meta-roj

apologies to the original speaker, but someone said it before me. now it’s just a pop-under-culture touchstone, and a hook for me to hang this entry on.

i recently went into a bit of a [private] rant on one of the components of the eclipse project. in that rant, i decried the relevance of writing “magnet content” that would actually attract (as in “magnet”) working musicians to the project. on top of that, i have some rather strong opinions on the quality of writing in the field. i’m going to reprise (in a non-musical sense) some of that for you today.

not only is music a subjective personal experience (and all the more so for those who make the music), but the books and articles are crap. i mean that in a nice way. they are well-intentioned and sometimes include valuable information. but, when it comes right down to it.. there are too many variables – you have to focus too narrowly to make the written content relevant (this applies only to acoustic guitar players who use nylon as opposed to steel strings) – so it’s very, very difficult to make it broad enough to sustain a publishing market.

yes, magazines have become more and more segmented (and there probably are several magazines for acoustic/nylon enthusiasts), but, if the intent is a broad audience, you have to generalize a bit, and when you do that in the realm of making art, you sacrifice the details that would otherwise make your material valuable.

i’m generalizing a lot here, so i’m going to take a moment to apologize to david gibson. david gibson has written a 3.5-out-of-5 star book on mixing. he’s taken an unorthodox approach, and he’s probably served people very well. i haven’t read this book (it’s called “the art of mixing”), or seen the videos that followed. what i did see was a excerpt that was published by the industry magazine artistpro in their may/june 2003 issue. david, i’m sorry, but now i have to pick on you (and your editors).

artistpro ran a 3-page excerpt from this book. in this excerpt, called “instrument eq” we learn important things about equalization of instruments. the most important lesson, based solely on repetition is “get the mud out.” i wish i could make this stuff up, so here are the relevant quotes from the excerpt from the book that should be useful.

kick … normally have a huge amount of the muddy range taken out, as much as 10dB, in the EQ range around 150 to 300Hz.

snare … Occasionally, it is necessary to take out some of the muddiness around 150 to 300Hz.

hi-hat … It is also quite common to roll off the muddiness in the bleed from the rest of the drum kit (around 150-300hz).

bass … On some bass guitars, it is necessary to take out some of the muddiness around 150 to 300Hz. However, if taken out too much, the bass will sound too thin and wimpy.

guitar … Occasionally, it is necessary to take out some of the muddiness around 150 to 300Hz.

vocals … Occasionally, it is necessary to take out a bit of the muddiness around 150 to 300Hz and a bit of irritation around 3000 or 4000Hz.

piano … Commonly, a bit of mud is taken out around 150 to 300Hz, and a bit of boost is given around 5000 to 6000Hz.

acoustic guitar … It is important to take out the mud around 150 to 300Hz more or less depending on the mic placement (keep the mics away from the sound holes).

now, i just want to reiterate, that all of these quotes came from a three-page article in a magazine. it applies to almost every instrument described in the article (the exceptions being “organ” and “horns”). these are such broad strokes as to be useless in any practical sense. three pages on “eq for guitar” might provide some interesting observations, quirks, anecdotes or experiences from gibson’s vast experience, but we’re left with a paragraph that says “get the mud out” and a few other generalizations. the problem is that artistpro isn’t targetted at people who only record guitars (and how many of those people actually exist?), so the substance is lost to make the market.

so, yes. thanks for trying, i guess. maybe there’s more in the book (better be!), but this was… well, a letdown. and it’s indicative of the problem of creating “magnet content” about art. this is ostensibly a practical guide to a practical issue that faces many musicians, and is supposed to be a “magnet” for the book. as far as i’m concerned, it fails on every count.