Podcast #4 – I Beg to Differ

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I Beg to Differ

Mobile Studio Podcast #4

Mark:

Welcome to the Mobile Studio podcast number 4. In our continuing mission to learn about different aspects of musical composing, recording and post production. I have great pleasure in introducing Danny Harouche, Danny is a KJ. Which I learnt from him stands for a karaoke jockey; a bit like a DJ but instead of playing CD’s he runs karaoke sessions for private parties, clubs and pubs. You can visit his website on: www.dannyskaraoke.com to see exactly what he does, what was interesting for me in talking to Danny was how his background in first DJing than KJing has influenced him in the recordings he produces as he also runs his own mobile recording business, similar to mine.

It turns out that we both have very definite but very different opinions on how to record large groups of people such as choirs, and so I went along to his home in Birmingham, England, to talk to him about how he records, what he has learnt along the way and how he got into DJing and the club scene in the first place.

I also wanted to find out a little bit of his history, because despite his accent, Danny is not originally from Birmingham. He comes from slightly more exotic origins and his early childhood is very far from routine.

Danny:

I was in Egypt as a child, I was born in 1952. My family’s Egyptian, extended family, brothers, sisters, parents all Egyptian, all Jewish, all told to leave and not come back. We were told to leave the country, left behind all our belongings. My mother had a British passport and we came to England as refugees.

Mark:

And how old were you when that happened?

Danny:

I was four years old. None of the family spoke any English, none of us had anything, we didn’t have a candle stick, we just had the clothes we stood in. Plus luggage, what we could carry and it was January 1957 when we arrived in Dover by ship and we experienced cold weather and the only clothes we had were light cotton clothes, so we relied on Red Cross for clothing and we relied on the Jewish community. Who were very good, they all rallied together and helped.

Mark:

So you were four years old at this point; what was it that first peaked your interest in music?

 

Danny:

I do recall being a member of a boy’s club. And this was, maybe I was just eleven or twelve years old and the boy’s club was in Moseley. It was in Moseley Village, and it was part of NABC – The National Association of Boy’s Clubs. And we’d all meet, no girls, and we’d all meet and play snooker and table tennis, and they had a little DJ booth in the club and I remember walking into it and they had a selection of singles. And I thought: ‘That looks like fun!’ And I asked if I was allowed. “Yes, help yourself.” And there was only a selection of about eight different singles and I knew all the singles. Being at that age you get to know what the Pop Charts are all about. I used to love The Beatles. They did it for me, I loved The Beatles. And I loved anything to do with the charts, I used to listen to the top twenty every Sunday.

And I went into the DJ Booth at the age of eleven or twelve and started playing records, and I just got a feel for playing one correctly after another. So you’d look at the title and think ‘Oh, I’ll play that first and we’ll follow it with this one and then we’ll follow it with that one and leave that one until last.” So, you didn’t mix up the style of the beats, you just worked your way through this half a dozen songs and I found that the club atmosphere lifted! There was an excitement! It wasn’t such a dull place where you played table tennis and snooker now. People’s moods were elevated and that was my first experience of DJing.

And another boy’s club asked me to go over to theirs, where you sort of interchange different boy’s clubs and they had a much better set up, and I did that music there. And after 20 minutes or so, everybody was singing and dancing!

So, this was from the age of eleven or twelve, I had a feel for Pop songs and I had a feel for putting them together in a certain sequence to get people up and dancing and to get people animated. All from music.

Mark:

So you set an initial mood, and then how do you develop from there into the next song?

Danny:

The DJ can control a room, there’s no question. He can control a room and there’s no science to it. Just by feeling and if your audience wants a particular mood, music can do that for you.

The DJ doesn’t have to know how to sing, he doesn’t need to know what a quaver or a crochet is, he just needs to know what mood a particular song puts a person in. And by mixing songs, or matching songs, he can extend a mood or change a mood. Because a song will tell you how to think. A song or music will tell you to relax. A song or music will get you up and going. You will not get lift music at a body pump class, you’ll get some carefully selected songs at body pump class and they are carefully selected. Nothing is random.

A body pump class is an example, is about an hour in length and is designed to get people to do their exercises. And they use a sequence of music that’s carefully put together to start people into a warm up build them up to pump their body into lifting weights, working in a gym and then cooling them down in the end. That’s an example of how music is used.

Mark:

I’ve spoken before, on a previous podcast, when I was doing a podcast on chords. About how composers often use chords and styles of music as incidental music in films, to help actors prompt to make the audience to feel a certain thing in the film. And you’re basically using the same thing to control the mood of a room. To control the feeling of a room.

Danny:

That’s what a DJ does. And if he’s got a rave and if he’s got a load of young kids who want to jump about, he’s going to carefully select. And he knows, from personal experience, what will get his room going and what will flatten the room just as easily. You’ve got things a DJ will call ‘Floor Fillers’ and you’ve got music that are called ‘Floor Killers’. And a DJ knows the difference between, knows the mood of the room and will make sure that that mood is either maintained or changed.

Mark:

So, you had this experience of club-life, of DJing, of how you use music to influence a room, and dealing with people in an entertainment environment, when you left school…

Danny:

With very few qualifications.

Mark:

Was any of that experience useful to you, I mean, how did you make a living?

Danny:

Well, you have to use your personality. Directly over the road, from where we lived in Park Road, was a club called ‘The Highfield Club’. It was a casino and a cocktail bar and a restaurant. And I used to step out from post-war Britain slum into the Highfield Club, where they were eating lobster out of tanks and they had striped lawns and they were drinking Rolls Royces. It was just, stepped out into that world and I got myself a school-time job. I enjoyed what I did, I got a feel of club life and then I stepped back into poverty and that was life, and so when I finished school I did various jobs, using what skills I had, which was language skills, I’ve always been very good with languages.

Worked in a travel agent and I was very good chatting with people, getting to know people. And one of my travel customers that happened to walk in one day, was the owner of another casino in Birmingham and we got on very well and I did help going to the rainbow casino where I became a manager by the age of twenty two. Normally to get to the stage of being a casino manager you have to be mid-life, but I was a twenty-two year old casino manager who was incharge of the premises including all the gaming and little did they know I had my experience from the age of fourteen at The Highfield Club and so I always got used to dealing with people and getting on with people in an entertainment environment.

Mark:

So how long were you managing the casino for?

Danny:

Oh, about eight years. And then I started my own business, very boring, very dull. I’ve started a courier business, transport and successfully ran that business for twenty-six years. And I ended up selling it to a local competitor and then I retired at the age of 54. And I was happy to retire at fifty-four because I knew that there must be more to life than transporting goods across the country.

Mark:

And was it at that point that you decided to start the karaoke business?

 

Danny:

When a man retires, he has to have things going on. And in my case, I’ve got a family, a lovely family and I’m established in the city. Been living here nearly sixty years now, so I’ve now got a massive music collection and I’ve always been very good with computers and PC’s and it developed.

I saw what – you had an MP3 file and I learnt something that was MP3+G and MP3+G is plus a graphics file. And if you’ve played an MP3+G then you’ve got a karaoke on your computer and I thought it was fantastic and every time I thought it was great fun. So whenever anybody came round to the house, especially young people, when I have young people in the house, the kids. Oh they’d love to sing the latest songs on karaoke in the house! It was really fun. And I had a huge karaoke, massive collection through this whole sale that I know.

I happened to mention it to a guy and he said he can’t do this particular club in town, would I take over from him? So I started doing Karaoke in pubs successfully, and I’ve now done over a hundred different gigs. From private parties to clubs to pubs, so that’s one of the things that I get up to as a retired man, so I’m not falling asleep all day, I’m still an active person. So I get involved with music parties and karaoke parties.

Mark:

How did you use your knowledge of DJing and then later KJing to help you when you started recording?

Danny:

Well, Karaoke sounds childlike, but it isn’t it’s a skill. And every song has a different backing track every singer has a different microphone style and what you don’t realise when you’re a karaoke jockey, you’ve heard of DJ’s, Disk Jockeys, well in the industry KJ’s are known as Karaoke Jockeys, KJ’s.

So, to be a KJ you’re constantly mixing, constantly you cannot just set up and allow a member of the audience to come up and sing a song because backing up you’re on. One’s louder, one’s this, the singers wrong some people hold the microphone down to their chest, some people grip the microphone and stick it up to their mouth. People’s knowledge on how to use a microphone is very limited, some people are shy, some are very loud they’re brilliant. So if you have a look at a karaoke jockey, you will see that he’s twiddling his buttons constantly, all night long! He’s mixing, and from that you get experience.

Mark:

So you took this experience you gained as a KJ and live mixing in a performing environment and transferred it directly to the recording environment, now this is where our two styles of recording differ.

Danny:

When you first showed me your equipment, the first thing that crossed my mind was why are there so many outputs and not so many inputs?

Mark:

But that’s exactly my point, I’m recording all the time from a single source, so for example if I’m recording a quartet, I like to record each person one at a time on his own track which I will then work on, fix little errors that we have in recording the odd flat note, timing errors, bits of noise, whatever.

Then pan each part between the two speakers, maybe tweak the sound a little and add a little bit of reverb, so that it sounds as if you’re listening to the quartet as you would hear it in a performance, what you do is very different to that.

Danny:

Your style is the manipulation of sound, my style is the bringing together of sound and trying to coalesce the sound. Now that sounds very posh, and I don’t want to sound as if I’m an expert in anything. But your style is to get a pure source and to mix it with another pure source.

In karaoke world, you’ve got many sources that you throw together and try and make a professional sound and for that you develop a skill. A good KJ would be twiddling his knobs throughout the song, throughout every song he’s always twiddling something. And that’s what gives you the experience of not being frightened at being in a live situation and bringing everybody together. Coalescing the sounds and making it sound as if it’s pre-mixed and that’s the skill of the KJ.

Mark: What sort of microphones do you use in your recordings?

Danny:

Unidirectional dynamic. Dynamic is good enough for most things. It’s good enough for most things, the good thing about a dynamic is that it will block out background sound. A condenser mic is ultra sensitive, it’s so sensitive it needs it’s own cradle to stop any vibrations of any sort, but a dynamic mic is very forgiving. And if you’re in a loud environment, such as a pub or any environment actually sound-wise is loud, you can pick up all sorts of things. A dynamic is only interested in the front part, the unidirectional part, and the microphone sound isn’t interested in the global sound whereas a condenser mic is.

Mark:

So there is another important difference in the way that we work. I personally prefer condenser mics you’re absolutely right in how sensitive they are to background noise ,and I’m forever having to ask people in the room to be totally quiet when I make the recordings.

But I do prefer the crispness they gave especially the high frequencies and I find if I get my microphone close enough to the source sound I can get a very clean, very pure and crisp recording of my subject. Because your recordings are live and you’re recording in many different types of environment do you find you have problems with room acoustics sometimes?

Danny:

Some clubs and pubs are awful places, they’ve got wooden floors, wooden panels, they’ve got mirrors, which makes sound bounce dreadful. Some places are great because they’ve got soft furnishing, carpets, tables with table cloths lovely deadened sound, which makes a great audio recording, so you can’t tell, until you get to a place, how awful the environment is. And so live mixing is a good skill to possess.

Mark:

If you’re recording in one of these bad acoustic environments what can you do to help improve on the quality of the recording.

 

Danny:

If you’re recording a single source, a popping screen is important. Also without having sound booths, take with you a blanket and hold the blanket up somehow and that makes an excellent sound deadening screen. It doesn’t have to be a blanket, it could be a quilt, it could be something you can just hold up and that makes an excellent sound deadening environment.

Mark:

You know it reminds me of a recording I once made where we had exactly that, a quilt held up by four microphone stands around the person I was recording. Another way of combating room acoustics I’ve found is by close-miking, getting the microphone as close to the subject as possible.

Danny: You get a lot of popping and sibilance with close mic.

Mark:

Well, let’s move on now to a situation where close miking is not an option. We’ve both recently recorded different choirs, again I’ll record each section of the choir separately with my single studio condenser giving me more flexibility to change things in the mix. But you prefer to record the choir live what sort of microphones do you use for that and where do you position your mics.

Danny:

I don’t possess any condenser mics, so I can’t tell you if there’s a difference between the two for a large multi-person recording. I’ve used ordinary dynamic mics and I’ve found that the best place for these dynamic mics are either side of the conductor.

Mark:

Because he is at the optimum position to hear what his choir is doing.

Danny:

That’s right, and he’s telling his different choir members to lift their voices or lower their voices or whatever he is doing, into his ears. So the microphones are near to his ears so you get what the conductor is trying to achieve. That’s all that’s needed if you want a very quick setup one microphone either side of the conductor is an ideal location.

I’ve tried rears, I’ve tried mounting extending boom mics into the choir. I’ve tried all sorts of different things and my experience is, where the conductor is, which is at the centre of the group placed equal distance about a metre apart or two metres apart away from the conductor. Just place the microphones into the body of the choir and that gives you an excellent balance.

Now, you might say you might get the soprano on the right giving it large and you might get the tenor and thinks he’s a baritone getting it wrong. That’s not your concern. That’s the headache of the conductor, the director of the music, if the baritone is sounding like a tenor and the soprano thinks she’s a mezzo that’s not your problem. Your problem is to get the balance of that live recording. So the music director, bless him, has got the worry of trying to get everybody to sound perfect all you have to do is to get the balance right on your mixer.

Mark:

So, that’s a very important difference in how we see our rolls as sound engineers. What you’re saying is you’re there to record the truth of what there was at the moment of recording, you’re not there to try and be the choirmaster.

 

Danny:

Absolutely not, absolutely not. The choirmaster, bless him, I’m sure has many sleepless nights. That’s not your concern, your concern is to faithfully record what’s going on on the day.

Mark:

The way I see it, is my role is to assist the choirmaster in making his choir sound the best he can. After all, the difference in a performance and a recording is that once the performance is over it can never be reproduced, any imperfections in the performance will never be heard again. A recording, on the other hand, can be played over and over, and therefore any imperfections in the recording will be heard time and time again.

Danny:

Why should the onus be on you as the recording master to improve and whose eyes are you improving? To get a pristine digital recording of everything that’s gone on you loose the atmosphere of the room, and somehow you’ve got to warm it up and get the atmosphere of a room.

Mark:

From my experience of recording the parts separately, what I found was especially not so much on the later tracks but on the first track. When I laid down that first track whatever part it was sopranos or whatever, found it extremely difficult to perform as they would like to perform because they’re not used to being on their own, and that first track is on their own.

Danny:

That’s exactly what I’m trying to say about the atmosphere. If you’re in a group of people, they generate their own dynamic energy. And if you’re in single person, that person probably needs the dynamic energy of the person sat next to them or standing next to them. You’ll miss out on individual tracks.

Mark:

The solution I’ve found to that, is to record the whole choir first as a guide so that when we do go to record each part separately they can hear everybody else in their headphones. When they go to record, so then at least they are used to singing as they would like to sing. How do you cope with any instruments, say a piano? Is that separately miked?

Danny:

I find pianos the easiest of things. Pianos put out a lot of vibration, it’s important not to rest a microphone on a piano because they’ll be rumbling. And vibration coming from the structure the wooden structure of the piano, so there are many mics stands.

Desk stands are good where you just place a microphone on a desk stand then place it on top of a piano. And always point the microphone into the belly of the piano, don’t point it to the pianist or the keys. There’s always an opening to a piano, point the microphone inside the opening, into the centre but it must be free of the structure and you’ll find the piano is a very easy thing to record. It’s very crisp, very nice, great sound and lots of resonance.

Mark:

And again that’s a dynamic mic.

Danny:

Again a dynamic mic.

Mark:

Unidirectional? Omnidirectional?

Danny:

Unidirectional is fine. Because you’re pointing into the source of the music, don’t place the microphone with the piano lid closed. Open the piano lid and place the microphone inside without touching anything.

Mark:

Is there a difference between an upright and a grand?

Danny:

Not at all. So long as you place the microphone inside the piano will do the rest.

Mark:

So you have your two microphones either side of the conductor and in the piano. Where do they all connect to?

Danny:

I use a portable mixing desk, and the one I use is a Wharfedale Pro and it has a facility for six microphones and altogether about a dozen types of input. My mixer is five kilos in weight, it’s got a handle on it and I can throw it across the room as I can a football. So I’m not interested in mixing after the event, I’m interested in mixing at the event. And for that reason I don’t fear the mixing stage because it’s live. What’s done is done. And, if you’re confident, you could get a good balance, a good mix.

Mark:

So for my recordings, my single track recordings up until recently, I was using an M-Audio FireWire 410, a FireWire sound card. Which has two inputs unfortunately the reason one of those inputs started to play up it is quite old.

I’ve had it for like ten years and done many many recordings with it. And so after that I brought an M-Audio FastTrack Ultra, which I really like because that connects to my computer through USB. It’s much more connectable than the FireWire version was. And also I can power it from my USB port.

It has six imports all together, four of which can be XLR’s and, obviously, it has the phantom power for powering my condenser mic. For anybody listening to this podcast, I’ll put a link to the mixing desk that Danny uses, and the sound cards that I’ve used in a resources section of this podcast homepage. And that’s at www.themobilestudio.net/podcast and go to Podcast #4.

Danny one of your earliest recordings for choirs, was at the Kol Kinor choir. And I understand that that was a bit of a baptism of fire for you, can you tell us what important lessons you have for that recording?

Danny:

With Kol Kinor, I saw that they already had a microphone setup where the choir wanted to do their recording. So I, in hindsight, was wrong in thinking: ‘Aw great! No wires, it’s already set up!’ I’ve just got to plug into their mixer desk. Big mistake.

The Kol Kinor was recorded using plastic wireless microphones. And in my experience I didn’t know they pick up low battery, one of them started to “Tik! Tik! Tik! Tik!” and because I didn’t have experience we spent half an hour wondering what the “Tik! Tik! Tik! Tik!” was and it was the fact  that it had a low battery.

So that was sorted out and on the day when you’ve got 30 people in front of you including the musical director, you do not want to hear “Tik! Tik! Tik! Tik!” and you start sweating thinking ‘Where in the hell is that “Tik! Tik! Tik! Tik!” coming from?’

Don’t be tempted to shortcut the setup routine by using other people’s equipment. Use your own equipment, be confident with your own equipment. You don’t have to spend £100,000 so long as you’re confident with the mixing desk that you’ve got and microphones, and always check your cables because cables deteriorate quickly. You will get the result that you want.

Mark:

I think that’s very good advice for any type of recording, be it the live recordings that you do or the single track recordings that I do. You know your own equipment you care for it, maintain it and at the end of the day it will reward you for that right giving you far fewer bad experiences than some equipment sitting in a hall somewhere.

Danny, I’d like to thank you very much for sharing your story and experiences with us and for giving us some great tips on what you’ve learnt on your live recordings. For people listening to this podcast which way do you like to record? Do you prefer Danny’s live approach which concentrates on the atmosphere of the performance or do you prefer my single track approach which concentrates on the accuracy of the performance? Leave me a comment on this podcast’s homepage, telling me which method you prefer.

To help you decide, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is. And put links to one of Danny’s recordings and to one of my recordings in the resources section of this podcast’s homepage so you can judge for yourself.

I’ll leave you with a short excerpt of one of Danny’s prior recordings, this from the Kol Kinor recording, which Danny mentioned, you can hear the complete song on the podcast homepage, which is at: www.themobilestudio.net/podcast and go to podcast #4.