(Carol Han writing chalk descriptions)

My first exhibit is running until November 27th. We opened it on November 4th and had about 500 people come and play the exhibit that first evening.

I had been thinking about designing some gallery exhibit ideas when I met Daniel Abraham on the flight home for SXSW. He was in a good mood despite having had a trash can full of beer bottles dumped on his head by the band Trash Talk, who he was filming. I was in a good mood because I’d just had a great time at SXSW.

He asked me to design an exhibit about sound and recording. Easy enough idea, back then. 

So then we come to August, when we set an opening date for November 4th. I promptly started dragging my heels because I didn’t know what to do. Luckily, many of my friends are artists and exhibitors and I asked for a lot of advice. Thanks: Carol Han, John Pettit, Mary Smull, Caitlin Butler.

Mainly what I wanted was the following experience: someone walks up to a machine, knows they can touch it, plays with it and hears a sound being affected and understands what is happening. It’s that last part that was so difficult. To have the user be able to affect the sound and know how they are doing it. I want them to have the feeling that “oh I can do this, too.”

To demonstrate reverb I borrowed Dr. Dog’s spring reverb unit, took the cover off, hung it on the wall and explained how spring reverb works. We also explain why you’d want to use reverb in the first place. In recording we use fake reverberation to give a sound depth, to make it sound like it exists in a different place than is inherent in the recording.

(Daniel Abraham tracing a cassette)

The tape loop section was designed to show how we made loops of music before we had digital samplers. This started with me trying to get one of my two Tascam 38’s functioning and it just wasn’t happening. ATR generously donated two reels of 1/2” tape that came as pancake reels. That means no flanges. I made a lot of calls around and Josh Meakim came through with a reel of 1/2” that I could borrow and two flanges! I made a loop on the 38 and it worked… then it didn’t. Just no response to any transport controls. Daniel had found an old tape machine at a yard sale and brought it over. It worked! And it had a tape on it of some old band practicing in their basement. It was kind of sludge rock. Sounded like Jack White would love it. So I cut a bunch of 1/4” tape strips and made loops of different lengths to see what we could get it to do. I had the idea to make a shape or spell something with the tape and Daniel had the idea to get empty thread spools on nails on the wall so the tape had less friction as it tried to wind around the loop points. We settled on spelling something with the loop on the wall. This part of the exhibit isn’t interactive but it’s certainly visually striking.

I wanted to use my Kaoss pad in the exhibit. This is a common DJ tool that’s so fun and expressive to use but I imagine it’s not well known to other musicians. I picked an effect that seemed to give the user the quickest dramatic change to sound and that also made sense about how you were altering the sound. For the first week I had the tiniest tape loop running into the Kaoss pad: I cut open a cassette tape and made a loop out of it. This was so unreliable and eventually snapped so I replaced the Kaoss pad’s input with a microphone.

(Tiniest loop)

One part that was more popular than I expected was our Remix the Beatles section. I “found” some Beatles multitracks floating around online and transferred those 4 track masters to my tascam 8 track cassette multitrack. My wife, Carol, cut foam board around the multi track so the user can only access the faders, pans, and varispeed. I wanted to remove the confusing buttons and functions of these devices that could have the user accidentally touch a setting that ended their experience. I wanted to give them instant creative control and not feel they were intimidated by the number of buttons. This is why there is foam board cutout on the Kaoss pad, SP 404, and cassette multitrack.

(Tape covering buttons to cover with foam board)

The last interactive section is the Sp 404 sampler. I love David Attenborough nature films and the way they’ll draw out showing you a bird for 30-45 minutes until you’re really excited to finally glimpse it. They tell you how hard it was to find this bird, let alone film it. They tell you it’s endangered and how fragile its environment is. I was hoping with this part of the exhibit to describe a sound that is utterly unique so you feel a sense of wonder when you hear it. I love the experience of haring something unique and asking “What’s that?” The SP 404 is a common sampler now and in this part we’re not using it as a sequencer, or as an effects box. It’s used a a visually interesting playback device. Much credit again to Carol for smartly laying out the descriptions of the sounds.

We also pulled some interesting recording footage and are showing that continuously during the exhibit. These are films I watch regularly for inspiration: Sinatra leading a recording session, Lee Scratch Perry putting a track together, Kanye West awkwardly showing the MPC to 60 minutes.

I was very grateful this is my first experience putting together an exhibit. There; no chance it would have been as successful without Daniel, Erin, and Elissa at Art In The Age who built it with me.

Soon after someone wrote a review of the exhibit and I was very happy to read they understood what I was going for. http://www.knightarts.org/community/philadelphia/handmade-sound-bill-moriarty

The exhibit runs daily until November 27th.

http://www.artintheage.com/

(Folks enjoying the exhibit)

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I was honored to be invited to SXSW this year to speak on a panel of record producers. I hope the audience learned as much as I did. The five of us hung out a bit the evening before or talk then again for an hour or so before the talk. I always find it fascinating to find out how people are making a living by making music in 2011.

You can listen to recording of our talk here: http://sxsw.com/node/7284

Highlights of my time at SXSW:

Watching Talib Kweli for the first time rocking the stage while rapping about love.

(Photo from Brooklyn Vegan)

Meeting Aesop Rock after 4 attempts at stalking him that week. My first attempt ended with me introducing myself to a mister Ian Bavitz… his brother.

(Aesop photo by me)

Unexpectedly meeting the very kind Ian Bavitz.

Watching Andrew WK’s one hour talk in a ballroom. He talks about how all parts of making music and making a living from it can be done in an uplifted way. He’s doing it.

Learning that points on records can actually matter in 2011. A new friend of mine had just received a $36,000 check from his points on a record that sold 250,000 digital copies. That’s digital copies. Downloads that people bought.

Staying in a good friend’s home while they were away. It’s important during SXSW to have a place where there’s no pressure to impress someone. That  pressure is from my own mind, of course.

Seeing Bob Ludwig and Doug Sax on a mastering panel showing such respect and admiration for each other.

Meeting Jack White randomly on the street and finding out he knows about my work.

Seeing Grandchildren live and feeling proud they’re from Philly.

Lowlights of my time at SXSW:

Getting on the wrong bus that was going in the complete wrong direction, figuring it out very late in the process, getting off and trying to find my way home, phone dying, no cabs.

…Non-SXSW Sidebar: there’s very little chance I’ll ever make another video in my video blog “series” about finding a new studio. I only made one video. So it didn’t turn out to be a series. I found a new studio. It’s great. I nicknamed it No Nostalgia. That’s an aspiration. I will put something up here about it that is informative.

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So I was mixing this record… then I told the fellah I needed to start over since I wasn’t getting what he wanted. Then he sent me an angry email and I responded. I think this rare exchange could be useful for other people to read. His name has been removed, of course. 

*********
The email I received:

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In 2008 I wrote a post about mixing on tiny speakers. 37signals thought it was pretty and good reposted it on the 37signals blog. Then I redesigned my website and lost everything I’d written. I just found part of this post again on the web so here’s what was left!

It’s the very naive producer who works only on optimum systems.” -Brian Eno

It’s unlikely whoever is buying your records has anything better than an average hi-fi, boombox, car stereo, or ipod. I’d bet they don’t have studio monitors.

Recording & mixing solely on studio monitors is foolish. All that low end in the guitar? It’s useless in the small speakers. It’s just taking up frequencies the bass or drums or organs or tenor instruments can occupy. You have to be ruthless in cutting away useless frequencies so the record is loud & jumps out of all speakers. Make the record sound outstanding on little crap speakers since that’s where most people will hear it. I’ve found when… read more

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“Philly Producer Sets the Record Straight

You can thank Bill Moriarty for Dr. Dog and Man Man.

By Michael Alan Goldberg

Years of hard work, plenty of perseverance, a strong vision and a little bit of luck … that’s how Dr. Dog and Man Man rose to the top of Philadelphia’s music scene. The same can be said of Bill Moriarty. At the helm for the last four Dr. Dog albums, two of Man Man’s albums, Drink Up Buttercup’s recently issued debut LP Born and Thrown On a Hook, and dozens more, the 31-year-old Moriarty’s emerged as one of the city’s premier producers and recording/mixing engineers, with a long list of local and national artists angling to work with him…”

Studio Switch Up #2

Hi. Let’s get to it! The recording studio switch up progressed a lot then came on a surprising turn and I’m still curving around that bend as I type. More on that part in a bit.

First… Dr. Dog’s new album Shame, Shame is out today! Congratulations to them.

(Dr. Dog mixing)

Drink Up Buttercup’s first album (and the first album I ever produced) Born And Thrown On A Hook came out March 23! And congratulations to them.

(Drink Up Buttercup’s CD release in Philly)

So…
Where I left off… Dr. Dog & I wanted to improve our music situation. Since we moved into our current studio (American Diamond if you ask me / Meth Beach if you ask them) we’ve talked about moving out. I’ve made many records in there and so far avoided taking out a loan and building a soundproof room. I don’t generally enjoy being in soundproof studios and neither do the artists I work with. We usually find more inspiration in comfortable or unusual places. Living rooms, outside, old apartments, empty fields… but sometimes there are sounds we want to record that those places insist we shouldn’t record: very quiet acoustic guitars, a string section, whispery singing. Meth Beach/American Diamond/Whatever is in a lively building. Dogs sing along and there’s an excellent yet unfortunately prolific carpenter below us. Back in November all possible disasters happened concurrently while I was recording my friend Elliott Harvey who was singing so softly I couldn’t hear him from a couple feet away… the carpenter’s saw started up, Scott decided to spray paint a t-shirt in the studio (!), some Dr. Dog members started loading out equipment, a semi truck pulled up to make a delivery, and the charming german shepherd was barking. That was the final moment when I decided I needed a vocal booth. Then I thought the “vocal booth” would be better if it could hold two people playing acoustic guitars, and maybe the piano, and drums could be cool in there, and since I hate control rooms what if it was big enough to hold the piano and me and the drums and the… so now we’re talking about soundproofing our whole studio.

Ok. So that was the impetus. Frustration becoming inspiration. Lucky for me my father (an actual engineer) enjoys redesigning rooms and building them. One frustrated day in December I told him everything I wanted out of our studio redesign. No control room, lively tracking room, daylight, windows that still open, a very open design, quiet, should still feel like one big space while separating the kitchen, storage, and loft area. We do need a separate space for people as they come in. As much as the one big room is a great idea sometimes friends, parents, wives or whoever come over and half to instantly stop talking so we can keep working. Awkward. So then Pops whipped up something great. He laid out a plan that would turn the studio into a long rectangle (about 680 sq. ft – same as now) and outside the studio have storage, a kitchen, and a large raised loft area.

It definitely optimizes the 1400 sq. ft we have. So in January 2010 that became the plan. Our estimate is about $10,000 to build that. (including no equipment changes). Our landlord approved the design. This is now the big idea. Now I can move on the fun part of picking what equipment to change up but…

Then a larger opportunity came up. A space on the first floor of our building opened up. This is a huge space. It seems to be at least triple the size.

We applied my Dad’s construction ideas to that space and it turns out we could build a recording space about 1400 sq. ft and still have a whole lot of space all around it. There’s enough room to build a smaller studio in the future if we need to. The loading dock connects to it. And! the carpenter noise is quieter in there. Seems like a better situation all around, eh? All except the rent is double and the cost to build is double.

Hmm. Which to build in? If we build on the larger 1st floor space we could keep working in our current space then move in when it’s complete. That’s a big advantage. But all the costs are double. Hmmm

Since I was also making r e cords, working and going about life during this process the planning didn’t happen particularly quickly. I can make gear decisions quickly but since I know very little about construction and such these decisions take me a while. So now we’re at mid February and the plan is to build in one of these two spaces… I just need to finish cost estimates then find someone to loan me the money to do it. I think building in the larger 1st floor is a better idea if I can afford it. Then…

Unforeseen opportunity #2. So in February this guy calls me about 10 times over a couple weeks. He has a recording studio in south Philly and wants a young producer/engineer to use it, take it over, do something with it. I avoid these calls for a while because I’m stubborn and have decided to go into a lot of debt to build a studio. Since I’ve decided to go into debt to build a studio what could I possibly want with this guy calling offering a studio… so… eventually I call him back, we have an encouraging conversation and I’m left confused. I go down to visit his studio and it’s nice. It’s BIG, sounds great, it’s old, it’s very well made.

There’s a Harrison console sitting in it(!)(needs some repair). There’s a beautiful grand piano(!)(…also needs repair). There’s a bunch of tube outboard equipment. The studio doesn’t look good but that’s nothing christmas lights, lamps, some color can’t fix. I mean it looks good in the sense that it looks like a big old professional studio but if you’ve worked at our studio you know that’s not our style. Those paces tend to make my friends feel intimidated. The owner and I have another inspiring conversation about music, recording, Philadelphia, the music business… and now I leave feeling hesitant excitement. What will it sound like in there? Can I fix the console? How in the world can I move in there and but keep my prices as affordable as they are now? So I was getting ahead of myself, as I do. The owner said just bring a friend over to play some music, try out the room, see if I even like it there. I thought about it, went down to SXSW (fantastic), came back, brought 1/2 of Drink Up Buttercup to this new studio to record some drums just to see what it sounded like. Damn. Sounds good. The next day(last Friday) I started an album in there recording acoustic guitar all day. Sounded great, too.

So I can thank my slow decision making skills for allowing this studio situation to show up.

So where does that leave us.
Plans are drawn up for building in our current studio for maybe 10-15k.
Plans are drawn up for building in the larger space on our building’s first floor for maybe 20-25k.
An existing studio has come up as potentially great situation

What will I do? I’m going to pursue the existing studio space for a few weeks more and see what happens. If I can dream up a way that makes sense for me, the owner, Dr. Dog, and my friends to make records in there then we will. If it doesn’t work out then we’ll build one of our two studio plans.

—

Finally! On to equipment. Much more fun.

Right now I’m mixing Pepi Ginsberg’s next record and am trying out some Waves plugins. The Maserati and CLA signature packs. I don’t like them. I find them confusing. There’s no way to know what’s really going on with them. You get controls that are named things like Snap, Grit, Sub, Power, Loud, Unnnghg, Yeah!, Dirt… I made some of those up. They look nice… faux wood grain & such. They feature pretty looking knobs that are very frustrating to “turn” with a mouse (let me right now say thank you to Ableton for designing a DAW that actually doesn’t try to look like a piece of analog hardware). They do sound very good, actually, but they’re not for me. I’d rather know precisely what I’m doing to a track I’m also demoing the JJP analog collection. Of course these are plugins… there’s nothing analog about them. When I’m mixing I tend to wish I had more 1176’s and a couple LA2A’s. So until I do have those I thought I’d see if there are some plugins that are good. I tend to use my laptop for everything and since Apple dropped express cards from their design I can’t use anything digital from Universal Audio. There plugins seems nice but I need native plugs. URS seems good, too, but I demoed them years ago, forgot what they sound like, and now that I’m shopping around my iLok won’t let me demo them again. Whoops. I don’t need reverbs or delays. We have two real tape echoes and two channels of real spring reverb and an actual hallway near some stairs.

Speakers. Proac Studio 100’s still seem the best to me.

I mixed most all of Shame, Shame on Proac’s and it turned out great. any problems in the mixes weren’t because of the speakers. I just also have to find an amp that isn’t a Bryston 4B. I don’t know anything about amps so I’ll research those a bit.

Console! Even if we move into new south philly studio we’ll keep Meth Diamond/American Beach. It’s such a worn in & locally loved spot it’d be silly not to keep it. So if that happens I’m looking at two console problems. The Harrison in the new spot needs recapping and other as yet unknown repairs. The Allen & Heath at Meth Beach either deserves repair or replacement. I would imagine this studio would be mainly recording & writing… not mixing. So automation wouldn’t be important. I really like Daniel Lanois’ idea to keep the recording and mixing consoles separate. Use one console or set of mic amps for recording and return on a different console so you can always have a mix going. There is an interesting console by Allen & Heath being designed now called the r24. It’s an analog console with full automation. Look it up. The other one I mentioned is the Toft. My friend Ryan who built & run’s Drexel’s recording studios let me come in and fool around with one. It was only a short period of time but the mix I made on it was ok. Pretty ok. This could be a good replacement for the Sigma we have now. I’m going to see if I can demo one more thoroughly.

Lately when looking at equipment that I want it’s mainly stereo buss effects. Right now I don’t mix with a compressor or EQ or anything on the stereo buss because I don’t own one. I have been using some plugins on the final mix or Tube EQ at Larry’s Gold’s and I’ve preferred the results every time. I taked to Greg Calbi about my Shame, Shame mixes and the one piece of gear he used on every mix was the Anamod ATS-1. So what I’m looking for now is a stereo buss compressor, stereo buss EQ, and maybe this Anamod piece. Since, as you know, I mainly make independent records and this is all I do for a living there’s not extra money laying around to blow on gear. Everything has to make a significant difference to be worth buying. There’s a tempting option which is to just use a mac tower and get a UAD card since they make a Neve 33609, Massive Passive, and Fatso emulation (that last one’s funny since the Fatso itself is emulating something else). That would mean I’d need to use a tower and be in the same place every time I’m mixing, but then if I buy all these pieces of hardware that’s at least 6 rackspaces full of gear. I doubt I’d be taking that rack with me every place I work on a mix. So I’d be tied to one place anyway. Plus… they’re plugins. I actually enjoy mixing when I’m using hardware. Using plugins I find a bit tedious.

Ok, so what I’m looking for: stereo compressor, stereo EQ, maybe also Stereo distortion/tape simulation (Fatso, Anamod ATS1).

Ok let’s add it up…
HARDWARE
Compression:
Neve 33609 stereo compressor = $4500.00
There are likely other candidates – I just don’t know which yet

EQ:
Manley Massive  stereo EQ = 4320.00
2 Channels of beautiful Tube Tech EQ1AM (which I mixed Shame, Shame thru) = $12,150.00

Tape Simulation/Distortion:
Anamod ATS 1 = $3000.00
Fatso Jr. = $2250.00

DIGITAL
Necessary: a UAD PCIe card to run plugins = seems to be somewhere around $1000
Apple Intel tower = about $2300.00
Universal Audio Manley Massive Passive plugin = $300.00
Universal Audio Fatso Plugin =  $300.00
Universal Audio Neve 33609 plugin = $250.00

Totals:
Analog Hardware = about $12,000 (Anamod, Manley, Neve)
Digital Faking It But Still Pretty Close = about $4000.00

—–
OK! So that’s where things are. I promise it will not take 3 months for the next update.

Here’s a great article on Dr. Dog’s new album: http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2010/04/dr-dog-shame-shame-liner-notes-930-club.php

take care,
Bill

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This is the first of a series of videos and written posts I’ll be making as Dr. Dog and I take apart and rebuild our recording studio. You know, for the kids.

Something may happen you didn’t intend but it’s inaccurate to listen to a recording and say something’s wrong. It’s not possible for a recording to be wrong. A recording just is. You wouldn’t look at a cloudy day and say: “the weather’s made a mistake,” or, “the weather’s wrong.” The weather just is.

Now, I love hearing mistakes in recordings but I have to realize the mistake I hear is only a deviation from some preconception my mind came up with for how the recording should go. I guess because I’ve heard a pattern in the song I expect it to continue. The reason I like hearing a mistake in a recording because it makes it sound human; it makes me feel connected to the musician. Humans playing music is beautifully imperfect & inconsistent.

Recently I was recording a bassist who often would listen to the playback and say: “No, that part’s wrong,” or, “no, that shouldn’t be there.” I think he was limiting his perspective to hearing the song only as he thought it should go, not being open to how it went.

“Honour thy error as a hidden intention,” -Oblique Strategies

A great performance by Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan that has no, autotune, tape echo, vocal doubling… just heartfelt playing and singing.

“Can you put some reverb on my voice and turn me down?” -Nearly every singer I’ve worked with

As a music listener I usually do not like doubled vocals. What’s a doubled vocal? It’s when a singer records a vocal part then records a second, identical vocal part with the intention of mixing them together so the listener hears both simultaneously.

Why I don’t like them… when I hear a doubled vocal I hear a singer that isn’t confident, fears their voice, is worried what people will think of their singing… and so they doubled it to make themselves sound unnatural and now their voice is okay since it’s no longer their natural voice. When I hear a doubled vocal I find it hard to connect with what the singer’s singing. I feel a disconnect from them.

When producing records I find singers that are reluctant to use just a single voice often change their mind when their vocal recording sounds amazing. If I can get a great vocal mix by affecting the dry recording with tasteful effects the singer tends to come to their own decision that the single vocal is better than the double. That taught me that, again, doubling vocals is usually done as a defense against a bad sound. Producers, get a singer’s voice to sound great and they’ll trust you and their voice.

Harmonies, group vocals, ad-libs, tape echo… all these are not the same as doubled vocals.

Let’s listen now to a beautifully recorded single vocal and appreciate the power in it…

Here’s an example of a beautiful song by the late songwriter Elliott Smith that, in my opinion, would have been even more intimate had Mr. Smith used a single vocal take…

If you’re singing in front of a band then you’re telling the audience you have something to say. Don’t make your singing purposefully obscured or intentionally difficult to hear. People want to hear what you’re singing. It’s fine to make vocals sound as reverbed, changed, and affected as you want if it comes from a genuine place of creativity like My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts but I often see artists using those techniques to obscure their singing out of fear. Trust yourself and your voice. Singing in tune, out of tune, out of key, warbly, scratchy, perfectly… this is all what is unique to your voice. Be fearless in your vocals and give the listener the gift of letting them hear you.

Exceptions! There are a two times I know of so far when I’ve preferred a doubled vocal to a single…

Cat Power’s song “Metal Heart”
I notice in this song it sounds like she recorded two very different vocal takes and mixed them together. It does not sound like she attempted to make the two takes identical. To me it feels even more intimate than if there were one vocal.

Drink Up Buttercup’s “Gods And Gentlemen”
The lead vocal is doubled and in mixing we decided it served the song better. The doubled vocal gave the song a quality of distance in time from the listener that we wanted.

Gods And Gentlemen – Drink Up Buttercup

Last: a new toy for singers that looks fun. Hopefully I’ll be picking one up soon…

More to come,

Bill