Tag Archive for: mixing

Dharawal composition commission

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I love composing to picture, and in Sept 2022 I was asked to create the sound track for a short promotional documentary on Dharawal country. The job was commissioned by Wollongong Council and produced by Mane Collective.

 

The budget was such that it afforded being able to record local indigenous performer Dale Wright on Yidaki and boomerang clap sticks. Yidaki, or as it is commonly know, Didgeridoo, is not actual an instrument the people of Dharawal country played, but rather originates from the north eastern Arnhem land. Nevertheless, Dale has been bless by the north eastern mob to carry the sounds of Yidaki south, and rightly or wrongly, it is a sound that evokes a sense of the indigenous people and history of Australia at large.

In talking to Dale, I was excited to come to a better understanding of the musical history of Dharawal country, and was told that the men usually played boomerang clap sticks and the women drums made from possum skin.

In trying to be aware and sensitive to all parties viewing and using the documentary, the sound palette that was chosen included:

  • a bed of skin drums, clap sticks, yidaki and field recordings taken from the area. Such sounds were used to place the view on country
  • a range or transitional synth sweeps and synthesizer effects that capture the movement of the weather patterns over the escarpment
  • a chord progression or two that used traditional folk and pop stylings to create a light uplifting emotion
  • and lastly a few modern electronic or dance music influenced drum patterns and techniques to give the product a contemporary flavour.

The direction that the composition and overall sonic arch of the documentary was informed by Jamie LePre, Mane Collective Director. His sense of country and understanding of the task on hand made his direction specific, inspired and a pleasure to work with. I think both Jamie and I enjoyed the back and forth of compositional ideas as the pictures rolled in, and I hope we get to work together on more projects soon.

Below is a few pictures from the recording session with Dale Wright at Stranded Recordings in Bellambi.

 

 

Mixing SääD’s Never Come Back

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Earlier in 2022 I mixed a new collaborative EP by neo-folk artist SääD and jazz musician Johnathan Holowell.

The beautiful first single, Never Come Back is out now

This is the second EP I have mixed for SääD, and was not without some interesting production challenges worthy of discussion in this production blog.

Firstly, the collaborative nature of this record, involved a lot of lo fi, iPhone recordings of Johnathan on keys or double bass. Whilst, full of atmosphere and vibe, the recordings were at times very resonant, by this I mean a lot of concentrated frequency content, often in the mids, such resonances causing distortion problems for smaller speakers at the start of the mixing process.

For example, the main piano / keys featured in this single were recorded via an iPhone at a distance from Jonathan’s keyboard / keyboard speaker. Due to the frequency response of the iPhone’s inbuilt microphone, and due to the proximity effect, the keys have a majority of frequency content concentrated between 500Hz and 2kH.

To solve such issues of resonance, my production tools relied heavily on multi-band compression, and frequency specific compression, such as Fab Filter Pro-Q3’s dynamic EQ, and Oaksound’s Soothe 2. This somewhat modern ability to compress certain frequencies enabled me to control certain frequencies that were causing distortion in smaller speaker types. See the images of such plugins below.

Further, to address the lack of frequencies in other areas of the spectrum, due to some of the lo fi recording techniques, saturation, was used to stimulate and inflate both the bass and high frequency content. Currently, my tools of choice in these areas of saturation are Waves’ Vitamin, for multi-band saturation, and Slate Digital’s Fresh Air for more high frequency simulation.

I’ve also made a quicktime screen grab of a technique that I often use to create space in a mix for a vocal. Check that video out below

It’s always a pleasure to work for the artist SääD, and I hope this short article inspires other producers out there.

 

Open Spaces – The Wandering Mind EP

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One of my ambient music aliases, Open Spaces, has released a new EP of works titled The Wandering Mind. The EP is released by the Australian imprint, lo fi spiritual, and can be found on all digital platforms.

This alias focuses on creating ambient spaces and moods that engage the listener in a two way relationship rather than the usual one way consumption of pop music. This ambient release aims to have an ambiguous edge to the music, in other words to create a sonic environment where the listener is unsure of what is part of the music and what is sounds from the outside environment. A metaphor if you will, for the wandering mind, that is shaped and influenced by both the internal and external environment.

The moods of this record therefore rely on a combination of field recordings, synthesis and 360 mixing to create immersive sonic environments.

For those interested in such concepts of ambient music, here’s a great introductory video of one of the ambient music forefathers, Brian Eno, talking about such concepts.

 

Sound West – Immersive Sound conference presentation

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In August I was invited to speak on Immersive Sound at the Sound West conference at the CommBank Stadium at Parramatta.

Chaired by Radovan Klusacek (SAE Sydney Campus Manager) and joined by Stewart Gedes (301 Studios), we covered many aspects of the emerging field of 360 audio.

The session gave a history of immersive 360 audio, from university based researched through to the easily available plugins and DAW enabled 360 tools available to the modern producer.

The Q&A at the end of the panel was interesting in that it definitely appear that we had engaged some of the young producers in the room to experiment with some of these new production tools and capabilities.

If you are a producer and are interested in the creating 360 music and audio, here are a few links to get you started.

Ableton Live user try the open source freeware – Envelop For Live

All DAW users try the free dearVR micro plugin

ProTools users try the FB360 suite

Logic Users – enjoy the fact that as of Logic Pro 10.7 (2021) dolby atmos spatial mixing is now native to Logic. Here’s a quick youtube tutorial to get you started.

 

Electric Korma recording session

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On the 14th of July I had the pleasure of tracking a rather curious band by the title of Electric Korma at Stranded Recording Studios.

Effectively they are a red hot trio that do abstracted, rocked-out Hindi Hits / Bollywood covers. A bizarre niche, as admittedly by the front man George, but profitable, and popular amongst the affluent Australian Indian community.

The emphasis of the session was to get great drum takes, and possibly some keeper bass takes and guitar takes. But band leader George and Bass player Joey, stated at the onset that they might do overdubs after the fact at their home studios. The Input list below confirms such, the emphasis being on the drums with minimal mic’ing of other elements.

ELECTRIC KORMA – 14/7/22 INPUT LIST

  1. Kick In – AKG D112
  2. Kick Out – AKG D25
  3. Snare up – Shure SM57
  4. Snare Down – Shure SM57
  5. Hat – Rode TF5
  6. Rack –
  7. Floor – Sennheiser MD – 421
  8. OH L – Coles 4038
  9. OH R – Coles 4038
  10. Room – Gefel – Um-70
  11. Bass DI
  12. Bass Amp – M88
  13. GTR Amp – Shure SM57 – LP 3
  14. Scratch Vox 1 – Shure SM58 – LP 4
  15. Scratch Vox 2 – Shure SM58 – LP 5
  16. Scratch Vox 3 – Shure SM58 – LP 6

The band wanted to play live, and this has informed and directed the mic choice to focus on dynamic and ribbon microphones to minimise bleed between instruments.

The mic choices are fairly standard, but a few things excelled or impressed me during the session.

Firstly, I’m loving the Beyerdynamic M160 double ribbon mic on toms. They have that ribbon warmth and have great rejection past 110 degrees (according to the manufacturers) which keeps down too much cymbals or other drums getting into the mic.

Secondly, The Coles 4038 ribbon mics are such a warm lovely choice for rock drum overheads, and in this particular application, really minimise bleed from bass and guitar amps compared to condenser mic options. They also respond so nicely to a bit of a high shelf lifting those higher frequencies that aren’t so pronounced in ribbons generally.

Lastly, a bit of an AKG overkill, but the D112 and D25 made for a solid, warm thumping kick drum sound.

Below are a few pics from the session.

 

Solfeggio Sculpture in 360 audio

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During 2021 I wound back most of my freelance work in order to finish my masters. For my final masters project I focused on creative research into the emerging technology of 360 audio spatialisation. In particular 360 spatialisation that can be encoded to binaural format for headphone listening.

I reviewed the literature on human spatial perception and looked at what is and isn’t possible within the 360 compositional space.  

This creative experimentation within the 360 space explored concepts brought forward from the literature review, and resulted in 4 EPs of spatialise compositions for headphone listening. Some of the compositions have become quite minimal in order to leave space for perception of the 360 space, in particular 360 parameters such as azimuth, elevation and radius. Further, the academic atmosphere of the research has put me in the mood to return to my on going interest in the esoteric side of audio, ie binaural beats, solfeggio frequencies and the like.

The first of these works has recently been released through lo fi spiritual and can be heard below. The title of this first release is Solfeggio Sculptures and is released under my own name rather than any of my previous aliases.

Mixing Scott Ferrier EP

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Earlier this year I was sent a bunch of Pro Tools sessions to mix for the singer songwriter called Scott Ferrier. The sessions as per usual were a bit of a brain dump of a whole bunch of ideas, but buried within all the tracks was a beautiful heartfelt simplicity and vocal tone that was honest and charming.

The record was a good learning curve as to the benefits of the mix engineer, myself in this case, taking on a more produce type role. The tracks were bubbling with possibility, but often the verse and chorus were hidden within the session and the tracks and instrumentation weren’t fully formed to compliment the verse chorus structure.

I’m thankful for the confidence that both Scott and recording engineer Joel King put in myself, allowing me to strip back the recordings and structure them to best compliment the timeless verse chorus format.

Scott’s release Garageband is not out at Spotify and beyond, and the title track also has had a video clip made for it as well. Check it all out below.

Enjoy!

In The Making Podcast by Make Shift

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Recently I’ve been doing the audio post production on a new podcast by Make Shift called In The Making.

I’m really enjoying the content; it’s all about the arts and the use of creative practices for best mental health. Within each episode, the host, Jennifer Macey interviews artist from various disciplines about their creative practice and the role of creativity in their mental health.

The first two episodes are currently available from all the usual outlets and feature the fabulous Australia creators, Kirli Saunders and Drew Fairley. Click on the images below to access the podcasts from Spotify. Alternatively here’s Make Shift‘s page on Spotify.

       

From an audio production perspective, it has been enjoyable to ponder best practice for podcasts, and as a result below is a reflection on my current signal chain.

For the main interviewee and interviewer audio, the processing and order of processing that has been working thus far is:

1. UAD SSL G Bus Compressor with a quick attack time and a gentle ratio to control the dynamics

2. Waves DeEsser to tame any sibilance

3. Fab Filter Pro-Q3 to add some warm in the low mids, some articulation in the mids and some further control of the sibilance/ high frequencies around 8-10kHz via dynamic EQ, see the EQ curve pictured above.

4. Waves Vocal Rider to level the differences in levels through the recording

Beyond that chain of plugins, a further bit of volume automation has helped control perceived levels that the AI of Vocal Rider hasn’t addressed. Secondly, some Izotope RX 7 De-Clip has also been used to remove any clipping that occurred mid interview.

All the vocal content/ channels have then been bused to a Vox Bus channel where a touch more compression and EQ has been applied to polish the sound.

Beyond vocal content, the podcasts have all made use of some atmospheric sounds and music. These channels of content have been routed to a Music Bus where some side-chain compression has been applied so that the Vocal Bus will compress or duck the musical content to ensure that the vocals are always the focus or dominant sound.

Both the Vox Bus and the Music Bus then route to the master bus. The processing on this final bus is pictured below.

The master bus chain is currently:

  1. UAD Studer 800 – applying some gentle harmonic warmth and some dynamic and upper frequency gentle moulding
  2. Oeksound Soothe 2 – a dynamic EQ, for lack of a better description, that looks for resonances. In this case Soothe 2 has been used to reduce resonances that plague the type of playback devices that podcast listeners will typically use, ie laptop speakers and earbuds.
  3. Slate Digital VBC FG-Grey – this compressor is one of my favourite mix bus compressors and in this case has then been used to glue the whole mix. The setting used are a slow attack and quick release with a gentle ratio for minimal gain reduction.
  4. Fab Filter Pro-L has finally been used to bring the level up to the desired professionally competitive level. Generally it is held that podcasts only require an RMS of between -16 to -12dB. So this was the level aimed for.

I hope you enjoy the In The Making series, I know I’m enjoying the content as I polish it.

For more tips on podcast production, there is a good introductory article by Izotope that I would recommend reading entitled 10 tips for a great sounding podcast.

Nainiouman – Dominion

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Early this year I mixed the track Dominion for the Central Coast artist Nainiouman.

It was released earlier this year with quite a graphic film clip on the label Pink Side of Purple. The subject matter was based on the 2020 Australian fires and the management or mismanagement of the our environment.

Due to the subject matter it created quite a bit of heated debate. The film clip is below.

Saad album finished + glowing Amnplify review

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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.”