This week we had a guest lecture from Ken Blair who is a recording engineer and producer for his own label BMP recordings which is based in  Lincoln but  travels both the UK and America to various studio’s. The company BMP recordings focuses mostly on Jazz and orchestral styles and genre’s of music. Most of his key skills lye in the post editing and recording of orchestra’s and Jazz bands.

 

Before BMP recordings Ken taught music production at the university of surrey for 4 years.

 

Most of his technical advice was how to set up and the general recording process of recording jazz music going into specific detail about acoustics, mic set up etc. For example He made a point about how its important to have mics set up before the musicians arrive.

 

He also spoke about ways of getting into the industry, and heavily promoted opportunity, he spoke about taking chances no matter how impossible they may seem. He also added how he wrote to loads of recording studio’s but only one got back in touch with him offering experience. He also stated that we need as much experience as we can get if we want to build a reputation for ourselves.

 

He also gave us a bit of insight on how we may be able to better construct our CV when trying to get in the industry, he told us to relate it to all the departments in which we have experience in, in relation to the role and to have an easy to work with personality, as he previously stated is key for working with musicians.

 

This lecture I found interesting in the tailoring of my CV, how I can edit it and promote myself as a professional, that I’ll need to back up all my skills on my CV with an example, a past piece of work for example. I don’t think I really want to go into studio engineering work, although it’s a possibility. But some of the tips and techniques discussed in this lecture will surly be of aid if I do find myself in a recording studio environment, (which no doubt will probably happen at some stage)

This week was the last of our guest lectures and probably one of the most interesting even though it doesn’t exactly apply to myself, but covers a matter which I do agree with. Women in the industry.

 

She showed us her organisation co-founded with Richard Burgess called ‘Women Produce Music’ who’s aims it is to promote and help establish women in the music industry. She promoted the work of some highly established producers like Bjork and mentioned how none of them had won an award through the industry. She did state that Women Produce Music is by no means a feminist organisation with radical views or whatever.

 

She spoke a lot about the process she and her co-founder Richard had to go through to help set up and establish women produce music, such as the building of their social media presence, and also presented her research about women in the industry to the UK music equality and Diversity Committee.

 

She spoke a lot about press and how women are undervalued through it, for example Bjork worked on a collaboration with a male artist through the project yet she wasn’t given credit for her work.

 

She finished the lecture by saying how record labels watch producers, and how they will promote their works to reach a larger audience.

 

Through this lecture I realised how little influence women are given in the industry and I do genrally agree that it needs to be equalised

For this week we had a guest lecture from Dan Shepard who bases most of his work within radio and podcasts. Prior to the lecture we had to listen to two podcasts that Dan would ask us about in the lecture. One was a podcast about chopping and editing called ‘Cutting Up The Cut-Up’ where they focused on the works of people such as cassette boy amongst many others. This was my favourite of the two podcasts as I found it more amusing and also more engaging. The other podcast was about a train journey through Australia from Sydney to Perth which focused on a range of perspectives. The sonic environment was a lot more in depth than the previous podcast as it was trying to set a scene audibly through the use of fx, textures and other background sound.

 

Dan made a point of pointing out the difference between radio documentaries like ‘Cutting Up The Cut-Up’ and Radio Feature Programmes such as ‘Indian Pacific’ which was the name of the other podcast we listened to. He made a point of saying that features have a wider range of subject matters and generally when working on features you can be a bit more creative with what you do. As he spoke about the production process of the creating a radio feature I couldn’t help but think back of how I could incorporate elements of this into my own soundscape and how the both inter-related quite a bit. Dan led most of the lecture talking about how he produced the content for this feature programme and how he recorded 30 hours of content that went into it, and questions that came through his mind such as how he was going to convey the perspective of being on a train journey through radio.

 

Dan didn’t speak to much about the documentary, but did say that it was presenter led inside the studio, and the primary function of the documentary is to educate the listener.

 

Through this lecture I didn’t really learn much about radio that is useful to my project but, through Dan’s words on the Feature programme, I took a couple of idea’s about working with perspectives within my soundscape and how I can change them up and choose which perspective my listener is listening from at any one point.

For this week we had a guest lecture from Jez Riley French who is a field recordist and sound artist, Jez spoke to us about field recording and some of the projects and work he’s done and the use of using different methods for recording live sound, such as placing contact mics in unusual places. This sparked a few idea’s of my own of how I could better record sound on location instead of using the standard conventional methods. He also showed us some of his own mics which he had adapted himself so that he could pick up low and mid frequencies better.

 

Jez spoke about how he had designed some the iconic sounds for well known movies such as the star wars trilogy where he placed contact mics on a radio tower. He also showed us some other examples of his work where he placed hydrophones into the water on the ice to pick up the air bubbles being released from melting ice.

 

Jez mainly focuses his work within sound design and sound art, and a lot of his work has a very artistic quality to it, he also spoke about idea’s related to his work and gave us a few tips on how we can adapt our own recordings and to be prepared to adapt to different environments and such.

 

He showed us more of his recording equipment and gave some more advice on how we should approach field recording. He also stated that trial and error is a good method when trying to figure out what sound it is that we’re trying to achieve when designing our own sounds.

 

Through this lecture I picked up a few idea’s about sound recording which I could adapt to my own work and my soundscape, on how to get clearer sounding recordings, the advice on different mic placement I found most helpful and is something that I want to experiment with.

In week 3 we had a guest lecture from Lol Hammond who works as a Music Supervisor at Vertigo Films, some of the films he is best recognised for are as follows:

Bronson

 

‘It’s All Gone Pete Tong’

 

‘London To Brighton’

 

 

 

‘The Street Dance series, ‘The Football Factory’ and many more.

 

In his lecture he spoke a lot about his role as a music supervisor and important things to keep in mind when working in the industry, such as having a good strong working relationship with film editors and directors as they’re the people that he has to mostly deal directly with most.

He also gave his advice for trying to source and find music for film, adverts and such. He stated that when you have to source music you have to find who has the master copy, so this would be the original composer, and then negotiate a price with them for using the piece of music in the film.When he’s finding who owns the master copy of the music, he emails the three big labels as a first port of call, which are obviously ‘Sony Records’ ‘Warner Bro’s’ and ‘Universal’, or he’ll generally look at PRS licencing.

He spoke about how music budgets for films vary, the producer has to take into acount the entire budget for the film also it depends on the size of the film, how big its production value will be, who’s working on it will depend on how much the composer may ask for it. He said that the average pay for music in a film is between £1500 – £2000 per side, and music for adverts and the opening/ending credits are double due to this being the natural soundtrack to the film that people will recognise.

He also spoke about when negotiating with the composer, and how it can be difficult, he said that the bigger the artist is then generally they have more influence over how their music is used in the film, but overall apparently the it’s a half half negotiation between the Composer and the Producer of the film. This is another reason why a lot of film producers will try and have music sourced from composers that may not be as established, as not only is it cheaper but easier to work with but of course in a high budget film, sometimes you need a large piece of music to acompany it and match the film in a way. He spoke about when he wanted to buy the rights of a certain film he would need to speak to the publishing company and record label to make sure that they agree that the rights to the composition could be sold, and if so how much for.

He continued on to give us some advice for how to get into composing for film ect. He said to try and get into doing music and sound for short films and media pieces, going to film festivals and “Short Film Ciruits”, and from that build a showreel and portfolia of work that we can showcase and distribute.

He finished off his lecture on a light note of how at Vertigo Films they take on interns and gave us his email so that we may apply!

Overall I found this lecture very inspiring, outlining other roles in the industry that I wasn’t aware of and possible roles in the industry that I can get into! I have done work and composition for film and other forms of media before like annimation, so I think I’ve developed a wide view of what to do when it comes to working for media, what can be done and what goes with what. Also running a society through University, I’ve developed quite good negotiation and ‘people skills’. So I think that in hindsight, the role of music supervisor should be something that I should look into a bit more with depth.