AA1 – Semester 1 Assignment
Song: Ol' Bitey I don't consider this finished as I'm learning as I go on with the process. Things went in three stages. I started by going for a static mix, starting with kick, snare and hats then bass. I got some levels and began equalising. I experimented by sweeping through frequencies with gain up, hunting for harsh or pleasing ones. Harsh, bring it down. Pleasing, accentuate, but not too much. I tried all sorts on stage one of the process and got to a sound which was okay, but there was too much to unravel if I wanted to try a different tack. So I loaded the original session and started over, utilising what I'd learnt so far. I call this the 'Drum Chop' stage as I began trimming away any portions of audio regions not containing significant audio signal. This cleaned things up a little. But not so fast. The lead vocalist, on further inspection, had been moaning and groaning between verses (he recorded choruses one by one on separate track and verses in one long take). I brought the volume up on this material instead. I began normalising the drums and this brought me to my next level. The EQ was bugging me, and after normalising some tracks, it was bugging me even more. Couldn't seem to nail it. I re-read the AA1 Readings, particularly the section on EQing from 'Mixing With Your Mind', by Michael Stavros. Hmm. Don't sweep, close your eyes and imagine the instrument you're EQing with the 'perfect' sound, then dial up what you think that EQ would be and punch in. An excellent way indeed to become familiar with frequencies. Very quickly I'd developed a new approach and the EQ was much better than what I'd previously achieved (ever). Dial up presumed EQ settings, punch in, check against sound in my imagination, analyse, punch out, dial up another guesstimate and punch in. Great fun, love to do it all again armed with the experience of this assignment. I think the final product is a little off the boil at the end of stage 3! Documentation: References: Fieldhouse, Stephen. "Audio Arts." Semester 1, 2007. EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia. DigiDesign. 2007. http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm? (accessed May 15, 2007).
Artist: Burnt Offerings
* Many thanks to Brad Leffler for being there on the night after being there all day and also to the band who did admirably as they hadn't played together for over 2 years before this recording (Me? Worried?)*
2 comments:
Awesome sound leveling; especially in choruses.
Now I am realising that I use effects WAY too much!
Thanks Sanad. I tried a few things. I found I had plug-ins all over at one stage and my computer started crashing under the strain so I had to rethink. Rather than have 4 plug-ins for each track (!) I bussed just about all and this caused me to pull effect out and start again. When I heard things back with only a little compression, I liked what I heard and just tweaked FX here and there rather less liberally! I still fiddle with the lead vocal though (not vocalist!).
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