Tuesday 15 December 2015

MIDI

In our MIDI lessons over the past few weeks we have been working on soundtracks and development of our musical ideas by creating short phrases for different adverts.

Here is one of the longer projects for the soundtrack part of the course



This piece was called 'Movement in a Scene' it was about two people in bed together that has a macabre feeling to the piece


Monday 14 December 2015

Recording over the past few weeks

In the recording aspect of the course we have been working on the track 'Supermassive Blackhole' with Matt, Amy, Sophie and Reuben; we started the track from scratch. We started off by recording drums, we used the AKG microphone set for recording drums, this includes:

  • AKG D112
  • AKG C 430
  • AKG D 40
  • Shure Sm57
(Yes we used the Shure mic for a snare, as there wasn't one for the snare in the AKG box). We found this a very good way of recording the drums, we patched these microphones into the stagebox. From the stagebox, the signal went into the Focusrite and TLA pre-amps, where we then recorded the signal into Logic. 

For the vocals we used a Rode NT2a in the booth, again going into the TLA pre-amp. The Rode NT2a is a great sounding condensor microphone, we used it because it is very versatile and worked perfectly for Sophie, Matt and my vocals. 

When we recorded the guitar, Matt and I recorded it in the live room without the studio, so we had to run it all off my laptop. We had Matt's guitar running through a Blackstar amp, then had 2 microphones (a Shure Sm57 and a Sennheiser E606). 

The bass was the easiest part to record because all we had to do was plug the bass into the TLA pre-amp and then patch the pre-amp into the desired channel. 

The MIDI was just recorded on a MIDI keyboard through the MIDI interface. 



Saturday 12 December 2015

Music Performances

So far in the past few weeks I have played live in three different situations.

The first was playing on Eastbourne Youth Radio with my friend Reuben playing on the drums, We played two for my composed tracks.

The second was playing at Printers Bar in Eastbourne, this was the first of my live gigs playing my music, you can listen to a very bad recording of some of the gig here: https://soundcloud.com/catsloveyoutoo/for-your-viewing-pleasure

Finally the third was a performance with some of my friends in my Music Performance class at The Archery Centre in Eastbourne, we only played one song (Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix).

All of these performances have boosted my confidence for performing live dramatically, I can not get up on stage without any worry or butterflies.