Thanks for checking out our journal. This is where we post thoughts, articles, news, updates, interesting tidbits and anything else we can think of. Hopefully you will find something that tickles your fancy. xo xo
After arriving in Melbourne for another challenging mobile recording we set up and worked with what we had been given. For more info on the issues and limitations that we had to work with check this out.
The tracking days and nights went well, and after finding some curtains and carpet to throw around the large open room to help reign in some of the long reverb we were underway. Sadly a lot of the vocals were attempted to be sung live in one take as planned, however there was just too many things for Ash to think about and therefore a separate vocal recording session was booked for after this initial week.
What I loved about this mission was that with the right people, the right attitude and a few beers you can accomplish anything. I’ve learnt an absolute tonne about recording in this way and it only solidifies my thoughts that I would like to do more mobile recording and location recording projects coming up. The reality is that I just can’t afford a perfect acoustically controlled studio, I can ‘try’ and make something but to get it perfect costs hundreds or thousands of dollars and I just don’t have that money lying around (geee really?).
I think the vibe, the song, the people and working with what you’ve got are the most important things with any recording project whether it’s in the worlds best studio or done from your bedroom. I cant wait until the CD’s come back from mastering and they’re in the hands of all the people involved.
I would like to thanks everyone that helped out to make it happen: Ash, Em, Greg, Tony, Marg, Cal, Paul Rigby, the string and horn section, the choir, the dance school, the old orange volv… everyone.
In the meantime, here’s some pics of the process. Enjoy. I did.
Mobile, location audio or live recording whether it be for a band, a tv show or a film is always very interesting and often quite challenging. This particular mobile audio production project was no different and I loved it! Ashleigh Southam writes fantastically eclectic soundtrack style musical compositions that would equally be at home as a film soundtrack as they would snuggle into your ipod playlists. This concept album session come DIY music recording not only took me away from the recording studio in Christchurch but to a whole new country, Australia. Ash lives and works in Melbourne and really wanted to record his sophomore album there this year and approached me earlier in 2010 to plan out the sessions.
The concept behind this recording was that Ash wanted to track and record as much live as possible, where possible. Do it ‘old school’ Motown styles: One big room, all live, one take. Drums, bass, guitar, keys, vocals, horn section, string section.. the works… all live.. all one take. I was intrigued by this and thought the challenge of getting out of the recording studio and into a massive room to work like this would be good for me, I mean you don’t grow and learn unless you put yourself into odd situations right?
I arrived in Melbourne in late September which was welcome relief following the large 7.1 earthquake in Christchurch earlier that month which had destroyed the old Sitting Room studios building and had caused a large deal of stress in the local music and recording industry. I caught up with Ash and we talked through the plan of attack and went to go and check out the space which he’d managed to secure for the project. Straight away a few issues became evident.
The Issues:
The time frame:
Due to me having to cancel work in the recording studio in Christchurch I was on a tight time frame and the musicians and location we’d chosen we were limited to a week for the entire album. The location / The room:
Ash works part time at a dance school and because it was school holidays we were able to get access to their largest studio for the week. 450 sqm, 7meter high ceilings, hard surfaces and no acoustic treatment. Simply, it was a monster of a room. The songs / The players:
Ash doesn’t normally have a ‘band’. Most of the players playing on this album were mates or ring ins that hadn’t spent much time learning or rehearsing the songs. To top this off, not all the players had been confirmed nor had the final string or horn section parts even up until a few hours before the first day of recording. The Gear:
A lot of the gear I’d planned on bringing had either been damaged by the earthquake or I didn’t have access to bring. I’d arrived with a handful of mics and that was about it, we had to beg borrow and steal the rest and only ended up with a stock digi 002 (rather than my Black Lion audio modded 002r that I love and swear by), a behringer ada8000, some more mics, some cables and stands and the ability to only track 12 tracks at once MAX… WAY less than I am used to!
by thesittingroom on October 15, 2010 · 0 comments
Audio post production for tv and film is something that the sitting room recording studios has been doing more of in the last 2 years and I must say that I bloody love it! We were lucky enough to score the audio post production job for Push Play this year. It was heaps of fun and combined Voice Over ADR recording, Sound Design for the title sequence and Graphics, music selection, a mix and master and supply for broadcast. Push Play is the brainchild of Tony Palmer (ex What Now and NZ TV guru) and is a weekly magazine style sports show for children aged 7-17, and being aimed at a young audience was quite FX heavy in some of its sequences… tonnes of fun laying all of those Sound FX.
It screened every Sat morning on TV3 and then repeated numerous times throughout the week on the Sky Sport channels and as far as I am concerned is one of the best value for money children’s production around. I tip my hat to Tony and the Quick tv crew for their ability to pull this off every week with the resources available… and here’s hoping there’s more to come.
by thesittingroom on October 15, 2010 · 0 comments
Earthquakes don’t like country music, who knew?
The Unfaithful Ways were so close to finishing the recording and mixing of their debut album up at The Sitting Room recording studios just as the dreaded quake struck Christchurch and temporarily dampened proceedings. Four weeks on however and it appears that nothing will hold back it’s release, which is surely just around the corner.
This particular band is comprised of some of the best song-writers in the New Zealand music and audio production industry as far as I am concerned and have a lot of potential to make their mark both here and overseas if they can keep refining their skills and most importantly – stick together.
The concept, process and reason for recording an album varies a lot between artists but I like to try and make sure that no matter who it is or their reasons for recording and releasing an album that the actual ‘process’ of the album recording is as enjoyable and memorable as possible. Most bands are lucky to record 1 or 2 albums in their lifetime as a band and when you think about it that way it’s a rare and beautiful thing that should be enjoyed and cherished so that was firmly at the back of my mind during this process…and I have to say this album is sounding pretty bloody good because of it.
To top off the end of the recording process the band were selected to be the main support for the US band ‘Band of Horses’ recent trip to NZ. We all flew up to Auckland to play to a sold out ‘Powerstation’ and The Unfaithful boys totally creamed it.
Anyway, be sure to keep your eyes out for this album as it’s full of poetic lyrics, timeless songs and some clever little gems. I am proud to have been involved with this and have had this be the last recorded album at The Sitting Room studios old location.
Pine have been one of Christchurch and New Zealand’s leaders in the indie pop revolution and a few months ago we finished up the recording and mixing of their latest album ‘Books and Magazines’.
This particular recording project was not only one of the last albums to come out of the studio (pre earthquake) but also one of the more interesting and interactive that The Sitting Room studios has been involved in. Aaron (guitar) had taken some time to record a good chunk of the album themselves in a Hall at the University of Canterbury over a summer. I’m a huge fan of DIY recording, the vibe it can create and experience and lessons that can be learnt as a band that records their own music. Aaron and the band then brought these recordings to the sitting room and we ‘tweaked’, fixed, mixed, re recorded and re formed what is now the final album.
I thoroughly enjoyed working with the initial material that had come from the band’s initial recording session and would like to encourage other bands to think about doing the same some time.
Congratulations to Aaron, Steve and Hannah on this album and I hope the album release shows are a smashing success and you receive more glowing reviews like this one.
by thesittingroom on October 15, 2010 · 0 comments
Well done little lady
A while ago (2009) Julia Deans came to The Sitting Room recording studios to record a bunch of songs for her Debut Album – ‘Modern Fables’. This is just a very short post to say well done Julia, Dave all the musicians that played on it. The album has been released for about a month now and has been receiving fantastic reviews both here and in Australia.
It was a pleasure to work with you and be involved with the recording of such a wonderful piece of music.
We got word yesterday that our building is officially unsafe after Saturday’s earthquake. It’s been a bit of a weird ride as soon after the quake an engineer thought the building was mostly fine. We even started cleaning up.
Yesterday though we learned that the building has some pretty serious structural damage. Pretty soon after the CCC gave the building ‘restricted access’ status which means we can go in and get our stuff but we can’t work or be there long term.
So it really is an end of an era for us. We’ve been in the current premises for nearly 5 years and spent a huge amount of time, money and energy making it into a great place to be and record. We’ve had a lot of really great bands and friends help us along the way and support us so it seem like a good time to say thanks!
But we’re certainly not beat! We have set up a temporary mixing and audio post space at Ben’s house and we’ll be actively looking for a new space as of next week. We’re not sure where or what that will look like (or what we can really afford… eek) but The Sitting Room will be back at some point.
Our thoughts go out to all those who are far worse off than we are – people with wrecked homes, businesses with no insurance or in big financial trouble and those who are still anxious and frightened about what the future holds.
Today begins the huge task of dismantling everything in the studio and packing it up to be stored. Interesting times ahead!
Audio Post Production for TV and Film.. Who cares?
When you think about it as a % your movie or tv watching experience surely depends on the sound about 50% as the visuals also about 50%, right? . The finer details could be argued that either is slightly more important at given times or depending on the style of entertainment you’re watching, however the % is probably sitting close to half most of the time.
Given that, the audio recording, soundtrack or music, sound FX, foley fx recording, ADR and audio post mix is quite simply bloody important and more often than not, very time consuming.
The Sitting Room is doing more and more audio post production these days, everything from tv shows, advertisements, documentaries and film and I love it. It’s quite a different challenge to recording and mixing music and can is extremely rewarding when you see (hear) the finished product.
The Hell Pizza interactive adventure was no exception, we had a totally blast with the SFX recording (zombies, blood, bites) and the great vibe of the project.
Here’s hoping there’s more exciting Hell Pizza adventures to come!
And for anyone interested in a little laugh this stuff happens all the time in the Audio Post or Location audio recording circles:
Audio post production, Sound fx, the soundtrack and audio post mixing for film and TV is often under estimated and overlooked by the general public in the finished product. Often if the music and audio post production mix is done REALLY well it’s designed to not be noticed, in fact it’s usually only noticed when it’s done badly. There’s a real art and skill to piecing together a dynamic and emotive sound mix for film or tv and one very important part of that is the dialogue recording. Whether it’s an action, a horror, a rom com or even a doco the dialogue is very important, the watcher must be able to easily hear what is being said, and this can be extremely tricky if you’ve decided to record your audio on location and there’s the lighting guy’s generator cranking, or planes flying overhead, it’s near impossible to get a good clean take of every line. So the process of ADR was invented and implemented.
ADR or Automatic dialogue replacement is essentially the process of ‘over dubbing’ good clean audio takes of the dialogue. It’s most usually a case of getting the actors back after the shoot, have them come into an audio recording studio (like the sitting room) and re recording each of their lines, mimicking exactly how they delivered the lines during the actual shoot. Now, clearly this is a very time consuming process and there’s a lot of factors here that can make or break a good ADR session. Consider such things as:
Microphone placement or distance to the speaker vs how far away they are on screen
Emotion and being able to exactly replicate ‘how’ something was said
Movement, if lines were being delivered whilst running or eating, they sound very different to just standing still in front of a microphone
And phrasing, I can say the same thing in different ways 100’s of times without even consciously trying to do so.
Given all this, the role and job of being able to record and/or re deliver your dialogue lines is tricky even at the best of times. Once again, if the ADR recording and editing is done well then it’s hardly noticabe even to a trained eye/ear… done badly and things can be out of sync or just sound wrong. The Sitting Room recorded and edited the and fingers crossed there’s not too many points where it’s too noticeable !
Check out this great video about all the issues sound production and audio post teams face on big film shoots:
For those who haven’t been involved in film or audio post production for film, shooting, editing and mixing this amount of footage of this calibre is no easy feat. In fact it’s a time consuming and costly process, but once again Logan and Katie have managed to ace this and the proof is simply in the pudding.
Logan has been a big DSLR fan and in fact one of NZ’s DSLR poster boys. He’s been using and shooting HD video on DSLR’s longer than anyone else I know in the industry and as far as I’m concerned getting some of the best results in the country. All this does not come easy or cheap, he’s spent 100’s of hours using, shooting, researching and testing to make sure he get’s the best results.
The shoot for this campaign was spread over 5 shooting days and comprised of a 2 camera set up, a large crew and crap load of Hell Pizza for lunch.
Film shoot, location audio recording and zombies
Some of you will know that one of the major drawbacks to the DSLR shooting at the moment is the audio recording capabilities. Not that it has none, but that they’re limited and well, average to say the least. It was discussed at length before we started the shoot how we’d deal with this as usually I would be swinging a boom or making sure we’d be recording location sound as best we could, however being an actor and also the tight shooting schedule meant that we opted for a shoot with little or no location audio being recorded to be used in the audio post mix… scary? Yes.. a little dangerous… yes.. but did it work out.. yes, just. Essentially this meant full ADR recording for all the actors, massive foley sessions and FX laying and some very long and intensive audio post mix sessions..more to come on this in the next few posts.
