The area is unusually circular in design (in a good way) which gives the spaces a sense of fluidity, and the school’s equipment list which fills the spaces is impressive, (big shiny desks and gear everywhere). It was even better seeing students working in very small groups on musical projects, I even saw one studio with a 2 inch 24 track multi-track recorder doing the business, awesome, that old skool tape sound still alive!

Along with the tour Udo gave good conversation about what they get up to in the vibrant city of New York which I found really interesting to hear, it must be a rush to study in an area with such a buzz around you, both inside and outside.

New York (NYC) is a seriously vibrant place and the phrase “the city never sleeps” is without a doubt true, which I’ve experienced before.

Whilst I’m on the subject of NYC, I’d love to hear what you’ve found in town, including bands, clubs, venues etc, what have you seen?

The album was a complete departure (production wise) from anything Metallica had done previously, more than likely as a result of teaming up with the talents of Bob Rock.

The reason I am telling you about this delight is that the album is a fine example of Kick Drum EQ. Sure it is an acquired taste and you’d never catch a “jazzer” using such extreme processing as this, but nonetheless if you are seeking some influence for the baddest kick drum eq of all time(?), check it out.

In addition what would you add to the list of bad ass kick drum eq?

Foto Credit: Metallica Tattoo

An interesting piece of kit that has been featured on a variety of records over time such as the Beach Boys Good Vibrations, among many others.

However, we’ve never seen a cat playing one, until now, takes all sorts!

Last years event was a great success and attracted a variety of bloggers, marketing types, vloggers, PR people, musicians and studio engineers into a melting pot of an unconference.

Unconference?

Yes, the “un” in unconference means that you can expect everything that a conference isn’t. So nobody will be standing talking to you for an hour, you won’t have to sit there becoming bored with the content, you are actively encouraged to get up and walk to another “session” if you find it boring or non-relevant.

Unconferences are powerful and interactive, people travel from afar, book into hotels and make a weekend of it. It’s all about participation and sharing good practice, and as you can imagine slots perfectly into the style of learning we are so proud of on AC here, “open” and immersive.

So pop along to MediaCampBucks and register to attend, it’s completely free!

It’s not so much a complete mix but 5 stems to “make it easier” as the websites states, of course being an AC user you’d probably rather have all single tracks to mix, but hey I guess 5 stems is better than none, right?

The site states: “To make remixing easy, the separate ’stems’* from the song are available to purchase from iTunes. The ’stems’ available are bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums. You can mix them in any way you like, either by adding your own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts.”

Once you’ve uploaded your mix you’ll find that we all as users will vote on our preferred version, there is a top 10 list on the main page.

Pretty cool user generated idea this right? Or not, what’s your view on it?

This is really amazing cutting-edge technology for the audio world, the possibilities are endless, how far we’ve come since tape recorders!

Seems like a good idea to have wee page over there as we can let our friends know when we have some updates.

Currently we are piping some of our rss feeds into the page, so you’ll see fresh content every day, every hour sometimes!

There is a wall and a place to upload some pictures and video too, personally, I would love to see your gear and workspace.

Drive on over and be an AC Fan.

Listening List

• Sergeant Peppers - The Beatles (1967)
• Discovery – Daft Punk (2000)
• London Calling - The Clash (1979)
• Band on the Run - Paul McCartney & Wings (1973)
• Bran Van 3000 (1997)
• The Black Album - Matallica (1991)
• Rumours - Fleetwood Mac (1977)
• Blood Sugar Sex Magik - Red Hot Chili Peppers (1991)
• Original Gold - The Beach Boys (1999)
• Wish You were Here - Pink Floyd (1975)
• 20 Greatest Hits - Aretha Franklin (1987)
• I Should Coco - Supergrass (1995)
• Divine Madness - Madness (1992)
• Live Evil - Black Sabbath
• Never Mind The Bollocks - The Sex Pistols (1977)
• Nimrod - Green Day
• Left of The Middle - Natalie Imbruglia (1998)
• Rubber Soul - The Beatles
• Under a Blood Red Sky - U2 (1983)

So what would you add to the list, and more importantly why would you add it? Thanks in advance.

The Panel includes some really interesting professionals, check it out.

The content is fairly varied and the panel do a good job at answering the audience.

Browsing around this morning we found some footage from NAMM 08 which features a cool performance showing off a vocal harmoniser box.

Don’t you just love technology?

Fact is that we are living smack bang in the middle of the loudness war, not that an end is in sight either. The loudness war is one that you do not have to enter, though if you are competing with commercial releases it is also something which is hard not to become a part of.

This video explains part of the problem rather well.

If you’ve ever tried to record drums with lots of microphones you will be aware that a “phase issue” typically rears its ugly head and can bring on some serious comb filtering, which to cut a long story short sounds nasty!

The RecorderMan Technique is one such method which is quick, easy and phase coherent, which usually always yields good results, watch the video and give it a try!

If you do try it, come back and tell us about it here.

100% pass rate?

Yes, sounds kind of odd I know, but it really is true. Since 2001 we have not had a single student entered for exams fail, and I have personally seen the same syllabus taught in regular institutions with nothing like a 100% pass rate.

So how do we maintain such success?

Without wanting to make this sound overly enthusing, I have to simply take my hat off to all the students that we have had the pleasure of getting to know. It is unquestionably the students of Audiocourses.com who have kept us at the top of our game. Time and time again I have seen serious motivation and commitment to complete studies from a very wide ranging background of students too.

Distance learning is not an easy platform at all, distance learning is in fact a real serious life commitment one has to make, you really have to want to study this subject with us, you really do need to be passionate and hungry for success Having said that, as a school, I pride myself on knowing that all of our Production Advisers help YOU in getting over the finishing line in a manner which yields life-long learning skills. I cherish the fact you learn how to learn with us.

2008 is going to be yet another milestone for Audiocourses.com with a huge new partnership currently forging and with more exciting new courses for the fall semester, which will eventually see full-blown degrees on offer.

So I wish you well, if you are thinking of enrolling for our Feb start semester, and if you have any questions that need answering do not hesitate to contact me personally.

Chris Hambly

Director

Naturally when making a decision to study invariably you’ll have to plan ahead considerably, and distance learning is no exception to the rule, in fact it is probably even more imperative you plan ahead.

As you can see we run the dual semester approach each of which lasting 15 weeks. Generally all courses (modules) last 15 weeks so after one semester there is some closure of study and the finalisation of grades. In the future we may well have longer 30 week modules, split over two semesters as we start rolling out more exciting courses, which we are certainly now planning and developing, watch this space!

As we start our yearly planning you’ll see more exciting items appearing on the Calendar which will be items of note, and of course if you are a student essential dates for your diary.

2008 Calendar

Chris

As well as this Nuno was caught running around with a video camera and he kindly put together a short summary vid to show off his talent. We hope you like the style and you are set to be seeing more of Nuno’s work on the site in the coming months in the way of tutorials.

The event is taking place at Bucks New Uni, and is in the format of an un-conference, and will be a great day of mind-share and networking potential.

Un-conference? 

Yup, that means it is everything a conference isn’t! You know those events you’ve been to where you sit and get spoken to for an hour while someone flips through a power-point presentation? – this is not going to happen, here, at MediaCampBucks07 you will interacting with everyone, the sessions are more like “brain-storms”, or discussion sessions around a particular topic, as a way forward for asking the question “what comes next”, “how can I use this myself”.

Grass Roots

OK, so I actually do not like this term, I find it a bit “wanky” and “tree-hugging”, but what I’m trying to imply is that the event is for people like you, people who might know me, or a friend of a friend, or in some other connected way. It’s also about reaching out to the local community and getting them engaged to learn something new about social media and how to “move mountains” with it.

We are not opting for some huge promotional campaign, we are starting small and then leveraging those involved to set the scene for each successive MediaCamp, which may well be in YOUR Town or City.

I’m hearing from a diverse set of career people interested in this, and most of those seem to be from people who are not currently using social media, those who have heard the rumbles and think they ought to find out about it all, this is perfect and so definitely the point. 

However, If you already “waist-deep” in social media we want YOU to come along and share your tricks, tell us how you use it for your business, how are you embracing any of this?

Well that’s it for now, but I do want to know what type of things you might want to learn about, what sessions would excite you, what do you want to learn, what do you “need” to learn? 

 Chris Hambly

As most of you readers are aware we publish pro-audio news almost on a daily basis, and in a fairly significant quantity at times. The press release information comes from many major pro-audio companies, and we are delighted to continually be of service to them.

The press releases are typically sorted into niche categories along with a specific topic home. This has obvious benefits for information organisation. Once published, typically with an image of the product, the latest releases appear on the main home page of the site, enabling our audience to immediately check out what is hot, as well as having a dedicated page on the AC site.

The press releases section also has its own unique rss feed which enables anyone to syndicate the news. The rss feed can be ported into any number of thousands and thousands of additional sites.

Being a company firmly wrapped-up in audio technologies it seems a very natural progression for us to offer our clients a specific podcasting service, where the product in question gets “air-time”, and provide a further medium for consumer engagement, something which is becoming more and more vital in the market place. We are currently offering three levels of service, all of which provide incredibly good value, as I’m sure you’ll agree.

The levels of service are:

Standard Podcast - $100

These podcasts are 4-5 minute interviews carried out over the telephone with our AC staff, and edited by our professional PodIdent team. We recommend scheduling the podcast interview to take place at least a day or two before the press releases release date. Once completed, the podcast will be found on your press release page and be able to be streamed on the site. The podcast will also be listed in the main AC Pro Audio News feed, adding a substantial audience. The podcast will also be distributed in iTunes and other podcast directories.

Extended Podcast - $200

This package takes the Podcast up a couple of levels - an extended telephone conversation of between 10-20 minutes for a more in-depth interview.

Full Service Audio Promo + Extended Podcast - $1000

This package gives you a 30 sec professional audio jingle/ident/promo royality-free to use on your extended podcast interview and anywhere else you would like. This package is amazing value as you get a professionally composed audio ident, constructed by our PodIdent team, included in the advertising package which is re-useable multiple times, anywhere you wish! Your ident will be played on the main AC Podcast along with your interview.

The completed file(s) are licensed under the Creative Commons License.

I’m personally really excited to see how this initiative works out, as I know some of our clients are.

For more information including purchasing options visit here:
Pro-Audio Podcasts

I’m moving towards a more “cleaner” style for the site, really enjoying the fresh white look, very minimal and sparse, which makes getting the information you want so much easier.

I’m also now looking for a slightly differing header and menu system, not entirely sure how we are going with that but we are looking at using the team involved with http://audana.com to come up with some good ideas, maybe you have some too? I would love to hear about them for sure.

I’m also working towards making the account profiles have some real value, besides just indicating contact info. I essentially want to have upload ability for the users and also “skin” ability, so users can customise their own profiles and get creative in showing off.

We have the basic back-end worked out to an extent, and now need to shift a couple of gears and make it a reality, so you can upload your songs, and have them very easily streamed so other members can comment and hook up with your work.

I’ll keep documenting the process here as we go.

Chris Hambly

This is a USA concern which is frankly where most of you asking for aid stem from.

Well just a short post to say wow, what a great weekend in SL at the AC HUB.  As i’m sure you’ve all heard it was the Spring Festival over this weekend, and in my books it turned out great. I enjoyed it anyway.

Friday was an educational day, with some fascinating talks from SL educators. I found the talk about the “InfoFez” system particularly interesting, as a way of getting large amounts of information across to sim visitors as efficiently as possibly using scripted hats. Lol, sounds funny when you say it.

Saturday was an awesome day, with the Central arena or ‘CoreAudio’ as i call it (thats a quip for you ProTools users out there ) playing host to many excellent live performances from SL musicians. Varying from DJ’s to improvised blues.

Now i have to admit im not a great person to comment on Sundays exhibition as i didnt get much time to have a look around properly, but what I did see was great. SecondLife is an excellent way for artists to display their work and an excellent place for non-artists to look at it for that matter.  There are still plenty of artworks up around the sim, so get on down to Audio and have a browse.

Gotta give the usual plug…Check out the ACF+ pages, lots of interesting posts especially if you are a Fruity Loops/FL Studio user.

Have a good week everyone
-Paul

This is a wiki which provides some excellent features for all the ACHUB group members to benefit from.

Along with the recent wiki building I am also organising a flickr.com account which will contain multiple set of pictures for the SecondLife performances.

See you “in-world”.

Chris

It does feel great to see how much Audiocourses.com has grown over the past few years. I remember way back in 2004 when I was still ‘fresh’ to the audio world and had googled for ‘free audio courses’, and then found my way to this interesting orange coloured (I did find the colour odd in the start!) website. My learning rocketed from then - from microphones (one of my first posts I think) to the Nyquist theory.

It’s great news to hear that AC is now a private limited company - congrats Chris and team, and of course, every single member of our growing forum.

It’s a great start for this new year. The forums now have a great vibe and a fresh lease of life - ACF+, the high octane audio forum (keep that cat wailing Paul)! The podcasts are wonderful, they are getting better with every episode (compare Ep.1 and Ep.41, you can hear the difference).

So it really is audio zenith if you ask me! True Globalization.

Keep it going all!

Cheers
varun.aka.conquistadore

2006 was a year which saw us consolidate, stock take, and generally see where we were positioned in the market, ask questions, and reflect on the years that flew past previously in building the ship of Audiocourses.com.

Personally I was investing a great deal of time in various educational projects, which though related, were not always directly transferred to Audiocourses.com

2007 however is a whole new ball game!

This is going to be a huge year for us, on Jan 8th Audiocourses.com became Audiocourses.com Ltd, a private limited company registered with Companies House London UK. This is truly a milestone for us in many ways not least because we have grown from a postgraduate research project into a fully fledged distance learning solution for students located globally!

This has not been an easy road mind you and we have had to helm this ship carefully through often un-chartered territory and have embraced the exploratory nature of that. Personally, I wish to thank all our members over the years who have and continue to contribute to a truly great company.

As I said, 2007 is a new ball game completely, now we have company status, and we will be rolling out heaps of initiatives to you all month after month and hope you are on for the ride, it’s going to be exciting and motivating and best of all will always be for you, our members and readers who engage with us, weather that be blog reading, forum posting, enrolled student, podcast listener, member of the press or an advertiser, and of course the rest of you too!

So best wishes and here is to 2007!

Chris Hambly
Director
Audiocourses.com Ltd

1. The blog feed, the original feed that is, has now become our podcast feed and can be subscribed to here:

AC Podcast Feed

2. The new blog feed, i.e. the one for the content you are reading now has a new rss feed which is:

AC Blog Feed

We hope this improves your selection and updating of our content and as always do let us know how we can improve in our services.

We have now installed a networked server in our SL complex, enabling easy distribution of objects through SecondLife.

That audio blog was April 2005! - we had intended to podcast and continue the blogging immediately, but sometimes things just take time.

However, I am delighted we are back on track… even though it took us over 12 months!

If you are into SecondLife you can now pop along and here the most recent podcast playing on the Audiocourses.com land!

I am sending this e-mail from Secondlife after editing a script within an object. This will allow me to blog from a chat window fairly easily “in-world”.

The latest items into the Audiocourses.com Second Life Complex include the Soundcraft GB8 24 channel mixer as seen below:

I might also mention to the right of my virtual me you can see some racked compressors and on the far wall we are screening a movie preview.

I’m very excited about the possibilities of Second Life as an educational platform, the potential is enormous, not least in the ability of hightening the scale of the audiocourses.com virtual community.

Come and join us.

The podcast technologies Ben is looking into is how to record the conversations that take place considering the geographically dispersed nature of those involved. Myself and Ben are located in UK currently, albeit in entirely different loocations, Mikey is in Texas, and Kris is over in Sweden but on a contract in Latvia currently. The simple solution is for us to use Skype, the VOIP tool to all hook up and have a voice conference. Skype is an excellent solution for the actual conference, though the area Ben is researching is how to in fact record this audio conference.

The podcast itself is an exciting move for us at Audiocourses.com and we hope to make it a very rich environment for all our users, both students and trade.

That’s all for now, if you check back after the weekend we may have our very first podcast beta test available for listening to.

Chris

The forums now sit sweetly in their own folder structure at Audio Forum The migration from the previous forum version to the new forum posed a significant challenge not only due to so many urls being present in google. Naturally we needed to ensure you could all find the forum posts when you clicked on a google link.

With the help of our in-house coder, Humpa, who is to put it mildy a “gem”, we managed to switch on the new forum set and to discover very little errors present.

So what’s new?

Well the main obvious change for you the user is that of colour and style. The new pink we have been told is “very in” and the extra width of having dynamic tables makes the whole system much more user friendly.

There are some other features that I’ll leave you to discover.

If you have not posted for some time go get yourself busy.

Audio Forum

One of my good thinking times is when I drive, just this week I attended a conference entitled ‘Skilling For Games: What the industry wants’, a forum panel contructed of some of the leading figures in the games world including, Saga, Sony and Electronic Arts, to name a few. It was the road trip back, though not particularly long, that my mind was racing away into creative thoughts, those times when you don’t even remember the trip once your destination has arrived.

I sometimes use a portable recorder and start talking to it, as it can be essential to keep these little gems which may well turn into something great.

Perhaps you have ideas and suggestions too, please do share in our forum for this, come and have your say.

Read more at www.audiocourses.com/fo…

Career Opportunities

As a growth industry the audio and media sector requires smart, dynamic, self-motivated graduates with hybrid skills in both the fields of audio and moving image technologies and production. Our courses aim to produce such people, who also posses, an awareness of the unique culture found within these industries. In addition, the skills and philosophies obtained through our programmes will provide you with cross-transferable richness to other related industries, such as computing and IT.

Our new cohort begins soon, are you with us?
Chris Hambly
Director

This station is one of the many Jack FM stations (http://www.jack.fm/) which dispense with a DJ and a music policy and instead play songs from all eras seemingly randomly. Listening to Jack FM is meant to sound like playing your iPod on shuffle. As I’ve been typing this I’ve seen ‘Vertigo’ by U2 followed by ‘Electric Avenue’ by Eddy Grant!

The jingles for this station reflect the mixed musical policy - one had to sound like Bob Dylan playing as one man band in a subway, the other needed to sound like a 1950s Elvis track. Both need to be at most 10 seconds in length, and most interestingly, both require a suitable edit point somewhere near the middle where they can be spliced and mixed and matched with other jingles of different styles (they already have Ragtime, 80s Metal and Monk style chanting jingles)

The 1950s style cut was reasonably straightforward musically and production wise, however the one-man-band style jingle allowed a little more room for play.

The sonic characteristics of a one-man-band for me are; kick drum and cymbal (maybe slightly loose timing), a stringed instrument such as a guitar or banjo for the main harmonic content, a voice and a harmonica or kazoo for some melodic embellishment. Occasionally a tambourine or bells may be involved.

As entertaining as a banjo/kazoo double header may be, it wouldn’t have sounded very ‘Dylan’, so I plumped for the acoustic guitar and harmonica option.

Chordally I chose simple chords in the key of G major as this seems a common key for a lot of folk, country etc.

With the sounds I tried to find a boomy drum sound and a pair of ’splashy’ cymbals which I could alternate between to make it sound less sequenced. Some subtle volume and timing manipulation ensured that the beat was in time but not perfect/robotic.
I recorded the acoustic guitar with a mic in a vocal booth to ensure a dry yet natural signal. A local harmonica player was drafted in to perform some bluesy style licks and was again recorded in a vocal booth.

The greatest challenge was to create a feeling of the one-man-band being played in a subway without losing clarity. I decided that the use of a convolution reverb would provide the most natural sounding impression of space so i found a suitable impulse file from many of the free resources online and loaded that into the reverb plug-in. I also experimented with a delay using short delay times and a very low feedback time. Although this sounded quite realistic, it damaged the clarity of the overall composition so I decided to only use reverb.

Anyhow the jingle was emailed back to America where it will have the vocals recorded - I’m looking forward to hearing the results, and the final version on air.

If any of you haven’t tried Convolution Reverb yet you can download a free VST plugin here;
http://www.knufinke.de/sir/index_en.html
On the links page of that site there are links to sites that offer free impulse files.

Give it a go!

Thanks for the warm welcome. It feels great to be on board joining the professional Audiocourses team. It is really exciting that Audiocourses now takes on Audio for Video. I will be the production advisor for this new module and I am inviting everyone interested in audio for video in one way or another to join the course. If you are already in the business this can be a chance to fill any gaps and get a more comprehensive base to stand on and if you are not, this can be your first step into a new career! One thing I can promise you though, is that either way, you will get your hands dirty. This is a tough module but you wont regret it!
If you want more detailed information about the module, check under the Courses menu.

Kristian Eliasson

ACAV03 Audio For Video sits very well with the current modules we have running and with the heavy video slant we hope to hook up with some of you “video types”.

Sound for the moving image is a growth area in the industry with an ever increasing need for people with cross skills and adaptable attitudes, willing to embrace very new technologies, very quickly.We are all excited and looking forward to what the Audio For Video students will produce in terms of soundtracks for film and animation or even TV and games.

I’m personally really looking forward to this one.

Chris Hambly
Director

Read more at www.audiocourses.com/se…

Happy New Year to you all and a warm welcome to our newest member of staff, Kristian Eliasson who will be taking a leading role with our audio for video work and instruction.

We will be seeing Kristian popping up in various places around the school and wish him a great year, welcome aboard!

Read more at www.audiocourses.com/se…

The map has both map and satellite view, and in most areas can be zoomed down to see the cars on the street in your own road!

Once you have found your location on the map you can then leave a marker which will add your location and user profile page right onto the map! We will be updating the code very soon to allow you to add a profile picture and various other cool stuff.

For now if you are a registered member you can go tag yourself.

Happy tagging!

http://www.audiocourses.com/modules.php?name=Geotag

These films which release (around 700 films are released each year only from Bollywood which is our mirror to Hollywood, and that is with out counting the huge number of films released in our regional languages) get publicity because of these songs. The number of solo artists are very few and the number of ‘bands’ that are on records and successful are even more fewer.

So the majority of music production that happens is for these films. Here the industry doesn’t work like the way it does in the UK and US. There is no concept of a band/artist sending out demo tapes, getting signed by a record label, working with a producer and then listening to their singles being aired on radio. In fact the producer doesn’t exist here!

The film director hires a music director who makes the basic music/song structure. He then hires an arranger who then hires a bunch of musicians and programmers who get paid on a daily basis. They finish programming the music in about ten days/month and then the director takes these session files to the studio. In the studio the chief engineer records the vocal parts and any other acoustic instruments that are necessary. He then starts with the mixing.

So someone like me who writes his songs in English and has a total different approach to the recording and mixing process does find it difficult to find a place in the industry because most of the engineer’s today are self taught and very few have the right balance between aesthetics and theory (but there are a quite a number of people who do a great job). So all I and those others like me can do is wait till we can climb up there and strike a balance. But until then we’ll have to squeeze into the system and hope that we stay alive and creative.

The main reason why this industry is stuck in the same place for the past few decades is that it is not very open to change. The equipment here is great, people are ready for a technology change but not an artistic and creative one..

varun

This week has been slightly different as I’ve been working on an AudioCourses ‘ident’ (essentially a jingle) for broadcast.

Now, I do like to get stuck into composing and production - I do this most weeks both for work and for pleasure (ok, maybe i do need a life outside my studio!)

I am involved with ‘jingles’ in the UK radio market (mostly commercial stations and local BBC stations) so getting a chance to apply my knowledge in this area to AudioCourses was a challenge I was looking forward to.

Unlike the BBC, who provide you with a very strict idea of what they want from an audio ‘ident’ (they even draw you a nice graph to represent the dynamics of the jingle), I was given somewhat of a free reign for this composition. However I had a strict time scale to work to, and obviously we didn’t want to descend into the realms of a BBC style budget (you’d be suprised how expensive jingles are - when you involve several sessions musicians working at up to £300 per hour each, the price can rocket sky high very quickly) so I couldn’t get too self indulgent - this is very easy to do when you have 3 months to create a ‘package’ - in this instance I needed to look at a window of a couple of days at most. Nothing like a bit of pressure to get the creative juices flowing…

Obviously for this kind of work you need some kind of vocal talent, and for this project we decided to use the lovely Beverley Beer who is very experienced in this area and has a proven track record as a V/O artist.. Look out for a feature on Beverley, including some vocal recording tips, on the AudioCourses site in the next week.

Well, tonight I sent the MP3 of the ‘bed’ (the backing track) to Beverley so tomorrow she will record the voice over in her home studio and send the results back to me (mono-192kbps mp3 format) over email. What is great about using a professional like Beverely Beer is that she can reel off several versions of the same script in different voices i.e. sexy, professional, warm etc. This gives the producer lots of choice when it comes to comping the final take. As Beverley has a home studio and broadband access it means we can quickly and easily swap large audio files over the internet depsite living several hundred miles apart.

This weekend will be taken up by choosing the best takes and comping them together to create the perfect voice over. The editing process can be very complex and time consuming - when working to a professional standard you need to really get into the edit, even on a minute level - when doing work for radio stations I will often cut up a word on a syllable level and make a comp from several different takes. This may sound ‘over the top’, but when your work is being played several times a day alongside tunes from Kylie Minogue, U2, Madonna, Coldplay, Norah Jones etc you need to make it sound on a level with these tunes, and at least 2 of the above artists will have been edited to a similiar extent (i’ll let you speculate over the 2 i mean!)

So by the start of next week we’ll have our new AudioCourses jingle - I’ll post a new blog after I’ve finished the ident detailing some of the production techniques used in the piece.

Have a good weekend & ‘jingle’ all the way,

ben m

This is my first entry on the Audiocourses blog - I’ll try to post here regularly with my thoughts on music and production as well as other things that are happening in my life which may be vaguely interesting.

I decided today to spend an hour or so creating a tune in a genre that I don’t usually work in - Drum’n'Bass. Every now and then I like to do something like this as it really freshens you up, especially if you only work in a few genres usually.

Now electronic music isn’t new to me at all - I first got into music production about 13 years ago using a Commodore Amiga 512 (later a 1200) and a copy of OctaMed. At the time I was using 8-bit mono samples and had no MIDI keyboard. everything was put together in the most unmusical way possible. OctaMed was certainly very basic in it’s user interface but somehow I created some of the most innovative music I have ever produced - at the time I didn’t even play an instrument so I was just making it up as I went along with no idea of music theory.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time trying to write songs in the style of Westbam and Slipmatt. A lot of the music of this time was what we would later call ‘jungle’ and this in term obviously had a huge influence on the later genres of ‘Breakbeat’ and ‘Drum’n'Bass’. I drifted out of the ‘jungle’ so to speak and became more interested in the slower, funkier sounds of House and the party-friendly, and now dated, rhythms of ‘Big Beat’.

In recent months I’ve felt a yearning to go back to my roots of electronic music production and so hence my decision today to have a crack at drum’n'bass. Firing up Propellerheads Reason I ramped up the tempo to 168bpm(!), at least 35bpm more than I’d use for house, and a tempo twice as fast as the last band project I worked on. I had a quick listen to some tunes from the genre, namely the fantastic Bodyrock by Shimon & Andy C (which inadvertantly started the whole ‘clownstep’ debacle on internet forums) and tunes from the likes of DJ Zinc.

Anyhow I had a great time layering bass sounds, doubling up loops with programmed drums and applying far more effects than I’d usually dream of. Although it’s not quite the standard of Pendulum, the current darlings of D’n'B, I hope to continue working on it just for practice. Have a listen to an 8-bar section here.

Right that’s enough from me, I’m going back into the jungle…

ben m

This is an excellent solution (we hope), for a non-permanent sound isolation booth that can be easily dismantled and taken to another location, sure not quickly, but for house moves and being able to take your acoustic space with you, not bad. We’ll keep you informed of how it sounds.

The talk was one of audio blogging as well as text and images which might make for some interesting sounds, indeed the sound of Venetian life in full swing would bring a humbling warmth to the majority of us at Audiocourses.

Anywyas, back to the task at hand, this week my assignments takes me into the realm of consumer media and digital systems and I am supposed to answer the questions as if I were explaining to someone who is ignorant to the whole digital audio area, wish me luck in breaking things down into layman’s terms! ..lol

Rachel

The entire concept is quite interesting and thought provoking but why is the video clip one of the most intricate things that I have come across so far? Why

The answer is that George Lucas had something to do with it. To me he is like the Bill Gates of Film.

It does not help that I am not a Star Wars fan so I literally am making stuff up as I go along, the output should be very interesting.

If there were no Foley of light savers on the net I woulda surely died.

I am petrified for this one it’s really difficult for me as this is my first attempt at doing audio for video. Maybe if it were The Matrix or something, Keanu I understand, George Lucas I don’t. I am really gona have to rely on my imagination.

Anyways all of this being said, did I mention that this weeks questions are very intricate “Perceptual Coding Systems” geez

Lol it’s gona be a very long weekend.

I need divine intervention.

Rachel

I still have not started my practical assignment the sound effect story I just need to come up with the story and the rest will fall in place
I really dunno what I am gona base the story on No clue

I know that when I get the storyline in place all will fall into its place

But right now I do not feel like thinking backlash from the week past I guess

Hopefully by tonight I will get some inspiration

Good luck to me

Rachel

So the questions of the day are

1. WHAT AM I GONA DO FOR THE ASSIGNMENT

2. where do I buy creative juice… cause I am running on empty right now

And last but definitely not least

3. WHAT AM I GONA DO THIS WEEKEND

I know such pressing issues that I deal with on a daily basis.

Rachel

- well that’s what they say on the Apple site, but what is the state of play with the Mac, is it everything it is hyped up to be?

One of us within the AudioCourses team spends a fair amount of time within an Apple iMac suite loaded with Logic and Reason, are we convinced one way or the other, hmmm … we still have a raging debate going on here, PC Vs Mac

I am also looking forward for the launch of their J Ouvert band entitled “ONCE IN A BLUE MOOD”

I love J Ouvert and I wanna play next year carnival

J’ouvert - a contraction of the French “jour ouvert”, or “day open” - is a large wild frenzy of a street party during Trinidad carnival (night-time event)- looked up on the net for a definition for you

Just in case you are gona be in Trini on the weekend here is where u can find me Sunday night

http://trinipulse.com/entertainment/event.php?id=252

Rachel

My sister left me to baby sit a two year old which was pressure and then…
Then there was a power outage so you know where that went.

But I had a good nights sleep, which is always welcome.

So tonight I have to research analogue versus digital consoles it is gona be a lot of work to cover but I cannot wait to get cracking

Rachel

I had lunch 2 hours late because of a stupid meeting that topped the day off for me lunch at 3 pm.

My company is entering into a trade show and I may have to work there on Thursday, I hate working late, So I dunno if I will be attending in light of that but the entire point of going to the show is to highlight my department, so u know. By the way this is the project that I am affiliated with, you know my sales pitch :

http://www.hcltt.com/community/woodbrook/default.html target=_blank

All I am thinking of right now is once I get to Wednesday the rest of the week will pass quickly and I have the weekend to catch up on my sleep.

Rachel

As some of you already know Northfork Recording Studio has been going through some major changes recently. We bought another complete house just to house the new studio. Contractors were 1 month behind schedule which has put me behind on my schedule. The new studio will be up and running and ready by the end of September of this year. For the rest of the month we will be dismantling the Old Studio and relocating to the New studio with some very unique equipment and programs. As an example my video display is a large 72″ wide screen, I’ve finally mastered the use of the Waves plug-ins which can enhance any music creation at the mastering stage. I’ve been licenced to use E-jay dance projects, Magix music Studio 10 and which I ‘ve just increased my samples library from 10,000 to 20,000 clips. These are samples to enhance country, rock, hip/hop, dance and many other genres of music. We are still ahead of the midi field with the new processors which will compliment the studio.

For the artists that are waiting to be recorded I since