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!