Focus on Rick Turner

Obenaus calls luthier Rick Turner “one of the most influential guitar makers of the last 30 years.” Turner was responsible for crafting much of the Grateful Dead’s signature sound; he built the lead and bass guitars Phil Lesh played and his company, Alembic, designed the Dead’s recording studio and custom-built the super-clear sound systems for which Dead concerts became famous.

Other aficionados of the Turner sound include jazz player Stanley Clarke and Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham, one of the first well-known musicians to choose a Rick Turner guitar. Buckingham played a Turner on “Rumours,” which is still among the top 10 most successful albums of all time.

With these credentials, Turner was “at the very top of our wish list,” says Obenaus. “We sent him the first DVD in our series and he was just blown away. He said, ‘What you guys do is a very important thing for American music history and musical instrument history.’” Turner agreed to participate, and he’s featured on the second DVD in the series.

“Logic gives me the tools I’m used to from a real professional recording studio.”

Heading to Santa Cruz

From their studio in Cologne, Germany (the trio will soon move it to South Carolina), the partners packed up two dvcams, their PowerBook G4, microphones, lights, and hard disc recorders and flew to Santa Cruz, California, where Turner has his workshop.

There they set up to capture the craftsman at work. “We use two or three DV cams so we can shoot from different angles,” explains Obenaus. “We hook up to Logic Pro on the PowerBook, using the digital converter MOTU Traveler as the audio interface, and we’re able to simultaneously record up to six tracks of audio at 24-bit and up to 96KHz.”

As a musician first and filmmaker second, Obenaus is understandably obsessed with sound quality. “It’s the most important thing,” he says. “If I have good sound and a less-good picture, I can always cut in some other image for the finished product. But if the sound is bad, you get a low-quality feel when you watch the DVD. Good sound with footage that’s not crystal-clear is OK, but the opposite is not true.”

Graphite, Ceramic, and Mama Bear

Obenaus and crew began by filming Turner’s collection of guitars from the 1920s and 1930s. They then moved to his workshop, where Turner’s ten-year-old son Elias volunteered to conduct the on-camera tour and give a demonstration of the machines. “We like to get a variety of visuals and locations and people,” explains Obenaus, “so we don’t have 45 minutes of just our main person talking.”

Next they zeroed in on Turner’s innovations. “He pushes to the utmost limits of technology,” notes Obenaus. “He makes custom steel-string acoustic guitars that don’t need to be amplified and a hybrid acoustic-electric that has the sound qualities of an acoustic guitar without the problems you get when amplifying acoustics on a big stage, such as feedback whine.”

The DVD covers some of Turner’s most creative advances: graphite reinforcements that allow acoustic guitars to be built lighter for a livelier sound, without sacrificing the strength needed to sustain high string tension; ceramic frets hard as sapphire that eliminate the hassle of frequent re-fretting; and a digital device called the Mama Bear that, according to Obenaus, “you plug into a cheap acoustic guitar and out comes the sound of a classic 1930s Martin.”

Sound Logic

Logic Pro speeds Obenaus’s editing process by making it easy to work with his key element, sound. “Logic gives me the tools I’m used to from a real professional recording studio,” he says. He employs it on the road and in the studio. “After every recording session,” he explains, “I hook up my Marantz to my PowerBook via FireWire; it shows up like an external hard drive. Then I just drag and drop the Logic sound files — it’s very quick. Then as I’m traveling I can open up those sound files and start to cut and edit.”

For Obenaus, the rough cut always starts with sound. “It’s faster and easier for me to start with the sound than to be forwarding and rewinding video,” he explains. “On the road I can cut and jump and pop in little pieces in Logic, check what I have, and be ready for the edit room. When I get back, I go through the soundtrack I recorded in Logic and cut it into snippets and label them by topic, so it’s easy to find parts that relate to each other.”

He edits the soundtrack into a rough overview of the entire interview. Next, he says, “I go through the entire thing on video. I transfer the tape to the hard drive and make notes on which parts are visually outstanding. Then I match them up with the audio. With Logic, it’s easy to sync the sound and the film.”

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