This week we had a guest lecture from Ken Blair, an acoustic, classical, and jazz music recordist. He’s also the owner of BMP recording based in the Lincoln Sparkhouse, however involves traveling lots to places such as London.

Classical music recording involves recording a number of instruments at the same time. Due to this there aren’t usually overdubs. If someone makes a mistake, a whole new take needs to be made, and cuts can be made in the editing process to cut the better takes together. Ken explains that during classical music recording it’s not normal to spot mic each individual instrument, and would usually utilise stereo recording techniques.

Ken works more for publishing as there isn’t as much classical music releases anymore. He says that his biggest clients are companies that produce audio books and music syllabus training for music exams.

His routine on a normal recording day would start around 6 to get to London to set up for around 8 and start the session at 10. He would set up the microphones first. One of the positions, he would use a broadcast stereo technique ORTF, using matched pair of 414’s 14cm apart at 110 degrees. Because an orchestra doesn’t fit in a studio, a hall is usually used; therefore a control room has to be built from scratch. An issue with this being there needs to be a way to get all the cables into that control room. Ken showed us some pictures of halls in which there where holes in the wall for this purpose, and some where he, done this himself.

He then moved on to talk about the roles. That being producer and engineer, and how this can sometimes be the same thing, but very different jobs. He talked about how he needs to keep track of each recording with a recording log and needs to be able to read music pretty well, especially when editing the music together.

Ken then talked about how he got into the industry. He started by doing a degree in sound recording, this was a sandwich course involving 2 years course, 1 year placement and 1 year course. He managed to grab an opportunity in a well-known studio abroad. Since then he has been engineering and teaching for around 15 years.

This lecture was extremely useful and interesting has Ken then gave us some advice on how to get into the industry, whatever the speciality is. He advised to treat people well and this creates goo relationships that could lead into more work. Make a CV that is skilled based, with the first page completely selling yourself.

Katia Isakoff for a guest lecture, to talk about ‘Women Produce Music.’ Katia is a music producer who co-founded the West London studio, UNIT20, with producer Steve D’Agostino in the mid 90’s. This was an artist-led studio that specialised in a variety of things including: analogue synthesis and drum machines. She had come in to talk about an organisation called ‘Woman Produce music’, which she and Richard James Burgess had founded. She explains how the industry is still mainly male dominated and the purpose of the organisation is to promote collaboration, and for woman to be recognised in the industry. Katia outlined that she is not a hard-core feminist that’s trying to eliminate men from the industry but points out that with explains, that woman aren’t recognised in the male dominated industry.

Katia explained the industry is and was a male dominated industry but is changing. In 2011 herself and Richard James Burgus presented finding of a join research project, (Katia researched in UK and Richard in the US)’women in music production, education, representation and practice. She said that there was around 515 music related course in the UK and only 10% attendees are women. I personally think there is definitely a lack of women in the industry, and something does need to be done to promote collaboration in the industry to change this.

We had a guest lecture from Dan Shepard, who produces Radio features. He has been working for the BBC, working on radio features for around 20 years. He also formed a business called Far Shoreline Productions, producing features, podcasts and radio programmes for the BBC. Before the lecture we were required to listen to a few pieces. The first one was a world service feature about traveling across Australia by train and the other was ‘cutting up the cut-up.’

He started by talking about the different between radio documentaries and radio features. Documentaries are generally news based, whereas features ‘explore ideas and people’ and be quite poetic. He explains that a good feature, allows you to explore your imagination though the use of sound.

The use of sound is very important in any radio piece. In features, you can either record sound effects on location or get them from a sound FX library. Other sounds such as vox pops and views from previous features can be used, found in archives.

There are two types of Features, Presenter led, ( e.g. the Cut ups example) and montage (e.g. train example) He talked about the process montage example of the Train Journey, and how he had to record lots of interviews and sound effects. Tis required finding people on the train to describe what it was like, and using field recording techniques

Dan explains the reason he makes features is: He says

“You can go into a subject in great depth and explore different shades. It also gives you scope to explore a subject that can transform you, and encourages you to create the images in your head.”

A feature producer is in charge of everything including producing, editing and research. It is then passed onto the studio manager, who does the final mix and delivers it for broadcast.

Cut Ups is a presenter led feature, and has more of an orthodox and conventional format. The presenter is there to explain and sign post the audience, rather than using sound to just create an image.

Podcasts transform the world of speech radio. Dan gave a strong opinion how the future of radio lies within the podcast. He also mentioned how a budget for a standard feature is around £6000-7000, which isn’t a lot considering the costs etc.

Although not being particularly interested in radio, I was interested by the way he was passionate about creating a feature that puts the image into your head, and the commissioning process. It was also really interesting when he talked about he sees Podcast being a large part of what radio is.

Jez Riley French is known for his experimental recordings through the use of non-conventional microphones and homemade/ modified contact microphones. He shows a huge fascination for sound and explained how he can listen for hours to the sounds he records. Jez introduced his lecture before jumping straight into showing us examples of his field records. He introduced his field recordings by showing us an image of the environment he recorded, explaining the microphone he used and his approach followed by the recordings itself.

Some of the examples included metal staircases recorded by contact microphones, picking up a very interesting wind ambience sound. Another example was a recording of the Bethlem wires in Iceland. The wire vibrations created a deep resonance sound, in which he later explained that’s what they used to record the Star Wars Blaster sounds. He also experiments with water sounds and showed us examples of a recording from a glacier in Iceland and the sound of water beetles in the water. All these recording sounded very interesting and I’ve even considered purchasing a contact microphone to experiment as they can pick up some amazing atmospheric sounds that could be used for visual or even music.

Jez also showed us some of his equipment, some of which included: Ultrasonic detectors, coil pickups (good for recording light bulb buzzes), VLF (Very low frequency detector), contact microphones, hydrophones and recorders. He talked about the importance of using a good quality recording mixers/recorders, as handheld recorders create horrible preamp noises which can mean that certain and interesting frequencies might not be picked up, in which I need to think about when record field sound effects.

Jez also went on to talk about how he is approached to create sounds or if he has sounds to fit films, TV programs and games. He talked about how building an archive and specialising in a certain type of record or in specialising in recording certain objects, you are more likely to be approached for sounds of your archive.

This lecture overall was very interesting and inspiring. And techniques and information from this lecture cold help when creating sound effects, potentially even for developing LO2, when in the post production stage of my project. This has also inspired me into wanting to create an archive of recordings and record unique things. His use of contact mics creates very interesting ambience sounds that would be very interesting in atmospheres in films and games etc. which I definitely want to experiment with.

Guest Lectures – Bryan Rudd

We had a lecture from our course leader, Bryan Rudd; to talk about the creative process he went through, when working on a radio drama called ‘Chronicles of Freedom. This lecture was a case study to show us the creative and research process of a project like the one we are currently taking on. He started discussing the overview of the project, moving on to various issues he had, to research he undertook, to details that he would include in the final artefact in our project. He ran out of time in the end but gave some examples of questions that we may want to consider in our viva voce, and who he would answer them.

The project, (‘Chronicles of Freedom’) was a 5 part radio drama commissioned by BBC radio 7/BBC radio Humberside. The drama was to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of William Wilberforce’s Elimination of the slavery bill and traces the life journey of Wilberforce towards ending slavery in Britain. Bryan’s role in this was: Producer, Co-director, Editor, technical production and music composer. He was also involved in this project at a fairly late stage, therefore didn’t have long to complete the task.

Bryan talked about some of the issues he had. Some of which was pre-involvement issues such has agreed budget not being large enough and actors already been chosen. However it has a 12 month schedule and he came in around 9 months in. He then moved on to talk about all the research he was required to do, including historical research (to insure it sounds like it’s from that time period), location research and technical research.

I found this lecture very informative around completing a professional audio project. It has helped me see the creative process that Bryan has been through, and made me think about solving problems that might come around and researching more in depth in my own project.