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!

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