Post Mortem - End of Year one

Well, we have arrived at the halfway point in the degree. We learned a lot about electronic music and its production this trimester. We were also dropped in the deep end with some Foley work resulting in some serious research from YouTube and Google to find out what was required. I was a little surprised that there were no formal lessons for the Foley work. I guess this was self directed learning? Either way, I did what I felt I needed to, so I could fulfil the set tasks. The good outcome is, I confirmed that I know how to be self-sufficient and be able to take initiative to find out how to do things without assistance.

The major project this trimester was “to mix electronic and acoustic music to create something of value”. Many students chose an incredibly wide array of submissions as this was such a broad brief and could be interpreted any many ways. I chose to team up with a capable student this time after my experience in previous trimesters, (a tough lesson that was). We chose to work from different ends of the spectrum. I chose to convert a predominately electronic (synth) based song back to conventional instruments. My colleague chose to convert an old school heavy rock song to electronic instruments.

My song choice was Depeche Mode’s, It’s no good. Depeche mode have a reputation of being predominately synthesizer based music. I planned the choice of instruments but no vocal track was available unlike my colleague’s song so I called upon a fellow student who has a similar voice to the original artist and set up some recording. To my horror, on the day of recording there was a major equipment failure in the studio I had book and I subsequently lost eight hours of studio time which is substantial. I was not able to secure any more studio time for two weeks which caused me great stress.

Where I could I used my equipment at home to record as much as I could, but an elbow injury caused me problems when it came to recording the bass. I ended up using a synth bass which is not what I wanted but it also maintained the some with both electronic and conventional acoustic instruments. I recorded the drums and vocals but I made the mistake of rushing the drum recording. It is imperative to ensure you have the correct and best recording possible prior to wrapping the recording session and mixing on to mixing. A valuable lesson learned there. As the recording session was so late in the trimester I had no more time or studio vacancies available to re-record the drums. I spent many hours trying to make the best of the drums.

I did not make a mistake on the vocals which sounded great. When you get to about three quarters of the song I decided to bring in the vocal harmony like many songs of the era did. The only difference was I decided to be a bit different and pan the main vocal one side and the harmony to the opposite side. This had a great effect and sounds fantastic. I was very impressed with the vocals overall, something that did go right from the very beginning.

When it came to guitars I was unhappy with my guitar ability so I once again called upon another fellow student who brilliantly came through for me with some great guitar work. I utilised Pro Tools guitar amp plugins which gave some very nice results but it took me some time to decide which ones were the best. I had too much reverb on the rhythm guitar which was pointed out by the lecturer and I turned it down substantially which improved the sound markedly.

Overall, the final mix is quite acceptable, but by my standards it is well below what I would like to achieve. I don’t want to be good, I want to be great. This leads me into what went right and what went wrong and what I learned from this which will assist me in future projects.

When I commenced this project I had a plan and schedule for how to proceed. The first hurdle was the lost studio time and my lecturer quite rightly pointed out how I should have a contingency plan in place for such an event. This is something I certainly will factor in for all future projects and life in general.

Another lesson I learned was the rushed drum recording. Not only did I rush the recording, but the drummer had been in a car crash the previous day and was having difficulty playing correctly due to pain in the left arm as a result of the accident. Not only was rushing the recording a problem but having an injured drummer complicated matters and I should have listened more critically to the recording at the time of the session before wrapping or allowed extra time for a follow up recording session. More valuable lessons here.

There are many lessons here and I am taking notice of all of them. I feel that overall I rushed the entire project. I already had a high workload and was trying my best to learn and understand how to do Foley at the time, plus my CIU project (in addition to the collaboration project) which was also soundtrack, voice-over and Foley. So when this came on top of that workload I guess I didn’t manage things so well. This is not just a time management issue but also a lesson in priorities. Managing time and priorities together is what makes you successful. I was having great difficulty with the CIU project where some of the team I was working with had major communication issues. It got so bad the lecturer had to intervene more than once. This was a distraction and caused me to lose focus.

Yes I have learned a significant amount this trimester. Time and priority management, planning at the outset. Having contingencies in place for problems as they arise. Assessing and understanding the task implicitly is another lesson learned here. I am thankful to to lecturer’s for their guidance and understanding.

The Bass MIDI synth I used for the mix

A screen shot of the Pro Tools session