Author: Barry Hartglass

It must have been late December or early January this year when I received a text message from Samantha Kenny, one of my former students at Guitar Center Studios (Danbury, CT), where I taught piano, guitar and bass (and got amazing discounts!) from 2012-2018. Samantha stopped taking piano lessons with me after graduating high school when she became a student at The New School in New York City. It was great to see her again when she came to hear me perform some unusual, experimental music in Brooklyn with Audible Abstraction in September 2018.

Anyway, as I was preparing my syllabi and course content for the Spring 2019 semester at Hostos Community College (Bronx, NY), Samantha reached out to say hello and let me know she was around if I needed help with anything. Perfect timing! For my Production 1 class at Hostos I needed to record a guest soloist for a mixing project at the very beginning of the semester, so I asked Samantha if she wanted to record something in the class for the students to mix. She is not only a pianist, but also a very talented singer/songwriter with a contemporary style. For the recording, she considered playing acoustic guitar and singing, like what she does on her very popular Samantha Michelle YouTube channel. The other option was to sing to a prerecorded track that I would create for her and that’s what we ended up doing. Samantha sent me three YouTube videos of songs she was interested in recording. I never heard any of them before but my Production class was familiar with all of them! The one I thought was the most manageable for me to do was “Rather Be With You” by Sinead Harnett from her 2016 EP. I don’t remember what the other songs were.

I got to work by quickly transcribing all of the parts I heard on the recording by ear and wrote everything down on a couple of sheets of blank manuscript paper. There were so many parts (drums, synthesizers, sound effects, background vocals, etc.) and I knew it would be impossible to recreate it exactly – this would take way too long – so I decided to just capture the essence of what I heard, while still being somewhat detailed.

When creating the track, I decided to limit myself as much as possible to using the instruments that come with Pro Tools so that my students would have access to what I did. After creating all of my parts, everything was recorded as audio tracks for the students to mix and the Instrument and MIDI tracks were hidden. For curious students, those tracks could be unhidden and analyzed inside the session. Normally I use a lot of third party instrument software within Pro Tools (or Digital Performer, Logic Pro, etc.) and don’t use the default Pro Tools instrument plug-ins that much so this was an educational experience for me too. A couple of times during the semester, I opened up the session in class and showed how I created the sounds for each part.

I used Boom for the drums (kick, snare, rim, clap and hi hat; no toms or cymbals). I needed a shaker loop but couldn’t find one in Xpand!2 or anywhere else in Pro Tools that I liked for this song, so I found one in Spectrasonics Stylus RMX. However, in Xpand!2 I found very good bongo and triangle samples, layered two sounds together to create the wind effect, and layered three sounds together to create the organ-ish electric piano sound. Toward the end of the song, right before the last chorus, I used iZotope Vinyl on the electric piano track to do the spin down. This incredibly cool plug-in does not come with ProTools but can be downloaded for free from the iZotope website. For the main bass part, I combined two sounds in Structure Free, and for the short synth bass gesture that happens occasionally I created a buzzy sounding patch using Vacuum.

For my version I had three synth pads. The first was created in Xpand!2 by layering two sounds, the second was created in Xpand!2 by layering three sounds, and the third was created in Structure Free by layering three sounds. Sometimes with all of the patch combining I also modified various parameters (filter cutoff, resonance, etc.) and effects within the instruments to help design the final sounds.

Since I wasn’t sure if Samantha would be singing any background vocals, I decided to recreate two of the many background vocal parts with synthesizer sounds. I layered two sounds together in Xpand!2 for the repeating crescendo part (“then I realized, then I realized”), and for the main “You…” chorus hook I couldn’t find what I needed in Pro Tools so I used a “female ooh” sound from Spectrasonics Omnisphere.

The Sinead Harnett track has an extremely vibey feel and I found this challenging to recreate quickly. If I spent more time and messed around with different quantize settings and got into nuanced velocity and duration details, I may have been able to pull it off. Instead of obsessing with any of that, I just opted to record the parts as I wrote them in my transcription and use basic quantize settings to tighten up the performance. Because of this, my track sounds a bit straighter and maybe stiffer in comparison to the original.

On February 5, 2019, Samantha came to Hostos! Oje Paloma (the ultimate lab assistant!) setup a number of microphones and I discussed their differences in frequency response and other features with the class. Samantha sang into all of them – Neumann U87, Neumann TLM103 and AKG C414 XLS; the Bock 195 was having issues so we didn’t get to hear that one for the shootout. By vote, the class chose the AKG, so that’s what we used, with a Grace Design m501 preamp and one side of a Universal Audio 2-1176 compressor. Samantha sang a few takes of the lead vocal to my track and she did a fantastic job! She didn’t get to record a lot of background vocal parts so it was good that I had the synthesizer vocal parts in the track. All of the students made their own mixes and we listened to them in class the following week.



I wanted to make my own mix but I was only able to work on this sporadically at home over time in between sessions for clients. To finalize the arrangement, I recorded my super talented 14 year old daughter Maya singing a bunch of the background vocal parts. She doubled the synthesizer vocal parts and also sang some (not all – so many!) of the other parts that we heard on the Sinead Harnett recording. In less than an hour Maya added a number of very substantial harmony parts (Harmony is her middle name!) that made a big difference.



I didn’t limit myself to only Pro Tools plug-ins for my mixing and mastering. I also used my usual palette of effects from Focusrite, Native Instruments and Waves.

“Rather Be With You” (featuring Samantha Kenny)

I sometimes get complimented on certain aspects of my music production work, like how I arranged or mixed a song, or how I edited something or played an instrument a certain way… But I’m beginning to notice that a number of people are even more appreciative of me because I simply acknowledge them by responding to their emails and phone calls! Apparently, this is a big deal that I do this! A rare behavior someone said recently! What is going on out there? There seems to be a “no reply at all” syndrome going around… I’ve been noticing this a little myself as well. What is most surprising to me, is when I call someone to HIRE them, to pay them MONEY, especially after they stated that they would like me to hire them, and then they do not respond, EVER! OK, no problem, I’ll call someone else.

Recently, some work came in because the person who was called first did not respond, even after numerous attempts to get their attention. I responded right away and so I got the gig. Maybe there should be a tagline on my website: Barry Hartglass Music Composition & Production – I respond to EVERY email and phone call right away! Maybe if I added that I’d have so much work that I wouldn’t be able to respond to everyone’s emails and phone calls…

Perhaps some people are just too busy or overwhelmed with things that they are unable to respond to every email or phone call that comes their way. The problem is that the sender of the message might get insulted when they are not acknowledged, even though it might just be a misunderstanding or something else altogether. They are assuming that they are being ignored whether or not this is actually true. And this is why they appreciate it so much that I actually respond, consistently. It usually only takes me a moment to respond so it’s really no big deal to me. I never thought this was a special feature of mine that I should mention, let alone write an entire blog about, but apparently it is.

I have decided to not take it personally when I am not responded to and I suggest you do the same. You don’t always know the reason why there is no response. It could be technical. Maybe they simply didn’t get the messages. This is very possible and this has happened to me. Or maybe something is going on in their life and they just can’t deal with every little message. Also very possible. Or maybe they are really inundated with messages and never even saw or heard your message. I know some people who are very popular or even somewhat famous and I can only imagine the number of messages they are receiving all day every day. However, there are others like this that always respond no matter what, so it is also very possible, that you are simply being ignored for some reason. You may never know the reason so just forget about it. It doesn’t matter. Let it go.

If you would like to be responded to though, you can always send me an email or call me, even if you don’t know me. Go ahead. It is my personal policy to ALWAYS respond right away. I promise to respond as fast as possible. If you don’t hear from me in 24 hours, then something is wrong. Try again. This has happened before. I’ve been sent emails that never got here, and once someone said they called and left messages that I never received. ??? So try again. I will reply no matter what it is about – personal or business. And not only will I reply, but if you happen to ask me 5 questions, for example, I will respond to EACH one – not just 1 or 2 of your questions, but ALL 5 of them. I will also try to be as clear as possible in my correspondence. I know how frustrating it can be when you don’t understand what someone is talking about. Clarity is important to me.

Or, if you don’t want to email or call me, then I suggest listening to “No Reply At All” by Genesis. You’ll feel better. It’s a fun song and video even though the lyrics are not necessarily so happy… I’ve always liked this song and the clever arrangement. Every instrument has a cool part.

Genesis – No Reply At All by jpdc11ame

A few years ago, I produced Annie Karto‘s CD, “Refuge,” which featured Annie’s “Song For Immaculee.” This song was inspired by Immaculee Ilibagiza‘s incredible book, “Left to Tell.” Annie has since become friends with Immaculee and there is a VIDEO of Annie singing her song live, with Immaculee in the audience. The emotional hug at the end of the video is a very touching moment. Because of this new friendship, I had the honor of meeting Immaculee and also producing a new CD for her as well. The CD is called “Let Your Will Be Done” and I am very proud to add this title to my Discography. Reading Immaculee’s remarkable story is life changing in her books “Left To Tell” and also “Led By Faith.” These books should be required reading for the entire world!

Immaculee, who loves to sing, liked the work I did on Annie’s “Refuge” CD and asked me to help her create this special new CD. Her 12 minute song, “Let Your Will Be Done” is a very simple, but beautiful song. Since it is supposed to be a meditation, it repeats the same verse and chorus melody many times. My concept was to have the musical arrangement gradually develop over the length of the song to keep it building and interesting throughout. First, I created a basic track with music for one verse and one chorus. Among other things, I used some sounds from Spectrasonics‘ “Heart of Africa” sample CDs, Volume 1 & Volume 2, and also “Symphony of Voices.”

Immaculee came to my studio and sang all of her many verses and a couple of choruses over my basic track. It was interesting recording her. Here in my studio, singing into my microphone was the inspiring woman from those life changing books I read. Immaculee miraculously survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide by hiding in a tiny bathroom for 91 days with 7 other women, and now tells her amazing story to large audiences all over the world. But I tried not to think about all of that. Like on all vocal recording sessions, I was focused on making sure her performance was the best it could be – in tune, in time and with clear, understandable English, making the most of her beautiful Rwandan accent and rich singing tone.

The next step for me, on another day, was to edit Immaculee’s singing and create a developing music arrangement that was emotional, inspiring and interesting to listen to over the course of 12 minutes! I did this by slowly building up the instrumentation and singing and then starting over again small and building it up again. To do this I arranged a piano part that starts the song and gradually added in elements from my previously created basic track and adding some new sounds as well. Immaculee asked me to include some type of “high pitched” instrument. I showed her some of the instruments I had and she seemed to like everything! I decided to use my soprano saxophone and this instrument became a very important and featured element in the arrangement, especially during the interludes in between sung sections and at the end where the chorus repeats numerous times. I improvised melodies on the soprano saxophone throughout much of the song. During some of the interludes I used Gregorian Chant samples (from “Symphony of Voices”) of men singing “Amen.” I thought that was not only a beautiful and lyrical musical addition but it was also fitting to sing “Amen” in response to all of Immaculee’s simple but profound lyrics. To build up the arrangement some more I sang along with Immaculee on later choruses and sang in harmony with some of her phrases in the later verses.

This was a fun project for me. I don’t think I ever featured my soprano saxophone as much as I did on this recording. And I almost never sing! I love incorporating world music elements in my arrangements and this was a perfect opportunity to use some of my African sounds. When I finished recording and mixing the song, Immaculee’s only comment in an email was, “I love it.”

Immaculee mentioned recording an album of Rwandan music sometime in the future, and I hope that I get to do that with her as it was a great experience for me to work with her on this CD. Wayne Dyer, in his foreword to Immaculee’s NY Times bestseller,”Left to Tell,” wrote: “Her story will touch you deeply.” That is most certainly true. On this CD, there are 3 tracks. Immaculee first tells her story and how her song came to be. Then there is the song, and then there is a meditation prayer. The story and the meditation have an instrumental version of the song playing in the background.

Unfortunately, five years after I wrote this blog post, Immaculee’s CD seems to have been discontinued. For anyone who would like to hear my production of Immaculee’s “Let Your Will Be Done” song, it is now included here:

For more info about Immaculee please visit her website: Immaculee Ilibagiza

Everyone always loves this story, so I thought I would post it here.  My sister, Caryn Hartglass, recently wrote about it on her facebook page:

Here’s the story about my dad, Harold Hartglass who was a great bowler in his younger days, bowling 3 nights a week. He competed in the 1968 Pro Am Madison Square Garden National Championship. Later all his bowling shirts, including the one from Madison Square Garden, were donated to a neighbor collecting clothes to send to Poland. Somehow it got into the hands of rock star Freddie Mercury and it was reportedly one of his favorites. We found it via an accidental google search around my dad’s 75th birthday when it was hanging in the Hard Rock Cafe in Shanghai. Now it hangs in Bahrain.  Unfortunately, Freddie Mercury is no longer with us, but my dad, now 84, recently joined a new league and bowled a 217!

In honor of his 84th birthday, which was on February 2nd, we are all going bowling today with my dad!

I should also mention, that like Freddie Mercury, my dad also sings…  Well, not really like Freddie Mercury, but maybe more like Billy Eckstine or Frank Sinatra.  I recorded dad singing a few times in my studio and then my father-in-law wanted to get in on the act too.  It became a Father’s Day tradition to record “The Grandfathers” singing together. Soon after, my brother-in-laws, became part of the group and they were singing on the Father’s Day recordings also.  Last year, I included almost the whole family singing together on a recording on Father’s Day…  A very musical family!

Take a listen to the recording that started it all – my dad singing the classic song, “All The Things You Are.”  He starts off by saying “This is for you Sugar.”  Sugar, of course, is what he calls my mom…  He ends by saying “Well,” which is his tribute to Billy Eckstine.  Upon first hearing this recording, my friend Claudia Martin (one of my favorite singers!), wrote “Who needs Sinatra?”  Of course, my dad loved that.

In my last blog, Everybody Else Is Wrong, I had a quote from Abraham-Hicks, a Dr. Seuss story and a Todd Rundgren/Utopia song. Everybody Else Is Right has nothing to do with any of that even though the title sounds similar…

The other day, someone was complaining to me that their client made them make a lot of changes to a project, and in his opinion, those changes made the project worse.  Of course, he made the changes anyway and the client was then happy!  And that’s how it’s supposed to be.

When I am providing any kind of creative service, like producing a recording or composing custom music for a marketing video, for example, the client (singer/songwriter, musician, video producer, advertising executive, etc.) is always right, even if they are wrong! And of course, there is really no such thing as wrong.  With creative projects, everything is entirely subjective.

In the end, it is their project and they have to love it.  It’s all about what they want, whether good or bad in my opinion.  It’s never about what I want.  However, if someone wants me to change something after I’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating a certain result, usually based on what they asked me to do, if I think their revision request might make the project worse, I will explain my point of view one time.  And if they still want me to change things than I will do my best to see things their way and try to make it work.  Ultimately there is no right or wrong, good or bad, better or worse, only preferences and opinions.

Using whatever skills, abilities, instruments and equipment I have,  I will do my best to achieve the desired result. I will try to figure out what the client wants in order to make them happy with their project.  When it’s all over, they have to live with it while I move on to the next project… Sometimes, many years later, a client could still be selling, and even performing with, a recording that I produced for them. It became a significant part of their life.  So what they want matters the most.

Different things are important to different people.  For instance, with my arrangements or mixing, some people love everything right away and don’t ask for any changes at all.  I do what I do and then it’s done.  Easy.  But some people are very particular.  They have something very specific in mind and will ask me to redo things, sometimes several times, until I get it right.  And the tiniest, most microscopic details can be of major importance to some people.  But that’s OK.  Let’s get it right, whatever that is.  At a certain point though it is time for me to mention one of my favorite quotes from Julia Cameron‘s wonderful book “The Artist’s Way“:

A painting is never finished.  It simply stops in interesting places.  – Paul Gardener

Sooner or later, we all have to let it go and call it done otherwise we will keep finding things to change forever! Next!!

Some singers I work with sing one or two takes and that’s it.  Good enough for them.  Done!  Some even ask me NOT to fix anything and to leave it raw, as is.  If something is a little out of tune, late or early, so be it.  They want it to sound honest and natural.  In complete contrast to that, some singers are seeking the ultimate perfection in their performance and require many takes, editing, tuning, tweaking, expression scaling, vibrato modifying, and then, after all of that, rerecording everything, and then going through the whole editing process all over again!  A lot of this may seem obsessive and ridiculous while it’s happening, but in the end, it’s good that we went through this tedious process.  All artists have a vision and I’m here to help them achieve it.  They may be planning on manufacturing thousands of CDs that contain their performance and their music and so it needs to be the best it can be. I will do it their way, whatever that is.  Everybody else is right.

In recent years I have become a big fan of Esther Hicks and the teachings of Abraham.  I like receiving their Daily Law of Attraction Quotation in my email every morning.  Today’s was particularly interesting:

Physical man gets into an uncomfortable place when he concludes, “I and those like me have come to the right decisions, and everybody that’s living outside of these right decisions is wrong.” And then he spends his life pushing against all those “wrong” decisions and cutting himself off from the Life Force that would help him have joy in his, what he concludes to be, right decisions. There is no one right path. There are endless paths, and the differences in the paths are what make them more and more, and more, perfect. The same old path no longer serves.  — Abraham

This reminded me of one of my favorite Dr. Seuss stories, The Zax, a typically silly Seuss rhyme, but also profound in it’s lesson about pride and compromise.

When I was younger, I used to listen to every Todd Rundgren and Utopia record over and over after my friend Kim turned me onto them in high school.  One of my favorite songs was “Everybody Else Is Wrong” by Utopia from their Deface the Music album (1980).  The title and the sound of it, a sort of comical homage to The Beatles, always made me laugh.  If you don’t like this song, you are WRONG and I will spend my life pushing against you!

Over the years, I’ve produced and arranged numerous recordings for songwriters with various levels of music training.  Sometimes I am presented with songs that are very complete with lyrics, melody and chords.  I am initially given a lyric sheet that may have chord symbols over the words, and maybe a demo recording so I can learn the melody, or the melody will be sung to me in person or over the phone. Whenever I start an arrangement, I always write out the melody and chords using music notation as a first step.  I like having a sheet I can refer to.  Notated music is my language.

But sometimes I am presented with songs that are not as complete.  The songwriter may have minimal or no “academic” music background and therefore, does not know how to harmonize their melody by adding chords to it.  They sing their melody to me in person or over the phone and tell me what the lyrics are or send them to me.  In this scenario, it is up to me to “create” the chords.  It is usually obvious to me what the chords should be after hearing the melody, but sometimes, if it is not so obvious, I’ll present a few choices to the songwriter.  In either case, I never consider myself a co-writer by simply adding chords to existing words and melody.  I’m just the arranger.

There have been times though, when a songwriter has added words and melody to a music arrangement or chord progression that I created first.  I have a lot of unfinished ideas in my music “pile” that I look through from time to time when someone wants to collaborate with me.  In this case, I am considered a co-writer because the new melody was created using the music that I started.  In a scenario like this, I usually have a lot to say about the new melody and help to refine it.  At this point, there is no question that I am a co-writer as I am actively involved with crafting the melody in addition to the chords.  I may have something to say about the lyrics too, but I am more of a composer than a lyricist.

With some of my arrangements, I have practically rewritten entire songs to make them into what the songwriter really intended.  Even if I am offered writing credit for this I do not accept it.  As explained above, if I did not write the words or melody, I am not the songwriter, just the arranger.

There have also been times when I have composed original sections of music as long introductions to a song or significant interludes and did not take writing credit.  In this type of situation, if a new melody was introduced by me, I could technically be considered a co-writer.  But in most cases, I don’t make a big deal out of it and I’m happy to contribute whatever I can in the arrangement to make the song the best it can be.

When producing CDs involving previously recorded music (cover songs), if I am put in charge of “copyright clearance,” I always try to find the copyright owners in order to pay them their mechanical license royalties, no matter how small. The first place I look is on the Songfile on the Harry Fox Agency website.  But sometimes, if songs have been previously recorded but not published, it is unlikely that they will appear there. In this case I will do research on the internet, make phone calls and do whatever I can in order to track down the copyright owner!  Sometimes this requires significant detective work.  Once I find them, I send them their royalty check along with the appropriate legal document: Notice of Intention to Obtain Compulsory License for Making and Distributing Sound Recordings.

People generally appreciate it when you track them down in order to give them money!  One time after I paid an unpublished songwriter, a few months went by and he did not cash his royalty check. When I called him to find out why, he said he wanted to keep the check so he could show it to other producers he knew to teach them how things are supposed to be done!

Awhile ago, I produced a CD every year for a school where the students would include an alma mater song. They would sing about their school, sung to the tune of a very popular song.  Changing lyrics for a recording requires the permission of a publisher and so I always wrote a letter requesting permission. Here’s an informative site: Copyright: Changing Lyrics

In my role as the producer of a music recording, I always do my best to respect another’s copyright.

I’ve always had pretty good relative pitch and consider this an important skill to have if you are a musician or a singer. When I’m learning to play a song or composing, I try to use my ear only (not an instrument) and write down what I hear with a pencil using music notation. Once you know what the first note is, if you have good relative pitch you should be able to tell what the next note is and the note after that also, by recognizing the intervals between the notes.  If you have very good relative pitch, you should also be able to recognize the sound of combinations of notes, or chords, as well.  If you can’t identify these things by ear, then you must guess by noodling on your instrument until you find the note or chord that sounds the same as on the recording you are learning or what you hear in your head, if composing.  It takes much longer if you have to guess so it is advisable to learn the sounds of intervals and chords!  I highly recommend the The Relative Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse by David L. Burge. He drills you until you really know each interval or chord.  You only move on to whatever is next in the course after you’ve mastered what came before it.  So take your time and get the sounds into your ear.

If you are learning a song, how do you figure out what the first note is?  I usually try to guess that and sometimes I’m right but not always.  I don’t have perfect pitch, so I’ll play the beginning of a recording that I know how to play and then I’ll have that first note in my ear.  Or, I’ll walk over to guitar or bass hanging on the wall in my studio and pluck a note.  I’ll find the interval between that note and the first note I’m trying to hear in the song I’m learning and then I know what it is because of relative pitch. Several years ago I was working on the The Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse, also by David L. Burge, and experienced some success with it, but I was more interested in strengthening my relative pitch, which to me is more practical, so I focused more on that instead.

Having good relative pitch is useful for not only learning songs and composing, but also for improvising and singing.  Background vocalists, in particular, benefit from having good relative pitch so they can hear the lines they need to sing in the middle of the music.  Whenever I record Donna Cori Gibson singing her background vocal parts it is interesting to see how she notates them.  Even though she can read and write music notation, her vocal arrangements usually consist of numbers written over the lyrics.  These numbers refer to the 7 scale degrees of the key.  For example, in the key of C major, the notes are C D E F G A B.  C is 1, D is 2 and so on.  Donna sings her numbers.  She is able to hear and sing the intervals from one note to another even with everything else going on in the music.  This is very good relative pitch…

Shortly after I graduated from college, I started working with Mike Costanzo at his recording studio in midtown Manhattan, MPC Productions.  Mike, a very talented producer, engineer and musician, is a very good friend of mine from high school, and it was great to be working with him at his studio.  I learned a lot, especially about house music, which I had never heard of before working at MPC.  I thought, “We are in an apartment building in the city and there was no house so why is this called house music?”

Anyway, at the beginning of one session that I was engineering, one of the faders on the mixing console did not seem to be working.  I shouted to Mike who was in the office down the hall, “Hey Mike, how come there’s no signal on channel 1?”  Mike immediately shouted back, “1 is 7!”  Apparently, something happened to the channel earlier and Mike had to switch a wire to go to another channel to get things working on a previous session.  It’s a good thing he was there to tell me this otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to figure it out.  To do this day, “1 is 7” is one of those unforgettable phrases that Mike and I still use with each other.  There is something really funny about it to me…

One of the reasons that I like working at commercial recording studios is that they all provide a staff assistant engineer who knows not only how to use all of the equipment, but also knows if anything is broken or if there are any “1 is 7” types of technical things going on that only someone on staff would know about.  Some of the studios I’ve worked at in recent years (many have since closed or became another company) with great, very helpful assistants (and/or owners) include:

• Avatar Studios
• The Barber Shop Studios
• Bennett Recording Studios
• BiCoastal Music
• Legacy Studios
• Skyline Recording Studios
• Spin Recording Studios
• Systems Two Recording Studios

Fast forward to Halloween, 2011…

I was doing a live mix for Tom Nazziola and The BQE Project at a theater in Manhattan.  BQE was performing Tom’s brilliant score to the classic film, Frankenstein.  A few weeks before the event, Tom sent me the list of the equipment that the theater had and said that there will be no one there to assist me.  OK, no problem.  Doing a live mix is simple and involves much less equipment than recording in a studio.  No problem.  However, the mixer that was listed was an older Yamaha digital mixer that I never used before. I asked some engineering friends about it.  One said not to worry about it and I’ll be able to figure it out and another said that I should definitely download the manual and learn about it…  I didn’t have much time to read the 150+ page manual and I figured since there was no assistant, the mixer probably wasn’t too complicated.

I decided to get there really early the day of the event and I brought all of my own mics and mic cables.  I remember reading Don Aslett’s book, “How To Have a 48 Hour Day” and he talked a lot about the magic of EARLY.  Really good advice, especially for this day!

The first thing I did was look in the very small and very cluttered control room in the back of the theater.  Wires and other things were tangled up everywhere and the digital mixing console I was concerned about on the equipment list was not there!  There was a very simple, easy to use, small mixer instead.  Good.  Sigh of relief.  But where do I plug in my mics?  I looked around for awhile and eventually found an input panel on the wall to the side of the stage in a dark area.  But the musicians were set up all the way on the other side.  My 30′ cables were not long enough to reach the input panel so I had to go through the tangled pile of  miscellaneous cables in the control room in search of more mic cables to extend the length of my mic cables.  Eventually, I found enough extra cables.  It’s good that I got there really early!

I got there right before the group was about to rehearse and set up my 5 mics and all the cables.

• Audio Technica AT4047/SV over the drums/percussion
• AKG C414B-ULS in front of the double bass
• AKG C414B ULS in front of the cello
• AKG C451B over the violin
• AKG C451B pointing at the back of the upright piano
• The guitar amp didn’t need a mic…

During the rehearsal, while testing my mics, I wasn’t getting any signal from some of them.  Uh oh!  Once again, good thing I got there early!  Did I say that enough yet?  Time to troubleshoot the problem!  Whenever I do that, I start from the beginning of the signal chain.  In this case, the mics.  Some of the mics were definitely working, so I plugged the mics that seemed to not be working into the cables of the definitely working mics.  All 5 mics were good.  The next thing to check was the cables.  I plugged the cables that seemed to not be working into the inputs that had cables that were definitely working. All of the cables were good.  At this point, a lot of time went by and I still haven’t figured out the problem.  There was no way for me to test the input panel or the wires in the wall/ceiling that went up to the control room and into the mixer.  So I decided to test the mixer by plugging directly into it, bypassing the input panel.  Maybe there were some bad channels.  I connected a bunch of cables together making a very long cable and ran it from the stage up to the control room.  I tested each channel by plugging the cable into every channel, one at a time.  All of the channels on the mixer worked fine.  And then, a very clear vision appeared in my mind, I saw and heard Mike Costanzo in his old office at MPC Productions from years ago.  And of course, he said:

1 is 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I looked behind the mixer and noticed that the wires that were connected to the mixer had tiny, and very faded out stickers with numbers on them, numbers that were apparently corresponding with the mixer channels.  I assumed that all of the wires would be plugged into the correct channels.  But I was wrong!  Wire 1 went to mixer channel 1.  Wire 2 went to mixer channel 2. But wire 13 went to mixer channel 3 and wire 14 went to mixer channel 4… Aha!  Someone switched the wires and didn’t put them back, or at least leave a note anywhere for the next person (me).  Or maybe there was a note somewhere buried in the clutter everywhere.  If it was there, I didn’t see it.  Luckily, I figured this out. I found the wires with numbers 3 and 4.  I plugged wire 3 into mixer channel 3 and wire 4 into mixer channel 4, tested the mics and everything was finally working.  I was able to mix both shows that night with no problems.

Thanks Mike!  I’m going to put on some house music, in my house…

More often than not, when someone calls me in a panic to save their studio in the middle of a session, the solution is simple.  But sometimes problems are more complicated.  If I can’t figure out what’s going on over the phone, I may need to visit their studio in person.  Once I’m there I can usually figure out what happened.  In some situations it may be best to call a software company’s technical support line.  Below are a few solutions to typical home studio computer problems.  Since I use a Mac, some of this may not apply to PCs.  A lot of it will though…

——————————

Restart the computer

Simply quitting the program being used and restarting the computer solves most problems!  That’s it.  End of phone call. Session resumes. So if something strange is going on and you don’t know what’s wrong, try that first.  It also might be a good idea to restart in safe mode.  Safe mode is intended to fix most, if not all problems within an operating system. After restarting in safe mode, restart again the normal way and then see if your software is working better now.

——————————

Trash preferences

If restarting the computer does not solve the problem, than perhaps something got corrupted…  One way to find out is to delete preferences files.  A corrupt preferences file can cause a program to behave erratically. It can, for example, cause crashes when the program opens or when a document needs to be saved. Deleting a preferences file can thus be used to troubleshoot an application. Over the years, “trash the preferences” has been the advice that I typically got from tech support people over the phone.

A useful site to help with debugging Pro Tools is Free Software utilities for Pro Tools and Audio Post.

——————————

Leave some room on your hard drive

A full hard drive slows down your computer.  Leave some room on it.  It’s a good idea to always leave at least 10-15% free on your hard drives to avoid problems like fragmentation or even drive failure!  Always monitor how much available space you have on your hard drives.

——————————

Know where you save things

It’s important to be organized and know where your stuff is.  Applications go in the applications folder, documents go in the documents folder, etc.  And put all files related to whatever project you are working on in the same folder.  Right? I’ve seen computer desktops and external drives with loads of random files and folders everywhere. I’ve also seen some people not being mindful when saving new sessions.  In a mad rush, they click OK without even looking where their file is being saved.  No wonder why everything is all over the place and why there is confusion and frustration when I show up to solve the problem…  Take your time and pay attention to what you are doing.  Don’t hit OK or click on anything if you don’t know what’s going on.  Slow down!  Make sure things get saved where you want them to be saved…  Perhaps now would be a good time to take a few minutes and organize your desktop.  Copy files and folders to where they should be and get rid of anything you don’t need anymore.  This frees up space and unclutters your life a little. Just a suggestion…

——————————

Backup your data

There is no better computer advice then this:  BACKUP YOUR DATA!!!!!!!!!!  Even though this is so obvious, a lot of people do not regularly backup files.  You should always have at least one backup of your files.  More is better.  You never know what might happen.  Hard drives fail.  Not only do I backup EVERY project I’m working on to multiple drives, my computer also automatically backs up files for me using Time Machine.  Very important!

——————————

Call Technical Support

Sometimes a computer problem is just user error.  Maybe you did something by accident or you don’t understand how to do something with the software you are using.  Call technical support.  Below are a few websites and phone numbers for companies that have helped me solve computer related problems over the years.

Apple 800-MY-APPLE

Applied Acoustics Systems 888-441–8277

AVID 650-237-1700

East West

Finale

Glyph (607) 275-0345

MOTU 617-576-3066

Native Instruments 323-467-5260

Spectrasonics 888-870-4223

Waves 865-909-9200 ext. 1

——————————

Overwhelmed by technology?

Visit this website often: Do nothing for 2 minutes