jeff shuck

Though I haven’t pursued music professionally for almost ten years, it continues to be a huge interest of mine. I try to compose and play as much as time allows. Plus, I’m a bit of a gear freak (okay, an enormous gear freak), and so I’ve kept abreast of the incredible evolution in equipment and done a fairly good job of keeping my gear up-to-date. I say “job” as if this is a chore, but in reality if you are a gear freak, it is a bit of an obsession, really. From scanning new music magazines over and over to lurking on forums to dumpster-diving on eBay, the search for gear can be quite consuming.

I should note right here and now that upgrading gear is really more of an interest/obsession than a need. There is no reason that great music cannot still be recorded on four-track tape, and to make it personal, there’s no reason I couldn’t make great music on the Roland sequencer and hard disk recorder I had ten years ago. Yes, sooner or later it would wear out, but the point I’m trying to make is that upgrading gear is much more about the need to tinker with new, shiny things than it is about the quest for better music. People still write and perform beautiful music on the piano, which debuted in basic form around 1700.

The change in music technology over the last twenty years is well documented, so I won’t really go into it other than to make the very trite comment that things have changed quite a bit since I got my first keyboard (a Roland Alpha Juno-1) in high school. I got involved at a great time — MIDI had already been established and was being put into everything, and although tape was still the way to record, the revolution of digital tape recorders such as the Alesis ADAT and Tascam DA-88 soon gave way to actual hard disk recording. Once hard disk recording was commercialized, it was only a matter of short time until most of the studio moved “in the box,” that is, into the computer itself. Nowadays, almost all recording is done directly into the computer, as is editing, mixing, and master. This is equivalent to the change in writing with a typewriter to writing with Microsoft Word — the two are so different as to be almost incomparable. What this means is that now, instead of collecting racks of MIDI gear with cables running all over the place, most of us collect dozens of plug-ins and software instruments, with literally hundreds of gigabytes of samples and sounds. Here is the type of trite comment I was hoping to avoid, but: It is truly amazing the power than one can get from an entry-level MacBook, with stock plug-ins and a free copy of GarageBand. When you look at the power of a top-of-the-line Mac Pro, with 16 GB of RAM and terrabytes of storage, running a top-tier digital audio recording, the power is mind-blowing.

I’m working on a gear page where I list out all the stuff I use and have collected, and in compiling the list the change was shocking to me. Where I used to own several keyboards and a number of physical modules, I now have very few pieces of hardware but an overabundance of software instruments, some of which I know very well but others of which I’ve barely touched. And this is where the quest for gear can really backfire. In the olden days, a good MIDI module might cost you $1,500 or $2,000, and so you had to work and save to afford it. When you got it, you really used every inch of it, and learned it head to foot. Now, an incredible software instrument like Native Instruments’ Massive retails for $230, and for about twice that you can get a package with four software instruments, all of which are at least as good and in most cases much, much better, deeper, and more complex than any hardware module. What happens is that gear obsession takes over, you find yourself getting “just one more” instrument or plug-in, and all of a sudden your hard drive is crammed and you realize you don’t know your equipment nearly as well as you used to. It can be a bit overwhelming, actually – and though you realize what is going on, you still find yourself reaching for the PayPal account when that next awesome synth debuts. And at the same time, I get the new gear but find myself reaching back to what I know; one of my favorite plug-ins is Korg’s Wavestation plug-in, not because it is intuitive (it isn’t) or superb-sounding (it is), but precisely because I owned a Wavestation EX keyboard for ten years and I know it backwards and forwards.

I’m old enough to know that I probably won’t tame the gear lust completely (although I did just successfully reject my inner calling for a new computer), so I’ve tried to redirect it to investing in upgrades of the “supporting” equipment that ushers sound in and out of the system — that is, interfaces and monitors. While some people really drool for such bits of kit, most people I know see these components as less compelling. Monitors don’t get the heart racing like a new soft sampler! But that is silly, really, since your interface and monitors control everything you actually hear.

A couple of years ago I got a Mackie 400F firewire interface — it had received great reviews, I’d always had great luck with Mackie gear, and I was looking for a firewire interface with multiple inputs so I could record a few pieces of gear at once. But once I got it, a couple of things happened: One, I found that I was having a lot of problems with the firewire driver that I could never figure out. It was glitchy and noisy and the latency was pretty bad. Two, all of that outboard gear I wanted to record started disappearing as I moved into the box.

So I recently went on a purge and sold the 400F as well as another couple of pieces of kit. In its place, I bought the small, elegant, and wonderful-sounding Apogee Duet (pictured above). The sound quality is amazing — I was blown away when I heard it compared to the 400F. The latency is great, and the integration with Logic Pro (my musical home) is literally seamless. The firewire problems I had with the 400F aren’t present at all. Plus, it takes up about 10% of the space of the outboard stuff I got rid of, and looks rather nice sitting on my desk. Yes, it only has one set of inputs and two preamps, but do I really need more than that? I feel good because I got something great that is exactly what I need. I’ll be able to learn it, use it, and know it from every direction.

My next step is to get better monitors. I’ve been using Audix 1A’s since 1996. I’m not sure how I got them — some fast-talking from a Guitar Center employee, I think. They have always been good but not great. The biggest issue is the lack of reliable low end. My mixes end up bass-heavy because the monitors aren’t representing enough low end, so I end up over-compensating in the mix. You can get around that by consciously lowering the bass level during mix, but it doesn’t really make up for not hearing what is going on. The 1As are also passive (they require an amp), whereas most monitors now are active, meaning they have amps inside. I’ve ordered a pair of Mackie 624Mk2’s, which will allow me to get rid of the 1As and the power amp, and thus another set of cables running behind the desk. I’m a bit worried because I haven’t listened to the 624s, which is a huge no-no when buying monitors, but where I live it isn’t an easy option to audition them. They have been very favorably reviewed, so … I’ll let you know how it works out.

So I guess that was a lot of rambling, but that’s what I’m thinking about right now. I hope to have the music gear page up in a couple of weeks.

Of course, the point of all the gear is to make music, and considering I have five times as much great gear as I did ten years ago but one-tenth of the free time, that might take a while. I have started writing and playing a lot since February — my health problems made me realize how much I want and need music in my life. I’m hoping to drop my need to get things perfect and have some songs out this summer. We’ll see. I’m optimistic.