Powered by Avid Everywhere, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Score Their First Number One Album
Avid Artist Suite audio and live sound solutions deliver faster, collaborative workflows for the inspiring new album, Hypnotic Eye
Burlington, MA, October 23, 2014 – Avid® (OTC: AVID) today announced that rock ‘n’ roll legends Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers embraced Avid Everywhere™ to bring to life their new album, Hypnotic Eye - their first ever number one album on the Billboard 200. The band used industry-standard audio and live sound solutions from the Avid Artist Suite, powered by the Avid MediaCentral Platform to record and mix the entire album digitally, giving them a faster, more efficient and collaborative workflow, and greater creative freedom to produce high-quality content.
While most would expect a rock album like Hypnotic Eye to be mixed using analog consoles, Petty made the decision to record and mix the entire album using the Avid Artist Suite of tightly integrated audio and live sound solutions, including an Avid VENUE | D-Show System running Avid VENUE software at Petty’s Los Angeles rehearsal space, The Clubhouse, and edited and mixed using Avid Pro Tools® software.
The band wanted to play together in the same room, without headphones, replicating a rehearsal setting rather than a sterile studio, and chose the VENUE console, which they use on tour, to achieve their vision. Thanks to the tight integration between VENUE and Pro Tools, co-producer and engineer Ryan Ulyate used VENUE as both the monitor board and recording front end, while Pro Tools connected to the Avid ICON D-Command® console to record the band. One of the benefits of this workflow was that the band didn’t even need to wear headphones, giving them the feeling that they were just rehearsing, rather than recording in a studio.
“The band had wedges (speakers) and they were just doing what they normally do when playing live or rehearsing, Greg Looper was in the room with the band mixing their monitors, and I was ‘secretly’ off in the control room recording it,” said Ulyate. “It’s a new way of recording and we love it because it gives us the opportunity to use performances that have more fire. We’re making arrangements and trying to get it all to happen in one take, and you can capture that with this system.”
VENUE’s tight integration with Pro Tools enabled Ulyate to route all D-Show® System inputs straight into the Pro Tools system in the control room. Once the basic tracks were recorded, Ulyate took them back to their studios. Both Petty and Ulyate use identical Pro Tools rigs with the same plug-ins, enabling them to work collaboratively at either Petty’s home studio, Shoreline, or at Ulyate’s studio in nearby Topanga Canyon.
“With Pro Tools you can open a mix and have it directly in front of you in a matter of minutes – that’s really given Tom a lot of creative freedom and it’s that kind of speed that keeps the creative process going,” said Ulyate. “It allows us to go back and make edits whenever we want, so if we have an idea to make a verse better, we can do it. It makes for a better album because anything we put down isn’t set in stone. Every time Tom changes a line, the song gets better.”
“To have a musician of Tom Petty's caliber incorporate an Avid live system into the recording process demonstrates the power of the integration between Avid Artist Suite solutions,” said Jennifer Smith, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Avid. “The Avid MediaCentral Platform gives musicians the speed, efficiency and seamless collaboration they need to experiment creatively - whether on the road, or in the studio.”
Josh Paterson, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, joshp@rlyl.com, 44 (0) 207 403 8878
About Avid
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