So today I was bored doing editing and decided to purchase this DVD. I've always loved Joe Barresi's work, and was curious what this dvd would be like.
Here's a short review. Let me make something really clear though.....
THIS IS MY OPINION AND ONLY THAT.
STUDIO TOUR:
Pretty cool section, and a great intro to Joe's personality. He's cracking jokes, being good in front of the camera, and is very articulate. My only complaint was when they get to the mic locker, he just closes it real quick and doesn't really go into his arsenal or anything.
INSTRUMENT SETUPS (drums/bass/gtrs/vocals):
Probably the coolest parts of the whole dvd. He goes through all the mics, why he uses them, and afterwards goes through the whole chain he uses to process stuff. His setup to me is pretty standard in my eyes, but the mics he uses are pretty different in some cases. Again he is cracking jokes and being great on camera.
The section of going through the processing chains is cool, but as you might expect not really any specific settings are giving. He speaks in pretty general terms explaining why he uses certain things. One thing I would of liked to see is to hear the mics he was summing together separately before he summed them. Especially in the guitar section where he's summing 4 mics together across 2 amps, it'd be nice to hear what he's doing!
PROS: Good info, well put together, and he's really interesting on camera.
CONS: Pretty general information. One thing in particular that was more annoying then I thought it would be was the 6505 that's blurred out, and he's censored when he's talking about it. I won't go into why that happened, but go over to gearslutz if you wanna read what everything else thinks about it.
INSTRUMENTS TRACKING:
These sections were ok IMO. You watch the band members track each of their instruments and it's cool and everything, but there isn't a whole lot of joe directing or producing them. It's basically him making a few comments here and there and then footage of said band member tracking.
PROS: Cool to hear some of joes comments.
CONS: Not really enough stuff happening to warrant it making up about 40% of the DVD.
DIRECTORS CUT/WEB INTERVIEW:
Very informative. Alot of this is him kind of rehashing what was in the dvd, but it's still really interesting stuff. Honestly, neither of these needed to be video content. It could of easily been a podcast or MP3 and I probably would still of been just as interested.
PROS: informative
CONS: again this is a large portion of the dvd and alot of the information is just rehashed from before.
OVERALL THOUGHTS:
I give this dvd a 6.5/10. Its informative well shot, and Joe is hilarious, but I give it a 6.5 because of the following negative things...
1-Content to Price. It's a great dvd, but not a 95 dollar dvd. I think IMO it's worth probably 65 bucks at most.
2-I know settings are totally scenario specific, but in this case, since the session was in fact included it would be nice to know EXACTLY how he got to this sound or that one. He talks in very general terms.
3-The tracking sections almost seem like filler. Yes there are some really good tidbits in there, but overall I found myself getting really bored watching 15-20 minutes of someone tracking a song, and then joe making a few comments.
One really good thing about this DVD though is the included PT/OMF/RAW wav files that are included. ESpecially the PT session has some of Joe's plugs and automation.
So yeah...good dvd.....not great, but for most people still worth seeing at some point.
*****EDIT*****
One thing I forgot to mention. I know this wasn't one of Joe's bigger projects and I bet he wasn't giving it his 100%, but there are some really bad edits across all the tracks. All tracks in you don't notice, but in solo it's pretty bad. Maybe Joe just doesn't think they are a problem, but with producers I work with if I left an error like that in a track I'd get fired.
Again not a dig at Joe or the DVD, I just found it more interesting then anything at the level of mistake in the editing that were left in there.
Here's a short review. Let me make something really clear though.....
THIS IS MY OPINION AND ONLY THAT.
STUDIO TOUR:
Pretty cool section, and a great intro to Joe's personality. He's cracking jokes, being good in front of the camera, and is very articulate. My only complaint was when they get to the mic locker, he just closes it real quick and doesn't really go into his arsenal or anything.
INSTRUMENT SETUPS (drums/bass/gtrs/vocals):
Probably the coolest parts of the whole dvd. He goes through all the mics, why he uses them, and afterwards goes through the whole chain he uses to process stuff. His setup to me is pretty standard in my eyes, but the mics he uses are pretty different in some cases. Again he is cracking jokes and being great on camera.
The section of going through the processing chains is cool, but as you might expect not really any specific settings are giving. He speaks in pretty general terms explaining why he uses certain things. One thing I would of liked to see is to hear the mics he was summing together separately before he summed them. Especially in the guitar section where he's summing 4 mics together across 2 amps, it'd be nice to hear what he's doing!
PROS: Good info, well put together, and he's really interesting on camera.
CONS: Pretty general information. One thing in particular that was more annoying then I thought it would be was the 6505 that's blurred out, and he's censored when he's talking about it. I won't go into why that happened, but go over to gearslutz if you wanna read what everything else thinks about it.
INSTRUMENTS TRACKING:
These sections were ok IMO. You watch the band members track each of their instruments and it's cool and everything, but there isn't a whole lot of joe directing or producing them. It's basically him making a few comments here and there and then footage of said band member tracking.
PROS: Cool to hear some of joes comments.
CONS: Not really enough stuff happening to warrant it making up about 40% of the DVD.
DIRECTORS CUT/WEB INTERVIEW:
Very informative. Alot of this is him kind of rehashing what was in the dvd, but it's still really interesting stuff. Honestly, neither of these needed to be video content. It could of easily been a podcast or MP3 and I probably would still of been just as interested.
PROS: informative
CONS: again this is a large portion of the dvd and alot of the information is just rehashed from before.
OVERALL THOUGHTS:
I give this dvd a 6.5/10. Its informative well shot, and Joe is hilarious, but I give it a 6.5 because of the following negative things...
1-Content to Price. It's a great dvd, but not a 95 dollar dvd. I think IMO it's worth probably 65 bucks at most.
2-I know settings are totally scenario specific, but in this case, since the session was in fact included it would be nice to know EXACTLY how he got to this sound or that one. He talks in very general terms.
3-The tracking sections almost seem like filler. Yes there are some really good tidbits in there, but overall I found myself getting really bored watching 15-20 minutes of someone tracking a song, and then joe making a few comments.
One really good thing about this DVD though is the included PT/OMF/RAW wav files that are included. ESpecially the PT session has some of Joe's plugs and automation.
So yeah...good dvd.....not great, but for most people still worth seeing at some point.
*****EDIT*****
One thing I forgot to mention. I know this wasn't one of Joe's bigger projects and I bet he wasn't giving it his 100%, but there are some really bad edits across all the tracks. All tracks in you don't notice, but in solo it's pretty bad. Maybe Joe just doesn't think they are a problem, but with producers I work with if I left an error like that in a track I'd get fired.
Again not a dig at Joe or the DVD, I just found it more interesting then anything at the level of mistake in the editing that were left in there.