Production Journal

Sondheim Suite
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFphXVArzG-3flLlUS5ruLQ
The idea for my project was to record and video the music of various
artists as they sing original songs and covers. The musicians will benefit
from the high standard of recording quality, having a visual they can
upload anywhere along with it, and being allowed to experience a
professional working environment. I plan to use the finished recordings
and videos as evidence of my abilities as a producer and sound engineer.
This is a joint project with Joe Pearce but by the end of the process we will
have two entirely separate bodies of work to submit. The work will be
uploaded to a YouTube channel entitled 'Sondheim Suite', named so
because all recordings will take place in the Sondheim Room. I am using
this image as the project artwork:

The main sources of inspiration for this project are the Radio 1 Live
Lounge (https://www.youtube.com/user/bbcradio1) KEXP
(https://www.youtube.com/user/kexpradio) and NPR Music
(https://www.youtube.com/user/nprmusic). In the modern world the
internet has become the primary source of music consumption for the
general public. Sites such as Bandcamp and SoundCloud pull in huge
amounts of web traffic, around 340 million a year for SoundCloud alone.
YouTube being a video streaming service still benefits from this huge
demand for music. Channels which showcase bands and musicians
performing their music and the covers of others have become hugely
popular. Live Lounge has around 3,000,000 subscribers, with KEXP and
NPR coming in at 855,000 and 555,000 respectively. Clearly this kind of
music streaming is proving effective. Fans like to be able to see their
favourite musicians whilst also hearing their music. With that in mind the
target market is anyone who enjoys the music of the musicians I have
recorded, but I would expect that the general audience will most likely be
teenagers who are very into music and like to listen to unheard talent.

Suburbia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OgCEEDPSCg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVc5Q5Jh3mI

The first act we recorded were a band called Suburbia who have a heavy
Britpop sound. They recorded four original tracks for us entitled Rock and

Race, Just Hang Out, Wasting My Time, and I'm Free. The two tracks I am
mixing and submitting are Just Hang Out and I'm Free. The initial recording
sessions took place during the Easter holidays but we didnt record vocals
for any of the tracks. The lead singer returned to record the vocal tracks a
couple of weeks later. Originally I was mixing Wasting My Time instead of
I'm Free. However when I started to mix I found that many of the channels
(namely the Bass, the Vocals and Guitars) all had huge waveforms and
were distorting quite noticeably. Suburbia wanted to record a cover
version of Tainted Love so we decided that Joe would have Tainted Love
and that I could mix I'm Free instead. The band has an idea of what kind of
sound they're aiming for but I was largely free to experiment. For the 2
recording sessions I had the vocalist in the vocal booth, the drummer in
the live room and the bass player in the live room directly inputted into a
DI box. The lead Guitarist recorded through the ISA One in the studio so
didnt allow for changing of mic placement, I found that adding a Clean
R&B amp to the Guitars over the top of the distorted sound they were
recorded with created a very nice tone and by moving the mic around on
the plug in I found the optimal sound. I miked the drum kit using an Audix
F6 for the Kick, Shure SM58 for the bottom snare and 57 for the top snare,
an Audix F2 for the Rack Tom and Floor Toms, and 2 Audix F9s for the left
and right overheads. I also experimented with the lead singers vocals,
especially on Just Hang Out. He wanted a distinctive effect that could be
applied to all future Suburbia recordings so I opted for a moderate amount
of tape delay which he liked the sound of. I applied this same effect to his
vocals on the song I'm Free but with significantly more reverb than was on
Just Hang Out. However, Just Hang Out is a track with heavy
instrumentation (plenty of distortion) so I thought that a clean vocal sound
really wasn't mixing well with the rest of the band. I added overdrive to
the lead vocal track and brought up the drive while preventing peaking by
reducing the gain.
I would have preferred to record the Guitarist through miking his amplifier
as this gives greater control to both the performer and the sound
engineer.

Remi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTM0hrtI2tc

Our second client was Remi who had an original track to record entitled
Frozen Colours. This was the first time we had the media team come in to
do the visual aspect of our project. Remi already had a backing track that
had been recorded in his own time but wanted us to record his vocals and
then mix the finished project. We realised that it is easier for us to record
the music and then have the artist mime the song to the camera to give
the impression of it being recording and videoed simultaneously so after
recording the vocals we asked Remy to sit in front of the cameras. We set
up a microphone to make it look authentic but it wasnt plugged in to the
stage box. This song was mixed and submitted by Joe. Remi came back a
couple of weeks later to record a cover of the song 'Stone Cold' by Demi

Lovato. I thought that this would be perfect as a cover of a popular song is

great at attracting peoples attention to a channel or artist. This track was
relatively easy to record as it only consisted of keys and vocals. Remi
already knew how to play the song so I had him play in the chords through
a MIDI keyboard. He didn't play to a click, at first we tried with him playing
over the original track but then found it more effective for him to play at
his own speed. Vocals were recorded straight after and the whole session
took around two hours. The media team came in again the next day to
film a video for this track which came out well. Mixing Stone Cold was an
easy process. I first tried moving every piano note into exact timing
through quantizing but found that it took away from the feel of the song,
while the timing was slightly improved it sounded very programmed so I
stuck with how it was originally recorded. As there were only two tracks
the song required very little EQing or panning.
However, Remi has a very dynamic style of singing so Compression was
needed. While at the very beginning his voice is low and quiet it quickly
becomes overpowering on the chorus. While a little automation was used
the vast majority of this problem was sorted via compressing the vocal
track just enough so as to not take away from the power of the singing.
Reverb added a lot to the track so I used space designer to give the
impression of a medium sized room for both the vocals and the piano.
If I were to re-record this track I would give Remi better instructions on
mic technique or even reduce the level of signal coming in to the
microphone. There is one occasion on Stone Cold when his singing
becomes so loud and direct into the microphone that the signal distorts.
(It is at 2:57 on the video)

Southside
After this we recorded a band called Southside who had an original track
to record entitled Use Me. This was a sparse recording which consisted of
2 vocalists, an Acoustic Guitar and a Cajon. I aided during the recording
session but Joe mixed the final track. This session was the most unique of
the project as we had a media team videoing the band as they performed.
Obviously, this creates a better visual for the music as everything is
perfectly in time. I would have preferred to do this for every recording
session but it was difficult to make the studios, the musician's and the
media team's schedules align. However, we later learned from the filming
crew that there was unspecified problems with the video and they
requested that we redo it but due to time constraints this was not
possible.

Petrichor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFJpmTLG7eU

The final song recorded for my project was a song entitled Pulling Me Back
by Petrichor which is an indie pop song. For the recording session the
drums and bass were recorded first with the bass going through a DI box

in the live room, then the 2 Guitars were recorded via the ISA One and
finally the vocalists recorded separately in the vocal booth. Overall, this
track consisted of Drums, 2 Guitars, Bass and 2 Vocals. This was the
hardest to mix as there were a variety of performance and sound issues.
Due to the absence of a pop shield there were a lot of plosive sounds on
the vocal track. I remedied this by adding low cut to the EQ which
removed the intensity of those audio spikes. Also, the Lead Vocal and
backing vocals werent quite working in harmony even when melodyned
(both the pitch shift and modulation set to 75%) so I cut them so that they
sang a section each rather than together, only singing together during
prechorus and the end of the chorus. The Drums were out of time in
places so had to be cut up and moved into time as did the Guitars, I
accomplished this via crossfading. The Guitars were given a brighter tone
via amp inputs. There was a drum fill mid song that was played badly so it
had to be cut and replaced with a regular section of drumming. This
session wasn't videoed the same as the rest of the project, instead the
media team used actors in order to create a music video for the track. I
thought that this would look good and would make an interesting change
for the YouTube channel whilst still being relevant to Sondheim Suite as
the audio was still recorded there.

Patrick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nduV2w50S5w

I helped with a small side project that I will submit with this work as it fits
the criteria. Patrick wanted me to record him playing some drums solo. I
booked Studio 1, set up and miked the kit and communicated with a
media team as they wanted visuals to go along with this recording. I
miked the drum kit using an Audix F6 for the Kick, Shure SM58 for the
bottom snare and 57 for the top snare, an Audix F2 for the Rack Tom and
Floor Toms, and 2 Audix F9s for the left and right overheads. Originally,
Patrick was going to improvise some drums over a metronome but he
decided he wanted to cover the drums from Macklemore's track 'Can't
Hold Us'. This was easily done as all we had to do was open a 10 hour
version of the song from YouTube and play it through headphones into the
room for Patrick to play along to. The recording session took around an
hour and the mixing took around forty minutes to complete. Essentially it
was a basic drum mix, EQing was used in its usual places (low shelf on the
Kick, removing bad frequencies from the Toms, etc.). However, I ran into
problems with the top and bottom snare. I think that it was possibly faulty
cables or mics but the signal was tinny sounding. I remedied this with
drum replacement using the EXS24 Sampler by selecting appropriate body
snare and transient snare samples.

Typically the original recording would play with the sample in order to give
more authenticity to it but the originals signal wasnt good enough to
leave in the song so I cut it altogether. The Floor Tom was a problem as it
had a bad resonance which I removed by attenuating the 240Hz frequency
via the EQ. As well as this the sound of the other drums were
reverberating inside the Floor Tom and creating a low pitched background
hum. I remedied this by adding a gate to the Tom so that it shuts after the
initial strike and ringing out has occurred.

Overview
I think that Sondheim Suite could very easily compete in the market it is
aimed at entering. Given time to grow I feel that it could take advantage
of the many musicians out there who may not have the popularity to
appear on channels such as Live Lounge and KEXP, but definitely have the
talent and the motivation. I believe that we have some very creative
musicians showcased on the channel and that this is one of the strengths
of the project. The logo is simplistic but striking with the red colouring and
white background, it also goes very well with YouTubes colour scheme.
Advertising is an obvious method of monetising this project as it is a
YouTube channel, once a channel reaches a certain popularity it is
approached by advertisers and can eventually even be paid to upload by
YouTube. Also, events and gigs could be held or advertised for the artists
on the channel, with the channel taking a certain amount of revenue.
If I were to redo this project I would have made certain that I could get a
media team, the musicians and the studio time to coincide as even
though the miming of the songs worked, it is still out of time in places and
is especially noticeable to me as the creator of the project.