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