2. You learn and develop valuable and transferrable skills

3. It’s not a distance learning course, so……

…..while I’ve posted a lot of detail on the blog for both assessments, you MUST attend to absorb 100% of the detail. Your participation is essential, as is sharing information or immediately bringing to my attention instructions which aren’t clear (to you). While I have a ‘pretty good grasp’ of the subject, having owned and run a commercial recording studio since 1986 (yep, hard to believe I’m that old) I wouldn’t claim to know everything there is to know about the subject – this is where your ‘challenges’ / ‘provocations’ are essential; collectively, we stand a much better chance of enhancing the learning experience. WOW! despite that sounding a tad affected, even pretentious, it’s not too far from the truth.

Overview – portfolio, 2 assessments + blog (weighted 40/40/20)

NB: DVD-ROM or CD-ROM must accompany the cover sheet when you submit to the i-centre on Tuesday 8th May before 5pm

All info you need about the module is on this blog. The VLE is linked back to here

Contact me when ever you need clarification on anything we’ve covered, no matter how stupid you consider the question – email addresses on the VLE - gareth(at)zigzagmsuic(dot)com or, gareth(dot)stuart(at)anglia(dot)ac(dot)uk…NB: I don’t have ‘office hours’ so this is the way to contact me when I’m not in college on Wednesday and Thursday. I’ve also given out my mobile phone number for those who’ve attended.

Contact the module leader – Paul Rhys or Tom all or Justin Williams at their Anglia addresses for issues you’d rather not discuss with me or college procedures I may not be ‘up on’ as a part-timer

The technicians – Chris Herbert and William Baker have all their contact info on the door of room 046

Studio availability 9am-10pm 7 days a week. Security lock up at 11pm, so don’t over-run.

Door code given out in class

Sign up for a blog NOW and email me your blog address NOW – you could use WordPress, Tumblr or any blog you like

For your blog, I want:

• screen shots of the mix and edit screen for completed tasks 1 & 2
• task 2 – photos of your stereo mic techniques
• task 2 – a table or chart of info on the mic techniques with details of:

1. mic name
2. type (dynamic/condenser)
3. polarity ie. omni/cardioid/fig 8
4. name of technique (eg. XY, MS…)
5. mics spaced or coincident
6. angle of mics to one another eg. XY is 90˚
7. distant apart if spaced
8. distance from source

Complete assessment 1 by the end of week 6. You’ll play them back in class – week 7, when I’ll give you feedback

Check the marking criteria and system/software I’m using here

Turning the studio on/off – essentially, make sure the Genelec sun + monitors are switched on last (on power up) and last (on power down). The sub is the last plug on the right on the far side of the control room.

Jamie Bellinger – sax (alto|soprano)

Geoff Geer – guitar

David Hartmann – guitar

Robert Makin – bass guitar|piano

Thomas Pavlopoulos

Andi Sampson – acoustic guitar

Fiona Stephens – bass

Amaan Fatmi – ?

Robert Newsome – ?

Wednesday 11-1

Nathan Cowell – guitar

Andrew Haley – drums

Reece Hughes - acoustic guitar|vocals

Tom Hughes – trumpet|guitar|piano|drums

Gabriel Nacu – guitar

Kenny Parish – keys|didgeridoo|flute

Tom Peacock – guitar|piano

John Peters – guitar|bass

Rami Ukwatte – piano

Nicholas Webster – drums|guitar

Thursday 9-11

Darryl De Courcey – laptop

Jordan Gandle – drums|keys

Tom Holliday - guitar|vox|bass

Adam Jaffery-Roberts – guitar|vox

James Leight – guitar|piano|bass

Adam Quinnin – ?

Matt West – guitar

Thursday 11-1

Jacob Abbott – guitar

Andy Fraser – drums

Michael Hebbard – bass

Tom (Mad Dog) Holland-Wing – guitar|bass|drums

Jack Lewis – guitar

Tarilate Olali – ?

Henri Salonen – guitar

Alexandra Tsimidaki – laptop

Thursday 2-4

Theresa Elflein – piano|guitar|vox

Tom Heath – guitar|vox

Sam James – drums

Lhasa Mencur – guitar|piano|sitar

Sidarth Minnasandrams – vox|percussion|beatbox

Shankar Ramdulara

Anish Unadkat – guitar|piano

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Assessment 2 – Stereo Recording / Sound design

Use AB, XY, NOS and MS to discover the best techniques for instrumental and ensemble recording

1. Make 4 short recordings, using the above stereo techniques (with a voice over ʻidentifierʼ) of 15 – 30 seconds of the same instrument or ensemble to demonstrate the result of varying microphone techniques.

Support your recordings with diagrams / photographs of the set up specifying the techniques employed, the microphone angles (to one another) and both their distance apart and from the source. In the case of MS, provide a screenshot of the setup in the ʻMixʼ window.

This information can be in a table or bullet point format

2. Using any of the above techniques, record a variety of sounds produced by musical and/or non-musical sources. Manipulate these recordings using production techniques from assessment 1 to produce a piece of 2 – 3 minutes. The musical genre is entirely your choice.

Bunny is now out on the Miasmah label and available from the Simon Scott Music Shop or Boomkat

1977 colaboration between Lenoard Cohen & Phil Spector “Death of a Ladies’ Man”

“A Christmas Gift For You”

Reading material:

replicating the ‘wall of sound’

the history of echo chambers

mixing principles

SOS article on The Ronnettes “Be My Baby”

a blog about the drum sound on “Be My Baby”

an interview with Brian Wilson which refers to many aspects of the wall of sound

an extract from “What’s That Sound”

What's That Sound - Phil Spector

a review of “Little Symphonies for the Kids”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRmRBrnQq8o

radio chat about and with examples of ‘wall of sound’

phil spector .com

Phil Spector Documentary (Demons):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkqrSAGpvpw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wGW3PXD39k

Angle of Parallelism

 What Does a Music Producer Do Anyway?

a brief account of production techniques used in Strawberry Fields

Sgt. Pepper 1/5 (about Strawberry Fields from 5:50)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3kIzikGl6w

Sgt. Pepper 2/5 (about Sgt. Pepper from 5:27, Lucy in the Sky from 9:03)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTAWVYmxRgQ

Sgt. Pepper 3/5 (5:33 role of producer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPH4pRgZSvw

Sgt. Pepper 4/5 (3:44 -5:24 steam organ atmosphere / 6:49 odd time signatures, sound effects and the impact on the time it took to produce in this way)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfgyRRYtP1I

Sgt. Pepper 5/5 (1:00 Day in the Life – tape echo and from 3:30 production ideas to join two separate songs into one)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA4vZSEww-c

Interview with Geoff Emerick – engineer for Sgt. Pepper:

brought in as a young engineer because he’d have “no preconceptions about how to record something” (2:15)

general production aesthetic, as there’d be no tour – create sounds with no pressure or ability, with the technology at the time, to re-produce live (7:22)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d942s8hsXgI

First backwards solo on “I’m only sleeping”, threading a ‘tail out’ reel of tape onto a machine as if it were ‘head out’ made it play backwards, they recorded random parts against it then turned it over to play it forwards. If that doesn’t make sense – read up on tape based analogue recording (from 5:28 – 6:09)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2J9zIuredY