Post Production Archives — AudioTechnology

Steal Yourself: Recording Nothing But Thieves

Paul Tingen — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 04:05:12 +0000

Artist: Nothing But Thieves
Album: Dead Club City

It’s been more than half a century since The Rolling Stones recognised the attraction of recording ‘in the wild’, rather than in the stifling confines of a recording studio. They created the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio for this purpose, and their legendary early ’70s albums Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street were largely recorded at Mick Jagger’s Stargroves manor house, an hour south of London. Countless bands followed suit, most famously Led Zeppelin, who recorded several albums at Headley Grange, also using the Stones’ Mobile studio.

As recording equipment became more and more portable and reliable, recording on location became commonplace. So when Nothing But Thieves decided in the summer of 2022 to record their fourth album in a country setting, they were travelling a well-trodden path. Their reasons were the same as those of countless bands down the ages: a hope that a comfortable, remote, non-studio location would lead to a great vibe, increased focus, heightened creativity and better results.

However, in the case of Nothing But Thieves’ fourth album, this strategy proved easier said than done. The English band did experience all said benefits from recording in the countryside, and the resulting album, Dead Club City, proved a big critical and commercial success (it was the band’s first UK No.1). But the path to getting there was distinctly and rather unexpectedly rocky.

ESSEX ESSENCE

Formed in Essex in south-eastern England in 2012, Nothing But Thieves broke through with their self-titled debut album in 2015. It was recorded at Angelic Studios just outside of Oxford, and mostly produced by Julian Emery. Broken Machine followed in 2017, produced by Mike Crossey, and Moral Panic in 2020, produced by Crossey and Dominic Craik. Both albums were mostly recorded at Crossey’s place in California, with Jonathan Gilmore working as an engineer on Broken Machine.

Dead Club City was released in June of this year, and co-produced by Dominic ‘Dom’ Craik and Jonathan Gilmore. The former is one of the band’s guitarists and main writers, and also responsible for synths and programming. The latter is a producer and mixer with credits that include The 1975, Rina Sawayama, Carly Rae Jepson, Beabadoobee, Lewis Capaldi, and more.

Via Zoom from their respective studios in London, Craik and Gilmore relayed how going off the beaten track in their case meant encountering many large-sized rocks, and how they circumvented or climbed them. Gilmore set the scene…

“I began my career working for Mike Crossey from 2011 to 2017. We did the whole of Broken Machine in five weeks, running two studios, with Mike in one studio, and Dom and I working in the other. Mike might be cutting the drums and bass in his room, while Dom and I would record the guitars and add programming before it went back to Mike for the vocals, and finally mix. It was a really tight schedule and thus a bit of a baptism of fire for Dom and I. We’ve been in touch since.

“During the pandemic the two of us co-produced the Nothing But Thieves song ‘Life’s Coming in Slow’ for the Gran Tourismo 7 video game. The sessions were a bit of a circus: Dom was at home with covid and we had to get from initial phone call about the project to finished master in about five days. Audiomovers and FaceTime saved the day! But it turned out well, and I suggested to Dom that we produce the entire next band album together in a similar manner (minus respiratory diseases). I really wanted to support the band in exploring the edges of its stylistic comfort zone.”

I’ve made a lot of records in a lot of different places and these were substantially the most adverse conditions under which I’ve made an album.

The MCI console in the control room was handy for playing back Spotify but not much else.

COUNTRY HOUSE

After the band agreed for Craik and Gilmore to be at the helm for the making of its new album, the duo, says Gilmore, “pushed for making a record that’s as creative and elaborate as possible and even a bit indulgent. To be able to do that we needed quite a bit of time, so the idea was to find somewhere where we could set up camp and stay for a long period. Dom and I ended up frantically sending each other links to online listings of country houses. We were inspired by Led Zeppelin working at Headley Grange, and Radiohead recording most of OK Computer at a manor house called St Catherine’s Court.

“Unfortunately, because of the British rental market we got priced out of our luxury country house aspirations. Instead, we ended up stumbling across a place in Essex called Kyoto Recording Studio that was surrounded by a 22-acre farm. I think it had aspirations of being a luxury residential studio, but the studio was extremely basic on a technical level, with some very substantial shortcomings.

“However, the place was affordable for the length of time that we required, so one pre-production aspect of this record was figuring out the logistics of transforming it into something where we would not only be physically able to record the album, but where we also would not go mad. The estate had a country house, and a barn that had gradually been repurposed into a recording studio. But there wasn’t really much diligence paid with respect to the install.

“We had to basically rip out the whole control room, replaced a lot of the furniture, and re-jig everything. I spent two days testing everything in terms of signal flow, and a lot of the cabling was dysfunctional. We replaced the Pro Tools system, all the headphones had faults, as did the guitar lines, and the acoustic treatment was very basic and quite ineffectual. The control room felt like a mixing desk slapped into a conservatory.

“Speaking of which, the desk (an MCI) was a hazard. Honestly, it felt a little like a fire risk. As you can see in the YouTube videos, at one point it started making a rather angry electrical buzzing sound. It had been very poorly maintained, so even though we had it extensively serviced, it basically didn’t work. In the end we just used it for a couple of line returns.

“After the two weeks to sort out the studio, we had quite a slow first three weeks of actual sessions, because we were still hitting a lot of issues. The air conditioning caused electrical buzzing on the mics and we had hornets in the control room. It was pretty rough and ready! I’ve made a lot of records in a lot of different places and these were substantially the most adverse conditions under which I’ve made an album.”

A guitar-wielding Dom Craik in his production nook, surrounded by some of his synths, including the Udo Super 6 and Oberheim OB-X8.

3 YEAR GESTATION

Although the team managed to create a functioning recording environment, there were more problems to come, as we will see later. To illustrate both the challenges and the magic of the recordings at the studio, the band made a series of YouTube videos , which Gilmore referred to above.

In the end, the entire recording process took 130 days, from August 2022 until January 2023. However, this had been preceded by a three year-long writing and pre-production period. Dominic Craik elaborates on the album’s genesis, first by clarifying how he ended up in the co-production role.

“I started playing guitar when I was six, and come from a classical music background. I can read music, and have a traditional understanding of harmony and how chords fit together from analysing chorales and string quartets when I went to music school. I then applied my knowledge of the guitar and the music lessons to other instruments, and learned how you can create an arrangement, and get this kind of holistic overview of entire pieces of music. This led to me writing and producing.

“[Singer] Conor Mason and [guitarist] Joe Langridge-Brown, and I started writing a little over 10 years ago, but discovered that we just couldn’t write songs to save our lives. It took years and years just to get the basics. At the start you think that because you can play complicated pieces of music on an instrument, you’re going to be able to translate that into writing songs. But it’s just not the case. Song writing is a completely different art form. There are songwriters that can’t even play instruments!

“We just kept pushing and pushing, and eventually the songs came. For many bands now, if you’re also recording demos, there has to be someone who can work GarageBand, Logic, or Ableton, even if it’s just for basic recordings. My curiosity was sparked by Logic, and I became obsessed with trying to copy some of the sounds on my favourite records and implement them in our music. It became this weird jigsaw puzzle to put together. I also learned how to navigate a synth, but I’m more comfortable creating sounds than performing on them. I would rather write out MIDI and send it via USB or MIDI to a synth than play it, because I’m not that technically competent as a keyboardist.”

FLESHED OUT

Craik continues by going into detail about the band’s actual writing process. “In general, writing and recording are quite separate stages for us. We try to write over a long period of time because we find that it gives the most successful results. You gain perspective. The more songs you write, the more you can pick from, and the stronger the album is going to be. You can rewrite things, re-demo, change stuff, if you like a chorus lyric from one song but it’s not the right song you can put it on something else.

“Dead Club City was born out of the pandemic, when we were first able to get back together after all the lockdown stuff. It meant that we were all creatively rearing to go. We had a lot of gas in the tank. The beauty of working as a trio with Conor and Joe is that they come up with ideas that are never fully fleshed out, and this has two benefits. The first is that nobody gets too attached to their idea because they haven’t gone down the rabbit hole of fully exploring it. The second is that you get this amazing level of collaboration, with everyone hearing things slightly differently.

“We wrote most of the material for the new album in my studio. It’s always a bit of a free for all, and there’s no tried and tested method. The last thing we do normally is guitars, which is funny because you’ve got two guitarists in the writing room, or two and a half if you include Conor. Inspiration could come from a synth sound, or a drum loop. It’s never the same, and that’s what’s exciting and one of the reasons why our music is so diverse. Only one song on the album was written in the studio, ‘Do You Love Me Yet?” which is a collective favourite, and one of the more experimental songs on the record.”

The control room felt like a mixing desk slapped into a conservatory.

EXTENDED PALETTE

By the time Nothing But Thieves descended on the studio in Essex, upgraded to suit their needs, everyone brought their equipment, and Craik tons of song demos on Logic. “They were pretty fleshed out,” he says. “On this last record, they were probably the closest they’ve been to the final product. The arrangements were also more synth heavy than ever before. After working on Moral Panic, I started collecting synthesizers, I built my modular synths and have a UDO Super 6, a Roland Juno 6, a Moog Sub Phatty and many others.

“Synths offer a whole different palette of sounds. Guitars are incredible, but for this album, synths gave me a new and exciting realm of creation. It was amazing to pull up a hardware synth, program a sound and be like ‘that reminds me of Rush or Phil Collins,’ or something, and be able to pull that into our music. There definitely was a lot of inspiration of the music from the late seventies and early eighties, all that synth-and-band hybrid stuff. It was a case of getting our paints and paintbrushes in front of us, and see what comes together.

“I also used soft synths. I’ll take whatever sounds good. Jon and I did a lot of A and B-ing of synths versus soft synths, and for example the U-he Diva is an incredible plugin, really thick-sounding, loads of character, and it doesn’t sound plasticky or thin or any of that kind of plugin stuff. Sometimes the plugins would beat the analogue gear, and you don’t even know why. I like hardware synths because you operate them with your hands and they’re fun to be with, but sonically analogue doesn’t always win.”

JUMPIN’ JACK PATCH

Gilmore: “So Dom brought all his toys and his synthesizers, and I brought in my full recording studio complement of gear and microphones, and all the various drums and accoutrements you need. We installed a Neutrik Jack Patch system whereby we could easily interface between the synths, the guitar pedals, and the hardware outboard, including Dom’s Binson Echorec, Roger Mayer 456 Tape Emulation, Thermionic Culture Vulture, several old nineties effects units, and so on. I’m also a guitarist, and brought my custom pedal boards and a big crate of loose pedals. We probably ended up with about 100 pedals between us!”

Craik: “From the outset we wanted to have a very fluid, quick and spontaneous relationship between the outboard, guitar pedals and synths. If you don’t colour synths a little bit, they can feel a little bit cold and separate next to the guitars. You need to run them through a guitar pedal or an analogue effects unit or an amp, to add a bit of grit, and make it all fit together. In addition to the Jack Patch, we also had a Radial unit (EXTC Radial reamp box), which took care of impedance and level conversions, so we could use easily route synths, outboard and pedals to each other.”

Gilmore: “Between Dom and I we had a great collection of guitar amplifiers: a Fender Twin, a Fender Vibralux, a Mesa Boogie Mark 5, a Marshall Bluebreaker and also some weirder stuff, like a Silvertone 1485 and a Laney Klipp, which we used a lot. We mainly used an Ampeg SVT stack for bass. All the bass performances (and some of the guitars) ran through a guitar amp and a bass amp simultaneously, so we could have that kind of throaty upper voicing on the bass guitars if we needed it, and low end on the guitars if required. In addition to all the guitar amplifiers we would also use a DI, often with pedals.

“All these different layers were phase aligned at the source, so the phase was coherent. That allowed us to make stylistic choices with the guitar, including some really idiosyncratic ones, to give them a lot of personality. We cut all the lead vocals with a Neumann U67. The tonality of that microphone suits Conor’s voice really well. It gives it a bit of a midrange focus that I think is very helpful. It went into a Rupert Neve Designs Shelford Channel mic pre. We had a big rack of Neve 1073 preamps for everything else.”

DRUM SURRENDER

The company recorded all the above at the revamped Kyoto studio in Essex, but the issues with the studio proved insurmountable when it came to drum recording, for which decent acoustics are the most crucial.

Gilmore: “I would say that the tone of the rooms was the biggest challenge in making this album, and it meant that everybody had to be on headphones a fair amount during the entire process. We mostly used Shure SRH940s, and also Audio Technica M50s. The control room had a pretty substantial null at around 110Hz, where all the good stuff is, so monitoring sounded really strange. It was quite drastic.”

Craik: “For monitoring, we normally use the Unity Audio The Rocks, which are great, but you can have the world’s most expensive speakers, and in a terrible room it will still sound terrible. It was a bit of a nightmare. We’d gone to the studio with the intention of recording everything there, but the reality was that the acoustic treatments were purely for show. Once we got to recording drums, it turned out the sound was uncontrollable, with mad resonances.

“After trying the main live room and a smaller side room for a week, we decided to record the drums elsewhere, and went to a small east London studio called Baltic. It has a great, very controlled and punchy live room, apart from the fact that they put in an upright piano in the live room, which caused quite a bit of ringing. We added a lot of aggressive compression to the drums on this album, which of course pulls up all sorts of resonances, so we did a lot of work on dampening the room and the piano, like gaffa-taping windows, and leaning chairs against things and so on.”

LOGIC & TOOLS MAKE FRIENDS

Throughout the recording process, Craik used Logic and Gilmore Pro Tools, which led to a lot of sharing of files. The latter explained, “I think it’s fair to say that Logic is a very creative environment for music production, and Pro Tools has an accuracy when working with audio, which cannot be matched. So recording and editing audio was all done in Pro Tools. Meanwhile, Dom was throwing ideas around in Logic. Our Engineer Freddy [Williams] was also on a Pro Tools system.

“It was a bit chaotic, but it meant that there were always three things happening at the same time, and multiple songs would come together really quickly. Conor and I would be recording vocals, Freddy might be editing backing vocals, and Dom might be working on a synth arrangement for a song that we are going to cut vocals for in the afternoon. I think this album is sponsored by AirDrop! All three of us sat in a room together, and along with the rest of the band it was an open forum of coming with ideas. It was quite a fluid process, with the three of us throwing files around. And fortunately we had a huge whiteboard to keep us all on top of what we were doing.”

Throughout the 130-day process, the original Logic demos changed remarkably little. Gilmore: “Because the arrangements were mostly already great, and the songs themselves were already the strongest contenders, it was not like other projects that I work on where pretty much all the demos require structural and tempo/key changes. Our process was re-recording all the main band elements and then enhancing things or modifying things to make them better. We did add a lot of stuff but it was to support and enhance what was already there: backing vocals, additional melodies, ear candy, and so on. I think only ‘Tomorrow is Closed’ and ‘Welcome to the DCC’ went through substantial compositional changes.”

Craik: “Once Jon had finished and finessed the recordings of the vocals and the additional instruments, that stuff would come back over to me and I would do additional production and get a rough mix together in Logic. I built these rough mixes over quite a long period of time, and many eyes and ears went over them, questioning everything. We gradually developed a detailed idea of what we were shooting for and what we’d send to Mike Crossey, who would be doing the final mixes. Once we agreed on a rough mix, we’d send it to the label, to management, to ourselves. Once it was approved, there was this massive transfer of my rough mix over to Pro Tools, and Freddy and Jon would spend days putting on the final touches.”

Gilmore: “The rough mixes reflected where the songs needed to go creatively, and then I would go through everything on a technical level, to make sure that everything we sent to Mike was as bullet-proof as possible, and we squeezed every last percentage out of what we had, with the absolute best drum sound we could get, the best guitar sound we could get, exactly the right vocal, and so on. The rough mixes were mostly delivered with compression and EQ on the tracks and everything else production-wise printed, because the sounds we wanted were all there. The exception would be the vocals which we did deliver with FX prints and live processing on the channel but without any processing committed to the audio. By that point we had usually been through multiple stages of rough mixing, so the production was really the way we wanted it.”

Gilmore might have added that they also made sure the material explored “the edges of the band’s stylistic comfort zone,” while still sounding like Nothing But Thieves. Despite, or perhaps because of, the adverse conditions, it’s exactly how Dead Club City turned out. As one critic put it, “It is distinctly Nothing But Thieves, but with a fresher, funkier twist and a concept album foundation.”

The post Steal Yourself: Recording Nothing But Thieves appeared first on AudioTechnology.

Trackdown Scores Film And TV With Neumann

Audio Technology — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 04:10:38 +0000

Trackdown is a renowned recording and post-production studio specialising in musical scores for film and television, as well as a diverse roster of music genres. Entrusted with some of pop culture’s most celebrated film franchises, revered orchestras, and even operas, Trackdown Lead Score Engineer and Sound Supervisor Craig Beckett uses a Neumann studio monitor array and an extensive collection of modern and vintage Sennheiser and Neumann mics. The 7.1 monitor system setup includes, but is not limited to, three KH 420 and four KH 120 monitors, as well as two KH 805 subwoofers, while some of the preferred control room microphones in Trackdown’s arsenal include the Neumann U 87 AI, U 89, a first-generation TLM 170, and Sennheiser MKH 50 and MKH 8020.

Trackdown has been a key figure in the Australian music world for over 30 years. Since its humble roots as a rehearsal studio, the space has been graced by acts such as INXS and Divinyls. In recent years, the studio has expanded to include Australia’s only purpose-built scoring stage, named the Simon Leadley Scoring Stage, after the Trackdown co-founder. With this, the building houses an automated dialogue replacement (ADR) and foley recording studio, the Theatre One screening room for mixing, as well as 18 fully furnished production suites. The studio has earned a strong reputation for providing a suite of services in audio and music post production for film and television, most recently servicing such projects as The Crown, The Mitchells Vs The Machines, and Mortal Kombat.

Craig Beckett has been working at Trackdown for more than 15 years, having started his career as an assistant, working his way to lead engineer. “I started off playing in heavy metal bands and recording them as a hobby. When it came time to get a ‘real job’, as my parents put it, I got the opportunity to come into Trackdown thanks to a band I knew that was recording there.” In Beckett’s time at Trackdown, the studio has continued to build on its standing and expand its offerings. A few years ago, the studio underwent a redesign and with it, an upgraded monitor array. “We restructured the scoring stage about five years ago, which was when we had the chance to upgrade the monitors in the room. We tried out a few monitor brands and ended up going with the KH 420 as our primary speakers. After listening to a lot of different recordings in the room, I found that I was able to hear many more frequencies with the Neumann monitors versus other speakers,” says Beckett. “I not only could hear more while tracking, but I was able to get a better signal-to-noise ratio, and great high and low-end response.”

The Neumann monitor array in the Simon Leadley Scoring Stage is coordinated via a Euphonix System 5 console with 340 channels. The digital-hybrid console enables easy calibration and the monitors are effortless once they are set up. According to Beckett, “I never have to touch the monitors. I double check them once every six months, but we have had no issues even as they have aged over the last five years.” The 7.1 monitor array includes three KH 420s, four KH 120s and two KH 805 subwoofers.

The control room also houses a covetable microphone locker with several models from several manufacturers. The collection includes two Sennheiser MD 421-II cardioid microphones, two MKH 8020 omni-directional RF condenser mics, an MKH 50-P48 super-cardioid RF condenser mic, and three MD 441-U dynamic studio mic. Beckett’s go-to mic has become the MKH 8020 for a variety of recording use cases, “the MKH 8020 microphones are on my list every time. They are great room microphones for piano, as an ambient microphone extension to blend with other mics, and I even used them to record a didgeridoo this morning.”

With this, the control room also features several Neumann microphones. This includes a set of KM 85 cardioid microphones, a pair of M147 tube microphone, a matched pair of KM 184 small diaphragm condenser mics, six KMR 81-i short shotgun mics and a few vintage studio mics like the U87 and a first-generation TLM 170. The microphone and monitor arrays converge to enable Beckett to do his job to the fullest extent, “the best part about our Neumann monitors is that there is no difference between what I hear in the control room or booth. The microphones and monitors pick up everything so accurately.”

The monitors have served Trackdown well during the last few years. As more and more film and television productions have moved to Australia, the studio has received an influx of scoring work. Beckett shares that this was especially amplified during the pandemic, “we have been fortunate in Australia as we did not have the same [COVID-19] caseloads as other countries. Because of this, we have been able to stay open and support a lot of projects that were on hold while the United States and Europe were in lockdown.”

In recent months, Beckett and the team at Trackdown have shown no signs of slowing down. You can hear Trackdown’s recent scoring work in recently released films and television series, including Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (Sony Animation), Maya and The Three (Netflix) and La Brea (NBC).

CONTACT

Sennheiser: en-au.sennheiser.com

The post Trackdown Scores Film And TV With Neumann appeared first on AudioTechnology.

It’s Time to Collaborate, Mate

Mark Davie — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 22:00:00 +0000

Photos: Bobby Rein

You should heed the words of Vanilla Ice. It’s time to stop, collaborate and listen. Check this out. Ice was a suburban white boy who collaborated with an established black artist, DJ Earthquake. That pair then ‘collaborated’ a key riff from a hit ’80s collaboration between Bowie and Queen, into their own hit. They also ‘collaborated’ black hip hop and white washed it. And made millions doing it.

Yes, yes, I’m misappropriating collaboration there like Ice vanilla-ising (icing?) the chocolate cake of hip hop, but you get the idea. Repurposing works, honing outside influences, buddying up, it’s all part of the hit-making process.

THE HUB OF A SONG

Five years, 52 camps, over 100 songs released globally and $1.4m earned in performance royalties. Those are the numbers Milly Petriella, APRA AMCOS’s Director of Member Relations, lays out to describe the success of her baby — APRA AMCOS’s SongHubs.

It’s not everything though, she points out. Firstly, that’s only the money APRA AMCOS can track, there have been sales and syncs to major ad campaigns that the collection agency doesn’t have figures on; but it’s a healthy chunk regardless.

The other reason is that the goal of SongHubs goes way further than figures on a Spotify statement, it’s about propelling Australian and New Zealand artists’, producers’ and songwriters’ careers. “It goes far beyond the tracks written in those few days,” said Milly. “It’s changed careers.”

Artists like Morgan Evans, who was desperate to work with Nashville songwriter/producer Chris DeStefano but couldn’t get in the door. Milly met Chris at the Bali Songwriting Invitational, then invited him to to the Sydney-based, APRA AMCOS-supported 50 Songs in 5 Days. Morgan finally gets to have a session with Chris, Chris becomes the executive producer on his album and he now has a number one hit, Kiss Somebody, on US country radio. Boom!

Likewise, Jon Hume, previously of Evermore, attended the LA SongHubs with Mr. Hudson, who invited him to a session with JP Cooper. It turned into JP’s biggest hit September Song, and Jon sold his country property to move to LA. Kapow!

Heliport’s James Russell pulled together five different studio spaces across the 56-acre property.

FIVE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY

The latest camp, celebrating the fifth anniversary of SongHubs was held in Queensland at Heliport Studios. It was over the weekend prior to Bigsound Festival, Australia’s premiere music industry event. The international artists were songwriter/producer Yves and top-liner Maize, from the US. Locally, Tom Busby, from Busby Marou, was the guest Australian writer. The rest of the attendees included artists like Tia Gostelow, Timothy Morrisey from John Steel Singers, and producers like Konstantin Kersting and Mookhi. There were 15 attendees in all, a mixture of local Queensland artists and those on their way to showcase at Bigsound. While everyone is well-catered for, including accommodation, food and drink, one lucky APRA AMCOS member gets their entire trip fully funded. In this case, it was Bri Clark from Perth.

While it’s invitation only, any APRA AMCOS member can apply to participate, but you can only be granted one residence, and one fully-funded position within an 18-month period. On average, Milly gets between 50 and 200 applicants depending on the genre and territory. She got a boatload more for the LA and Nashville camps, especially given there was a fully-funded double pass up for grabs to celebrate SongHubs’ fifth anniversary.

CURATED WORKS

While Milly and her team organise the SongHubs, the actual attendees and makeup of the camp is decided by an external curator. This year, Milly asked Robert Conley back, who was the first ever SongHubs curator. For the last 20 years Robert made his living writing and producing, but four years ago started his own publishing company, Specific Music, which he runs through Kobalt. He’s having particular success with Dean Lewis, who just eclipsed half a billion streams. In the last year, he was also approached by Universal to establish a joint label.

“Narrowing down about 80 people to the 15 people involved was more challenging than I thought,” said Robert. “They had to provide three links to songs they’d written. I try to find the people I think are going to be the next-level writers who haven’t broken through yet. The goal is always to discover some people who have potential and put them in with established artists.”

Robert has his own songwriting camp, 50 Songs in 5 Days, which has over 100 people involved across 22 studios. He’s been running it for the last six years, so he reckons he’s got a handle on how to pick a fake from a true songwriter, though “sometimes you get it wrong or are tricked by people with good songs who are average writers.”

Once the camp starts, Robert takes a fairly hands-off approach. Each day, he groups them into five parties of three, comprising an artist who’s looking to release material, a producer and a top liner. Each day, the makeup of the groups change, so everyone gets three unique chances to make a song. After a morning pow-wow, a few coffees and the occasional morning meditation routine, Robert lets them know who they’ll be partnering with, and five minutes later at 10am, they’re writing a song with two relative strangers. By 5pm they need to turn in a demo.

While he says the environment can be confronting for some, typically the guns show what they’re made of.

MOOKHI MAKER

One of those guns is Mookhi, real name Olympia Henshaw. She’s a young producer from Sydney, who’s already done one SongHubs in London. This time, she was thrown in the deep end straight away, partnered up with international guest Maize and Tia Gostelow. It all went swimmingly, said Mookhi, “we got into that flow state and it came seamlessly.” The next day she was grouped with Tim from John Steel Singers and Natasha Shanks from the Little Lord Street Band. “I’m an electronic, poppy producer and she’s a folky singer, so I was a little out of my depth,” said Mookhi. “But we managed to pull it together and come up with a beautiful cinematic, folky song with inspiration from Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac.”

Mookhi had her live rig — a collection of keyboard and pad controllers — with her for her upcoming Bigsound showcase, but didn’t need much other than her laptop and Ableton. Before jumping into any production, she got Tash to play some previous material, “so I could identify the limitations and strengths of her vocals, as well as the style she feels comfortable singing in,” she explained. “Then I looked at the space we were in and figured out what we could and couldn’t do. We weren’t going to record an acoustic drum kit, so I stripped it back to a downtempo beat and started with some melancholic chords. She wanted something sad, but with a hopeful resolution. We layered vocals and strings from there and it just grew organically.”

While Mookhi says she’s often informally involved in collaboration, she finds it hard to penetrate the established Australian scene. “Established artists already have producers they prefer working with, and I’m the new kid on the block,” she said. SongHubs is a perfect way for her to get more credits and work her way into the mix. “You’re definitely running on fumes,” she said. “It’s still morning and I’ve had three coffees already. But the more I do it, I’m just so in love with how fast it is and how quickly you can put together a really promising track. You don’t need all the time in the world to create something beautiful.”

Tom Busby, the guest Australian writer laying down a track in a day.

HELIPORT TO PARADISE

Heliport Studios is the perfect place to host a songwriting camp. Set on 56 acres of sub-tropical rainforest, it’s a retreat for the senses. Studio director James Russell had the job of setting up the five studios. Some were a no-brainer; there are three dedicated studios — A, B and C — on the property. Studio A is the largest space, with an SSL Duality console in the control room that didn’t see much use for this camp. One group camped in the control room, while another set up on the other side of the glass in the live room.

Yves was stationed in Studio B, where he simply unplugged the Thunderbolt cable from the studio’s Mac Pro and stuck it into his laptop. He’s a UAD user, so Heliport’s Apollo 16 made for an easy transition. He was also able to use the SSL Sigma for his monitoring, and the Neve 1073 preamps and Retro Doublewide compressor in the 500 series rack. Studio B is designed as a writing and pre-production space, “we recently had The Brave in there to write their album,” said James. “It’s a big open-plan, acoustically treated room with a vocal booth attached. It really helps to not have a separate control room.”

The rest of the spaces are adapted, which although James had to run out a bunch of monitors, and get the right sex changes for each interface, there wasn’t a lot of treatment required. “Alan, who built the studio, got addicted to building studios,” said James. “So all the recreational rooms have been acoustically treated and we’re able to adapt a lot of the spaces.”

James had already put up a collection of Neumann U87s and AKG C414s for each of the groups, but when Yves got a sniff of the mic locker he had James pulling out pieces like the RCA 77 ribbon mic. He also liked working in Studio B so much, he decided to stay on for a couple of extra days to finish off some work, staying onsite in the Producer’s Cottage.

Beyond the actual and makeshift studios, there’s a whole landscape to inspire artists. There are six separate outdoor decks on the property, prime for pulling up an acoustic guitar and hammering out some ideas. Another big benefit of Heliport is it can be literally ‘locked out’. James can close the front gates, turning the entire 56-acre property into a private retreat.

Mookhi loved working in the studio. “I mean, who has a helipad in their backyard? It’s crazy. All the studios are so beautiful, the grounds themselves have been really well maintained. It’s been such a creative space to be in.”

ELABORATING ON COLLABORATION

Robert doesn’t just extol the virtues of collaboration, he sees it as absolutely necessary for an artist’s and producer’s development. Not to mention increasing the chances of getting hit songs on the board.

“I could not express how important it is for up and coming writers to collaborate as much as possible,” said Robert. “That is the development process, and it’s the secret to writers getting to the next level; collaborate, as much as possible, with as many people as possible, across as many genres as possible, for as long as you can do it. Especially ones outside of your comfort zone, where you’re with a producer who does something you’re not used to.” It’s simple math really; “The more sessions you’re in, the more songs you write.”

As well as his songwriting camp, he also owns a studio-equipped caravan on Fingal Head Beach. He sends his artists up there for a week or two at a time to “just live on the beach and do nothing but write songs,” he explained. “There’s no phone reception there. They’re trapped. I give them enough food and alcohol, whatever they need to just relax and deliver songs. With Dean Lewis blowing up, suddenly people are more interested in my development process.”

“It’s good practise for me,” concurred Mookhi. “Because you need to get your chops up to be quick, and be decisive.

“It’s interesting watching them get thrown into a room together,” agreed James. “I’ve worked with Caitlyn Shadbolt before, and she’s more of a country artist. Seeing her thrown in a room with two more electronic producers, where they came up with a pop funk, country tune. It’s amazing the results of the collaboration.”

SongHubs organiser, Milly Petriella watching on as American producer Yves gets to work.

WHERE & WHEN

APRA AMCOS’s SongHubs is a global program. As well as Australia’s capital cities, invitees can find themselves flying across oceans to hubs like LA, Nashville and London, or India, Toronto, and the latest addition, Brazil. Milly Petriella, APRA AMCOS Director of Member Relations, said APRA AMCOS’s songwriting camps often happen in conjunction with a partner, like a festival, or existing camp, to spread the funding resources and manpower.

Milly: “We often tag onto festivals, so we host SongHubs in London when Great Escape is on and there’s already 30-40 Australian bands attending. LA and Nashville are a no-brainer. In Melbourne, we’re doing one or two a year with Creative Victoria, and host Brisbane in conjunction with Bigsound. The Bali Songwriting Invitational is a standalone camp we partner with. They provide the infrastructure, but our funding involvement allows 30% of the writers to be Australian.

“We partner with 50 Songs in 5 Days in Sydney at the end of every year, which is owned and run by Robert Conley and his wife Leonie. We’re going to be working in Brazil for the first time in December. There’s a conference happening at that time called SIM, with some Australians already there, and after hearing about the success of SongHubs the Brazilian society reached out.

“That will definitely have a Latin feel to it. We try and cover different genres; pop, urban, jazz in conjunction with Reeperbahn Festival in Berlin. Stockholm is the centre of the music industry, so we’ve done SongHubs there three or four times now. I’m working on doing one in Atlanta, the epicentre of the urban scene. We’ve done India three times, and partnered with SOCAN in Canada twice.”

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A Ring To It: Revoicing Halo for the Xbox One

Audio Technology — Sun, 17 May 2015 23:00:00 +0000

Story: John Broomhall

Nearly 15 years ago, Microsoft launched its first videogame console, the XBox. A landmark in game audio history, its dedicated sound hardware positioned it very favourably in the race for high-quality music, cinematic sound and credible dialogue in games. It even boasted real-time 5.1 encoding of in-game sound FX. Audio for games was coming of age.

The poster child for this audio revolution was Halo, whose original release showed just how engaging and powerful the aural experience of games could be, a point it proved through multiple releases in the beloved series, over two generations of Microsoft consoles.

But what about Halo fans kitting out their dens with Microsoft’s third, latest, and even more powerful videogame station — the XBox One? Enter Halo: The Master Chief Collection, an audacious ‘nu-gen’ homecoming for the franchise, billed as the ‘definitive Halo experience’ and featuring a re-mastered Halo 2: Anniversary, along with Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 4, Halo: Nightfall (the live-action digital series made in partnership with Ridley Scott), and access to the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta.

Paul Lipson, Senior Audio Director for 343 Industries/Microsoft Studios managed and directed the audio team through this gargantuan undertaking. Lipson: “I’ve been a huge Halo fan since the original release, Combat Evolved. An innovative and aesthetically groundbreaking title which transformed the way I look at game audio; a creative landmark. However, moving Halo 1-4 over to XBox One with a brand new unified UI and at 1080p/60 frames a second was a Herculean task. We were looking at four different integration schemes and audio engines that needed to play nice together. Meanwhile, Halo 2: Anniversary hitting its 10th anniversary was a massive project in itself, with a full update of all audio content — 198 minutes of all-new music, over 16,000 new sound and foley assets, and 58 minutes of all-new cinematics with bespoke post-production content.

“One of the coolest features in Halo 2: Anniversary is that we included both the legacy sound and the new sound — literally two complete sound trees running side-by-side. You can play the game in remastered mode and do all the fun things like dual-wielding weapons, then instantly switch to the legacy content running in perfect parallel. It’s quite astounding and really showcases the power of the XBox One and how far game audio has come in a decade.

“Looking back, I’m amazed at how much we accomplished. We never sacrificed audio quality — from the very first note recorded to the very last moment of mixing. Bringing all of this amazing talent together and focusing our collective energies to make something this cohesive is certainly a bright moment and a satisfying feeling.”

Moving Halo 1-4 over to XBox One with a brand new unified UI and at 1080p/60 frames a second was a Herculean task — 198 minutes of all-new music, over 16,000 new sound and foley assets, and 58 minutes of all-new cinematics

SKYWALKER BOUND

Lipson partnered with Skywalker Sound and multiple Grammy Award-winning engineer, Leslie Ann Jones, to record 85 members of the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra (players from the San Francisco Symphony and Ballet), 40 singers from the SF Opera Chorus, and 28 singers from the Boys Chorus. He also commissioned two new cues from guitarist/producer Misha Mansoor (Periphery, Animals As Leaders), and brought back guitar hero Steve Vai for work on the main themes.

Lipson: “We have a strong relationship with the American Federation of Musicians (the largest musicians’ union in North America), and we’ve had great success recording with them. They love games — and it’s fun to hear them come in after a night of playing Mahler or Rachmaninov and say, ‘wow, it’s so awesome to stretch out and play this amazing music’. The AFM players have been instrumental in helping us shape the gorgeous sound of our Halo soundtracks. Leslie Ann Jones and the Skywalker Sound team also make all the difference — their expertise coupled with one of the finest recording environments in the world really brings the music to life. I’m lucky to be working with such a talented group of people, and I think our results reflect that.”

MASTER CHIEF: PAUL LIPSON

AT: What drew you to this industry?

Lipson: I used to program machine code on my old Apple IIe and write little interactive audio programs using a Mockingboard card when I was a primary school student. I’d toured with bands and taught after earning my Masters degree from the New England Conservatory, but I knew I wanted to pursue games as a full time profession. I grew up idolising early trailblazers like Bill Budge, Richard Garriott, Nasir Gabelli, Jordan Mechner, and it just evolved into a full-time pursuit. I started my first game audio company in 1998 and haven’t really looked back since.

The evolution of the industry has been staggering over the past 20 years, and from an audio perspective, it’s going where many of us hoped it would. The size, scope, and production values of our scores and audio rival anything in entertainment — and the bar has been raised to that of a true art form.

AT: What’s the future of game audio and game scoring?

Lipson: There is a continued forward charge toward higher fidelity and an unabated evolution of how we express and capture our content, but we are now finding ourselves on the cusp of another technological renaissance that is going to create myriad opportunities for audio in games. The cloud is becoming a factor, platforms are evolving and becoming unified — many common technologies are harmonising in ways that we are just beginning to understand. All of this platform evolution needs gorgeous music and sound, which is great news for musicians, designers, integrators, and audio professionals around the globe.

THE ARBITER: BRIAN FIESER, SOUND SUPERVISOR

AT: Sound Supervisor sounds like a broad title, what were you handling?

Feisher: I was responsible for designing and implementing new audio systems for Halo 2: Anniversary, creating and implementing sound effects, reverse engineering and learning the engine tools Bungie used over 10 years ago, organising and running field recording sessions, working closely with Paul Lipson and Sound Designer Paul Stoughton to establish the direction of the sound, providing audio post work for marketing, and working with our external partners.

AT: What are the key pieces of gear that can handle all those roles?

Feisher: For software designing and editing, I mostly use Pro Tools and Adobe Audition with many different plug-ins. I carry a Sony PCM D50 as a portable recorder on a daily basis. It usually depends on what it is that we are going to record, but for our larger sessions we’ll generally bring an array of recorders such as the Sound Devices 702s, DEVA, Sony PCM 100/D50, and microphones such as Sennheiser MKH 8040/40/418, Rode NT4, AKG D112, and a few others.

AT: What’s given you the leg up in the world of games?

Feisher: Being proficient in a DAW and familiar with editing sound through various platforms is a must. Besides needing to be passionate about the medium you are working on, I think playing a lot of games is critical to the job; it opens up your ears and mind to sound. You will identify more with the audience you’re creating content for, and start to understand the bigger picture; that placement of sound and creating sound for player feedback is more important to the art than editing and mixing any single sound on its own. I also think that being open to experimentation and even failure are key components. There are many times where I’ve gone into a recording session with grand ideas, only to have the material not turn out very well. Understanding that and being willing to try random experiments and new techniques will ultimately lead to more success.

RED TEAM: LENNIE MOORE, COMPOSER & ORCHESTRATOR

AT: What was you contribution to the project?

Moore: I was Principal Orchestrator on both Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary collaborating with Paul Lipson and the team to fulfil the creative vision and update the orchestration to a larger size orchestra recorded in surround.

AT: Can you run us through the orchestration process?

Moore: Orchestration is the parsing out and balancing of individual parts within a given composition. In another form it could be called arranging. In essence, it’s about translating a composition into something that is playable by a group of live musicians. I’ll usually analyse a composition, make choices about how it will be distributed to separate parts within the orchestra, decide what colours or textures will be used in various sections and render all of this into a notation program like Sibelius; which allows me to layout how the full scores and parts should look. These are then printed out and distributed to the musicians performing on the recording sessions.

AT: How far would an orchestrator go in embellishing the original notation?

Moore: Only as far as the ‘boss’ allows! A great orchestrator follows the lead and intent of the composer. It is often a collaborative process where, after analysing the composition, the orchestrator will discuss with the composer how best to translate the original notation into something suitable for the orchestra. As an example, let’s say the composer used a full string section patch in his composition where he played ‘piano style’ (meaning with two hands only) into his computer for his demo. What do the Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello and Bass parts play? My role would be to translate the two-handed version into a five-part version for the strings — dividing all the melodies, chords and various compositional ideas into what makes the most sense for the musicians to play, while maintaining a balanced sound within the entire section.

Reworking the entire Halo catalogue required a team effort and all hands on deck at Skywalker Sound. Senior Audio Director Paul Lipson sits to Leslie Ann Jones’ right at Skywalker’s scoring stage console.

CORTANA: LESLIE ANN JONES, DIRECTOR OF MUSIC RECORDING & SCORING, SKYWALKER SOUND

AT: Think ‘Skywalker’ and you tend to associate it with movies. How has its involvement in video games come about?

Jones: Skywalker has always been involved in audio post for films and now television. But the Scoring Stage has had a diverse clientele from the beginning: rock, jazz, classical and film scores. With the increased interest in videogame scores having a more cinematic sound with large, live orchestras it seemed to be a natural fit for us to start doing more of them. Plus many major videogame publishers are on the West Coast so the location was a factor as well. Our involvement comprises recording and mixing music for scores but our audio post side has also contributed to many games with ADR, foley, sound design and mixing, just like we do for films.

AT: Are there any special factors or differences associated with working on interactive music scores for videogames?

Jones: Videogame scores are an interesting hybrid between film scores where you have picture, sound effects and dialogue to pay attention to, and records where you just want to record a great sounding track. But videogame scores are also very different in they deal with levels of play versus what the player(s) hears. And also cinematics, which do have picture, effects and dialogue. My approach to recording doesn’t change much. I like to have things sound big and grand and get as much detail from the composer’s composition and orchestration as I can. But when I mix, then I can pay attention to how the music will be used and any balance adjustments that might be needed. Also videogame scores tend to take more advantage of recording sections of the orchestra separately because of the different levels of play and the sound needed for that.

AT: What makes the Skywalker scoring stage so legendary?

Jones: I like to think George’s [Lucas] vision of Skywalker Ranch and Skywalker Sound was to create a wonderful, warm, and relaxing environment in which to get one’s best work done. Our staff lives up to that and creates an atmosphere that says, ‘we’ll do whatever it takes to enable you to walk out with the best product possible’. I think those things, and of course a great sounding room are what makes Skywalker so special.

AT: What are the key pieces of tech you can’t live without?

Jones: My staff actually. They are all the best at what they do and because of that they enable me to work at my best without having to worry about anything. That and my Lexicon 224.

AT: What key skills and personal qualities do you think have led to you being at the helm of such a prestigious world-class scoring stage?

Jones: Paying attention to detail is very important as is multi-tasking (and I don’t mean checking Facebook at the same time as recording). But the most important thing is knowing when to say something and when not to. Most of the time it will be not. But my job is really twofold; recording and mixing, and running the scoring stage. Different skills are needed for each, but both require great people skills. The artist/client is paying the bill but also is the creative force behind the music and it’s important to remember it is their recording.

GRUNT WORK: BRIAN TRIFON/BRIAN LEE WHITE, PROJECT MANAGERS & SOUNDTRACK CO-PRODUCERS

AT: What were your roles?

Trifon: We wore many hats. In addition to working on the score itself, we were also responsible for contracting, budgeting, editing, mixing, asset tracking, sequencing, etc.

AT: How do you manage all of those assets?

White: Every part of the score eventually found its way into Pro Tools for editing and surround mixing. With so many minutes of material and so many assets to organise and deliver, the new offline bounce workflow in Pro Tools 11 really saved us a ton of time. I was able to simultaneously print full surround mixes as well as surround stem splits all in one quick pass.

Trifon: We also used a little known piece of software called Keymap Pro from Redmatica to do the crossfading loop edits. The company got bought by Apple a while back and their software is no longer available, in fact it only works on an older version of OS X, but there is nothing else out there that can touch it for what we needed to accomplish.

AT: What skills are key for your success?

Trifon: I’d say the main skillset is problem solving and time management skills. Of course, none of it is possible without having excellent musical skills, supreme DAW chops/editing skills, and a refined musical and sonic aesthetic. You can’t be any kind of audio professional without those skills. However, technical skills and even musical skills alone aren’t enough. Making cool music is the easy and fun part! The challenging part is all of the unforeseeable roadblocks and setbacks that will inevitably come up during the course of a project.

White: Organisation is so critical in game audio. You literally have to track the status of thousands of assets, know how they relate and be able to quickly verify what state they are in. Has this cue been approved? Has that cue been mixed? Does this cue need a revision? In addition to using a purpose-built project management tool, we also tracked things in huge colour-coded spreadsheets that we could quickly glance at and see where things were. Even during the recording sessions at Skywalker, I had two laptops full of spreadsheets open in the control room, tracking what we still needed to record and where we were with our time.

Working with Steve Vai and Misha Mansoor was a blast. On top of each being incredible shredders in their own respective styles, they are both genuinely awesome people to work and hang out with. Steve and Misha both came out to the scoring sessions at Skywalker Ranch and it was like having two eras of guitar gods sitting under one roof, such a special time, we all had so much fun at those sessions.

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Studio Focus: Phoenix Sound Studios

Audio Technology — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

When Justin Humphries was choosing a name for his new studio, there was really only one choice. After losing his home and studio in the Black Saturday fires, then putting in years of hard work to resurrect something from the ashes, Phoenix Sound Studios just felt right.

“It’s taken a lot of hard work and determination over the past six years to recover and rebuild my life after losing absolutely everything,” said Justin Humphries. “I’m happy to say I now have Phoenix Sound Studios to show for it.” Located in Hurstbridge, north of Melbourne, the facility comprises a large 10m by 7m tracking room, a generous control room of the same dimensions, and a smaller vocal/drum booth. Humphries also built in two amp isolation booths. All the rooms are visible to each other, and able to comfortably accommodate large bands and small chamber orchestral groups. Humphries made sure to incorporate plenty of natural light and not obscure the beautiful scenery. Remote computer control and 16-channel individual personal monitoring rounds out the interconnected atmosphere of Phoenix, giving it a great creative flow.

As well as engineering, Justin has been a session drummer since the late ’80s, and established an online drum tracks service that had a global client list. In the main tracking room are two Yamaha custom drum kits, with Sabian cymbals, as well as Fender bass and guitar amps, keyboards and various percussion pieces. At the hub of the control room is a Tascam DM4800 64-channel mixing console and Tascam 24-bit/96k conversion. Outboard gear includes multiple Avalon VT-737SP black anniversary edition channel strips, a Universal Audio 6176 channel strip, and a Bellari tube compressor. The mic collection includes a Neumann U87ai, Rode K2, and a matched pair of AKG C414s. And Humphries has a pair of Event Opal monitors to sit alongside his trusty Yamaha NS10s, and KRK Expose E8B studio monitors.

Phoenix Sound Studios is currently working on Melbourne guitarist Nick Freer’s album featuring the talents of top Australian musicians Andrew Gander, Phil Turcio, Carlo Barbaro and Matt Clohesy. As well as music production, Phoenix Sound Studios also offers restoration and forensic audio services.

www.phoenixsoundstudios.com

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