AWMR The Music Video!

AWMR The Music Video!

One of my uni assignments for this year was to make a short film in the theme of a day in the life off! Being easy to get hold of and willing to do it my band were chosen and the title of the video was " A Day In the Life Of AWMR ". The location was chosen to be the recording studio and the video would show the band recording one of our tracks Grace & Elegance. 

My role for the day was in the audio production, and did not in fact do any filming!

The Set Up!

So i may as well list everything!

The cameras

Sony DSR-PDX10P DV Tape

Canon EOS 550D

GoPro HD Hero3

The Microphone set up!

Drums

Snare - SM57 & AKG C451 on the top. Small Senhiser condenser on the bottom.
 Kick - Boundary mic in the middle of the drum, (new favorite! ) Electro voice on the inside. And finally a rode NT1a on the outside.( heavily angled to reduce the shock wave from the kick drum )
 Toms - Beyer dynamic M201
Overheads - AKG C414s spaced pair. Single Neuman U87a over the drummers head! The microphone stand was also used to hold the GoPro Camera!

Bass Guitar

A di box coupled with a audix D6 and rode NT1a on the speaker cab.

Guitar amps

A di box coupled with a  SM57 and rode NT1a on the speaker cab!

VOX

Single Neuman u87!


 The plan for the day was to record and track each band member separately. Following this we would film each band member with them miming back there performance. There was also some footage of the band shot playing all together. It was strange having to play to just the drums and a small monitor playing back the per-recorded audio session. 

Aside from this the mixing of the audio for the track fell into my and a fellow friends (David Gudge)  hands. The project started out in pro tools, but after having lost all the plug in settings we switched to logic pro. The change allowed for everything to be re-looked over. 

Parallel Compression

 Getting nearer the end result of the mixing, The drums on the track were still not cutting the grain. After allowing some one else to hear the mix, we were shown how to use parallel compression. It was like re-discovering some long lost ancient technique it was amazing! For those of you, like me that dont know what it is. It is essential applying compression to a bus and then sending signals to the bus. The process should follow on from say a bass drum that has had some compression but its not quite pumping or cutting through the mix. The compression on the bus should be quite "Dirty" and have a short attack and release times to essentially just reinforce a brief pulse of energy. Just enough to make the hit stand out but not cause all the track to pump.
aside from this a little pitch shift/blend was used to add extra harmonies to the vocals. The usual light distortion was added to the screams to make them even more harsh! Compression, Eq and reverb were also used.
For a more information on parallel compression, point your mouse at this link : This Link
 

Editing The video!

for editing the video, final cut pro 7 was used (non of this x crap :P ). I was not involved in as much of the editing as the others (Gary Rendle and Dominic Reneouf ), though i did contribute to some of the ideas. The great visual affects found in the trailer was all Dom's work!

 

The video Trailer!

 

Ok the final video!

 

 

Credits

Production : Samuel Hunt
Cameras and editing : Gareth Rendle
Cameras, Editing and after effects : Dominic Renouef.
Assistant production & Audio Mixing : David Gudge

Guitars : Sam J large, Sebastian Knight & Samuel Hunt
Bass guitar & Vocas : Ben Forse
Drums : Dan Squibs
Vocals : Ed Sims.

 

 

Things to come!

Things to come!

Ok so i have pretty damn busy over the last few mounts and have a lot of catch up blogging to do!

Music video.

A project i was involved with. my band were used to record a single song and music video for a university assignment!

Soundscape.

I recorded a soundscape at my local beach, also for a uni project.

Within these walls.

A recording i did for a chelthnam based metal core band!

AWMR

The current update with the recording of my bands album :D Very exciting.

Monome!

The process of building a monome.

Now excuse me while i get on with the blog post about the music video!

:D

A Collection Of things 20th March 2013

A Collection Of things 20th March 2013

Ok so i haven't posted anything in a while and I'm sorry for that but i have been very, very busy!!

As you may or may not no i do a lot of programming. I have been working on this application for around 6 months now. It is a basic keyboard hero arcade game type thing! It will be a open source release sooner or later.

In other news......

As well as recording a music video for my band, we will be entering the studio in less then 5 weeks to record an album!

I will also be recording these guys at the start of april, and will be being joined by a fellow audio engineer luke boast! 

More to come soon i promise!!

Mp3 Compression

Mp3 Compression

I often argue with people about the audibility quality of music. I prefer when possible to listen to stuff at cd quality, when its not possible i have my ipod music at 320kbps mp3.( By comparison cd is around about 1140 kbps :) ) People often ask why i bother with cds at all. A large collection of music at a low bit rate seems to be the norm for most of my non-musical friends.

For this post i have taken a 15 second sample recording of a piece of music i recorded last year and have converted into many mp3 bit rates ranging from 8-320 kbps. For simplicity they have all been put into a single soundcloud file. The "obvious edits" are where the next sample starts, i did the chop together in logic fairly quickly :L

Analysis:

Its clear from the very first sample that it sounds shit, A bit of geeky analysis is needed.

Geeky Analysis:

As the bit rate drops the sample rate does also, the direct result of this is less high frequency response. Because the lowest bit rates of 8 & 16 only have a re-sample rate of 8khz, any thing above 4 khz will be UN-audible. The fluttering is audio being rapped around. (see the nyquist theory! )

As the bit rate increases, we start to hear more high frequencies still sounds a bit like a 50s sci-fi film. though pay close attention as the cymbals will sound washy for a while yet.  

As 50 seconds rolls around the sample rate changes and suddenly we hear some guitar. There is still what sounds like a low pass filter going on.

At 1:36 another clear jump can be heard, the audio is now at around 56kbps.

2:54 the audio is now at 128 kbps, this is a common format for most mp3s. This would have been the norm for older iTunes downloads and what spotify streams at when on a basic account.


The second from last sample is what iTunes music is at. (256 kbps ) though that is using a different audio format (aac).

Finally the last sample is at 320kbps mp3, the only format i like to use :L hahaha.

Feel free to comment on either soundcloud or this blog should you notice anything you wish to mention. 

Thats it for now folks!

Recording Holding Tides Part 1

Recording Holding Tides Part 1

Hi Folks! This is a one of a two part post regarding my latest recording of the band Holding Tides! Since i took my camera this time, i took a fair few photos so decided to break it up into 2 posts allowing me to cram lots in!

Background!

Through word and mouth i was recommended to the band as a recordists after the Slow Down World project. The band where looking too lay down some Rock & Roll, using primary live takes! Despite anticipation the studio was good to me and there was a fair amount of microphones in stock for me play with!

Set up!

Drums:

Snare: An AKG C451b and a Senhiser dynamic clip on mic (no idea of model number!). The Akg
was pointed at the rim with the senhiser more towards the middle.

Kick Drum: Akg d112 directly in the middle of the kick drum.

Toms: Both Beyer Dynamic m201s

(Pictures dont show the position very well! )

Overheads-Close Pair: A matched pair of earthworks Er30s.

Overheads-far pair: A matched pair of AKG C414s

 Guitars.

After raising the amps of the deck, a shure sm57 and a shure sm57 beta were used respectively on a Kustom Quad channel and a line 6 spider.


The sm57



Bass Guitar.

Dident have a bass amp this time so resorted back to a Di Box.

Still thought i should include a photo :L

Results

Using a condenser the top of the snare did provide me with a different sound. Some what boxy with a little more treble. Combing the 2 microphones together did provide a better result. Though im interested to see what would happen on final mix! Having paper on the snare drum very much changed the sound. It acted a bit like moon gel, but gave the snare a sound found in those old 70s queen recordings!


That's it for now. Will be back with part 2 in the near future! I will leave you with a time lapse video from the session!

Stepping back to 2010

Stepping back to 2010

Its not this just this last year i have been recording songs, in fact i was half way through recording my own little album in the summer of 2010. I Ended up with around 5-6 original songs and one cover. The recording setup was very simple and used only basic equipment. 

Instruments

Guitar wise i used a Epiphone Flying V and a cheap honer strat copy into a line 6 spider 2x12. Very little of this was a mic setup, i ran a lead straight into the mixing desk from the line out.

Some of the bass parts ( teenage kicks & all i need) was done with a bass amp and cheap zoom distortian pedal through the line out. The rest was done either through midi or i played it on my keyboard live ( Riding out til the end).

All the keyboard sounds were played on a yammah bog standard keyboard, some of which was run through my guitar amp to use the in build effects (reverb mainly ).

Drums were midi, and where pre loaded onto my Yamaha digital drum kit, before hiting playback ;)

I had only one microphone for the album, which was a behringer c1. Which i used for all vocals and the guitar solo in All i need is you. Using my brother for the vocals i built a small matress booth in my house to contain him in. I had no pop filter, and he held the microphone sat down :L

Software

For recording most the songs, i used abelton live lite. Sadly i could only have 4 tracks at a time. So after laying down the drums and rhtyum guitar i bounced out the individual tracks, before recording the next layers. what had been done already was merged into a guide track. Its worth mentioning that alot  of the reverb and delay and was done as the signal was being recorded meaning it could not be removed :(

 
Kristal DAW (windows only )

The songs where mixed and edited in audacity and some of the material was mixed in the krystal open source daw. I new very little about eq or compression. Instead i just boosted levels and panned the instrument to gain a "mix" . I splashed everything with reverb and lots of it :L. The best song in terms of audio quailty would be riding out to the end. I did some clever guitar work in the intro (listen hard)


I would like to return to the songs one day and finish that album with a host of different singers :L, but for now here are the recordings minus 2 which i may upload and include at a later date!

Future Plans For 2013!

Plans For 2013!

Happy new year to you all! 2012 saw me start my production career, from working with folk music to some proper heavy metal. Infact i recorded over songs last year :)

1 folk single

A 4 track metal ep

A 11 track grunge album

A 4 track pop ep

A 5 track cover ep

A 6 track metal ep

As well as that i auditioned for a rock band and got turned down. Built my first iphone app, and got into lots of new music!.

2013:

As of the start of this new year i auditioned for a progressive metal band called AWMR, and got accepted as there 3rd guitarist :D. It looks to be a exciting couple of months as i record the bands debut Ep as well as a few music videos.

In terms of recording projects i have a set date to record a rock band at the start of February which should be good fun! I should also be back on recording duties for Slow Down world once again. I also hope to record some of my own songs as well. 

In terms of uni work (yes poor old uni work :( ), im going to be recording some soundscapes for outdoor environments. In more geeky news i will be exploring synthesisers to build and program my own. And finally i will be making with my group a music production video / mini documentary with my band AWMR.

I will leave you with a preview of my new band! Cheers for reading :D

Slow Down World

Slow Down World

I was lucky to bag this project, as many people jumped on the advert offering there service. It just happend to be me who was first. Luckily for me i already new twig and rob from my 1st year, after being asked to drum for them. (story for another time).

I was once again in the dark with this band, as i had very little idea what style of music the band played in. Metal is a broad subject :P

So onto recording. The band had specified they wanted demos rather then a polished ep, like many others wanted to record live. Being in the smaller studio meant i only had 12 tracks. 

Set Up list.

Drums:

Kick. Ev 20 in the middle of the kick without the front skin on.

Snare: Tried many microphones here, started with a m201 didn't quite cut it, used a sm58 which also seemed to miss the marl. settled with a sm57. After playing around with position it ended up pointing directly at the center of the snare drum. I used a small senhiser condenser microphone on the bottom pointing at the center of the snare wires.

Toms: I have always been a fan of drum mic pack tom microphones. I guess they have been designed  for one purpose so it makes sense to use them. I didn't bother with the clips, i placed them on mic stands. Pointing them at the center of the toms just like the snare, though resting just above the rim.

Hihats: I have never had much luck with hihat micing, i used a small pencil condensor from the senhiser kit pointing away from the kit between the rim and center. Sadly this got knocked around when recording so ended up being unusable. 

Overheads: once again these where changed from whats in the picture to a generic spaced pair of c414s.

Note the photo was taken during set up and position of mics are not what was used.

I belive this is a later photo as more stuff seems to be plugged in. Note the position of the hi hat microphone.

Bass:

Never before i have use a microphone to record bass i normally just use a di box. Instead i used a d112 on a small ampeg bass amp with a 12' spekear. Close to the rim was where the d112 was placed. I used a di box as well and mixed the result 10:2. The d112 gave the bass so much more punch and character  though sadly there was a fair bit of bleed.

guitar:

After trying an sm57 and sm7b i swapped them out for a single neumman u87 placed between the cone and rim. This resulted in a lot of bite. The only place the original guitar recording can be heard is in "sunlight", as the other tracks were replaced using a better amp. However i do like the sound character present in sunlight.

Vocals:

In a seperate session the vocals where done. The set up was a double microphone set up. I used my fav combo of a u87 around 30cm from the singer, and a sm7b. The u87 was raised up so the singers head would be back slighlty helping him to hit the higher notes. The sm7b was lower down pointing up at the singer and was used as a reinforcement microphone.

guitar re-record:

On the second session i set about doubling the guitar takes. In reailty we just replaced the previous takes. Having the time to experiment i used 3 microphones. 

Mixing

Ok the first thing i allways do is mix drums. I spent a lot of time fiddiling here. 

Ok so we have 2 samples here, i was rather happy with the basic kick sound. The bleed for me wasent too much of problem given the fact i was recording a demo. A fair chunk of compression and a tad of eq brought the sound out a bit better

Something im not so pleased with was the snare drum, as you can both hear and see by the waveform, there is a huge amount of hi-hat bleed. Using dual compression and reducing the hi-hat mic level, i sort of brought the sound of the snare out. It doesent sounds as good here as it does when put with the rest of drums. And that leads us on too....

And the drums soloed bit mixed :)

Bass Guitar:

You will need good headphones or a good sub to benifit here, but this is the sound of the bass amp with a d112 in front of it :)

Same part again but a dry Di signal
(you can choose which sounds better :))

Electric Guitar
So on the re-record i chose to use 3 mics and blend the 3 :) here they are as solo tracks.


Single Shure sm57 in front of the speaker.



Single Akg D112 in front of the speaker.

Single Akg C414 in front of the speaker.

When double tracking not a option a good blend of mics and panned tracks can give a thicker result in my opinion.



Thats it folks! I need to add some photos to this post when i find them! And if you would like to listen to the final songs check em out at the band (slow down world) Soundcloud.

Slow Down World