Year 2 Audio Production Blog

Firdaus (15471)

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Week 14 - Soundalike Recording

This week was my group’s schedule to have our recording session of the sound alike project. My group have selected the song Lithium by Nirvana. We had done our research about the song production earlier and have found out a few things that we will be able to reproduce and some of which we were not able to copy from it. Such are like the sub-kick which the band had used in their production of the song. Some mics also are unavailable in the school’s studio, therefore we used what we think may be able to reproduce/record the closest of its sound.

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Week 14

Continuation of Production Project

This week was a continuation of the production project. We recorded the remaining guitar parts for the song before we are able to get it into the mixing process.

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Week 13

Assisting Group 2 Soundalike

This week, Group 2 from the sound alike groupings asked for my help to assist them in playing the guitar parts of their sound alike project.

Here are a few of the photos captured by them.

The set up they chose was very simple. Both guitar and bass was DI-ed and the drums was miked up with overheads, a snare, two tom mics and a kick mic. It was a pretty straighforward song and it being an electronic piece of music, the effects of the guitars will be added in their post production/mixing process.

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Week 13

LTC

This week’s LTC was a performance by a Jazz Quartet consisting of a piano, sax, trumpet and a vocalist. My team and I were doing the FOH for this week. We had to keep a lookout to how the instruments were miked up and be cautious for the vocal mic as a condenser was mic was used. The sax and trumpet was miked up with an SM57 whereares the piano was an XY small diaphragm condenser.

We faced a panic situation right before the show when the local rack power was down. We were figuring out what was the problem and thought that probably someone might have muted the FOH speakers. However, James figured that it was not that and went straight to the local rack realising it was powered off. I then realised that the 4 way gang IEC cable was lose and suspects that someone might have stepped on it while squeezing through to the seats eventhough it was placed on the back of of the local rack.

The troubleshooting went well  and we were right on time to amplify the musicians as they were about to hit start their performance.

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Week 12 - Production Project

We did a recording of Green Day’s song titled “Give Me Novacaine” and experimented with the miking techniques. We used 3 different mics to record the sound from the bass and guitar amp that includes the Royer ribbon mic for the guitar. It being a very sensitive mic, a shockmount and a pop filter was used for it. As the diaphragm is very sensitive and fragile, the pop filter serves as a filter to decrease the ratio of it being damaged by the air pressure that the guitar amp can pump into it. 

The most important thing to note is that phantom power is also not required for this mic or else it’ll damage it.

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Week 12 LTC - The Echo Chamber!

The speaker spits the signal out and a C414 mic was placed at the top of the stairs to pick up the reverberant of the space in an omni polarity. Thus picking up the sound of the reflective space.

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Week 12

LTC

As I was not present on week 11, there’s no post from me for that week’s LTC. However, this week’s LTC was a performance by classical Pianist, Raymond Chow. We had an interesting set up that day, creating our own reverb/echo chamber by sending the raw signal to the staircase of the emergency exit to the side of the stage. An AKG C414 mic was placed at the top of the stairs in an omni-directional polarity to pick up the reverberant of the whole “chamber”. I was very priviledged to be able to set that up being part of the stage crew this week.

The picture above shows the spaced pair stereo miking technique that was used to pick up the sound from the piano to be used to amplify to the FOH and send to the echo chamber.

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Week 10 LTC

After two weeks break from LTC, the series returns with an experimental performance by the band known as “Game Of Patience” consisting of a drummer, bassist and saxophonist.

My group and myself set up the stage this week. We did a simple miking technique for the drums as it is mostly to focus the amplification of the drums as a whole, and not focus on its individual parts as how it would normally be miked up for a pop/rock concert.

2 C414′s were miked up as overheads with a cardiod polarity aiming towards the cymbals,the two toms and snare whereas the kick drum was miked up with a Shure BETA52A. The overheads was also both panned left and right respectively to give the stereo effect on the FOH system.

The double bass runs through its effects pedals and into the bass amplifier.

The sound of the saxophone was picked up by an SM57.

We didnt run into much problem for this week’s LTC except for the breakdown of communication. The musicians left the stage for their break before we were able to have a proper soundcheck with the FOH. As a team, we failed in helping each other in ensuring that everyone had complete their part of the job.

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Sem 2 Week 8

Project week - Production

This week was filled with rehearsals, dress runs and the actual show for the production Im involved in, that is Thesis Dance. It was held at the Flexi space. I learnt more about the Yamaha CL3 console and the importance of hitting the right cue at the right time with QLab.

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Sem 2 Week 7

For this week's production, there were alot tech runs and by next week, its already the opening night. We had a couple of changes with the cues on qlab and some editing were made on the audio due to the bad quality remixes made. There's also a cue which requires projection. It can be seen in the photos above.

Studio

This week's studio class is a recording of folk/country music, Blue Grass of Rick Smith's and his band. It was an acoustic session with the acoustic guitar, mandolin/resonance guitar and violin, or also known as the fiddle in this genre.

With the resonance guitar known to project a really bright sounding sound, we decided to use an MD 421 mic so to capture the body of it and an AKG C414 to capture the instrument as a whole.

Lots of overdubs were made in this recording. As we get into the final phase of the recording session, Rick realised that he missed out a final chorus on one of the pieces and decided to call it a day to sort things out himself.

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Sem 2, Week 6

LTC - Luke Buirski

Another rock and roll band this week. My group and I were doing front of house for this week's concert and we faced with a couple of issues. The bands were basically playing too loud on stage and the monitors they were asking for were too loud too. We couldnt really control the levels from the FOH as the sounds of the drums especially were way too loud. The projection was more on stage than on the FOH system. We also face issues with the bass amp channel. We couldnt get any signal to go through the speakers despite all the possible troubleshooting made. Other than that, everything went well for us as we move quickly from one stage to another. From patching to line/soundchecking/pre mixing of the concert such as applying and high pass filter on necessary channels and standing-by effects for it to be made ready when needed.

Production - Thesis Dance

This week was the first week of my production in the venue and that is to bump in and rig the speakers up. Here is a picture of one of the TPM students rigging their lights.

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Week 5 - Studio

This week's studio class is a recording of jazz band. Rick Smith and his fellow colleagues were very easy to work with. We multi-tracked recorded them as if they were performing and we managed to record 5-6 songs within the time limit.

We did something different this week, that is to run the vocal signal through the Focusrite pre-amp and into the LA2A into the monitor path of the session so we can listen how it would sound like when a vocal signal runs through it.

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Week 5 - Sound Design

We had a fun session this week recording sounds to make sound effects to see the different results of the usage of different microphones. An SM58, SM57, Behringer C2 and a Rode NTG 2 shotgun mic was used.

Here, we recorded the sound of an iphone vibration using all 4 different mics. I personally think the sound recorded with an SM58 was the best amongst all the 4 mics. The C2 gave too much an emphasis on the high ends of the vibration which is not the pleasant to listen to.

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Week 5

LTC - Sezairi

This week's LTC was a performance by former Singapore Idol Sezairi and his band. They performed a number of pop songs both cover and his originals. I was doing monitors this week and we faced a few problems during soundcheck. We couldnt get a monitor work (Bassist mons) even after going through every single trouble shooting procedures that is available. However we missed out one tiny thing, that is the stereo-mono button which affected the changes in the console. I believe this wouldnt happen if a proper resetting of the console was made.

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Week 4 - Live Sound

This week's class, as usual was a recap of what we had recently during LTC. Some pointers were brought up in class in achieving the best sound we can get, as we weigh the responsibilities we carry out as a sound engineer; that is to follow the client's command and to know what we should change but still achieve customer satisfaction (the musician/performer/manager/producer).

We also had a  look at what is coming up next week for LTC (Sezairi Sezali).

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Week 4 Sound Design

In this week's sound design class, we looked back (listen) at some of our classmates sound library recording project. What are the common mistakes of recording and what good examples or techniques that can be used to achieve good recording results.

We also had a shot at recording the construction sounds beside the school building by using a shotgun microphone. We'll look at what we got recorded in next week's class. 

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Sem 2 Week 4

LTC

Gerry Hemmingway & Sarah Weaver

This week's LTC was an experimental performance of percussion and electronics by a solo percussionist known as Gerry Hemmingway. He is a well known jazz drummer who played with the Anthony Braxton quartet.

He came to Lasalle to perform his solo project of experimental percussion that has more melody to it than the previous concert.

The drumkit were set up like how a standard drumkit should be and the mikings involved were nothing too extravagant. It was all about amplifying the drumkit like how it supposed to be miked up for a normal pop concert.