My Losers Speech

Tuesday saw Richard and I pitch our business plan to a "Dragons-Den style panel" in the final stage of Leicester College's Freeth Cartwright sponsorship award 2011, competing against three other hopefuls.

Yes and as the title suggests, we were unfortunately unsuccessful in our bid. Our downfall was most likely our market research, but didn't help when the presentation took a turn for the worse when the video and audio samples integrated into the presentation, wouldn't play. So the panel got to watch all my actions on the big screen, while i frantically searched through my files for the original video and audio files. I wouldn't have minded, but rich and i purposefully went into the college early to make sure all would work with the presentation, which it did. However, it seemed that the media player used on the system was a totally different version and it made us look a bit daft.

Despite not winning and with all the troubles encountered during the presentation, there are lots to be taken from the whole experience, as well as some great advice for the panel members. It's also pleasing to think that we did beat 30 other applicants to become runners-up. Which isn't too bad i guess and it shows that there is some potential in the ideas Richard and i have.

The full £5000 prize went to a gentleman with some form of photography business (I'm in the process of contacting the winning, congratulating him and also getting the the full picture of what his project is based around), so good luck to him.

Bottom line, Richard and i are failures.

Whats next? 

Well, i was hoping to talk about the guest mix with Paul Tipler, but unfortunately he had to cancel because of the good old train system, but he should be being rescheduled for sometime in September, so hopefully I'll catch him them. Sunday should see an exciting event take place, but I'm tell all after it's happened.

Aside from that, all my efforts are going into swatting up for the Logic 101 Apple Certification course i intend to complete next week and with college finishing in a week or two, its time to find a job.

I'll leave you with this:

So, my third post in three days!!!

So what’s been going on over the past month? Well it’s been an extremely busy one, with college work taken up most of my time. But there have also been some interesting events throughout the month. My two last posts detailed the two of the larger happenings, but other interesting happens included finally getting a chance to hear the words of wisdom as preached by Andrew Dubber. Speaking of the evolution of communicational mediums, his thoughts on how the Internet should be used and his loathing of MySpace. I have also been teacher assisting on a 4-week HCFE Level one music tech course, which was certainly a new experience and one that took me out of my comfort zone.

What’s this month have install for me?

Well tomorrow I’ve been given the opportunity to sit in on a “Guest-Mix” with Paul Tipler, whos an engineer/producer who has worked with the likes of Squeeze, Placebo, Idlewild, Elastica, to name a few. So it’s going be immense to see how an industry engineer tackles a mix from scratch.

Wednesday, Richard and I are preparing a business plan presentation for the Freeth and Cartwright sponsorship. If won, the £5000 prize would certainly help us take our ideas for location recordings onto the next level.

At the end of the month I’ll hopefully be taking the Apple Certification Logic 101 course. After going through the example questions, it became obvious to me that the course will be both good and worryingly in-depth. So I need to dust of the old revision cap and do me some reading!

Amongst all that, I aim to indulge oneself in the art of music creation with the Ally Barber and I think I should also find a job, as this poor student life isn’t all that fun.

Recording Leicester Symphony Orchestra

On the 21st of May, Dickie and I recorded the Leicester Symphony Orchestra at the De Montfort Hall, assisted on-stage by the theatre’s sound engineer, whom was introduced to us as “Scooby”. The recording was conducted using 4 mics, swung from a lighting bar in the following manner:

·      A spaced-pair of two AKG C414 with Omni patterns, hanging approximately 8 meters above the orchestra and in-line with the front of the stage.

·      A coincident pair of Neumann KM184’s, center stage and again hanging at the same height and in line with the other mics.

Basking in the glory of the moment!

Our recording rig consisted of a Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 and a Macbook Pro running Logic Pro 9. With the session being recorded at 24-bit, 176.4kHz (Sample Rate), I was wondering whether my little MacBook would live up to expectations, but she did us proud and ran without any signs of stress.

Now I'm certainly a fan of classical music, but this was the first time I had ever witnessed a 70-piece orchestra live and for Richard and me to be the only other people present in the auditorium during their practice, was an insanely brilliant feeling. There were two practice sessions before the show, so this gave us a chance to set our levels and ready ourselves for the evening performance.

Me Watching Levels (with an immense looking side-parting)

The program for the night included:

·      Elgar’s  Polonia

·      Elgar’s  Cello Concerto, Featuring guest cello soloist David Cohen

·      Saint-Saens Symphony 3 (Organ)

With this being the first (of hopefully many) occasion that we have recorded an orchestra, we were slightly anxious about our levels clipping given how dynamic an orchestra is. But the recording ran smoothly and it was certainly an awe-inspiring sight to see the orchestra in all their glory.

The Orchestra during a practice session

Listening to the recordings once getting them home, they sound amazing and I’ll be posting some samples as soon as we get clearance. So a big thank you must go to the Leicester Symphony Orchestra for allowing us to record the show, it was certainly a great opportunity for us.  

So now it’s on to the next challenge, which is to conduct a recording in a church or cathedral and hopefully capture some immense acoustics.

(Two posts in two days! I’m getting better)

The Mutech Show

After months of planning, the CD launch party finally happened. The event was held at the Upper Brown Street Theatre (the old Phoenix Arts Center) on the 19^th of May. The crew arrived around 2pm and we started the day with a short team talk and  Elliot handed out awesome crew t-shirts he had made especially for the event. The crew then set about their duties, setting up the stage, instruments, mics and FOH desk in a double quick time. The sound-check went a little pear shaped, but we wouldn’t learn anything if it always ran smoothly.

The show was scheduled to start at 7pm but due to lack of audience members, the start of the show was delayed by 20 minutes. This gave us a little more time to round people up and throw them into the auditorium. The show generally ran ok, although it would have been nice if we had attracted more of a bigger crowd. But I guess that’s the biggest trick to running a successful live music event.

Band of the night had to be the Tall Orders. Not only because I was engineering the sound, but also because they have a stage presence that I’ve never witnessed in an unsigned band before.

Overall I think the show was a success, we didn’t sell all of the CDs but we managed to raise £115 for charity, so that’s never a bad thing. The whole project has undoubtedly been a great experience and it has certainly amplified my ambition to run a record label, although I don’t think I’d too keen on running a live event again.

Read other crew members thoughts about the event at Jake Brennan and Peter Collins blog pages.

All of the Mutech crew, in fetching t-shirts!