Noise on the Internets

Steve Albini, who I think of as someone more interested in having an extreme opinion that sounds all rad and cool and makes a great sound bite, rather than a thoughtful insight filled with subtleties and contradictions, is also disingenuous. Why do I say that? Because he knows better.

In this article he goes through the economics of a major-label record contract and concludes snarkily:

The band members have each earned about 1/20 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month.

Well, there are two things with that statement. One is that he conveniently ignores the publishing royalties that the composer(s) in the band makes. The other is that he inserts a $50,000 "buyout" in this contract which of course mathematically makes sure that the band doesn't "recoup".
But also, note that this example band now has all new backline gear. New drums, bass, guitars, etc.
And they sold a quarter-million units. That means that any backline they get from here on out will likely be free because they'll get endorsements.
And and... somehow their tour only grossed $50,000.
Hmm...

I've never seen a Neve without at least one module that needs to be fixed.

The other thing is that the best thing which could happen to a band like this, especially nowadays, is to have had sales of 250,000 units and then get dropped from their label.

Now, they probably wouldn't get dropped at 250,000 units on their first or second album (although they would be arguably rock stars) but they probably would be dropped if they went below 100,000 units. Why is being dropped good? Because then they'd have had all the push from a major label and all the publicity and name recognition, but they can run on their own, owning all their material from here on out and making much more money (per unit) than they ever could have with the major label.

It would be a good scam if you could pull it off as a band. As far as I can tell the reason most bands don't continue to tour and release their own records after being released from a major label is because the band members all hate one another.

Amps and Music

David Kronemyer on HiWatt Amplifiers. The dude David Kronemyer has a crazy resume, and in addition to everything else was an executive at Capitol and Atlantic records.

The Vintage Sound Classic is a pretty amplifier.

Sufjan Stephens sold 10,000 copies of the EP "All Delighted People" the first weekend it was available on Bandcamp. It debuted at #48 on the Billboard 200. He's on his own label. And his work is really interesting. The choir and orchestration are very tasteful and delicate. He's sold out two nights at the Beacon in November. Kind of reminds me of a cross between Donovan and Frank Zappa with that kind of modern indy-music vocal style.
His "record company" is Asthmatic Kitty Records.

24-bit 44.1kHz

When the Mouse was in the studio a decision had to be made. I told Eric* that we wanted to have an "old fashioned" sound. We wanted the drums to be like drums from the early 70's, but with more room reflections (see: Led Zeppelin) and, of course, louder than drums used to be mixed at.**

Eric (he and I are old friends and he has the bestest recording studio evah: Trax East) looked over at the unused analog tape decks in the corner of his control room. "If you want old-sounding..." There was sort of a wistful look in his eye as he considered the washing-machine-sized recorders ignominiously turned off and silent in the corner of the control room.

Yeah, I'd love to record onto 2" 16-track. Heck, we'd record at 15ips with Dolby noise reduction. But wait, you said tape was how much? OK, we're not doing that. We're recording directly to ProTools.

Which brings up the questions of bit depbth (I'm leaving the spelling that way because it amuses me) and sample rate. Eric suggested 44.1 as the sample rate (which is the same sample rate as CD's). Because, he said, many people thought the darker sounds with the more "broken up" top end worked well for an older sound. The thing we won't be doing is the noisiness of tape. He pointed at his Scully 2-track "What is that? 56, 57dB?"
So we're recording at the lowest "professional" sampling rate of 44.1kHz but with a more sophisticated bit depth of 24 bits. 
At 24 bit we'd have a lot of room to work with the files in the digital world.
Oddly, we won't be doing that much . My studio is competent for two microphones -- I have an AKG C12a (which is possibly the best mic for my voice) and I have a pair of Neve 1202 Brent Averill modified preamps going into an Apogee Mini-me A/D. So my signal path is just fine, thank you. And in Samplitude I can stay at 24 bit and even do 32-bit float for a party. This means that in my studio we may do some editing of some sections. We'll certainly do some vocal recording. And we can re-record guitars and keyboards until the cows come home.
But when we go to mix it'll be through a big analog console (Eric's).
And when the signal hits analog again it'll be at the mastering stage.

______________________________
*Who am I that I make these decisions for T-Mouse? Uh. I don't know. I don't think that was a unilateral decision, at least not strategically.
**Why did drums used to be mixed so (relatively) quietly? Was it because the transients were so hard to record? Or was it that the stacks of guitar amplifiers typical by the late '60's had made it so that the unamplified drums really were that much quieter live so nobody thought to turn them up?

What Are We Doing?

At some point a discussion of Tyrannosaurus Mouse and what we're doing has to happen. I'll start it now.

1. We're making an album. I figure the album will be finished sometime around the beginning of 2011. [Wow, "2011" -- that looks like a date in the far future doesn't it?] I suppose it hasn't even occurred to any of us that we would do anything other than give the music away for free. Of course you can download the entire album. But we'll also have T-shirts.

Ethan wants a physical CD. I don't know where the money will come from. Ha!

And what about a 12"? Are we cool enough to warrant a lacquer master? I don't think there are enough people willing to buy a phonograph LP of Tyrannosaurus Mouse to make it worth our while yet.

So I suspect you'll be able to (at least eventually) do any or all of the following:
a. download our album (or just some songs) for free
b. download our album (or just some songs) for any amount of money you want to pay us
c. buy our album on vinyl
d. give us lovin'

2. And what next as far as live-performance?
Well I've always seen Tyrannosaurus Mouse as being a big psychedelic band that plays on a stage with oriental rugs and chandeliers -- groovy oil light projections dance over the band and a backdrop of out of this world films play behind us while nude dancers on either side of the stage enact Salome as pots of smoke billow up from the stage turning and twisting themselves into snakes while splashes of light dapple the audience, exploding through time and the musical eruptions of the Mouse.

Now, it's quite possible that other members of the band have a different idea about what it would be like if/when we play live, but I doubt it.
We do all need some psychedelic duds. I nominate Ethan for a top hat and a cape. And I see Arie in an ascot. I always feel bad for the drummer because the drummer always seems to get the hottest, so maybe just a very frilly shirt for Lou. I get tails and paisleys.
Plus, and I may not have explained this earlier, I need a staff. I need my own guitar tech to take care of my pedals and turning on and off my delays and such. Need.

a. So where on earth could we actually perform?
I suspect we'll have trouble in normal NYC clubs with our nude dancers. That's why I'd prefer to play in theaters. Problem with theaters? They're really freakin' expensive. We can't perform at Theatresource, for instance, because we're way to loud.
b. And what about our light show? That sounds expensive too. And it sounds like it'll take some rehearsal to do.
c. How many people could we possibly expect to come see Tyrannosaurus Mouse? Could we get sixty people to show up at $10 a head? That's $600 to pay for sound, lights, and theater rental.

These and many other questions await us.

On the Psychedelic Jacket Front

Really, the whole band needs psychedelic jackets.

The Jimi Hendrix Hussars.

This one is five hundred Great British Pounds. Thin Red Line also makes historically accurate jackets. I think I want something that's a cross between one of these and a tail-coat. I feel I need tails.

You Know Who Makes A Pretty Amp?

Emery makes pretty amps.

Touch Sensitivity

So the other day

I went to Ethan's house and we listened to some of his fantastic amplifiers.

He has a pretty dreamy collection. What's nice is the variety of the sounds they all put out. And each amp makes you play a bit differently.

He has a Ampeg Reverb Rocket combo (1965 he thinks). The Ampeg is bright and jangly (not strident at all.) It just has high end for days. I immediately started playing "House of the Rising Sun" on it. And that was with a Les Paul with mini-humbuckers!
The Ampeg is very cool but not, we decided, what we needed for Tyrannosaurus Mouse just now.
One thing I found interesting about this amp is that, especially compared to other amps of the period, when you played harder the amp got louder. Just louder. The same "sound", but at a higher amplitude.

Which is funny because when most people talk about the "touch sensitivity" of an amplifier they're talking about how the amp sounds clean when played lightly but becomes dirty as you hit the strings harder.

Shouldn't this be the pattern of my psychedelic jacket?

Sometimes you just want the amp to make a louder sound though, and otherwise sound about the same at a given volume setting no matter how hard you play. But the Ampeg, doing this, makes it seem like it ironically isn't touch sensitive. When, in fact, it responds exactly to what you're doing.

"Touch sensitivity". It's hard to define then. Well, I guess trying to describe sound with words is like dancing about architecture isn't it?

The other odd thing is the way compression affects an amp. For instance, the Blankenship Fatboy Extreme has (I think) a Deluxe-ish front end which makes it very compressed. At the same time it "opens up" into a sweet overdrive as you play louder into it. Ethan's Rickenbacker amp (similar to a Deluxe) does a sweet thing with its compression. So does my Lil' Dawg Mutt.

Other amps are somewhere in-between. I have to say that all those mid-'60's Fenders have a similar feeling to them, but they all sound different. And boy, does his Princeton Reverb sound nice. We may just use that and my Mutt the next time we record.
^^^^^
All you could want to know about Fender Twin Reverbs. I know this: I'm selling mine. Come on over and buy it!

The Stompbox Blog.

The best part of this "100 Free Resources for Teaching Yourself Guitar" is number 49:  about Vodka.

REM

Chance Shirley reminded me, via Twitter, that REM was a light on the very dark landscape that was popular music in the mid-'80's. Here they are performing on the David Letterman Show.

Erin Hill

Erin Hill, who was the sound designer for the first Estrogenius Festival, is in a children's band called "The Dream Jam". New album is out on EMI -- "Leave It In the Soup".

Melanie the Mermaid.

Courtney Love Does the Math for You

Ten years ago Courtney Love gave a talk on music technology and piracy. It's mostly a coherent argument, which destroys many of my prejudices about Courtney Love, and honestly the less-coherent portions of it may be because this Salon article is a transcript of a speech.

Here's my favorite quote from her:

Don't tell me I'm a brand. I'm famous and people recognize me, but I can't look in the mirror and see my brand identity.

Keep talking about brands and you know what you'll get? Bad clothes. Bad hair. Bad books. Bad movies. And bad records

That's not actually the crux of what she's talking about though. Courtney goes over some of the numbers for a major-label record contract. Here she talks about the "million dollar" record contract for a 4-piece band.

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released. 

So of course things aren't quite that simple. The odd thing, from an economic standpoint, is that the record company itself is getting ripped off. That's right. They would love to see 10%. They're lucky if, overall, they're seeing a percent and-a-half. If you read on, Ms. Love goes over the record company expenses for this act which "got" a million dollars and sold a million records.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven. 

Yes, that's what this band got (note that the record company also spent $750K in publishing, some of that presumably goes back to at least some member of the band.) But that's not how well the record company does. No no no.
Instead, the record company has a lot of acts out there. A very small percentage are profitable. Essentially what is paying for the development of the many acts which do not sell a million records is the blood, sweat, and tears, of the few acts which do. As she notes later:

More Irony Please

Of the 32,000 new releases each year, only 250 sell more than 10,000 copies. And less than 30 go platinum.

So another way to put this is that the "surplus labor" (that's the Marxist way to think about it) of some rock stars goes to develop some smaller, newer acts which may or may not go anywhere.
As far as the systematic exploitation of rock stars goes, I have difficulty caring.  Sure, back in the day they used to pay for an executive's private jet (those days are long gone). But now they're mostly paying for the failed endeavors of hundreds of other acts.
It might be more fair, and clear, for the record company to simply tell the band "We're putting you on salary at $45,000/year -- make whatever else you can with concerts and publishing. Everyone who is in a band at our company makes $45K/year for the run of their first contract. Those of you who are hit artists end up paying for those of you who aren't. Get over it."

But that would make all the bands whiny and complainy. They'd much rather be a band with a million dollar record contract. Wouldn't you?

Ooh. Special note: classical musicians apparently have much clearer record contracts. I read that in a book on the music business once. They make vastly less money but none of the expenses are "recoupable". They make a small royalty on each record sold, starting with the first record.
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As for the rest of Courtney's argument about "works for hire" I'm not exactly sure what she's talking about. I was under the impression that any work could be a "work for hire" -- what she's talking about is probably a very specific nuance in the law, not that record companies automatically own in perpetuity any works without a contract.

Actually, after that she either goes a bit off the rails and/or she's talking from 10 years ago and either "we already know this stuff" or "yeah, that's not how it worked out."
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I heard a funny story once about why the second Men Without Hats record didn't do so well. The record company decided that the manager of the band was getting too much of an attitude and decided to teach him a lesson -- by not pushing the band's second release.

Experimentation Day

Today I visited Ethan at his beautiful new house and played through a bunch of amps. Ethan has a gajillion* amplifiers and guitars.

I played through a Les Paul with P90's and a Les Paul with mini-humbuckers. They don't exactly sound like either of my guitars, but that's cool. We listened to amps. Lots of amps.

Ethan has fixed up a bunch of very cool guitar amplifiers. He's got an old Rickenbacker amp which is essentially the same as a Fender Deluxe. It was awesome 'cept for the tear in the speaker. He's got a '65 Ampeg which sounded amazing - all chime and... well it just sounded like 1965. And his '65 Vox Cambridge was exactly what you'd expect from a '65 Vox. (When I originally published this I thought the Cambridge was a '64 but it ain't, it's just exactly as old as I am. In better shape though.)

But the amp we were looking for was what we thought a second Tyrannosaurus Mouse amp should sound like. I have my Lil' Dawg Mutt, which is basically a Deluxe front-end with a Champ power section, and it sounds awesome. What I want is that second amp which would be cleaner - sounding and which I'd play at the same time.

Beverly Road "Q" - train stop.

Our final four were all amps from the early to mid-60's. They were a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a '62 Princeton, A '66 Princeton Reverb, and a '61 Tremolux. The Princeton and the Princeton Reverb were the amps which Ethan had done the most "fixing up" to. All the amps sounded simply awesome.

What I found most interesting is that my favorite amps had a very smooth response across the guitar and a sort of "three dimensional" sound. You could hear beyond the speaker like the sound came from a few feet behind the amplifier. The Princeton Reverb and the Tremolux were the most smooth and three dimensional. We cross-patched the channels in the Tremolux head, which seemed to give it an even better sound (even more "smoove" and 3D I felt).

My feeling was the Princeton Reverb was the best - sounding for my needs. Which didn't mean that there weren't a dozen more amazing freakin' amps, but they'd be #1 for different applications.

And one day I'll write what my thoughts are on touch sensitivity...

On the way home I took this picture of the unique Q/B train station at Beverly Road in Brooklyn.
+++++
*That's a bit of hyperbole, he only had a kabillion of 'em.