Viet Nam Studios

As I was leaving my hotel room, three SUV's pulled up. The doors opened and out jumped ten or so kids in tight jeans, mesh shirts, cowboy hats, and Armani sunglasses.

These urban invaders, who seemed completely out of place in this quiet town, almost immediately began break-dancing on the hotel lobby floor. I was sure I'd recognized one of them from the posters I had seen taped up all over town, so I went up and introduced myself. Through the broken English and the squeaking of shoes, I gathered that they were doing a big show in town that night. This wouldn't have seemed unusual had I been anywhere but a small, rural town in the foothills of central Vietnam.

In December of 2004, I packed my bags, tuned my bicycle, and boarded a plane to Bangkok for two months of traveling in southeast Asia. I was looking forward not just to a break from Portland's dreary winter weather, but also from the engulfing nature of my work in the recording world. With my bike fully loaded, I set off for the quiet roads of Vietnam.

After traveling for several weeks, I found myself in another typical Vietnamese city where one main, paved road led through the middle of town. Big trucks barreled past me as chickens scurried across the road. In the center of the town was the local market where villagers came to sell their meat, produce, and Chinese-imported wares. In front of the market, a man was asleep at the wheel of a little hatchback. A few feet above his head, on the roof, was a bullhorn blaring Vietnamese pop music. The doors of his car were plastered with advertisements for that night's big show, and glamour shots of the latest wave of pop stars from Ho Chi Minh City.

By eight pm the whole town was gathered around the fenced-in field, handing over the necessary 20 Viet Dong to get in the doors. Imported trance music pumped out of the sound system as the band began to set up. The sound guy sat in front of a small Behringer board lit up by a naked light bulb. The light flickered with each thump of the music. By nine pm the band got on stage and began to play. As they started, the sound guy cursed the ground hum that broke up the guitar channel, and in frustration, he flicked his cigarette into the fence. The band forged onward, with a cover of Fleetwood Mac/Santana's "Black Magic Woman". Ten minutes later the guitar solo was still going and each member of the band still seemed confused as to what song they were supposed to be playing. This made it all the more shocking when one of the pop diva's jumped on to the stage and miraculously the music erupted into something coherent. The crowd cheered as she danced around the stage. By the second song, the guitar player was still shredding but this time I could hear no guitar in the song. The secret to the miraculous change in music was in the hands of the sound guy up front, who was agilely cuing up the next song. Lip-syncing seemed fitting to a culture where karaoke replaced American Idol in popularity. What really mattered to the audience was the singer, the rest was superfluous — just icing on the cake.

Upon arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, I wasn't sure if there was a recording community and musician culture surrounding it. Up until then, I had only found a karaoke pop culture and an older generation of folk musicians sponsored by the tourism council. I was convinced that if I dug a little deeper, especially in the developed, cell- phone sporting pop culture in Ho Chi Minh City, that I would find something of merit. Secretly in the back of my mind I was also hoping to find remnants of an old Soviet culture with some pre- Oktava mics, clunky old consoles, modified old military communications equipment, and possibly some old '50s gear that was bought prior to the communist take-over.

After having Googled "recording studios" and "Ho Chi Minh City" I found two studios that sounded promising. I called the first but the power was out for the day so we would be walking around in the dark, which somehow wasn't surprising.

The next studio, a place owned by a Danish ex- patriot called Little Planet Recording Studio, was a beautiful two room studio in a large, old colonial house left over from the days of French imperialism. The tracking room was a small cozy room, with wooden floors, and a large glass wall facing the control room. The control room on the other hand was built into a grandiose living room that had 20-foot tall ceilings and had a small Trident board built into a nice wooden control desk in the middle of the room. Outboard gear was limited to a Line 6 Pod, a reverb unit, a rack synth, a sampler, and a MOTU interface. A couple of synths and guitars lined the wall. The mic selection was just as limited as the outboard gear. The only mic I saw was an entry level Neumann condenser. The studio had not been designed to record bands but focused on vocalists and overdubbing instead.

The head engineer was a Parisian named Laurent who'd who had been involved in the jazzanova scene in Paris. He was a recording engineer, but was offered the job in Ho Chi Minh City because of his remix and compositional skills. Since the music in Vietnam revolves around the karaoke culture, the town operates with an abundance of singers but a lack of musicians. Just as there aren't many musicians, there are also very few songwriters. Oftentimes the job of an engineer is to write, play, record, and often master a whole album — a job we usually delegate to five or more people in the U.S. The studio had given up on investing in new gear since the costs would never be recouped due to a lack of recording budgets. Often, whole albums had to be written, recorded, mixed, and mastered in ten days. I thought it was hard working with a drunk vocalist at two in the morning. Shit, try writing lyrics and songs in a foreign language. Imagine explaining to the singer, who can't speak English, that he's off key.

Over the last few months, the rushed recording process had worn on Laurent. As he explained, quality was always sacrificed, not just because of budgetary reasons, but because the singer and promoter didn't understand the value of a good take or good mix. Just hit record and sing the words; if the first take sounds okay, keep it. Throw up the faders for a mix and call it done. Because there is little pursuit in quality, the Trident console is rarely used. Everything is mixed inside the computer, as it is simply more convenient.

Little Planet Recording Studio appeared to be the best-equipped studio in Vietnam. Because of this, and what I assume is Laurent's production ability, the studio was in high demand. It wasn't clear how sought-after Little Planet was until I visited Vafacom Studios, which is Vietnam's answer to Universal Studios, complete with an airplane hangar-like complex. Inside the studio signs pointed the direction to various film and TV sets, and TV shows. Following the posted signs for "audio", I entered the main studio where they were overdubbing a movie in the middle of a Vietnamese version of a "wet T-shirt" scene, where the actress was wearing full-length, traditional clothing rather than a white T-shirt. This is as close to a sexual encounter in the media that is allowed in Vietnam.

The control room felt completely naked by our standards. It was a small cement room with two TV monitors and DV decks, a pair of unrecognizable speakers, and an Akai Personal Studio (all-in-one box). Through the window into the tracking room I could see a pair of SM 58s for the voice-overs. There were no mic pres, no computers, no console, no large diaphragm condensers, no fancy monitors, and a talkback switch that would feed back. There was less gear here than many bedroom studios I've seen. On top of that, the movie was going to be broadcast on national TV to ten's of millions of people. What was even more humbling was that no one would even know the difference, as most people in Vietnam have mono TVs. Why bother with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear when a sixty dollar mic works just fine? In the end it makes you wonder if all our equipment is really necessary.

In Vietnam, engineers are making gold records on equipment that has been designed for "project" studios and using about as much gear as you'd find in my bedroom. Everywhere we look in the U.S., gear is continually outdated, and replaced with the next best thing. On one hand, it clearly shows how little equipment you need to make a best selling record. It also pokes fun at our dependent consumer dependent culture. We are always in pursuit of something better and new. But more importantly, it also highlights what a vibrant and cherished music culture we have. Music in Vietnam is surprisingly homogeneous. From casual observance, there seems to be no independent music or counter-culture in Vietnam. Not only is there no coherent culture, but there simply aren't the musicians to support it. Laurent could only name one session musician that he found that could play the guitar. We have them by the thousands. We have music clubs, labels, radio and magazines where ideas are exchanged, challenged, and reinvented. Through these outlets we push music to develop and grow. But it is also through these outlets that we unknowingly support other music cultures. It is this younger generation of Vietnamese that are experimenting with guitars, drum machines, and recording, and in time will develop their own styles. As Laurent pointed out, Vietnam is where Thailand was ten years ago. With the ever-decreasing cost of computers, recording equipment, and software, Vietnam is at the dawn of an independent music revolution.

Of course, when one talks about music culture in Vietnam, you must also get into larger discussions of communism's purge of artistic independence and the loss of a generation of artists who fled the communist regime. But in spite of Vietnam's historical struggles in war and oppression, the country is still missing a fundamental artistic dialogue that is often the core of creativity. "More than the lack of decent equipment, there is the absence of a music production culture, skilled sound engineers, open-minded composers and world class players. Vietnam needs these more than any modern studio piece of gear to catch up with the developed parts of Asia, like Japan or Korea," claims Laurent. A change is happening and it is apparent in even the small rural cities. It is very likely that Vietnam will continue to grow and someday have a vibrant music scene like its peers in Asia. Back in the U.S., where records get turned out by the thousands, we have something special to hold dear. We have community, creativity, artistic development, and more importantly some great music.