I need a geek

  • Thread starter Thread starter dobro
  • Start date Start date
dobro

dobro

Well-known member
The August edition of Electronic Musician has a pretty comprehensive article on DVD. It's really interesting, really powerful, and the article claims it will gradually start to displace CDs and CD-ROMs. Okay, I'm up for it - I think video could be fun. Not as interesting as music, but possibly an interesting and attractive way to present the music. But I need a geek. I've been doing everything myself so far, and happy to do that, but I can't write, play, sing, learn gear, record, mix, burn CDs AND work the camera and learn how to put video, audio and interactive bits on DVD. I need a geek. Video is a highly sophisticated art form (not that you'd notice it looking at MTV music videos...), and it needs loads of time, effort and attention to get right. A lot of musicians just can't do video as well as they do music (anybody seen Kate Bush's Red Shoes 'film' called the Line, the Cross and the Curve?). So any home recording band that gets into this medium will have to have a geek for a member.

Vocals: Sanchez McTaggart
Guitar: Omo Sidebar
Bass: Kunkle Knagg
Drums: Floggeroskins
Geek: Little Jimmy Jeebits
 
Anyone care to lay a little wager on when Dragon creates the new DVD forum?

I'll start: exactly this time next year.
 
dobro,

DVD originally stood for "Digital Versatile Disc". It doesn't necessarily imply video. There's a new standard that has come out recently called DVD-Audio which has incredible potential.

The really cool things about DVD-Audio are:

1. It's very flexible.
There is tons of space and you the producer can choose how you want to use it. For example you could make a really long disc with several hours worth of 16bit 44.1kHz stereo sound, OR you could make an hour long disc filled with 24bit 192kHz stereo, OR you could produce a recording in 6 channel surround sound and still have the flexibility of choosing the bit depth and sample rate for each of the cannels - say 24bit 96kHz for Left, Center and Right, and 16bit 48kHz fir the Sub and back channels - however you want to split it up with the space you have available!

2. Lossless compression
Unlike MP3 type compression which looses information in the translation, DVD-Audio uses a standard called Meridian Lossless Compression. MLC is like the audio equivalent of a ZIP compression algorithm. You get back bit-for-bit what you put into it. After decompression the audio file that is played back from the DVD is exactly the same as the one you started with - i.e. no sound degradation due to the compression!

I can't wait until I can afford to start working in this format. Surround sound used to have a well deserved bad wrap because it sounded like shit, but can you imagine having 6 separate channels of better than CD quality sound to play with? Imagine how dynamic and open your mixes could be!

barefoot

PS. I think this time next year is a good prediction. Only it will be a DVD-Audio/5.1 Channel forum.
 
Well, if I had a band you could be our geek. :D

It's the combination of audio AND video and what you can do with it that intrigues me more than surround. Also, with DVD video, you can do interactive bits that link to websites, for example - it's still glitchy, but the possibilities are huge. All this with two channels of sound playing back at 24/96. Damn! You can see where this is gonna push CDs out toward the edge. They're gonna become like cassettes are now. And will anyone still have cassettes and cassette players?
 
Damn, I'm always getting labled as the artzy-fartzy geek type :D

I know you can put some video on DVD-Audio, but personally I still think it's the SOUND thats going to make it a winner. In a few years even the up turned nose audiophiles are going to listening in 5.1 sound.

I've been experimenting with a rudimentary 3 channel system. 16bit 44kHz L, R and Sub. Man the sound is great! Just by throwing the bass to a separate track you can open up the dynamics so much! In regular stereo the damned bass steals all of your signal range and pushes the mids and highs down into the bottom bits. If you have 3 outs plus an extra amp and sub, give it a try. You'll be amaized!
 
Old Geezer Mentality

I'm a 70's guy, so... call me an old geezer (fart, fuddy-duddy, etc.), but with very few exceptions, I don't think music and visuals NEED to go together. If you're making a full-length film, that's one thing, but songs?! The whole "every-song-must-have-an-accompanying-video" thing (MTV) cheapens both the music AND the artist. Just my opinion, of course. What did Queen's Roger Taylor write in "Radio Ga-ga"? "We hardly need to use our ears / How music changes through the years." (The irony, of course, is the elaborate video the band then made for the song!)

But to get back on-topic: Yeah, I agree with the post that outlined a few of the truly awesome AUDIO possibilities for DVD's.
Now THAT's something to look forward to - an hour's worth of high-definition digital?! 6-track surround sound w/different bit rates?! Holy CD-R, Batman, Di-Vine-Disks are the s#@$!

A closing note / rant: back before MTV, I judged the quality of bands and their music by the images they created in my mind. (This is w/o additional artificial stimulation, folks!). If it evoked exotic / fantastic places, people, creatures, or just blanketed me in goosebumps, I would think, "Wow. Great band!" Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Rush, Queen, Yes, Genesis, and others regularly moved me and gave me these images / skin conditions. If, on the other hand, the mental picture was merely that of 4 or 5 dudes plunking away on their instruments, I didn't value the music nearly as highly. For me, the Rolling Stones are a good example of the latter.

After 1981, the industry began it's continuing process of creating all the images for us. This, to me, robbed the music of so much magic. (Well, a great deal of '80's music is decidely less-than-magical in my book, anyway.) So, when DVD's become the standard medium, I hope creative individuals won't feel it necessary to dilute great music by complying with what "the biz" wants. Comments?

Whew!

Okay, I'm done for now! Sorry, but I just had to get that off my chest. I feel better now.


Bruce Ray
 
Old Dudes Unite!

Great post, Burce, and great discussion everyone.

As an old dude myself, I tend to think like Bruce about the images that music evokes. That's probably why the old Boston song "More Than a Feeling" has always been one of my favorites; the theme of the song is all about the images that hearing a song brings to our minds.

DVD audio is definitely going to provide a rich, exciting way to express musical vision. I hope that today's winning musicians and producers (ie. the guys with the big budget recording contracts) will be able to catch this vision and ride with it. There is a lot of room in modern music for some real creativity. I also hope that by the time it is accessible to we lowly hobby musicians that it hasn't taken a serious compatibility flame and gone the way of DAT tape for home audiophiles (can anyone remember when DAT was going to replace cassette for the mass distributed choice for popular music?).

Just think, 10 times the storage capacity! Boggles the mind.

DDev.....
 
I'm older than both of you, and I agree that MTV is lousy. But have you ever seen The Last Waltz, the film of the Band's last blowout concernt with lots of their musical buddies playing as well? It's wonderful, first because the music's so good, and second because it's truly insightful and interesting to see these guys in action. Watching Van Morrison give that kick, watching lounge lizard extraordinaire Dr John do Such A Night, and watching Dylan's illegal smile at Robbie Robertson - unique and unforgettable stuff. Who said music was only for listening to? Who said you can't watch it as well?

Plus the possibility for interviews, skits, documentary-type stuff, stills... Loads of potential for enhancing the music.

But if your idea of video for music runs along the lines of what MTV is doing, maybe it's just as well if you go the DVD-audio route... :D
 
Additional comments...

Thanks, DDev & Dobro! DDev: How could I ever have forgotten to put Boston & "More Than A Feeling" on my "inspires great images/goosebumps" list?!? I think that first Boston album was one of my all-time favorite 70's releases. MTAF still does it for me. Mr. Scholz & Boston (well, same thing really) have never done videos, either. By the way, check out the band's (not updated terribly often) bulletin board at www.boston.org)

Dobro: I was ranting exclusively about artificial, CREATED images that seem to come bundled with any new music: slow motion, explosions, a dude playing his electric guitar in the woods or underwater, gratuitous scantily-clad girls, ad nauseum. On the other hand, I absolutely LOVE watching concert videos! It's very rewarding to be able to see my heroes doing what they do. Interview stuff is welcome, too. I just don't want anyone to try to create images to original music. That, to me, is akin to those ridiculously cheesy art exhibits in which the artist has a one-paragraph blurb "explaining" what he's trying to tell me through his painting/sculpture/whatever. Leave us the hell alone and let US decide what it means, I mean, she-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ez!

Thanks for the support and discussion!

Bruce Ray
 
Old dudes regress! :)

I was a kid in the 70's, and yes there was a lot of great music. I was also heavily into Zeppelin, Rush, Yes, etc. But don't miss out on all the incredible stuff that's been happening recently by getting stuck in the past. Don't loose your childish verve to discover!

Did you know that there is still an underground revolution going on (which pinnacled in the mid 90's) where MUSIC is the absolute center of everything? Names, faces and personalities are of very little importance. It's head music for the new millennium, but instead of traveling over the hills and far away on a guitar solo, you travel in a transcendental spaceship of beats and continually invented and evolving organosynthetic soundscapes. It comes from musicians with the minds of tweaked out 1960's avant-garde Berkeley electronic music professors, and the hearts of ancient tribal drum beaters.

Personally I know lots of great modern music and the names of many 'bands', but if you told me the names of individual persons or showed me pictures, I doubt I could identify more than one or two. That's not what it's about. The pieces are the 'stars' not the people.

Dig deep. You won't hear it on the radio or find but more than a few of the very biggest CD's at Tower or Sam Goody. There is amazing and intelligent music being created TODAY. But you're definitely not going to find it if you're still looking for the next Rush.:)

barefoot
 
I just said 'don't loose your childish verve to discover!' True, but even beyond that don't loose your childish verve to CREATE!

I think Van Gouge was middle aged when he started painting. You're never too old to be a ground breaker!

Old dudes, I hope my head will be soon be swimming in YOUR revolutionary new music.

barefoot
 
Good advice

Hey Barefoot: Thanks for the inspiring words! I'll be the first to admit that I sometimes get stuck in the past, but I can't help it if certain music really stirs my loins. I do like lots of different things, though.

I totally agree that there's ALWAYs someone out there making innovative new music. We don't hear it on the radio, and probably never will given THAT animal's current state (i.e., rotten).
A moot point for me, because I almost never listen to the radio when I visit home in Ohio, and NEVER here in Korea. (It's pretty lame here too, sad to say.) And receiving radio airplay is not the standard by which "good" music is measured anyway. I could go on and on...

Finally, I really appreciate the Van Gough comment. That goes back to the business/image part of this business: so much emphasis is placed on youth that many mistakenly believe that only the young can be innovative. Let's prove them all wrong... and whether or not they know what we look like is, in the end, immaterial.

Peace!

Bruce Ray

I'm always interested in hearing about intelligent new bands, but being "overseas" leaves me well out of the loop, as it were. Feel free to e-mail me privately about some of these bands you mentioned at this address: abray20012001@yahoo.com Thanks again!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top