Intern Amar Singh - Week 2

As I begin to write this, I'm trying to figure out what the lesson I learned from this week was. Not that something life changing or horrible happened at the studio- but I guess the work I got to do and watch made me think a little about the purpose of what I was doing. Maybe I've been having a bit of an introspective and moody week… so let's just jump right into it!

A few of the clients that came into the studio this week asked me what my plans were for work in the future. I'm kind of bad at answering those kinds of questions. There’s a lot to say in such a short window for a response, so I try to give a summary of my aspirations as best I can, or just say “I don’t know” when I really don’t know what my plans are.

I'm hoping to maybe one day help make music and work on audio for video games. I think I’d also like to be able to do that for other forms of media like movies or television. That's kind of broad, but I’m hoping it might help me to stay open to more job opportunities while still getting to do something I'm interested in.

I think what drove me to study music, programming, audio, and try to make a career out of it came in large part from the intersection of the different things I like in life. I often listen to the soundtracks of video games or shows to see what I might’ve missed, or re-experience moments and feelings from them. I also enjoy getting to create things like videos and songs for myself, and to share with others. Being able to create and solve problems during the creative process is kind of satisfying to me. It's also frustrating when it doesn't work out well. Those are all things I think I'd like to be able to carry with me into my career though.

The work I get to do at the studio uses some of the same skills I use for my passions, but it requires a different kind of attitude and mindset to get the work done.

This week I mainly worked on tuning vocals using Melodyne. Bill recorded an a capella group and gave me one of their songs to work on. My first step was to clean up the vocal performance and fix some of the tuning. The bass parts were already done for me by someone else which was nice. Gives me a little less work to do.

I’ve seen people use Melodyne before, but this was my first time sitting down to actually use it. I can’t really speak to how Melodyne works on a technical level, but what I can say is it's a powerful tool that can do a lot with tuning and more. Individual notes of chords can be tuned, timing of notes can be changed, and the way a pitch sounds–like its vibrato–can be adjusted.

I started by working on the altos and adjusting their tuning by hand. I was clicking and dragging individual notes to their pitches. I tried to use a combination of what Melodyne was saying was in tune along with my ear to make my decisions. That took me a little more than a full day maybe to get through, and that was just for the altos- I still needed to get through the tenors and sopranos.

Bill didn’t really have an issue with that though since I was still figuring out Melodyne and what the process was like. He showed me some features to speed up my workflow like how notes can be automatically adjusted to pitches. I just had to be careful that the notes got adjusted to the right pitches.

I went on to tune the tenors, trying to work through the parts more quickly with the new technique I learned. I still went in to fine tune notes by hand and worked section by section, relistening to things to make sure they were sounding right. I was able to get a little more done in a shorter amount of time, but it still wasn’t enough to get all the parts including the sopranos tuned.

Bill then recognized I was probably giving the vocal parts much more fine tuning than the project required. He explained to me that there were different levels of tuning, and in general, effort, that could be given to a project depending on how much time and resources could be spent on it. In some cases, autotune might be enough to get the kind of tuning you need. I was doing decent work, but it was more than what was necessary for this project.

The issue that started to creep up in my mind though was how speedily using Melodyne might remove some of the artistry from the process of making music. I wanted to use more of my own judgement to fix the tuning and performance of the vocals. If Melodyne could just do a grand majority of the work for me without needing a whole lot of input from myself, then would that make what I was doing kind of mindless and without meaningful intention? Would that remove some sort of value from the musicianship and artistry of myself and the performers?

Maybe.

There’s also different levels of humanization you can apply to a performance after you make your changes with Melodyne, so that adds another level of junk to what I'm talking about here.

But now, I think about the rest of the work I got to see Bill do this week. There was lots of mixing and podcasting going on. There was a really fast paced Warner Bros. voice over session. That one kind of stunned me just from the pace they were going at recording lines and how quick they wrapped up when they were all done. There's lots to be done with varying levels of time, energy and resources that can be committed to each. Despite that, Bill would still manage to get results that pleased clients, showing care for the art of it.

I guess the lesson I learned this week was that the amount of resources that can be given to a project varies, but the artistry doesn’t have to disappear. Some projects can get a lot of time and meticulous care given to them. Other projects have to get quickly rolled out the door the same day. Though no matter the project and what tools are being used, there'll probably be at least some room for artistry. I think as I figure out how this industry works and churns, I'll also be figuring out how to balance artistry with efficiency. The passion of doing things I like with getting stuff done.

I think I’ll wrap up my recap of this week there. Maybe I’ll get a mix finished for the a capella song next week.

Now that we're at the end of the blog, I’m just gonna try and shoehorn in another fact from my life. I recently finished playing the game “1000xRESIST” developed by sunset visitor. Very interesting characters, plot, and storytelling. If a narrative game about a clone society, space alien disease, generational trauma, and more, sounds interesting to you, I recommend you check it out.