Pro Techniques from VH-1's Behind The Music

by Randy Alberts

Did you know that Mötley Crüe once rented a Sunset Blvd. apartment above The Whiskey, that Quincy Jones has a metal plate in his head after surviving two brain aneurisms, or that drugs were commonplace in the Go-Go's dressing rooms? You did if you've been watching VH-1's weekly biographic series Behind The Music the past four years. If you've tuned in to similar shows, such as VH-1's recently premiered series Ultimate Albums or Fox Sports' Beyond The Glory, you also know that Red Sox first baseman Billy Buckner was not solely responsible for losing Game 6 of the '86 World Series and that Sheffield, England, was the last place on the planet in 1983 to embrace Pyromania from hometown boys Def Leppard.

After cutting his audio editing teeth for five years on America's Most Wanted and numerous political campaign commercials in Washington, D.C., mixer/editor Richard Gray has found his love of music, sports and audio all come together in working on Behind The Music, Beyond The Glory and Ultimate Albums ever since. Which episode was his favorite?

"Mötley Crüe was the quintessential Behind The Music," says Gray from his Pro Tools workstation at Shoreline Studios in Santa Monica, California, where he tracks, edits, and mixes the recently Emmy-nominated series. "It had all the sex, drugs, near-death experiences and rock 'n' roll elements that make up the Behind The Music formula and those guys enjoyed telling about every sordid detail in the band's past."

Gray shares duties on Behind The Music and Ultimate Albums with friend and fellow mixer/editor Earl Martin, both nominated for an Emmy this past year for sound mixing on a non-fiction drama series. Gray's BTM sessions are done on an 867MHz Apple G4 running a MIXplus system with an additional Vintage DSP card, three 888|24 I/Os and a ProControl and at Shoreline's The Reef Studio. He uses a similar configuration for the Behind The Glory series on Fox Sports, a MIX3 system with a Mackie Designs HUI controller as part of Framework Post's Avid Unity and Symphony video editing systems in Hollywood.

We caught up with Gray, whose long-form biographic expertise also includes episodes of Legends, Intimate Portraits, and A Sports Century during a short break in mixing a new Behind The Music about Sheryl Crow. His choice Pro Tools tips to follow are particularly useful for anyone chopping episodic dialog and music audio every week.

Pro Technique 1 —
Learning and Removing Background Noise with the Waves Restoration Bundle
Even on well-budgeted shows like Behind The Music and Ultimate Albums, location audio quality is often an afterthought. The kind of once-in-a-lifetime interviews BTM does are often recorded in noisy bars where the look of a shot takes precedence over any audio concerns. As far as Gray is concerned, that's where the X-Noise plug-in from Waves' Restoration Bundle is most useful.
"A lot of times I get interviews that have way too much background noise," notes Gray. "X-Noise is great for reducing all that noise. It can practically perform miracles."

Gray suggests finding the dialog-free room tones at the heads and tails of troublesome dialog tracks and using X-Noise to sample and "learn" those ambient sections of noise. The larger the sampled area, the more effective the plug-in can be in processing the audio clip and removing unwanted noise from one's critical dialog tracks.

"Since I usually have at least five-second handles on either side of the clips from the OMF of the session, I have more opportunity to find a larger section from which to sample some dialog-free room tone before the interviewee starts speaking," Gray continues. "Once I've sampled that background noise I can use the same setting on other clips from the same interview throughout the show."

After sampling and previewing the background ambient noises with X-Noise, Gray then highlights the problematic portions of the dialog he needs to de-noise and simply hits the 'Process' button in X-Noise to remove the offending noise. For a good starting point in most dialog situations, he suggests setting X-Noise's Threshold parameter between 12 and 17, adjusting its Amount of Noise Reduction control no higher than 70, and setting X-Noise's Attack setting in the mid-20s and its Release parameter in the mid-200 range.