E.P Mastering: Notes

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I needed to get a feel for her EP so what I decided to do was listen to the EP and then wrote down the problems on a piece of paper and what the singer was asking for. I realised a big problem that I had was that the singer sounded muffled, the bass did not sound like it was a bass. One of the pianos was way too loud and was over powering everything. The reason why I thought the vocals sounded muffled was because she might of recorded the microphone facing the wrong way. The reason why the bass sounded weak was because she used the guitar as the bass. The guitar does not produce enough warmth on the low end to produce a good sound. The piano should never be that loud, it is very damaging and it pierces through the ear because the frequency is too high for the loudness. So my task was to find where the piano was, which was about 10k - 20k. I removed 12dB from it and that was the only thing I could do to reduce the sound of the piano. I tried to boost the bass by 2dB and because I thought that she recorded the guitar instead of the bass, I found where the body of the guitar was and then I boosted 30 - 200Hz also by 2dB. Once I done that I found where the vocal is I boosted 200 Hz to 500 Hz up by 5dB which made her more hearable. I the had to increase the gain by compressing it and I did this by keeping 5.0ms of the Attack and then the release at 34.0ms, which are my default option, I changed the ratio to 20.0:1 which really makes the threshold work. I chose to have a hard knee by keeping it on 0.7. The threshold I increased to -19.5dB to compress the piano more then anything else, I then increased the gain a tiny amount.

I have never used the multipressor before but because it was taught to me and my class mates recently it was fresh on my mind, so I tried to use It by keeping everything flat except channels 3 and 4, the reason for this is that I wanted to compress out the piano even more so I took about 15dB from 500Hz to 5k then I decreased 8dB from 5k to 20k to compress only the high frequency.

Roaming

Roaming was only a guitar, I felt that I did not have too much to do except to match the first track. Mixing wise it was very interesting musically and I didn't want to take anything away from the song, so what I did was to bring the amplitude of the track up and then I Equalised it to increase what we needed to hear more like a melody line that she sometimes played. I also increased what I didn't need to hear, I took out some of the high and the really low parts.

 Smokey Blue 

This song is the type of song that you need the power from the kick and the warmth of the bass. Because it is what makes the song work. So what I did was remove lots of the low end and then compress it. I removed the low end by taking off about 24dB off 20hz to 50Hz, I still felt like the low end of the bass was distorting and muffled, so I removed about 4dB from 20Hz to 200Hz. I then boosted up the body of the track by 2dB from 37.5Hz to 150Hz. This gave a body of the whole track more room in the song. I then wanted the highs to stand up a bit in the track so I increased it by 2.5dB from 2k to 5k, once that was ready I decided to add more air to the whole track, so I boosted up 4dB from 10k to 20k. Once the EQ was ready and set, I needed the track to match the other tracks and so I did this by lowering the gain and then compressing the track. The way I used the compressor was by increasing the attack by 6.5ms, I then increased the release by 77ms, once that was done I increased the ratio by 2.7:1 and then I increased the knee by 0.7. I turned the gain down to 2.5dB and then Increased the compressor threshold by -13.5dB which only compresses what is really loud on the song and nothing else. 

I then used the multipressor and I kept it at the default, so it was only compressing a tiny amount on the high end of the track. Once that was done I noticed a very harsh sound on a specific part of the low end, so I Equalised it by removing -16dB from 100Hz to 120Hz. 

EP Budget

Studio Time - I mainly used the studio to mix some of my EP tracks so in total I spent about 5 hours on each track I didn't have to pay because my college gives me free accesses to the studio and the equipment in the studio is up to a professional level. even though I didn’t pay for the studio I checked for quotes and prices for studios that I might used in the future.

Technician -  I worked on the mixing my self so I didn't really need a technician to help me though I have had help from our college's technician on a some things.

Session Players -  I wanted to work with session players but availability was an issue so I decided to work on the EP my self by playing guitar mixing and singing. 

Mastering - Mastering was done by a classmate but I'm still going to pay the price to get it mastered so I can get the quality thats industry standard. Bob a sound engineer that I met does it for good prices for mastering and I heard his work and it was also recommended to me  a someone who’s working in the music industry 

Graphic Design - I will pay about £30-40 to get graphic  Design to get a good enough image for the album this will help people to see me as an artist 
Sleeve Printing 

Cd Duplication -  I have decide that I will not need to have CDs because am going to release my ep online and depending on the amount of people that gives me feedback or enjoys what I make I might.

A2 Posters - I Only want a 2 due to the big sizes and I will have a web link on it so people can download my EP for free 

A3 Posters Distributor - Gene pool is a site that you can upload your EP for free On almost all sites official sites once the tracks mastered so I will be doing that for free.

Online promotion - I will not promote my EP play due to the luck of fan base

Social Media - I will send a link to all my friends so they can share the site I will also create a Facebook page to get my Ep shown.

E.P Evaluation

1. What is your EP called? - The One

2. What styles of music are on the EP? - Ambient Music.

3. What genre would you categorise the EP as?  It can be more than one. - Electro, Hip-Hop and R&B influenced.

4. In terms of the style/artistic content - are you happy with the EP? Tell me about the strengths and weaknesses of your music. - I am kind of happy with how some of the tracks turned out but not satisfied with the final product because I feel I could of worked a lot harder in some tracks to bring it up to life a bit more, I also feel that I should've used more instruments and singers. It was also an idea that came together instead of being planned for it to come together. The strength of the E.P itself is the atmosphere that the whole E.P brings and the emotion behind each track, It made me happy with that because it was exactly what I wanted the E.P to have. The weaknesses was probably the mixing, after hearing back the tracks I realised I should've mixed the tracks better, an example of that is 'Old Man', The main lead in that track is barely hearable because I kept the main lead quite. Another weakness in this E.P is the musicality, sometimes I felt like my tracks were too long to listen to due to the lack of solo's and musicality, due to my lack of music theory. 

5. Musically - How well does your EP fit into the genre you work in? Compare your work to your favourite artist - My E.P fits well with the genre of the artists I listen to, there is lots of similarities for example I used lots of dreamy pads, smooth lead sounds, sampled noises and hip-hop influenced drum beats which are aspects of 'Flying Lotus' and 'Catching Flies' have on their E.P and they are the people that inspired me to make a E.P with this kind of vibe. Old Man is a track that was very heavily influenced from 'Flying Lotus' due to the very heavy side chain compression attached to the kick triggering the pads making a bounce effect, which can be heard on his track called the 'The Kill' and another of his track called 'Tea Leaf Dancers'. Also the track which I made called 'Giving All To Up' is influenced by 'Catching Flies' Song which he remixed called 'Live Sized Ghost'. I have heard the original track and I really liked what catching flies done to change the feel of the track, so I done a song with the same type of mood that he brought on to his remix. 

6. In terms of technical standard (recording/mixdowns) - are you happy with the EP? Tell me about the strengths and weaknesses of your music. - For some songs I am very happy with how I mixed and the standard of the whole E.P is to a good level, what made me even more proud was that I didn't use expensive equipment to get the end result, but I used reasonable monitors to do my mix downs so the result was a good one. There was also a few songs that I over mixed meaning that I spend too much time on it, so I kind of lost sense of how the track should of sounded. On other tracks the mix down was done to quickly and after I re-played it I realised I should've spent more time on them. You can say that the strength of the E.P's technical standard is the space each instrument has for each track. The weaknesses is over using plug-ins like side chain compression due to the hard time you have mastering after. 

7. Technically - How well does your EP fit into the genre? Compare your work to your favourite artists - Technically my work does not meet the standard of the artist's I listen to because the amount of money that they spend more than I do, the years of experience that they have more than me, but I think that I am heading at the right direction to achieve the same result, if not a better result. 

8. Did you collaborate with other musicians/artists on your EP? - No because I wanted it to be a more instrumental E.P more than a normal track E.P, I felt that I could of lost a lot of the impact that the E.P has by choosing people to collaborate with me. I am not technically good enough to get people working with the same ideas at me. 

9. Who did you work with in the studio? What roles did they fill? How did this help you complete your EP? - To complete my E.P I mainly stayed at home and my task was to be a sound engineer/producer/artist for my own E.P. Those were the roles that I took in order to make the E.P, I feel that I have learnt a lot by filling these roles because it gave me more insight: A good example of this is when I listen to a track I listen to it musically, technically and lyrically and these are the ears you have to put on as a Producer/sound engineer and artist if you want to improve your mix and your track in general. 

10. What was the most important piece of equipment you used when making your EP? How did you use it? Why was this the most important? - My most important piece of equipment was my macbook pro and my bose headphones, these two different equipment were vital to me especially when I was travelling and I wanted to write an idea down, It was vital that I had these two pieces of equipment. Without my macbook pro I could not use logic pro (software), without my bose headphones I could not hear the quality that I needed to hear to improve my mixing. Even though bose headphones are not made for mixing I found out a very important aspect about mixing which is that it is not what equipment you have but how you teach your ears to listen, I can probably mix better on my bose headphones then a lot of monitors.

11. Give me an example of a studio session that went really well. What was good about the session? Why? - An example of a studio session that went really well was when me and elliot grabbed all the equipment that we needed, got ready in half an hour and we had at least 4 hours of recording with the singer. The reason why the session went well was that we used half an hour to allow the singer to warm her vocals up and we used that time to get all the equipment ready to record. When the singer came in to the session to record she was much more confident and the session became much more productive. I have learnt that the technique that was taught by our tutor phil is to make the singer comfortable by bringing the singer water, making the singers laugh and being friendly. 

12. What is your favourite track on your EP? Why is it your favourite? - My favourite track is giving all the up and the reason why This is my favourite track is because the track feels like a step up in progression from all the tracks I did before. It is also nicely mixed and I got a good response from people that heard it. 

13. What are you going to do with your completed EP? Send to labels? Post online for free? What are your plans for the future? - My plan is to get it well mastered by a sound engineer and then to release it online for free to see if I can increase my fan base or get people interested in working with me in the future. 

14. What is the most important thing you have learnt when creating your EP? - The most important thing I learnt is that you can learn a lot from your class mates and you can share skills to improve each others work. Team work was the most important thing I have learnt from making this E.P and also being inspired by every day things helps your creativity. 

15. What was your most recent music purchase? - My most recent purchase was latin music 

16. How much money do you spend on music every month? - £20

 

17. How much money do you spend going to gigs/clubs? - Not a lot 

18. How do you plan to make a career in the music industry? What are your future plans? - I am planning on making a recording studio in the near future and eventually owning my own label. 

 

Unit 11/24

EQ Event

Roles:

- Plan event by deciding who to perform: I had to speak with the tutors from level 3 music performance to see which performer would be available to perform for the EQ event. Once I found out I had to look for them round the building and I had to introduce myself and talk about the event and encourage them to take part. I also asked for their email so they could give us their equipment list and also to confirm if they were performing or not.
The day before the event was quite a stressful day due to the small amount of people performing and the large amount of people that did not reply. We had to take a different direction by inviting people that we knew would come to perform. But on the day quite a lot of the performers showed up to the sound check and the space which was given to us was filled perfectly.

- Help build stage: To help build the stage I had to bring the equipment down on a trolley with my team mates, we worked quite fast and quite efficiently. We decided the best way to place the stage and then we positioned a special made metal bars where we wanted the stage to be. Then we placed a wooden floor on top of the metal bars, after we done that we placed all the gears in the right place and the stage was set.

- Helped sound check: I helped with the sound check by making sure that the singers was not taking to long on the stage and that they had the right equipment, also if they needed help setting up the stands. My initial job was to help with the sound alongside elliot, but because of the awkward stage position and the amount of reverb in the hall I decided to use my sound engineering skills to hear from the audience and give feedback to the sound engineer.

- Helped with filming: Initially elliot had an idea to film the event and he had a camera so we decided to film the event. Sashanni placed the camera at a position where you could see everything but there was too much showing. So then I decided to take over by actually using skills I have learnt before: getting the right angles, filming everything that I wanted to film and not things that I didn't. Example someone talking in the background. I also followed the main singers so the audience would have more connection with the performers when they watch the video.

What Went Well?

I think one of the things that went well was that all of the performers that I wanted to perform performed and they performed really well. The team worked really well together, we did everything on time, we did not panic and we all contributed in helping the event be ready in time. We also have proof of how the event went because we filmed it and we helped with each others tasks. For example as well as helping out with the sound I helped sashanni with the filming and elliot helped me with the sound and lemar also helped elliot with the sound. The sound check was on point we had no complaints from the performers and the audience enjoyed themselves without becoming deaf, they could hear everything okay.

What Went Less Well?

What did not go so well was getting the singers to reply on time, it was left until last minuet and it caused us to panic a bit. The sound can always improve even though it was done to a high standard, if we had more cameras we could of given the editor of the video more to work with.

How Did The Actual Event Go? Positives and Negatives

The event itself went incredibly well we couldn't have hoped for a better event, everyone was busy helping each other out, the audience grew in numbers because they were interested. But one thing that did not go so well was getting the message across, for the audience it felt like a random open mic event instead of a planned event, so we could of made the event clearer and more understandable for the audience.

How You Would Improve The Planning In The Future?

One thing I would defiantly want to improve is how to contact the performers, I felt like we had to improvise a lot because the performers did not reply fast enough. So next time I would get their phone numbers to actually contact them so we do not have to wait for their reply. This is because a lot of people don't check their emails often enough. I also would of stuck to one task to get more people involved.