Recording School

Last night, I attended a “Q&A and discussion of mixes by attendees” featuring Larry Crane at Hotel2Tango Studios. I first learned about Larry through his magazine Tape Op, who is now the world’s second- or third-largest circulation recording magazine. I discovered it in the 1990s at Quimby’s bookstore in Chicago, when I was there to do a reading for Bad Subjects. At the time, it was a classic ‘zine–handmade and photocopied. I don’t remember what issue was on sale that day but read it and was inspired. I sent for all the back issues, and have been a dedicated reader since (and have reviewed it for Bad Subjects here and here). The progress of the magazine also mirrors Larry’s career progress, as he’s amassed some serious engineering and production credits with acts like Sleater-Kinney, Quasi and Elliott Smith.

Larry is an organic intellectual of the recording world (though if I’m not mistaken, he does actually have some kind of Communication Studies degree). The event lasted about six hours (I bailed at 11:30), beginning with Howard Bilerman (a very interesting character in his own right, whom I hadn’t met before last night) interviewing Larry about his career and quickly getting into the making of various recordings. Larry played us some of his work and discussed a wide range of issues, from mic selection to playing with a noise gate, to dealing with band politics, to a feminist reminder to the male engineers not to be “the asshole with the equipment” when recording women. The last third or so of the evening was critiquing recordings brought by the attendees, some of which were amazing (including the Juno-winning Chic Gamine). Although the recordings were all different genres and approaches, it was fascinating to hear work from a bunch of aspiring engineers at different levels and to see what kinds of suggestions were being made. #1 suggestion, which I already knew but was totally reinforced, is that the majority of mixing problems are arrangement problems, and the next biggest category is problems in the original recordings. Get those two things right, and there is a lot of latitude to play. With a bit of the novice’s nervousness, I brought a still-unfinished lo-boy mix where I was hoping for more rock edge and dynamics and have been winding up with more flat. I’m used to running workshops like this (how to think about your academic career, how to apply for a research grant, etc) so it was fun to be back on the other side as a student and have my work critiqued. It was totally valuable too. I thought the flatness came from too much production–both Larry and Howard said there wasn’t enough. Outstanding. What engineer doesn’t want to hear “why don’t you try some more processing on that?” and then get a bunch of suggestions for things to try with echoes and reamping? Wait, don’t answer that.

I also took the liberty of checking out Hotel2Tango, which is a beautiful studio and a very comfortable space. It’s one of those things–I’ve lived here for just under 5 years now and there are still all these vital parts of the local culture, like the studio scene, that I just haven’t explored at all. I’m sure there’s some comment on globalization in here, where it takes a visit from someone out of town to give me a reason to explore something in town, but I guess that’s how it works.

Every time I do something with music–which is not nearly often enough–I am reminded of how much I need to get more music back into my life.

Alep — Another Local Discovery

Across from the Jean-Talon Market (you could throw things at Hamel) stand the Syrian restaurants Alep (more formal) and Petit-Alep (less formal, same kitchen). We’ve lived in Montreal for almost 5 years now and in our current place for almost two, and just made it there for the first time Thursday night to celebrate Carrie sending her book ms. back out.[1]

Anyway, the food was amazing. Syrian is like Lebanese (many similar dishes and names, though a few different ones) but I would say the spicing is somehow more elaborate. For instance, the muhammara was an almost shocking red and had an intense spicy-sour flavor that was very striking. The grape leaves also tasted different than I’m used to in a very good way. They also have a few house teas that are delicious (some of which don’t actually use any tea). We’d commented to our waitress that we felt like fools for not finding it sooner, and she said “that happens to us all that time. We’ve been here for over 30 years.”

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[1] We are fond of celebrating getting manuscripts out of the house, and not just acceptances and publications. Why not have more occasions to celebrate, more incentives to get things done? Might as well celebrate as much as possible: academic life is an experience of small, incremental achievements, apart from a few major milestones like the PhD and tenure, which many experience as anticlimactic, anyway.

Revisiting the Toronto School: Edmund Carpenter

In print I have had some harsh words to say about the so-called Toronto School’s treatment of sound (that’s so-called “Canadian School” to some Americans, but pretend I didn’t say that) in the concept of orality, and I shall have a few more in print shortly. But in preparation for that, I’ve taken a couple weeks’ leave from the book manuscript in order to go back through some material for the positive argument that I wish to present at the end of the paper, about what parts of the tradition might be worth recovering. I have been re-reading some Harold Innis (and also discovered Heyer and Crowley’s excellent 1991 introduction to The Bias of Communication, which I had never read–I also never bothered with McLuhan’s intro which I should clearly go back and read), and also working through Edmund Carpenter for the first time, really. I remember looking at his material in grad school.

To people not preoccupied with the “school,” Carpenter is relatively minor figure on communication theory, or at least his work is not widely cited in our field. Carpenter was an anthropologist and brief look through his oeuvre shows that his concerns were anthropological first and mediatic, second. My current preoccupation is his Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Dealt Me, which attempts to construct a transcultural theory of media through a series of almost aphoristic short sections. As a work of medium theory the book is in one way derivative, since Carpenter’s claims about media and the senses aren’t new or shocking. It is also very much of its period, with more than the requisite macho humanist references to sexual escapades (and the standard dated ideas about gender and race), the somewhat random substitution of “&” for “and”, and its episodic and disconnected character. At the same time, I find the book captivating. As Innis has an attention to historical detail even as he aimed for synthesis, Carpenter has an attention to ethnographic detail. There are many passages where if one substituted the right terms, his observations about television and telephony could pass for current scholarship on digital and mobile media.

As for Carpenter’s intellectual legacy, it is hard for me to judge, but he did teach Steven Feld, who brought a whole new level of sophistication to questions of media and sound in anthropology and music.

But I will say this: for all my criticisms of and problems with Toronto school authors and their basic assumptions, there is something very attractive in their expansive curiosity about communication, culture and consciousness. Even if I find their answers unsatisfying, the questions they posed more than a generation ago remain vital and engaging, and many of their formulations still resonate.

Root Canal Review

Oddly, I started this post in spring of 2008 and it has sat in my drafts folder for a year, but now I feel compelled to complete it. Don’t want to read about teeth? There are two awesome comments under the gentrification post.

Spring 2008 Part

A root canal procedure is not how I’d recommend spending half a day, however, it turns out that it is much less painful than the condition it treats. I went to the dentist 2-3 weeks ago with a cavity, but the filling didn’t fix the pain. After another attempt at desenitization, we finally gave up and did the procedure yesterday. I’d been chewing on the right side of my mouth for weeks. So I’d have to say that in the end I’d recommend it. The procedure has an undeservedly bad reputation. However, there are a couple slightly disturbing parts (stop reading here if you’re squeamish):

1. The point of a root canal is to remove the pulp from your tooth if that pulp becomes infected. When the dentist get to the pulp he used the word “gangrene” as there was no blood. There’s supposed to be blood. At least I know why it hurt.

2. I had no idea how far into my jaw my roots went. The feeling of some small dental instrument rooting around in my jaw was bizarre to say the least.

Spring 2009 Part

So everything was awesome until I got home from my various travels in March. On the way home from work I noticed a crack down the middle of the tooth. I looked at it and it looked disturbing. Carrie looked at it and it looked disturbing. I went to the dentist who didn’t even need to do much of anything to pull half my molar out of my mouth. That looked really disturbing. It turns out that about a year after a root canal, you’re supposed to get a crown. And they’re a little fragile so it’s good to avoid things like almonds and crusty French bread (items I had consumed in the day leading up to the broken tooth) until you have the crown. Oops.

So now it’s unclear what will happen. As it’s my last molar, no bridge is possible. And a visit to the oral surgeon today indicates that there is no way to reconstruct the tooth or give it some kind of elaborate crown. They are suggesting extraction, an implant and crown. I know the extraction will hurt the most. Now I must wait and see what my insurance says. . . .

The Moral of the Story: When you have a root canal done, it’s not really over till there’s a crown on top. Turns out the same thing happened to my mom, and she was similarly unaware. So consider yourself warned.

Canadians: Tell the CRTC to regulate traffic shaping

Many Canadian Internet Service Providers practice traffic shaping during high-usage periods, which means that while they may sell you a connection at a particular speed (e.g., 10mbps), they may actively slow down your connection if you are using peer to peer software or doing something else they don’t like. To be clear: the regulation issue here is not about what you think of file sharing practices online, but whether ISPs should be able to tell you what kinds of activities you can and can’t do online when the activities themselves are not illegal (to be clear: there is nothing illegal about using torrent software to move files).

More information here.

The online consultation is happening here.