Pro Techniques from Jeff Bova

By Randy Alberts

	Jeff Bova and his Pro Tools|HD rig

Reading producer, composer, Pro Tools|HD engineer, and session keyboard player Jeff Bova's credits is not unlike browsing the CD aisles of any well-stocked store. If there's Bill Laswell, Tina Turner, Herbie Hancock, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Meat Loaf, and Broadway musicals in your collection, your purchase decisions are the same as those of any devoted Bova fan. Wait until you see the disc you're buying in a couple of months.

"It's amazing to be part of that energy in there," says the New York-based Bova about a session he just finished tracking a day earlier. He played keyboards and synths with Bono and The Edge. Every note became even more special because the tracks were for Nelson Mandela's "Mandela SOS" AIDS Project.

All profits from sales of this "USA for Africa"-style all-star cast single, to which Bova added keyboards and an Access Virus Indigo synth part, will benefit Mandela's AIDS programs in Africa. A live concert event February 2, hosted by Mandela in South Africa after the single's release, will be staged on the very same prison island he was released from 13 years ago. Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) is producing the single that will include performances by Bono, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Lopez and Luther Vandross; Dr. Dre is contributing another track, and there are still many replies to be answered by most every major artist on the planet.

All-Star Casts and New Talent
Bova recently worked with vocalist Michael Crawford for the November, 2002 Broadway premiere of "Dance of the Vampires," a musical by Jim Steinman. Pro Tools|HD will be a big part of the all-star cast album and theatrical production. Is this just another day working with the crème de la crème at Bovaland, his fish-eye-lens-requiring workspace in New York? Hardly, since the gracious and humble Bova is quick to point out the travails of even the most decorated, successful audio and music providers in Manhattan.

"People tend to categorize you by what you are best known for, either as a player or as a producer, so it's been challenging for me transitioning into producing. I do, however, see this transition time as a chance to further perfect my craft," offers the Grammy-winning Bova (Celine Dion), who in 1983 also happened to be in the same Herbie Hancock Rockit band with previous DigiZine cover artist Grand Mixer DXT.

"I usually play on everything I produce. However, I have found it far more fun to hire in other players and programmers so I can get a wider range of creative input. It hasn't been easy to get a shot at opportunities these days. But like anything else, you need to believe in yourself and keep working at it even when it feels like you're hitting a wall everywhere you turn. Even with the down side of the business, I get so much out of passing my knowledge on to developing artists I love. I love to see them soak it all in like sponges."

Blondie's Back
Another band Bova recently worked with is Blondie. He's producing the track "Good Boys" for the band's first new record since 1999's No Exit. Working with four of the original band members (Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, Jimmy Destri and Clem Burke) was a thrill, especially capturing the voice of Debbie Harry.

"Debbie is just amazing," Bova says. "We recorded her vocals at 9:30 in the morning because she had to catch a flight in a few hours to a film she was shooting on location. She was warmed up and singing full tilt on the first pass with the tonal and expressive qualities we have all come to know as being distinctively hers."

Starting out with a band demo recorded to a RADAR recorder and later transferred to Pro Tools, Bova put the song through "a lot of heavy revision work." Ultimately, he merged two different versions of the song smoothly into one with a little help from Serato's Pitch 'n Time plug-in. From this working shell he went on to build within Pro Tools a tip of the hat to Blondie's classic "Heart of Glass" days with that track's infectious Giorgio Moroder-ish sound merged with rock, once again.

"The band sounds great and the track I produced is a real hybrid groove track with the live band integrated with it," Bova continues. "I used some (Ilio Entertainments) Stylus loops and sounds right from within Pro Tools as an RTAS plug-in to merge both worlds together and it worked seamlessly. Debbie said that they've always created a hybrid of styles to express what they're trying to say. She said 'No matter how hard we try, we just can't seem to make a record any other way."

Pro Technique 1 —
Docking synth workstation-based composers with Pro Tools
Like other producers and programmers working with new and established artists, Jeff Bova is sensitive to the creative home writing process. Recently, when songwriters collaborating with Luther Vandross brought their synth workstations and Akai MPC drum machines to Bovaland, Jeff was ready. His intention was to integrate and synchronize all the audio and MIDI data in Pro Tools. "

A lot of writers, especially in R&B and hip-hop, sequence and compose completely within those instruments," he points out. "So we first needed to export the MIDI files to Pro Tools, then trigger the MIDI file from within Pro Tools and record the audio individually for each MIDI track. This also allowed the producer, in this case Luther, to make any edits to the song and individual parts he desired before we committed them to audio."

Bova continues: "There was a case with one song on the album where a songwriter tracked his Korg Trinity sequence to 2-inch analog tape with live instrument overdubs. We needed to create a Pro Tools session with both the audio and sequence data so that edits could be made and individual parts could be separated to individual tracks. Because the sequencer was driven from tape, I had to record the MIDI data live from a Trinity that was locked to the tape machine. I captured the MIDI and audio referenced together. We then locked up the workstation to Pro Tools and received the MIDI data from the workstation and recorded all the MIDI parts into Pro Tools, channelized for each part, of course. Then we re-triggered the Korg sounds from the Pro Tools MIDI information and recorded that back into Pro Tools as an audio form of the parts. We transferred all those parts to a Sony 3348HR to have it on tape, too, so that we're covered no matter what we need or where we go."

Bova goes on to explain his quick and useful tip for multi-recording from a composer's keyboard workstation into Pro Tools. The first step is to create MIDI tracks that match each channel of a workstation's sequence.

"Let's say you have four channels of MIDI data, let's say drums, bass, Rhodes and synth leads," he continues. "Set MIDI track 1 to receive input from Triton channel 1 (drums), set MIDI track 2 to receive from Triton channel 2 (bass), and so forth. Next set the MIDI track outputs to match the inputs. To avoid feedback either turn MIDI thru off or mute the MIDI tracks for now. Set the workstation to receive whatever sync is appropriate, then enable send sync to the workstation and enable record and proceed to record the MIDI data."

Bova goes further to explain that he then creates and names tracks that match the individual channels of the attached workstation. He also specifies the need to designate only one MIDI track per Pro Tools track to avoid recording multiple channels to one track, and to use the graphical MIDI editing advantages Pro Tools offers over a keyboard workstation interface when editing MIDI.

"Once all the MIDI tracks are fully edited then you can individually record each track's audio from the keyboard into Pro Tools," Bova says. "You will obviously have to make separate passes for each drum sound from the drum track. I create multiple playlists of the drum track. On the bass drum playlist, for example, I erase all the other events except for the bass drum. I continue doing this on all the other playlists for the drums, remembering to keep the original playlist with all the drums in case I make a mistake. The same goes for machines like the Akai MPC or any sound module or workstation one may be using."

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Pro Technique 2 —
Adding a MIDI click after the inspiration
Be they experienced songwriters or new to the craft, Jeff Bova often works with artists who never record to a click. That's not surprising in a host of music genres but nonetheless a considerable challenge for engineer and musician alike when it comes to doing possible overdubs later, so Jeff makes his own click. A MIDI click, that is — one that he records manually in Pro Tools and then quickly nudges around to perfectly match every timing nuance of an inspired piano player's part.

"I can align any tempo changes the live part may have, and in doing so create a click for a drummer or other instrumentalist or vocalist to record a part to later," he continues. "Sometimes it's not to add an entire click track for the whole song but just to have a guide click for performers to count in to certain parts of music where they need cues. That's always handy to have right there. When an instrument strikes a chord and holds it for a measure before moving to the next section, for instance, there's got to be some kind of reference there for other instrumentalists to count in on as the next part resumes."

In the new Broadway musical "Dance of the Vampires," Bova created fully produced MIDI tracks based entirely around live, click-less piano and vocal performances.

"I tapped in aligned MIDI clicks to match the performance, exported the MIDI file to my separate sequencer application and used the re-clock feature in it to line up bars and beats to the piano vocal performance. Then I re-imported the new MIDI map into Pro Tools. This forces the bars and beats in the Pro Tools bars/beats ruler to align exactly to the live audio. This allows me to quantize to the live audio and locate by referencing to bars and beats rather than time-based markers. If I had to do audio edits at a later point, those edits could also be done by referencing to bars and beats."

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