Hi, would like to add my vote for this too. A batch of more advanced, in depth DVDs would be very welcome. That said, the current releases have been very useful.

Cheers :-)

1. How can I get Grammy level polish on my vocal tracks? E.g. smoothness, sit in the mix, compression without losing all dynamics, gear choice, exact gear settings and why, equipment chain order, room requirements, distance requirements, etc.

> There are multiple unreleased sections about it ... Vocals, compression, mix...

2. How come my guitar parts, vocals, etc. in my home studio sound so rough even though I have decent 24/96 equipment, Cubase 5, expensive condenser mics, preamps, etc. I obviously think it has to do with my musical limitations, but I'm sure that there is a lot that could be improved with great mixing techniques that he could share to smooth out and polish my tracks.

> I'm not sure whether it's possible to cover every single case... Maybe the guitars section and the vocals section will help. Who can tell without watching?

I'd pay $200 or even more for a 6-12 hour uncut download of Alan taking a young band into the studio and recording 1 song start to finish and him mixing it to rough completion just prior to mastering. The insights would be huge for all of us struggling to master the art. And he could even do so with other producers for spotlight videos and we'd all benefit. I'd buy each guest producer's individual uncut session footage as a member and I'm sure many would to see realtime practical application of how they work and make choices and the end results they get. Those details would teach me immediately why I'm not getting those same results and why.

>>>>

While this suggestion would not teach everything for the area I am in, being surrounded by Hip-Hop, R&B, Reggae, and Electronic Dance music, I really would like this info demonstrated for studio and if possible for stage. Similar to "Recording a Choir". I enjoyed that one the most so far as my first gig was live sound reinforcement, and I always wished I could have better performance takes when recording live. I had a eureka-type moment when he panned out-of-phase to provide an illusion of width. Why did I not think of that? But that is a valuable and fundamental mixing technic that a person such as myself needs demonstrated, and would pay to learn.

My main problem was always with piano, guitar and vocals vs feedback and dynamic range of the recording. The piano is truly a band-in-a-box, as its range is broad and overlaps the frequency range of other instruments/vocals and coupled with uncooperative performers can cause issues especially in smaller venues and the proximity to the mic positions, monitors, acoustics, etc. And once you make the house sound top-notch, some of the methods seem to lower the quality of the recording. I know it is primarily a mic positioning and monitoring issue, but I know it can be done. I would love to see it demonstrated and would pay more for it.

Additionally, how about mastering? Or even just the final-mix step in the process if mastering goes beyond he scope of this series. It could be a synopsis of mixing for Pop, Rock, Country, Classical, Club, etc. I can get good takes, just making it sound good enough to send off for mastering is my issue.

I know some of this will be addressed, but if not I just wanted to give my two cents!

Thank you!

Thanks so much for your input and feedback. It's always extremely helpful to know, personally, what people are looking for.
Several sections do indeed address the types of thing you are looking for. The Mixing section runs for more than 45 mins, I believe, and is presented as a continual process. Other Sections, too, such as the Live Tracking session, and even recording Guitar, and Vocals, show more of the human 'just as it happens' side of recording.
While we read with interest your willingness to pay $200 for 6-12 hour uncut footage :) - and actually we do make a lot of the interviews that surrounded the project available to everyone - Alan is trying to provide some specific help and advice on the various tools and techniques involved in recording and it would be tough to achieve that in too relaxed and/or rambling a presentation, even if that is how so many recording decision are indeed made. However we have filmed probably more than 50 hours of material during the making of this series. So, you have been warned!
Mastering is not part of this series, no. However I do think that the remainder of the series will give you a lot of the information you're still looking for (we certainly hope so!). While the individual sections provide specific information for those who are looking for 'just that', in order to really understand how 'Alan Parsons makes records' you will probably need to look at the whole package.

Thanks again for so detailed a post. A final thought, Alan spent years and years and years at Abbey Road listening to different types of music. At least part of the message of this series is to get people to appreciate the value of listening, experimenting, making their own decisions - hopefully based around many of the principles and directions that the series reveals.

As follow-up, I had purchased the full-DVD set about a month ago after seeing it I believe on the Electronic Musician or the Sound on Sound website. I am watching them as I find free time. I do enjoy going over the fundamentals and the various things that I have little experience with such as designing and building the studio's workspace/acoustic treatment.

I also really enjoyed the interview with Richard Dodd and the others. To me these guys are like the unsung heroes of the music business. Yes, I know they are or have been recognized in various ways. They are inspirational to me and such a stark contrast to some of the flash-in-the-pan types that are seemingly more interested in starting a clothing lines and setting Auto-Tune on automatic pilot, while crashing their gun-filled Bentley rental car in South Beach, than pushing the creative envelope in the ART of mixing, production and overall musicianship.

I am not intending to judging anyone, any genre, or any person in particular, just the whole music scene in recent years, has been a bit disenchanting for an idealist such as myself. Maybe that just how it has always been, come to think of it, did I ever return that copy of Auto-Tune? LOL!

BTW Glad to see topics you intend on releasing soon, I am sure there will be plenty for me to learn.

Something I wish I would have had instruction on, as boring as it may be, is a proper backup scheme, sample and project organization, and various other file management technics. This is probably not something that a person would put on a DVD set such as this, but wow I have certainly learned some hard lessons in these subjects recently. Right now I find myself spending more time doing data recovery than music. I currently am working with a failed NAS RAID migration in my home studio as I write this. So much time spent not working and creating. I lost approximately 1TB of audio and video, *poof! like a flick of a switch, gone. That happened one week after my Time Capsule died with 24-months and 1 day of ownership (I had a 24 month warranty!). Luckily I do have most of my data scattered across multiple HDD's and DVD's. For those who have not experienced it this is a major aggravation and stresses the importance of a good backup regiment. In my opinion, not doing proper back up and file management can cost more than a lost project, it can cost you a job, future work, and possibly a blow to your reputation if not handled correctly, I swear I heard that somewhere.

Sorry totally off-topic.

Thanks for reading!

First, I love this concept and have purchased the disc set happily.

However, I do feel it is a little bit more BASIC than I was hoping for. most is review for me... so far. I too would gladly buy a more high level set, getting to look over Alan's shoulder doing the stuff he does on the mixer or DAW screen. Kinda glad someone posted this topic. :)

I would agree that upon first impression,
All of the information is what anyone with any engineering experience
would consider basic... However, I would note the following;
1.
The reality is that the engineer is only as good as the musician.
Gear is important, but you should be able to get good to excellent
results with any decent equipment. The SM57 isn't top of the line,
but it is a workhorse and gives very good results for a wide variety
of applications. But you need a great musician to make a great
recording. Great gear will not make a hack sound like a pro.
2.
All there is basic information. No matter how much detail you
get about how Alan works, ( I agree it would be interesting.)
the fact is everyone should have the same approach...
Listen to what is playing and make critical judgments based on
what you are hearing. It might be nice to see how he got some
effect on some track, but it was still based upon what he was
listening to and feeling it needed something more. That is
something you can only develop over time.
3.
That being said, one thing this project could do, and it has been
more or less suggested here, is help make up for the lack of
mentoring in todays recording environment. Nothing can replace
spending hours as an assistant to learn the ropes, but as most
people don't have that option anymore, hours of raw footage
of a session in progress might help. It would be interesting at least.
4.
There is no "secret" to great recording.
The bass section is a great example. The technical content is basically...
Record direct. Mix the direct and mic'd amp if needed. This may seem
a bit blunt, but if you watch the section you will realize, the bassist
is what makes a killer bass sound. That's the secret.

My only negative comment is on the choice of Billy Bob as the narrator.
He may have a technical understanding of the content, but he sounds
like he suffered from a serious lack of caffeine in doing the voice overs.
Alan should have done the narration himself.

I believe you have hit it on the head. The best takes are the ones that need little or no editing.
The basics of recording sound are vital even for seasoned professionals and should be revisited often.
One alternative to being an assistant in a real studio, to a real producer, is to pool your resources with others. Whether its equipment or knowledge both have equal value when you are struggling with your mix. Learning how to collaborate with others is and will always be at the heart of making good recordings.
As for Mr. Thornton's narration I believe his experience as an actor, musician and voice for animation give credibility to his part in this series.

I feel like I am watching a documentary and not a tutorial DVD. Alan should have targeted these DVDs for a BBC documentary, and not recording engineers eager to learn practical skills and not theory, history, etc....etc...

As an engineer, if you do not know that half of the battle is the equipment (the other half your talent/ears/use of equipment etc...) you're in the wrong business (any type of business)...

I have just finished streaming the mixing part I section. Like a lot of the other guys here I have been recording using DAW's for several years. While I too could benefit from a more advanced program, I still found value in that single section and to me that makes it worthwhile. For example, the idea Alan learned from Geoff Emerick is a different approach than I normally use and I can't wait to try it out.

I plan to buy the whole DVD because I am sure that there will be little nuggets of wisdom or new ideas like this in every section. I think that if you are very experienced in recording you should be able to see that even if you only get a handful of new ideas and inspiration from the DVD's $99 is a very reasonable price. Plus it's Alan Parsons - I mean how cool is that?!!!

To RATIONAL and anyone else interested:

Check out this book and accompanying website. I believe this might be what you are looking for.

In the following link, you can hear the transition from a typical "home studio" recording to a fully polished song.

http://www.mixingaudio.com/book/sample_mixes.php

Best of luck.

Is the DVD set shipping to England yet? For me I'm glad it takes you from the ground up. I hope to grow in this area as I have been self taught for only 4 years.

Many thanks to the Alan (legend) & the team.

Steve Brown

Recently I have been helping a friend with a project he started a few years ago. He hosts a free to the public concert series at a local bandshell records the performances and posts them to the web.
The first season he used the audio from his video camera, OUCH! hard on the ears. This season has gotten more professional. Using a Presonus studio live and some better mic's and gear we have gotten some very nice wave files. So he rushed home and got busy mixing it in garage band and applying the finished tracks to his edited video. Of course he compressed and EQ'd and added a little reverb and was quite pleased with his work.

I suggested that he bring the raw waves to our studio and let me have a go at it. I then loaded them into Nuendo, since this will ultimately be mixed with video, and after adjusting each tracks level to get a starting point began to solo each track. After a few snips I turned off the unneeded parts, and a few more snips and adjusted the level's, removed a few pops and clicks and adjusted a vocal that came in a hair early. Now for the really easy part I doubled the tracks that need just a bit more in the mix, the tracks were created in 48k but the duplicates make it sound like it was recorded in a higher resolution. For leads or instrumentals I sometimes make a third copy and turn off everything but the parts that need punch.

My friend was very pleased with the results of my rough mix which will need very little compression or EQ to complete the mix, and after spending many hours trying to do it the way he thought it was supposed to be done now realizes how easy it can be.

If you are mixing in the box learn your DAW and what it can do for you. The hip-hop and gangsta' guys are way ahead using Ableton and wavelab honing their mix skills, they know what can be done just by editing.

Again Thanks to Alan and all involved in putting this project together I promise to turn up the good bits and the bad down.

Sincerely Wajmartin

I love the video's I have downloaded and they are fab quality etc..
But..
I would love to see and intermediate and or advanced series which takes things further and shows more actual detail of how to do things. Real examples for example of taking a sing from start to finished product showing more detailed step by step what is done and demonstrating the changes taking place at each stage.

I appreciate that learning is not instantaneous and listening and doing etc etc are al part of the process and that Alan is encouraging us to do just that..

I would happily pay for more of Alan's videos and knowledge.. And what a Legacy he would leave us all with (not that he hasn't already in his music and his work so far!!).

I have the complete series and all I can say is MORE PLEASE!! Series III advanced would be extremely, warmly welcomed!!

S.

it is precisely the discussion in this thread that vindicates my purchase. assr is producing something that i would support forever, purely based on the synergistic possibilities when like minds approach a important task and work together. i know the scope can and will be expanded, it's too important not to. a bit like george lucas stopping with american graffiti. (that thought is horrifying to me). alan and his team have done great so far, but the real value will come when we all use this valuable resource to exchange information; information that comes from our own 'real world' experiences, before 'or' after studying the 'assr content'.

subjects of interest to me (that i believe would be valuable to newcomers), based on working in sound reinforcement and sound engineering environments for 30 years, are the fundamental things that got in my way when i started out. impedance matching, how and why to use an adapter, infinitely simple stuff that without knowing, can impede your progress measurably. this would be great for the newcomers perhaps.

for the more advanced participant; i believe this forum will produce the results you all are looking for. maybe alan doesn't even see that yet, who knows? i'm so happy to see him doing this, but i wonder if he knows how big this really is? for someone who cut his teeth on 'the poe album', the entertainment value alone beckons me to participate.

I somewhat agree with the points you make regarding the series. I would like to see more of what Alan's thought process is, like what exactly it is that he's listening for (Do you hear that?... the guitar is masking the vocal! kind of stuff). However, all of my interactions with professional engineers have yielded basically the same information. A friend of mine, legendary Memphis engineer and session drummer Richard Rosebrough, best known for his work with Big Star, Alex Chilton, and Chris Bell, simply tells me to "Just do what sounds good! Make it sound like you think it should sound!" Okay, Richard... explain why "this" sounds better than "that", and how do I make it sound like I "think" it should... I would love to get more of that from Alan's series...

here's hoping they make enough money on this first one, and see enough interest in a higher level, more nitty gritty detail version

This post says "we do make a lot of the interviews that surrounded the project available to everyone" - where are they available? As someone who already had all the basic technological knowledge this series presents, the interviews are what really interested me: each engineer's philosophies, techniques and approaches.

And I second other requests for more advanced material and/or more unedited mixing footage.

Thanks for your question, tenvolt.

We have untold hours of interview footage from throughout the series. While only a fraction of the footage made to the 3-DVD series, we have tried to make a lot more available through our Podcast (http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/alan-parsons-art-science-sound/id3487...)
and Studio Stories on the homepage 'Video Browser.'
Plus, I can tell you that an upcoming 'Studio Stories' episode will feature Bill Putnam, CEO of Universal Audio. Look for it soon!

Ben Cruz
Video Editor

I was hoping for and expecting a more indepth video series. While it was enjoyable and interesting at times it did seems to just cover the basics.
I don't feel the product is worth the money and wish I hadn't ordered the dvd's.

While the DVDs are great, I too agree that some step by step, beginning to end, detail recording from Alan would be extremely educational. I'd love to see some of the more advanced techniques. How about another Webinar? There's nothing like visually seeing Alan at work doing his magic. I really enjoyed the last one, even though you had a lot of technical difficulties at the beginning.