An assistant engineers guide to assisting engineers and producers

An assistant engineers guide to assisting engineers and producers

Here's a guide on some this fresh interns and college students should know as an aspiring audio engineer . These tips will help you be successful at work and may even help you work you way up to the next level.

BB4 Studios Launches: World-Class Mixing & Mastering Facility Brings Innovative New Audio Resource to New York City | Mixonline

This beautiful room will be open for business in this new year of 2015 and I will be one of the mix engineers available using the room.  I am excited about this grand step of using a room that was designed with excellence in mind.   The facilities are gorgeous and the acoustics amazing and there is a nice blend of analog gear that will make any engineer or producer giddy! Read more here : BB4 Studios Launches: World-Class Mixing & Mastering Facility Brings Innovative New Audio Resource to New York City | Mixonline

The Far West Outfit: "May Veins"

We are happy to support our alumni and current student artists with their projects.  After a riveting

performance at Capstone 2013, The Far West Outfit is releasing their debut CD and would love for all

to come out and experience this huge step in their young burgeoning career!

Northern NJ based folk/rock band The Far West Outfit

is supporting the release of their debut EP entitled "May Veins" at Mexicali Live in 

Teaneck NJ on July 12th, 2013. They will be joined by friends/opening acts AJ 

Smith and Adam Lazor to kick off the evening.  

8:00 P.M.

Friday, July 12th 2013

 

 

Mexicali Live

1409 Queen Anne Road 

Teaneck NJ, 07666

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/TheFarWestOutfit

Holiday Time...the greatest time of the year

Its break time from school, holiday time with family, which means to me time to do something new! New, as in a project to add to my repertoire and continue my experience of making music and continued self-education!  So I challenge my fellow artists in this global community to do something out of their comfort-zone as we go into the new year.  And for those of you who may be thinking, like what? I have the perfect solution, a re-working of happy birthday, the song.  There is a contest being held by The Free Music Archive, and I urge all of you who may have an interest to check out their site and see how to submit your song version and what the outcome could be!  Enjoy your holiday and the best of luck to you all! Click here for more info...

JOBS JOBS JOBS

Its the holiday season and this usually means there is an abundance of seasonal work!  So while the semester is out why not take advantage of the free time!

I was at Guitar Center in Union Square, NYC...who in our department wouldn't want this job???

WHO DOESN'T WANT FREE GEAR?????

There is a contest by DreamGig  where you could win a about 6k worth of gear for your home studio.  This is more of a raffle but like they say you have to be in it to win it! Click here for more info and good luck!

RJD2 Talks about Production Techniques

I found this great conversation with producer RJD2 on 

Gearslutz.  

I really enjoyed the discourse and thought there was some useful insight into his production techniques and wanted to share!

Q.

Since this has been requested on another thread, i'm gonna kick it off.

RJ,
first off,
i'd like to know everything about the production and recording process of DEADRINGER.

-how long did it take you to finish this album? ... from the first sketches to the final mix and mastering.

-what equipment did you use?

and since this was asked on another thread:

-how did you get your drums to bang so hard?

A. haha, ok! here we go folks, im gonna do my best to answer 'em all.... re: deadringer. ok, the SPECS. get ready to laugh. the album was entirely produced, arranged, and composed using one mpc2000, one 1200 turntable, and one numark bullshit dj mixer with a fader that kept falling into the mixer, and an ADAT. it was mixed using a behringer eurorack 20-something channel board, one lexicon outboard unit i'd use for reverb, one ADAT. that's it. scratches on ADAT, synced to mpc. sounds dumped from mpc-ADAT to mixdown to DAT. 98% of the processing happened either going into the mpc, or within it. to go into this more would require specific examples. but i'll go into the drum thing a little: I'd generally hit the mpc inputs kinda hard. not distort hard, but not like 30% peak, more like 85% peak. I 've built up alot of tricks over the years for internally processing drums. one is to double up drum hits-same hit on two pads, assign to trigger both, then pitch one down AND filter it. More important on this is finding the PITCH of it, not just the filter cutoff of it. use your ears doing this, not the numbers. Big trick here-you can double up bigger portions of drums, not just single hits, if you dont pitch them, but just use the filtering and resonance controls. Again, use your ears, dont look at the numbers. A big thing to mention if we are gonna talk drums is that i have a personal aesthetic about drums. i like drum loop type sounds. I like to hear long portions of drums sampled. So I spend a lot of time trying to make programmed drums sound "real". again, lots of tricks to do this, but main thing for me is to think about the whole song, and try to put as much variation as I can throughout the WHOLE song. There's individual things I have learned, like sampling the decay portion of a drum hit, not the big transient part. Then, assign the attack and decay so it has no transient at all. It just whooshes. Now, think of this like spackle. After you chop a break, and reassemble it, you paste these little pieces into any places where there's silence. You can smooth things out like this. Even if its not a silence portion. It can make an awkward decay sound more natural. There's alot of "thinking like a guy directing a drummer" in the composing part. Also, don't discount the simple act of finding ALOT of drum breaks, and prioritizing them. I always have lots of breaks that are chopped up and ready to go, saved as a program, with no song.This gives me the option to go thru lots of drum programs and see what drums work on a loop/groove/song. LOTS of a/b/c/d comparisons to see what drums really WANT to be on a track. lots of revisiting songs and trying other drums. then deciding the original, or the new, are better. Another thing: I dont need the feel of the drummer. I want the tone of the engineer who cut the record. I'm gonna take it apart and put it back together anyway. So drums in 4/4, 5/4, 7/8, it doesnt matter. In fact, lots of my drum breaks arent even drum breaks. here, lets play a fun one, ill rat myself out: YouTube - Billy Thorpe - Children of the Sun Please, do me a favor - I don't EVER rat myself out, so lets just leave it here ok? who can guess where i used these drums? It's a good example of what im talking about. I just want the tones. I don't need anything resembling a groove sometimes. Q.

Hey RJD2,

Thanks again for doing this and I hope you had a good Xmas day.

I wondered if you'd care to talk about sampling records versus playing "real" instruments in terms of the creative and sonic advantages and disadvantages.....

Could you also cover the average speed of your workflow involved with each approach?

Also, do you mainly prefer studio work or touring?

Cheers

Paul G

A.

I see the big sonic advantage being in samples, cause you acquire tonalities that you will never-ever-be able to recreate, they last for one song, and then they are over.

w/ playing, I like the freedom it allows in the writing aspect. I would always get frustrated w/ samples, cause if you wanted a bridge, you;d have to use a totally different sound most of the time.

My compromise is usually to play the verses of songs - if I am playing-super repetitive. No wanking. It gives it more of a groove/sample type of feel, then, you add the spice by writing different parts, or turnarounds, etc.

If im on the sampler, a beat gets done usually in about 25-20 minutes for rough draft, mind you, that doesnt include all the hours/days i spent looking thru records. Then, another few days to do the song steps, touch it up, dump it in PT, for a BEAT, for an all sample song, like "iced lightning", that usually takes about 4-5 days of work, but not 8 hour days, couple hour days.

Touring vs. studio? Studio, mostly because the downtime isnt so painful. the 90 minutes im on stage, I love touring, but the 12 hours of travel/prep time makes it much harder. but i've never taken a year off since I started touring, so I might feel differently after that happens-someday....

Posted by Josh Groessbrink 

Recording Bass Guitar

Our music technology program is full of students with various levels of recording experience, I think every now and then we should take the time to step back and cover some basics of recording.  The process of recording is a huge factor in determining what your mix will sound like.  It is much harder to create a good mix with low a  quality recording.  In my opinion, one of the best feelings you can get as a mixing engineer is when you have such well recorded tracks, they essentially "mix" themselves.  Signature Sound Studios does a nice job posting videos of their recording techniques on various instruments.  These short instructional videos do a pretty good job showing how they record, such as certain techniques, gear, etc., as well as explaining why they do it.  Not only are the videos great, but they also have nice write-ups at the bottom of the page enforcing whatever points they make during the clip.  This specific post from Signature Sound demonstrates how they typically record bass guitar. 

The bass guitar is a very important part of laying the groundwork for a song.  Along with the drums, it is often referred to as the "foundation" of the arrangement. click the link to continue 



-Post by Justin Cosentino

IMSTAFEST September 22, 2012

 Here is a very interesting event for anyone that is interested.  There will be software companies there for most of the major music brands and a ton of industry folks.  On September 22, 2012 IMSTA and SAE Institute New York will partner again to bring you IMSTA FESTA, a celebration of music technology that allows you to learn more about the different production products in the market. Admission is FREE but you mustregister to attend!

BMI Songwriting Workshop in New York Now Accepting Submissions | News | BMI.com

BMI will offer an eight-week songwriting workshop directed by renowned BMI songwriter and instructor Billy Seidman starting September 12 and ending on October 30 in New York City. Participants will focus on music composition, lyric writing, music theory and production/arrangement techniques as part of an immersive curriculum that includes stimulating assignments and constructive feedback.

Apply Now: BMI Songwriting Workshop in New York Now Accepting Submissions | News | BMI.com