Hey Hey!
XRT! I've been a fan for years, but never been in the studio. It's important to note that due to the on-air nature of the studio, we need to be careful about starting on time. There's a buzzer at the front door and we'll be having our usual food and drink from 7:30 to 8:00, but once they start to tour us through at 8:00, there really won't be a way of letting latecomers in. Parking is available on the street. Please DO NOT park in the lot next to the station. The closest public transportation would be the No. 77 Belmont Bus which connects to the Blue Line O'Hare branch at Kimball. Our secretary, Chris Cwiak, set up the meeting for us there so here he is with an introduction. Thanks Chris! -KJH
This month at WXRT
I was fortunate to begin my career with an internship for production and imaging at WXRT in the Spring of 2004. After a couple of months, I was finished with my semester at Columbia and that was that. I could only dream of someday working with such great people at such a unique Chicago institution. Just two months following my graduation, I was alerted to an opening within the CBS Radio Chicago cluster that allowed me to come back to ‘XRT as an independent contractor on a temporary basis. It was my job to take their massive music library and help convert it into the computer database from which it currently operates. Following the completion of that project, I was hired part-time at the station to help produce and run the few pre-recorded programs they air and to produce and dub spots. It was at 4949 W. Belmont that I learned a great many things about audio and radio, but it is not my purpose to write about that here.
In giving a general overview of my appreciation and history with the site of this month’s meeting, I must mention a man who works tirelessly behind the scenes to give the station its signature sound, Chief Engineer Mark Nielsen. He’ll be our host for the evening and he’ll detail his history both prior to and with ‘XRT, how he spends his time there, give us a tour of the facilities and explain the upcoming move of the station from its long-time home in the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood. I find this move to be highly unfortunate not only because being away from the downtown studios of its sister stations has contributed to the character of this beloved frequency, but also because the studios were designed with sound in mind. The studios I’ve been in downtown are basically converted office space, and don’t have many of the features that you’ll find in the ‘XRT bungalow. It will certainly be a challenge for Mark to maintain the integrity of the sound of the station as it relocates. My eternal gratitude goes out to all the fine folks at Chicago’s Finest Rock for all the opportunity they’ve afforded me and for inviting us in for one last look at the old digs before it becomes a great-sounding storage facility for CBS Radio.
-Chris Cwiak, EARS Secretary
John W. Burke, Rest in Peace.
Dear Friends,
My great friend and talented recording colleague John Burke has died.
He was at home and fortunate to be surrounded by family and friends.
John had been taking treatment for cancer and showed a magnificent calm and positive outlook during his journey in treatment. We talked about how it was going --- the ups and downs --- he always remained an optimist, but also a realist. He told me he was going back to where he came from. He enthusiastically continued to do recording work until very recently.
John was a beloved friend and very talented musician, singer, recordist, choral conductor and opera fanatic. He was also an animal lover. As a technologist, John always was up on the latest things in recording. He built his own computers and designed many of his own recording rigs.
While riding to recording jobs together, we would often sing "Ride on, King Jesus" with great harmony variations and in proper genre dialect. How lustily he sang! He knew all the verses and while he sang tenor, I enjoyed seeing how low I could go to complement his tone.
We traveled together on European recording trips and John was always immediately embraced by the locals because of his jolly demeanor and for his gentle outgoing personality.
Of course John was much more than I can recount here. There will be time for others who knew him well to praise him and to remember. I understand that there will be a service in memory of John and those details will be forthcoming.
With sadness but also great memories,
Hudson Fair
Recap/Appreciation File
EARS MEETING AT STUDIO VMR 2-26-08
For this month’s meeting, we were treated to Don Griffin’s Studio VMR in Brookfield. Don has called this facility home since October of 2004 and was previously in Palatine in his first big room. It must have been a big room in order to soffit the two enormous 1977 / ‘78 Westlake TM-1’s he currently has in the live room.
Before Don picked up his Mackie digital board, he had never before even switched on a computer! He saw one of his buddies run ProTools and was immediately impressed with the ease with which he was able to record and edit a session. Now, Don has a huge DAW setup running ProTools HD via an XHD card in an Apogee AD-16X interface and two Mackie HDR’s. He primarily records to the HDR’s as wav files at 24 bit, 48 kHz. When he records to the ProTools rig, he uses stereo pairs almost exclusively with the exception of the kick and snare.
As was mentioned in the previous EARdrum, Don Griffin is an accomplished guitar player, as he was Real Blues Magazine’s Blues/Rock Guitar Player 1999-2001. This knowledge and passion for the blues has certainly informed his engineering, as several of his projects have gone on to be recognized by the industry. Don played several rough mixes for us and it was here that we caught a glimpse of how the man gets the sound he does. Firstly, he has quite an interesting signal flow from his mics to the console that includes pathways through an Altec 1220, two Amek EQ’s; a Trident S20 dual mic pre; an Avalon Vt 737 tube channel strip; a UA 6176 channel strip; a TL Audio dual channel strip and a Yamaha HA8 eight mic pre. From there, he has options to run through a patchable series of compressors that give his recordings a very tightly controlled dynamic range without squashing the life out of them. Don truly does get the most of every bit available to him, all while maintaining the feeling of the performance, a trick not many have mastered. The key to this is not pushing the compressors you have in series too hard, but applying just a touch of each one to get the final product. In some cases, it’s difficult to tell if the meter on the compressor is even moving.
We were also given a demonstration of Native Instruments’ KORE System by N.I.’s Matt Cellitti. KORE is a hardware and software solution that acts as a browser for soft synths using presets that you can re-label to any description you want. The system comes with over 500 pre-mapped sounds that you can audition in real time while playing something completely different. Matt used an M-Audio keyboard controller coupled with the KORE 2 USB interface for the demonstration, but the display on the computer monitor can also act as a means to tweak the sounds you can create with KORE. It’s set up to look like a channel strip to that end. Using the KORE 2, Matt demonstrated that the attack, decay, sustain, release and effects were all real-time adjustable and were capable of multiple simultaneous layers. You can save up to sixteen songs with eight variations for instant recall on the system. KORE also acts as a wrapper for VST or AU plug-ins and accepts 3rd party plug-ins as well.
The KORE system also has a program called Guitar Rig which emulates amps and 44 stomp boxes, all with real-time effects. If you layer enough effects on, you can basically turn your guitar into a pad to create tonal landscapes not reminiscent at all of a guitar. You can run your guitar directly into the KORE system and use the computer interface to drag and drop different amps and effects into your stack. You can also tweak your sound by choosing from an array of mics and mic placements in the emulator. There are even presets for your favorite guitar heroes’ settings. Want to tear it up using David Gilmour’s gear and tone that he used on Comfortably Numb? As Matt and EARS treasurer Eric Roth demonstrated while playing along with the solo directly off the album, the sound of the emulator is pretty dead on.
Thanks are in order to Don Griffin of Studio VMR, Sam Rodgers of Sweetwater and Matt Cellitti of Native Instruments for showing us such great hospitality and informing us on their respective ends of our audio world. From what I could gather based upon our time with him, Don is truly a humble person. It’s not often that I meet people who have been ranked among the best at what they do and don’t have an ego. Thanks also to our vice president, Michael Kolar, for setting this one up. I think I can safely say that I speak for EARS when I tell you that we all had a great time. I, for one, will remember Don Griffin the next time I’m compressing a musical composition as the benchmark for how it’s done.
-Chris Cwiak, EARS Secretary
Upcoming Meetings
Stay tuned for details on next month. You'll want to keep the usual last Tuesday open. We're working hard to make it worth your while. - 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 still have a lot of great meeting plans lining up for next year, some website plans, and a lot of good fresh energy (maybe not so much as a year ago, but...) and hopes for a more vibrant, participatory EARS, so of course we're very interested in your input on everything EARS. Please. :) - KJH
Archives
Our Archives are again up to date. Check out the website for that and more EARS info. Also, I'd like to complete our files with the pre-2001 EARdrums. By my calculations we're missing the first 16 years! I know Timothy Powell has a year or so on his Metro-Mobile website but that still leaves a lot missing. If you happen to have your old paper copies or files you could get to me, I would love to get them online for posterity. Let me know. - KJH
A note about our Website
I've noticed that it doesn't automatically update in some web browsers. If you're looking for something and it looks like old info, try reloading the page. I'll see what I can do about it, but I think it would take a full redo to get it in a format that did this automatically for us.
Dues!
Thanks to all who support EARS through paying their dues. Just as a reminder, they're due yearly by the October meeting and this is a prerequisite for voting and joining us for the Holiday Party and BBQ in August (and occasionally things like the Grammy Party), but they're always welcome. Dues checks for $25.00 (or cash, but no credit cards) can be made out to EARS and given to any of our officers or sent to the following address:
Engineering and Recording Society of Chicago, C/O Eric Roth, Treasurer, PO Box 98, Highland Park, IL 60035-0098 - KJH
A (few) (more) word(s) from the Prez...
or “Why are we... hear?”
XRT still lets its DJs choose songs, in the moment, veering from assigned, carefully researched programming. Why? Maybe because that's why they're there. But how long can that last? How much will moving downtown change? I hope not too much. I hope they still let the DJs share their love of music.
Don Griffin showed us his Studio VMR last month. That VMR stands for Vital Music Recording and it's no lighthearted whim of a name. Chris summed up the meeting pretty well, but the moment that impressed me the most was when Don said something you just never expect to hear from a guy like him, someone who's been around music and recording for a long time. Far from the usual cliche of moaning about how great tape used to be, it was the possibilities that opened up with the digital world that attracted this celebrated musician to set his guitars down (he hasn't plucked a note in years and even shied away from trying out Guitar Rig, giving Eric the opportunity to shine, which he did) and adopt the studio as his new instrument. Why is Don there, in this studio space in Brookfield? He loves making music, even recording others who probably don't quite hit the heights/notes he once hit.
Present also that night was Matt Cellitti of Native Instruments. It was as clear to me that Matt loves making music as it was that the people behind Native Instruments do it out of their love of music. For that matter, Sam Rodgers of Sweetwater helped arrange for Matt's presentation. I've been getting to know Sam a bit lately and there's no way around it, he comes to EARS meetings not just to meet potential clients, he comes because he loves it as much as the rest of us. (By the way... The same night as our meeting at XRT, Sweetwater's doing another demo at another studio of Digi's Icon and NI's Kore system. Let's keep in mind that XRT will no longer be there in a few months, but Icon and Kore will... :)
Why do Michael Kolar, Chris Cwiak, Eric Roth and myself do this? We love it. We love it just like our predecessors did. We love music and recording, but we also love arranging for these meetings and keeping this organization on track. Eric recently went through chemotherapy for colon cancer. He was diagnosed the middle of last year and while he didn't particularly want it written up here, he didn't mind word getting around less formally. I'm glad to tell you now that he's through with treatments and has a clean bill of health. There were a few scary moments but all is now well. We had a cabinet meeting last month and his doctor even gave him the go ahead to have a couple of beers. It was a joy, indeed, to see him getting back to himself again after months of dealing with the horrors of chemo. Our own Danny Leake was down for a bit, having to have surgery on his eye. There's a man who's in this because he loves it.
I can't help but wonder why a man like our very own EARS member, John Burke, who went through this life with a lot of love for his family, his friends, his music, and his craft... recording it, has to pass away with so much still ahead of him. I read Hudson's note with such a sense of sadness. I'd only met him a handful of times at EARS meetings and probably a couple of dozen times professionally, but Hudson's words remind me profoundly of what a great guy he was each time we met. I can't guess why he had to go, but I know why he was surrounded by friends like the good Hudson Fair.
I've been following a thread on the Tape Op forums about Scott Harding, aka Scotty Hard (known for recording and mixing for Wu Tang Clan, Black Sheep, PM Dawn, Chris Rock, and my personal favorite, Medeski, Martin, and Wood) who was hit by a drunk driver on his way home from the studio late one night. His back is broken, along with his collarbone and shoulder blade. It's very serious and, not too surprisingly in this business, he had no insurance. But he has friends, and they're doing what they can to help. Fundraisers are being organized, including concerts and Ebay charity auctions. I've been very impressed with his friend Joel Hamilton, stepping up to the plate to really be there for him. So when I heard of John's passing, I immediately thought to inquire as to whether there was any need that his friends in EARS (or even just on the mailing list) might help with. Very fortunately, I'm told he has good insurance, and as this did not come so suddenly, there was time to make arrangements.
But what if that weren't the case? I guess my point here is that there's value in this little EARS community beyond the monthly meetings. If there were a need, this would be a good place to gather the support of his colleagues, his friends, and the music/recording community in general. It's a wise person who thinks beyond today or this week or this month and makes sure to be plugged into a community of friends/colleagues/fellow travelers who uniquely understand his/her journey through this life. Not every meeting we plan is going to be earth shattering in it's revelations of new tricks to apply back at your own studio. Not every EARdrum is going to be informative, entertaining, and better time spent than reading a good novel or listening to a great record. But keeping an eye on what's going on through this little newsletter, and showing up to a meeting every once in awhile, even just to be around some folks of like mind, and be known, could pay off down the road in ways we might never expect. When I was inquiring as to whether or not there was anything EARS could do, I was very glad to know that he had been a member and that if there was a need, I could gather the troops and lead us to take care of one of our own. Not that we wouldn't do what we could for someone who had just showed up to a meeting or two but hadn't really committed, but to my way of thinking, that little bit of dues is more about stepping up to the plate and saying "I'm a part of this Engineering And Recording Society of Chicago, let's do this" so it would just make the situation that much more clear.
There is one thing I know we can do for John, and that is to remember him well and carry on in good spirit. Please let me know if you have any stories or thoughts you'd like to share. Email me. Perhaps another is that we could make it a point to keep better in touch and better ready to watch out for each other. Do please also let me know of any kind of situation you're in or aware of with another one of our community, dues paying or not, where a little support would be helpful. If nothing else, it would be good to post situations here in an "EAR Aches" column.
The mental image of John and Hudson driving along singing "Ride On, King Jesus" is very vivid, but I can't help but think of him in a genre closer to my heart today, singing, "Don't you know you're riding with the King?".
Tuesday night, EARS will meet at WXRT. It'll be interesting to see the environment in which this very unique radio station has thrived for so many years, and hear what their plan might be for keeping the love alive. It'll also be interesting, as always, to see who shows up. You'll certainly find me and at least a few others interested to check out XRT, but just as interested to simply come together and enjoy the company of a select few who understand, appreciate, and yes, love, this musical journey we're on.
Happy Easter, everyone. Let's keep in touch.
At your service,
Kerry J Haps
