EUonline Feature:FROM ANALOG 'GHETTO' TO DIGITAL 'REMORSE' Part II

While both David and I were proud of the work we had done on Ghetto Life 101, we also realized that the recent developments in Digital Audio Workstations were changing the nature of our jobs. With this arduous mix fresh in my mind, on May 15-16 1993 I attended the SPARS DAW shootout. Just about every company manufacturing digital editing systems was represented. David had recently received a grant that would enable him to buy a DAW, so this was the ultimate venue for serious shopping. Later that year, David invested in a Digidesign ProTools system. After that, we rarely saw him at the NPR New York Bureau, although I continued to work with him at his studio, Sound Portraits Productions. Among the stories we mixed for NPR were The Gods Of Times Square (ATC 941223) and All The Way Broken (WATC 950909).

"The differences between analog and digital mixing are shown in sharp relief when comparing these two documentaries, and the efforts expended in their respective mixes."

This is an typewritten page of production notes. The red splashes are BrainWash brand soda, the brown stains are coffee. (256K JPEG)

Our working collaboration has changed with the technology. Now,instead of dubbing to analog tape and cutting with a razor blade, David does all his preliminary cuts on hard disk files. No more rolling the chair over that important snippet of tape!

After he has rough cut the elements, he assembles them in a mix, and sends a messenger with a DAT to me at the bureau. I listen through, making notes on levels, EQ. After completing my notes, I E-mail them to David at his studio.

A few days before the piece is due, I join him at his studio to do final equalization, level matching and polishing. In many ways, there has been a blurring of our roles so that David often does a lot of the preliminary mixing while I come in with content based suggestions as well as engineering and mixing advice and other changes.

Early in 1996, David told me that he was preparing a sequal to Ghetto Life 101. LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, now 16 and 17 years old, had been interviewing their neighbors at the Ida B.Wells housing project in Chicago. Their new project Remorse: The Fourteen Stories of Eric Morse was a report about a five year old killed by two boys aged 10 and 11. During January and February, several DAT tapes and lots of E-mail travelled back and forth between Sound Portraits Productions and the NPR New York Bureau, and on February 13 a preliminary rough mix was sent to Executive Producer Ellen Weiss at ATC. All Things Considered was again creating a special slot for the kids from Chicago. This time, they'd get the entire first hour of the program.

First Step: Collect the field tape

Remorse also had a lot of field collected tape, recorded on Marantz PMD 222 cassette decks. Although their interview techniques have become more sophisticated with maturity, LeAlan and Lloyd still have a way to go on their recording. LeAlan's interview with then- Chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority Vince Lane was badly over-modulated, and the questions were marred by proximity effect and bombshell plosives. However, these problems could be partially rectified without the degradations of generation loss using the ProTools EQ and doing fine level correction on the offending p-pops, then bouncing the repaired track. As all the processing occured in the digital domain, no additional noise was picked up. Complex sections like the ending, where multiple ambiences crossfade with timed music beds under copy and actualities, were comparativly easy. Adjustments to timing or editing within sections could be accomplished without re-mixing. We were able to bring the piece to the time ATC Executive Producer Ellen Weiss needed in order to hit her timeposts with fairly simple cuts, using the ProTools crossfade function to smooth any ambience glitches.

The final mixing stage of Remorse took 16 hours over three days. This works out to about 24 minutes per minute of final mix. Again, this just represents my engineering time, and does not include David's hours of cutting and preliminary assembly. Remorse aired on NPR's All Things Considered on March 21 1996, the first hour-long piece on ATC since 1981.

"Both [digital and analog] systems have strengths and flaws."

The difference is...

The differences between analog and digital mixing are shown in sharp relief when comparing these two documentaries, and the efforts expended in their respective mixes. Both systems have strengths and flaws. The digital advantage is in its flexibility and the ease with which one can make and un-do changes, the amazing degree of control over all aspects and elements of the piece, and in the ability to bounce, submix and process without sacrificing to the demons of multiple generations and tape hiss. The physical limits to the ballet of hands, switches, and machines are no longer barriers to creativity. But something is lost too: the serendipity of the moment when the wild sound and the music hit together, something we might never have heard but for a lucky accident of timing and the 'wrong' fader being up. Qualities like 'warmth' inherent in analog tape recording seem to be lacking in the digital realm. We'll find ways to include room for chaos and accidents to occur, techniques for spontanaity, the frequencies for color. As we continue to learn and develop with these systems, we'll learn to be less obsessive about the details, just because we have the power of control. And we'll find ways to keep the organic sense of growth and randomness that help to keep pieces from sounding too sterile and perfected. We'll enhance our working relationship to emphasize the creative, collaborative partnership of ears and esthetics.
It can always be better, but it has to be alive.

Caryl Wheeler, NPR New York Bureau Engineer, is a regular contributor to EU. She can be reached at cwheeler@npr.org

Two documentaries, two technologies, three years

FROM ANALOG 'GHETTO' TO DIGITAL 'REMORSE' Part II

by Caryl Wheeler