As the title suggests, evidence in the form of embedded audio from Soundcloud and YouTube will be posted here to be there to show that the skills claimed are not made up.
Recording, mixing and mastering skills:
This playlist includes all of the tracks from a recording session with The Hayriders. This was a duo recording with Shelley Peters, we both recorded and mixed the tracks.
The track "Rockin' In The Graveyard" here was part of the original recordings, but we taken to be mastered for the 300EPA mastering module. So effectively, this track should sound better than the others. It was included just for the sake of completion. This recording session was very interesting, due to it requiring recordings of instruments that have never personally been recorded before - an electric double bass. The band were fairly experienced in general and had recorded their own stuff before. Due to this, the double bassist had a DI box already, which he set up by himself. He also advised that to get the 'click' sound of him slapping the double bass, to put a microphone on the strings. Even during mixing the band knew how their sound should be, helping with EQ settings on certain channels.
Here are another two recordings completed for university modules. The band here, Centauri, are a metal band that were also quite experienced. They knew their recording style well which meant that the recordings were done very quickly, leaving a lot of time with the band for them to give their opinions on the initial mixes. This band also knew their preferred EQ and compression setting, which although as student recording engineers was easy enough, it helped to get a feel as to how the band wanted the tracks to sound. Either way, the experience was invaluable.
The first recording module of university spurred these recordings. The band, Decades, are a 4-piece Birmingham-based band. They, again, already had a lot of studio recording experience, which made the process very simple. 'Séance' went on to be mastered, which can be found below, it was included here for reference.
Here are the mastered tracks mentioned frequently before. For 300EPA, the mastering techniques module, we were required to master three tracks to hand in - either past coursework, self-motivated projects or by getting unmastered tracks from the internet.
The tracks above include a past piece of coursework, as well as two projects undertaken independently. These three tracks were chosen personally to be some of the best finished mixes completed so far, although this has its good and bad points. Ultimately, the better the final mixes, the better potential they have to be good masters. However as a mastering engineer, there could be occurrences where a mix is 'perfect' and doesn't need any mastering applied. However as a student, it is unlikely that a mix will be perfect, which is why these tracks were still suitable for this mastering project.
The track 'Quick Escape' is by a guitarist/vocalist called Faye Clements. Although Faye had no experience in a studio before, making the many microphones used slightly daunting, the recording process was very smooth. She was easily adaptable to different recording techniques and played her track with ease. As a very talented musician, the guitar and vocal tracks turned out extremely clear and didn't need much processing. There were some definite areas in the mix that needed ironing out in mastering though, which made it a perfect candidate.
Compositional skills:
These tracks highlight all of the compositions done in the past, from very initial compositions made from experimenting in Logic, to some more professional sounding works created after more experience has been gained. The best display of compositions are first in the list. During A-level Media Studies, a fellow student came up to me asking, as I studied music technology, if I could compose a soundtrack to her 'Saw'-style horror movie trailer. I played around with some orchestral instruments to begin with, hence the quick change of pace between different melodies. This student eventually changed her mind and created a different genre of film trailer, hence this track can't be linked to a video. I then decided to experiment with a drum beat and some low frequency bass lines, which turned into this track.
Secondly is a display of a more gaming-orientated composition. Taking the sound track from the game "Luigi's Mansion" and recreating it using orchestral instruments and VST synthesisers. This is, in my opinion, a pretty professional sounding composition, and one of the best examples of using video games as music creativity that I've done.
The third track in the playlist is an interesting one. YouTube is a popular site to watch gameplay videos, called a 'lets play', by some famous 'YouTubers'. One channel, called the Yogscast, do a lot of gameplay videos of a game called Minecraft, which has recently become a very big game, almost groundbreaking within PC gaming, despite its simplistic 'sandbox' style. As a fan of the YouTube channel, using a simple video to MP3 converter, downloading over 20 of the channels videos into an audio format and cutting them up, making short vocal clips of the Yogscast duo, and putting them into Logic. Adding melodies and a drum beat to these found its way to be this song. Using the power of social media, and sharing the song with the Yogscast themselves, caused them to 'like' the song on YouTube. Although the song didn't get a huge amount of hits, it did blow up to get just under 37,000 views. The video with these hits on can be found by clicking here.
The next song is an original composition. It didn't take too long to finish but is another fairly professional sounding track.
Some more gaming music follows this. Taking the soundtracks of the popular games 'Super Mario' and 'The Legend of Zelda' and turning them into orchestral versions was a very fun thing to do. The skills these songs show include being able to pick out the high, middle and low frequency melody lines in the song and being able to build them into a composition. Using processing in Logic, they were made to sound similar to a real orchestra playing the tracks.
The songs that follow these are some very early compositions that could do with a lot of improvement, in hindsight. However with the knowledge gained since that time, they could be made considerably better.
The last three tracks are all examples of coursework based composition. The first was for a task to build original sounds using synthesis techniques - building sounds from a simple waveform (sine wave) into a composition. Secondly, a track with some meaning to it. Using speeches and debates from the likes of John F Kennedy. Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, all about poverty, spurred the creativity here. Lastly, a task to record sounds and layer them together to create a composition in the French 'Musique Concrete' style. A Marantz recorder was used to obtain every sound heard in this piece, though many of them have been edited using Fast Fourier Transforms, as well as general editing techniques.
Sequencing skills:
Only a few attempts at sequencing have been made, during A-level music technology coursework.
Sequencing is used mainly for karaoke tracks, or for recreating songs. That was the aim of these two tracks. They were both done during A-level coursework, but are of high standard and show that these skills are available. The first track only needed an instrument to mimic the vocal line, but the rest of the track needed to be recreated as accurately as possible.
The second track needed a full vocal recording in the style of Madonna, as well as another requirement of having at least one other acoustic instrument recording in it. There is an acoustic guitar rhythm part that's in the original song, and it was easier to simply record myself playing anyway, as opposed to recreating the sound in a DAW. 'A-B'-ing between the original Madonna track and this one shows just how similar the track is.
Film and Sound To Picture Skills:
This video is a teaser trailer that was required for A-level media studies. Although it doesn't show skills in music composition too much, interactive media such as video games, require this kind of film work - adding soundtracks to video and syncing certain cuts in the film. All sound here was recorded or added in during editing.
This was a piece of video work done in university and is of much higher standard. The clip was given to us and is from 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'. In groups we were required to recreate all sound, including dialogue, in the clip. A daunting task at first, but once the dialogue was recorded using Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) and the piano track layered on top, the most part was done. Following this, adding reverb to the dialogue, general sound effects throughout the clip and a fitting track for the end meant that the task had come to an end. This is the kind of work that would be done when working with film or TV as a sound designer.
MaxMSP skills:
MaxMSP is a programme in which synthesisers can be made. A lot of live performance, electronic artists use this programme along with Ableton Live, to be able to freely manipulate their sounds. Below are three pictures, the first two being the 'insides' of the final product, a synth called 'ValveForce' created for a university project.
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It looks very complicated - which it is! It was built up entirely from scratch, using waveform generators, along with lots of buttons and switches linked together. Although it is a digital sound, the title 'ValveForce' indicates that it should be analogue. To counteract this, adding a very low amplitude white noise to the overall signal adds that warmth. This synthesiser, although very time consuming frustrating at times, was very fun to make and had a great outcome.
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