To finish up for the year there was one more project outside of regular work that me and a good friend partnered up for. It was to engineer, mix and master however many tracks that could be done in a relatively short period of time. It’s not cheap to get studio time so a lot of bands these days look to smash out and EP in one session i f possible and then come back for overdubs and vocals, which is exactly how this project is panning out. 

So the end of the year is almost upon us and it’s been a busy last few months. The amount of valuable  know-how and industry exposure during this time has outweighed any of my previous experiences thus far. This “Post Mortem” of this duration will breakdown what skills I have learnt (both soft and technical) and show a reflection of how I handled things and how I can improve in the future.

After listening to Joel De Ross's fascinating Ted X Talk on the future of music and virtual reality it  inspired me to keep thinking outside the box and dream of creative ideas and projects that haven't been thought of before. His speech really shows innovative ideas that will educate, fund and entertain musicians and everyone involved into the future.

 With many AAA titles under Minto's belt he breaks down all the positions needed on big releases such as “ sound recording, Foley recording, sound editing, sound design, implementation, linear track laying for cinematics, mixing, VO (voiceover) recording, dialogue editing, music editing, mastering, debugging, and so on. We can also step outside of the purely audio role and get involved with design and implementation of animation or particle effects, or even camera shake and pad vibration, for example, thereby delivering a tighter synergy between the audio and visual components.” (Minto, 2011)

Tony Visconti:- "Producers and Engineers: Rather than actively buying up new and vintage equipment, more plug-ins, thinking those inanimate things will make better records, you should be asking the artists you record to submit better music, better lyrics and better performances. Don't degrade your skill and talent by resigning yourself to polishing turds. Chasing the Top 10 is a fool's game. Give feedback, give direction. This is your responsibility to music, to our culture, to the public whom you do not want to let down."

Here is the short clip taken from Back To The Future Two in which we re-created the audio for.

“Filmmakers can precisely specify where those sound objects should originate and how they should move” (Dolby, 2014).

So much of what we watch on TV or film we take for granted. Even the simplest of scenes can require some tricky post production workarounds. In terms of audio it’s not always possible to stick a microphone close enough to capture a great sound for whatever it may be. This means somewhere down the track an audio engineer will be reinventing that sound in a studio or on location far away from the cameras; this ensures high quality samples are recorded free from pop clicks and distortion.

Is everything we do and behave like directly linked back to our tribal instincts? Evolution has changed some human characteristics over the last 4 million years but some internal reactions still remain the same.

 “if the task will take more than five minutes put it in your calendar. If the task can be completed within five minutes DO IT NOW!”

You may never know when it’s going to strike, you will see people cower and cover their ears and everyone will look to each for answers …no I’m not talking about an air strike I’m talking about audio feedback loops.

I’ve been studying and freelancing in audio for over a year now and the reality of the industry is becoming more apparent in the fact that it’s an especially hard market to survive in. Before starting I seriously underestimated just how challenging the media projects would become and just how sparse the demand for jobs can be. For me at the moment in the earlier days the pay is often low and the risk of investment is high, usually without any guarantee of money returning (there is often no guarantee the job will be profitable, though the experience is always profitable!)