Project 1: Neve Studio Session

This week, our group had a 7-hour session in the Neve studio on Tuesday and I'm really happy to say that we recorded all the sounds that we needed and are well on our way into mixing! These were the first studio sessions where we had everyone in the group available and it was great to have everyone's input when we were recording and editing, which made the the sessions run quicker. Here's what happened in the studio:

In the Neve, we planned to record some guitar as well as some foley sounds, and if we had time, to start editing all the sounds/instruments. We had some technical problems at the start with getting signals out from the console, into Pro Tools and out to the monitors, but after some trial and error pressing buttons, we solved it. Next, we had trouble getting signals from the microphone to Pro Tools but at the end, we found that it was just the faulty mic cable giving us a hard time. Then, we had phasing problems with the headphone mixes and later figured our way around it. Yeah, it was a frustrating first hour or so but we deeeefinitely learned a thing or two in the problem solving department, easily.

After all the commotion, we finally got back into schedule. We first recorded Brea's breathing so it portray's the little boy's panting throughout the video. We recorded her in the live room and had her face the console room so she was able to see the screen where the video was being played. This allowed her to time her match her breathing with the intensity of the scenes. After 2-3 recordings, we got a great take!

We needed a heartbeat sound for the second half of the video but couldn't find heartbeat samples that would suit the mood of those particular scenes, so I suggested that we record heartbeat sounds using... my throat.

I suggested we record a repetitive 2-beat sound from my throat by positioning the microphone in front of my neck. Then we can EQ the sound, drop it down a couple of pitches, add some reverb and you'll have a heartbeat.

And well, it worked!

I got this idea from one of my all time inspirations, TOKiMONSTA, who in her studio tour, explained how she samples sounds from a Chinese pellet drum, and how she edits these samples by pitching it down to create hollow, bass-y sounds.

TOKiMONSTA's Studio Tour (Pellet Drum at 1:52)

Ever since I've heard about this method, I've always been eager to try it out when creating some of my own sounds/beats in future projects so I was glad to be able to use it for this project.

We tried to record some of my guitar melodies but because there wasn't a clear tempo throughout the video, it was hard to even know where to start as I always need to have some sort of structure when I'm playing. Also, some of the mandolin synth notes that were playing throughout the video weren't really in the D minor range in the beginning so it was difficult to distinguish what kind of chord I should be playing in. We solved this problem by shifting some of the midi notes around so it was in that chord range. After recording about 3-4 takes, it still didn't sound like a structured melody as there was no tempo to play with and I was just improvising and plucking at different times. So I decided I'll go home and edit the whole guitar part, come up with some sort of structure and re-record if I need to.

After the recording process, we started editing the velocities and also the pitches of all the sounds and instruments. We all thought the synth bass sound didn't really suit the whole soundtrack so we went through the synth bass category on Xpand!2 and auditioned all the sounds and noted down the ones we liked. Because we were in the Neve studio and it has one of the best monitor speakers, the quality of the bass was incredible to hear and the rumble it caused throughout the room was Heavy.

So yeah we spent about 15-20min messing around with auditioning synth bass sounds and just appreciating the monitors from every corner of the room, it was nothin.

After choosing our perfect synth bass, we roughly edited the velocities of the midi notes as well as the foley sounds. We played the whole project and we were really happy with our progress so far!

For our next studio session which will be in the MIDI studio, we plan to continue editing and start mixing and hope to have a rough exported mix by the end of the session to present to the class on Monday. I'll have the guitar melodies edited and structured so that it all makes sense before our studio session.

Woo really happy with our group and our progress with this project! It has made me want to work with sound design as it's been a fun trying to find/create sounds. It's been good!