Compositions

I am happy with most of the recordings that I have captured in this project but I would have liked to have had a little more time for refining everything. This however was not a major problem as I have enough material to compile the tracks to a decent standard for mixing. All the sound and mic placements have captured the best qualities of the instruments. I am confiddent that when the mixing an editing process is ongoing that all my expectations will met and the mix will be clear and neat.

Bass Guitar:

The bass guitar was recorded using a DI box. The bass guitar was pre-conditioned on the bass guitars pick-ups. I wanted to emphasise the bass input as clearly as possible rather than having to condition it within the project which may have resulted in the signal being artificial sounding.

Vocals:

The vocals were recorded using an Audio Technica 4033a. This microphone I find has a very nice pick-up pattern which is brilliant for vocals as well as many other acoustic instruments. I recorded the lead vocal two hand widths away from the microphone with the 100hz roll off activated. The pop shield was about half an hands width away from the microphone so turbulence didn’t effect the overall recording. This distance I found was the best resulting sound after trying different distances of both the vocalists and the pop shield.

Drums:

The drums were a little challenging to record as most of the channel wiring in the university CMT rooms were jumbled about. I eventually found which wiring was changed and adjusted it accordingly but this was annoying as it took me nearly an hour to figure this out, leaving me with less time to record. I used a total of seven microphones on the drum kit. Unfortunately the only mic available to use on the Kick Drum was an Sm58. I would have preferred to use a D112 or or a mic similar as the Sm58 picked up a little to much treble. I placed the head of the Sm58 into the sound hole which helped me capture more of the thud. This I found surprisingly effective. I have never used a Sm58 on a kick drum but it worked, eventually, to an acceptable standard. The snare drum was miked up using an Sm57. The Sm57 I like to use on a snare but the problem with this snare was that it had too much low end in it. I would have preferred to use a different snare to counteract this but unfortunately this was the best sounding snare I could find. The High-mid toms were miked using an Oktava. I only used one of the two Oktava’s available and placed it in the centre of the two toms. This was because having a mic on each resulted in too much snare coming through in the mix. Eventually I found a nice medium which accommodated both toms and didn’t result in too much snare interference. The floor tom I miked with the other Oktava microphone. This mic placement picked up a nice response from the floor tom which could be easily tweaked in the later processing stage of the mix. The Hi-Hat, Crash and Ride cymbals at uni I found have an horrible sound. This being the case I used a friends Sabian AAX cymbals and Hi-Hat as these were made from a much better alloy. I used another Sm57 on the Hi-hat as the mic has a nice presence on the higher end of its pick-up pattern. The two other microphones I used were the SE electronics. These I used as overheads. I placed the left channel over head in line with the ride cymbal and the right over head facing towards the crash cymbal.

Acoustic Guitar:

The acoustic guitar was recorded using an AB pair using the SE electronic mics. The left channel was slightly to the left of the hole while the right channel sat facing the 12^th fret on the neck of the guitar. The left channel was placed here as the noise from the hole in the body was too boomy, so by having it slightly to the left I eliminated the boominess while still capturing a rich sound. The right channel sat on the 12^th fret captured the nice mid-high range of the signal. Capturing only a slight amount on finger rubbing against the strings the overall result was crisp and clear. I found that the slide on the string also had a nice quality which I thought added a slight rawness to the track.

Piano:

The piano is a midi triggered sound patch which I bounced to audio for the final stages. I played the track into Cubase SX 3 as the Midi editing in Cubase is much easier than the one in Logic and many other sequencers for that matter. The patch I used was from Reason 3’s NN-XT sampler. The Acoustic Grand patch is made up entirely of individual samples taken from an actual Grand Piano which adds to the authentic sound I was aiming for. The patch also contains panning according to the position of the note on the piano adding to the concept of a nice stereo image.

Strings:

The strings are again Midi triggered. This track I left as Midi which I then triggered the sounds from the EXS instrument in Logic. I found this patch nice although the preset EQ which the patch comes with was fairly bad. The attack was needing to be quicker as the changes in the notation saw the strings slowly rising towards it peak. This made the strings sound slightly out of time with the rest of the track so I increased the response on the envelope to a quicker setting. The EQ was boosted in the bass by an harsh amount of gain and so too was the treble. This I could rectify later in the final mix of the piece.

Task four involved creating a song project in Logic 8. This project had to illustrate multi micing techniques. I began writing a song from scratch, the lyrics are from a poem a close friend of mine wrote and wanted to be made into a song. To begin with I wrote the piece for piano, to try and accumulate an understanding of how I wanted the song to be structured and also how I wanted it to sound. This was fairly easy but to ensure I was heading in the right direction, I made a rough midi sequenced which would help me understand the feel of the song in more depth.

The music industry adopted digital media long before any other industry
with the introduction of the synthesizer in 1960. With the introduction
of the synthesizer, the way music was composed written and produced
and also performed was revolutionized. When the CD was first introduced
by Sony and Phillips in the 1980's, this became the most popular storage
for digital media to be distributed and recorded on. For many years almost
everyone in the entertainment industry has realized that there is a vibrant,
emerging market in digital media. The introduction of the internet has seen
many forms of media in digital format being shared worldwide from the
networks that major distributors as an attempt to promote and sell media
with the click of a button. Although this easy and efficient way of
communication the internet has also been the central focal point of
illegal file sharing from torrents. Tens of millions of people have probably
downloaded copyrighted content through peer-to-peer networks.
The pay per download and subscription services offer the chance to own
music with greater flexibility than traditional media, with the option of
being able to download individual songs rather than paying for an entire
album etc. Apple's i-Tunes was a major success because it was the first
media centre that allowed a user to buy songs through the internet for
no subscription fee. Released in 2003, i-Tunes sold almost 2 million songs
in the first two weeks of being launched and generated nearly 70 million
downloads in the first year. Recently we have witnessed the emergence
of 'Spotify'. This digital service offers the user to listen to music for free
but at the same time, the free subscription offers listeners mass amounts
of advertisement for the entertainment company, but if you upgrade by
paying a subscription the companies make money from subscription and
advertisement interruptions stop. These media software applications help
to stop combat the piracy and illegal downloads that are slowly
destroying the music industry. The digital format has promised us pristine
sound quality that is easily accessible and is becoming larger every year. 

I have been reworking my music accompaniment for task 1. I have added tremolo strings
and emphasised the brass expression with a swelling Sforzando character. I feel that
this has encouraged the piece to become much bigger sounding and when listening back
to the piece, the brass now cut through the mix clearly with a wide dynamic range.
The tremolo strings I added were towards the beginning of the piece but I felt that
the strings sounded too cliché for creating a suspense moment. Instead I worked
with the legato string feel mixing subtle but dissonant harmonies which created a
suspense feel without the cliché finish.

After arguing with myself as to how I should approach my task 8 assignment, I have
finally come to a final decision. I am going to make  a patch that interacts with the
environmental atmosphere of a night club. I will experiment with shapes in florescent
colours so they will be clearly visible against a black background. I am currently
experimenting with the frequency responses that a most prominently emphasised
in club music such as the low end kick and bass drive and the mid-high frequencies
of a euphoric uplifting theme of the song. I have found so far that around 80 -
160hz is a good area as most of the kick drum frequencies appear here.

After reading Audio-Vision, many parts twice, I have become increasingly inspired by
Walter Murch's foreword. The quote 'We gestate in sound and are born into sight,
Cinema gestated in sight and was born into sound' – (Murch 1994: 1) has persuaded
me to research into the importance of sound in cinema and how psychologically these
sounds combined with the music, affect how much or how little we truly appreciate a
film. I have chosen my dissertation concept and I will be looking into the importance
of sound and how it and the visual display rely on each other to keep an audience
interestedand informed of the flow of events. Sound is a major importance because as
far as the argument goes, the visual cannot triumph individually because 'sound rules
 as solitary Queen of our senses' – (Murch 1994: 1).