It's been a while!

Well, I've not been sticking to my promise of blogging more, but nevertheless here I am. So easter has come and gone ever so fast, with me spending most of my time in a dark room writing thousands of words for college projects.

The Mutech Records CD launch party is only two weeks away, but there is still lots to do. The CDs have been duplicated and printed, cases arrived mid-last week and the artwork for the CD insert is currently on it's way to the printers. So by the end of next week, the product for the event will hopefully be completely manufactured. Next job is heavy promotion and sorting the crew rota for the event. Managing the project is a challenging affair, especially with 11 loose cannons as colleagues. However, it's still a lot of fun and i'm sure everything will turn out good in the end.

On other fronts, the Wheelband and I are through to the final round of a competition-like-thing ran through the college. If we win, it will see us receive up to £5000 to fund the lauch of our proposed location recording business. So fingers and toes crossed and hopefully the business will be launched towards the latter half of the year.

Right then, i'm off for now. But i'll leave you with something practical and something entertaining. 

First of all, an instructional video on how to create project templates in Logic Pro. 

http://t.co/yjvl6gT

And now for the entertainment, i'll leave you with this.

Stress be gone!

It's been a stressful week, but it's been a productive and worth while one.

I delivered an awesome presentation on analogue and digital audio principles, survived a near fatal bus crash, finally completed GIRP (pointless addictive game) and have continued working towards Mutech's CD launch, which manly consisted of a team building exercise in one of Leicester's finest student bars.

Check out Jake's blog for further development of artwork for Mutech.

Time for a relaxing Friday evening with Alley Barber.

For anyone that cares go check out this site, it has links for a few free plug-ins. Nothing special but there is a half decent frequency analyser amongst them.

Album of the week, is Metric's excellent "Fantasies"

Enjoy

More Of The Same!

Well, I've not kept to my promise of regularly blogging, but it certainly has been another long week.

The Little Theatre has just finished a run of Three Sisters. The show contained two visual scene changes and so more crew members were required to assist than on a usual play.  I managed to work on 5 or 6 of the dress rehearsals/shows, so a valuable experience was gained.

Thursday night, myself along with Ricardo, Roland and Luis ran the sound for the yearly LEBC fashion show, held at the Athena in Leicester. As well as controlling the sound, we were also in control visual effects. The show was certainly run as professionally as could be, with the music run by iTunes and the visuals being run from the shitest windows laptop, it was certainly challenging task to keep on cue. To add to that some of the PDF's and DVD given to us by the acts were a mission in themselves to get working and one act didn't even provide us with music, Paul's iPod to the rescue. However, the show was a success overall with only a few minor sound hiccups. 

Right, time for college work so I'll leave you with this.

Time to snap out of my online laziness!!!!!!!!!!

It's been a while since my last post, admittedly I have been busy but that's no excuse for not keeping this blog updated.

So what have I been up to.

Well, the past couple of weeks I've been running the sound for Billy Liar at the Little Theatre. The show was fairly simple to run, with there only being 14 sound cues during the show. But the experience was invaluable and i'm looking forward to running another. Here's a review!

More exciting recording news as Ricardo Wheelband has just secured us an opportunity to record the Leicester Symphony Orchestra at their upcoming show at the De Montfort Hall. So we're super excited and currently planning how to conduct he recording.

Educational wise, my college class is currently working together to put on a CD launch party for a compilation album, containing bands that members of the class have recorded. I was voted into manage the project and it certainly seems a hard task with each meeting turning into a riot. But it's certainly fun and the project is being to pick up pace. Check out Peter Collins and Jake Brennan's blogs to view their side of the project and also to see design plans.

Check out these:

Right as for now, time to watch a bit of the horrific England Cricket display, then it's off to college, before crewing for the tech run for Three sisters at the Little Theatre tonight. So a long day ahead!

Laters Potatoes 

Comedy Festival and on to Billy Liar

Well the Leicester Comedy Festival is over for another year. Thankfully I managed to be a part of it this year by crewing for 3 of the acts (Jo Caulfield, Count Arthur Strong and Shappi Khorsandi) at the Little Theatre. The work literally involved me sitting and watching the act on the DSM monitor and it got me thinking that if I could do this as a profession, then life would be easy.

Jo Caulfield was good, didn't know what to expect having only every seen her on shows like Mock the Week and Nevermind the Buzzcocks, but the crowd reacted and interacted well. There was a few technical difficulties at the beginning, with Jo forgetting to bring her pre-show music CD. But the situation was easily overcome once all the crew members had listed the CD's in their cars.

Count Arthur Strong was amazingly funny and played to a packed house. This time there was a little more work involved with there being a scene change in the middle and there were a few shenanigans after the show, but thats another story.

Shappi Khorsandi was equally as funny. The show opened with support act Matthew Hardy and as with the Jo Caulfield show, there was little work to be done. Both Shappi and Matthew were very friendly and engaging people, with the show again being played to a packed house.

Now that the Comedy Festival is finished it's on to Billy Liar which I'm co-running the sound with Mr Atter. Hopefully this opportunity will be a massive learning curve for me and help me to hone in on some vital skills.

On with the busyness!!!

More Barbershopping and Comedy Festival

Well it's been another busy week again. The Barbershop recordings have been fully mixed and are currently being mastered. So hopefully they'll be finished by tomorrow afternoon and then it's time to think about packaging. Thursday night i participated in a recording session as a musician for the first time in a long time, helping Ed out with his recording project. Me and Rich blasted out Teenage Kicks, it's a little loose and my guitar playing is somewhat rusty but i'm sure it will sound alright after some tweaking. 

Saturday i was paralysed by a titanic headache, but nothing a little set destruction at the Little Theatre couldn't take care of. Tonight I'll be back there crewing during Jo Caulfield's performance in the comedy festival.

I'll Leave you with this snippet of audio i found on my old PC. It's a radio shout-out from DJ Hype from a few years back. Not overly sure who DJ Hype is, but nevertheless, at least i was on the radio.
Hype Shoutout by Paulie_h3

The Barbershop Chorus Recording

After weeks of planning, last thursday finally saw Rich and I orchestrate the recording of a barbershop chorus. Overall the session was a success, the chorus were brilliant and we managed to capture 12 tracks in a two and a half hour session. A few initial problems included the theatres PA speakers pouring out a horrid hiss and the kick drum of a band practing next door almost breaking down the walls, but they were quickly overcome. Unfortunately there are a few issues of spill on the recordings produced by suffering feet. But short of carpeting the theatre and stealing the shoes of the chorus members, there was very little we could have done about it and i'm sure the final production will be great.

The session was recorded using an X-Y pair, an A-B pair, four spot mics, a large diaphragm condenser with a figure-eight polar pattern and an omni mic, so ten mics in total. As i mentioned above, we managed to lay down 12 tracks so theres plenty of mixing and mastering to be done over the coming days. I've posted a quick mix of one of the tracks below to help give an impression of what the session was about. I've also posted a time-lasped video of the evening for one and all to enjoy.

As for the rest of the week.It's been one of continual research for potential business and website opportunities and a touch of music making with Alley Barber. I also discovered the sounds of Atticus Ross, the gentleman was responsible for the theme music of the film "The Book of Eli" as well as other great songs, so go listen.

As for now, it's time for a drop of wine and some Super Bowl Sunday!!!

Yesterday - Barbershop Choir by Paulie_h3