Production Advice

AND YOU KNOW WHAT ?

I’m not going to shout about it.

Even though that was the whole idea – to be honest, I’ve been SHOUTING non-stop since midday yesterday, and I’m getting a bit of a headache. (“Shouting” on the internet means typing in ALL CAPS)

When I suggested this gimmick for Dynamic Range Day, I had no idea how good an analogy it was be for the Loudness Wars. It’s not my original idea, by the way – I can’t remember who made the comparison originally, I think it was on one of the mastering forums.

BUT ONCE YOU START TO DO IT, TYPING IN ALL CAPS STARTS TO FEEL REALLY ODD, BECAUSE ALL THE SUBTLETY, MEANING AND NUANCE OF WHAT YOU’RE TYPING IS GONE.

And when you connect that to music, it really does make the point incredibly well. Exactly the same thing happens to music when we push the level up and up – so that there’s no contrast, no light and shade, no subtlety or room for impact.

TYPING IN ALL CAPS I FIND MYSELF LOOKING FOR *NEW* WAYS TO GET EVEN MORE IMPACT AND I JUST FIND MYSELF GETTING MORE AND *MORE* FATIGUED…

…just like listening to hyper-compressed music.

So, does that mean I think the idea is a huge success ? Well, yes and no.

It’s certainly caught people’s imagination – every few minutes a new post appears on Twitter with the #DYNAMICRANGEDAY hashtag, and more and more sites are posting and linking in here – these are just a few I didn’t mention yesterday:

Sensoria
The Faderhead Blog
GeorgeSolo.com
Control Voltage
The “Loudness War” Project
The Music Of Sound
Fix Your Mix
Mike Hillier

But is the message really getting across ? Or is ALL THE SHOUTING actually putting people off listening to the message, just like it puts people off listening to the music ?

I’m not sure yet, but thinking about this has made me change my mind a little about tonight’s attempt to get #DYNAMICRANGEDAY trending on Twitter.

I still want to try it, so please come along at 9pm GMT to give it a shot – but, I won’t be shouting as much. I think I’ll be using it selectively, for impact – but not continuously.

Which, is exactly what I hope people will start doing with music, again !

Something I tweeted yesterday caused quite a bit of surprise and discussion.

“Nevermind” by Nirvana must surely be one of the most popular and successful LOUD albums of all time, right ?

Well yes, but it seemed to shock many people to realise that almost anything released today is at a higher level, even country and folk records. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” has a dynamic range of 11dB as measured by the TT Loudness Meter, whereas “Your Long Journey”, the first track on “Raising Sand” by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, has a range of only 8 dB.

So a gentle acoustic ballad, featuring mandolins, vocals and not much else, sounds 3dB louder than one of the loudest albums ever, as a result.

It’s mad – we all know it’s mad. We just have to help everyone else to realise it’s mad.

Is Dynamic Range Day a good way to achieve that ? Time will tell, but for now – let me know what you think in the comments !

And this time, there’s no need to shout


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