Most times, Eric Pier-Hocking will get to the venue before you do. It's not because he wants to be in the front row, grab some limited edition merch, or even meet the performing musicians. But all of those sometimes occur in the line of duty.
This evening at Trans-Pecos near the Brooklyn-Queens border, he is in the front, though only because the room is small and the exact center of the stage in front of the performer is the most convenient place to set up his microphones. Plus, there's a booth alongside the nearby wall where he can sit. And he will be acquiring something rare, in that he's about to make a high-fidelity recording of an exquisite performance by acoustic guitarist Daniel Bachman. And, in fact, he does meet the artist, as well. "Mostly just to say hi," Pier-Hocking shrugs. The show isn't empty, but it's far from a sell-out. In time, though, more people will be able to hear Bachman's performance. Pier-Hocking is there to preserve the music and share it. In the process, he has become a valuable part of the 21st century musical ecosystem.
For most of the artists he records, he'll make sure to secure permission in advance, but like an increasing number of touring musicians, the Virginia-based Bachman is fine with audio-obsessed fans like Pier-Hocking. In this case, Pier-Hocking doesn't even ask, just sets up his recording gear.
"I'm all about it," Bachman says, understanding that high-quality recordings of his performances are good calling cards to have out there, his music spreading further when Pier-Hocking posts it online. "I actually record other musicians myself," the guitarist says. "I'll just pull up the voice memo app on my iPhone and record an entire set. I do it on the road a lot so that I can listen back to friends or other people I get to perform with."
Wearing a black denim jacket covered in pins, Pier-Hocking is not a professional audio engineer. The 37-year-old works by day as a production manager at a publishing company. With short hair and a neatly cropped beard, it's easy to peg him for the enthusiastic indie music fan he is. But to call him an amateur wouldn't be accurate either. What he does goes far beyond recording on an iPhone.
Tonight, Pier-Hocking is running a pair of MBHO KA100DK omnidirectional microphone capsules (via a 603A capsule attachment) into "a home-brewed" PFA phantom power adapter by way of a set of newfangled "active" cables, wired up by a colleague on a web forum for live-performance recording aficionados. (Most still refer to them as tapers.) Along with a feed from the venue's soundboard, the microphone signal runs into Sound Devices MixPre-6, a digital multi-track recorder.
But, once getting his gear set up and he's sure his levels are OK, Pier-Hocking mostly just sits and listens attentively to Bachman's performance. Occasionally, he glances at the MixPre-6, just to make sure it's still running.
Capturing the music from the two different sources—his own mics and the sound-board feed—as a pair of multitrack WAV files, Pier-Hocking will later align the two recordings in Adobe Audition CC. It gets pretty geeky. "Usually the mics are milliseconds behind the board feed," he says. "I zoom in on the WAV and look for a sharp point I can isolate, like a drum hit, and then shift it all over." He corrects the EQ with Izotope Ozone 5, tracks and tags them with Audacity, and outputs them as high-def, lossless files known as FLACs. Once Bachman has gotten back to him with approval and corrects the track listing, Pier-Hocking will post the show as FLACs and mp3s to NYCTaper.com, a website established by Dan Lynch in 2007.
Sometimes, with an artist's permission, Pier-Hocking will also establish a page on the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive, where visitors can listen to shows right in their web browsers, and where files are backed up regularly to locations in Egypt, the Netherlands, and Canada. "I love Archive," he says. "You upload it once, and it sets it up for streaming and all the formats. It saves me a lot of work. And I know when I die, my recordings will still be there." He pauses for half a beat. "Which is comforting, I guess."
Like every other part of the music world, taping has changed utterly in the digital age. Once dismissed as mere bootlegging, the surrounding attitudes, economies, and technologies have evolved. It's been a long haul since Dean Benedetti recorded Charlie Parker's solos on a wire recorder. In the '60s and '70s aspiring preservationists snuck reel-to-reel recorders into venues under battlefield conditions, scaling down to professional quality handheld cassette decks and eventually to DATs.
The myth and popular image of "the taper" persists, even though there haven't really been tapes since the early 2000s, when most tapers switched from DAT to laptops and finally to portable drives. But old terms are hard to dismiss. Many now prefer "recording" or even "capturing" to "taping," though recent headlines are a good reminder of just how durable "tape" really is, and most just use the term unconsciously and don't have a preference about the terminology one way or the other—as long as you don't ask them to leave.
Unlike most every other part of the music world, taping has not only thrived in the 21st century but come into its own, from advanced cell phone gadgetry (like DPA's iPhone-ready d:vice MMA-A digital audio interface) to compact handheld recorders (like Zoom's varied line of products), from high-speed distribution to metadata organization. Despite constant radical change, taping has never been disrupted. Rather, it has positively flowered.
This evening at Trans-Pecos near the Brooklyn-Queens border, he is in the front, though only because the room is small and the exact center of the stage in front of the performer is the most convenient place to set up his microphones. Plus, there's a booth alongside the nearby wall where he can sit. And he will be acquiring something rare, in that he's about to make a high-fidelity recording of an exquisite performance by acoustic guitarist Daniel Bachman. And, in fact, he does meet the artist, as well. "Mostly just to say hi," Pier-Hocking shrugs. The show isn't empty, but it's far from a sell-out. In time, though, more people will be able to hear Bachman's performance. Pier-Hocking is there to preserve the music and share it. In the process, he has become a valuable part of the 21st century musical ecosystem.
For most of the artists he records, he'll make sure to secure permission in advance, but like an increasing number of touring musicians, the Virginia-based Bachman is fine with audio-obsessed fans like Pier-Hocking. In this case, Pier-Hocking doesn't even ask, just sets up his recording gear."I'm all about it," Bachman says, understanding that high-quality recordings of his performances are good calling cards to have out there, his music spreading further when Pier-Hocking posts it online. "I actually record other musicians myself," the guitarist says. "I'll just pull up the voice memo app on my iPhone and record an entire set. I do it on the road a lot so that I can listen back to friends or other people I get to perform with."
Wearing a black denim jacket covered in pins, Pier-Hocking is not a professional audio engineer. The 37-year-old works by day as a production manager at a publishing company. With short hair and a neatly cropped beard, it's easy to peg him for the enthusiastic indie music fan he is. But to call him an amateur wouldn't be accurate either. What he does goes far beyond recording on an iPhone.
Tonight, Pier-Hocking is running a pair of MBHO KA100DK omnidirectional microphone capsules (via a 603A capsule attachment) into "a home-brewed" PFA phantom power adapter by way of a set of newfangled "active" cables, wired up by a colleague on a web forum for live-performance recording aficionados. (Most still refer to them as tapers.) Along with a feed from the venue's soundboard, the microphone signal runs into Sound Devices MixPre-6, a digital multi-track recorder.
But, once getting his gear set up and he's sure his levels are OK, Pier-Hocking mostly just sits and listens attentively to Bachman's performance. Occasionally, he glances at the MixPre-6, just to make sure it's still running.
Capturing the music from the two different sources—his own mics and the sound-board feed—as a pair of multitrack WAV files, Pier-Hocking will later align the two recordings in Adobe Audition CC. It gets pretty geeky. "Usually the mics are milliseconds behind the board feed," he says. "I zoom in on the WAV and look for a sharp point I can isolate, like a drum hit, and then shift it all over." He corrects the EQ with Izotope Ozone 5, tracks and tags them with Audacity, and outputs them as high-def, lossless files known as FLACs. Once Bachman has gotten back to him with approval and corrects the track listing, Pier-Hocking will post the show as FLACs and mp3s to NYCTaper.com, a website established by Dan Lynch in 2007.
Sometimes, with an artist's permission, Pier-Hocking will also establish a page on the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive, where visitors can listen to shows right in their web browsers, and where files are backed up regularly to locations in Egypt, the Netherlands, and Canada. "I love Archive," he says. "You upload it once, and it sets it up for streaming and all the formats. It saves me a lot of work. And I know when I die, my recordings will still be there." He pauses for half a beat. "Which is comforting, I guess."
Like every other part of the music world, taping has changed utterly in the digital age. Once dismissed as mere bootlegging, the surrounding attitudes, economies, and technologies have evolved. It's been a long haul since Dean Benedetti recorded Charlie Parker's solos on a wire recorder. In the '60s and '70s aspiring preservationists snuck reel-to-reel recorders into venues under battlefield conditions, scaling down to professional quality handheld cassette decks and eventually to DATs.
The myth and popular image of "the taper" persists, even though there haven't really been tapes since the early 2000s, when most tapers switched from DAT to laptops and finally to portable drives. But old terms are hard to dismiss. Many now prefer "recording" or even "capturing" to "taping," though recent headlines are a good reminder of just how durable "tape" really is, and most just use the term unconsciously and don't have a preference about the terminology one way or the other—as long as you don't ask them to leave.
Unlike most every other part of the music world, taping has not only thrived in the 21st century but come into its own, from advanced cell phone gadgetry (like DPA's iPhone-ready d:vice MMA-A digital audio interface) to compact handheld recorders (like Zoom's varied line of products), from high-speed distribution to metadata organization. Despite constant radical change, taping has never been disrupted. Rather, it has positively flowered.
by Jesse Jarnow, Backchannel | Read more:
Image: Vincent Tullo
