Pacific Northwest AES Section Blog

April 25, 2018 at 7:30 pm

Location: Opus 4 Studios, Bothell, WA USA

Moderated by: Dan Mortensen

Speaker(s): Dr. Michael Matesky, Opus 4 Studios & PNW AES Committee
Grant Crawford, Costco

 Once a year, Costco holds a Manager's Conference in Seattle, WA. A segment of the conference program is a memorial to Costco employees who have passed away during the previous year. The memorial takes the form of video images of those who have passed, along with an audio track that underscores the video. The only stipulation was that the music had to be performed by Costco employees. Simple enough, eh?

This year, there were two songs to be used, Song #1, Going Home, a spiritual, and Song #2, Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen. Both songs would play against a video track that was being created at Costco HQ in Issaquah.

Going Home was to be recorded in English, French, Spanish, and Korean. The vocal would be added as an overdub, in the home country of the language; i.e. here, France, Spain, and Korea. Grant recorded a basic piano track at Opus 4 Studios without knowing the final tempo or key, and that's what was sent around to each country. Everyone got instructions about microphone choice, processing, etc. Each country would sing the entire song through, and the production team here would pick and choose what parts to use where. Simple enough, eh? What could go wrong?

Hallelujah was to be sung by yet another singer, with a small studio band. After some searching, they found their singer here in the PNW, BUT she had NEVER been in a recording studio. The "band" was guitar, bass, synth/keyboard, and backgrond vocals. With the exception of Grant (synth/keys), everyone was an amateur, albeit a Costco employee. What could go wrong?

Finally, as mentioned before, the songs underscore a video, which was being produced elsewhere at Costco, without the video team really hearing the music AND the audio team not seeing the video. A third party was calling the shots to both, to the extent that the production was evolving somewhat independently in two different but mostly parallel universes. The upshot of this was the audio team getting requests from Corporate that at such and such time, something had to happen, and the audio track would have to morph somehow to accommodate the request. This might be as simple as a fader move, but more commonly, it resulted in arrangement changes on the fly. Ohhh, of course the deadline is tighter than a  <<pick something impossibly tight]>> . What could possibly go wrong?

Come to our April meeting and find out how Dr. Mike and Grant made the impossible into a reality. Dr. Mike has still not seen the finished film (or even any of the rough cuts). 

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More Information at AES PNW Section Website