Sound Engineering Studio (B) - Project

This assignment afforded me with a diverse range of experiences. The first recording was of a piece of music composed for a dance routine. The instrumentation was all acoustic. Recording the musicians commissioned to perform the piece was an absolute pleasure. They possessed a level of skill and professionalism I have yet to see amongst commercial acts and needed only one take to nail the piece. With the post production, at first I was reluctant to use things like compression or reverb on the signal. However, it became apparent that some things needed refining (like the double bass) and in the end, the whole thing was compressed comparatively heavily. Recording the Classic Metal act was in my opinion, a good practice at efficiency. It is the first time I have allowed myself time to arrive at the studio before the musicians to set up the microphones and ProTools sessions. Unlike the Classical piece, I intended to attempt a degree of refinement akin to the likes of Rick Rubin on the recorded audio going heavy on the compression. When it came to mastering, I tried a couple of different degrees of compression. The track on which the signal was pretty much square waved seemed to be the preferred track. If I am to continue on this path of heavy compression, I would like to find the loudest sound before the signal becomes squarewaved (out of consideration for people’s ears and speakers). Presenting: the MP3s and documentation for both recordings J.A.C. Documentation J.A.C. MP3 Hero Documentation Hero MP3

Portfolio Presentation: Pick me, Pick ME!

Presenting, Lisa’s sales pitch.

I started my presentation by saying who I am, describing my backing in music (practical and theoretical) and more recently, my experiences in sound engineering. I mentioned how I like to use ideas and techniques learnt from investigating the more obscure varieties of music in my own work. An interest that translates easily into
the realms of sound engineering (after all, there is no point in re inventing the wheel).

I touched in this a bit in my presentation but think that it should be one of the main things I emphasise in the pursuit of work. Yes, I have only been studying/practicing sound engineering since the beginning of this year but, in that time, I have developed a passion for it and an eagerness to learn more and better myself. This passion translates into an enthusiasm to work in this field (enough enthusiasm to put furthering my career in sound at the top of my list of priorities.

The rest of my presentation covered my skill set at this point in time, my experiences in recording and creation of music/sound using MIDI or audio samples or both. I think this straight forward list of skills (using the term lightly) will prove an asset. In all honesty, I have not yet perfected any of these skills but I have a basis competence and in a niche market such as engineering, I think it is important to leave no room for potential employers to fear you are inexperienced.

At this point, I am glad I have a repertoire of work (no matter how small it may be). I am able to list recordings and compositions and hopefuilly, give an impression that I am an established engineer. I also have (and forgot to mention in much detail during my presentation that) spent considerable energy in my own time, trying to make connections in the local, live music scene. These efforts are a good example of initiative taking and demonstrate my enthusiasm for working in this field.

My plans for the immediate future are to practice recording by finding small, local bands and offering to do them demos for cheap or for nothing. While I have access to the facilities at uni, I shall certainly use them, when I have not, I have a couple of friends with the rudimentary elements of a recording studio (ie, they have a computer, recording program, mics and a mixing desk). Getting a good recording out of basic materials would surely be a credit to my developing skills. I am also going to continue attempting to break into live mixing on a local level. I have a few work experience opportunities I can take up, a couple of mates bands who I can offer to mix for free (and practice on) and I intend to ring around the live music venues asking if they will accept my resume (I am inclined to think that there is a sufficient surplus of sound engineers for venues to not ever really place adds for jobs online or in the paper), the first venue I contact is Fowlers as I hear their resident engineer is quite unreliable.

As suggested, I have supported this overview of my skills, experiences and ambitions with a demo CD.

Cover art:

the front cover




















inside left




















the disc itself





















behind the disc




















and the back cover





















And here are links (it looks like you are going to have to paste them in the address bar, the insert link option in blogger appears to dissappear link from the face of the earth) to all tracks on the disc bar one (which, despite my most painstaking efforts, came home as an aiff file and therefore, could not be converted to mp3 for online hosting.)

My fantasmigorical mega mix
La La Megamix

Of Traffic Lights and Drum Beats
(DAT and protools based sequencing exercise)
Of Traffic Lights and Drum Beats

AfroCelt Sound System - My Secret Bliss: Loop it La La remix
missing courtesy of the existance of aiff files

Mini Moose (yes, from Invader Zim, "I am ZIMMM")
An attempt at techno using MIDI in Logic (much fun automating synth parameters was had :-D ) Disclaimer: The levels of the different elements still need a little fine tuning,I know this.
Mini Moose

5 10 - C.I.A.
The local anti establishment punk group, these lyrics are wicked. They had two bassists you know, one of the bassists played with so much distortion though he may as well have been a second guitar, I certainly ended up treating him as such)
5 10 - C.I.A.

J.A.C.
The minute long intro of saxophone noise aside, this is an excerpt from an 8 minute long, rambling Classical/minimalist piece of work by an Adelaide Jazz student (I used to work with him at McDonalds in Victor Harbour, "I am Ned SeaGoon" generally known as Traeger. Apparently, people at the arts tafe danced to it at some point.
J.A.C.

Mini Resume

Lisa Lane-Collins


PERSONAL DETAILS:

Name: Lisa Lane-Collins

Address: 41 Marden Road
Marden SA 5070

Telephone: (08) 8362 6024
0438 847 438

Health: Excellent

EDUCATION:

Secondary: Victor Harbour High School
2004: Completed Year 12

Tertiary:

2007: Diploma of Sound Engineering (Almost Completed.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

31/8/07
Employer: The Greens

Position: Sound engineer (for the Green the Night
fund raising gig)

Duties: Set up, monitor/manage sound, pack up

REFEREES:

Peter Fiebig
Greens member
Telephone: 0438 883 104


For the full resume, click this link...

My Resume

Week 11 - almost there

This week featured the first round of presentations (something I avoided). I know that people who presented this week had less time to organise their thing but never the less, I expected…something different. Lauren went first disguised as The Electro Kitten. She is already well on the way to being identifiable on the local scene, she has her alias well figured out and a simple logo of a cat printed on everything she works with (including business cards). To the end of being a techno artist, her portfolio is excellent. The thought that struck me (being perhaps not so directed in my endeavours) was that she repeatedly was able to demonstrate her skills in her chosen field but didn’t demonstrate any other skills (something that I think this year’s study is perfect for). I would prefer to go for a portfolio that shows a diversity of productions. No one had really managed much with their demo track (ideally, I would like to do a mega mix not unlike the tracks that Nick Skitz creates for the beginning of each Skitzmix CD though the short time frame probably didn’t help this. A couple of people had thought about creating web pages for their business. I’m thinking a Myspace will be sufficient. I could reinvent myself…Sound Engineer Sam (nothing like a bit of alliteration). There is a lowly recording business (in Adelaide) who sends messages to bands over Myspace offering to record demos for cheapish. From what I have heard though, he is not very good.

WEEK TEN can i have a yiros please

Well, Shawn Timm of Timm’s tunes definitely has a different outlook to anyone else we have met this semester. Summing it up nicely I think would be his stating that he regards himself as a part of the advertising industry, not the recording industry. To begin our tour, we were shown into Shawn’s studio, sat down, given a very brief overview of what equipment he has and given a long pep talk on starting from the bottom. His equipment is minimal, he uses Protools and MIDI synths and not a lot else. As he is not really a sound engineer, he has no objections to using digital plug ins (makes life a whole lot easier for him), there isn’t even a mixing desk attached to this system. He does have the power to record (mostly voice overs) and a really shmick vocal mic but that is all. He also has supplied himself with a fine collection of instruments. This way, he can guarantee that whichever session musician he brings into record will have a good instrument to play. I was most intrigued by the presence of a Koto on his desk. Shawn owns and runs his business and gets paid twice because usually, he hasn’t just engineered the song he is recording/creating but composed it as well. Financially speaking this affirms in my mind just how much of a cash cow the marketing industry is though I’m not sure if I want to be a part of that process. In addition to Shawn’s workspace we were shown a second studio, which seemed to be used for communicating with clients interstate or overseas. We were treated to a nightmare story of the 3rd studio breaking down and the impatience of clients awaiting the transfer of information from the malfunctioning studio to a functioning one. This of course is a very bad thing to have happen in a professional context. The third studio seemed to be the best one, the employee who inhabited it worked for Shawn but also, rented the space and did his own thing there too. In terms of making money from having knowledge of sound engineering, Timm’s tunes definitely seems to be the ticket. However, it does not seem like a place where a career/art could be forged.

Weeks 8 and nine Movies movies movies

Week Nine Today we were shown around Oasis Post (one of Adelaide’s High End Post Production and Special Effects Facilities). A theme that seems to reoccur is that of versatility. Disc Edits have the capacity to master CDs and record voice overs, Mix Masters have the facilities to record to disc or cassette and at Oasis, the work ranges from adds to blockbuster films and their skills include the editing of visual and audio aspects of film. First of all, an overview, our guide gave us a bit of a run down on what they do and what equipment they have to do it. It seems that, like the film corporation, quite a number of medium sized films have past through the doors. Oasis have done well to acquire the best equipment and most efficient systems of communication and transfer We were sat down and shown a preview for the follow up to Wolf Creek, Rogue. As far as I was concerned the movie seemed indistinguishable in visual and audio quality from any other blockbuster. It is pleasing to see that film makers from America bring their work to Australia for the finishing touches and I guess the quality of Rogue is a fine indication of why (or maybe once again, like the film corp. it is more to do with subsidies and cheaper costs.) The next room we were shown was a neutral space for previewing work with. I cannot for the life of me recollect its specific purpose. There is a projector in this room that can ‘learn’ what the conditions of the room are and adjust its projections accordingly. For example, at Oasis, it ‘knew’ that 3 of the walls were black curtain and one was stone. Lastly, we were shown Tracks Adelaide, the incorporated facility for editing sound to video (courtesy of ProTools). The way Oasis is set up, information from a computer working on visuals can accessed by the Tracks Adelaide Computer (save time on transfer of info). Tracks Adelaide use a smaller version of the Icon desk and, while we were there, the engineer was working on a DVD for the Hilltop Hoods performance with a symphony orchestra (mostly for love). Week 8: FILM CORP and the crazy white room with no walls floor or ceiling Back out to the industrial wasteland west of the city this time to look around the Film Corporation. Oddly enough, this entity is government owned and funded. The Film Corp. is versatile, essentially, the building is a Space that people can rent out and use. There is a studio for foley work (the idea that foley is crucial is reinforced yet again.) The foley recording space is a comfortably messy area, there are several varieties of ground, a bicycle, misc. A couple of good room mics, a remote control system to hit play on Protools for those days when the techie has to work alone. While we were there, the sound guys was working on the Foley for some b grade Aussie kids show (I’ve never ceased to wonder where these shows get churned out from). There were some instances where the foley guy had to ‘invent’ a sound (i.e. a scene with a baby crawling around in it). If a filmmaker has hoped to just use the sound caught on location, they are dreaming. Should you ever want to take the show overseas, the actors’ voices will be dubbed over and all the other Foley will need doing then too, best to do it at the beginning. We didn’t get to look in one of the filming spaces but we did get to go into the room with the crazy non-walls. While we were there, they were white, often they are a particular shade of green which is immensely hard to come by. You may have heard the term ‘blue screen’, in Australia, you can’t get blue screen, the paint for it was on sale once at the very beginning and never again (hence the green screen). The highlight for me was most definitely attempting to walk to the corner of the room with no walls or corners, very trippy. Our next thing to look at was the studio for synching sound and film. The Film Corp uses a monster desk called a Harrison (the techie treated us to its equivalent to Vegas mode, an act that was met with a collective, appreciative ‘ooh’). The Harrison has 92 inputs but even that cannot save it from being made obsolete, already, the film corp. is looking to acquire an Icon desk. In short, the have to if they want to stay competitive. A lot of movies get made in Australia or New Zealand because it is cheap.

Film music guest person stuff (this is a blog)

This week’s forum saw us all learning about music in film. It’s a pretty involved process, lots of teamwork involved. Essentially, no sound in film is source sound. For one thing, reality is not exaggerated enough. Hollywood has us used to hearing the whoosh of air and the smack of skin when someone pulls a punch and the rustling of clothes when someone moves, the crunching of gravel when someone walks and the jangling of car keys in their pocket. It’s the attention to these minute details that suspend the viewer’s disbelief (well, I think so anyway). The person in charge of this magic is the Foley artist. (All but rustling, someone else is in charge of rustling). In Hollywood, the workload is split up into very specific parts, everyone specialises (like Japanese mechanics). You have the - Foley artist, - Rustle track guy, - The person in charge of overdubbing the dialogue, - Someone who composes scores, - Someone who arranges them, - Someone who makes them readable - Librarian (a surprisingly important member of the film making army) As far as composing film music is concerned, it is hard not to be influenced by the temp track (according to our guest speaker). Before composing a note, go and talk the director/producer and get as much of an idea as to what they want and what would be appropriate for respective scenes. Also, get an idea of what instruments you have to play with. When composing, it is important to remember that at the end of the day, dialogue comes FIRST. Compose sound that will compete with the dialogue and it will be squashed down and hidden in the background. Likewise, if a character is singing on screen, accompanying music will need to be small. Point of View camera shots are a good opportunity to put in some additional music. Ask yourself ‘why is the camera moving, what is it trying to portray?’ Lastly, the guest speaker played us the promotional video for a Sony game to which he composed the music and created the sound effects. He suggests attempting to source sounds from the Hollywood vaults of recordings as Hollywood has the money to create the best quality recordings around. He told us a tale of a fellow who spent a day recording sports cars racing down a tunnel. My conclusions in respect to the actual music were that, game music is a good opportunity to play with MIDI and create what is essentially techno/electronica.

Week 4?? 5? what ever week following the post before this one ha ha.: DISC EDITS

This week’s forum excursion found me falling asleep in disc edits. In my half-asleep haze I learnt that these guys got in on mastering CDs nice and early. Their soundproofing and design was impeccable, their equipment good quality and their couches allegedly pretty comfy. Disc edits have been operating since around 1992. Originally I think they intended to do other things like recording voice-overs. The equipment for this is still present and used. However, as CDs came to the fore of the audio landscape, it became apparent that something needed to replace the editing process present in tape recordings, something was needed to restore a little warmth to digital recording, disc edits set out to become a mastering studio. Like other mastering studios we have heard about, disc edits possess an array of analogue devices through which signal can be processed. They also make good use of equalisation and have an oscilloscope device that can tell you what the stereo image is doing. I was somewhat perplexed to learn that they usually listen to music at 80 db (at this level, you can work for an hour I think before needing to take a break). Personally, I would try and work at as low a level as possible (so at night, you could probably get away with considerably less than 80 db). However, it is imperative that every different recording requiring analysis for effective mastering is listened to through the same speakers and at the same volume. An hour and 45 minutes into this excursion, I woke right up when our disc edits man gave us the history of recorded music in 15 minutes (impressive). All of the manufacturing processes up until the point of CDs I was at least a little bit familiar with and yet this guy managed to make it sound interesting. Finally, he arrived at the era of the CD and not only told us about ‘Glass Masters’ but showed us one as well. In fact, he had 3 Glass masters (I think) and was able to show us the Glass, the Glass with a nickel coating and the Glass after it has been etched. He seemed mystified as to why bands might ask to keep their Glass Masters. That is no mystery to me, they look COOL.

blog for week 4 in the semester numbering 2: CD city

Here it is folks, the ins and outs of CD manufacture (surprisingly hard to find pictures of on the net). You take one master CD that meets the industry standards to the factory where a pair of technicians will spend 8 hours putting information on a 'stamper'. (The stamper is a reverse mold of the original information which is made from metal covered by glass). Then there are the CD production lines. The biggest issue with CD manufacture is getting your job into their schedule. In a large factory, a disc can be printed every three seconds. The process is approximately as follows...plastic pellets are melted down, stamped as they reach melting point, coated in metal and coated in more plastic. Finally, the disc needs a government approved barcode, I'm not sure if this is every individual disc with its own code or if the code is relevant to the information printed on it. If you want to be stingy, you can attempt to burn uber numbers of CDs at home...I don't recommend it. However, if you insist on this course of action, there is a program called Bravo that will slowly burn your discs for you (like maybe over night). Finally, your disc needs a picture, you have a choice between offset printing (photographic quality) or silk screen printing (more dotty). You could get a CD in the shape of a business card. Pretty expensive and they can only be played in CD players with trays but how cool is that!!! You can get CDs in other custom shapes too, they need only to be balanced. The plastic for these needs to be of a high quality. So, when you get all your CDs back, keep your master copy in a safe place. Oh, and of course, use refutable manufacturing plants who will take good care of your master while it is in their hands. David Grice suggests having three copies of the master, one for listening, one for safe “tape it up, never listen to it” and....another one for safe. Not surprisingly enough, people still manufacture tapes (you can sell anything to people crossing the Nullabor) and vinyl (it retains a much warmer sound). In Australia, there is only one place that produces vinyl, it is in Melbourne I think. Now, a little more class project feedback: ME – Instrumentally sound (good drums oh yeah) the vocals are out of tune, is this necessarily a negative (NB, the band went and recorded a bunch of stuff with someone else and put it on their Myspace and kept all of the ear drum mutilating partials int eh guitar and bass sounds, they obviously like to sound bad and, as a professional, I needed to give the band what they want. Ponytails gets thumbs up for panning of guitars and vocals, vocals maybe a bit loud. Simon – Mixed in headphones equals boom double tracked guitars good vocals in mono would be a different creature voice double tracked Jake – Rockin could have used a Rhythm part Don't work with pissed people Daniel – open lid for piano recording middle string miced with u87 good honky tonk feel

week something: Paradise (not surprisingly, not my idea of)

Well, never could two studios be as different as Mix Masters and Paradise. The former, in true Rock tradition I think, assembled over a life time of engineering and collecting, many devices being old/salvaged/restored/emulating the old, the engineers being their own masters (the guy from Paradise kept on referring to “the band’s producer” as the person who decides what to do. Producer? I have never seen a local band with a producer.) The building was old and homely unlike Paradise, which featured narrow corridors, wide screen TV, egg chairs and the smell of paint. The Paradise equipment was all bought brand new, top of the line stuff (no two inch multitrack taping machines kicking around this joint). The Paradise engineer a mere 23 years old, shipped over from Sydney to do Church recordings. So, what did I learn? Our guide said most sagely that it is better to get things right when recording than spend ages trying to fix it up in the editing stage. He also said, most intriguingly that, once you have a little experience and a little confidence…abandon the clean recording. If you have an A grade compressor at your disposal, run your vocals through it, it’s compression will sound infinitely nicer than anything Protools has to offer. If your desk is a quality beast of a desk, set your EQ at sound check, the result will be pleasant (and save messing around in post production). Upon examining our offerings of recorded material, the Paradise engineer played recordings through two different sets of speakers, one set of which Ken declared to sound ‘appalling’. This statement was met with the explanation of needing some poorer quality speakers for a more objective monitoring system (harking back to Stephen Fieldhouse’s adventures mixing on his car stereo). Alas, the overwhelmingly commercial attitude (manifest in such ideas as ‘if the drummer can not play to a click track, tell him to practice until he can.’) of our guide meant that I had trouble not tuning him out and gleaned little more knowledge than what you see above you. I can conclude that, I liked Mix Masters a lot more than Paradise and, I could never do work experience at Paradise. Too Much Church Music!

Mtf wk 2 or semester 2: Ideas city

At last, a bit of real world application, this week’s forum was spent investigating the Mix Masters recording studio up in the hills. Upon our arrival, we were shown an array of old-school analogue technology. Nifty devices included a 2 inch multitrack tape recorder and a Radar, countless reverb and compression units, ribbon mics and an analogue desk (that is never-the-less hooked up to Protools which Mix Masters essentially use as a filing cabinet/editing tool). All semester, I have been wondering why the old sound engineers are so reluctant to let go of analogue recording devices. Now, finally, I have an explanation. Quite simply, the attraction is distortion from track to track on the 2 inch multitrack tape. The less than perfect technology allows for a little bit of contamination (or ‘fuzz’) from the neighbouring track the end result being a nice kind of distortion that binds everything together. In the pursuit of a compromise between the mind-boggling ease of digital and the ‘warmth’ of analogue, a computer with a super ADC/DAC converter has been created. This is known as Radar. I think I would like one, can I have one please? Mix Masters have one wired up and often use it to record. The fellow who showed us around suggested (with his infinite array of options) that, just because you have access to a collection of equipment, you may not need it for a good sound. He would probably tend to start with nothing and add devices as the sound quality (or lack there of) dictates. He also had a nice collection of mics including very old, top notch vocal mics and assorted ribbon mics. He had found with experience that the best quality mic may not produce the best recordings in every situation. At the end of the day, it is a good thing to avoid simply follow a formula. Good advice given included the suggestion of trying your best to record warm ups as, they often as not prove to be the best take you get. Same as live situations, setting up more mics than you need is preferable and, much to my surprise, our guy suggested building rock mixes up from the guitars/vocals, something that I am keen to try with my recording from last semester.

Mtf wk 13: back to the grind

We have a new lecturer (David Grice) for forum this semester and, we are going to, every second week be going on excursions to local studios, which should be cool. For the first part of the class, we got told a little of our new lecturer’s history. Like a lot of the rock musician come lecturers here, David tells us he settled into recording when he hit 30 because he wanted a stable future. Coming from a musician’s background, he became interested in recording and more or less taught himself. David’s musical background includes piano lessons up to fifth grade and competitive singing. At this stage, David has a broad appreciation of different styles of music. He suggests that, as an engineer it helps to be able to find something you like in every band you record (even if it is just the double kick in a death metal band) otherwise some recording jobs will drive you insane.

 David mentioned the impact of the evolution of the internet on the acquisition of music (this curious compromise on quality for quantity ala MP3s). The upside of the net is that it provides a whole new medium for marketing. In the realms of recording and marketing, David suggests recording warm ups and selling your CDs in a store so you can collect ARIA points (though if you sell independently then you can keep your profits). He also mentioned that, at the end of the day, analogue will ALWAYS sound warmer than digital. However, I like to think that a good analogue mastering can redeem the warmth you lose from digital recording. Of peoples recording projects we heard: Rohan – Had to deal with a less than 100% singer who wanted to record into an SM 58. Have to communicate to artists that recording is an entirely different world to live performance Ben – Good though a little more snare wouldn’t have gone a stray Scott H – sounded wicked to my ears. Scott said that in the end, he had to leave little mistakes in the recording, it being a cover, all the mistakes were identifiable and if he had gone for the perfect take, he would have been there for ever. Stewart – All good except for vocals which start to quiet and end too loud Josh – in a room with terrible boom, Josh’s mix didn’t have any which I thought was curious. - vocals needed to be louder Lauren – hum - did a really good job of getting ambient, airy vocals - acoustic could have been more full

Sound engineering studio: My career as a producer of renown begins here!

Recording Documentation Lisa Lane-Collins ________________________________________________________ 18/5, 25/5, 1/6, 8/6 ________________________________________________________ Ponytails ________________________________________________________ Format Sampling Rate 44 100 Bit Depth 16 Duration 2’06 Total Time Spent on Recording 7 Hours 15 Minutes Notes/Issues/Commentary on Recording (Minimum 300 words) Recording with inferior instruments when superior ones are available is an outright waste of time. Need to allow a good hour to perfect the levels of the drum micing. In one session, I had the tracks for the snare and the first tom mixed up. The result of which was a peak nightmare. Was very careful with my mic cables after. Towards the end, lost a few files through Protools refusing to save new recordings to the audio folder. (At the beginning, lost an entire session through selecting unused files and deleting them. I’ll never make that mistake again) Drummer unable to work to a click track. Got the guitarist to play in the control room (being recorded onto a track in the protools session which was deleted later on when it came time to record guitar). The drummer could now hear the guitar part through the headphones with (in theory) no spill into the drum mics. In practice, there was found to be spill with the drum tracks containing guitar but it was quiet enough to not pose a problem. Time was an issue. Time taken to set up and more significantly, time taken to save progress at the end of each session. A portable hardrive would have made the whole process infinitely easier. USB drives stuffing up was also an issue until I started bringing a windows based laptop into each recording session (for use formatting broken USB drives and additional storage space). Used a combination of Mic, amp and DI to record both the basses. The clean base was easy to record (it had hidden pick ups too which meant that was no risk of the bassist slapping the pickups). The distorted bass however, had to be treated more like a second guitar. Used a mic and DI for the guitar. Vocals were recorded through a Neumann using the Avalon for a preamp. After my early nightmare losing an entire song through clearing unused files, I invested a lot of time between each song/instrument, cleaning up my results, removing from the disk unwanted takes and giving wanted takes easily identifiable and sortable names. After one recording session I had to create an entirely new protools session and import all my audio from the old session because protools was not saving my recordings to the audio folder. (The upside of which was, I had no more work to do when I finished the last vocal take save for mixing and mastering). Track Information Track Instrument Performer Name 1 Kick drum Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique B 52 cardioid dynamic Attempted close mic with the b52 inside the kick drum Notes Fairly straight forward, place the mic in facing approximately where the beater hits (impossible to tell for sure as the skin was not clear). Had problems with the mic stand not holding the weight of the mic and drooping until it rested on the pillow. Didn’t notice this to effect the sound terribly. Track Instrument Performer Name 2 Snare Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique SM 58 cardioid dynamic Closed miced facing snare skin Notes Seemed to work well enough, Had a pretty nice snare sound I thought Track Instrument Performer Name 3 Tom 1 Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique SM 57 cardioid dynamic Close miced directly facing skin Notes Had to use 57s on the first two toms. There were four toms in total, 3 56s available for use, I wanted to reserve the two 56s for the lower toms and I wanted there to be a consistency between the 57 miced toms (tom 1 and 2) nd the 56 miced toms (3 and the floor tom). Using the 57 on two toms I thought would stop it from being obvious that it was a different mic to usual. Had lots of spill from other parts of the kit. Also, the mic stand kept drooping. In the end had to coun ter balance it with a bag. Track Instrument Performer Name 4 Tom 2 Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique SM 57 cardioid dynamic Closed miced directly facing skin Notes As above. Track Instrument Performer Name 5 Tom 3 Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique B 56 cardioid dynamic As above Notes Suffered from spill and drooping (and was thusly counter balanced with a bag also) Track Instrument Performer Name 6 Floor tom Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique B 56 cardioid dynamic As above Notes As above Track Instrument Performer Name 7 Hi Hat and Crash Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique NT 5 Omni Condenser Attempting to use rule of thirds, placed above and over the hi hat and crash cymbal Notes Can’t escape spill, use it to your advantage Track Instrument Performer Name 8 Assorted other 3 cymbals Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique As above As above Notes As above Track Instrument Performer Name 9 Bass Doink Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique 414 cardioid, condenser Close miced on angle facing amp Notes Works well Track Instrument Performer Name 10 Bass Doink Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique Amplifier DI N/A Notes Also works well Track Instrument Performer Name 11 Bass Doink Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique DI N/A Notes Combining the output from the DI and the two tracks previous allows for a nice/full bass sound Track Instrument Performer Name 12 Guitar Vark Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique SM 57 cardioid, dynamic Close miced on angle to amp Notes No fear of peaks, amount of distortion that the player used however could strip your insides Track Instrument Performer Name 13 Guitar Vark Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique DI N/A Notes Slightly fuller sound with a little bit less edge, combined with mic gives good results Track Instrument Performer Name 14 Bass 2 Gavin Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique 414 cardioid condenser As with the last bass Notes Same as other bass Track Instrument Performer Name 15 Bass 2 Gavin Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique Amp DI N/A Notes Same as other bass Track Instrument Performer Name 16 Bass 2 Gavin Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique DI N/A Notes As with other bass Track Instrument Performer Name 17 Lead vocals Todd (a different Todd) Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique Neumann cardioid, condenser Relatively close miced with popper stopper Notes Tended to droop, ran it through the Avalon for better, louder sound Track Instrument Performer Name 18 Backing vocals 1 Vark Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique As above As Above Notes As above Track Instrument Performer Name 19 Backing vocals 2 Doink Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique As above As above Notes As above Track Instrument Performer Name 20 Backing vocals 3 Gavin Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique As above As above Notes As above. Missing from final mix thanks to protools’ lack of saving of audio files Link to MP3 mixdown will go here as soon as it is uploaded to the web Recording Documentation Lisa Lane-Collins ________________________________________________________ 18/5, 25/5, 1/6, 8/6 ________________________________________________________ CIA ________________________________________________________ Format Sampling Rate 44 100 Bit Depth 16 Duration 1’59 Total Time Spent on Recording 6 Hours 30 Minutes Notes/Issues/Commentary on Recording (Minimum 300 words) Essentially, this song progressed at the same rate as Ponytails. For example, drums would be recorded for Pony Tails and then, before packing the kit up, drums would be recorded for CIA. As all the setting up would be completed by time Ponytails was finished, recording CIA tracks was always an easier experience. The notes/issues and commentary are essentially the same as they are for Ponytails as CIA was recorded at the same time. Ways in which CIA differs are the Clean bass which uses a phasing effect for the verses (meaning the gain needed to be turned down a little bit and the bass had to be automated to be louder in the chorus or it disappeared) and the backing vocals, there are less (only because by the end no one could be bothered to record them). That and, the distorted bass now plays with breaks under my advice (attempting to insert some contrast into the band’s music). Track Information Track Instrument Performer Name 1 Kick drum Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique B 52 cardioid dynamic Attempted close mic with the b52 inside the kick drum Notes Fairly straight forward, place the mic in facing approximately where the beater hits (impossible to tell for sure as the skin was not clear). Had problems with the mic stand not holding the weight of the mic and drooping until it rested on the pillow. Didn’t notice this to effect the sound terribly. Track Instrument Performer Name 2 Snare Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique SM 58 cardioid dynamic Closed miced facing snare skin Notes Seemed to work well enough, Had a pretty nice snare sound I thought Track Instrument Performer Name 3 Tom 1 Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique SM 57 cardioid dynamic Close miced directly facing skin Notes Had to use 57s on the first two toms. There were four toms in total, 3 56s available for use, I wanted to reserve the two 56s for the lower toms and I wanted there to be a consistency between the 57 miced toms (tom 1 and 2) nd the 56 miced toms (3 and the floor tom). Using the 57 on two toms I thought would stop it from being obvious that it was a different mic to usual. Had lots of spill from other parts of the kit. Also, the mic stand kept drooping. In the end had to coun ter balance it with a bag. Track Instrument Performer Name 4 Tom 2 Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique SM 57 cardioid dynamic Closed miced directly facing skin Notes As above. Track Instrument Performer Name 5 Tom 3 Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique B 56 cardioid dynamic As above Notes Suffered from spill and drooping (and was thusly counter balanced with a bag also) Track Instrument Performer Name 6 Floor tom Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique B 56 cardioid dynamic As above Notes As above Track Instrument Performer Name 7 Hi Hat and Crash Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique NT 5 Omni Condenser Attempting to use rule of thirds, placed above and over the hi hat and crash cymbal Notes Can’t escape spill, use it to your advantage Track Instrument Performer Name 8 Assorted other 3 cymbals Todd Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique As above As above Notes As above Track Instrument Performer Name 9 Bass Doink Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique 414 cardioid, condenser Close miced on angle facing amp Notes Works well Track Instrument Performer Name 10 Bass Doink Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique Amplifier DI N/A Notes Also works well Track Instrument Performer Name 11 Bass Doink Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique DI N/A Notes Combining the output from the DI and the two tracks previous allows for a nice/full bass sound Track Instrument Performer Name 12 Guitar Vark Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique SM 57 cardioid, dynamic Close miced on angle to amp Notes No fear of peaks, amount of distortion that the player used however could strip your insides Track Instrument Performer Name 13 Guitar Vark Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique DI N/A Notes Slightly fuller sound with a little bit less edge, combined with mic gives good results Track Instrument Performer Name 14 Lead vocals Todd (a different Todd) Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique Neumann cardioid, condenser Relatively close miced with popper stopper Notes Tended to droop, ran it through the Avalon for better, louder sound Track Instrument Performer Name 15 Backing vocals 1 Vark Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique As above As Above Notes As above Track Instrument Performer Name 16 Backing vocals 2 Todd, Todd, Vark and Doink Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique As above As above Notes This track is more for fun than for the music, every band member present crowded around the mic and at certain points, screamed backing vocals. Track Instrument Performer Name 17 Bass 2 Gavin Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique 414 cardioid condenser As with the last bass Notes Same as other bass Track Instrument Performer Name 18 Bass 2 Gavin Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique Amp DI N/A Notes Same as other bass Track Instrument Performer Name 19 Bass 2 Gavin Microphone Brand/Model/Pattern Placement technique DI N/A Notes Wave form is a solid rectangle, didn’t end up using this track at all, too abrasive Link to MP3 mixdown will go here

Audio studies Creative Project-Only: Loop It La La mix

Only: Loop it La La Mix Lisa Lane-Collins Minutes ‘ Seconds (Italic 11pt Arial) I had a lot of dead ends with this project, all due to ill thought out sample collecting. In the end, with only a day or so to go, I downloaded the protools session of Nine Inch Nail’s Only and used the audio tracks from that to create a remix. To begin with, I imported the audio files that were included in the audio folder into a new protools session (thus losing any structure in terms of instruments and in terms of alterations to length that may have been made to these files in the original protools session. Once these files were imported, I located the drum loop and went about sampling the kick, snare and hi hat sounds. I applied a low-end filter to the kick (in search of a boomy sound) and a high pass filter to the snare (to make it more contrasting to the kick drum). I would have liked to have built something around one of the synth parts however, they refused to conform to the alleged tempo of 112 bpm (in fact, the synths sounded a lot like they were in fact playing in 5 4. Finding that one of the bass parts fitted nicely to my drum part, I began trying out different samples (mostly of guitar parts) over the top. I found that the three piano parts were the most malleable, They could be chopped up and bulked out with without leaving artefacts. It was while playing with the piano samples that I had the idea to overlay a loop out of synch of itself by one beat creating a canon. It was my preference to omit the vocal parts all together (in the original song, I found the vocals to be pretentious overkill). However, my mix needed something so I inserted the lead vocal 1 (essentially the first two verses). Upon listening, I found the vocals in the context of my mix to be quite effective. Removed from its intended backing, Reznor’s voice, half singing, half speaking and often repeating things sounds like the voice of someone gone a little insane with pain. Pleased with the effect of the vocals, I wrapped it up with my piano loop canon. The result is a piano line that moves (rather than the original static line). The piano, I supported with a funny, ‘bouncing’ percussion sample. NB While I did experiment with tricks like reverse (the result of which I could not incorporate even though it sounded cool. It just didn’t fit), I didn’t really bother with effects as I felt that none of the samples needed anything else. NB2 I am still having technical ldifficulties uploading files for linkage. I hope to overcome them tonight (ergo, my MP3 mixdown should be uploaded this time tomorrow and listenable)

Justice! MIDI studies creative assignment

Justice Lisa Lane-Collins 3 ‘ 57 The intention was to recreate the backing track to a rap by MC O2 (a local and as of yet undiscovered talent) using better quality audio programming (the original is made in fruity loops). Once satisfactorily recreated, I intended to add my own touches here and there and record better quality vocals over the top. To recreate the various tracks from the fruity loops session in Logic, I made several tracks and, using the step editor, entered the relevant MIDI data. Choosing from the assorted synthesizers that come standard with Logic, I attempted to match up the data with sounds similar or the same as the sounds from the Fruity Loops session. This proved to be a nightmare. Drum and bass tracks were easily recreated, as were fruity loops ‘strings’ tracks. More complicated, synth effects with obscure names like ‘adventure and ‘gnome’ however were impossible to recreate in Logic. By ear, I could identify that notes played by the ‘adventure synth’ were in fact, fifths and thus, I was able to more closely recreate the sound by writing the adventure part in fifths. The ‘gnome’ sound however was harder to recreate with the note seemingly sliding up an octave within the first second of being sounded. I attempted to fiddle with synth settings a little bit to more closely resemble the sounds I desired but found it to be some what ineffectual without knowing anything about controlling the synths. Once I had settled on compromised synth sounds, I arranged them by ear into something that would be suitable to rap over and used a little volume automation to ease the transitions from no sound to sound in some places. The arrangement no longer resembles the arrangement of the original track as the rapper was dissatisfied with the sounds I found in Logic and opted to stay with his fruity loops version thus rendering it unnecessary for me to retain his song structure. Also rendering the addition of vocals unnecessary (and I had run out of time). N.B. I would have an MP3 of this piece posted but I don't know how to post MP3s on blogger. The MP3 will be up as soon as I find out.

Afrocelt sound system goes under the scalpel mwoahahaha

• Import all the audio files into the regions section of protocols • Investigate • Have genius idea to establish the original tempo thus making everything fit together neatly with little or no editing • Sampled the sound of the kick, hihat and snare but opted in the end to use the bodhran/percussion samples for my initial drum part – results in nice folk feel • Looked for an alternative motif to the vocals or the whistle parts to build my piece on, settled on a kora riff • Experimented with the abstract key parts as they sound cool but found that regular keys sounded better. • Made a cliché doof doof kick drum beat out of the kick sample at 1:24 because it could be done and because it removed my remix further from the original. • Included a guitar line and a bass line with the doof doof, it’s like the climax of the piece • Really didn’t like the vocal samples but included them in a minor way. They are very quiet in the mix when they first appear and don’t really get to shine until the guitar/bass drops off and leaves a minimal mix of kora and drums . As I progressed through my mix, it became apparent that it helps to have a good idea of what you want the end result to sound like. Thinking of the remix like it were a rehash, I considered that one could take the song in question and remix it to sound like an assortment of genres (an idea that solidified after hearing a remix of Shock the Monkey that sounded industrial). As far as research is concerned, I found very little advice on the creative aspect of things and most information was directed at people who had wav files of songs to work with, not jigsaw puzzle pieces. A lot of my samples already had heavy use of effects like reverb and delay (rendering reversals very obvious) so I didn’t bother much with effects (just the occasional modulation on the kora part for a change). One bit of information I found invaluable was the rule of repeating new things 8 times before evolving or changing them. Perhaps, this rule cramps the creative potential of the remixer but it is aurally an aesthetically pleasing thing to do. Bibliography http://forum.djspenny.co.uk/index.php?s=76355067b1c0fe639f868cb38b8706e4&showtopic=268 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.07/avalanches.html http://helpdesk.audiofile-engineering.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=31 (this guy is obsessed with 8 beats) http://www.realworldremixed.com/remix.php?remix_id=l5488eOTKmixVO4. http://blog.deepsound.net/?2007/01/08/117-bjork-remix

MTF week 12

Ken • Approaches as remix (not mix), seeks to create own version of song • Chooses loops that sound interesting and builds from there. • Cheated and did the bulk of the preliminary investigating, altering and structuring of samples in Ableton Live (where is our Ableton live Adelaide University? Why don’t the rest of the Diploma class get given the hint that this programme exists? Are we supposed to discover it on the task bar all on our own?!!!! The right tools for the right job I say!) • Does nifty things with chopped up vocals that give piece a real techno feel Me • See write up! Josh – Shock the Monkey • Experimented with putting the left and right drum track out of phase, it was unsuccessful. • Remix bares little resemblance to original. • Abandoned the vocal line, sampled the phrases “Shock the Monkey” and “monkey, monkeeey” and created a vocal line from that (an almost satirical treatment of the song in my opinion) • Found many of the audio samples supplied to be of poor quality – thus was limited to a minimal instrumentation • Samples have too many effects on them already for it to be worthwhile using anymore (effects) Brendan – If I had My Way • Ambitiously attempted to make an Industrial mix • When that proved too hard, went for a Hard Rock feel • Double tracks vocals ala Ozzie, double tracked guitars (hard left and right) • Effects on the drum kit (something I had yet to think of) • Amplitude on just about everything • Combination of gain, amplitude, chorus and pitch shift used on vocals to make them abrasive. • Would have employed the Kylie Effect on the vocals if the plug in was available. Lauren – People’s Colony No. 1 • Had problems with samples of irregular sizes • EQed samples and liked the result • Use of repetitive beeping sound would have been excellent for giving the piece a techno feel if mixed for the forum room speakers. • Mentioned that she would have liked to spend time building the piece up and then bringing it down again (which would have been good) but felt constrained by time limits.

MTF Wk 11 - remix city

Commonly, people delved into their mixes without hearing the original (thus minimising the chance of simply recreating the original). Where this didn’t happen, people still, to varying degrees, avoided simply putting the song back together. This said, I personally preferred mixes that bore little resemblance to the original, more creative I think (though I suppose, less demonstrative of one’s ability to mix sounds the way they are intended. Scott H. – If I Had My Way • Constructed without hearing the original though (as a result of keeping the lyrics intact I think) it has become essentially the song with a different backing. • Endeavoured to create space and succeeded well Ben – If I Had My Way • Chopped up samples and created a remix with a techno feel • Chopped and distorted guitar to create new backing for a verse Scott P. – What You Are • Having not heard original, uses samples to create a song that has half the duration • Use of backwards vocals Stewart – My Secret Bliss • Approached task as an arrangement rather than a remix because the samples were already highly produced • Had to chop drums to make them fit • Changed guitar tracks to mono for something different • Got very nice musicality out of the vocals, made them sound busy • Mentioned idea of building mix around the vox, which made me think that what you choose to mix around makes all the difference to the end result. As does having an idea beforehand about what style you want to mould your samples into. Jake – My Secret Bliss • Fades the vocals in and out (much to my liking) • Highlights the whistle – double tracks, delays, has to boost 1kHz frequency to compensate for phase issues. Daniel – My Secret Bliss • Techno head thus steered clear of vocals and brought cool little electronic samples to the fore using the EQ • Drums and bass are the most prominent instruments in the mix • Very spacious mix – this leaves headroom for panning to be effective • Aimed to incorporate layers Simon – What You Are • Wanted to multitrack but couldn’t find information on it. • Thin intro, good use of builds. • Good, techno treatment of vocals. • Primary vocals in the first minute are a section of the original vocals sample reversed • Had the problem of running out of tracks, had to ‘track stack’

MTF week 10

Grunge • Very raw • Once cleaned up and stylised by record companies, was assimilated into other forms of music • Trend Genre – experiences waves of popularity • Was a rebellion against glam metal and the over produced 80s Grunge artists learn to play as they go, Grunge Metal band Sound Garden lost fans as their technique improved. An interesting note on ‘copycat bands’…Firstly, it is possible to get artists who reach the same musical sounds independently of each other, sounding the same does not necessarily reek of theft and, the line between copycatting and being legitimately and unavoidably influenced. However, some bands are just straight out copying, sometimes even down to their image, they don’t always sell so well. Some of the Offspring of Grunge include Stoner Rock (my favourite kind) • Evolution of the Black Sabbath sound • Psychopathic vocals (think QOTSA) http://youtube.com/watch?v=nR2emR9xvCE The White Stripes • Mid-fi • Basic songs and performance but sells well (a fine example of successfully pulling off a cliché?) Marilyn Manson’s ‘Beautiful People’ • Glam Metal meets Industrial • Double tracked drums Iggy Pop – shows Grunge tendencies before Grunge emerges. (Layers mix with the sound a guitar feeding back.) Australian Grunge. Sounds kind of pop…think Spiderbait. http://youtube.com/watch?v=UtqjmuUaYXA Punk (not an evolution of grunge) • Lots of mid range and a fast tempo make it very in your face The other topic covered in forum this week was ‘English sound production. For a country where the various sources of music are geographically pretty close, there are notable differences (characteristic of England in general to my knowledge. Just look at the multitude of accents). Locations covered included: Bristol • Dark sound, haunting, to me it sounds like the band Gomez • Lots of bottom end • Retain dynamic variety despite massive compression Manchester • Influenced by late 60s stuff (ecstasy) • Sound like Rolling Stones • Layered • Airy vocals – sound very English Oxfordshire - RadioHead • like to progress from lo-fi to hi-fi in songs (for effect/contrast). • Create excellent new guitar sounds (then get sick of it after copycats overuse it) So, if you are producing a young new band, try and accentuate the new and innovative things in their sound. Back to English production…my favourite band Muse (quoted by Stephen Fieldhouse as sounding like Radiohead on steroids) • Use mega compression. So much so that the climatic loud parts become quieter than the normal parts. This could be some horrible mistake on the part of the producer or, it could be art. I am now left to wonder. Certainly, I had never noticed the dramatic loud parts getting quieter without having it pointed out to me. Liverpool (primarily, The Beatles) • Artist comes first • Reversed guitar solos • Sampled and spliced sounds • Concept record • Staggered orchestral crescendo English Glam Rock • David Bowie – invents a character4 for each album • Outrageous falsetto vocals • Tuned down and dampened drums Lastly, from the two minutes spent talking about film music, I can now tell you that the best orchestral recordings are to be found in the vaults of Hollywood. Sample away my pets.

Trent Reznor!

Trent Reznor. Musical super ego, top of Digidesign’s promotions payroll (or so I have heard)[1], bringer of industrial music to the mainstream market and (maybe most importantly) a figurehead for independent production. A quote from a letter written by Bob Ezrin could not have put it better...“Trent Reznor is a true visionary. He has broken and reinvented the rules of engagement on every level, from recording to touring to interacting with his fans.”[2]

Reznor's list of productions is an impressive one. By far, the most successful bands he has produced are his own band Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids (who he in fact, discovered) and Pop Will Eat Itself but there are countless other productions under his belt. Other bands include Prick, The The, Pig, a number of remixes,[3] the soundtracks for Lost Highway and Natural Born Killers[4] and Reznor created and produced the background music for the game Quake.[5]

As a producer, Reznor's preference is to make full use of postproduction facilities available to him (something that, with the advent of digital recording hardware seems to be becoming the mainstream recording technique). Repeatedly in music he has produced, one can find effects such as chorus, delay and distortion used on the vocals, digital distortion on the guitars, synthesizers and regular use of drum machines and samplers.

In Reznor's own music, one can (if one tries) find a solid sensibility for the common pop song. In an interview with Reznor on his 'Downward Spiral' album he can be quoted saying “I was trying to keep the songs in a framework that was tough and I learnt a lot from Jesus and Mary Chain about how to bury nice pop songs in unlistenable noise - the idea being if you can get behind that wall you find there's a pearl inside. That's where my head was at.” [6]

Nine Inch Nails songs often have fairly minimal instrumentation. Songs like Closer and Hurt manage to sound full with only a few instrumental parts. A balanced mix of percussion, bass, samples and vocals result in a rounded piece of work.

Reznor likes to make use of the multitude of production techniques out there. Concept albums are a regular occurrence on his label. Both Downward Spiral and his latest release Year Zero are concept albums with a story/theme, Marilyn Manson's album Antichrist Super Star is also structured like a concept album.

A lot of Reznor's productions sound like Nine Inch Nails. His collaborations (as an artist, not a producer) with other artists like Bowie and Hip Hop outfit Flyentology result in music that sounds like Nine Inch Nails with a different singer. This can be heard in some of the music he has produced for other artists too. It is quite likely that this is a result of Reznor's guidance in terms of equipment to use, skill at writing pop songs, ability to contrast sounds and postproduction mixing techniques. Songs like Tough by Prick and Ich Bin Ein Auslander by Pop Will Eat Itself feature effects on the vocals, Industrial beats and guitar. By the sounds of it, Tough uses a drum machine, both songs have prominent vocals (a production technique often overlooked by the less mainstream bands). Prick even makes use of the 'small guitar sound' in the intro to Tough.

The Nine Inch Nails album With Teeth provides insight into Reznor’s heavy use of Pro Tools, in fact, there isn’t any effect or recording trickery implemented pre or during production. EQing (which is only used occasionally for effect or repairs, not for everything) and compression are done on the computer, as is the application of effects to recorded sound.[7]

The list of plug-ins on With Teeth is extensive to say the least. The ‘Izotope Trash’ plug-in supplies distortion, ‘RE Vibe’ is used for reverb and T racks/the Cycling 74 pluggo (primarily using the turbo synth) supply electronically generated sound. Reznor also uses the Tom Erbe VST spectral shaper (which is wrapped as a RTAS plug in Protools), Bomb factory plug-ins (“Over 200 instruments from 1888 to present, set up, plugged in and ready to track. Sounds you simply won't find anywhere else”)[8], ‘Unique Recording Software’ EQs, the Audio ease Nautilus Bundle (‘a crazy sounding and very resonant EQ’[9]) and the Granular synth River Run which, Reznor claims can be used to make ‘any sound you want’.[10]

Guitar tracks are recorded generally through line 6 PODs or native instruments guitar rig software. However, Reznor also makes use of various Marshall, Mesa, Line 6, Fender and Diezel amps. The vocals are recorded through a Blue Microphone[11] (see http://www.bluemic.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Products&file=index) with occasional use of Celemony’s Melodine (a program that allows you to edit vocals on a piano roll[12]). Sequencing on With Teeth is done using Ableton live (loop-based software music sequencer for Mac and Windows designed to be used for performance as much as studio music creation)[13]. According to an article in a Digizine magazine ‘there is a huge native instruments presence across the entire with teeth album’.

For touring, Reznor has invested in the digidesign VENUE live sound systems, which allow him to use Pro Tools plug-ins on tour.[14]

After listening to a number of bands that Reznor produced (and quite likely collaborated with) and, considering that Reznor uses the same equipment to record other bands that he would use to record Nine Inch Nails songs, I have had to conclude that he comes under the category of a niche style producer. Artists who go to Reznor to produce their music are looking for a sound like Nine Inch Nails.

Anyone who would like to see Reznor’s use of Pro Tools first hand, go to www.nin.com/onlyprotools. Here you will find the Pro Tools session for the With Teeth single ‘Only’. Be warned though, it’s for remixing only. Have fun J

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[1] Stephen Wilson, MTF week 5

[2] letter written by Bob Ezrin and posted on... http://www.torontoist.com/archives/2007/04/thank_god_for_t.php (accessed 25/4/07)

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Records (accessed 17/5/07)

[4] http://www.answers.com/topic/trent-reznor

[5] As stated in the production credits on the album cover of the game itself

[6] http://www.uncut.co.uk/music/nine_inch_nails/interviews/8597 (accessed 7/5/07)

[7] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p16

[8] http://www.bombfactory.com/studio/ (accessed 17/5/07)

[9] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p19

[10] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p19

[11] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p20

[12] http://www.celemony.com/cms/ (accessed 17/5/07)

[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableton_Live (accessed 17/5/07)

[14] Jorgl, Stephanie 2005, ‘Nine Inch Nails: Pro Tools With Teeth’, Digizine, v1, no. 6, p20

mtf week 8: Genre land

FUNK!

• Two primary, distinguishable kinds (American and London),

Features of early American funk include:

• Dry and somewhat distorted recordings
• Extreme use of pan
• Clean recording
• Compression and reverb

UK funk on the other hand, uses:

· dry sounding drum kits

· darker sounding recordings

· ‘mixing in layers’ (a concept that intrigues me…I think I might explore that for one of my major assignments)

· subliminal messages embedded in the music.

Australian funk outfits usually meet the American and UK styles midway. Regardless of the style of funk, the first beat is always heavily emphasised. Essentially a ‘live format’ that requires little or no postproduction. A good funk recording is one that accurately catches ‘the Groove’[1].

Reggae.

• Guitar and keyboards panned through opposite speakers.
• Compression on ‘clean guitar’
• phasers and flangers on keyboards

I was interested to note that some of the sounds I was familiar with in music by artists like Gorillaz are an evolution of a reggae/hip hop fondness of rhythmic delay on snares and cymbals (these effects are prominent in Dub music).

The Blues

• Close micing on pianos.
• Harmonicas are recorded with shure Green Mics.
• The likes of Xavier Rudd tap on an old suitcase and mic it up for a backing track.
• Natural sounding music with little postproduction.

Jazz

• ‘live’ music. Anti postproduction, pro gathering an entire ensemble in a nice, echoing hall and (with some strategic mic placement) recording the thing and leaving it well alone. A good Jazz recording captures the sound with minimum embellishment.[2]

‘Hard Rock’

• ‘smiley curve’ in the EQ. (Lots of bass balanced with lots of treble)
• Compressed guitar solos
• Lots of attack (or ‘click) on the drum kit

Nifty tricks used by hard rock artists include:

• panning guitar and distorted bass through left and right (Rage Against the Machine)
• Using protools trickery to put their listener on edge (System of a Down)
• Double tracking of vocals

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[1] Stephen Fields, MTF week 8, level 4 tutorial room Shultz building, Adelaide uni, 9/5/07

[2] Stephen Fields, MTF week 8, level 4 tutorial room Shultz building, Adelaide uni, 9/5/07

MTF Wk 8 (The write up is coming....)

Well, one of this week’s presentations featured a producer who then became a musician (not a terribly famous one but never the less, the musician come producer pattern has been broken at last. In fact, becoming a musician it seemed to me was a symptom of being a sound engineer, interesting, interesting, a first for the books). Who is the man in question? Steven Wilson, creative mind behind Porcupine Tree (yep, I’d never heard of them either). This man is a self taught musician/producer who in his early years did things including exploring scraping mics over guitar strings and inventing a primitive form of multi tracking including much recording of recordings played back through multiple cassette players (reminds me of Stockhausen and his ilk, ahh, Stockhausen you eccentric, There is No Point!) {Curious about this Stockhausen fellow (if you like techno, you ought to be)? Go and check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Stockhausen or this http://youtube.com/watch?v=v-1Vmr9xjg4 (damn string instruments think they can do anything. This isn’t exactly accurate as the original piece would have consisted of electronic sounds but it gives an idea never the less…. If nothing else, you should check this out, it’s less than a minute http://youtube.com/watch?v=JxuftUJrago&mode=related&search= how ironic that to my 1990’s ears this sounds cliché. } I think I like this producer. A) When he used a real drummer for the first time, he was reluctant to return to using drum machines. Could it be that, like myself, he has not the mind of a composer. Given the choice between having someone else invent a drum part for me and having to write one myself, I can tell you now I would opt for the former. Perhaps like myself, Steve Wilson likes/needs the creative input of others to make new music. B) He is anti surround sound *does little dance of joy *. OK, he likes surround sound I think…but realises that, realistically, you can’t have the entire audience sitting in the sweet spot. I know in forum I have never been privileged enough to sit in the sweet spot. In fact, even in sound engineering live, I have never found this mystical sweet spot. How is one supposed to hear the ‘out of phase’ sound that David Lokan goes on about when one can’t even find the stereo sweet spot? Biased? You better believe I am. Also, I finally found out what the ‘wall of sound’ is courtesy of a talk on suspected murderer and all round nasty guy Phil Spektor. And the Wall of Sound is…..’dense layers that reproduce well on tape players and duke boxes’ (and why not mix for the lowest denominator, that way, everyone can hear your skills, not just owners of 5.1 surround sound systems). Wall of Sound recordings capitalised on double and sometimes even triple tracking for that extra big sound. Although he eventually ate his words, Spektor was against stereo mixing when it first came out. It amused me to hear that distorted vocals in some of Spektor’s productions were simply a consequence of careless disregard of fidelity loss.

mtf 7: I think I see a pattern forming

This week’s talks made me wonder about a few things. Separation of instruments when recording, analogue versus digital and the complete and utter pointlessness of 5.1 surround sound in music. Kevin Shirley recorded some of rock/metal’s big names in a live setting. Why do we go to all the effort and hassle of recording instrumental lines separately? Every band member needs to hear the rest of the instruments to be able to play their part and recording parts separately is quite time consuming. Shirley has proven that you can record commercial releases live, I am left wondering why more producers don't make use of this. And that brings me to my next query. What the heck is with so called 'live' albums being multi-tracked and tampered with post gig? If anything should be possible to get down in one take, it's one of these. A quick note on Shirley's drum micing technique, Shirley regards the drum kit as one instrument and refuses to mic up each individual part. He close-mics up the kick and the two toms and uses overheads for the rest, something I am actually pretty keen to try as I tend to find the crack of the snare to always be too sharp/bright and painful to listen to up loud. Perhaps micing it with an overhead would positively affect the sound. Next, on mixing and matching recording platforms (something that just keeps cropping up in peoples’ talks). What of those of us that are only just getting into production now and learning it at a theoretical level (rather than from an old professional)? We know analogue exists but we are being trained on digital, Will we even know how to use analogue should we encounter it? Will we care? We certainly aren't going to actively seek it out without knowing what its glories are. Surely it is only a matter of time before it dies out. A talk on Ross Robertson (giver of voice to the fad of Nu-metal...later, denouncer of fad of Nu-metal as it stagnated) brought up the issue of raw sound versus ‘plug-in’ sound. I guess the choice of raw or ‘plug-in’ is an artistic choice, or maybe it’s a case of just staying with what you know. It might be that a synthesized sound or a raw guitar sound lends itself to the writing of song. If the song is a good one, it will be able to cross over from raw to synthesized to raw again easily. The proof? A cover of Nine Inch Nails’ hurt by Johnny Cash. Nine Inch Nails: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgSWRicWIy4&mode=related&search= Johnny Cash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO9dbmJ_2zU (this was the last song Cash released by the looks of it, how cool is that?! How honoured would Reznor feel!) I wasn’t sure if presentations would lend themselves to worthwhile blog writing in the beginning but it has proven interesting to see, time and time again, these same old statements cropping up. If anyone can ‘sell’ 5.1 surround to me, I’d love to hear them try.

mtf week 6: at last

This week's forum saw the beginning of producer presentations in earnest (one snuck into last week's forum). Now, it seems to me that there is a definite pattern forming, the producer is also a musician/performer (and sometimes a failed one at that). Also, it seems that in every case, the end creative output of the band owes at least a little bit to the producer. Lauren raised the question of whether Nigel Godfrey lifted Radiohead to success or vice versa. In the case of the producer Bob Ezrin, his creative input was substantial to the point of forcing a change of style upon the bands he recorded, just about every band he has produced sounds like a seventies rock band. An ample demonstration of his attitude is found in this quote “I’m going to turn ‘Jane’s Addiction’ into a real rock band”. Could it be that Bob Ezrin is some sort of 70s rock music mould? A band goes in one end sounding original and comes out the other sounding just like everything else Bob Ezrin has produced? Once again, that issue of versatility/diversity has been raised. Example…an up and coming producer produces a few bands of the same genre (Pantera, Iron Maiden and the such) and gets tagged as a producer of that style of music. Change the style and you risk losing your customer base. In other news, the second half of the forum consisted on some handy advice for recording Classical music. Handy hint number one, place a mic (or many mics) over the head of the conductor. Why? I hear you ask? Well, the conductor might not know a thing about mixing desks but he knows the Classical piece of music you are trying to record off by heart and has already got some ideas about interpretation. What’s more, he is in a perfect position to communicate his wishes with the whole orchestra. Why mix the thing yourself when you can imitate your conductor’s ears and get the thing perfect first go. (There are even a few techniques developed for doing this including the Orft technique – 110 degrees based on the locations of the average human’s space between the eardrums, the dummy head technique – placing mics where the ears ought to be and the binoral technique – same as the last. The general feeling is that, for Classical recordings, a combination of separated and live recording will yield the best results. It is important that, as the sound engineer, you understand the dynamics written into the score. It wouldn’t do to be boosting the volume through movements marked pianissimo or vice versa. Being able to read the score will help immensely with recording the piece in parts (and not straight through). It isn’t enough to ask the orchestra to play their parts at 1 minute and three seconds, they need to know bar numbers.

MTF week 4.

In this week's lecture, topics looked at included 'a great recording versus a great release' and a 'timeless production versus a perfect production'. A great recording should have high fidelity and be well recorded regardless of the music. It should serve the purpose of the artist in regards to sonic quality and (when this is the desired effect) it should make you feel like you are in the room with them. An album that sounds good will not only have all of the above but songs/music that move the listener and can be heard many times over. Technically speaking, a great recording can be mistake free (something much liked by record companies) however, in terms of this making the recording a great release, this 'over production' can have the affect of wiping the human element from the recording (think, every top of the pops CD ever made), making it (in my opinion) somehow less worth listening to (as it sounds like music made in a factory somewhere solely for the purpose of selling CDs, predictable, cliché, bad). A timeless production always feels right, sounds good and "doesn't buy into the cultural trend of the month."[1] Examples of these cultural trends are use of the wah pedal (an effect that was in fact banned for a few years was everyone was so sick of hearing it)[2] and the use of auto tune on the voice (Cher and a slew of singers for the next two years).[3] Once a sound (like Cher's auto tune) has become identified with an artist or time, using it in any new music results in the music seeming like nothing more than imitation Cher (or 80's synth bands or clean cut 70's rock). Just a note, some artists like David Bowie, U2, Madonna and Kylie Minogue (the first two of their own craftiness, the last two I would imagine under the direction of any number of producers) stay in vogue by following trends in music, adapting their sound to suit the listening ears of each successive generation of teenage music consumers. Another thing looked at was cliché production tricks. The advice given? If you have to use them, use them well. Also, knowing what they are will help you avoid using them where you wish not to. In the case of some genres like Blues, learning the cliché tricks will save you having to reinvent the wheel leaving you with time to improve on its design. Some producers become predictable in their use of cliché tricks. Commercial tricks that are timeless money winners include making a big guitar sound by recording the guitars twice then playing the two recordings, one through each speaker and, making the recording loud (or inserting a quiet bit to emphasise the rest). In regards to record companies, the record company will want to hear first and foremost the vocals, then the beat (the beat was once in the sound of the snare, then, in hip hop, the kick drum, now it is a combination of the two). [1] Fieldhouse, Steve, (2007).Tech forum week 4, presented at the University of Adelaide, 22th March [2] Ibid [3] Ibid