final blog

to summarize my final EP i think that it went well as far as making the tunes and mixing and mastering the final 3 tracks. original i had about 5 tunes that i wanted to use but in the end i ended up only using these 3 because i felt that they were my best track and there ones that come out the best all in all. however i think that i could have spent more time recording more audio sources but as a lot of our studio sessions were canceled due to out performances for others tasks always fell on our studio days which meant that we had to work much harder in the sessions we had. as far as the EP cover went i feel that i could have done better the cover is pretty simple and im a bit disappointed in it. i think if i had ask a friend from the art department to work on something with it, it would have come out much better, so i had to settle for 2nd best really and depend on my self to do the cover, this it the main thing that i feel has let me down and as i don't no much about making a artwork but all in all i'm happy with the way the tracks have come out and think that the musical values are good

week 9

this was my final week to get my mastering done so i loaded my last track which was called "space invaders" this was my main track for the EP but when i was mixing it down i felt there was something missing so i went through some old vocals i had and found one were this guy was talking about Space invaders and thats were the name for the track came from. one big problem i had with this was that i thought i didn't have enough recording in the track so i routed some to the synths to an outboard efx unit and added some reverb and recorded it back into logic. i also used Ozone to mix and master this track as i felt that for the other two tracks it worked perfectly so i couldn't go wrong. and as this didn't take me long i stated putting the tracks on to wave burner and mix down the tunes on there so that all the levels were perfect and how i wanted it. i also used Ozone on this as it had a cd master preset, this made the cd sound really profesitional

week 8

this track i mixed down my 3rd track which was called "one foot step" i didnt really have many problem with this track because i split the bass in to two files one was a a pure sub bass and one was the distorted sound with a low cut on it so it filters all the low end frequency. when it came down to mixing the vocal tho i had wanted that to be the main focus of the track and this was hard as it had some effects on the voice but in the end i had to turn everything else down just to make the vocal louder. then i herd some sounds on my ipod that i really liked for example there was a air horn and some lazer samples and they fitted with the track so i used a mini jack to 1/4" jack and ran it through the mixer so i could route it in to logic and mix in some of these effects. and i also used ozone to master the track which meant i could had a tiny room reverb and use the harmonic exciter this made the track sound more clean and a bit brighter.

Week 7

in this week i had finished doing all off my recordings and started to do my mixing and mastering of each track. so the first track i mixed was "proof is in you" the first track i recorded and the main problem i had with this was the bass, i wanted to make the bass sound powerful but still not over powering the track. the problem was that the kick drum and the bass kept clashing and sounded horrible so what i had to do was low cut the kick so the the drum sound was less subbby and more of a high pitch punch this meant that my bass-line could then go low and not clash with anything. but it also meant that my bass-line was not as powerful. once i had done all this i bounced it into a brand new logic track so i could start mastering the track. when i was searching for synthesizers i also found a mastering plug in called "Ozone" this was perfect as it had a all mastering effects like a mulit band dynamics and a panoramic EQ this made the track sound really professional.

week 6

as i know we had to have 3tracks for the FMP so for the final track i used a vocal from one of my classmates we set up a "AKG 414 condenser mic" we also set up some foam walls so that it would get rid of all the natural reverb once the mic was set up we got the performer to go over his verses so that we could plug in the "TLA compressor" this ment that the vocal would sound a lot more cleaner and you would b able to here there actual words spoken from the verses. once all the vocals had been recorded i had started on making some melodies on logic but i couldn't find the right sort of sound i wanted so i looked for some third party VST's that i could use in logic with some good sounds that i could use, i found a synthesis called "massive" this was perfect as it was made to produce most styles of electronic music. and once i found the right sort of sounds then i started to produce my track.

Week 5

in this week i needed to work on my second track so i was thinking of what i could record in. i deiced to use some drum hits so that i could program them into a drum sampler on reason.i used a SM57 mic to record my snare samples from the top and bottom, as i felt this was the best instrument mic to record a loud sound very close (SPL level) after i had done this i loaded all off these sounds into my sampler and started to work with the track i made the rest of the track on reason using digital synthesis like "malstrom & thor" then i bounced evething and but them into logic ready for the mix and mastering stage.

FMP BLOG WEEK 4

In this week i arranged for a guitar player to come and work on the first track for my FMP, we meet up previously befor the session and shared some idea's, so that when we came to the recording session we was able to crack on as soon as possible. so the first thing we did was to mic' up the guitar amp, i deiced to use a SM57 mic because it has a good SPL level which ment we could crack up the amp to get a nice full sound and also the frequency response of the mic was perfect for recording the guitar amp, after this was set up we got 4 guitar parts record and arranged for a basic skeleton, after all the tracks were finished we used the same mic and set up 2 snare drums to use as a sample that i could trigger via MIDI on the computer. we also use another SM57 to record the snare from underneth so that i could have 2 different recording to play with on a trigger pad. we recorded 4 times but in the end we chose the recording that we felt was the best and as there was roughly 5 people in the room i had lots of feedback for the best snare sound. once this was was done we took everything down and padded up the booth so that it would dampen the room so i could get rid of all natural reverb in the room so i could record vocals as the guitar player i had was also a talnted singer as well. we used a TLA compression unit on his voice to make it sound fat so we could get a decent recording to play with, also we use a pitch correction plug in to give the vocal a bit more of a future sound so that the vocal would belnd in with more of the electronic sounds and this finished off my session.