Massing Online

What I wouldn’t give now to have enjoyed the power of 2020 hindsight back in 2019!

All those things we took so utterly for granted only a few months ago – live gigs, kids at school, hand sanitiser (not that we cared about it then), crowded spaces – all now replaced in the blink of an eye with isolation, boredom, unemployment and uncertainty.

But these unexpected changes have included something else… a massive shift in the way we participate in music. Everyone, it seems, has become a performer!

Even from inside my studio I can hear the groans of the 4G Network bending under the weight of all that Internet traffic, as everyone takes to their new online lifestyle.

It’s a brave new world, that’s for damn sure, but I’m not going to dwell on that here.

Suffice to say, while some of my work has dried up like a worm in the hot sun (as it has for most of us reading this magazine), paradoxically my phone has been ringing day and night.

Friends, non-musicians and the wider community have suddenly taken to participating in random online recording sessions, and some of them have been requesting my involvement or advice.

There’s a veritable tidal wave of new audio material out there, surging onto the Internet: via phone apps, over Facebook and Skype et al, some of it at least has slightly loftier expectations of its audio quality.

As a result, guys like me have suddenly received calls from people who, three months ago, didn’t know a mic from their elbow.

For now, I’m going with the flow of this seismic shift, not quite knowing where it might lead.

Although I have several albums in production at the moment to keep me busy, at least one of these has stalled – in the short term at least – until we can find a satisfactory online recording method that’s not too tedious and unwieldy.

In the meantime, I’m half expecting that my participation in at least one of these ‘Community Projects’ (not wanting to patronise it with a label) will inform me of the best way forward for my paid gigs.

The Bedroom Hit Factory

I predict that this year, the biggest hit will come via someone recording in their bedroom – and who knows, it might have been tracked already – and if that occurs, this homemade production (including the video) might just transform the way we view pop stardom.

It might finally force the world to divest itself of the persistent notion that big hits must always be recorded (and filmed) inside shiny studio facilities, by people wearing fifty thousand dollars worth of clothes and makeup.

Shabby and unshaven might become the new look for videos – and the crappier the backdrop the better!


Coming Together, Tearing Us Apart
The project I’ve volunteered to participate in this week has, however, no such expectations of itself other than to distract and entertain those involved for the sheer hell of it.

Organised by a musician I know in Gippsland, Brett Glover, who’s perhaps more widely known for his role in getting the Bundy Hall (near Bundalaguah, VIC – yep, I’d never heard of that town either) cranking with live music in recent years, the project is called Mass Online Band, and the song we’ve recorded is a cover of INXS’s hit, Never Tear Us Apart.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s been quite fascinating to both witness and participate in.

It has swept up kids, grandparents and every age group in between, glued them all together with a sense of community they so desperately crave, and added a healthy dose of humility to the expectations and purpose of musical performance.

It’s participation in the raw (almost literally), featuring a grab-bag of musical skill levels, and an even wider array of audio engineering techniques (if some could be called that).

But what’s fascinating is that there are literally thousands of similar projects happening the world over right now, which should be of particular interest to those of us who derive an income from the audio industry.

These spontaneous projects are ushering in the further democratisation of music recording – a heavy sounding notion to read perhaps, but not really.

Digital recording equipment ushered in a revolution years ago now, transforming our industry by giving more people a chance to show off their musical skills. This worldwide shutdown is taking that digital revolution and running with it… down the street and around the block!

And for those of us in the audio industry with something to sell – mics, converters, speakers, PAs, our skills as engineers – this might just mean that, though times are painful right now, on the other side of this mess the market for audio equipment might be four times bigger than it was going in.

I guess only time will tell.

Music In Isolation
The Mass Online Band project is just one example of the way in which people gravitate to music when they’re pushed into a corner.

As people have found themselves locked down, music has emerged as a common auditory link, via live performance on people’s balconies – like we all saw in Italy – and online the world over amongst amateurs and professionals alike.

What’s also been fascinating to see has been the relatively humble, sometimes unremarkable, online musical performances by famous musicians in their own homes, stripped of their giant PAs and lighting
rigs, stage sets, and roadies.

While it’s no consolation to the thousands of CX readers who derive their livelihood from working with musicians and actors on stage, it won’t go unnoticed by the latest batch of amateur performers that often their musical heroes, when stripped of all the associated trappings, look just like they do!

I dare say this will push more people than ever to say “bugger it, I’m gonna have a crack at this!”

The Mass Online Band project probably has a few such participants, though I can’t be sure; I’ve not spoken to any of them!

Actually, related to that concept, this musical online collaboration is unique in my experience for one specific reason: there has been no collaboration.

Most online recordings involve some sort of back and forth interaction – sometimes endlessly – between musicians as they bounce off one another’s performances, and the word ‘collaboration’ is nearly always central to describing that process.

The Never Tear Us Apart cover, meanwhile, was achieved with nothing more than a Facebook page and a demo guide track that anyone could download.

No-one collaborated in any musical sense; each individual played in isolation to nothing but the guide track, knowing nothing about what anyone else might be adding to the project, nor where the music style was even headed.

And from a technical standpoint… well, frankly, there was no technical standpoint! No-one paid any attention to where their audio file started or ended, and nothing was recorded at a common digital resolution. It has been as close to technical anarchy as a project gets!

But it’s worked. Admittedly, I had to convert and time align every single audio file as it came in, but that was a relatively simple process, albeit slow.

The time alignment was basically done by me, by ear – there was no common ‘blip’ or clapper board noise at the start of each file, with which to align them.

Admittedly, I knew the tempo of the guide track, so it was easy enough to set up a simple tempo map inside Pro Tools, which I used to get things close. The rest was simply an evolutionary process of getting to know what each performance sounded like as it came in.

A few were completely unusable, but mostly everything’s in there… a few missed the cut – well, I mean, you can’t really have six people playing the same bass line. I had to pick one of those in the end.

There are two drummers: myself and a guy called James. I’ve mixed the song’s final pass tonight, without knowing who most of the performers even are, whether they’re eight or 80, or what they look like…

I guess I’ll find out when the video uploads to YouTube later in the week.

It’s been hilarious to hear people in their homes having a crack at a Michael Hutchence lead vocal, getting it horribly wrong, and sending off the video and audio files anyway!

I’m sure Michael would be touched to know that so many people took refuge in his words during this crisis, for some brief amount of time. I dedicate this article to him, and to the many other great musicians – including my hero John Prine – who have been taken from us recently by this horrible virus.

EDITOR’S UPDATE: As we went to press, the video had more than 100K views and 1,200 shares, and Andy was being interviewed on ABC Radio, and Channel 10s ‘The Project.

To check out the great results of the Mass Online Band project for yourself, go here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCDclazXGk8

CX Magazine – May 2020   

LIGHTING  |  AUDIO  |  VIDEO  |  STAGING  |  INTEGRATION

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