Progress Being Made on The Black Hole Project

Sorting Out The Sound (Week 5 Blog 1)

Slowly getting the black hole project sounds sorted. spent more time on the light switch sound and added more distortion and equalizer into the mix plus shortened the transients on the voice foley clips, so l could get a better overall sound when l added the plugins.

Here are the clips with the vocal foley transients and we used some props in the C24 studio.

Above is the EQ plugin setting that helped develop the shorting light switch sound.

We used 7 tracks and 14 plugins to get a sound that ended up being as close to a switch shorting as it was turned on.

Our team has a preview in the theatre room this week so we better get it together.

Live Sound Mixing

For example, DSC means downstage center or OSL off stage left. We learned the terminology or the communication dialog which is used in the industry. We are expected to know all of the terms before setting foot into this work plan environment, so we can get jobs done quickly. Setting up the gear for preparation is done at a fast pace and you are checking off the equipment as you go in preparation for a live show.

For example, DSC means downstage centre or OSL off stage left.

I managed to get some pics of the signal flow of a live sound PA setup.

Here is a pic below.

As you can see, FOH is happy, MON is happy and the band is happy on stage.

Guitar Work For Side Project.

This week Phil and l went into the Audient 8024 to do the guitar rhythm tracks for our project. The microphones we used are as follows.

• Shure SM57

• Shure B52A

• Sennheiser MD421

• Audio Technic AT2050

Room setup for the session.

Microphones in mid/side position (microphones are Audio Technic AT2050)

We used house studio amplifiers for this session as it was more convenient and also gave us more of an opportunity to see if we could get a decent sound out of unfamiliar equipment. We placed 2 microphones in front of the Yamaha amplifier and 2 microphones in front of the Roland amplifier.

Yamaha amplifier

Yamaha amplifier microphones were

• Sennheiser MD421

• Shure SM57

Roland amplifier

The Roland amplifier microphones were

• Shure B52A

• Shure SM57

Squire Telecaster

We also used a passive DI Box, so we could get a clean sound. l used a couple of pedals in the signal flow setup as well. They were a Shark tuner and an MXR Distortion pedal.

Unforchantly l couldn't get hold of an A/B professional splitter box, so we had to use the line out at the back of the Yamaha amplifier and re-amp the signal flow to the Roland Cube amplifier.

I really wanted to have a clean sound through 1 amplifier and a dirty sound through the other.

We used the output on the DI Box to go straight into the Audient 8024 console and the thru output with the distortion and tuner going into the Yamaha amplifier which sent the distorted signal into the Roland amplifier. Not what l wanted, but you make do with what you think of at the time. Just thinking about it now and l could have tried putting the distortion pedal between the Yamaha amplifier line out and Roland amplifier input, which would have given me a clean sound through the Yamaha amplifier and a distorted sound through the Roland Cube amplifier. (Damn it)

Guitar rhythm tracks in the below pic.

Rhythm tracks finished

We managed to get it all done in a couple of hours and had time to have a little listen to the finished tracks.

Next week, Phil is doing the keyboards and l have booked the Neve studio to hopefully get the vocals completed. I'm leaving the lead parts to last before mixing the song down.