Wednesday 25 June 2008

AA2 Semester1 Major Assignment

Band1: White Light
Practice, practice, practice. After the numerous preproduction meetings where I mentioned the bass playing was not up to scratch and more practice was needed, it was evident on the day of the recording that the bassplayer had only ever practiced during band rehearsals. That makes three practice sessions in three weeks. Not good enough. After all my effort to help these guys get to a level where they may actually get a half decent recording was pretty much wasted because of lack of practice by both the lead guitarist and the bass player. The majority of my time mixing has been spent attempting to make the bass player sound decent. It was as if a three year old had gotten drunk and at a spur of the moment decided to start bowing a double bass. It was that bad. Nothing was played in time. Very little notes were even played properly. And don't get me started on the lead guitarists girlfriend offering me her 'production' advice all night. The rhythm guitarist and lead singer, brilliant. For people that have never performed before, they practiced hard and it showed. From where they were a couple of months ago to where they are now is a huge improvement, but yes after you hear the recording they still need improving. Now don't get me wrong, I really like the song. It has so much potential but there would need to be some rerecording of parts. Also the percussion did not get recorded, but it wouldn't be hard to imagine where it goes. This is not only a demonstration of my engineering skills but since I was friends with members of this group, and they trusted me, I had the opportunity to expand on my producing skills as well. This song ended up being edited and mixed rather different in regards to structure and instrumentation arrangement than how it was recorded on the day.
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Band2: CASM allstars
This went very smoothly apart from the fact the drummer could not make it in the end, but we survived with a little ingenuity as described in the documentation. There's a couple of bum notes here and there, but hey, once is a mistake twice is jazz. It all adds to the style. It was all recorded in three hours and mixed the next day. If only everyone could come in and lay a track down in only three goes and let the engineer do his job. They took my suggestions well and tried a few different things, and when I said "let's do another take, because I think you can do it better" they did without questioning anything. Great stuff.
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