Music Tech Forum : Personal Portfolio

Track listing:
1. Sample Track
2. Bad Bodine - Elvis
3. Stella Octangula - My Sky Is Green
4. Scott Philp - May
5. Scott Philp - LTO (London Trade Organisation)
6. Scott Philp - MTO (Melbourne Trade Organisation)
7. Joi - What You Are (Remix)

CV PDF: http://www.box.net/shared/recsa7yir0
Mini CV PDF: http://www.box.net/shared/x2q2vemqsx

MINI CV:
Scott Philp
33 Diosma Drive
Corromandel Valley
Adelaide, SA 5051
T 08 81781017
M 0401747593
scottbphilp@gmail.com

PROFILE
I am a young enthusiastic individual seeking employment in the music industry. My background
includes live performance, composition, sound production and recording in both live and studio
settings, and production/band management roles. I have just completed a Diploma of Sound
Engineering at Adelaide University and used that opportunity to work with many different bands and individuals on a professional level. I have both technical and theoretical musical knowledge completing solo performance on bass guitar in year 12 gaining high marks and also completing Musicianship to a high standard and further improving my theoretical knowledge in Concepts of Music as part of the Diploma of Sound Engineering. I am competent on many instruments including bass and electric guitar, basic keyboard skills. I am also currently receiving vocal training. I am a dedicated and hard worker with music as a passion and I feel I would be a great addition to any team.

EXPERIENCE
Producer/Engineer, Stella Octangula Demo Session — 2007
Engineer, Bad Bodine Demo Session— 2007
Various Personal Projects — 2007
Producer/Engineer, Shadows of a Golden Age Demo Session — 2005

WORK EXPERIENCE
Salesperson, Dick Smith Electronics — 2006 - Current
Front of House, Oporto — 2006

EDUCATION
University of Adelaide — Diploma of Sound Engineering, 2007
Blackwood High School — South Australian Certificate of Education, 2005

SKILLS
I am a competent user of Pro Tools LE/HD 7.3/4 Systems and have experience using a Control 24 desk to recorded, mix and master bands. I can use Logic Pro 7/8 to produce, compose, mix, and edit audio or MIDI based pieces. I have many years of live performance experience playing mostly bass guitar. I can also play electric/acoustic guitar, have basic keyboard and vocal skills. I can compose short pieces and am currently working on my song writing. I have excellent skills in dealing with people and from my time in the retail industry have an excellent customer service manner.

MIDI Studies B : Major Project

MTO (Melbourne Trade Organization)

Scott Philp

2 22

Mp3 :

http://www.box.net/shared/662mllczyi

This piece while not too interesting musically was created to show off certain skills using logic. The main part is split across three brass instruments with a guitar reinforcing the chords in the piece. The brass was split up in three playable parts so I could use the expression controller more realistically. The part with more movement in it has emphases on the end of the lines while the second part is similar but rises in expression more sharply. Also the second on third parts actually peak in expression at different points in some parts of the phrase to emphasize the harmony at those points. The drum part is split across three tracks to allow for better control over the sound of each part. I have found over the year that is a very important part of getting a realistic drum sound in logic. The hats have their own EQ to bring it closer to an appropriate sound for this track. The snare has pitch bend data to add some realism to the hits. Running low in the mix is an electric piano sound that adds a little bass to the track. The strings are used subtly for colour but come out with the other synth sounds at the end. As the track is really just one repeated phrase the moving synth sounds add colour as the track moves to its conclusion. The strings have a small amount of pitch band data to add realism, it is very slight but I feel it helps add some realism to the patch. I created a few different glass sounding patched in sculpture for this track and used various delays on them. The delay sounds are automated out for the concluding section. The guitar track has had the note values changed slightly for realism. Also the Guitar Amp Pro plugin is automated to push more gain through the track after the intro section. Overall while short I think the track at least remains interesting and I worked hard to make sure the synth sounds didn’t take over too much until they were supposed to. The parts chosen were influenced by what we learned this semester about various instruments in MIDI and I had to do some volume automation to make the track make sense. To master the track I just used a multiband compressor and the Spread plugin to achieve a wider stereo spread.

Audio Studies B : Major Assignment

The Monkey and the Walrus (2567)

Scott Philp

3 ‘ 25

Mp3 :

http://www.box.net/shared/nsjfimj8hv

This song is made up of only a few takes of real audio. The Piano was recorded with a stereo mic and two U87s sitting behind a baffle on either side of the Piano. This created a darker muted sound which suited the song. Also after recording the Piano I grabbed a snare drum and walked around the room playing it. This created a nice natural panning effect although the gain wasn’t really set for it so it peaked. However because I used it reversed under a lot of things it really didn’t seem to matter. The chorus and coda vocals were recorded with the mic on figure 8 and Jake and Brendan provided ‘backup’ however looking back I probably should’ve done the backup in another take so I could raise it up a bit. I used a single instance of Sample Tank 2 SE and routed two MIDI tracks into separate channels for the Brass lead and the strings sample. I then automated their volume levels and in the case of the brass lead the panning on the Aux track. To get the shaker I put reason on an Instrument track and then set the output to bus 1-2, then I set the input of an audio track to bus 1-2 and recorded it in real time. The Instrument track for reason was retained but made inactive, as it was easier to deal with the audio track. I used beat detective on one of the piano tracks to get an idea of where to put the reversed drum sounds before the coda and it actually worked reasonably well. It didn’t get the exact beats and bars right but in the end it was close enough that I could use grid mode to match up the reversed sample to something I had played straight to the audio. This is one of the only things I’ve mixed in Pro Tools LE for a while and it really showed up the difference in the quality of the plugins as opposed to the suite in Studio 1 and 2. The Piano was recorded with a dark sound in mind so I was pretty happy with it anyway so instead of using lots of plugins on the track I’ve mostly used volume and panning automation to create colour in the sounds. The reverb for the vocals however helped create a more spacious sound. The track wasn’t mastered separate I used a light compressor on the master track and then dithered it down to 16bit. The track is not exactly what was proposed as due to time constrains the original track I was going to do was used for the studio project. However the use of Pro Tools, Sample Tank and Reason remain at the same levels I had planned for the original song so I feel that I’ve still displayed the same amount of technical ability as proposed.

Studio Project - May

May
Mp3: http://www.box.net/shared/ftbxto8fky

Recording Log:
I found recording the instruments for this song very different from that of recoding My Sky Is Green. Although the song starts off with just a lone voice and Piano getting a drum kit sound that would fit well with it was quite difficult. The whole process also had a number of setbacks the largest being the completion of Piano and drums takes on the first night that were lost due to my failure to back them up. The Piano had two U87’s placed in figure 8 around the strings that were being played as the song didn’t use a very large range on the piano. The drums in the end used the NT5 stereo mic as and over head and also two U87’s one on each side of a baffle in a binaural technique. The kick and snare were closed mics but also added into the mix was the mic being used by Jake as a talkback mic. It had swung around and face the window behind him and this provided some nice room sound to the cymbals which worked quite well in the mix. The guitar ended up being recorded through a DI into an MBOX in the audio lab as there was no studio time left in which Ben could play on it. The sound worked alright after some tweaking but the sound of Amplitube is still there so that was a little disappointing. Vocals were recorded in the dead room into studio 2. Many takes were needed to get something passable... eventually switching between the doubled take lower in the mix and the original seemed to work alright. Overall the recording process didn’t really go well between losing original takes and being unable to record live guitar I feel the recording did suffer. However in the end I think the performers made the most of what we had and came out with a fairly reasonable result.

Production Log:
Mixing May was an interesting thing, getting most of the sounds that I wanted was easy but some things caused me some trouble. The vocal take for exapmle was not really the kind of quailty it needed to be so making it fit in the mix and actually sound reasonable was prety hard. I used a doubling take to make is sound thicker and auto tune to try and fix up the pitch. Mixing the drums was quite easy and I reversed the phase of the Binarual mics as I could hear something funny going on with the ride. In the mastering setup I used a small amount of EQ but as there weren’t really any noise issuses in any of the tracks so I worked mostly on making it sound louder without ruining the mix. I added in a spot effect to the guitar coming into the second chorus using one of the waves delay units. It worked out quite well but maybe could’ve been made a little more sublty. Overall I added differnet reverbs to the different groups of tracks and a long delay to the guitar to add some space to the mix. In the master track I used the S1 Imager to widen the stero image as with only one guitar track it was pretty much only the drums provding anything hard left and right.

Studio Project - My Sky In Green

My Sky Is Green
MP3: http://www.box.net/shared/1tncu9vt3u

Recording log:
The recoding process was interesting for me because the band was comprised mostly of instruments I hadn't worked with in a recording format before. Also because it was comprised mostly of acoustic instruments it meant to achieve separation in the tracks most things had to be recorded separately. The first take was the Piano and Bass Guitar because the bass was just using his pre amp and a DI so there was no microphone involved. I placed two mics on the Piano close to the strings for a brighter sound. This later proved to be an issue as the sound of the dampener on the piano came through very loud after even light compression. There was another U87 set up about 3 meters from the Piano to capture the rooms sounds. The Vocals were recorded through a U87 and I did both the lead and the harmony vocal in separate takes. To achieve the sound I wanted for the acoustic guitar I put one SM57 close to the sound hole and a U87 further back at a point where there was a fair amount of reinforcement. The guitar had a very clear and sweet tone and I wanted to capture that the best I could. The drum was recorded with a C414 after trying a out a few mics that didn’t seem to capture the ‘poppy’ nature of the drum. The C414 captured this while also sounding warm as well. The Viola was recorded with a U87 placed about 30cm on average from the sound hole when the instrument was being played. Overall I think the recording process went well and I get the sounds I wanted from each instrument. The only issue that popped up was the piano mics being too close and picking up the dampener being used.

Production:
As with recording the track I enjoyed mixing this track because it contained many instruments I hadn’t mixed before and required me to think differently about the mix. The first mix I did was just a preliminary mix so the band had something to listen back to. I fixed the levels at a basic level and started the volume automation on the harmony track. After taking the track up to studio 1 to mix I started trying to bring the main level of everything up with some subtle compression. This worked quite well for most things keeping the ratio low and the threshold quite high. This however also brought to light my first issue with the recording with that any amount of compression brought up the dampener sound in the piano from having the mics placed too close to the beaters in the piano. In the end it seemed if I wanted to keep the piano level consistent with the guitar and drums I would have to live with it being there. I tried to mix the track so that the vocals were the most obvious part and added separate reverbs to the different sets of instrument to stop the mix getting too washy. At the beginning and end of the track I automated the Piano mics so the track started with the room mic and slid into the wider fuller sound of the two close mics. I found this acted like a fade in intro to the song without actually having to start from a zero level. In the mastering step I found controlling the background sounds even more difficult and ended up having two L3’s with relatively low thresholds on them worked better than a single one trying to do all the work.

Sound Engineering (Studio) B: Genre Samples (Guitar)

I chose to pick some electric guitar samples. I went for melody/lead type sounds.

Blues
http://www.box.net/shared/h154ke0740

Metal
http://www.box.net/shared/j73xvmz7cj

Rock
http://www.box.net/shared/ap5l2st1ul

Enjoy.

Music Tech Forum: I always thought they would be more palm trees in Paradise

This week we visited Paradise studios which were located behind an adult toys manufacture in Hendon. Clearly. No tape machine here, but still clearly we are getting the idea that most professional studios have a whole heap more outboard gear than we're likely to get our hands on this year. I found that although it was similar to Mixmasters last week you could tell that the atmosphere was quite different and if you spent a whole heap of time in one studio you might have trouble getting to know the other one. I mean that would easily be true for ever studio across the state but I've only seen two so far.

There was no tape deck here, everything was running into pro tools through the desk and again we got the idea of running through nice outboard gear on the way into pro tools to get a nicer sound. The patch bay here was pretty definitely something to be feared, I'm not sure exactly what it was patched for hopefully that wasn't just getting sound to the speakers. I really enjoyed hearing about the computer matched AKG C414B's. I touched one... ohhhh.

Another good point touched on today was the idea of having breaks and being relaxed. I think that having a relaxed atmosphere is crucial to getting a good recording. I mean it's important in any area where there is pressure and stress, but when the result will represent both the artist and the engineer for as long as it's around it's very important to get it sounding as good as possible. In this respect it's clear the majority of people will perform best when relaxed so taking breaks to maintain a good level of relaxation could make the difference between a good performance and a great one.

This time I was smart enough to bring along something to get some feedback on. Although 'That was really good' is flattering, it's mabye not as helpful as I had hoped, but I didn't ask any questions so thats really my own fault. Hearing it through the big system I could pick up some things I hadn't picked up before, it was really quite useful.

Links: http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/29853

A site selling a matched pair of AKG C414Bs

Sound Engineering (Studio) B - Only Outtake

I didn't do a whole heap really. I grabbed one of the muted parts at the end of one of the playlisted vocal tracks and then added a distortion effect and mastered it to make it loud.

Link:
http://www.box.net/shared/8votcysas2

Music Tech Forum: Mixmasters

This week was our first studio visit. We headed down to Mixmasters in Hawthorndene and after actually finding the place we made our way inside. Being inside an acual up and running studio was interesting for many reasons, but I suppose the best part was getting another professionals opinion on some of the different areas of recoding and mixing today.

Seeing all the old equipment and hearing some of it in action was particularly impressive, and it was good to see a set up the was using a whole heap of outboard equipment and how they used the patch bay to get between them all. I found Mick’s explanation of the difference between recording to tape and digital recording very fitting. He explained that he thought the on tape the instruments melded together better, which is something I could understand the concept of.

The main recording room was very interesting and seeing all the old ribbon mics was cool. The room was specially constructed and the walls filled with carpet, but it was interesting to hear the room was not constructed with any specific acoustic design in mind but rather just an idea was what might work. I suppose maybe a little more interesting to find out that it did.

It was good to hear some more of peoples work and great to get some feedback on it, however I missed out. This week I will hopefully remember to burn my work to a cd instead of just bring my hard drive. The desk was just downright impressive and I hope to one day be working with something like that.

Music Tech Forum: Enter Grice

Well this is Semester 2

And what have you done

First semester over

And a new one just begun

And so this is Semester 2

I hope we have fun

The near and the dear one

The old and the young

A very merry Semester 2

Happy something that rhymes with fear

Let's hope it's a good one

Without any fear

We've started the second half of music tech forum and to celebrate I decided to ruin a great song. Sorry John. This week we got a rundown of what to expect this semester and started to listen to everyone's studio projects. Lucky for me we haven't done mine yet. Visiting studios sounds like it's going to be great, and getting professional feedback is really excellent. I think I'm going to bring along some drum recoding as that's something I'd really like to improve on.

Listening to everyone's studio projects made me wish mine was a whole lot better, especially Ben's who has done the same band. Rowan told an interesting story about the troubles of getting everyone together to actually do their stuff and be prepared for it. The vocals were a bit lacking, but I think he got really good guitar and drum sounds so I really enjoyed it. Ben just like myself recorded Bad Bodine, and to be honest I feel he did a better job of it. The singer and snare were a little soft, but having worked with the band I think he did a really good job of capturing their sound. Brendan had a really interesting mix, I had heard it before he mastered it and I could hear the difference. I think he got a really great piano sound on this track and he already knows I'm stealing his method of getting it.

Scott H had the band I would've liked to record. I'm not really sure why as I don't really get into that kind of music but for some reason recording it seems like fun. As I was quick to announce in class I think the production really suited the music here. The standout thing for Stuarts track for me was that he really got a great sound out of the vocal harmonies in his track, the drum level could have been more consistent though. Josh recorded myself, Jake, and Brendan and boy am I glad I went home before having to sing. It should be noted that all takes here were done after 2am so we maybe could've played a little better...

The song we heard of Laurens was produced really well, when the drums came in the snare and kick drum sound was great. Next week should be great, it will be good to be in a decked out studio. The week after that is more projects, mine will probably come up so sorry Stuart in advance.

Sound Engineering (Studio) A – Project

Production Documentation
Your Name
Scott Philp

Date/s of Production
17th/19th of June

Song Title
Let Him Lie

Format
Sampling Rate 48kHz Bit Depth 24bits Duration 5’44

Total Time Spent on Production
5 Hours 12 Minutes

Notes/Issues/Commentary on Production (Minimum 300 words)
This song was quite dynamic. The biggest problem was the guitar sound in the chorus was quite different and had a whole less mid range in it which meant keeping it sounding good with the rest of the track was difficult. Having two guitar tracks made it quite loud also, this didn’t seem to be a problem against the vocals but the bass, kick drum and snare drum has trouble keeping up even after compression and EQ so I double them over to an aux track which seemed to do the trick. I left the spill in the two vocal tracks as I thought it mix of mics sounded nice. I inverted the male vocal track to avoid phase issues which made a big difference. As the band played the track as a whole I wanted to keep that sort of feeling in the track, which is another reason for keeping the spill in some of the tracks. I used aux sends for all the reverbs and used a different reverb for the vocals, drums, and guitar to help give them all their own sense of space. NOTE: I have not included references in my descriptions but many of my techniques have come straight from examples and discussion had in class.

Link to MP3:
http://www.box.net/shared/tyx9a4v6tp

Production Documentation
Your Name
Scott Philp

Date/s of Production
17th/19th of June

Song Title
Elvis

Format
Sampling Rate 48kHz Bit Depth 24bits Duration 4’19

Total Time Spent on Production
5 Hours 12 Minutes

Notes/Issues/Commentary on Production (Minimum 300 words)
This song was interesting to mix, really I was going for a nice warm feel with a really full low end sound. I wanted to keep everything up in the mix and quite clear. The biggest problem I faced was with the volume of the guitar and the relationship between the kick drum and the bass guitar. The guitar had two track which I panned left and right, this gave a nice full sound but was overpowering at times and finding the right EQ and compression settings was key. I found that I didn’t really need to add many effects to the tracks as it didn’t go with the bands sound. I tried to make each instrument sound as good as I good using EQ and compression and try and keep the feeling of the band all playing live together. I added a small Tremolo effect to a drum fill to demonstrate the use of effect automation, it’s very subtle but I actually like it. Mastering the track was an issue as I found it hard to find settings that didn’t destroy the mid range of the mix. I ended up using the mastering plugin combined with an EQ to get the final sound I wanted from the track. I used aux sends to create the reverb tracks with a separate one for the guitar tracks, drum tracks, and the vocal track. This helped create a good sense of space for each instrument. Also to help boot the volume of the kick and bass guitar I sent them to an aux track as well. I found this a good way to keep the volume up with using too much compression. This was the second track of the two I mixed so many of the settings are altered versions of what I used for ‘Let Him Lie’. The biggest re-evaluation of settings I had to do was now have the female singing on the NTV.

Link to MP3:
http://www.box.net/shared/51qfgaz589

Audio Studies A – Creative Project

Remember
Scott Philp
5 ‘ 14

The track Remember came originally from the electric guitar parts. The guitar was recorded and then lyrics and melody were written almost at the same time as recording. All parts were by written and played by myself. I used Peak LE to check out all the files before bringing them into pro tools, and to do my analysis for the Samples sheet. I found peak easier to go through and analyse a file so that’s why I used it instead of pro tools. There is some volume automation used on the tracks, with some panning automation a feature of one part of the guitar sections. The reverb effect is automated to change the input level coming into the chorus. As there are two tracks for each guitar I used a small delay plugin to find the point with the most phase cancellation and then inverted the second track to create a stronger signal. The Guitars are grouped into two sections (Guitar 1, and 2) and then the Vocals were grouped with their aux reverb track to allow me to mute them all easily. I used bus’ and aux tracks for both reverbs and a feature delay for the guitars. When editing the guitar tracks there was one section where I had left too long of a gap and I had to cut out some space to make it make sense musically. However this created a little click in the track. I got around this by a small fade in/fade out at the point of cutting. There were many takes left in the raw data file so the region list was quite full, once I cleared all the unused files it was far more manageable and I kept a copy of all the original files in a backup folder. However there are still some play lists with alternate takes left in as I was checking things out on them until the final mix. Doing the master tightened up the bottom end nicely but I had a problem with the end of the track peaking after I bounced the track. In the end the overall volume of the track ended up a little bit lower than I would’ve liked it to be because of this.

Blog note... Sorry about the singing

MP3 of Mixdown : http://www.box.net/shared/iivsk0ocf9

MIDI Studies A – Creative Project

LTO (London Trade Organisation)
Scott Philp
3 ‘ 27

This is a piece I composed and arranged myself. It is all based around the one theme played with the Vibra-Rhodes from the ES2 VI. The track builds up with multiple instruments playing the main theme with a couple of little ambient effects in the background. It then moves into a second theme bridge section before returning to the main theme again.

Originally I wrote this while playing around with the Horns on the EXS24 VI, but after playing around some more in class and finding the Vibra-Rhodes I decided they were much cooler. Most this track was done via live entry. I played in the basic Vibra-Rhodes, Drum (Ultrabeat), Pad’s and Swell track using the Novation SL and then fixed them up. I used the Matrix editor to fix up velocity’s and note lengths and then the Hyper Editor to add in the cymbals to the drums track. I automated lots of volume, but also automated the parameters for some of the delay effects.

I used markers to help me flick through the song sections quickly. I had trouble stopping the track from peaking as the section at Marker 2 was so much louder than the rest of the piece. Eventually I found a good compressor and eq setting that didn’t ruin the dynamics of the song while stopping it from peaking.

Link to Mixdown :
http://www.box.net/shared/7qpthz3hy7

Music Tech Forum: What If I Had My Secret Bliss

It’s the beginning of the end and I was one of the first to stand in the line of fire. Granted they were only bullets of fear, but it seemed like many of us were unprepared enough to get hit. We started our presentations of our real world remixed assignments, and a few of us it seemed weren’t quite as prepared as we would have liked to have been. Myself for example, if anyone was in class last week and is reading this please disregard my handout and refer to version 2.0.1 posted below. This one was spell checked in English.

The first thing I found interesting about the presentations was that so far only three out of seven possible tracks were chosen. What You Are, My Secret Bliss, and If I Had My Way. Although the advantage of this was that you could compare the differences in production, arrangement, and mixing styles between the people. Of the three people doing the Afro Celt Sound System track My Secret Bliss I found the most interesting thing was that no one really embraced the vocal track. Daniel Trembath went as far as explaining that he prefers music without singing. All three people presenting this one had hand outs (Daniel, Jake, and Stuart) which was great, although when Stuart got up and presented his I think we all felt a little deflated after seeing the quality and detail of his analysis.

Less people did If I Had My Way by Little Axe than I had imagined, although maybe this Thursday will end up being a mini Little Axe concert. I found a big part of the mixes on this one was the drum beat they had decided on. As the track had no set drum beat and just a couple of samples they had to come up with the actual beat from scratch. It made a huge difference in the sound of the track and I remember Scott H’s track actually feeling a lot slower than I remember the track being from when I tried to mix it.

I would like to hear a couple more takes on the Joi track What You Are which is the one I presented. It was very interesting hearing the differences between what I thought it should sound like and what Simon did. He used a vocal predominantly that I hadn’t even touched and our two versions sounded very different. Knowing what he had to work with I really enjoyed his presentation and hearing what he came up with from the same sound files.

Links-
http://www.realworldremixed.com/download.php - In case you still need it.
http://www.realworldremixed.com/toptwenty.php - Now we've done ours here are the best ones submitted to the site.

Music Tech Forum: Real World ReMixed Project

Band Name: Joi
Song Title: What You Are
Taken From: Without Zero
Length: 5min 49sec
Bpm: 110
Key Signature: Bmin
Genre: Alternative Dub/Dance
Instrumentation : Acoustic Guitar, Electric Bass, Synth Bass, Synth Kit Sounds (Bass Drum, Snare Drum, Hi-Hats), Oud, Vocals, Synth breaks, pads, string lines, etc.
Performers: Female vocals. Two to three different vocalists. Many synth sounds. Very few sounds played live. The ‘Oud was played live.
Performance Issues: Most of the sounds are from a synth of some kind, and of the few live sounds I didn’t really detect any major issues with their performances.
Recording Issues: I found there was a lot of noise in the background of the Oud recordings, and the synth sounding kit drum sounds pretty dead.

Research:
Mixonline, The Inside Track: Mixing Vocals, Mixonline.com, Viewed 20th May 2007 <http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_mixing_vocals/>
This site had a great section on mixing vocals and gave me this idea to add the medium delay to the effects vocal section of my mix.

EQ Guide, Sirgalahad.org, Viewed 19th May 2007
http://www.sirgalahad.org/paul/music/eq-guide.html
Great reference guide for different EQ settings. It was very useful for getting the acoustic guitar sound I was looking for.

Sound On Sound Magazine 1999, 20 Tips On..., Sound on Sound, Viewed 19th May 2007
<http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct99/articles/20tips.htm>
Point 3 interested me, after reading through it I actually took the point as to keep the same volume for the drums throughout to keep a dance like feel. However I did build up the volume of the percussion in the synth section as to make the song feel like it built up to something.

Davis G & Gray M (), Sound Reinforcement Handbook – Second Edition, Pg 39. Chapter 4.3.3 How to Fit Wide Program Dynamics into a Sound System with Limited Dynamic Range, Hal Leonard Cooperation
Although the book is primarily about Live sound, I found it a good read on understanding compression.

Joe Bochar 2002, Guest Column: Creative Panning 101, Guitar Nine Records, Viewed 19th May 2007
<http://www.guitar9.com/columnist221.html>
Good panning article. I experimented with a number of techniques, but in the end being a fairly dance track (and most of the track were stereo already) it’s a fairly mono image.

Notes:
First off I started with a different song. I was doing If I Had my way and it just didn’t do it for me. I think the biggest issue was that I’d heard the original a couple of times and was trying to recreate it while not recreating it, and that just wasn’t working. I started my mix of What You Are before hearing the song. So the main arrangement of the parts was created without prior influence. I went to listen to the original before doing the final mix and realised mine was less than half the length. I found the original quite repetitive and boring. After sourcing my research I started doing the mix, applying the techniques and experimenting with what sounded good. I ended up with something that while a little short I liked. My biggest problem was in the middle and end sections stopping the audio from clipping. Eventually I overcame this by removing some instruments from these sections all together and thinning down the instrumentation. The song I used to reference was ‘Hypergeek’ by The Devin Townsend Band. I used this because it was a mix of a high quality to reference against, something I was used to, and had an acoustic guitar sound I wanted to emulate. I used the EQ guide I had found on the internet to help me find which frequencies to boost and cut and how they would affect the sound. In the end I didn’t really achieve the same kind of sound as the one in Hypergeek, but I did get one I thought fit well in the context of the track. The articles I looked up for this project really helped me create the track. I was using them while creating the arrangement as well as doing the mix, so I feel that they probably influenced both sides. For example I made sure there was a section for the solo vocal with effects after reading the mixonline article, so I arranged the song in a way that it would make sense. The only thing I would change about my mix now would be the volume of the vocals at the end. This probably came out because I was only mixing through headphones, but looking back now they are clearly too loud and I am disappointed I didn’t pick up on it before the presentation.


Bibliography:
http://www.guitar9.com/columnist221.html
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct99/articles/20tips.htm
http://www.sirgalahad.org/paul/music/eq-guide.html
http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_mixing_vocals/
Sound Reinforcement Handbook – Second Edition
Gary Davis & Mark Gray
Hal Leonard Cooperation
Pg 39. Chapter 4.3.3 How to Fit Wide Program Dynamics into a Sound System with Limited Dynamic Range
http://www.realworldremixed.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joi_(band)

Music Tech Forum: Rant On...

What’s the difference between a band that wears its influences on their sleave and a copycat band? We got into this point while talking about grunge, being on of the simpler genres musically there are a large amount more copycat bands than many other genres. It’s a hard one to distinguish sometimes, but I think most of the time it comes down to image. I mean its one thing to sound exactly like another band, as Steve pointed out with his story about the guy who sounded like Mark Knofler, it’s possible to do without even hearing anything from the other artist. Generally however if you both sound and look exactly like, or very similar to another band you are well aware of who they are and what they do. I think copycatism as I will now call it can come from two main things,

a.) Not having a wide enough range of influences. This one you can tell pretty easy, if their favourite band has never written a song using an Amin7 chord, don’t expect them to even know what it is. Sometimes in this case they discover new music and their style changes and starts to develop… sometimes they go on sounding like Green Day forever.
b.) Wanting to be just like the other band or a member of that band. Grunge suffered pretty heavily from this one. The worst part about this one is the songs lack any kind of realism as they aren’t based on the experiences of anyone in the band. People idealise someone and basically try to model themselves around them.

While I would like to list some bands that might fall under these categories I can’t really think of any of note, as they generally aren’t very successful if at all. If you’re not being something new at all to a genre or style you generally won’t succeed. If I wanted to listen to Green Day I’d just put on a Green Day C.D. If…

http://www.greenday.com/ - Do you sound to much like them?

Music Tech Forum: So many genres so little time

This week we looked at different production styles based on genres and genre clichés. We started off with funk and looked at the difference between American, English, and Australian production styles. The British were more dry and dark, the Americans had more reverb and we just tended to copy one or the other. I wonder about Australian production, is there really an Australian sound? I think there probably is but it really differs from band to band instead of being a sound that you can pick from any band as ‘yep that’s gotta’ be Australian.’ We moved on and did Reggae/Ska, Blues, Jazz, and Hard Rock/Heavy Metal.

I think one of the most interesting things about many of them were the kind of ‘rules’ or ‘conventions’ involved with different genres. Like if you recorded a Jazz record and just compressed as if it was squared under an elephant would it still really be a jazz record? Or has it become such a large part of the Jazz sound that it starts to define it? I’ve really started to wonder about how much control production and mixing techniques have had over the over all defining sound of a genre. I think that maybe too much of a defining sound is what can make a genre die out or become boring. Nu Metal for example was really built on a specific production sound; all the bands really sounded the same. Not just in the content and arrangement of the music but the actual ‘sound’ of the records.

This contrasts I think with the Heavy Metal/Hard Rock stuff we looked at which changed over time. While musically the genre has diversified over time, not every band in it writes a record and than has it sound exactly the same. Granted they probably all use double + tracked guitars, I mean it certainly has it’s conventions but there is enough room left for bands to sound different from each other. Also I imagine I need a better understanding of each genre to really understand something like this, but for me the big question lately is, how much can change between a band writing and arranging a song to be recorded and how it sounds at release? But more importantly, how much should change? Or, how much change is too much?

References/Links: Music tech forum 10th May
Metallica at Last.Fm.com - http://www.last.fm/music/Metallica
An example of a Metal band with changing production styles.

Music Tech Forum: Phil Ramone, or Phil and the Ramones?

This week in Music Tech Forum we finished off the producer presentations. We had a mix of old producers this time Seb started off with Steven Wilson. He talked mostly about his work with Opeth, we was very interesting. I've always been a fan of Opeth but never really looked at the production on their records. He mentioned also that he is a member of Porcupine Tree, which are very similar to Opeth in style and would be worth checking out if you liked what you heard of Opeth. Lisa talked about Trent Reznor and I realised I'm not really a big fan of industrial music. The interesting thing about both these talks for me was that both these producers were part of a band themselves. This got me thinking about the benefits of disadvantages of that scenario. At least in these cases it seemed that they really only produced bands that were of a similar sound and style to themselves, like Lisa said 'He go to Trent Reznor when you want to sound like Nine Inch Nails.' This also got me thinking about Bob Ezrin who I talked about and how it seemed he wanted to turn everything into a 70's rock and roll record because that seemed to be where his passion lay (He had enough writing credits on Kiss and Alice Cooper albums to almost be considered a member at times.) Simon talked about Phil Spector. Interestingly enough it seems just before his murder trial he had plans to work with The Vines, which would've been well, um... interesting. Dan talked about Groove Terminator and taught us quite a lot about some of the different tricks that can be used to sell a song. I had to throw my headphones on the second I got out of there just to get that stuff out of my head. Finally Josh did Phil Ramone. Must be cool to lay claim to have the first CD ever printed being something you worked on. Unless of course you really hated the idea of CDs at the time, then it would've been awkward. This brings me to something that popped up a couple of times during the talks, some producers not embracing new technology. I wonder what advances are coming ahead that this generation will be scared of?

Links
http://www.philramone.com/Informational/Biography.htm - Phil Ramones website
http://www.porcupinetree.com/ - The official Porcupine Tree webpage, with audio and video samples.

Music Tech Forum: Vanilla Korn?

There was a time when everyone wanted to be Nu-metal. After the lesson I got the cd Rowan used for his talk about Ross Robinson and listened to one of the tracks he didn’t get to play. Too Cold by Vanilla Ice was produced in 1998 by Ross Robinson and is really really awful. I thought I’d mention this first as you really have to hear it, the best I could get was a 30 second sample off the Vanilla Ice website but give it a listen. http://www.vanillaice.com/audio/swallow_07.wma

I noticed a theme in a couple of the talks about drum sounds and it got me thinking that a different or unique drum sound really goes a long way to defining the ‘sound’ a producer brings to a record. One of the things I found interesting about Jake's talk on Kevin ‘The Caveman’ Shirley was the way he liked to mix drums. He was saying that he likes to treat drums as one full instrument and had a fairly simplistic approach towards the mic placement and recording but I think this statement applies more to mixing and post production on drums. Instead of going for the best sound on every individual drum (ie Toms, Snare, etc.) he prefers to have the kit sounding good as a whole, I thought this was an interesting way to look at it. At least a way that I have previously for some reason not really thought too much about. This leaked into Rowans talk and a similar thing with Ross Robison. With acts like Sepultura the drum sound is very raw and ‘tribal.’ By the end of the lesson I realised that in production the sound of the drums is a very major factor in the sound of a record and the way it’s mixed or produced.

We also got our major assignment for MTF which looks like it will be pretty interesting. I headed on over to the Real World ReMixed website and checked out the tracks. Having a listen to them I decided upon ‘If I Had My Way’ by ‘Little Axe’ fairly simple stuff. Some people were talking about seeing how far away from the original they could get, I’m not really sure what I want to do with it yet but just putting it back together seems to be a pretty daunting task at this point. Hopefully I’ll get something good out of it in the end.



Links:
http://www.vanillaice.com/ - …
http://www.realworldremixed.com/ - If you haven’t checked it out yet.
http://www.cavemanproductions.com/ - Website for Kevin Shirley

Music Tech Forum: Bob Ezrin

Bob Ezrin is a producer that will be forever associated with The Wall. He is a producer that marks the record with own sound, but that sound is not the same sound every time. He interested me for his work with Pink Floyd, and through them he has stamped and influenced modern music. He is also a producer that seems to be good at conflict resolution. Pink Floyd during the Wall, Janes Addiction during Strays, and although it seems he failed to do so the Deftones on Saturday Night Wrist.

Looking through his works you can see he started out with Rock and Roll, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Lou Reed. After having worked with Alice Cooper for awhile I think maybe the idea of the concept album stuck in his head, the idea of having an underlying theme at least tying through the whole record is something that appears a lot on his records. He also from this early start gets a lot of writing and arranging credits for a producer, especially a producer working with such big name acts. I think this period really set the stage for his career, while the Wall really made him famous the first records he made are I think, the ones he wishes he could continue making forever. While is the Wall is easily the most well documented work he produced it is also documented from very biased points of view. I think Ezrin did an amazing job getting that record out and getting it to sound as good as it does, and I think that without him on that record it certainly would not have done as well. After the Wall he went on to produce the rest of Pink Floyds efforts without Roger Waters, a few more Alice Cooper records, and co-founded a multi-media company. Despite being active today this is where a lot of information on him stops. He doesn't produce many records a year, and maybe it's that he's very selective about what he chooses to do but he certainly hasn't stopped. In 2000 his did the last Jane Addiction album and the first 30 Seconds to Mars album and then not much until 2006 where he did the latest Deftones album.

The interesting thing about reading about him is that while he made a big difference in music, it seems he may have had his time. During the sessions for the Deftones record the singer left the project and had the vocals produced by someone else. Comments made during the Janes Addiction sessions make it sound like he tried to make them into something some of them didn't want to be. He still wants to produce rock records and it may be that the artists he's working with these days don't want to make them. I would like to see him paired with a band that really wanted that old Rock and Roll sound, granted he brings a great wall of sound technique to the artists he's working with today and their records have by no means been bad or ill received it seems that the band come out of the sessions less than happy with the results. He used to form partnerships, like with Alice Cooper, Kiss, and later Pink Floyd. Now it seems he's more freelance so I think he only comes out of the closet when a band or band member approaches him with a project he likes. This may be the reason with some members of the bands disliking him; they want a record like the Wall so they get the guy who produced it. Then when he tries to produce like he did when he was producing the Wall they feel like their 'sound' is being compromised.

While the common theme of concept records runs through his earlier work with people like Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Lou Reed it makes me think he loved something a bit over the top and theatrical. The first records he produced with Kiss weren't concept records but Kiss by nature are very theatrical. I think that this has a bearing on his production style, the orchestral arrangements on the Wall give a big sound later on however that sound big sound is achieved in a record like Saturday Night Wrist by creating an orchestra of distorted guitars. He also has used things like a children's choir to emphasize the point in a song, this was done on both Another Brick in the Wall Part II by Pink Floyd, and Schools Out by Alice Cooper. I think this is an example of using something from what the song is about, to emphasize the point of the song. Both those songs were about, or at least involved (depending on how you look at Another Brick in the Wall Part II) school children being unhappy with having to go to school. So by using a children's choir in the song it brings the meaning of the song closer to the listener.

Bob Ezrin seems like he may be becoming a producer that is out of date, not because he can't produce many of today's bands to a very good standard but because he wants to do it in a way that I don't think today's bands do. He wants to have more control over the project than the bands want him to. Maybe he wants to play god a little with the records he produces, take when the band has done and shape it into what he thinks it could be. I think that would explain the dissatisfaction express by some of the later acts who have worked with him anyway. All in all however he has most certainly become quite a stable brick in the wall of rock and roll history and will have a very lasting effect on it. I do hope there is a band out there today that can work with him to such a way that produces a record that works as well for both the band and the release itself as the records he used to produce, maybe we'll see Pink Floyd together again under him. It's possible..... Right?

Music Tech Forum: What do Radiohead, the Bee Gees, and Isis have in common?

We're full swing into our talks on producers and so far the talks have been very interesting. The thing I'm picking up mostly from these talks is that while there may be a very different sound between bands out there the core roles of a producer remains almost the same no matter whom they are working with. While of course some producers do more than others they all contribute to the overall sound of a project at least in some way. This emphasizes the point I think that it is very easy for a producer to step over that line where they do become a partial extra member of the band. We had this discussion over Nigel Godrich who has produced many Radiohead records. The question there I suppose had he influenced the sound of the recording enough that the band would have been either a different sounding band, or a similar sounding but less successful band without him. I don't really know enough Radiohead history to comment, but I think from what Lauren was saying he properly has and it probably isn't a bad thing.

The talks this week I found were very informative. I was actually impressed that people with producers that are often associated with one big name act talked didn't become too focused on that one act. It's interesting actually looking up Nigel Godrich that his first major production technique was in fact with Beck so he obviously favoured the alternative rock genre from the beginning. On a side note having listed to 'Torn' during that talk it made me think of two things. One http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1GA4SKZIC0 and two http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s13sASS5F4. The second one in the context of what we were talking about in forum got me thinking about the role of a producer in pop making a song popular. The point I'm trying to make here is that Torn, and the point was also made in forum is a song that we've all heard before. While it is a pop song it's possibly a pop song that makes us cringe a little less than the 80s pop stuff we heard the week before, and that I believe is the work of a good producer.

Links : http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:vu2m96hodep2~T4 – Nigel Godrich discography

Music Tech Forum: Blog 2

If it’s too loud turn it down – Weezer T-shirt. The industry today is full of commercially successful tricks. There are things that a record company wants to hear, but do these actually make a good recording? Or just help force a good release?
Matching the right producer to the right artist is probably the biggest key in creating a good recording, having good songs also helps but we just need to look at Hanson’s MMM Bob to see that’s not always the case. A good release means good money, good popularity, and overall success, but in my opinion a good release of a standard recoding with nothing new to offer will only mean short term success. I think we are used to/tired of these old tricks and it seems to me that the songs that are popular for long amounts of time these days don’t necessarily chart well.

This also brings up the point of timeless vs. dated production. I’ve never heard anyone try to tell me they won’t listen to Dark Side of the Moon (1973) because it sounds dated. Poison however…. Picking the right producer for the job doesn’t seem like an exact science. You could match up people who have done similar styles of music before, or if the band liked the production sound. This however doesn’t always work. It seems to me that it’s more about matching an artist with a producer who share a common goal. Does the band just want a big album? Do they want a producer who will come in and make their songs more attractive to a mainstream audience? Do they want to just create the best album they can?

Another point we touched on in forum was overproduction. The best example I can think of of overproduction is Oasis. Not every Oasis album, they do love their reverb but it usually works. If you listen to a comparison of their early albums vs something like ‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’ the simple songs are weighed down by extra instruments and production effects. In my opinion they don’t work as well, and would have benefited from the simpler sounds you can hear in tracks like Wonderwall.

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/oasis (Go Let It Out from Standing on the Shoulders of Giants is a good example of the over production I mentioned.)
http://www.myspace.com/poison (Poision samples.)
http://www.australian-charts.com/ (Look up some of your favorite songs and see how well they did, you may be surprised.)

Music Tech Forum: Producers

The topic in music tech forum this week was music producers. The first thing we went through was the role of a music producer then we looked at a number of music producers in detail.

A music producer can work many jobs in the end depending on how involved they want to, or the artist they are producing wants them to be. However some basic roles a music producer may fill are:

• Being responsible for the overall sound of a record.
  
• Guiding the performance of the artist.
  
• Writing and arranging songs for the record.
  
• Song choices and layout of tracks on the record.
  
• Budget and time management.
  
• Communication between members of the band. (Often conflict resolution)
  

We then looked at individual producers and what sounds and techniques they bring to a project. The first one we looked at was Butch Yig who produced Nirvana's Nevermind album with a rather clean sound. He liked to use contrast in songs, e.g a really dirty sounding guitar line under or before a really clean one.

We then moved onto David Bottrill. After looking him up it looks like he'd producing the new Silverchair album, listen to the track Straight Lines and you can hear that very clean sound.

The next we heard about was Flood (Mark Ellis) who does things like contrast hi-fi and lo-fi sounds, distortion with clean sounds and using loops. An example of the use of loops was 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins. Also the clean trend continued, but with Flood I heard a very stylised clean distorted sound and it reminded me of the track When You Were young by The Killers. Sure enough he was involved in producing the track and at about 2:17 there is a good example of the hi-fi/lo-fi contrast with a very clean guitar and a very lo-fi sounding drum kit.

Next we heard about Daniel Lanoui who won a Grammy for getting a good sound out of Dylan's voice. In the examples you could hear why, the vocals were very clean. The samples we heard were from his own music, which while it had an awesome vocals sound, didn't really interest me

Lastly we heard from Bill Laswell who travels the world introducing artists, getting them to jam and mixes the results, the sample we heard involved a very interesting mix of jazz and metal. Then we missed out on George Martin which annoyed me, hopefully next week.

Links:

David Bottrill wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bottrill

Silverchair main page (Straight lines should be streamable from here) http://www.chairpage.com/

The Killers Myspace (When you were young should be streamable from here)http://www.myspace.com/thekillers