By Jake TenPas
The Entertainer | Posted: Thursday, March 22, 2007 12:00 am
OSU duo of Coolen and Kincaid taking department, equipment into the digital age
The air in Oregon State University's Benton Hall is thick with the smell of dust and ramen, the odors of old walls, vintage instruments and cheap eats for cash-strapped students mixing together to create a somewhat deceptive olfactory omen.
While there are many years of tradition here - and a program that celebrates both fundamentals and classics of a variety of musical genres - Benton also contains a sound lab on the cutting edge of digital technology.
Overseen by professor of composition and music technology Michael Coolen and music instructor Sam Kincaid, the complex of rooms containing the recording and editing studios and equipment is seemingly expanding faster than the building can handle.
Entering the building through the back doors, an immediate right takes you into a long hallway of a room filled with doors on either side. Each door opens to reveal a miniature recording studio or isolation booth, all connected to one another through a central server. Students can save their work in one room one night, then resume their project the next day from a different cubicle.
In one room, Adrian Grado sits in front of an industry standard automated digital console with Pro Tools, an HD3 Excell system and 5.1 surround sound. He's working on a version of the OSU Fight Song for the Recording and Editing Technique class Kincaid teaches. As part of the class, each student must come up with a different take on the anthem.
For his, Grado's chosen the 808 kickdrum sounds of classic hip-hop and, more importantly, Herbie Hancock's mid-'80s electronic music. What comes out of the speakers sounds like the bastard child of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "My Posse's On Broadway," Hancock's "Rockit" and an OSU Band performance.
Next door, Andrew Barella is working on his final project for the class, which entails creating 10 minutes of music; in this case, Christian folk pop. Across the hall yet another student mixes down a punk song, and a variety of students come and go between the rooms like Scooby and Shaggy running from a villain dressed as the abominable snowman.
Both Coolen and "Chief Engineer" Kincaid survey the scene with the looks of proud parents, describing the program they've developed and the facilities full of equipment they've helped to amass.
"What's really wonderful about Sam and many of the other guys, really, who are involved here," Coolen says, then pauses, searching for the right word. "I call them the Jedi Knights. They want to do it. They work hard. Usually you don't get the question, 'What do I need to do for a C?' "
Meanwhile, Kincaid continues to run down the stats for me, in some ways resembling a kid enamored with his new video game system. With the equipment they have, they can import scores, assign instruments to them and, doing it all virtually, work on 192 tracks at once. Not that most projects call for that many, mind you, but it's always nice to have the option. Surround sound projects call for six tracks per effect, and multi-tracking an orchestra can put any system to the test.
"48's about as many as I've ever used," Kincaid says, but you can tell he's hoping to best that number some day.
Two doors down from the room bumping with the drum machine version of OSU's Fight Song is an isolation booth that's recently been outfitted with all-new equipment, so students don't have to trek all the way upstairs to the larger but somewhat poorly insulated recording studio on the third floor. They've recently moved all the "dinosaur equipment" as Kincaid calls it - or "legacy equipment," to Coolen" - to different parts of the building. Some has ended up in Coolen and Kincaid's shared office for the purposes of teaching students. Some of it, also, might be for Kincaid's personal education and pleasure. A vintage guitar synthesizer and motion-activated air synth pack the already crowded office at the opposite of the building, just begging to be played with.
But there hardly seems to be time for such fun as Kincaid details his latest project, wiring the downstairs isolation booth to every other room so that all the students, not just the ones lucky enough to work in the surround sound booth with 192 channels, will have access to it. He hopes to be done sometime after Spring Break.
"You can sit around and wait for something or you can go do it," Coolen says of Kincaid's initiative. Even between student funds, grants and department moneys, it's often necessary for him to take matters into his own hands.
"There's so much demand. Every room's in use all the time," Kincaid says. "We've had to expand the hours (of the lab) every term. Next term we'll be open until midnight seven days."
In many ways, Kincaid, who was a member of popular local rock band Melodious Funk and is now working with Substitute, a Who tribute band, is the perfect example for the students he teaches. Eventually, those who choose to pursue careers in music will be forced to tackle complex problems within short time frames, using the problem-solving skills they've learned through the class.
For instance, one of their assignments requires them to fix a badly mangled audio recording in a week. In a professional setting, they'd likely have 12 hours.
"The majority of the stuff you can do in here, it's not about what you can do. It's about how much time you have to figure it out," Kincaid says. "Any audio problem you come across, it's entirely possible to fix it."
In addition, such exercises prepare the students for the often-expensive experience of recording their own music in high-end studios. Kincaid explains that most don't think about the time it can take to tune their instruments between songs, time that's running up their tab by the minute.
The program drew folk and Americana artists The Severin Sisters for those very reasons. In addition to earning degrees, they can learn some of the skills they'll need to navigate the unforgiving world of the music industry.
On our way to the elevator to travel upstairs to the third floor studio, we pass an ancient-looking Wurlitzer piano with a lightboard above it that allows students to see on a staff and keyboard diagram what notes and chords are being played.
"We're the technology guys," Kincaid says, so the keyboard was brought to them to restore. When he pulled the back panel off to work on it, he found a pile of peanut butter-filled pretzels.
"I think a mouse was going in through the sustain pedal and storing them there."
Upstairs, we explore the recording studio, a classroom that's been converted to serve both purposes. Fellow instructor Neal Grandstaff's guitar sits upright in one of the rows of seats, a reminder of the range of talents and styles present here.
Afterward, Coolen, who started marimba ensemble Balafon and directed the music for last year's Corvallis Community Theater production of "The Fantasticks," sits in his office, working on an arrangement of a Bach tune using a computer program to transpose the music to different keys and different instruments.
His office represents the heart of this complex of expanding technology, creativity and educational opportunities. As he runs down the different inputs he can draw music from, and the different effects he can add to it, it becomes unavoidably apparent that despite the age and size limitations of the building surrounding him, the future is wide open.
To hear more of TenPas' interview with Coolen and Kincaid, go to www.gazette
times.com and click the GT to Go logo.