"Take a walk within the walls of my mind and watch my thoughts ravage the spaces between the walls"
- David Sawang
- David Sawang
Music Production: Blog 43/30/2017 We have finally come to an end of the Music Production Intensive and I am very happy with the final product that we have produced. Although it started off a tad slow, we eventually built up momentum trying to mix the sounds in such a way that it would sit well in the mix. I learnt a very good technique of mixing with the volume at a minimal and trying to hammer down any sounds that are very predominant, that’s something I didn’t think of and it is something that I’m looking forward doing more in the future. We used a lot of outboard gear, compressed most of the tracks but also applied corrective eq. My favourite part of the corrective eq was the editing of the kick drum, we managed to make it sound really punchy and add the subtle reverb to the snare. Something which I haven’t worked with before was Melodyne, and it really changed my perspective of tuning vocals. We managed to rock in at 9 am (an hour early) to change the bass line in the chorus as we thought it would be too much for the vocals to sit on and we quickly decided to throw in that really cool synth which we thought didn’t work at first, but when we tried to get it in the session, it sounded beautiful. All in all, music production has really taught me how to properly create a song and not make music as a sound engineer, but make music with the perspective of a listener and figure out as a consumer of music myself, what would I want from an artist.
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Live Sound: Blog 23/25/2017 This week Tim almost gave me a heart attack when he said we were to do a 15 minute mix. First and foremost, I had no idea what the desk did and didn't know what knob did what and what fader did what, I was literally shitting bricks and volunteered not to go first. Some of the boys called shotgun and I was relieved since I had enough time to analyse exactly what was being done and hopefully try to replicate what they were doing in general, the problem was that the only person who knew the desk in and out already did his 15 minute mix during the lunch break because he had to leave home early. So we all were in the same boat because none of us knew how to properly operate the desk. By the time it came to me, I was a little confident as to what to do, I just applied my knowledge on applying compressions, gates and editing the levels, but the desk got the better of me when I was down to the minute and had eq'd the vocals but I forgot to switch it on Live. (I'm still kicking myself for that) By the end of my 15 minute mix, Tim was satisfied with my performance and I could take a sigh of relief. Tim did mention at the end of the class that people learn the most during that 15 minutes than all the classes put together, and I can testify to that.
Music Production: Blog 33/25/2017 The third week has already passed and we’ve successfully managed to get a lot of the sounds in place. We’ve managed to create a skeleton of the song so that we have an idea as to what goes where and what needs to be done in order for our song to sound the way we want it to sound. In the third week, we decided to give vocals priority and I also managed to alter the lyrics a little in order for me to fit the proper syllable count for me to sing the particular pattern which we had decided to go for in the previous week. Although the vocals sound a tad raw, I know it will sound heaps different once we’ve applied EQ. As one of my lecturers said, I am not taking a role of a sound engineer, but when it comes to creating a song, I can be multiple people, i.e I can play the role of a writer, composer, musician, engineer, etc. This flexibility allows me to be able to think creative and out of the box, which will surely show in my other intensives. I hope to do well in the other intensives and hone the skills I am learning and applying it in the future.
Music Production: Blog 23/18/2017 Another week has passed and I find myself really pretty much running around helter-skelter. The fact that I’m double timing doesn’t really help at all and I need to focus on getting the work load spread out evenly so I can pull this off. I feel as though this could turn out to be overwhelming but I’ll have to find a way to balance this workload for the next few weeks once I’ve successfully finished double timing. For my Music Production, so far we’ve successfully added drums and bass along with a few synths, once we rolled into class our objective was to add an actual analogue bass to replace the digital one we used. We also managed to alter the sound of the drums from sounding too electronic to giving it a very nice crunchy distortion. We also decided to add in a bit of a lead guitar into it, although that would defeat the purpose of it being a hip hop song, we decided to do it anyway, but as a supporting element for the vocals which we will be recording next week.
Podcast3/18/2017 For this trimester, I volunteered to be in a podcast along with Henry, Insan, Aditya, Denham and Chau. Although I was late addition to the group, everyone welcomed me with open arms and assigned me to be in-charge of the narrative aspect, and interviews. The concept behind our podcast was focused solely on buskers and we conveniently named our podcast "Route 109" which revolved around an individual taking the tram 109 to the city and experiencing busking life one-on-one by watching buskers perform life and having a conversation with them regarding busking life in Melbourne. So far we've successfully finished two interviews and I am happy with the direction the podcast is going. we've managed to accumulate loads of foley and atmosphere from the trams, tram stops and traffic which we will be putting in to give it a "live feel" when in actuality, we're only in the studio and not anywhere close to the outside world. It will take a lot of comping and post producing in this podcast to make sure that the product is exactly how we want it to be, like we are physically outside and looking around for buskers to interview and record. All-in-all I'm pretty excited about the end product.
Live Sound: Blog 13/11/2017 We've finally come to our next intensive, Live Sound. In Live sound we are required to successfully set up the live sound stage and mix all the instruments and vocals live, I know it sounds a bit tricky but we started from the basics. We first went through the whole structure of what made a really good team and personally, I feel as though team work is key because there's just so much to do. Much like signal flow, we were required to analyse where each signal went in the desk as well as the PA and in the stage monitors, etc. We started off with a strategic list of all the microphones we needed to use, and what we were using them for. We then had a diagram to guide us where to put the microphones and what instrument they were going to be directed at and where the instruments were physically going to be on the stage. After we went through the whole process of marking the stage, we needed to provide wedges for the artists in order for them to listen to themselves (again we were working with what we had). Once we successfully had everything in place, it was now time for us to check if all the speakers were working and so we ran pink noise through each and every individual speakers, from the wedges to the drum fill to the side fills to the main speakers, pink noise had to successfully emit through every single one of them. Our motto was to "Keep It Simple Stupid'.
Music Production: Blog 13/11/2017 Personally I find myself listening to some really good heavy rock or some nice new school and old school blues. I’m most unfamiliar with the concept of electronic music so hopefully this trimester I will look into creating music utilising methods within electronic music. For my intensive ‘Music Production’, we’ve successfully chosen “distant friend” as the concept of our song. With thorough discussion we’ve come to a conclusion that most of our musical components are to be created electronically, but to regain its analogue structure, we’ve decided to add in an upright piano, bass guitar, an electric lead guitar and samples of percussive elements which we’ve recorded live to give it more of a humanistic approach. As of now we’re focusing on creating a chord structure and have decided to stick with a chord progression of Cm – A# -- Gm – G#. We collectively went back and forth as to what genre the song should be in and we’ve come to a conclusion of settling it as a hip hop song. The whole concept of this week was to brainstorm and get ideas of what we need and create a list of things we need to get done in the coming weeks, hopefully all will go as planned.
Blog Topic Week 12: Final Report12/15/2016 It’s a good end to a successful trimester, and I have learned a lot this tri considering the fact that I am repeating it. I’ve seen improvement in myself this trimester, been able to get things done and the time management aspect of this tri has been an improvement. Let me go in detail as to what exactly I did this trimester and how I have improved and how I need to improve next trimester: EMP Remix: For my EMP Remix, I decided to do a remix on the previous trimesters Soundalike Project on Hoops by The Rubens. My EMP Remix was much better although I could have avoided making silly mistakes with the fm synthesis with regards to the the ‘chord’ midi effect and other technical aspects. But I think I successfully took the criticism from Nick well and worked on getting a better mix by following his advice and making sure whatever I was doing made sense and wasn’t there only because it was supposed to be there for the sake of fulfilling the criteria’s. I also had a problem with the grove template, but with Nick’s help with material online, I was able to identify why it wasn’t doing anything at all. All in all, I feel as though I successfully made a very decent mix and made sure my export was up to the mark and didn’t end with a click. Soundalike Project: For our Soundalike Project we collectively decided as a group to do Transmission by Joy Division. Safe to say I was very comfortable with the Soundalike Project as we planned everything meticulously from the beginning to the end so we didn’t really have any problems with how we were going to go through the recording process. My time management was put to the test during the soundalike project because we had everything planned in advance so any mishap would cause the whole project to not work, but as a whole team we did an amazing job at the end of the day. It really brought out a side of me I didn’t really know I had, the ability to work so fluidly amongst people I have never seen before. That was one of the biggest learning outcomes for me personally. Critical Listening: For my critical listening, I didn’t have a problem at all doing the ‘Stem Matching’ and the ‘In The Box Mix’. My main agenda was to just focus on it asap and just get it done so that I had enough time to spare for my Jingles. I thought I did pretty well with the ‘Stem Matching’ and the ‘Critical Listening Test’ conducted, although I wish I could have done better in the ‘In The Box Mix’ I was happy at the result and did everything well enough for me to then focus my attention on the Jingles project that was upcoming. I also had time to finish all my blogs in time which was a drastic change when compared to the previous trimester fail. Jingles Project: A lot of my previous blogs have been related to my reflection of the Soundalike or the EMP but I haven’t got the opportunity to speak about my jingles. The main agenda which I wanted to focus on my jingles was not to complicate things too much. I wanted to work on a premade animation so that I wouldn’t waste time compiling all the videos and not have any time for me to work on the folly and the background sounds. Ultimately at the end of the day I felt as though my jingles should showcase my ability to provide good audio for the video which is why I chose not to do anything with the video clip, this way I had enough time to work on the technical aspect of the jingles. My first jingle was episode 1 of ‘dick figures’ where I needed to focus on autotuning my voice and creating different dialogues and editing them to make them sound like they are different people although all the voices were in fact mine. It really helped me explore more on how I can modulate my voice to best fit the character and will further help me in the future to shape a character’s voice to best suit the character. I sourced some of the sounds on freesound and provided an edm background from abelton, although I wish I could have worked more on trying to get a better sounding backing track. My second jingle was episode 2 of ‘dick figures’ where my predominant role was trying to get the vocals to match the video. This is very similar to what I did to the previous jingle except I needed to change my voice to be that of a girl, that for me was one of the toughest things to do because it didn’t matter how much I pitch shifted the voice, it would sound unnatural. But then after doing research online about male and female voices, I used a vocal tuning software to change the rise and fall of my tone and change it to what I thought a woman’s tone would be and that helped significantly. Helping to setup the Jingles Page and putting up my work on the Jingles Page also gave me the opportunity to work alongside two really talented individuals and get positive feedback from them and get their support in my jingles project. We were in constant contact through social media and even trello to make sure each of us knew our roles and what we needed to do and whether or not we could do it. My communication skills has improved and my ability to constantly work with new people has caused me to look at situations in a different view. Conclusion: All in all I feel as though I have learnt so much during this trimester as compared to the previous ones. The fact that I have been using techniques I would have never thought I would be using really proves the fact that there is significant growth with how I deal with projects now than to how I used to deal with projects before. I feel as though the only way I have learnt more was for me to fail and realise my mistakes and do a better job in the future. Although due to personal circumstances of my getting into a bus accident really messed up my opportunity to try and make it to class during the last few weeks, I feel as though my adaptability has really improved with regards to my work flow and work ethic. At the end of the day, I have seen lots of improvement as well as seen the need for improving more and that I can improve more given the opportunity to. Below I have the links to the Jingles projects as well as the custom Jingles page: 1st Jingle: 2nd Jingle: Link to our Jingles Webpage: https://jjproductionweb.wordpress.com Blogging Topic Week 11: Copyright12/11/2016 In this particular blog I will go through the copyright requirements for the major projects I have worked on this trimester. I have done a total of 3 productions for this unit, namely an EMP Remix which I did on the previous trimesters soundalike project of the song ‘Hoops’ by The Rubens, a Soundalike project in which my group did ‘Transmission’ by Joy Division and finally the Jingles project in which I am currently doing the dialogues, foley and composition for two episodes of ‘Dick Figures’.
Before I go in depth, considering the fact that none of my projects will be released publicly or commercially, I will be covered by Fair Use or Fair Dealing by the copyright law which then enables me to use the copyrighted material only on the grounds of it being for ‘Educational Use’. For the EMP Remix that I have done a remix of a soundalike done on ‘Hoops’ by The Rubens. Now because all of the songs were recorded by another group but the composition was not done by them, I will have to obtain a mechanical licence in order for me to release it commercially. Also, permission is needed from the original composer of the song to avoid legal issues. For the Soundalike project, my group decided to do ‘Transmission’ by Joy Division, and much like my EMP Project, we will also need a mechanical licence because although the music and everything was recorded by us, the composition wasn’t done by use so we would need to seek the approval of the composer. For the Jingles projects, I have done all the sound for the video by myself, so a copyright licence wouldn’t be needed. However, on the other hand, all the sounds that I have sampled will force me to seek permission from the owners of the sound even though they are deemed as ‘Creative Commons’. Although I wouldn’t need a copyright licence for the audio aspect I will need to seek the permission for the video from the owners if it were ever released publicly Once my team members and I have made the Trello page for our Jingles Timeline, we will work on getting our individual projects done in time for the final submissions.
Firstly, I will have to identify and compile all the videos I want to make the Jingles for. Choosing the video is cruical as it can determine what you will need to prepare for and where to source the particular sounds from. Once I have found the video, the next step for me is to source the sounds or sound effects for the video. A good place to start is to look at freesound, as it is free and reliable, or in other cases try and record those sounds by myself and edit them to best suit the video. In week 9, I will solely focus on the video for my Jingles and whether or not I should do a pre-made video, or risk having to fail by compiling my own video. In week 10 I will have recorded the audio for at least one of the videos and by the end of week 11 finish editing the vocal takes for that video and move on to recording the other videos. Hopefully by the end of week 12 I will have all the recording takes for all the videos and will have them edited by Monday of week 13. If anymore adjustments or additions are to be required, everything will be done by Wednesday, in time for me to hand it over to the exhibition reps. |