Review

One of the most difficult aspects of this project has been adapting to the unique work flow. The tasks at hand are so meticulous and seemingly mindless, yet overtime, its these tiny changes that define your piece. You must learn to trust yourself and your ears.

One thing this project taught me to do was to step back and change your perspective in order to change your work. With something as intricate as audio engineering there are a million different lenses to look at your art through. You could listen to it with a concentration on percussion, or on volume levels, maybe play it and listen to it on different speakers, or upside-down or whatever. Really it's all about putting yourself in a position to get that spark of an idea. Ive discovered that learning your own work style and creating parameters to facilitate that process is step one of any project. Maybe you need a cup of tea before you go in everyday or something. Its almost like re-entering this deep state of meditation. Return to your happy place and write something cool-that was one of the biggest lessons for me.


The technology pro tools has for Eqing is really an amazing feature and is so affective in changing both midi files (synthetic instruments) and live instrument recordings.
 
 The colors on the image below represent ranges of frequencies. Ex: Blue is High, Green is High Middle, Yellow Is Middle, etc.

Example of EQ capabilities
The Colors are ranges of frequencies.

This technology is fantastic yet it present a very difficult questions which is, When to stop? You can sit there for days trying to get your Snare to sound like whats on the radio, but at this point, I am not an audio engineer, I am just making educated assumptions on what sounds good. This trouble-shooting will help me in terms of understanding how this whole studio works, but it can really burn your music out listening to it over and over again, Fixing things that are not heard to someone who isn't looking for it.

If I were to redo this project the things I would differently range from basic organization too the entire way I approach the first stages of songs. The first thing i would do differently would be to go in and match sounds, write material on those sounds, record decent versions of those, get all music in place, pledge not to change to much and then go in and mix/master the audio. It can be so difficult listening to something 100+ times a day trying to get just the right sound. I got really burnt out on my music during the second week and it definitely affected the momentum I had.

The final tip I would give is to save different drafts. One day you could go in after a late night and feel real upset about how loud that one hi hat is or what not. Its best to save constantly but save new versions. If you do this you end up saving yourself a lot of time. And in the end if you create two complete different songs, call one the remix of another and save it for a B-Side kinda album. This is an idea I came up with upon my immense amount of time spent listening to other dj’s, producers and composers and playing close attention to the unique culture modern day electronic music has. People create a song, send it to their friends, their friends remix it and now two audiences are getting something they can say “hey my favorite Dj just put out a tune." If the listener really likes the remixed track then they can see who created the original track and show them some love. Both artists benefit and now the listener gets two sweet songs.
This project was really important for me and I’m pretty positive I want to study audio engineering in college. I found its the perfect mix of something I love and something that I can rely on to provide for myself. Its so hard become and artist financial dependent on solely your art or music. The Amount of pressure that can put on the relationship you have with something as holy as art can really strain it and as I fear, ruin it. Audio engineering has serious occupational opportunity and as of right now is something I’m very passionate about, So thats where I’m headed.

Updating The track Flood

Wassup y'all,

I have updated the track Flood by adding Vocals and guitar. The process of recording went very smoothly and unfortunately I don't have any lyrics for the song but I wanted to get vocals down so the melody could be tested.

  Give it a listen!

Flood (second Draft)
Remember to eat your vegetables kids!

An example of mastering audio

Wassup Y'all

I have been working a bunch mastering and editiing a track I recently made "Dooha." I wanted to show how much work it takes to simply master and edit a track to mediocre level. This took me around 6 hours in total to "evolve" this track into what it is now. I see another 4 hours put into the finalizing of Dooha!

Go on my SOUNDCLOUD to compare the two drafts.

DOOHA= first draft

DOOHA VER. 2= Second draft.


A basic overview of the changes are the following;

1. Lay down bass line.
        -I'd say it takes around 30 minutes to find the right sound, write the bass line, and record it correctly and in a manner that will allow me to manipulate it later (looping and such.)
2. Find and apply effects that sound good. 
         EX.) 1:07 to 1:10 contains an example of post production effects you can use. (whirling sound)
3. Give it a listen and see if any of the new elements clash with the old.
          Ex.) The bass line was drowning out the original kick drum noise so I had to either find a new bass sound/frequency or change the kick. I liked the original kick so I decided to only change the kick drum where there was bass over it!
4. Master the levels of the track.
        Ex.) the snare in the First draft was way to loud, so I decided to lower it, but also EQ the sample so i could Highlight or diminish certain frequencies of the snare. (High's, Mid's, Low's.)

Possible next steps:
a. re-record any element that sounds off beat.
b. Looking into more appropriate sounds to incorporate.
c. developing new sections to add.
d. Recording vocals over the beginning
e. Rage?

Tell me what you think!

1st week review

I first entered the studio with a vision of creating "electronic music" at the beginning of the spring term. I took up Audio production class and began to learn the tools of the trade. The first few weeks were painfully slow trying to translate my ideas into the very rigid program Protools. The big things I've learned so far are:

A. Getting the sound you want can take hours and one wrong click and can cost you a lot of time, so be patient and careful.
B. Its essential to save religiously when manipulating the recordings. The system can glitch out and ruin that recording you were super stoked on.
C. Get all your ideas on to the page and then start messing with sounds and effects. The most valuable parts are the written pieces which can
D.  Try your hardest to capture that Jam feeling, the spontaneous noodling over the main body of music. When recording through Midi it can become very easy to remove the soul and feeling to the piece. Don't just write the music in, record it!
E. Listen to the songs on both great quality speakers and computer quality speakers. The difference from the studio's speakers to those of my phone or computer is tremendous. Master the tracks with this in mind, Add effects to the music that allow it to be heard on all spectrums of audio devices.

This whole process has been really enjoyable and has allowed my artistic abilities to grow in many ways. There is so much thought that goes into to just selecting one sound for one song, The intricacy and the room for error is immense. I've learned to just take it step by step, put the pen to the page and go from there.

Our Soundcloud Account ------> Blackwater Myst

We now have 3 teasers two the album up now so GO CHECK IT OUT!!!!!!



UP NEXT

We will be shifting our focus to recording two cover songs. These interpretations will be spearheaded by Alex Sprague. You can keep up with him at his blog HERE

Stay tuned.

Today was a very productive day. I added several layers two each track and started the production of our third track "Dooha." Listen to it HERE---->>>>>>Soundcloud Account

I was in the studio from 11-3 and 5-6 then finished with a 7-9 jam with alex on some new material.

Day 4

I spent today mastering and editing the two existing tracks from 11-3 then 5-8

Cranking along, and doing the do. 

Day 3

Today was spent from 11-3 applying some of the material I have written on the piano. We then recorded alex's guitar riff over the new song "Meeched"

From 5-8 was spent mastering this track and making it a solid enough draft to put up on our Sound cloud account ----->>>>!!!!Soundcloud Account

Patching Guitar from preamp into main bay

Enjoy!