I am finishing the work for a summer exhibit of portrait photography. It’s involved the gracious lending of talents by several people, and I am fascinated by the countless nuances in craft that any facet of creation requires. I spent an hour with Annie Cohen this evening. (Annie is part of the elite legion I pay to be friends with at the Donnybook Writing Academy.) Annie is sweetening the audio from a variety of first person interviews with the subjects that will appear in the exhibit. She defiantly had the hardware to make short work of the music and voices of the musicians who will be on display. What is most interesting to me though, is not tools but their operators.
The methods and aesthetics Annie applied to average-at-best audio recordings was a blast to watch. The audio is recorded phone conversations between musicians, and the luminous Wendi Walker. (Annie said Wendi can make a tree stump open up and talk.) All the musicians who were available all seemed to be in a tour bus on some interstate in the continental U.S. with marginal cell reception, and the sound quality while entirely acceptable, was made exponentially better by Annie’s ears and hands.
The nearly subconscious techniques Annie employed were made fast, and would have been made faster if not for all of my questions. Compressors, limiters, noise reduction filters and level adjustments are all good things to use. But how these tools are used are a treat for me to witness and attempt to understand. If the devil is in the details, and devil is a fascinating fellow to know.
These audio recordings and music will be included in a photography exhibit curated by Jesse Groves at the Visions Gallery, Brooks Institute of Photography, Ventura California June 10 – August 5, 2010.