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!

Stay tuned for part two… and what happened next.

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.

DIY recording success?

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.

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:

ADR and Hell Pizza

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:

Recording software: Music industry and studios take note!

Isnt it funny when certain items, software, guitars, shoes, clothes, anything really become what is known as ‘the industry standard’. I find this term and phenomenon totally bi-polar, it’s either perfectly warranted and the item is by far and away the leader of the pack, OR it’s almost completely bamboozling, where it almost seems as though the only reason it occupies the top spot is due to critical mass… and mass attracts mass, right? So, in saying this… Pro Tools. What is up with digidesign? I mean, can anyone tell me why the industry standard in software and hardware continue to use cheap components, design and manufacture in their products? Why is it that the software is limited in it’s uses compared to some others? Why? Why? Don’t get me wrong, we use it at the sitting room, we have it but the more and more I use it the more I think that the only reason it is here is because joe public always asks ‘do you have Protools?’. Within the last 3 years I have almost done a full 180 regarding ‘the tools’ (I would say I am at 175 right now). I used to be the biggest poster boy for protools, always the first to dismiss anyone’s  claims that there was something else out there that was better, or faster, or cheaper, or more stable…until….Until I was introduced to Reaper.

Reaper has been on the scene for about 4 or 5 years now and is the brain child of Justin Frankel (the guy who made winamp and then sold it). He was sick of the same limiting things I was about ‘other’ multi track audio editing software on the market. So he made one himself. A fraction of the footprint size of protools, the reaper installer file is tiny and can be run off a USB drive. It’s simple, it’s fast, it’s stable, it’s unlimited, it’s customisable, it’s cheap… like REALLY cheap, it allows you to use ANY hardware with it, but best of all the developers are DAILY refining it, asking users for ideas and feedback, implementing changes and you know what? All of these updates… for ever… and ever… are FREE.
Dare I say it, but I think protools (digidesign) better keep a close eye on the underdog here before it sneaks up and gives them a very large, long overdue bite on the bum.

Snapshot of REAPER in action

Proudly and lovingly brought to you by Tim Chesney and Ben Edwards of The Sitting Room Recording Studios Christchurch, New Zealand. The south island home of audio production, sound design, mixing and location sound recording.

Home-Brew ethics and philosophies:

Ok, so this may seem  a little out of the blue… a recording studio and audio production house writing about ‘Home Brew’ beer, the process, and the philosophy….but to be honest The Sitting Room is about creation, it is about vibe, it’s about appreciating quality, it is about having fun… and nothing fits in better to this philosophy than that of brewing your own boutique beers.

It’s no secret that I love beer, not just any beer, but nice beer. Beer that is tasty, beer that lingers, beer that makes me feel good, beer that makes me laugh. It is no secret that musicians and artists usually also love a nice beer… and so as of September 2008 I decided to invest some time, money, sweat and tears into what is possibly my 2nd or 3rd favourite thing in the world.

After purchasing 2 home brew barrels/kits 2nd hand off trade me (and subsequently finding a 3rd at the dump) I got started. We are now into our 15th brew and so far there hasn’t been a single one anyone has refused to drink, in fact I would go so far to say that 90% of the brew’s so far have received an official ‘WOW’ or ‘Two thumbs up’ rating from whomever wraps their sweet lips around that glass bottle.

I think it says a lot about a person or in this case a recording studio. People that spend the amount of effort and time involved to make a single brew, the dedication, the time, the forethought, the enjoyment… it translates to their approach to life, to work, to love. I think you can tell a lot from the type of beer a person drinks, and even more about how they go about aquiring it and how they drink/share it. I haven’t done my research but I would go so far to say that The Sitting Room recording studios here in little old Christchurch New Zealand is one of a small handful (a midget’s handful even) of studios around the world that brew their own beer for their bands and clients to enjoy.

There was even talk (and it’s not official yet as we could easily get taken advantage of) but talk of offering FREE Unlimited beer, as much as you can drink if you come to record and mix an album with us.

Sitting Room/C4 Coffee Stout
Low frequency late hopped Lager
Phased Indian Pale Ale
YUM YUM LOL Wheat beer
This and That Triple Malt Dark  ale
Benny Boy’s Bock

I even went SO geeky to make up a couple of beer labels… yes I know.

Sitting Room Studios - Double Dutch Ale

Sitting Room Studios - Indian Pale Ale

Proudly and lovingly brought to you by Tim Chesney and Ben Edwards of The Sitting Room Recording Studio, Christchurch, New Zealand. Home of audio production, sound design, mixing and location sound recording.

Day 8: The Burning Sensations, Green like Go + an Acoustic Duo.

The last and final day for me was a Sunday afternoon show outside in the Uni Ampitheatre outside the Foundry bar.
It was on a much smaller stage and the system was tiny in comparison to the last few nights (just dual 15’s and horn each side)… however was actually ample for 2 out of 3 of the acts.

The first up was ‘the Burning sensations’ which basically is the live band project of Ed Muzik. A 3 piece electro/punk/pop act with tongue very firmly in cheek. Featuring songs like ‘The Roast Song’ and ‘Your mumma likes Drum n Bass’ this was right up my alley. They played well and sounded pretty good out the front considering the system was pretty small for a loud band with a full drumkit. I noticed the wind pick up towards the end of their set and this is a regular and obvious probem with outdoor gigs. When an outdoor stage is fully open and there is no shelter the mics and their diaphragms are susceptible to wind and the very annoying noise it makes as it passes through the mics. I instantly did the first thing you should do and roll off any low end on the vocal mics and it cleaned up it up a lot.

The second act was an acoustic duo, by now it was the middle of the day, the sun was out and the wind had died down.  They were great and the PA was a perfect size for these guys.. they sounded great and it went down a treat for the few people that were there drinking beer in the sun.

Last and by no means least were Green like Go, a 5 piece American influenced pop rock outfit that reminded me of old ‘Killers’. Straight away it was evident that these guys were going to be too much for this small system, especially with no dynamic control, what made it worse was the sun was now gone and there was a strong south west wind picking up. Not only was it blowing through the mics on stage but it was carrying the sound from the PA speakers and sending it swirling around the ampitheatre at random. It took me half of the bands set to get the mix even to a point where I was mildly happy and from then on in battled the wind and the underpowered system. There are times as an engineer when things are simply and sadly beyond your control…. This was one of those times. The band played really well but sadly sounded like arse….. not very often will you see or hear of an engineer writing about how bad thing sounded when they mixed.. but I guess I call a spade a spade and a shit mix a shit mix. I can honestly say though that I did my best.. and my best was not good enough.

In a way it was a real sad end to what was an awesome week, the last band on the last day ended up being a nightmare of a time (and NOTHING to do with the band). To be fair I think I like the bad gigs as much as I like the great ones, it puts me back in my place, it forces me to think about what happened, whether I could’ve done things differently, what I have taken away from the experience. Own and operating one of the South Islands best recording studios I believe strongly that everything you do must be a learning experience. The minute you think you have it all ‘sorted’ and you know everything is the minute you are dead to the industry and may as well give up. There’s nowhere to move or grow if you believe that. Something to think about… next time you show up to a recording studio to record an album or a song, or turn up somewhere for some audio post production or mixing….. ask the engineer what his most recent CRAP job has been. Ask to hear it, ask why he thinks its bad and what he has learnt from it all. If they don’t give you a believable answer of tell you that everything they do is awesome.. .. then I believe they are simply full of it.

Proudly and lovingly brought to you by Tim Chesney and Ben Edwards of The Sitting Room Recording Studio, Christchurch, New Zealand. Home of audio production, sound design, mixing and location sound recording.

Just read a very informative article from the great guys are Home Tracked offering some excellent but really simple tricks and tips to improve your home recordings. You can read the full article here: Improve Your Recordings and Mixes, on the Cheap.

I just want to mention a couple of the tips that really do work (we use them every day) here at The Sitting Room. Whether we’re recording or mixing bands, finalising post-production audio for film or TV, or producing a radio ad, these tricks really do make a huge difference!

One great point is to listen to your mixes on multiple systems. In the recording studio we have two main sets of monitors that we use on every mix. Both sets of monitors (set of KRK V6s and a set of Tannoys) have quite different frequency responses and so make a great combination for judging a mix. If the mix sounds great on both then I know I’m really getting somewhere. Even with this great monitoring set up I still always take mixes away to listen in the car and at home and I often tell bands to do the same. It really gives you an insite in to different aspects of the mix that work or need attention.

Another point that is absolutely true is to be ruthless with your mix. The temptation is alwasy to keep EVERYTHING that you recorded in the mix. Why? Because it’s there and you put time into recording it! But, most of the best mixes I listen to only have a few ideas or motifs occuring simultaneously. Once you go beyond a few elements the mix begins to sound crowded and messy and becomes a total dog to mix! So be ruthless – decide what is important at any given time and give it room breath and be heard. Cut out the chaff!

Last point. Mix when you’re not mixing. In other words, listen to songs you hear on the radio, on your iPod, in friends cars, or in supermarkets and evaluate them for what is good, what works and what sucks. You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn simply by listening to your favourite (and least favourite) mixes. Ask yourself, what makes this mix tick, what are the critical elements, relative volumes etc etc. Then take what you learn back to your mixes.

The article has a bunch of great tips you should check out but thats what really stood out to me. Main thing is, have fun, keep experimenting and keep learning!

Proudly and lovingly brought to you by Tim Chesney and Ben Edwards of The Sitting Room Recording Studio, Christchurch, New Zealand. Home of audio production, sound design, mixing and location sound recording.