View Points: A Life At The Improv
Does too much reliance on data affect the ability to deliver a musical mix?
By
Jack Alexander
It’s fair to say that music is the horse that brought most of us to this
business. Growing up in the ‘50s, we would huddle under blankets after
lights out with our leather-cased transistor radios, getting a very different
musical message than the one our parents received from network TV in the
next room.
That was the point. The little radio dial allowed us to slip the leash
pop, early rock, jazz, blues, C&W, even classical we were able to
experience music far outside the accepted corporate norms of the time.
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These days that little dial has become the corporate norm, but at least we have the Internet as a means of musical discovery. (Until they take that away, too.) This aural introduction to music can be contrasted to the paper/aural introduction experienced by most classical musicians. The sight-reading of musical notation is considered the basis for “serious” musical training. My grammar school class even was subjected to “sight-singing”, but at that point my reading of music was coincident with wearing an icky starched shirt and singing “Greensleeves” at a Christmas concert held in an auditorium redolent of wet socks drying on steam radiators. |
Those who got music lessons consequently got less baseball and were viewed
with scorn and/or sympathy. And those in music lessons were not sight-reading
Little Richard and Muddy Waters, as that stuff, if ever even written for
the page, could not be reproduced from a page, and no one had bothered
to try to do so anyway. Sight-reading was tied to classical music, not
exactly what was on most of our minds at that point.
MUSIC AS MANTRA
Years later, I found myself crashing in a recently vacated Weatherman
commune (1970, if you must know), living on peanut butter and student
loans. Music was the mantra jam sessions day and night, acoustic, guitar
based, with everyone from a jazz guy who had just left the Elgart Big
Band to a great bluegrass picker and various folkie poseurs who couldn’t
begin to keep up with the better players.
I sat in the corner and soaked it up, noticing that none of these guys
were reading music but could play anything. And play it well. What I didn’t
know was that the jazz guy had serious training and could read, though
the bluegrass guy couldn’t read a note, operating purely by ear, and incredibly
well at that.
I had been doing TV/film audio stuff at the university but had never played
an instrument in my life. Picked up an old Marine Band harmonica that
had been lying around and started to blow at the thing sounded awful.
I noticed how the bluegrass player practiced night and day, so I took
a page out of his book and kept hammering away until I was able to do
some basic tunes. One thing led to another, and I got pretty far with
it, but always by ear. No reading, ever.
I was dumb enough to think I could have a career as a professional musician
on that instrument and even took some lessons from a friend who had serious
reading skills. But I realized that reading music would not work for me
I could not connect the page to the harp.
As I became totally occupied with live sound work, it dawned on me that
much of the live sound idiom was the equivalent of playing by ear, or
improvising. There wasn’t much training available in those days (Bob Heil
recounting how he once did The Who with a 500-watts per side system is
not a very useful resource), so I just twisted the knobs on the console
until things seemed right.
COMPLEX REALITY
A studio guy babysitting a system asked me if I actually knew what the
knobs meant. At the time I was embarrassed, as I mostly didn’t, but the
reality is more complex. My experience as a non-reading musician had created
a little hearing mechanism that pulled me way past those knobs. I was
used to improvising music by ear, and fast. Moving sweeps and gains on
the top snare channel until it sounded like Phil Collins was easy by comparison.
At the same time, a lot of the people I encountered were quite technical
and knew all about how everything (theoretically) worked, and could even
fix stuff. It seemed like their book knowledge was more important than
the street methodology I was developing, but eventually I realized that
we need both the sheet music of the purely technical world and the improvisations
of the live sound operators who deal in the emotion and aesthetic of the
moment.
Problems do arise when one side crosses over a little too far into the
turf of the other. A great musical example of this is the famous story
of Art Tatum, the jazz piano improviser, and Vladimir Horowitz, the famous
classical pianist. Both lived in New York, and Horowitz invited Tatum
over to hear an improvisation he had written. This was already a disaster,
as you don’t write improvisations, but Tatum listened politely and then
ran the changes for an hour or two without repeating himself, much to
Horowitz’s consternation.
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And we’ve had something like that situation around here recently. A few months ago, you may have noticed a 20 Questions & Answers (Live Sound, January 2003) on the subject of stage monitors. It was written by a monitor engineer about monitoring engineering for monitor engineers, and I go on record here as stating that I am in total agreement with the writer of that quiz. (You could say that if I wasn’t in agreement, it would be an indication of schizophrenia, if you catch my drift.) However, the quiz elicited some whining from some of the technical worthies on staff, to the effect that there were “technical errors” in the quiz. |
Well, duh, it wasn’t a quiz, it was a sharing of information in a pseudo-quiz
format. And it wasn’t written for the Journal of the Audio Engineering
Society, it was written for Live Sound, and it was about monitor engineering,
not the engineering of monitors.
The subtext of the alleged superiority of physical science bias shines
through in this kvetching, but I was talking about realities that regularly
occur, real-time, during a performance with numerous unpredictable variables:
stage volume, alcohol, mistress feedback, changing distances of vocal
orifice from microphone, changed response in a vocal mic due to the thing
being doused by spittle, changed response in a mic after it gets dropped
the 10th time, microphonic stage, wind, rain, the whole drum tuning bummer,
variations between monitors, bad maintenance, etc., etc., etc.
QUANTIFY & PONTIFICATE
There is no way that people operating from sheet music could predict or
ring the improvisational changes needed to cope with such a freak show,
so they ignore the stuff which is the lion’s share of live engineering.
They can’t quantify and pontificate that there were “errors”. This is
equivalent to saying that we improperly read the string quartet from the
sheet music provided, but there is no music (or methodology) written that
can cope with the zoo of monitor world. We have to be prepared to take
things on the fly.
Very experienced monitor engineers, for example, will keep an eye on all
the vocals, and if they start to sing flat, will up vocal levels without
being asked, as any idiot can tell that this needs to be done. When leather-jacketed
youths do their first shows in monitor world, they are told never to change
anything unless it is requested, yet as they become geezers, they join
the band and protect the artists when those artists start to screw up.
This, and all the other fixes that monitor folk have to generate, are
done in response to the flow of the show, on the fly, improvised. I can
see the tech response now: “Our new Freebus 47-Z will give you a readout
that your lead vocalist is a half-octave flat, so make the necessary plus
2 dB kick in the side fills, just like a real monitor engineer would!”
When some speak of growing from doing sound by ear to the higher plane
of measurement/tech, they are telling us that they are moving from the
multidimensional aggravation of improvisation to the comfort of the printed
page (or display). This presumes a need for simple answers, a need for
structure, and it has a place in live sound, specifically theater, corporate,
and certain parts of the hardware design process. But not monitors.
There is a frightening book titled Fast Food Nation that describes, among
other things, the attitude to labor that has been developed by the fast
food giants. A certain hamburger empire familiar to us all has an average
four-month tenure for all non-managerial staff. The operation is structured
so that there is no way that the workers can learn any extra stuff and
add value to their labor. “Minimum wage from cradle to grave” is the watchword.
Sophisticated machines limit the bandwidth, if you will, of their contribution,
and if they could get rid of all the carbon-based work force, so much
the better.
CORPORATE MOTIVES?
As we see digital in its many forms creeping into the live industry, it
is obvious that, in some degree, we are headed the same way. If virtually
anything can be quantified by a machine, and a show can be delivered without
improvisational human intervention, then those who own the machines will
see their profits and control maximized.
Let’s face it corporations aren’t really big on improvisation or depending
upon the kind of people who operate outside of directly quantifiable control
structures. Given the chance, they will limit our bandwidth, too, and
they could not care less if the music or the shows are too boring or predictable.
And if you doubt this, think about what’s happened to radio in recent
years.
Rock ‘n’ roll was successful because it was from the heart, the ether,
whatever but not from the page. When and if the engineering of that
music is forced to conform with the equivalent of the limitations of the
classical form, we will be trading emotion and creativity for the structure
of printed music. I suppose, though, if you’re going to listen to Britney
Spears, you might as well have a machine mix it, right?
Years ago, I provided a system for a benefit dance after a performance
by Circus Vargas in its big tent. We loaded into the site and watched
the show while waiting to set up, and I was fascinated by their sound
guy, who was 60 if he was a day with a “square” haircut and polyester
jacket and tie.
He had little crummy speakers all over the big top, and as he sat there
and played the fanfares from his Dr. Rhythm with his right hand while
opening and closing the announce mics with his left, I was amazed at the
precision of his mix and the way he hit his cues with no intercom or cheat
sheet. He knew the pulse of that show better than the animals or the trainers
did, and there is no way that any data could be formulated for the page
that would create the outcome this great engineer delivered directly from
his heart, by ear, the way we do it: live.
Jack Alexander instructs on topics allied to Performance Audio at Columbia College in Chicago. Reach him at jalexander@colum.edu
May 2003 Live Sound International