Sound Engineering Studio - "Creative Project"

Links to the masters and mix downs.

Born To Be Wild

Mix-down
MASTERED

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Mix-down
MASTERED

Recording Documentation

Your Name

Jake Taylor

Date/s of Recording

9^th June, 2007

Song Title

Born to Be Wild

Format

Sampling Rate: 44.1 kHz
Bit Depth: 16 bit
Duration: 3:37

Total Time Spent on Recording

6 Hours 45 Minutes

Notes/Issues/Commentary on Recording (Minimum 300 words)

Monitoring out to headphones became a problem in this song, the bassist couldn’t hear himself properly, and therefore is a little sloppy in the mix. Also, the EMU drum kit to my ears isn’t that great, but it’s all I had to work with. This meant the EQ was pretty crucial towards the drums themselves. The biggest problem was recording the band itself – They were either busy, doing exams, studying for exams, out partying or something else. Next time, I think that more planning could help this as well as meeting them properly before the recording takes place to finalise times etc. Then as a turn of my good fortune, I was notified that the singer was leaving for America, before my studio session. While trying to set the gain levels for the drums, in future, I must get the drummer in (he was to come into record later in the session For all the microphones, I used online User Guides to form a basis as to where to place each mic, and then used my ears to help define to positioning.

Production Documentation

Your Name

Jake Taylor

Date/s of Production

17^th June, 19^th June 2007

Song Title

Born to Be Wild

Format

Sampling Rate 44.1 kHz

Bit Depth 16bit

Duration 3:44

Total Time Spent on Production

7 hours 12 minutes

Notes/Issues/Commentary on Production (Minimum 300 words)

This was to be a heavy mix. The original was pretty thin I thought, and I didn’t want to replicate that. Ben’s amp was very sweet sounding, and in this song, he was that main focal point. I created three guitar tracks, panned two left and right, and kept one in the middle to get a big sound. I had doubts about doing it, but it worked in the end. Compression and EQ were quite important as the original sounds came out a little thin, or too thick, as with the guitars. The problem I faced was that the guitar was bottom end heavy, and this meant the bass had little room to move, so I added EQ to the guitar to help give space to the bass. For EQ I used a site (see notes “General EQ Guide”), which gave a simple list of what EQ to apply to specific instruments. This helped me greatly, and I also found it was mostly good for my mix. For compression I used a method that I found within Mixing With Your Mind, basically, it was a step-by-step process on how to apply compression. I still find the concept of compression however still a hard area to grasp and I would like to further my understanding of how to apply it.

_______________________________________________________________

Recording Documentation

Your Name

Jake Taylor

Date/s of Recording

9^th June, 2007

Song Title

Crazy Little Thing Called love

Format

Sampling Rate: 44.1 kHz
Bit Depth: 16 bit
Duration: 3:37

Total Time Spent on Recording

3 Hours 30 Minutes

Notes/Issues/Commentary on Recording (Minimum 300 words)

Drums were pretty easy on this song to record, everything was already set-up, I liked to mix from the previous recording,so I kept most things the same. The biggest problem was recording the band itself – They were either busy, doing exams, studying for exams, out partying or something else. Next time, I think that more planning could help this as well as meeting them properly before the recording takes place to finalise times etc. Then as a turn of my good fortune, I was notified that the singer was leaving for America, before my studio session. So vocals have been laid to rest until a new one can be found, which I a trying very hard to organise. While trying to set the gain levels for the drums, in future, I must get the drummer in (he was to come into record later in the session For all the microphones, I used online User Guides to form a basis as to where to place each mic, and then used my ears to help define to positioning. These were usually correct.

Production Documentation

Your Name

Jake Taylor

Date/s of Production

17^th June, 19^th June 2007

Song Title

Crazy Little thing Called Love

Format

Sampling Rate 44.1 kHz

Bit Depth 16bit

Duration 2:56

Total Time Spent on Production

6 Hours

Notes/Issues/Commentary on Production (Minimum 300 words)

Monitoring out to headphones became a problem in this song, the bassist couldn’t hear himself properly, and therefore is a little sloppy in the mix. Also, the EMU drum kit to my ears isn’t that great, but it’s all I had to work with. This meant the EQ was pretty crucial towards the drums themselves. The biggest problem was recording the band itself – They were either busy, doing exams, studying for exams, out partying or something else. Next time, I think that more planning could help this as well as meeting them properly before the recording takes place to finalise times etc. Then as a turn of my good fortune, I was notified that the singer was leaving for America, before my studio session. While trying to set the gain levels for the drums, in future, I must get the drummer in (he was to come into record later in the session For all the microphones, I used online User Guides to form a basis as to where to place each mic, and then used my ears to help define to positioning.

Audio Studies A - "Creative Project"

Drum Odyssey

Jake Taylor

4’55

The material for the assignment was recorded into an MBox, using various percussive like samples which overlayed a percussion piece. The samples included a heat sink, wallet chain jingling, and other percussive like sounds. On top of that MIDI sounds were utilized as they provided the best samples for elements that couldn’t be recorded manually.

A percussive piece was performed on the EMU drum kit, recorded and edited to have the recorded samples placed where desired. The quality of the recordings didn’t vary so much, however some samples did contain clicks, which had to be edited out within PeakLE software.

Within ProTools, the drum tracks were sent via a bus to a Reverb Aux, this created a very large like feel to the recording and made it sound more real. Stereo panning was also utilised to achieve this effect. To demonstrate knowledge within automation within ProTools, mainly volume swells were used, as well fade ins and outs to keep the flow of rhythm moving and not too staggered. Plugin automation was also use on the Reverb Aux track.

MixDown

Mastered

MIDI Studies A – Creative Project

Prelude No. 15 in D flat major, “Raindrop”
Jake Taylor
5:33

For this assessment task I wanted to create an arrangement of a favourite Chopin Prelude of mine; No. 15 in D flat major. For most of the task I used Sibelius 4 to create the actual music. This is important to me, as I will certainly use if in the future of my compositional career. I began the piece with the strings, as they are the main basis of an orchestra. I found that the LogicPro Vi’s for strings, flutes, and brass sounded quite good however, the woodwinds such as Clarinets, oboes and bassoons didn’t have what I was looking for so I chose not to use those.

The piece begins quite happily, and moves through a rhythmical d flat major ascending scale. It then flows deeply into a very dark section, which is predominated by contrabass and violoncello. In this section I used staccato flutes and violins to complement the dark sound, which then progresses into a very large full orchestra moment.

In LogicPro, I panned each instrument to match an orchestra placement which I found on this website: http://www.rpo.org/s_7/s_8/p_6/Orchestra_Set-Up/. For the darker sound section I mainly played on the Novation ReMoteSL, as I know the song well on Piano already. To achieve the right colouration, I faded out the last note, and gave the appropriate tempo changes where necessary.

MixDown

CompletePrelude(sib3).sib
Right-hand click > "Save File As"

MTF Week 12 (May 31st, 2007) "MTF Mix Presentations II"

In this week’s presentations I noticed the use of minimalism, and heavy-handed production. Josh Bevan and Lisa Lane-Collins showed this in their mixes. Josh maintained the point in his presentation that his mix was stripped down, and that massive editing was a method of getting what he thought was really bad into something that was listenable to. If you as a producer were faced with bad recordings, would you subject your material to heavy editing? A question worth asking I think.

Lisa also took a minimalist path, however she maintained as many others did that the Afro Celts samples were of high quality. Her mix was much like other compositions that she has already presented to our class in other programs (MIDI Studies and Audio Studies); ambient, spacious and warm/cold subtle variations in sound texture. Even though she had zillions of samples to work with, she still only chose to work with a few.

In opposition to this your have what I call the extremists [sic] - those who showed a use of many samples, sounds, editing and effects. In this group I put Ken Mosman, Brendan Godfrey and Lauren McMohon. Their mixes were quite full, particularly Brendan’s, who use many effects such as Amplitube, delays reverbs but what made his mix different was from ken’s influence on the “Kylie Effect”. This involves pitch shifting a voice 5-10 cents and panning each side left/right while keeping the original signal in the middle. The affected signal can then be shifted to get a singing bird like effect.[1] However I really had to admire Ken’s. He went so far that he managed to push up the tempo of the original mix he did, something that intrigued me.

Again its interesting how musical influences affect what you choose to mix, and how you mix. I know I have said this before but it just seems to be so crucial to remember to not let this get in the way of your customers needs and wants.

References:
1. Documentation from Brendan Godfrey on his mix, presented May 2007, Adelaide University
2. MTF Mix Presentations, presented on May 31st, 2007 at the University of Adelaide