artistic needs, encompassing:
Production & Songwriting
Recording services in Two ProTools suites
Mixing & mastering
CD & DVD duplication
Professional photography & video services
Web site development
Graphics design, layout & printing
Artist Management
There will be food & drink for all. There is ample metered parking around the studio, and meters turn off at 6:00 PM! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call.
Thanks,
Michael Kolar
Owner, SoundScape Studios
312-567-1400
MySpace.com/soundscaperecording
soundscaperecording@gmail.com
Recap/Appreciation File:
EARS MEETING AT EXPERIMENTAL SOUND STUDIO 5-29-07
For this month’s meeting, we were treated to the not-for-profit Experimental Sound Studio as hosted by its director Lou Mallozzi. The studio was co-founded by Lou in 1986. In addition to his work at ESS, he’s an adjunct associate professor in the sound department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has taught since 1985. Since the studio’s inception, not much has fundamentally changed. They still are a public space for artists and novices alike. They host workshops, artist development programs, and internships and curate sound performance installations. In fact, they were instrumental in Chicago’s first experimental sound installation at Randolph Gallery in June of 1986.
ESS has been located at 5925 N. Ravenswood for about a year now. The space has two floors including a live room, iso booth, control room, post room and archives. In 2003, they began the Creative Audio Archive. This archive utilizes all of the work done over the years at ESS and Links Hall, conforming to archivists’ standards so that it’s a searchable database by anyone who wants to come in and browse. Digital audio is stored as WAV files at 48 kHz on gold CD’s. ESS uses ProTools LE, microphones by Shure, AKG, TOA, Audio-Technica and EV, a Revox 278 1/2” 8-track recorder, Alesis, Aphex, dbx, Furman and Yamaha processing and Mackie consoles.
Some of ESS’s programs include:
- Outer Ear Festival of Sound, begun in 2000 and including performances, installations, screenings and broadcasts every November.
- Florasonic Sound, a greenhouse emulator using 4-channel sound at Lincoln Park Conservatory begun in 2001.
- Crosscut, a partnership with Links Hall where three pairs of artists from unrelated fields who’ve never worked together collaborate.
- Your Favorite Chicago Sounds, an open-source website where you enter in the location of your favorite sounds of Chicago and artists go out and record it. Sounds are uploaded onto the website as mp3’s that anyone can use anytime.
- Residency Program, begun in 1999 where 2-6 artists get 40 hours of studio time in 6 months to work and the studio helps them network and get shows.
ESS has a policy that they ALWAYS pay their artists. Even if it’s just a little bit, they always pay artists for their time and effort. At a time when budgets are tight and artists are being taken advantage of, this is a very honorable and honest thing to do. ESS is one of only four such studios in the country, and it's the only one in the midwest to offer the kinds of services that it does. It’s one of the unsung organizations that truly makes Chicago a great place to live and be an artist.
A very special thank you to our host for the evening, Experimental Sound Studio director Lou Mallozzi, who provided for us not only an informative and entertaining evening, but one that tasted great as well! A table of doughy treats was laid out for us from the bakery down the street. If you’re ever working at ESS and you need a break for sustenance, ask Lou about this place.
Also, thanks are in order to the rest of the staff at Experimental; studio manager Jacob Ross and engineer Pete Wenger for their hospitality.
Upcoming workshops at Experimental Sound Studio include:
- Improvisation, conducted by Michael Zerang on Saturday and Sunday June 23 & 24 from 10am-2pm
- Introduction to ProTools, conducted by Julia Miller on Saturday and Sunday July 14 & 15 from 10am-2pm
- Circuit Bending, conducted by Alex Inglizian on Saturday and Sunday July 28 & 29 from 10am-2pm
Visit http://www.expsoundstudio.org for more information.
- Chris Cwiak
Another small correction...
(Danny Leake sent me this correction to the recap of his meeting in April. I vaguely remembered him telling this story but wasn't sure enough of it to "print it" at the time of writing. It was even in my completely unreadable notes! I really cannot do this without Chris, Eric, and Michael - KJH)
Only one thing: I never worked for Streeterville. The owner wouldn't hire me because he thought his clients wouldn't work with me because I was black. After I was hired by Universal I made a point of stealing his main million dollar client, Klaff & Weinstein. I sent him a letter thanking him for the "clients" and said maybe he won't say that to the next black man looking for a position at his joint. :-)
- Danny Leake
Earlier this month...
TapeOpCon was where you would have found me (had you been looking) the weekend before last. What a great time. You know how these conferences go. If you're up on things, it's more about inspiration and confirming what you've already learned the hard way than actually learning new things. But it was just an amazing time of hanging out with colleagues who actually get it.
The panels were amazing, including the final "(More) Records that made me want to Record" led by our own Mark Rubel, who surprised us all by getting Les Paul on the phone and leading the crowd in singing Happy Birthday to him! Steve Albini shocked everyone with the irony of bringing his inspiring record on a CD while George Massenburg played one piece off of a reel to reel right there on stage and then apparently played his next piece off a CD he'd just burned, having downloaded it to his laptop while the other panelists were speaking. Probably the funniest thing that happened all weekend was George Massenburg actually seeming unsure whether he could trust Mark Rubel to do "a proper fade out" of his playback. The keynote interview was with Joe Boyd and it was fascinating.
The workshops were great. I checked out a "Buying Used Consoles" panel, a "Mastering Demo", a "Mastering in the Box" panel, and many others. (I actually brought along a portable Flash recorder to tape some of the sessions I couldn't attend.)
There was a "Pot Luck Studio" set up by the Women's Audio Mission that featured a new console by Geoff Daking and racks and racks of amazing gear and mics which hosted a lot of great sessions including several featuring Mark Rubel. (Another big hit of the weekend was his answer to the question of how to get more cowbell...)
I spent some considerable time both on and off the exhibit floor talking with various vendors, getting answers to questions, getting interested in gear I hadn't had the chance to see up close and personal, and even just thanking some of them for their great work in creating some of the products that I find so helpful in capturing those magic moments. I'm a big fan of Universal Audio and am quite invested in their gear. I got a glimpse of some of their upcoming products and even managed to get my hands on a UA neon sign at the giveaway at the end of the conference. I also was thrilled to meet Tim Ryan of Seventh Circle Audio as I'm in the middle of building eight of his preamp kits. What a great product he has going. I've been thrilled with the quality of the design and parts of these kits and of course I'm thrilled to own probably four times the quality of pres that I otherwise could.
Of course it's all about the music, and there was plenty of it. On Friday night they bussed us to downtown Tucson where there were three stages going. The Rebirth Brass Band, Sunpie Barnes and the Louisiana Sunspots, Mitch Easter, and Gentleman Auction House, who I personally really enjoyed and hadn't heard of before, were among the highlights. Saturday night, right there at the Hilton El Conquistador by the main pool we enjoyed DeVotchKa, John Vanderslice, and Calexico. Great stuff. Following that, in one of the hotel bars, I swear James Brown had come back, in the form of O'Malley Jones, fronting an incredibly tight band featuring Geoff Daking on drums and (again I swear) Paris Hilton singing backup. You could NOT avoid dancing to this band.
I could go on and on about the specifics but you don't have time to read it and I don't have time to write it. The most important thing, I think, is the amazing community that has been built by Larry Crane and all at Tape Op. I'm just so impressed with the tone of everything I've seen in Tape Op, both the magazine and the conference, which is largely now the baby of Craig Schumacher. We've talked about an EARS forum. I've got several I spend time on including Tape Op and I'd like to suggest you check it out. I can't see what we would need of our own that's different from that. Perhaps we could all get involved there and set our "Location" in our profiles to read as "EARS Chicago" instead of just "Chicago". You can find the forum on the Tape Op website and there you can also sign up for a free subscription to the magazine. I highly recommend it.
-KJH
In Memoriam:
Phil Bonanno
One of our Premier Brother Engineers, Phil Bonanno passed away last month. I had known Phil from his beginnings as an assistant at Chicago Recording to the platinum engineer that he became.
He was an ace engineer who was involved with numerous recordings and several platinum sellers. These included Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”, Styx’s “Show Me the Way”, and Dennis DeYoung’s “Desert Moon”. He was working on Dennis’s latest when he passed.
In addition to his recording and mixing work, he was very involved in studio building and design. He redesigned a studio that was built inside the old Playboy Resort in Wisconsin putting in a classic Neve console and all the accoutrements. He also helped design Alan Kubrica’s Glendale Studios in LA.
I believe he had just finished an SSL room in the suburbs when he passed.
He was a great guy and a great engineer who, even though working worldwide, never forgot where he came from.
One thing, though.
While researching his work for this piece I looked up Phil’s name in the “All Music Guide”, an information source several organizations use for reference, including NARAS. Sometimes it is even used in hiring.
There were only three listings for Phil: “Hot Spot”, “Hombres Malo” as an assistant, and “To Know You More”
This is woefully inaccurate. I personally know of hundreds of projects he worked on, not counting the platinum “Eye of The Tiger” and “Show Me The way”.
As I said at The EARS meeting I hosted we need to come up with an accurate information source about recording credits. At least as accurate as the IMDB is for movies. In this day of downloads with no info, not having our credits listed properly somewhere diminishes our worth.
With all we bring to these recordings, we deserve the credit. Phil certainly did.
- Danny Leake
An idea whose time has come? Something we could do about it?
I have to say Danny makes a very strong point here. I've thought about it many times when I was either improperly credited or not at all for work I was proud of. I've also thought of it as I've considered this crazy digital age with the sharing of files and paying good money for downloads that lack those all important liner notes. Surely there's something that could be done about this. Not only is the technology not in the way, it's actually capable of making this an easier and better thing. Danny's point about the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is a great one. I'd rather have all the info available there than have to look at all the boxes of my DVDs. I'm sure with metadata we could soon realize a dream of comprehensive online info linked to our actual CDs and files. But how do we get there from here? Very interestingly, Larry Crane's "Larry's End Rant" this month in Tape Op #59 (again, I highly recommend subscribing and checking out their message board) happens to be on this same topic. Here it is, reprinted with permission:
Credit where Credit’s Due
by Larry Crane
I just picked up a remastered CD version of Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, one of Dylan’s many permutations of himself, and one where his singing is more emotional than some of his other work. I’m happy to acquire this CD, and I’m thinking, “Remastered? Didn’t Greg Calbi do these remasters at Sterling Sound?” So I go to look for the credits - and despite the fact that there’s a big yellow sticker permanently affixed to my CD case with the excited yet vague sentence “Spectacularly remastered from original source tapes”, there’s no mention of who remastered this CD anywhere on the packaging. There are two credits for Bob Johnston’s production, as there should be, and credit for Dylan writing the songs, the players and the engineer, Charlie Bragg - but nowhere are there credits for who did the remastering, let alone who tracked down the “original source tapes” or who oversaw the process of remastering Dylan’s back catalog.
I was visiting an old friend and former band member last year. Right as I was about to drive off she said, “Hey, there’s a record you really should check out. Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins.” I replied, “Uh, I engineered some of that album and even played bass on a song!” Then she told me, “Oh, I’ve got a copy someone burned for me.”
I buy a few tunes from iTunes every once in a while. Sometimes you buy a track and ask yourself the same question, “Who recorded this?” Good luck finding out. Or the time I wanted to know who did string arrangements for Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman”. The name Al De Lory took a while to dig up on Google.
Speaking of Google, that’s what I use a lot when researching, editing and proofing articles for Tape Op. I spend a lot of time looking for album credits, proper album titles, discographies and such. Most are available through retail sites, though these can be very iffy - certainly no need to mention albums they don’t sell! All Music is supposed to be a database for this kind of information, but I find it to be impossible to navigate these days and full of misinformation. I know - I looked up my own discography, then tried to change it, and nothing ever came of my efforts.
I make part of my income because people look at the credits and say, “Hey, so and so recorded at Jackpot! with Larry Crane. Maybe we should go there for our next record.” If these credits are impossible to find, how are people like us gonna get work in the future, and will we even get acknowledgment among our peers for work well done?
The irony is I didn’t even listen to the Dylan record - I sat down and wrote this rant. Through searching the internet I found out that Greg Calbi did remaster it, Steven Berkowitz was the reissue producer and Didier C. Deutsch did the tape research. Now maybe I should just put the CD on and enjoy it.
Thanks to Larry for allowing us to reprint this, and for creating such an amazing thing as Tape Op. Again... For free subscriptions and their message board: www.tapeop.com.
- KJH
Suggestions Welcome!
There are endless good reasons to band together here as EARS. It can be whatever we want it to be.
If you have any ideas for the EARdrum, our website, or future meetings, please email me. We have a lot of great meetings lining up for the rest of the year, some good website plans, and a lot of good fresh energy and hopes for a more vibrant, participatory EARS, so of course we're very interested in your input on everything EARS. Please. :)
- KJH
Dues!
Thanks to all who support EARS through paying their dues. Just as a reminder, they're due yearly at the October meeting, but that doesn't stop us from catching up mid year as a show of support and in order to take advantage of the occasional members-only benefits. Dues checks can be made out to EARS and can be sent to the following address:
Engineering and Recording Society of Chicago
C/O Eric Roth, Treasurer
PO Box 98
Highland Park, IL 60035-0098
Thanks,
Kerry J Haps, your devoted Pres.
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