Glossary

ADC

analog to digital converter works by converting a real life analog sound into a digital sound by converting the sound waves into binary code numbers. It does this by using  digital-to-analog converter however, since sound waves can only be picked up using the digits 0 and 1 which works as on and off switches. Here is a link to a video explaining this-

Alias frequency-

Binary

Because we as a people aren’t programmed to work thingsout in binary code, we work out things in something known as base 10. Forexample when we write something like the number 23,469- we’re doing this byusing the 10’s 100’s and thousands column. The only way that computers can understand something is by interpretingit into binary 2- which means that the only way a computer can understandsomething is using the digits 0 and 1. When using something like binary, the onlyy digits that can be used are: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64.  For example, making something like the number 30,we would have to use this If we were trying to get to the sum of 3.0. In binarythis would look like: 11110

Bit depth ‘Bites’- this is just information in the form of 0’sand 1’s, so that computers can understand them, which can then be recorded for eachsample. There are thing called ‘bit depth’ for example you could have say ‘4bits’ or ’16 bits’ of information but the largest of all is ‘24 bits’ (6x4Thelargest bit depth is 24 bits because we would not be able to pick up anythingmore than that, as we are human.

Clipping- The term ‘clipping’ is used when something isincredibly loud. Something like a amplifier has a limited range of volt output,if you try and stress it, then it will sound distorted, and there is only a certainlevel of voltage output.  Let’s say wehad a diagram explaining this. The highest frequency would be ’10 DB’, whichmeans that anything louder than this will make it sound ‘piece’ and distorted.

 DAC- A digital audio converter takes digital info andconverts into audio info. This, as a whole, works as an entire system.  For example, I can take something like acomputer or even an mp3, and in turn, it will take the digital information andchange it into audio information, and it does this by changing into 0’s and 1’s.You can then get something like a stereo or headphones and listen to theplayback.

 DBFS- We use ‘Decibels’ to estimate something known as ‘soundpressure’. Whenever a decibel reaches its peak we call that ‘full scale’.Although it’s unexpected, 0 is the highest level of decibel- (full scale) butwhen turned down, it goes down into a minus value (-1,-2,-3). 6dBFS is the maxlevel below minus that a dB can hit (-6db).

Dither- Dither is an incredibly faint, and very low-It givesoff more of a white noise effect. For example when changing something that’s 24bits, and you’d like to change it to 8 bits, so that the data can fit ontosomething like an mp3 or a Cd then you can fit in the dither effect so that youdigital signals can run without distortion. There is no way for us topick up ‘dither’ in our ears. All dither does when used, is allow the tracksusing dither to run clearer and cleaner- making it sound normal/natural.

Digital audio interface- digital interface is what makes the connection between the 

 Digital effectsprocessor-

Digital mixing console-

Sample rate- sample rate is the amount of analog data record in 

Roles and Contracts

ROLES AND CONTRACTS

Live performance:

Live performance is one of the main attributes with in the music industry its where the artist gets to show what he/she has to offer. its where lots of important jobs come in to place and it also involves a lot of contracts that could make or break a career in this blog. I will be talking about a few of my plans for now and the future and I will also be talking about what is a good contract and what contract could leave you broke if not thought about properly. The three areas that I’m going to be talking about are Artist, Tour manager and stage manager.

Artist: an artist is a key role for live performance and it would be impossible to have the music industry without an artist. Live performance as we know has lots of jobs and there is non-more important than being an artist.
Salary/hours/working environment – An upcoming artist should work 24/7 it’s a job that involves a lot of training to become good at. The type of environment the artist will be working at is not really specific but different. In most causes the artist will be at a recording studio or touring on different stages up and down the country.
Duties – The duty of an artist is simple, rehearse the songs they have and perform it live to hundreds or maybe even thousands of fans. When they rehearse they have to be precise. It has to be timed and they cannot fail, how hard they work will determine how far they’ll get in the industry and it could also make them more active towards performing more events. Things they could do to make sure they are ready to reach that level is to be healthy by exercising and eating healthy and making sure they get regular check-ups from local doctors.
Skills/Education needed – skill is a must for performers and what musicians do to master these goals is practice, they often have private lesson to master their skills. Musicians like to be good at what they do and most musicians in our days need to learn theory. Learning theory is a great way to understand the basics and to have a great knowledge and understanding of what music is, joining courses that teaches the artist how to perform is a great way to boost confidence and also doing other part-time jobs to understand different industries and business. It is also important for an artist to be social and interact with fans to widen their fan base. I’m planning to work in the industry myself both in the studio and in the performance side. What I’m doing now to help me succeed is a level 3 course that teaches me different areas of the industry that is producing sound engineering, djing and theory. What I do on my spare time to help me with the performance is practice at least 2 hours a day and book as many gigs as I can to get my confidence up in performing.
Job satisfaction - it’s a great job to have when everything is well and your touring all over Europe but it can cause anxiety if it’s not going well but overall it’s great.
Type of contract –
360 deal: the 360 deal is where an artist gets an advance that has to cover all of the costs for the production of their album and the costs for tours and events, also recording time. To sign a 360 deal an artist has to often be recognised by an agent or someone that has connections with a major label. The contract has rules and conditions to follow and for some artist it might be too hard to follow or unreasonable so signing a 360 deal might not be recommended for anyone, because with a 360 deal the money gets shared between everyone that works and helps the artist. So the artist can do a lot of work with the performing and producing music but for the artist to get major in the music business people like the manager, publishers, recording studios etc has to do a lot of work to get the artist recognised so the money goes to all these people so that leaves the artist left with only a little bit of money so %5 or %10 of the money with the 360 deal.
Management Contract: A manager is often needed by an artist once the artist has a bit more work. Usually the artist likes to focus on the creative side of music so often they leave all the business to the manager. The manager has lots of different tasks and that means they cannot get a specific budget so often a manager gets 10 – 20 percent of the total income of the artist.With this contract the manager is in control of the artist once the artist signs the certain contract, with the income money the manager in some cases will get more of the money then the artist.
Risks associated with employment/contract type:
360 deal: not having enough control, not getting a specific amount of money, depth is a few of the risks that you take signing a 360 deal. 360 deal can be very attractive at first that’s why its really important to have a lawyer looking for any unexpected deals or hidden charges.Tour manager:A tour manager controls the whole group he is responsible for everything. For example making sure the group is safe and happy, he needs to make sure that everything is up to date. He also needs to make sure he knows the dates for tours. Once the artist is in a different country they are responsible for getting the crew to the country, they are responsible for food accommodations, travel, also extra commands that the crew needs, first aid kit for any injuries and emergencies.

Tour Manager:


Salary/hours/working environment - they work throughout the year without a permanent contract, they work as a freelancer witch means they only get payed for the hours that they work instead of a stable budget. The hours that a tour manager works usually is as long as the tour lasts witch is 24/7. Their working environment can be quite stressful and you would not often see the tour manager hanging around and relaxing because the tour manager has to run around from the hotel to the venue to the car to wherever the artist wants to go in the place of the tour, venues for interviews, photo shoots and video shoots etc, basically every specific place in the tour so the tour manager can do his job and keep an eye on the artist and the crew to make sure things are going to plan.
Duties: the duties for a tour manager is: booking flights, booking events of the tour, booking travel such as buses,planes etc, booking a hotel or somewhere to stay for the whole crew, making sure everything is on time, making sure the crew and the artist is up to date with interviews and shows and shoots. Taking care of everyone and if someone is injured or there is an emergency the tour manager takes care of it. Overall the tour manager is like the father of the artist/band and team, so its absolutely vital to have a tour manager thats friendly and easy to get along with.
Skills/education needed: usually a tour manager has to be all rounded, meaning having a good education in english,maths, and also having an understanding in depth about the music industry or just knowing how the industry works. having good organisation, social skills and responsibility could be enough to get him working in the music industry.
Job Satisfaction: the good thing about being a tour manager is being able to to travel around, learning new skills within the industry, meeting new people, working with different artist's. But Overall its nots a very satisfying job to have because its not creative, it involves long hours, it is a very stressful job with never ending tasks, you often would only choose to work as a tour manager if the money is good. Also its a competitive job because it is not a permanent job there are loads of tour managers out there so you might not be hired for a while and be left with no work throughout the year and not having enough experience could prevent you from getting enough jobs as a tour manager.
Type of contract - short term contract, a short term contract is a job that lasts for a short period of time. With tour managers their job could last for a few days, a week, a month, or in most cases tour managers are found working throughout the summer season. Tour managers work with freelance because they don't work full time and they get hired for short period of times. So because tour managers work for short period of times they usually can only sign the short-term contract. But whats important about working freelance is that they work for themselves so any contracts would only be for a short period of times.
Risk associated with employment: stress is a common aspect in this job due to the long hours and short amount of sleeping and some extreme cases, distress might even turn into depression depending how extreme the hours are and the tasks are.

Understanding Technology

Question 1: What is equalisation, and how has it changed the working process since the early days 

of studio recording and mixing?

Answer: EQ (equalisation) is something that every sound has. to understand EQ you have to know what Hz is, Hz is usually measured by how much the sound vibrates per second. The way EQ works is controlling what amount of Hz works and i am going to give a quick example.

having the EQ at 2000Hz and then changing the dB to +5 dB effect or increase the high frequency of the EQ, we often use EQ to control the sound of things like snare drums, kick drums, bass, guitars, vocals etc. 

the reason why it is so vital to have a microphone that picks up good equalisation meaning low and high frequency is because it gives you a clear sound. 

But having a microphone that picks up too much can sometimes not be helpful because sometimes we want to clear some extra noise like: extra breathing on the vocals, or moving about noises that you get during recording. Before people like 'Frank Sinatra' had to use U47 Valve Capacitor microphone which only picked up a certain amount of EQ which could not be changed and if they wanted the EQ to change they had to look for different microphones that had the amount of EQ that they wanted.

Once EQ started being used as a mixer people did not have to change microphones as much because the pioneer's made channels. Channels works like this: you have the dB which controls the gain on the channel and then you have a separate panel that controls the high frequency, mid high frequency, mid frequency, mid low frequency and low frequency, the way this works whilst recording a band is that if you used a microphone on a snare you would maybe eliminate all the low and mid low frequency and  increase a bit of the mid high frequency to get that high pitched sound to the drums but also have a bit of that mid range sound that you need on the snare. 

Question 2: What is the polar pattern called that the U47 used for recording vocals? What is the polar 

pattern of the other microphone that was used previously? Why do you think the 

directional ability of the U47 helped in the recording process in this particular case? 

Answer:

Part A: the polar pattern for the U47 is cardioid and figure of eight it has an extra polar pattern more then the ribbon microphone which makes it more reliable for more different parts of recording then the ribbon microphone.

Part B: the polar pattern for the ribbon microphone which was the microphone that they used before the U47 is the figure of eight polar pattern.

Part C:The ribbon microphone has a figure of eight polar pattern which the U47 microphone  has, but the U47 has an extra cardioid polar pattern which is amazing for recording vocals, the reason for this is because it stops the sound from the opposite direction affecting the sound that were trying to make with the vocals, it also has a more focus range which is great for avoiding feedback from the speakers during live recording.

Question 3: What is meant by the term 24/48? Why do you think, in this case, using 96k was not suitable? 

Answer: 24/48 is a sampling rate that picks up on the cd 24000 or 48000 Hz, explaining in more detail the sampling rate is how much data recorded on to the CD, having a 96k sampling rate is great for modern recording because it is most used for DVD'S and current high definition recording, but when using 96k on a older recording it picks up a lot of unnecessary data which could end up having a major effect on the final recording. 

Question 4: What is the job of the ‘converters’? How important are these in a modern studio?

Answer: the job of a converter is to convert real sound (analog sound) into digital sound. The reason why this is so important in a modern studio is because we use a lot of digital but we use the same amount of analog and being able to convert analog to digital helps us have a wide range of real life recordings, also having analog recording converted to digital helps you have more control of the analog recording once it has been converted to digital as in you can add more treble, decrease the bass, compress the sound and all sorts of effects etc. 

Question 5: What other benefits do using DI boxes give an engineer in the studio?

Answer: what a DI box is also useful for is home studios, in a lot of home studios space can be a real problem because of the amount of gear you need. So having a DI box means that you do not necessarily need microphones meaning you have a lot of room for other things and you do not need to waste room on microphone stands. It is also useful to get a different sound from a microphone recording so if you record an instrument through a DI box and a microphone at the same time, you might get a more realistic recording with real reverb recorded from the microphone. 

Question 6: What would you suggest?

Answer: my advise is to have microphones for all the vocals, guitar and bass running through the PA system but not for the drums because the drums is naturally loud, but if you want to record a stereo mix onto reaper i would suggest to record the drums first separately, but my guess is that you want a good sound recorded but live, so i suggest instead of plugging everything to the PA and playing it out loud, get headphones for everyone that is playing and plug it in to the Alesis MultiMix 8 so each person can hear themselves and not get feedback.  Another thing i would suggest is to use the mixer to record the vocals, bass, guitar and have one microphone recording the drums from overhead which wont give you a lot of control on the sound of the drums but it will get you to record everything without feedback. 

Business Plan

Building A Small Home Studio:

The first thing i noticed while searching for equipment is that the prices varie, My first step was to plan.
Price searching is the hardest thing before actually getting into action because having a good plan leads to targets being met, so for my studio plan i planned everything from prices to locations and to rights.

Prices:

i intend to build myself a small home studio specifically for doing mix down and producing beats, the following list is the equipment i already have for the studio.

Equipment Already Owned:

*BOSE headphones - £159 - the reason i need these headphones i because past 22:00pm it is illegal to play music out loud, so these bose headphones are very comfortable for long hour use, the sound is very clear and useful for mix downs and creating beats because the quality comes out clearly on bose headphones.

*Macbook Pro - £999 - Macbook pro is a specific computer for a specific software that i use, the reason why this computer is useful for music making is because it has a lot of power to support the work load of the software that i use.

*RAM (specifically for the mac) - £108 - my macbook pro first came with a 4GB hardrive, so i updated my ram to 16GB to support the amount of music that i make and not make my computer slow.

*Software For The Mac:
 Logic Pro - £155 - Logic pro is the software that i learned to use, it is very useful because it is very simple and it is very to pick up, the useful thing about logic pro is a lot of big companies like native instruments makes plugins for the software so there are unlimited things that you can do to make your sound unique.

 Massive Plug-in (within Logic pro) - €400 - massive plugin is a plugin that has loads of different instruments within in making my options less limited then having the normal logic instruments samples

*Acoustic Guitar - £120 - the acoustic guitar is useful to record a real acoustic guitar sound.

*Electric Guitar - £70 - the electric guitar is useful to create melodies and solos. 

Equipment That I Need:

*Scarlett Studio Interface - £120 - the scarlett studio interface is needed for me to connect the mac to the studio monitors.

*KRK Studio Monitors - £259 - the krk's are specific type of studio monitors that i will be using to make my beat more clean, the sound is clean and detailed because of the quality for the monitors.

*AKG C414 B-XLS Condensor Microphone - £660 - having a good microphone is useful to have a good recording which makes it easy to mix down, so i chose to buy the c414 condensor microphone.

*Microphone Stand - £20 (for 2 mic stands) - the microphone stand is to hold the microphone to record the vocals. 

*Midi Keyboard - £79 - the midi keyboard lets you play the midi data samples within logic.

*Jack Lead - £2.70 (x3) = £8.10 - jack lead is to connect the guitars to the amp or the interface.

*Samson SAPS01 Studio Quality Pop Filter - £13.19 - the pop filter plosives from having an effect on the recording.

*XLR Cable - £5 (x2 = £10) - the xlr connects the microphone to the interface.

*Midi Cable - £3 - the midi cable connects the midi keyboard to the computer.

*ACOUSTIC FOAM TREATMENT SOUND PROOFING 24 TILES - £31.19 - it stops natrual reverb from effecting the recording.

*Guitar Stand - £10 (x2 - £20) - the guitar stand holds the guitar safely instead of just laying the guitar on the floor.

Booking A Studio:

Because i want my home studio only for mix downs and producing, due to the amount of noise you can make whilst recording, the location that my studio is being set up is not appropriate so i am going to record instruments in a proper studio. (This will only happen when Vocals and guitars etc needs to be recorded together).

The Price: 

Because i am under 25 if i pay £15 for my membership i get to use the Roundhouse studios for £1 an hour. 

The Main Purpose:

The main purpose for me creating my own studio is mainly for mix downs, the space that i have within my house is good enough for me to use for mix downs, mastering and creating beats, so at first i would charge £20 for mix downs, £20 for mastering for people who know my work and for my mates.
The beats that i make will be mainly for me to advertise my work via Social networks, Soundcloud, band camp, Itunes and friends. 

Band recording

Setting up studio-

The first thing i did to set up the studio was to create a list of equipment that i needed. The equipment were:
4 mic stands
5 microphones
- C414 Condenser mic 
- Titian condenser mic 
- sure SM57
-  Rode NT5(x2)
Drum kit
Drum sticks
Acoustic guitar
Electric guitar
Guitar amp
Bass guitar
Bass amp
Pop shield
Xlr cable (x5)
Jack lead (x2)
Jack into xlr female lead (x3)
Female and male xlr port 
Interface
Mixer
Mac (logic)

First step: setting up the mic was the first thing I did was to grab the mic stand with the pop shield on then I left it by a place were we record vocals because there were noise cancelling walls that stops the sound from bouncing and creating reverb because the sound gets absorbed by the fabric on the wall. After that I plugged in the C414 Mic using I XLR cable to connect the male part of the socket into the female part on the XLR port. The XLR port is plugged in straight into the main mixer, so whatever we plug in it gets connected to the main mixer. 
Whilst i was doing that shashanni plugged in the other mic for the guitar and elliot plugged in all the mics for the drums .

Second step:
In the studio we had to make sure that before anything was turned on the main gain panel was turned down.
once we checked that we checked the list to see which mic needed phantom power. The microphones that needed  phantom power was TITAN, the C414 and the NT5 so we used the C414 on channel 1 for the vocals, the titan on channel 2 for the acoustic guitar and the NT5 for channel 3 and 4 for the symbols on the drums and sure SM57 for the kick drums on channel 5. On Channel 6 and 7 we used the metronome.

Third step:
Next step we had to take was turning the main gain on (which was the big red panel),after we had to turn the blue panel which is the sound that goes from the computer to the headphones, then we started out choosing how much gain we wanted for each channel, then we made sure that the right buttons was pressed for example daw button had to be pressed down to for the mixer to send the sound coming in to it to logic, we had to push the phantom power on to get power for the mics i needed to press A to send the cue send to the head phones.
Recording: when everything was set up we had to make sure that everyone was in place to record and we left someone in there to get help us record at the right time we communicated we him by speaking to the mic and he spoke to us by pressing  cue on the mixer. Once we recorded we used the usb stick to