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SOUNDING OFF

Paul Farrer reveals how he learned to stop upgrading and love the music. By Paul Farrer
Published June 2001

SOUNDING OFF

Paul Farrer reveals how he learned to stop upgrading and love the music.

Last week I attended a party thrown by a TV production company to premier a new 'behind the scenes' series about the Royal Air Force, for which I was commissioned to write the music. Amongst the usual suspects you'd expect to find at such an industry bash — directors (nervous chain smokers), editors (lanky, Def Leppard T‑shirt‑wearing Star Wars fans) and producers (forceful young women who talk loudly) — was a likeable, quietly‑spoken chap about my own age who looked distinctly out of place, being the only person in the building wearing a jacket and tie.

This sartorial misfit turned out to be the RAF pilot who had acted as a technical consultant for the series and was responsible for most of the amazing aerial photography that made up large chunks of each episode.

Much of this, he explained, had been done in a single‑seat jet fighter with the joystick in one hand and his DV camera in the other, a process he likened to trying to check your email while driving along a country lane at 400mph. In fog.

It transpired that when not running bombing sorties in Kosovo and teaching new pilots how to fly Harrier jump‑jets, the pilot also had a passing interest in music technology. Having found some conversational common ground, we swapped info to pass the time. While I told him all about the latest developments in Native Instrument plug‑ins, he told me what it actually feels like to land on an aircraft carrier, or fire Sidewinder missiles that cost £250,000 each.

I was surprised to learn that the Harrier jump‑jet is a near perfect example of 1960s technology. "But surely", I said "it must be a headache updating the aircraft's computer systems every few years".

"Not at all", came the rather sobering reply.

Because it turns out that the main computer in your average Harrier fighter is (and I wrote this part down so I wouldn't forget it) "a bit better than a ZX Spectrum but not quite as good as a Commodore 64".

Without any hardware upgrade strategy, the jets' computers have apparently been working at 110 per cent for about 25 years, so whenever the RAF boffins come up with a new bit of software for the heads‑up display or navigation systems they actually have to remove another software component to make room for it.

Even scarier, I learnt, is the fact that Tornado fighters, for instance, need their sortie information loaded into their computers every morning via a standard C90 cassette tape. While the thought of the Gulf War having to be delayed while the allied forces wrestle on the tarmac with a chewed‑up cassette tape may fill every freedom‑loving Westerner with dread, it does, I think, have something to tell us about our insistence on upgrading and updating as often as is humanly possible.

Why do we keep buying new sound modules and investing so heavily in newer, bigger, faster computers? Is it because the features and sounds they offer are genuinely so much better than the ones we already have, or does the presence of 'new blood' (new gear) promise to give us a boost of ideas and sonic self‑confidence?

When was the last time you took the trouble to trawl through one of your older sound modules or a familiar sample CD, looking for a fresh perspective? Under the time pressures of a working studio, very often it's a luxury we tell ourselves we simply can't afford. We see forking out another grand or two on the latest bit of kit as a much safer option — and who doesn't enjoy unwrapping a new toy?

Obviously the business of flying about at mind‑numbing speeds and dropping bombs on people is a far greater priority to the RAF than petty techno snobbery (after all, who is really going to feel inferior sat behind the controls of 38 million quid's worth of airborne killing hardware?). But perhaps, more importantly, however arcane and outdated their working methods may appear to us elevated musos, the simple fact is that it works for them. Is it a problem to have a four‑track cassette machine at the heart of your studio if you make interesting and worthwhile music with it?

So would this brief foray into the world of aviation history make me consider not buying a lovely new G4 Big‑Mac with everything on it? Of course not, but it'll certainly make me think twice the next time I see TV footage of a fighter plane delivering its lethal payload accurately to within 3mm through the letterbox of the front door of some anonymous foreign tyrant.

Now, did you want that laser–guided cluster bomb chrome or ferric? Dolby on or off?