bands – Sound and Music Production

Graduate Stories – Alistair Pritchard

Blog post by 2014 Alumnus Alistair Pritchard.

Once I left University I went straight out on tour with Darlia & Dolomite Minor as Stage Manage/Guitar Tech. During that time the management company was able to put me out with Noel Gallagher on a couple of shows shadowing their techs who got me involved on a few roles during the shows.

Dolomite Minor then went on tour with support shows to Eagles Of Death Metal, the Tour Manager asked if I wanted to join the crew as Drum Tech, I ended up doing some bass as well and went from there. We were out for 2 months across Europe, it’s been my favourite tour to date. Looking after Josh Homme for the shows was a great experience and the money wasn’t bad either! They didn’t ask me to return to the crew for the US run stating that it was cheaper to replace the previous Production Manager with a US based member which is understandable. It’s becoming much harder than ever before for UK roadies to work in the US.

In-between tours I’ve been working for a construction firm as a labourer whilst doing training for a site foreman job role in domestic housing. I turned down a full-time position though as I love touring and working on the road. The day after I returned from the EODM tour I was offered a job with Kiko Bun (BBC Radio 1xtra artist) and have been busy working for a few other artists (Lapsley, Rat Boy, Rejjie Snow, Andy Gangadeen of Chase & Status, Nothing But Thieves).

Early in 2016 I went back to Rock n Roll with Highly Suspect on a UK arena tour which was fun. Shortly after I had my first dry spell of the industry where label (XL Recordings) cut the budget of a tech on Lapsley’s US run even after my visa was approved, frustratingly.

The Summer is looking busy as I’m out covering for a friend who works for UB40 and he’s asked if I can do Fun Lovin Criminals which is going to be awesome. Kiko Bun is also picking back up thankfully. I was put forward for Busted as Guitar Tech but unfortunately did not get the gig (My older/wiser friend got one of the positions!).

I’ve also started a band of my own, we’re a Dark Rock, Gothic influenced act going by the name of The Devil In Faust. My old Audio Production mucker Ben Perrett plays bass and a childhood friend of mine is on drums. We just completed a short UK run of shows and flew to Denmark in May to record our next EP. We’re still independent and are just enjoying making art at this moment in time. I’d love to tour more with the band but funding is an issue right now.

June 3, 2016 2014, Alumni, bands, careers, featured posts, Music Industry, Rock, Students 2 Comments

Guest Lecture – Danny Roberts 2! – A&R Decca Records

Blog post by L2 Audio Production student James Woodliffe.

This week Danny Roberts gave a talk to myself and my course peers about his career, day to day roles and the music industry from the perspective of a record label.

Danny is an A&R representative for Decca Records who are a subsidiary of Universal records. He discussed about the two types of A&R, artists past and present, the impact of major labels and his connection with them. It was interesting to hear Danny talk openly about his day to day runnings with the label he works for and his colleagues. It was also interesting to hear his opinion of major/indie record labels from an inside point of view and it was refreshing to hear a talk from an A&R representative who clearly has a love for music. I felt that Danny really understood his business and although money is a crucial factor it isn’t the be all and end all of his job.

Personally, I found his talk very interesting and it confirmed some of my thoughts about the music industry previously to the lecture. It also taught me new concepts and ideas that are currently present within the industry, such as how he sees potential within an artist and what stages he goes through before signing them. Overall it was very enjoyable.

Addendum:
Danny’s recent signing Aurora has just been selected as the artist for the John Lewis TV ad campaign 2015

October 29, 2015 bands, careers, featured posts, Guest lecture, Music, Music Industry No Comments

Guest Lecture – John Williams – Record Producer

As well as highly successful careers in A&R and songwriting John Williams has produced records by The Housemartins, The Proclaimers, Petula Clark and Michael Nyman and Radio 1 sessions by The Cure and Killing Joke to name but a few. This week he came to Lincoln and talked to our Audio Production students about his latest production; Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott’s What Have We Become album.

John’s fascinating and insightful talk took us through the entire process of making the record – from budgets, to arranging rehearsals, to booking the studio, to tracking and overdubs, through to the mixing and mastering stage. Full of excellent advice and suggestions, John demystified the whole process, stressing the importance of keeping things simple and always focussing on the song and the performance. Rehearsal time is absolutely key to this along with not getting too caught up in the technology of recording and unnecessary audio processing.

For our budding record producers, this was a hugely valuable lecture which gave some great insights, not only into the technical and organisational aspects of recording an album but also highlighted the people skills needed to manage groups of musicians and performers whose (often fragile) egos of can at times be a bit of a handful!

Listen to John speaking about the role of A&R on Simon Mayo’s Radio 2 programme here (20/01/15):

November 18, 2014 bands, careers, featured posts, Guest lecture, Music, Music Industry, Recording No Comments

Cutting X-Factor – on AVID with multiple soundtracks

X FACTOR 2014

VT Editors, often have to wrestle with a huge amount of sound information. Especially on shows that have discreet microphones all over the place – such as the X Factor.
Editor Janci Kovic recently did this screengrab of his final timeline for a Bootcamp Episode of X Factor. This was bootcamp the episode after auditions.

Having the ability to cut off words, change the order of what judges are saying and soloing the backstage reactions at the same time was very helpful to get the story done.

Audio was recorded and captured on STEINBERG’S Nuendo Live

THE AUDIO TRACKS SHOWN INCLUDE:
Jury 4ch’s, crowd 2ch’s, singers port, mic and his instrument 3ch’s, band 12ch’s, backstage with moderator 3ch’s, stage mix 2ch’s, music 6ch’s, sfx 4ch’s, vo and other ports.

THE VIDEO was recorded on QUADRUS

November 8, 2014 Audio Post Production, bands, featured posts, Industry, location sound, POP, sound editing for visual media, TV No Comments

Steve Bernard – 2013 Alumnus

I’m Steve Bernard, a BA (Hons) Audio Production alumnus from the Class of ’13. Since I graduated, I’ve been employed at Cooz’s Recording Studio, in Oxford. My relationship with the studio actually began almost three years ago, after my first summer at the University of Lincoln, when I did a week long work experience there to enhance my CV. This led to an internship which I maintained around my degree, and I was offered a job at the studio after I finished my third year.

Working at the studio has been a great experience and I’ve recently found the most success as a Hip Hop producer – we were fortunate to have a break with a South African rapper called Rowan Groom, and his contacts and reputation in the emerging local Hip Hop scene has meant that business in this genre has skyrocketed. In the last 6 months, I’ve worked with a wide array of talent, producing mixtapes and EPs local rappers and singers such as Apt Ochiela, Carby, Manny O, Ellie Robbins and Rifle.

Getting business for my work relies heavily on word of mouth and networking. Whilst I have had success in building my reputation in the Hip Hop genre, Oxford’s music scene is much better known for the rock outfits it has produced over the years – most notably bands like Radiohead and Supergrass, and more recently Foals and Stornoway – who all had humble beginnings in the live music circuit around the city. Because of this, I started an initiative at the studio called Cooz’s Live, which offers bands the opportunity to have their live shows around the city recorded with our mobile rig. We’ve built up strong working relationships with a number of venues and promoters in the city, and eventually led to us working at the o2 Academy, recording touring bands such as My Life Story and Stiff Little Fingers.

Working at the studio has placed me right at the heart of the Oxford music scene, and allowed me to network closely with a number of bands and artists. On top of working on their recent recordings, I am now the live sound engineer for two up and coming Oxford bands, One Wing Left and Fracture, and I’ve started putting on my own gigs to support the continued success of local artists. I’ve also given workshops and lectures on music production at Oxford Cherwell Valley College.

Outside of music, I continue to work in sound for other media; I mixed the sound for two documentaries recently, one of which was picked up by the BBC. The Lincoln School of Media prepared me exceptionally well for life after university. As a student, you get a broad range of in depth training in a variety of media, from experts who have been out and done it themselves, on industry standard equipment. Studying there was such a rewarding experience, but it’s only the beginning and I’m very excited by what I’ve been able to do since then!

Picture – Steve with the director Kevin Cousineau mixing the Bad Company documentary.

August 18, 2014 2013, Alumni, bands, featured posts, Hip Hop, Music, Recording, Students, Studios No Comments

Producing The C-FaB Album

Blog post by level 1 AP student Rory Hunter.

Recently, myself and a team of Audio Production students at the University of Lincoln, recorded some tracks for the upcoming C-FaB Festival’s compilation album. As the music is country, folk and blues, the brief for the album was for it to sound as live as possible.

My first idea of capturing a ‘live sound’ in the studio was getting the artist/band to come in and rather than record the separate parts of the song, record a full complete performance of the song. This method brought a variety of advantages to recording along with some pitfalls to carefully think about.

The main advantage that came from this method of recording was how natural the recordings sounded. They flowed better, had more feeling in them and felt more of a real representation of the artist and their music. Performance are rarely perfect, it was the small imperfections in these performances that made it work.

The recordings came out well due to how comfortable the artists felt when performing. A studio environment can be quite alienating to some musicians, especially when they are more used to playing live. So when asked to just perform a song as they would at a gig, it felt a lot more familiar and comfortable for them. This is certainly beneficial for bands as they are more used to performing with each other rather than separately.

Inevitably the pitfalls we had to be aware of were technical ones. The first thing was microphone placement. Although this is important in all studio situations, there were more things to consider than usual. Avoiding spill between microphones was something we were always checking and thinking about. We knew it would be impossible to completely eliminate this from happening but we tried our best to reduce it. This was obviously easier to do with the solo artists, (although the acoustic guitars had a tendency to pop up on the vocal mic). However, with bands, we had to think about where each instrument would be in the live room and how we could isolate it. We used methods such as foam boards and grouping certain instruments together and giving them their own place in the room.

Our main incentive for making sure we did a good job on microphone placement was to make the tracks easier to mix. It was in the mixing stage we would truly find out how good a job we had done with our microphone placement. For example, there was one track that needed the vocal level increasing and the acoustic guitar level decreasing. However, due to the acoustic guitar spilling in to the vocal mic, a relatively simple task became more complex and required some clever mixing.

Sticking to our brief of recreating a ‘live sound’, we avoided as much we could in altering the sound with any plug-ins as such. It felt more like polishing a performance rather than mixing individual performances in to one track. However, panning was hugely important to the mixing of the tracks. Particularly with the tracks with more parts, it was key to making the tracks feel fuller and richer and give each instrument its own place in the mix.

Overall, I feel that going for a ‘live sound’ was extremely beneficial to the album. It really suits the genre of music and represents the festival well – an event that is all about live music. Although it wouldn’t be suited to every genre of music, I would definitely experiment with this recording style again as I feel it has a lot of potential benefits.

C-Fab album tracks recorded and mixed by Rory Hunter, Vashti Hayes, Anthony Belcher, Matt Jones, Adrian Rayworth, Jack Martin and Gaz Bailey.

May 23, 2014 bands, featured posts, Music, Recording, Students No Comments

I’ve Played In Every Toilet

John Harris visits some of Britain’s surviving small music venues and asks what will happen if they disappear altogether.

All over the UK, small music venues are threatened with closure, or have already gone out of business. Many of them have hosted gigs by truly legendary names and were once securely built into the so-called ‘toilet circuit’, which allowed promising musicians to take their first tentative steps on the national stage. Without them, we may not have heard from Coldplay, Oasis, Blur – or such contemporary talents as The Vaccines and Mumford and Sons. But crushed by powerful landlords and the rising expectation that music – whether live or recorded – should be free, these places are struggling as never before.

John’s journey takes in The Forum in Tunbridge Wells, once an actual public toilet, which has survived over the last twenty years because the volunteers that run it haven’t profited from the business. He also travels to Hull to visit the Adelphi Club, a semi-detached house on one of the city’s residential streets which has hosted bands such as Pulp, Green Day and Radiohead. Manager Paul Jackson says things have been tougher than ever for the venue, but he’s determined to carry on.

Finally John visits Newport, once home to the legendary TJ’s where Kurt Cobain famously proposed to Courtney Love. Speaking to the daughter of the former owner John Sicolo and Nicky Wire from Manic Street Preachers, he finds out what happens when a town loses its beloved venue.

He also speaks to DJ Steve Lamacq and journalist Kate Mossman to consider how – without these venues run on a mix of hope and blind faith – we will discover the next generation of musicians.

Producer: Simon Jacobs
A Unique production for BBC Radio 4.

February 14, 2014 bands, featured posts, Radio 4 No Comments

win an online mixing session at Abbey Road

AVID/PRO Tools COMPETITION

Win an Abbey Road mix/mastering session and Pro Tools® system
The Beatles. Adele. U2. Lady Gaga. Ready to add your name to that list?
Avid have partnered with Abbey Road—one of the world’s most famous recording studios—to help artists and musicians make music history.
they’re looking for one great song, chosen by a panel of industry heavyweights, to win an online mixing and mastering session at Abbey Road and a Pro Tools|HD Native system.

Enter now for your chance to win the industry’s respect, fan exposure, plus free gear from Avid and a mix/mastering session from Abbey Road, adding up to a value of over $7,000.

Get heard, get discovered, and break through.
Judge’s Choice
Three winners, as chosen by the judges, will receive:
Their song/track mixed and mastered by Abbey Road’s online services (worth $1,300)
A Pro Tools|HD Native system with Pro Tools HD 10 software and an HD OMNI interface (worth $5,999) each
Exposure across Avid’s website and social online channels

People’s Choice
The highest voted artist will receive:
An Mbox Pro audio interface with Pro Tools 10 software (worth $999)
Exposure across Avid’s website and social online channels

Get Involved
Submit by: March 13, 2013, 10 am PDT
Vote: March 14, 2013, – March 21, 2013,
Winners Announced: April 10, 2013

February 8, 2013 bands, careers, Composition, electronic music, Industry, POP, Pro Tools, Students, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Losing My Minor Key – REM remixed

I came across this today (apologies to Dave McSherry who currently has this song as an ‘earworm’ in his head), but I was amazed at the psychological difference turning this song into a major key makes.

Recently produced by Major Scaled – a version of REM’s ‘Losing my religion’, remixed in Major Scale
https://www.facebook.com/MajorScaledTv

This artists work is being removed by major labels so you may not get to hear this for long….

this is from the vimeo post – http://vimeo.com/57685359

“Someone has gone to the trouble (I don’t know how but would suspect using Melodyne DNA or somesuch) of processing REM’s minor-scale downer hit ‘Losing My Religion’ so that all the minor notes are now major. When I followed the link I thought it’d be a cover, but no, it’s the original, processed. It’s uncanny – the song is just as familiar as always but the impact is utterly different. Kind of like finding a colour print of a film you’d only known in black and white, or seeing Garfield minus Garfield for the first time. I like it.”

Major Scaled #2 : REM – “Recovering My Religion” from major scaled on Vimeo.

you can read more here

January 22, 2013 bands, Composition, electronic music, Experimental, Industry, POP, Uncategorized 1 Comment

LONDON 2012 – how ELBOW created the Olympics Theme

This is a great insight into how Elbow went about probably their most challenging brief.

“Go into a studio and come up with a global Olympic theme”. It starts with a brass fanfare where the first five notes relate to the five Olympic Rings. It’s a call to attention. The choir was introduced to make it more ‘everyman’. It will become another familiar BBC sporting theme which will be remembered by a generation. Though as Elbow’s Guy Garvey admits, “It’s never going to be as good as ‘Ski Sunday’ theme is it?

Mercury Prize-winning group Elbow have spoken about how they created their anthem for the BBC’s Olympics coverage.
Entitled First Steps, the new piece was recorded with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the NovaVox gospel choir.

watch the
Behind the scenes film here

First Steps is accompanied by an animation produced at Passion Pictures, showing the landscape of the United Kingdom transformed into a giant sporting arena inside the Olympic Stadium.

Guy Garvey and therest of the band spoke to the BBC about their inspiration for the music and the recording process, and the video’s designer explained how he created the look of the graphics.

The track will be available as a digital download only.

The trailer has been devised around the concept of “Stadium UK” and cleverly uses animation to transform the United Kingdom into a sporting hub where athletes prepare and compete in the Olympic Games. Exchanging swimming pools for the English Channel, running tacks for the streets of Britain and gymnastic apparatus for famous London landmarks.

July 27, 2012 2012, bands, branding, culture, Industry, orchestral recording No Comments

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AVID/PRO Tools COMPETITION

This is a great insight into how Elbow went about probably their most challenging brief.