Free Foley Pack

I have a foley pack of almost 300 samples recorded by myself and a colleague of mine available for free download. The pack includes all manner of things from vegetables being tortured, to power tools being used, creaky doors opened and even an old coffee machine pump. It was a great time recording all these things and they have come in so useful to myself that I thought I would share them with any and all.  

Pro Tip: There is an old rake being bowed by a double bass bow which makes a killer creepy gate sound. 

Confessions of an Addict

I’m here to admit something to you all, to finally come clean. I am an addict. My obsessive behavior is tearing professional career apart. Days that I could be working are spent indulging in my destructive. Yes, my name is Hugh and I am a gear addict!

“HI HUGH!”

But seriously I do often think about how much time I could be doing something productive that I spend drooling over the next mic. Sure it’s important to stay updated with the latest technology, but you can’t put the pre-amp before the performance. In other words don’t allow the fact that you can’t afford or don’t have gear allow you to stop making or recording music. The Beatles recorded their second album with just two tracks of recording. Albeit two tracks of recording through an EMI desk with beautiful microphones but still, I can’t remember the last time I recorded a drum kit with two microphones, let alone an entire band.  

These days there is an absolute plethora of gear to check out and it’s all just a mouse click away. But take a look at the piece of gear sitting on your studio desk, the one that you bought 6 months ago after an intense period of longing. Is it collecting dust or have you just put it down after a monster session? This is an important question to ask yourself as you are purchasing gear. So often the grass can seem to sound so much better with a brand new mic, until you get there. And then you’re just going to need that valve preamp.

So go and use what you have and use it well. I am in the position – as I’m sure many of you are as well – where I need the gear to get the job to get paid in order to get the gear… The cycle is viscous and real. But don’t let it get you down. There is a reason there is entry-level stuff. Skimp, save and get what you can to get your first jobs. People paying you $150 for a session aren’t expecting racks of 1073’s. There is a plethora of gear available that will do the job well and won’t leave you having to mortgage your house.

The State of Loudness

Back in the early 90s it became apparent to the industry just how powerful the effect of perceived loudness is. Anybody who has some experience in audio will know just how impressive it is to bump up your mix a few dB, or to run the vocals through a compressor that’s really just boosting gain. It’s a phenomenon that can be creatively used to great effect. Bringing a loud and heavy drop after a quiet breakdown is the basis of 95% of all electronic dance music. It intrigues the ears and excites the listener.

 

This is something that was known for a long time before the 90s, however what they realized was that this effect directly correlated to songs playing next to each other on the radio. If a song came on that seemed louder, the listener perceived it as being better and this supposedly meant more record sales, which of course meant more money for the record company. So, pretty quickly there became a massive push for mastering engineers to start hitting their equipment as hard as possible without completely destroying the fidelity. There was less care given to the sonic quality of the song and more towards just how it loud it was going to sound. By the mid 2000’s this trend was in full swing and it became a war (or race as mastering engineers are pacifists) to see who could pull the loudest sounds.

 

But music, like so many other things in life, is a balancing act. If you take away something from a whole then it’s going to feel off. If you emphasize something to the extreme then be sure to expect that something will diminish. In this case, when you aim for the heights of loudness while mastering then your compromise is going to be the dynamic range of the track. And not just throughout different sections, but between the balance of the instruments too. This, for some genres and pieces of music might not be too much of an issue. But for so many it will take away the life, the breath. Having music “brick walled” creates a fatiguing listening experience and can seriously take away the impact of a performance.

 

So where does this leave us? Is music irrevocably ruined? I wouldn’t throw out my stereo just yet. Interestingly one of the things that has been so terrible for music in so many ways is starting to reinstate the dynamic masters of yesteryear. Itunes, Spotify and other electronically based listening mediums actually employ loudness normalization algorithms in order to keep consistent volumes between different tracks from different eras. To achieve this programs generally utilize a relatively low loudness standard. What this does is it allows a large headroom margin, ensuring that a normalized dialog track that plays next to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring will sound (on average) the same volume, while still affording the Stravinsky piece the room needed to deliver a shattering crescendo. What’s really incredible is when a hyper compressed piece of audio plays against a relatively un-compressed piece it’s the hyper compressed piece that suffers, sounds flat and uninteresting.

 

Beethoven v.s. Opiuo

So due to modern listening methods and loudness normalization it is the general hope of many (myself included) that we will see a return a mastering process where less attention is given to the loudness and the engineer is freed up to focus on sonic quality.

The Plugin of My (And Your) Dreams is Here

The one thing that's always been missing from my digital analog racks has finally arrived! No more blank spaces in my pro tools sessions. No more empty racks showing the lack of wiring and dissapointing my clients!

Boz Digital Labs have finally put together something spectacular! A completely 100% authentic emulation of a genuine rack spacer. Put this on everything and hear just how much it will change your sound. And what's more is that its completely FREE! Whats more, is it has 4 different emulations of different spacer types -  I promise the Elite really does make you feel like you're better than everyone else.

Grab it here and check out the video below!

 

 

Electronically Analog

Welcome back to my bloggy ramblings. I'm sure you're wondering what you're doing here again, I can assure you I am as confused as you. I have spent the last 4 weeks banging my head against various assortments of audio gear. Eventually I have found that if you bang long and hard enough the gear starts making nice sounds (or maybe thats from the concussion, who knows?). 

My goal for this song was always to bounce it down into separate elements, import it into Pro Tools, bring it into the analog world on the audient desk and then mix it down there. With this goal in mind I was always conscious of not getting too finicky with eq's compressions and reverbs, if I used one of these things it was crucial to the sound of that element. This gave me a surprising amount of creative freedom as I wasn't constantly going from writing to mixing and back. In this way I could really focus on one thing at a time and not have to switch around headspaces too much.

Mixing on the Audient was a great experience, having to run around from one side of the room to the next to change a level was a healthy change from my usual spot propped on my chair moving nothing but my hands. Having hands on control of pans, levels and eq's was really cool too. And having access to reverbs that don't sound like a digital mess... Golden.

Overall however I believe the cons outweighed the pros. The biggest one was simply not being able to utilise hindsight. Once you leave the studio you can kiss any changes to the mix goodbye. This was a massive bummer to me, the first thing I did in the morning was to listen to the mix again. Of course there were issues. In simple things like levels too. But due to the nature of the beast I can't change any of that. Furthermore due to the track constraints of the avid interface I had to bus a few nice sounding stereo effects into mono. This affected the stereo balance of my mix a bit but not so much that it was disastrous. 

Overall I think that it's a good idea having two different workstations - one to mix and one to write - but I think that the final product would benefit far more by keeping it all in the box, perhaps writing in Ableton and then bouncing into Logic and mixing there (I love logic's reverbs btw). Anyway check out the tune below if you're interested. I'm pretty happy with how it came out in the end. 

 

The Legality of a recording

Lately I have been pondering a question that may not strike our minds too often while we pull that massive drum sound... Who owns the rights to this recording? The fact is that this is a complicated issue (who knew law was complex?!) but nonetheless I will attempt to decipher this issue so as to make it vaguely more approachable for you - and myself.

Copyright law in Australia is based upon a 1968 Commonwealth Act, including several amendments under this act. Many artistic and inventive things are covered under these acts but what we need to focus on specifically is: Musical Works & Sound Recording Subject Matter Other Than Works. These are two separate and distinct parts of this Act and both protect different parties rights in different ways.

Musical works belong to the writer of that work. If you can logically and reasonably argue that you have had a part to play in the writing of a musical piece, then you may have a claim to the rights of that song under Australian Law. That is provided that the work was published or made in Australia or a country on a list of complying countries (for those of you keeping up this does not include countries such as China and Iraq). But then you have to take the lyrics of a piece into account, this is covered under a separate literary copyright. 

On top of the copyright for works there is a separate amendment to the act which covers "Subject Matter Other Than Works". This, once again covers a large range of subjects but of a particular interest to us is sound recordings. This roughly defined as the aggregates of sound within a record and there are all manner of situations in which different people are granted the copyright under different scenarios. The most important thing to take note of here is that the Copyright Act actually allows you to come to mutual agreements as to who owns a particular recording. 

So write out agreements. This is the only and most important thing I am writing about. Make sure that whenever you make a recording that all parties are aware of who owns what and that this is all documented in writing. Otherwise all manner of troubles can come out of it. If you are sampling any recognisable piece of music, even if you rip it apart, stretch it and reverse it, if it  can be traced in any way back to the original you can be in deep, expensive poo.

So write your agreements and pay session musicians and enjoy all that royalty money that comes.

Make your own XLRs

So with uni out at the moment I've at a bunch of time to work on little projects. Plus, lately its felt like money is more precious than time and so making - rather than buying - gear seemed like a logical choice. 

This is a relatively simple project that really only takes an afternoon and will save you big bucks in the long run without compromising on quality (both in audio and aesthetics). Its also a great way to get your head around soldering, something that is always handy to know when dealing with any electronics. 

What you will need:

  1. A soldering iron
  2. Solder
  3. A pair of wire cutters
  4. XLR cable
  5. XLR male and female ends
  6. An ohmmeter (optional)
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First thing is to slip the threaded ends on to the wire. Let me repeat this. SLIP ON THE ENDS FIRST. This is not a step to be forgotten. If you do you're going to end up having to de-solder all of your beautiful connections, slip on the ends and start again.

Now you can strip all of your wires. Be careful not to cut too much of the wire while pulling off the plastic. If you get a braided wire like I have then you have to unbraid it first. This can be a little finicky at first but your best bet is to grab a pair of wire cutters and slowly pick away at the braid until you have exposed the wires underneath.

Next cut away all of the cotton strands and twirl the wires together. At this point you're probably going to want measure out the wires so that you get shield right up to the end of the cradles. This will ensure that you don't get any shorts in the wire down the track. 

After cutting to length you can tin the wire and the cradles. The best way to do this is to sit the hot soldering iron on the object to be tinned and then slowly drop the solder into place. You don't want heaps here, just enough to give it a small coating.

The diagram below gives you a good representation of what goes where. Ground will always be connector 1. The hot and cold wire you can interchange so long as you ensure that 2 goes to 2 and 3 goes to 3. When you get everything lined up and looking good you want to get into your soldering, there are a myriad of videos about this on youtube so I wont get into it here. Just ensure that your iron is very hot and very clean. Also it helps to have some sort of clamp to hold what your soldering. Otherwise you can be chasing it all around the table, not an ideal scenario. 

Finally, when everything is screwed away looking all professional then pull out the ohmmeter and check each pin. Alternatively plug it straight into your favourite mic and record some sweet sweet sounds with your shiny new XLR cable. 

I hope you found this of some use. I've got a couple more DIY projects in the pipeline so check back soon.

Cheers!

How relevant are the Grammys?

Kanye is in the news again for "sticking up for creativity" during this years Grammy awards ceremony. A noble thought, but how worthy is this cause? I decided to search for a creative vein which must still exist within these awards. Instead, after half an hour of searching, I was cast into such a mind numbing tornado of boredom. Controversies ruled and the music took a second place to LA based drivel. I resigned to forgoing my hunt for the silver lining and to just state what we all know deep down about these awards. 

We can equate it to the football world cup. Entertaining, but not about to change the way that I go and kick a soccer ball. In fact its worse than that, its more like cock fighting is to MMA. Irrelevant and a cheap distraction from the heart of the art form.

Basically their outdated, they honor cultural success over any kind of creative or intellectual milestone. As Maynard James Keenan of Tool has put it:

" I think the Grammys are nothing more than some gigantic promotional machine for the music industry. They cater to a low intellect and they feed the masses. They don't honor the arts or the artist for what he created. It's the music business celebrating itself."

So what is the solution? How do we better structure these or any awards and if we could, would there be any point? In order to answer this we need to look at the root motives for these awards and those of the artists attending them.

I think it vitally important that we keep tabs upon our reason for making music, to whom we are making it for and what is the goal of this music. I believe that the vast majority of artists started writing for themselves. They had to. Its such a long and arduous process of finding and sculpting a sound that you would have to love it. But when success comes knocking upon the door you then have to start treading the line between writing and performing what you love, and what your audience loves. Hopefully these two things keep relatively in alignment. If not then your fan base will undoubtedly let you know.

We need to keep in mind that these awards are nothing but a cherry being thrown on a cake by an arbitrary fashion show posing as a serious institution. They never should be any kind of motivation for making music nor should they offer any kind of validation for you making the choices you did. If you think they do then you may have lost sight of why you started making music in the first place... For you. 

So lets not lose sight of the reason that we make our art, even amid all the expensive dresses, thongs and champagne. It is mainly an ego show anyway, as is this article really. So please, don't take it too seriously. I certainly try not to. Hopefully, if we all try to ignore their boorish headlines and events, like a child screaming for attention they will eventually shut up and then hopefully this will be the last time that I ever have to write about the Grammys.

Zoom H6 VS Tascam DR 680

I've spent the past 3 weeks researching what is going to be the best way for to go about recording audio while away from the studio. After some careful deliberation I boiled it down to two units the Zoom H6 and the Tascam DR 680. 

Both of these units are entry level in terms of price, they both have the ability (with some attachments and modifications) to record 6 channels of audio and they both record 24bit/96kHz audio. And while I do think that the DR 680 would ultimately be the superior unit, for my immediate needs and unfortunate lack of funding, the H6 has come out the champion. 

In the end and after weeks of head scratching it came down to a good old pen on paper list of pros and cons. Here's how I eventually broke it down:

h6.jpg

Zoom H6

Price: $435

4 ins

Ok pre amp, not as good as 680

Lighter and compact                    

Comes with 2 stereo mics

~ 5 - 8 hours battery life

 

Tascam DR 680

Price: $635

6 analog ins / 2 digital ins

Quieter pre-amps

More professional looking for clients

Would have to buy atmos mics

~ 30 - 90 minute battery life

Basically, its clear that the DR680 would give me a decent recording device. I would however be left to have to go and buy microphones for atmosphere recording and a battery to sustain it for longer than the often cited 30 minute recording time with 8 (!!!!) AAs. With the savings in cash here I could then invest in a far superior NTG3 (over the NTG2), as well as putting cash away to eventually get external mixers (like the sound devices 302) in order to improve the sound quality of the H6. 

 

So in conclusion if you have the extra 500 ish dollars then I would probably nab a DR680 and upgrade it all the way. If however, you are like me and are still waiting for people to start throwing money at you, the H6 seems like a good answer for the meanwhile.