Just a short update on a couple of shows that I’m working on right now.
Firstly, is BlazeBlue OneLine which is a show that I designed the sound system for and also helped oversee the final stages of the sound design. The brain-child of Anthony Hamilton, this show mixes steet art and modern dance. I know that makes it sound a little like a community theatre outreach program, but this show is the furthest thing from it. Dancing with Anthony is Luke Smiles - these two guys are among the finest contemporary dancers in Australia right now - and this show is so packed full of unexpected moments and general awesomeness that you really have to see it to believe it. Now much time left however as this show is on tonight and tomorrow night at the ArtsHouse Meat Market in North Melbourne. Details here.
Secondly, I’m in the process of doing music and sound design for another ArtsHouse show called Get A Grip. This is a show that has been devised by the Trace Elements crew who are a diverse bunch guys that do “Parkour, Stunts, Performance, Athletics & Art”. This show mostly centers over Pakour and a huge scaffold set has been built inside the North Melbourne Town Hall for the show. Its shaping up to be quite a show and these guys can really move. The show also has a couple of films as part of it that are looking great. I’m working with old buds Nat Cursio (direction) and Jenny Hector. Find details on the show here - starts this coming Tuesday. This video below is from the development that trace elements did last year for ArtsHouse.
Apologies that I haven’t been posting in a while. Much has been happening. Here’s a little summary of what’s been happening.
Work has began on the Acolytes soundtrack. I’m assisting my long time friend and accidental brother JD Franzke on his first feature film score - which basically entails being a Pro-Tools nerd, making some sounds and recordings and also being a dogs-body and roustabout.
OUTPOST which is the A/V laptop jam night that I help run with some friends will have been running for one year this month. The next night is on 26th september at Horse Bazaar. On the same night at Horse Bazaar will be the launch of Digital Fringe as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. More info @ the OUTPOST website.
The Red Tree’s EP is closer to finishing - some vocals, overdubs and the final mixes to go.
All India Radio have been collaborating on a new album with Steve Kilbey. It looks like I’ll be mixing it sometime toward the end of october. Mr. Kilbey talks about the record here. It seems I’m someone….
The ambient diary is on it’s way. It’s a collection of the ambient music I make on a semi-regular basis. They’re made from a collection of synthesis stuff, found sound and binaural recordings. The idea is that it will be a podcast for people to download and have for free. When it’s all ready I’ll post more about it.
I ate a bunch of apples on-air for each apple user that subscribed to Byte Into It as part of RRR FM’s annual subscription drive. Check out the flickr pics of what ended up being a rather cleansing experience here. Also, Phil and I went down to the Malthouse Theatre to interview Cory Doctorow for the show. Corey was in town for the Melbourne Writers Festival. The interview is here. Cory is an absolute champ and pretty much takes the cake for being one of the most articulate people I’ve ever spoken to.
Well now that you’re updated, I’ll leave you to back to get back other things…
Tracking drums at Audrey Studios today for All India Radio. Recording drums seems to be the holy grail for lots of audio types and it’s a fair call. Lots of mics in a small area equals trouble, and it takes some time to figure out how to make it work for you. One of the things that is hard to get around is a good sounding drum kit. You must have this or else all your labour will come to naught. You can make any kit sound OK if you know what you’re doing as far as tuning, re-skinning and general maintenance go. But if that’s not your bag, you got to hire yourself a fine sounding kit.
Enter Travis Demsey. Aside from being a renaissance man (…he’s a busy guy), Travis has racked up a mighty collection of drums in his time. I think he told me once that when he was on tour instead of partying on, he’d get an early night after playing a show so that the next day he and his drum tech could head out into whatever town they were in to track down another set of vintage drums. That’s how you end up with 80+ odd kits I guess…! Travis puts his large collection to good use by hiring them and himself out to recording sessions. Travis appears with whatever kit you need, a few snare options and hangs about to set them and tune them to taste for your session.
Anyhow, Travis has this a’67 blue sparkle Ludwig set that is similar to this, - it’s a great sounding set of drums. I’ve used it once before with All India Radio. You can hear the (low resolution) results here on a track called ‘Four Three’. It has a great big old bass drum that sounds larger than it looks and has this great bottom octave - by bottom octave, I’m talking about the low down sub frequencies that you feel as much as hear. When you’ve got all the mics in place and have messed about with the options, it’s always a good feeling when you sit down to start doing the first bunch of takes and the kit sounds great. It makes the drummer happy to play and the band happy that their music is going to have a good solid foundation.
I get to hear and work on lots of records where people will track their own drum-kits themselves at home (or wherever they can). Usually the reason for doing this is money. Hiring a big room in a decent studio is not cheap if you’re an independent musician/band, and the idea of hiring a drum-kit on top of this (when the drummer usually has one) seems outlandish. At the same time however most everybody wants their records to sound as good as they can. There is a false economy here, because when you hear a lot of these self recorded drums they don’t sound so great. Usually the money saved on the DIY approach goes to paying a guy to sit down in front of a computer and replace all the sounds to get a better, but still not great result.
I think that it is possible to get a good drum recording with the equipment and resources that most people at home have access to. One important factor is the amount of experience the person recording has at recording generally (experience is a subject that I like to bang on about at length, but won’t here), and the other is the sound of the kit and the room it’s being played in. Instead of paying a studio nerd save yourself some money, and either get a guy to make your kit sound good (new skins, a good tune and all that) or hire a top sounding kit in for your session. This will get you much closer to a good drum recording than any amount of expensive mics and fancy recorders will.
Just a quick note to let you all know that I’ll be mixing Anthony Pateras’ new work QQ with the Melbourne Symphony this weekend coming. (Both links have details on the concert). The work is for 4 quartets (wind, strings, brass and percussion) with electronics (a MAX/MSP patch by Rob Fox to be precise). I’m sure this is going to be a great concert and it’s always cool to go and hear & see a symphony up close, as you can when the MSO play at the Malthouse. They like to pull out all the crazy instruments for the new music gigs as well….
Also Rob and Anthony will be playing their duo set on the same night in a separate little gig before the big show later. If you pay up for the big deal, you get the side order of art music free!
Saw this article in today’s AGE about Chunky Move’s“Glow”. I’m heading up to Sydney next week to put the show into the Sydney Opera House and operate it for a weeks worth of shows. I really dig this show. I think it’s one of the only successful ‘multi-media’ (…worst term ever - it makes me want to scream, or at least say a bunch of nasty & amusing stuff..) performances I’ve worked on.
I was chatting to some friends the other day about how it has taken about the last 10 years for ‘new-media’ work to start being interesting - rather than just stuff + screen, of which most is crap and dull. I think that it’s taken this long for artists to a) get a handle on the tech and b) start to be able to conceptualise from the ground up a place for the computer in performance. Thankfully the ideas seem to have moved on from the more process focussed stuff like, “Check me out - how awesome is that I can move and the stuff on screen does as well!?” or “I’m moving pixels in Melbourne and on the screen someone is moving the same pixels from Canada. It’s like talking on phone but slower and crapper. It’s the future.”
Apart from multi-media rants, I’ve been flat out mixing 2 records, one for a band called ‘Dust’ whose music I can best describe as ‘folk rock streaked with country, psychedelic and prog rock flavors’. The other disc I’m in the midst of is for ‘The Red Tree’ whose music is somewhere in the Sigur Ros territory of vast and expansive beauty. Then there has been the first two weeks of a new semester at RMIT, and more besides…
