Chris Hancock Archives - Page 4 of 5

Saad album finished + glowing Amnplify review

June 13, 2019/in recording mixing mastering, Uncategorized/by chnetwork

I recently finished mixing a contemporary Pop project for Sydney singer-songwriter, SaaD, aka Dylan Regtop.

The influences and brief for the overall album sound contained references such as Bon Iver, S.Carey and the like.

Challenges with the record included the artist’s desire to have drums and bass that could hardly be heard, yet still desiring a balanced mix, ie not too top heavy. As a result, I used a lot of very processed lo fi drums, and bass content, often stemming out to a cassette player and back into the DAW to achieve murkier sounds that whilst having more harmonics, had less attack and audibility within the mix.

The album was a pleasure to work on, and the brief precise. However, the vocals were by no means an easy mix. The takes were great, but the vocalist is quite sibilant, which when combined with the harsh top end of their mic, Rhodes NT2A, was hard to control in the mix. Sibilance had to therefore be dealt with in multiple stages, those including tape to mellow the high frequencies, standard de-essers, Pro Q3 dynamic EQ and F6’s dynamic EQ.

Another production journey that further related to the vocal, was the presence of mouth clicks, through out each track. The Rhodes’ brittle top end once again had any mouth noise unpleasantly emphasised, but through treatment by Izotope’s RX, we were able to de-click the vocals with a great outcome. Note a forth coming YouTube tutorial will be coming on RX and de-click vocals.

Finally, post the production journey, some positive reviews are starting to come in.

Amnplify comment;

“musically, the album is a pastiche of atmospheric genre pieces given depth by Regtop’s extraordinary ability to create sparse, but haunting soundscapes.”

Further, it seems we achieved the production brief, Amnplify comment,

“it’s tempting to draw comparisons to something like Bon Iver or Sigur Ros, though even those records are more akin to conventional structure than the individual pieces on SaaD. Sonically there are similarities to some sod ven stuff, perhaps even Beta Radio, but even then the sparsity of this album is probably beyond the reach of both of those acts.”

Anatole – Medlow Bath

January 21, 2019/in recording mixing mastering, Uncategorized/by chnetwork

In 2018, I was at Music Feeds studio with Anatole / Jonathan Baker recording some grand piano parts for his forthcoming releases. One of those track has just been released and it’s a beauty. Enjoy!

Danga Island comes to town

January 21, 2019/in recording mixing mastering/by chnetwork

2019 kicked off in fine form with a 4 day session for long term collaborator and man of mystery from Danga Island.

He and his musical muse, Cam Cooke, were down from their bohemia of Dangar Island, and had drummer Mark Spence in tow from Port Macquarie.

The crew had hired a beautiful mansion in Annandale with view across the city, and next to an allegedly haunted church. The sessions mainly took place at Musicfeeds aka Megaphon Studios with DI’d guitar and bass, whilst the focus was on great drum takes from Mark. By night a bit of extra tracking was also conducted at the mansion.

With all the inevitable large swirling psychedelic guitars and synths to come, we decided on a tight, smaller room drum sound, with a couple well placed room mics that allow us to expand the drums into a more splashy big room sound.

Notable elements in this session were;

The kick sound. We created a tunnel to avoid spill into the kick mics, and used the legendary D12 on the inside, plus a TLM107 on the outside. The TLM107, just keeps surprising. It seems a workhorse for a widest possible range of applications; vocals to kick drum mic ing.

The snare also sounded gorgeous, and for this session we taped both a AKG451 and a SM57 together for a bit of tonal flexibility in the mix.

Lastly of note, was the the movement between Pro Tools in the studio, and cloud-based multi-track recorder Soundtrap for the late night mansion sessions. Further, the acoustics of the large mansion were also of note and I look forward to hearing the takes back from those overdubs.

Non-Urban Decay VR collaboration

July 2, 2018/in academic, art, sounds/by chnetwork

Recently I had the pleasure to collaborate on a VR installation entitled, Non-Urban Decay, for the New Tricks group exhibition at Tortuga Studios, St Peters.

Grace Kingston, used photogrammetry techniques to create assets in Agisoft Photoscan and created, with assistance from Games Academic (SAE) Geoff Hill, a VR environment in Unity. The environment was then sonically realised by myself, giving a range of audio assets to Unity wizard Geoff Hill, to express the progression from natural environment into a decaying digital environment.

Below are a few images from the exhibition.

360 Project for Masters

May 7, 2018/in academic, art, recording mixing mastering, Uncategorized/by chnetwork

As part of my masters, in particular a module entitled, AUD456 – Immersive Audio, I have been studying the world of 360 content, with a focus on spatialising audio within a 360 field. Please wear headphones when viewing the above to experience the 360 Audio.

For the major work, a group of musicians and non-musicians alike were invited into SAE Studios for an Sunday afternoon improvisation. The work is titled, Men’s Circle, and features a group of men in a circular format, playing a range of provided instruments.

The instruments included; an acoustic guitar, various bells, a singing bowl, a bamboo flute, a melodic wood box, a pre-prepared Push control surface populated with field recordings, vinyl crackle and percussive one-shots, amplified via a small guitar amp, a contact microphone connected to a mini Orange amp, den-den daiko drums, and a rain stick. The participants were encouraged to choose an instrument that they felt comfortable with and change after each improvisation to another instrument.

The improvisation was captured via an InstaPro 360 Camera. Both visuals and audio were captured on the device, however, the Ambisonics microphone had some issues and glitches were present in the file. Fortunately, coupled with the in-camera Ambisonics microphone, was 4 small diaphragm condensers, Sennheiser 8040 x 2, Rodes NT55 x 2, plus 3 dynamic microphones that were used to capture a vocal performance (Shure SM58) and close mic the two amplifiers (SM57).

These microphone inputs were phase balanced and recorded to Pro Tools. The mono signals from the close micing were then spatialised using the free FB360 Workstation plugins with the DAW Reaper.

As the sounds were close mic’d, Ambi Verb HD from Noise Makers was also used to emulate a sense of the space and at points to embellish instruments such as the flute and voice with a large reverb.

To embellish the work and in order to see how Reaper and the FB 360 workstation handled Ambisonic files, some 2^nd Order Ambisonic files were created using Sound Particles. The files are of an ambient nature and are only very subtly mixed in toward the end of the improvisation. The agenda was to not detract from the improvisation.

Hoped that you enjoy the improvisation and it’s presentation in both 360 Audio and Vision.

TEChSLo included in Deep Moments Vol. 2

May 2, 2018/in art, recording mixing mastering, sounds, Uncategorized/by chnetwork

An original track from my Dub Techno alias TEChSLO, plus a couple of my tracks being remixed were recently included on GOS Music Studios release, DEEP MOMENTS Vol. 2.

Noni Hazlehurst – Customs House VIVID Sydney 2018

April 30, 2018/in recording mixing mastering, sounds/by chnetwork

L-R – Adam Lowe (Event Director Vivid Sydney), Lucy Keeler (Artistic Director Ample Projects), Noni Hazlehurst, Ignatius Jones (Creative Director Vivid Sydney)

Once again I’m helping Ample Projects with voice over recording for their Vivid 2018 content. This year Customs House will be receiving a more narrative treatment than in previous years.

I therefore had the pleasure of recording Noni Hazlehurst reading May Gibbs’ Snugglepot & Cuddlepie. Many of us grew up listening to Noni on Play School. Beyond having a familiar comforting tone, she also nails a script; what a vocal talent.

Not only did we have Noni and the infatiguable Lucy Keeler (Artistic Directore Ample Projects) in the studio that day, we also had Vivid royalty, Ignatius Jones (Creative Director Vivid Sydney) and Adam Lowe (Event Director Vivid Sydney).

Tag Archive for: Chris Hancock