Sound City Movie Review

There has been a lot of talk about Dave Grohl's Sound City Documentary. Some talk has been good some has been bad, but it sure is a fun movie in general. It is a long told tale of boy joins band, boy goes to an old studio, studio recording changes life, boy buys old studio's console, boy tells you how Pro Tools has ruined the music industry, and life goes on.

The movie tells this story, which is not the complete story of Sound City Studio, but it has some excellent footage with some great older musicians and some real fun jamming scenes with the Foo Fighters and others. It is definitely worth a watch if you are into audio recording or music.

But, the story is one that left me wanting something different. The movie perpetuated the lie that is as old as digital technology-- Digital ruined big studios and music. While that is not true it is what many people believe. Analog is a fantastic medium, one I love, but digital has expanded our audio possibilities. They could have extolled the virtues of analog in the movie without bashing the digital medium and perpetuating the lie. Other than that, fun to watch.

Overall out of 5 stars I give it a 3.5.  Worth watching.

Creativity Outside the Studio

I recently took a short vacation and it got me thinking about recording and being creative in general. My vacation was to a place I have been to many times, Sunriver Oregon. One trip I made to Sunriver was to record a friend of mine, Glen Zucker. It was not as grand as, say, when U2 recorded The Unforgettable Fire album in the castle, but we made it work.

We were in the vacation home of a friend there and set up a mostly portable recording studio, consisting of a Pro Tools set up along with some great pre amps and microphones.  We had 6 channels of Daking 52270 mic pre eq, 8 channels of API 3124 mic pres, 4 channels of Summit mic pre, and 4 channels of Focusrite ISA 215 mic pre eq.  We used very little compression during recording but did employ 2 channels of DBX 160X compressors and a stereo Drawmer 1960 on the drum room microphones, and a Urei 1176 blue stripe compressor for vocals.  We utilized the traditional microphones on the instruments etc..

What made this trip great was the freedom we had in the creative process. No real time constraints, just had to be done by a reasonable hour with the drums for the sake of the neighbors. We were able to wake up, have breakfast, get ourselves going for the day, and then sit down to record. Nothing else mattered.  If something was not happening at the moment, no stress. We walked outside and enjoyed nature and came back to the piece later.

I have always enjoyed being outside of the traditional recording studio when making records. There is something very freeing about it. There are windows to the outside, generally, no real time clock, and a much more open atmosphere to creativity. I'm not saying you can't have this in the traditional studio.  You definitely can in the right ones. But what I am saying, is that for some projects the off the beaten path place is best.

On my latest trip I felt the urge to create. There was a freedom, even though I was with my kids and wife on a family vacation. Something about being surrounded by beauty and the relaxing atmosphere made me want to create. So, I ended up remixing a song I had on my laptop. The mix I did while on vacation makes the song sound so much better! I was able to make the song sound like I had wanted it to from day one, but for some reason could not. I think it was the freedom my surroundings helped me to feel that cleared my mind and allowed me to focus on the task at hand. Even though I hadn't set out on vacation thinking that I would create or work on any recordings, when the urge came I knew I had to take advantage of the opportunity and do it.

So what I really want to say with this long winded post-- find creativity anywhere. Make it happen. Live in that moment and you will find some great rewards.