Pre-planning And Reflection At Home.

Chris Gleeson: Recording Producer/DAW Operator/Console Engineer.
Louie Johnston: Assistant Engineer/DAW Assistant Operator.

Talent:
James Howe
Louie Johnston

Basic Project Timeline Plan.
11.50 Set up instruments to get desired sound.
12.30 Drummer arrives.
1.00 Begin recording percussion.
2.30 Begin recording bass.
3.00 Begin tracking guitar tracks.
4.00 Post work.

Samson 7Kit
SM57 x 1
AKG P170
Line6 Seita3 + 4 speaker cabinet.
Kick drum, snare, tom-tomx3 hi-hat, crash, china, ride.
Behringer Bass amp + 4 speaker cabinet with tweeter.

Samson Kick Mic on Kick
Snare Mic top
SM57 on Snare bottom
Tom mics on toms x3
Hi-hat mic on hi-hat
OH over crash
P170 over china and ride

Samson kick mic and SM57 on amp cabinet, SM57 top-right speaker on rim to capture resonance. For guitar, kick mic on top left, directly in the middle of speaker but 5-8cm away to capture note tone. For bass, kick mic on centre of top-left speaker as it is the first in the chain and to capture tone, with a separate direct input line to capture bass depth and note clarity.

Risks & possible troubles.
-Percussionist becomes unavailable.
-Problems with equipment.
-Time issues.

After getting started, we kept some notes. They are the following;
The drummer was completely prepared and ready, this took one take with short rehearsal.
The bass is having issues with its input. We don’t have time for this so we decided to overdub with a friends bass guitar at a later date.
Guitars are taking too long to find the correct sound, so we are going to work with clarity instead of desired tone.

Reflecting on our progress, there was a lot that we could have done better, had we been well equipped and long prepared, we could have potentially ended up with a clean recording. Using cheap microphones and being stuck out, far from any desirable recording locations, we had to make do with a lot of obvious problems. Though, something we hadn’t thought of included bad planning on voltage use and placement, it took some amount of reconsideration with amps, mixers, computers and outboard gear. We planned on recording with an open bedroom with a hanging mattress and blankets on the walls for sound trapping. But because of holiday celebration, my family had taken the room and passively pushed us into the living room.

Amazingly, we had finished up long before we planned. Percussion recording went incredibly well. Though, we should have checked the bass guitars functionality before starting, we could only get either loud buzzing or no signal at all, I assume without knowledge that this is due to a loose connection either in the instruments input or an issue with the pickups. The bass guitar itself is fairly old and poorly constructed so, it is in dire need of a tune up and repair or, a simple replacement. We didn’t have much to work with due to family related restrictions so we ended up recording in the living room as I mentioned above. This living room is tiled with seven walls and an open hallway so, it’s pretty clear why our recording ended up with drained out sounds and lots of reverb. Our recording and time management went fairly well, we recorded percussion swiftly and had plenty of time to go over the guitar track in depth but this is mostly due to the loss of bass, meaning, we had a whole instrument to forget about. For guitar, the recordings came out fairly clean. With two cardioid microphones and placing the amplifier on an ‘off-angle’ at a wall, we were able to avoid reflections of sound that were loud enough that would have ruined our capture of the instrument. We made some overdub tracks for guitar while coming up with new ideas in the post-production work, unfortunately this is when things went downhill.

The family arrived early and we were bombarded with ‘great ideas’ which took up a lot of our time and we ended up with children screaming in the background of our tracks, party music made its way into our recording which turned the tracks to trash. We talked with everyone and were simply ignored so, we called it and decided to finish up. Although we hadn’t gotten all our overdubbing ideas in this session, we got all percussion and rhythm finished. The drummer had left at this point which got the guitarist ready to leave. The family went quiet so we quickly got one more recording of a lead track then decided it was time to pack up.

Overall, I would say that we were extremely lucky to get as good of a capture as we did with our set up and unforeseen issues. Our microphone placement resulted in fairly nice percussion tracking, regarding what we worked with, our guitar track came through somewhat okay. We were fast and precise which is what I need to do a lot more. I learnt that simply having people turn up unexpectedly can ruin a session completely and that when in a comfortable situation, I can work quickly and swiftly. I have also learnt that I have trouble finding a tone I want when it comes to the guitar, I spent about 10 minutes moving the microphone in circles until the drummer yelled at the guitarist and I. I am going to watch video tutorials on how to correctly find a sought after tone through my holidays between trimesters as a basis to work on this with.

Pre-Production and Reflection.

Getting ready for our next Trimester, Morgan Girle and I recorded Pyromance, below are the notes and reflection recorded during the session.

Morgan Girle: Recording Producer/DAW Operator.
Chris Gleeson: Assistant Engineer/Console Engineer.

Talent:
Jake Blatchy
Ty Williams
Chris Flemming
Nick Ashby

Basic Project Timeline Plan.
11.30 Arrive and get ready.
12.00 Talent arrives and set up instruments and sound.
12.30 Set up live room to get desired sound.
1.00 Begin recording percussion.
2.00 Reflect on work and adjust.
2.30 Begin recording bass. As the bass guitarist is most prepared, this should be fairly short.
3.00 Begin tracking guitar tracks.
4.00 With guitarists advice, adjust within DAW for preferred sound and direction.
5.00 Goodbyes with talent and short discussion on next session.
5.15+ Post production work.

Risks & possible troubles.
-Studio unavailable
-Team member unable to make it to session.
-Problems with equipment.
-Get undesirable recordings.
-Loss of session data.

Short Notes.
-No vocals.
-Passive DI’s for guitar & bass as we plan for drum tracking and over-dubbing everything later

24/9/2015.

11.30 Morgan and I rocked up 30 minutes early to a 12-o’clock session to get ready.
12-30 We have done everything but final touches due to talent arriving late.
12.50
-D12 on kick (outside).
-SM57 on snare top.
-SM57 toms x3.
-C2 ride & HH.
-NT5 on crash.

1.00 Drummer arrives and moves instruments to preference.
2.20 FINALLY TRACKING DRUMS.

2.40 Bass guitarist arrives.
– click sound with bass.
-regrettably couldn’t figure it out
2.50 We mask it with De-esser but nothing really changes so we decided that we will ignore it if it takes too long. Morgan turned levels down on amp and adds built-in compression. It helps but doesn’t remove click entirely.

4.00 Bass tracking finished.
4.10 Everyone leaves due to interruptions.

This was a poor execution but I feel that majority of the issues here were due to the talent being under prepared and indecisive. To do better, we could have easily set up more sessions with the talent and had more detailed discussions before-hand.

Australian Broadcasting Standards

Australia’s television has some specifics for commercial advertising, some of these include decibel limits based on Rms levels and gain levels. There are problems involved with the current use of this but, we will read on that soon. LKFS is a relatively new term, which means “Loudness K-weighted relative to Full Scale.” It’s a scale for audio measurement similar to VU or Peak. However, rather than measuring gain, it’s measuring loudness. LKFS is based on the ITU-R BS.1770 Loudness Measurement Method. The loudness unit of LKFS is dB and is used the same way as a dB of gain. For example, a -15 LKFS program can be made to match the loudness of a -22 LKFS program by attenuating 7 dB. Incidentally, -22 LKFS is considered a Dialnorm of 22.

The Code of Practise contains provision which state;

• 1.11 Commercials must not be excessively noisy or strident;
• 1.12 Licensees must do everything reasonably possible to ensure that commercials do not sound louder than adjacent programming;
• 1.13 Studio transmission must not be increased from normal levels  during program breaks
• 1.14 A licensee shall be deemed to have complied with Clauses 1.11 and 1.12 provided it ensures that the relevant requirements of Free TV Australia’s Operation Practice Note on Loudness of Advertisements, as amended from time to time, have been met. This requirement is satisfied if a person submitting a commercial certifies to the licensee that all requirements of the Operational Practice Note on Loudness of Advertisements concerning compression, limiting and equalisation have been met.

There are a few ways of measuring these values and limits. LKFS (Loudness L-weighted Full Scale) and LUFS (Loudness Units Full Scale) are measurements that are absoloute, depending on which broadcast standard is in use. They are identical but have a difference in total equal to 1db. the loudness target level could be e.g. -24 LKFS or -23 LUFS.
LU (Loudness Units) is the standard broadcaster’s target level rather then being -23 LUFS or -24 LKFS.

0LU limits have been placed on values for advertisement and programming. Below are some recommendations by TC Electronic on how to follow these guidelines.

Compression: The Appropriate use of compression should be used throughout the production process to constrain the dynamic range of vocals,music tracks to produce a consistent sound track

Audio Limiting: is a useful tool that prevents distortion in audio systems. When recording a television commercial limiting must not be used for producing excessively noisy or strident material.

Spectral Manipulation (Equalisation): Like Audio Limiting (Spectral Manipulation) must not be used for the purpose of producing excessively noisy or strident material. Equalisation is a very basic tool and is often used in audio production, but care should be taken to avoid excessive amounts of equalisation that could cause overloading of broadcast audio chains.

The commercial broadcasting standards for Australia’s ‘FreeTV’, tend to be focused on decibel limits. The loudest point in a show is the loudness limit for an advertisement. This has been an ongoing topic for debate as the transition from programmed television to advertisement creates a wall of noise which could potentially cause deafness to audiences watching.

There have been changes made and some new standards of broadcasting have been introduced to attempt to fix this issue. Australia currently uses standards system ‘OP 48’ which is what I was describing above. When a program reaches i’s loudest point, and advertisement comes in to take advantage of the loudness standards so that it can capture the listeners attention, but it gets to the point the the listener needs to rush to turn down the volume of their television sets. This is why ‘OP 59’ was issued in by The International Telecommunication Union or ITU which is referred to as ITU-R BS.1770, the current evolution of which is ITU-R BS.1770-3.
Using a meter that conforms to ITU-R BS.1770-3 you can actually get a quantitative measure of the loudness of a soundtrack. OP 59, like the US and European standards, specifically looks at (or listens to) the average or integrated loudness of the entire program . So if you were mixing a 30 second TV soundtrack you have to play the entire 30 seconds through the meter to arrive at your LKFS value, which for OP 59 -24LKFS.

OP 59 will likely address these common issues. Because we are now mixing to an average loudness, rather than a loudness limit.

Bibliography

Milne, S. (2012). OP 59 and Loudness Standards for Australian TV | Sound and Code. [online] Sandymilne.com. Available at: http://www.sandymilne.com/op-59-and-loudness-standards-for-australian-tv/

Tcelectronic.com,. (2015). Loudness Explained | TC Electronic. Retrieved 16 December 2015, from http://www.tcelectronic.com/loudness/loudness-explained

Audio Loudness and the Calm Act, Dial Norm and LKFS. Retrieved 16 December 2015, from http://www.ensembledesigns.com/products/audio-loudness/

Project Studio Plan

I had worked with some students in game design to create some mood setting soundtracks. When we had met, we all made our own notes and created an online page that all of us could edit to keep each other up to date.
Within these notes, I had included my basic plan for each studio session.

Initially, I used FL Studio to make a demo version of the songs with some pad synths. After showing the game students my ideas, they gave me the go ahead to record in the studio. Unfortunately, the game fell through and I was given a different task. For this, I simply made a song in FL and gave it one sound effect file. Easy work for old Chrissy boy.

Case Study 4.

Genre: Calum Bowen has described his sound as “Shibuya-kei soul-pop”.
Artist: bo en
Song: Winter Valentine
Album: pale machine

Era:
Calum Bowen says “Shibuya-kei was a huge influence for me. Taking the tenets of pop music to their extreme is kind of the general approach but stylistically, I take my lead from a big nostalgia for R&B which in turn led me onto a whole lot of soul/jazz. The surface aesthetic makes references to current trends in dance music but fundamentally I’m writing neo-soulish jazz-pop tracks.”. Shibuya-kei first became popular in the early 1990’s when foriegn-oriented stores would start

Target market demographic:

Paramusical intention:

Aesthetic qualities:

Below, I have linked to my Google Drive with an upload of bo en’s song Winter Valentine, with an analysis contained within VAT (Variations Audio Timeliner), with use of Logic Pro X to get a better understanding.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B00PuyK2po_jVENLN3FWdnhsdVk