|
I found this article in the "Canadian Press" about Bela Fleck to be somewhat bewildering: Pro Tools does seem to be too easy? I know a guy who has it, bought every instrument he could (won $$$$$$ a court case over a bike accident), can't really play any of them.... but turns out these Radiohead type recordings that could sell in Europe as "techno/house/trance" and the guy is a bartender. No offence to bartending. But Musician? Song-writer?? Artist? .... yes, somewhat bewildered....
about Bela:
"But when he decided to abandon traditional recording studios in favour of a computer setup at home, Fleck fell into the vanguard of a trend now transforming the music industry.
"That was the first record we ever won a Grammy for," he said from his home in Nashville, Tenn. "After all the money we spent in studios, I end up having the most success with something I did at home."
Since Fleck first embraced Pro Tools nine years ago, just about every professional studio - not to mention countless amateurs - have set up workstations with this type of software.
But depending on whom you ask, Pro Tools is either the best musical invention since the gramophone or the digital demon that stole the soul from rock 'n' roll.
It works like a word processor for sound. You can cut and paste together snippets of music, either single instruments or entire bands. Sloppy drummers can be rendered mathematically precise. Lousy vocalists can appear to sing in tune. Even distortion from old, discontinued guitar amplifiers can be emulated.
Pro Tools' developer estimates that its products touch up at least 90 per cent of all popular music at some point during production. Competitors such as Nuendo, Cubase and others vie for the rest.
The Pro Tools line - which also includes studio hardware - brought in almost all the $132 million US in sales booked last year by Digidesign Inc., the Daly City, Calif., unit of Avid Technology. That's up 20 per cent from 2001 and a more than fivefold increase in yearly revenue since Fleck first installed Pro Tools on his Macintosh.
Even more telling, the free, eight-track version - twice as powerful as the four-track Fleck used in 1994 - has been downloaded almost two million times, mostly for basement and bedroom studios.
Independent musicians can now set up a studio for what it once cost them to spend just a day or two in a tape studio packed with a small fortune in gear.
"Years ago, my band would do anything for studio time," New York musician Bryan Cullen said. "We signed shady contracts with management for studio time, and we made (lousy) eight-track demos."
Since Pro Tools, he said, "our band has recorded over 20 songs in the comfort of my apartment."
But there is a downside.
"Some people overuse Pro Tools," said Thom Canova, who records rock and hip-hop acts in his San Francisco studio. "A lot of problems start when someone decides they're going to edit everything. If you do that, you take all the life out of the music."
Some critics say computer tricks have created lazy musicians who disappoint fans when performing live because they can't replicate their recordings.
Software has increased the use of "looping," when snippets of music are pasted over and over. A technique celebrated in hip-hop and techno, looping leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many rockers.
"They're writing simple, recycling measures of music they play with an almost eerily machinelike precision," said Kevin Dale McCollough, an indie musician who uses the stage name Zed Salt and runs a studio near Bourbon, Ind. "Personally, I'd rather listen to a little sloppiness."
Fabrice Dupont makes a good living editing that sloppiness from major-label records at his Manhattan studio. It can take him weeks or months to edit an album.
But like a lawyer who protects client confidentiality, Dupont and others usually keep quiet about who got the royal Pro Tools treatment - and the acts receiving it rarely brag about it.
"They don't want to admit how much has been done," said Bob Muller, who has recorded songs for the Rolling Stones, reggae legends Toots & the Maytals and other notable acts at his Dangerous Music studio upstairs from Dupont's. "If you put in 'edited by' (on the CD's notes), nowadays that means an awful lot."
|
