In Search Of The Ideal Music Venue

Screen Shot 2014-09-22 at 20.22.56

Trevor Cox Professor of Acoustics from Salford University goes in search of the best venues for different types of music. Trevor is fascinated by the effect that the acoustics have on the enjoyment of different types of live music. He visits various music venues and tries out their acoustics by playing his saxophone. He talks to musicians, sound engineers and experts in acoustics about the venues and the effect that their design has on the audience’s enjoyment of music. He asks whether the size and shape of venues has had an effect on the way music is composed. And he travels to Finland to meet Professor Tappio Lokki who can replicate the sound of famous concert halls in his laboratory.

With contributions from acousticians Adrian James, Rob Harris and Niels Adelman-Larsen, sound engineer Derrick Zieba, and musicians Jessica Cottis and Trish Clowes.

Listen to the BBC Radio 4 programme here:

Steve Bernard – 2013 Alumnus

Screen Shot 2014-08-18 at 11.30.54

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.

New Facilities

Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 15.02.04

In addition to further updates to the Lincoln Sound Theatre, and investment in a new stock of Zoom H4N audio recorders for radio students, LSM created a new Radio Drama Studio last summer, making creative use of space that was largely for storage, and giving much better opportunities for high class productions to be produced in collaboration with staff and students in Performing Arts.

Moreover, in October ’13, we had news that we had been successful in our bid to the University to get funding to replace and update, quite substantially, our multitrack studio. It is now equipped with an Audient ASP8024 mixing console, a range of new studio microphones (including the SE2200A and Audix drum mics) and outboard processing devices (such as the Chameleon Labs 7720 compressor).

This new kit, along with the Pro Tools HD2 system and Waves plug ins, provides students with industry standard recording and mixing facilities as recommended by our prestigious accreditation body JAMES (Joint Audio Media Education Support).

the Sound of Skyfall

The sound of Skyfall

The SoundWorks Collection dives into the latest installment in the long-running saga based on Ian Fleming’s James Bond character.

Director Sam Mendes (American Beauty and Jarhead) brings the audience an entirely new storyline to the Bond character in “Skyfall”.

Exploring the sound and music of the film we talk with Scott Millan (Sound Re-recording Mixer), Greg Russell (Sound Re-recording Mixer),
Karen Baker Landers (Supervising Sound Editor), and Per Hallberg (Supervising Sound Editor).

see also

http://soundworkscollection.com/skyfall

Producing a music radio package

WATCH THE VIDEO CLIP HERE

USEFUL ARTICLE/VIDEO about producing a music radio package from the BBC College of Production

A radio package is pre-recorded audio content cut together to tell a story and delivered for broadcast. There are no set rules as to how a package has to sound or how long it should last as this depends on the type of story you are telling and the radio network it is for. It could be a five minute news report, a lively film review or an in-depth biography of a composer.

Depending on what type of package you are producing it may include voiceover, interviews, ‘wild track’ (sounds from the environments where you are recording), music and effects.

Metropolis

Cultural commentator Paul Morley explores a history of popular music through some of the iconic recording studios in which classic albums were created.

Without them music as we know it would simply not exist. At its most basic, there’d be no technology to capture the sounds envisaged by the musicians and created and enhanced by the engineers and producers… and there’d be no music for the record companies to market and distribute. But more than that, the studios actually played a crucial part in the structure and fabric of the music recorded there – the sounds enhanced by the studio space itself… the potential and shortcomings of the equipment and technology housed in the cubicles… and the ability and ‘vision’ of the engineers and producers operating it all to find the new sound that makes the recordings sound different and fresh.

In the final programme of the series Paul Morley ventures to West London and one of the last major studio complexes to be built in the heyday of the music industry. But without an exalted musical history to fall back on and decades of experience to help run it, how do you go about creating a world-class facility frequented by the likes of Amy Winehouse, Mick Jagger and Rihanna… and how do you keep it going when all around you are closing their doors?

Producer: Paul Kobrak.

Listen to the programme here

Abbey Road Studios

Cultural commentator Paul Morley explores a history of popular music through some of the iconic recording studios in which classic albums were created.

Without them music as we know it would simply not exist. There’d be no technology to capture the sounds envisaged by the musicians and created and enhanced by the engineers and producers… and there’d be no music for the record companies to market and distribute. But more than that, the studios actually played a crucial part in the structure and fabric of the music recorded there – the sounds enhanced by the studio space itself… the potential and shortcomings of the equipment and technology housed in the cubicles… and the ability and ‘vision’ of the engineers and producers operating it all to find the new sound that makes the recordings sound different and fresh.

Today he visits the world’s first purpose built recording studio, and possibly the most famous: the one at No 3, Abbey Road, a stone’s throw from a much photographed zebra crossing in London’s St John’s Wood. Opened by Sir Edward Elgar conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in a recording of “Land Of Hope And Glory”, the studios went on to record everyone from Adam Ant, The Bolshoi and Nick Cave… to XTC, Diana Yakawa and the Zombies – to say nothing of Pink Floyd and the Beatles.

But that’s not what’s drawn Paul Morley to these historic recording rooms – it’s the continuing work in capturing the sound of orchestras that is put under the spotlight in this programme. With the help of engineers and producers, composers and those that keep the studios running on a day to day basis, Paul explores how the relationship classical music has with the recording studio differs from the one that pop music enjoys.

Producer: Paul Kobrak.

Listen to the BBC Radio 4 programme here

Rockfield Studios

“The era of the great recording studio being central to the production of great albums hit its peak around the time the Stone Roses released their debut album. By the end of the 1990s a combination of increasingly sophisticated home recording and the Internet era assault on traditional record companies with their big recording budgets was threatening the very future of the studio. Studios started to close taking their history and artistic and scientific knowledge with them and even though there was a greater mainstream appetite for pop music, the astonishing complicated machines responsible for the history of pop were becoming as antiquated as steam trains, as irrelevant and obsolescent as stately homes.” Morley, 2012.

Cultural commentator Paul Morley explores a history of popular music through some of the iconic recording studios in which classic albums were created. In future programmes he revisits some of the classical masterpieces recorded in the 80 year old Abbey Road Studios and cutting edge pop in Metropolis, the studio complex built when the music industry was at its most bloated peak. But he begins in the rural heart of Monmouthshire – at a studio that grew out of a farm and gave birth to some of rock music’s finest recordings – everything from Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” to the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album, from Dr. Feelgood’s “Down By The Jetty” to Oasis’ “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory”, even from the Waterboys’ “Fisherman’s Blues” to Adam Ant’s “Kings Of THe Wild Frontier”. Those trying to explain what part the studio played in creating such musical magic include performers (the veteran Dave Edmunds and the newcomers Iko), technicians (John Leckie and Sean Genockey) and the people who (in some cases, quite literally) built the studio and the business (father and daughter, Kingley and Lisa Ward, and Terry Matthews). As the money flowing through the music industry continues to dry up – Paul also asks what future there may be or the historic recording studios that helped build the industry in the first place?

Listen to the BBC Radio 4 programme here

Producer: Paul Kobrak.