Recently, my good friend, Kubilay Uner, an amazing composer and engineer, wrote about how a certain mixing problem can sometimes be solved with simple panning, and I was reminded about what Walter Murch has to say on the subjects of panning and mixing in general.

In this interview, which is way too pithy to summarize here, Walter talks about the “Law of Two-and-a-Half”. He states that our brains are able to track only about 2.5 individual strains of something, but as soon as the number reaches 3, our brains no longer perceive them as 3 individual things, but instead as a singular, melded “group of things”.

He refers to his work in film as an example, like how when there’s one person walking, the sound of the footsteps needs to be in sync, and when there are two people walking, the footsteps need to match, too, but if there are three or more people walking, then none of the footsteps need to sync up. It’s as if the brain crosses a threshold and, instead of perceiving 3 individuals walking, it perceives a singular “group of people” walking, and as long as the sound is that of a “group of people” walking, the brain will accept it whether it’s in sync or not.

As other examples of this phenomenon, he talks about the how the Chinese symbol for “tree” looks like a tree (mu), the symbol for “woods” looks like two trees (lin), and the symbol for “forest” looks like three trees (sen). He mentions how Bach believed the listener could only handle three individual melody lines at a time, why Barnum had three rings in his circus, and even the “mysterious ‘mulitple singularity’ of the Christian Trinity”. He observes than many primitive languages only have words for “one”, “two” and “three”, beyond which anything more is simply called “many”. Although he doesn’t mention it specifically, I’m pretty sure he’s also referring to how three different notes are heard as a singular “chord” in our minds.

He talks about the way the brain decodes speech as opposed to music, why dialog is mono and music is stereo, and he describes them all in terms of colors, too, which is something I relate to as well. If my eyes are closed and I hear a loud sound, a certain pattern related to the nature of the sound will flash across my field of vision. Music to me has always been about colors, shapes, and textures, and now with the ubiquity of Pro Tools, the visualization is literal. Ultimately, what he’s presenting is some “conceptual and practical guidelines” for successfully navigating the crowded waters of modern mixing and production, and how to determine which sounds should dominate, which should play second fiddle, and which should be eliminated altogether. These are all extremely valuable insights to anyone who works in fields like ours, where creativity and technology intersect.

Walter Murch is amazing – A true Renaissance man and a great source of personal inspiration. The man has won multiple Oscars for both picture editing and sound mixing. He was the first person to be called a Sound Designer. One of the original Dirty Dozen filmmakers, his handiwork can be seen and heard on such seminal films as The Godfather series, Apocalypse Now, Cold Mountain and The English Patient. He and his colleagues actually invented the 5.1 surround sound format. He has lectured to neurosurgeons about picture editing, and to architects about Copernicus and the Pantheon. He’s even working on a new theory about Bode’s Law, which has to do with finding a mathematical pattern in the orbits of the planets. Basically he’s discovered that the ratio of the distance of the planets, and even moons around planets, match the ratios of intervals that make up a 7th chord in music. More about that and his observations on Copernicus can be read  in this interview.

I connect with his desire to look beyond the boundaries of one specific field of expertise, like picture editing, and discover, explore and describe the underlying patterns that seem to repeat in what are otherwise disparate areas of study. This is something that I have touched on in previous blog posts and thought about extensively, although with nowhere near the depth and rigor of Mr. Murch. I continue questing to discover more about this Ur-philosophy, this Meta-Creativity. I used to call it “Fractillian Thinking”, but Mr. Murch calls it “Cross-Disciplinary Thinking”, which I think is a more accurate description.

Maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough to talk with him or even work with him, and then I’d barrage him with so many questions we’d never get any work done!

Additional recommended reading:

In The Blink of An Eye by Walter Murch

The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje

http://filmsound.org/murch/murch.htm

I’ve been busier than usual recently:

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is our pleasure to introduce to you, Madeleine Frances Hiler:

One of the most talented bunch of guys I’ve ever worked with, TRIGGERS did such a good job with their debut record we signed them to our label! Now they’re available on iTunes as well! Check it out!

hi folks!

As many of you know, I have a small independent record label with a partner, Kyle McCulloch, and one reason I haven’t been posting here is that I’ve been super busy getting the record label’s website off the ground.

Well, guess what? It’s done! Well, as done as anything like a website can every be, haha.

So, if you have a moment, please stop by and look around. I’d love to hear what you think.

http://www.anomalyrecords.net

Thanks, and have a great day!

John

In motorcycle training you are taught that, when rounding a corner, you should stare at the point ahead in the road where you want the bike to go. Do not stare at the tree or other object off to the side of the road you are trying to avoid. One tends to end up where one is looking. It’s like focusing on the object literally with one’s eyes makes it loom larger in the mind’s eye as well – as though whatever we look at becomes stronger, as if the object feeds off the rays of our stare the same way a plant grows in the sun’s blinking warmth.

The man who oversaw the massive public project of constructing the first subway line in Manhattan, which was done all at once instead of one station at a time, was only 35 years old at the time. After it was completed he said, if he had known how hard it was going to be, how many hurdles and missteps he would have to overcome, he never would have agreed to do it.

In the beautiful documentary A Man Named Pearl, a self-taught horticulturalist, Pearl Fryar, has created a 3-acre Eden of fantastic topiaries out of thrown-out plants, including trees that, according to the experts, should not even be able to grow in that part of the country. In the face of this fact, Pearl replies, “Well, nobody told me I couldn’t grow them here.”

As economic times grow more difficult for many, it is easy to see how the creeping rust of self-doubt can begin to gain a toehold; understandable when one’s vision begins to drift from the brass ring to the yawning chasm. We all know what happens next in that movie. Like they always say, “Don’t look down!”

People that achieve great things have at least one thing in common – they focus on their objectives, not on the hurdles in their way. It would be beneficial to keep in mind the positive vision of what we hope to achieve, that which we wish to come to pass, no matter how much more out of reach it may seem temporarily. Envision the best possible outcome, like the ski racer that runs the course perfectly in their mind before even entering the gate, and you’re almost already there. The first victory happens in the mind.

A few weeks ago an old college friend of mine, Mark Wicklund, a brilliant man who is getting his Doctorate in Linguistics at the University on Minnesota (is Professor the opposite of Confessor?), sent me this link:

http://www.thelongtail.com/about.html

After reading it I replied to him, and I realized it would make a good blog entry. Here is my original reply:

—————————————-

Mark, I finally had a moment to check this out. Thanks for sending it to me. It’s interesting, but it’s hard to get past the guy’s huge ego. (His “about me” is almost as big as the article!) My favorite line from the Wikipedia article:

“The phrase the Long Tail was, according to Chris Anderson, first coined by himself.”

LOL

The theory seems like pretty obvious stuff to me, but it’s all observational and reactionary of course. It’s been going on at least since the 80’s with the advent of a hundred cable channels and the idea of an all-music-video channel seemed absurdly vertical.

But when some self-important editor deems it necessary to claim ownership of a generic idea like that and, in the second paragraph of his “about me”, writes…

“My speaking engagements are handled by The Leigh Bureau If you’d like to have me speak at a commercial event, please contact them directly.”

…it’s a big turn-off. Seems like he’s just another huckster selling his wares under the guise of offering wisdom. Whenever some suit starts spouting cliché phrases like “buzz marketing” and “viral marketing”, it’s a sure sign they don’t have a !@#$%ing clue as to what they’re talking about. I’ve been hearing those terms for years now and still no one has been able to show me a single example of where that has actually worked or paid off. We still live in a world where our cultural choices are dictated by massive marketing campaigns costing millions of dollars spent and dictated by the corporate giants. Any look at the Billboard charts or recent box office draws would prove my point. There’s not a single “viral” marketed item amongst them. Hanna Montana? Bruce Springsteen? Yeah, right.

(Disclaimer: I don’t read Wired magazine. After reading his blog, I saw a copy at a library a few days ago and thumbed through it. I guess it purports to be a technology trend focussed publication, but it seems more to be a cross between Maxim, Spin, and People Magazine, except without the rigorous journalistic standards, haha. In fact, that particular issue had 3 articles on magic (magic??), a guest editorial from JJ Abrams (Felicity? Lost? please.), and advertisements for both cigarettes and booze. This kind of sophomoric, parlor-trick “intellectualism” does a disservice to us real nerds and geeks. So, this is Chris Anderson’s legacy? Hmm.)

Maybe the real lesson to be learned from Chris is that if you want to quickly make megabucks, simply claim to be an expert on some trendy theories that typical corporate suits have no clue about. They are so afraid of losing their stature and Land Rovers in this collapsing economy that they are desperate to throw money away in the form of hiring an “expert lecturer” who will leave them feeling self-satisfied and sufficiently stuffed with enough new catch-phrases about current tendencies in the marketplace in order to appear cool and “in the loop” with their idiot bosses and around the water cooler next monday morning. If that’s the goal, then this guy’s got it right.

Finally, at the end of his page:

“By the way, there is no better way to spend $10 than to subscribe to Wired. But don’t take my word for it. It’s the wisdom of the crowd.”

There’s that wisdom word again. Who would even want the wisdom of the crowd anyway? Isn’t the triangle widest at the bottom? Isn’t that the same as “mob rule”? Since when does wisdom have a price tag?

So, is his blog an example of the very thing he’s talking about? Selling his books & lectures one reader at a time instead of paying for a full-page ad?

Hmmm, this would make a good blog post….

cheers,

john

PS – I concur with the criticism offered by Anita Elberse in the Wikipedia article. Seems she’s an actual expert on the subject, too. It’s more recent as well. So much has changed since 2004.

—————————————————

And then, a week after sending this reply to Mark, new light was shed on this very subject that even further erodes the veractiy of Chris’ claims:

P2P Study Questions Long Tail Theory
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i3e5aa5e0b30aa48e0874ebf4627fd88a

So, there it is. Another self-styled “expert” debunked by actual experts with real research. Imagine that.

Quad Erat Demonstrandum

Now, can we please get back to making great music?

A Walk In The Park

Kath and I went for a nice walk in the park yesterday. Spring has sprung and the trees are in bloom. I took some nice pics of the trees and the park, and the show ended in a grand finale of a magical 22° halo showing up around the sun. Fun! The photos are here.

Griffith Park is 4,210 acres, one of the largest urban parks in North America, and it’s only a couple blocks from where we live, which is great. On the other hand, Los Angeles has one of the lowest percentages of shade coverage of any American city, which is why they’ve decided to cease planting the tall, lollipop-looking palm trees synonymous with Southern California since they give about as much shade as standing behind a skinny person. They’re not actually native to Southern California, either. They were brought in as decorative plants starting in the 20’s and 30’s. They only truly native palm tree in Southern California is the Desert Fan Palm (Washingtonia filifera).

So, while one of the iconic images of LA are slowly becoming part of our history, a return to native species that are better adapted to the environment, use less water, and that provide more natural shade is a smarter, more harmonious solution in the long run.

I’m sick as a dog, I couldn’t sleep last night, and my ears are clogged so I’ve taken the day off from mixing. Mostly I’ve been laying on the around watching futbol.

Meanwhile, I’ve been meaning to post about the Music/Food connection for quite some time, and now that I’ve got some forced down time I can finally get to it.

To me, mixing a track is the same as making dinner. To make a great meal, first you have a recipe or at least an idea in mind. Second, you have to shop for the highest quality ingredients you can get. Thirdly, you put love and care into prepping those ingredients – chopping vegetables, etc. Finally, the actual cooking step – an alchemical process where the ingredients come together in the right proportions, with the right treatments, and magically transform into something that is more than the sum of it’s parts.

Sometimes if a client walks in on a mix before I’ve had a chance to do my thing and prematurely starts giving me feedback, I’ll say “Don’t taste the soup when it’s just boiling water and carrots!” They might say it needs “salt”, but they don’t know that later I plan to add some pancetta or other salty ingredient. Sometimes we talk about effects – reverbs, delays, etc. – as the “sauce” or “gravy” of a mix. Also the analogy holds that I can only make the meal as good as the ingredients I’m given. No matter how good a “chef” I am, if I’m forced to work with wilted lettuce and tainted meat, there’s no amount of cooking that will make it a great meal. On the other hand, tracks that are like amazing organic, local, in-season produce, when supplied in the right proportions, almost mix themselves. This is one reason why it nice to produce and engineer the projects I mix, albeit much more time consuming. As the great football coach Bill Parcells once said, ”If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.” I also realized this after doing so much mixing – that if I wanted the mix to sound better, I needed control over the arrangement and recording as well. Three guitar parts all noodling in the same frequency range and stepping all over each other (bad arrangement) make mixing very difficult.

I’ve always been interested in the “meta” aspects of things. How music, cooking, and even engine maintenance all basically stem from this same approach, the same philosophy. All are about systems that involve both art and science, and all involve arranging components in such a way as to create what is ultimately a final product that elicits an emotional reaction.

One good book that covers much of this is the Pulitzer Prize winning classic tome Gödel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (http://www.amazon.com/Godel-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237082331&sr=8-1). This guy is almost too smart for his own good. In it he compares the music of Bach to the artwork of Escher and the mathematics of Gödel.

The idea that there is some common force behind all this may come as no surprise to some. One definition of music is math over time, since so much of what we consider harmonious (albeit culturally-limited) is based on certain Pythagorean ratios.

Then there is also the field of study of Musica universalis, a.k.a. Music of the Spheres (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_spheres), which extends the Pythagorean concepts to measurements of the celestial bodies in the universe and describes them in musical terms. In fact, in 2003 it was discovered that black holes emit a B flat! Admittedly it is impossible to hear as it is 57 octaves below middle C.

So, as you can see, at this point the boundaries of music, math, physics, astronomy and even astrology all start to blur together. (Don’t forget cooking and motorcycle maintenance!) What we are left with, what this universal (pardon the pun) force is that makes all of these secondary fields of study possible, is something that is beyond the limits of our current wisdom. Some would say de facto it is God, but that’s a subject better left to the theologians in their ivory towers. All I can deduce is that it’s about vibrations, without which life as we know it would cease to exist (part of the definition of absolute zero degrees Kelvin); it’s about ratios, since everything is relative; and it’s about time, without which this blog post would never end, haha.

Thoughts?

Garry Trudeau is by far and away my favorite cartoonist. As a teen I would read compendia of his comic strips. To this day, his intelligence, insight and wit continues to buoy me through the worst of times. Like Mencken, Twain, Bierce, and now Stewart and Colbert, he manages to take what is a wholly unfunny condition in the world and find the silver lining that puts a smile on my face and reminds me that nothing in life is worth getting stressed over. And he’s done it day after day for decades. His characters are not frozen in time like a Simpsonian tesser, but have continued to grow and evolve, dealing with life’s curve balls: BD lost a leg in Iraq, Rick lost his job from the Washington Post, of course there was an amazing tribute to Hunter S. Thompson as his doppelgänger Duke’s head exploded (again), and now Mike Doonesbury’s daughter Alex is at MIT, navigating through her own teacup tempests:

Enjoy.

http://www.doonesbury.com/

right after a good rain, my favorite weather in LA is.

beautiful cumulus clouds, the sky is deep blue for once, and the rain cleans the streets and sidewalks, forgiving all their transgressions…