…and here’s a fairly cruddy christmas tree I quickly drew directly into Virtual ANS… merry christmas!!
Spectral Christmas Tree
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Spectral mischief – Michael & Alexander, I thank you.
I have been messing around with Virtual ANS (incredible spectral editor by the more incredible Alexander Zolotov) a bit this week thanks to a good mate of mine pointing me in the right direction… how did I not know about it until now??!!
Anyway that led me to some Spectral plugins I haven’t used before that are pretty tasty – developed by Michael Norris. Check out his site – he’s written some beautiful music, and given us easy access to spectral goodness – nice!
Stereo Induction Coil microphone!
Ok it’s been over a year since I last posted… I got married, started a company with two of my favourite sound boys – String and Tins, and then had a baby… he’s seven weeks old. I will try harder I promise!
I have been exploring different mic techniques a bit lately… so while on paternity leave I made a double induction coil microphone – it was easy to make, two coils out of two relays, a bit of stereo cable, bam!!! Oh and the heat shrink etc…
Jez Riley French sells good ones to get you going… amongst other joyful things.
Here are some initial rough recordings – no editing as such, no processing, so be warned this is for soundies not consumers:
Getting in a pickle with your foley…
Just a quick one – I have had the fortune to spend the last couple of days doing sound effects at Goldcrest’s foley room a for a cool project I am working on – recording various things we could get our hands on: guns, broken glass, metal cogs and wheelbarrows to old indescribable mechanical objects… basically a sound designer’s dream! I just thought I should give Julien the foley engineer there a shout out because him and Mattias were great to work with.
So, if you are in need of anything from an Uzi 9mm to a lovely pair a coconuts, I can tell you Julien is the man… here’s a link to his blog:
Nick Toons burpfest
I worked on this a couple of months ago – I am a bit behind on keeping things up to date due to various significant personal things going on (getting married being one of them woop woop!) so just putting it up:
Derek Best of Nickelodeon fame asked me to produce a bit of music and sound design for a Nick Toons advert – we tried a couple of different options but the vibes of my dubstep versions were a bit too heavy so Derek found this lovely bit of Ballet by Delibes (Coppelia) and instructed me to mash it up a bit.
I started by chopping up the track into individual notes in my sampler, then constrained it to tempo, chopped it up more, programmed a load of drums, did a tempo ramp for the finale, added more drums, and boom: classical music for the kids with a bunch of childishly wonderful farts, burps, zaps and swooshes added for good measure. Enjoy!
[vimeo 68236282]Carling: Trick Shot
Carling are using a piece of my music on their new ‘Trick Shot’ Campaign. Thanks Eclectic Music for putting it forward! It was mixed and finished off at the lovely Factory Studios by Anthony and is on air as we speak – have a look:
Moving coils and binaural spectacles!
I have just got a couple of new mics, a pair of hydrophones so I can do some underwater tests I have planned, and a really cool induction coil pickup – it basically amplifies electromagnetic activity, really simple and sounds awesome, if you like that kinda thing. Anyway here’s a quick vid off my phone of my first test running the little feller over the rack in the studio I was working in today – the constant interference is my Tascam dr40 chirping away, I reckon if I use a better adaptor and a decent preamp I can cut that stuff out… anyway in this context it sounds kinda nice:
[vimeo 65910742]Earlier in the week I was doing a test for something and was using the incredible Neumann KU-100 binaural head… bit of a pain to wield the thing around and so I made these, the most stylish specs you ever darn seen eh… it’s a pair of DPA 4060s stuck with Rycote Undercovers – missing the ear canal aspect but gives a really nice 3D depth to the recording – demos to come at some point when I get time to do something interesting with them:
Max Cooper Feat. Kathrin deBoer
Just a quick note to promote a new tune and accompanying video by my mate Max – definitely worth a look and a listen:
…and another while I remember! I love the vocal treatment and the sync in the film is awesome:
Eargasm
Jeez louise I have just heard this for the first time:
[vimeo 24003197]Really good work, loving it! Sound design is by a New York based sound designer called Joseph Fraioli. Coincidentally he seems to love modular synths too… ö
Audi R8 V10 Plus
‘Evolution on the Outside, Revolution on the Inside’
Well I am sure that is the case… anyway I was asked by BBH / Rogue Films to record this car, going at 205mph on a rolling road somewhere near Manchester in a freezing garage. I went on to mix the multitrack iso recordings and add some sound design and this is the finished result:
[vimeo 62064607]I recorded the car with 6 different mics to capture different flavours of the engine: a dpa 4061 close to each exhaust on the chassis, a contact mic on the gearbox, an EV re20 under the floor (good for bass), and a mid-side pair of schoeps about 2/3 metres back from the car (far enough to avoid the heat) on a mic stand. Everything had a -20db attenuator inline between the mic and the Sound Devices recorder.
Here’s Minnie my dog checking the kit list the day before:
Thanks to Minnie the shoot was a success other than cutting my hand on the chassis and one of my mics getting frazzled.
I worked on the sound design from my studio in Tooting, adding some details and using various plugins including Aphex Aural Exciter and Sountoys Decapitator to give the engine as much punch as possible. I went to finish the online and tv mixes at the lovely Pure Soho and took stems to James Saunders at Jungle for the cinema mix, he’s got one of the nicest rooms in town and one of the best pairs of ears too, have a look at them here:
Much appreciation to producer Richard Adkins, creatives Olly Courtney & Tom Evans at BBH for getting me involved. The film was directed by Mark Jenkinson from Rogue Films – look out for the tv cut and the cinema versions coming to a screen near you soon…
will cohen 