Trimester Re-cap: Accomplishing Goals Left, Right and Center!

This trimester was a hoot! What a great series of learning curves and experiences, ranging from difficult to the complete unknown. Overall I have been feeling quite positive about my experience at university but this trimester brought along a new feeling, a deep love for what I am doing and a drive to be great. This passion has come from my latest two projects, Mufaro and Auburn. In this Blog I will be reflecting on both projects and their final outcomes, as well as other side projects I have been a part of! Firstly, my side project, Auburn.

Auburn

I had the opportunity to Produce, Mix, Record and Master a Shoegaze track for a local Gold Coast Artist. The song's title (or working title) is Auburn, its a long shoegaze track that is distorted, warped, dense and psychedelic. I was excited to work on this track as I would be acting as Producer and mastering Engineer, something I haven't done for another artist before. The project overall timeline started via recording in my bedroom and ended by mastering in the Avid S6. what started as some cleanly recorded vocals and DI'd Guitar lines has ended in a distorted and psychedelic journey of a track, I am so proud to share the latest my latest project, Auburn.

This being my first role producing an entire track for someone else, it was a weird experience. I found that the constant back and forth would end in a lack of hype from the artist, so getting good feedback can become difficult through over exposure. This issue came up through my lack of confidence in creating something that the artist likes. Even though we have similar musical interests and was working form a reference track, I felt that I couldn't just go 100% and have him be so positive to my decisions or interpretations of his idea's. He ended up being incredibly positive to my production choices, opting to push the track into a more psychedelic and noisy wall of sound direction, instead of the smooth and lush sounds of the reference track.

There has been a lot I have learnt within this project, one of the biggest things I have learnt is gear quality. When I began this project I had known bug never truly understood the sound advantage higher quality gear (or genre specific gear) can bring to the table. My I have found that my own Focusrite 6i6 sounds terrible, well, not really terrible but very digital. It lacks the warmth and organic sound that I have come to love when working with the Avid HDX interfaces, Avalon Pre-amps and Neve console. I had felt like I would be able to work at home and create the sounds I want and love but after hearing the sound of the interface I am a little worried I wont be able to achieve this. The Interface is not incredibly transparent either, so using Plugin's cant fully mask the sound, which is apparent in my production (probably my biggest gripe with the final outcome). The vocals have a very digital and 'unnatural' sound to them, especially when comparing to the rest of the production which is warm and filled with beautifully natural harmonics (using great VST emulations ect.).

The final outcome is something that I am incredibly proud of and am hoping it can become a partnership that continues to grow outside of university. I feel as though this is one of my greatest works so far, it highlights my passion for the wall of sound and distorted textures while also keeping depth and clarity to the parts that need it, putting a spotlight to my engineering skills.

Mufaro

My Main Project this trimester has been working on the Mufaro EP with Callum. I have been keeping everyone updated with the process as we went along, but here I will just cover it in a final reflection. The Project is a 5-6 track project, but due to Mufaro still being in the writing process and having time constraints on being able to get the project recorded, we were only able to complete 3 of the songs, which we planned for. The lead single, Closer, was a worked on together between Callum and Myself handling the Recording, Mixing and Mastering. While Games Pt.1 and This Must Be Love were worked on separately, where recording was a joint effort, I handled the Mixing and Mastering to Games Pt.1 and Callum to This Must be Love. Below are the three mixed and Mastered tracks;

**The songs are private due to the project not being released**

There has been a lot I have learnt through this project, most importantly, I learnt to love the process. From having Mufaro in the studio, to mixing down his tracks, Mastering them and even just organising it all with Callum, I loved it. It was the first time I actually sunk my teeth into a studio recording to get the best result possible, something I haven't done up-until this point. I had always been working within the realm of Electronic Music Production, though i had gotten good results from recording numerous times before, I had never worked on that I have recorded to get it to an industry level. Never have I spent the time working away at sounds, carving and constructing something great, which I have felt I finally achieved in this project. This is most prominently evident in the track Closer, which we received external feedback from Andrei Eremin

Effectively, everything that Andrei had said is spot on to what Callum and Myself were thinking. I was happy to hear that Andrei was able to pick up the reason's behind why we did what we did with the track, i.e. Keeping the instruments very organic and fluid. Though he brings up a great point with the compression, it is something that I have since started to do with the other tracks I am working on for Mufaro, mostly with the Vocals. As he said, he would address that in the mastering stage, and as we have tried to do also, I would love to know how he would go about doing that. It would be interesting to see how he could take that final stereo mix and give it the overall consistency he had said. I feel that coming out of this it really goes to show how far I have come this trimester in the way of professional recording. I had felt that at the end of last trimester, I was capable of creating professional sounding electronic music consistently but lacked with my recording processing. I am happy to say, through the feedback, Callum and Myself have made a professional recording project, achieving my personal goals of last trimester and the goals I had before coming to university!

Monica

This trimester I have worked with a graphic design student, Monica Mendoza. I firstly commissioned her to create a Logo for my Website and from that point I ended up working with her on a few different pieces. I have since gotten her to create the branding for my website and external work, making a business card and Logo. I have also gotten her to create some album cover's for the Auburn Project and finally created a jingle for her final project. Below you will find the Logo and Business Card she had created for me, the album covers for Auburn and the jingle;

**Album Covers to be implemented once uploaded**

**Song has been published publicly on soundcloud**

Other Projects!

Below are two links to my previous Project Reflections, I cover all I need to say in those blogs, so rehashing that information is not necessary.

• Anta

• QWO

Reflection

What have I learnt?

This trimester I saw myself growing further then ever before in the world of audio engineering. The range of skills I have picked up has be exciting to say the least, from producing to advanced technical knowledge (I say advanced Lightly, because there is still so much to learn - I say more so in comparison to my previous self). mastering has been the most exciting things to learn this trimester, I have always been interested in mastering and considered it a possible career option, after this Trimester it is something I want to take very seriously. I also learnt a great deal about Bit Depth and Sample rate, I had previously felt that 96kHz was just to allow more clarity and dynamic range in the recording, but my fellow peers opened my eyes to its Foley capabilities. Warping an audio track recorded at 96kHz compared to 44.1 is astounding, where 44.1 could sound like a glitching hell, 96 is a clean and smooth sound, even when warped and stretched to hell. I could only imagine how nice 192 sounds.

Producing is probably the second biggest aspect to take away from this trimester, My growth as an engineer has been tremendous through the experiences I have producing artists. My time with Mufaro has been one in particular where I exceeded my own expectations. I acted as a vocal coach for him in a previous session, something I didn't think I could do. Not only this, but helping them achieve their goal, The decision of adding finger clicks to the track Games Pt.1 was an idea I planted in their brain, just simply asking while clicking along, "do you want to add that to the track?".

What now?

The end of this trimester has filled me hopes and dreams to accomplish my goals. I feel as though moving forward I have been given the best stepping stone from this trimester, though there are still some aspects i would like to work on, I stand in a position where I am 'balanced' in my knowledge and the only way forward is experience and to keep on learning. I could still fix things like my work ethic - esp. time management and etc. but apart from that, I am confident and excited about moving forward. I am excited to work on my own productions and create great content with my new found knowledge as well as help others achieve their dreams. To leave you, I will be posting a track I made in week 1 of this trimester, something I will be working on over the break :)

Much love