This day in the studio was a fairly uneventful one as I didn’t have too much to work on on this given day. Most of my senior recital stuff was finished, and whatever was left at this point was only workable in my home studio as that’s where all of my equipment was. The Computer Music EP was coming along nicely and I was waiting to receive some song ideas back from Tony, so there wasn’t much I could have worked on. Instead I used the time in the studio to work on some personal research that I was conducting on Austin, TX, as Tony, Nick, and I were (and still are) considering a move out there. I was able to have a phone call with a studio owner in a small town right outside of Austin, as well as do some research on housing and apartments. Of course I did my usual tidying up and mic inventory, but other than that this was  fairly unexciting day

This Thursday in the studio was an exciting one as I had finally gotten the phono record player adaptor that Amandine had ordered. Originally, Tony and I had planned to use a bunch of vinyl samples for our Computer Music II EP and base our songs around those. We follow several artists who heavily sample older songs and repurpose them into really interesting beats, and wanted to give it a shot ourselves. We had a couple old vinyls that were kept in the radio studio (not entirely sure why they were there or how old they were) and tried to get some samples from those just to test the concept, signal chain, and recording quality. After trying various different types of cables, DI boxes with ground lifts, and different levels, we weren’t able to eliminate the hum that came from the turntable. After speaking with Amandine and doing some more research, I discovered that I needed a specific type of adaptor to get a better signal out of the turntable.

I was very excited when it arrived and immediately began messing with cables and getting a signal into Ableton. The signal was definitely cleaner but not by much, and in reality I like the aesthetic of the lesser sound quality, especially when using something as a sample in this context. Ultimately Tony and I abandoned this idea for our EP as we ended up making decent progress on other songs with other samples, but this has definitely taught us a few things about doing it in the future. Now the turntable sits next to the Synthi and is available for any student to use, should they be interested in attempting the same thing.

With my major rehearsal behind me and the bulk of my senior research finished, I decided to have a more relaxed day in the studio and work on some side fun projects. A couple friends of mine had asked to sit down with me and teach them some of the basics of Ableton and beat making as they were quite interested in doing it themselves. I mentioned in a previous post that I love teaching people what I’ve learned about producing and mixing, so I was happy to make time for them. After giving them a brief overview of the layout of the program and how it differs from other DAWs, I explained how Ableton was originally geared towards live performances, and now has other capabilities that rival Logic and Pro Tools in certain regards. They were particularly interested in sampling and sample based beats, so we went over the Simpler instrument as well as a few of my previous projects where I used samples. We hung out and worked on various things, piecing something of an intro to a song together for about 2 hours. I explained how EQ and compression worked and how they were often used in mixing and general tone production. As my studio time ran out, I explained where to get some of the sample packs that I used and that a trial version of Ableton was available. All in all a relaxing day after some super stressful work had been completed.

This particular Thursday in the studio was intended to be a productive one, as I had a rehearsal for my senior recital that coming Saturday. I had a great deal of preparation that needed to be done with my Ableton session as I hadn’t finalized several things in it. I spent that day listening to the transitions between each track, considering the amount of time and how I might use my bass to make the blank space in between more interesting and cohesive. I also knew that there were certain things I wouldn’t have been able to finalize until I had the rehearsal, such as specific levels of my bass track and a few settings within my amp emulation plugin (Guitar Rig 5), or some EQ settings. Tony and I had done a quick rehearsal a week or so before this and so I had a really good idea of what needed to change, plus I had gotten to some great feedback from my hearing. After listening through to make sure each track was a consistent volume and adjusting a couple settings between tracks, I began planning out how I would map my MIDI foot pedal to control my various effects on my bass channel. I wasn’t able to finish this until I got home later that day and was able to have everything running in front of me. While I wasn’t always able to make use of the gear in the studio on these work days, the environment itself was incredibly helpful to put me in the right mindset to get this kind of work done.

On Wednesday April 25th at 5:00pm Andrew worked the baseball game. Jeffrey assigned him to the audio room to control the ambient sound,announcers’ headphones, and the black storm. He had to listen in on what Jeffrey wanted him to either turn up or down. He could only speak through the headsets if anyone in the trailer needed something.He had to mute everything when commercial was about to start and to unmut everything when the game was about to come back on by listening to the count down. Also, he had to watch the levels to make sure that they did not turn red, which indicated that it was too loud. They had to remain in the yellow indicator that showed everything sounded normal. All the sounds had to be mix together in order for the meter to take in the sound properly. After the game ended he had to stop the taps from recording. Some of the things that Andrew wished that he could have learned was being able to learn the different color switches that helped control each sound effects.Also, he wished that he could have taken a break from the audio for at least an hour and been behind one of the cameras during the game.

There hasn’t been a ton to do after Easter, but there’s always something to help out with at Collective! With the start of the Badass Lady Preachers series, I’ve been searching for different Sunday Facebook event graphics that fit each week’s theme. The only thing that’s really stopping me from completing it is figuring out what my supervisors see for their own vision (or what represents each theme to them). This is something I usually take some liberties on, and it’s nice to see some of my “edgier” Facebook graphics on the page as well as my own interpretation of the theme being sent out.

We’re also figuring out how to create a monthly calendar of Collective events to post outside in the lightbox. Jess (one of my supervisors) and I have been swapping ideas back and forth, and we were (finally!) able to figure out a monthly calendar with small strips of event names on each day. Rather than going through too much work by creating a calendar from scratch, I pulled a free template from online and I am customizing it from there. This includes adjusting the length, size, color, type, holidays, and days for the month of May. I understand that working from scratch can be helpful when first starting to learn graphic design, but when it comes to very standard pieces like calendars, I enjoy some leeway and time-choppers. Especially when everything ends in about a week! This will make it much easier to work within dimension boundaries and adhere to Collective branding. I’ve said it before, but it’s always a great feeling to see my work approved and displayed.

On April 11th Tony and I had a great studio session as we spent the afternoon recording drums. For our electronic EP we wanted to incorporate real drums into one of our longer (and heavier I guess you could say?) songs. When Tony first brought his ideas to me and we first started working on it it immediately reminded me of Twenty One Pilots, and thinking about how they incorporate real drums into their mostly electronic songs, it inspired me to take a shot at it. I took an initial pass at this about a month before this session by recording drums by myself in the studio (which was incredibly difficult even with only 4 mics), and getting what were essentially scratch tracks. I was able to do a quick mix of these and showed it to Tony, who was then completely sold on it. So on the 11th, we set up 9 mics and did a legit drum recording session; this happened to be the most mics I had ever used on a drum kit and I was excited at the challenge of mixing everything. After setting up the usual close mics and overheads, I decided to set up an additional mic on the outside of the kick using the Rode NT2A, a room mic using the large ribbon mic, and a hi hat mic using the AKG C3000.  I ended up being very happy with the results I achieved with the extra microphones as the room mic added some more ambience and space without compromising the perceived distance of the close mics, and the hi hat mic allowed me to be more precise in the mix with the main beat of the verse. All-in-all, I find the process of recording drums to be quite fascinating as every studio has slightly different practices and differences in mic choice, placement, and mixing. It’s an incredibly in-depth process in which I really want to improve.

April 6th in the studio was fairly productive afternoon as I worked on a large amount of paperwork stuff that needed to be turned in for my senior hearing. I was feeling quite nervous about getting all of my music notation for the album done in time as there’s  just a lot of material and layers to every song. Not only that but a great deal of the content on the album is noise that was generated with all kinds of electronics that exist outside of any kind of pitch or rhythm, and I was unsure of the best method in which to actually do this, even after researching several “modern” approaches to notation. Ultimately I decided on exporting a picture of the waveform of the electronics and cut it into the bars in Finale, which achieved what I wanted to convey as the dynamics were the largest change over time. Anyways,  my original plan was to create MIDI versions of every song in Logic, edit the notation in the Score Editor, and then export and print it. That day I was able to get another huge chunk of the MIDI done for several songs that I had just finalized. Eventually I came to find out that I was having formatting issues in the Score Editor and wasn’t able to get the header looking the way it needed to, and I was unable to get the instrument names to appear on the left side of the score to indicate what bars belonged to what part. It was an incredibly frustrating endeavor but in the end it came together.

After I did all that work and backdated all the galleries last week, I realized I had done them wrong. Instead of adding a gallery into the post, I simply put the pictures straight into the post. Some of the posts I also forgot to add a featured image, which made just a blank space on the main page where a linked picture should have been. I went back through every single post and added a featured image, as well as changed the line of pictures into a gallery. It definitely looks a lot nicer with it in gallery format, more professional and easier to look through.

After showcase yesterday, there were several winners for the Creative Art department. I believe Jasmine Ramos won the Maris prize, while Anna Chun and Ian Felpel both got honorable mentions. That’s so awesome that there was so much talent that they had a tie! I think I should write a post about the winners, but does that go in a post along with the 2017 Student Honorees or does that go in a post by itself? I’ve put up a draft of the 2017 Student Honorees, I just need the names of the winners to finish that one. After that, the only thing really left is the concert from Computer Music II, which we can create a featured event about. We may need some more profiles as well, but no one seems to want to do those anymore. Maybe Laura should send out one more asking for a last chance mention on the website.