goldy's times of joy as a sound engineer, musician and photographer

London

2011-03-10T14:33:00.000+11:00

Bath and Stonehenge

2011-03-10T14:09:00.000+11:00

Oxford - yes I'm still on the trip photos

2011-03-10T14:01:00.000+11:00

York

2010-12-17T15:49:00.000+11:00

Belfast

2010-11-26T16:20:00.002+11:00

Ireland

2010-11-05T16:56:00.000+11:00

Dublin

2010-11-02T16:16:00.000+11:00

Swiss Pics

2010-10-12T16:07:00.000+11:00

Christmas in October

2010-10-09T11:51:00.000+11:00

Last night the world famous Gonks played at the earliest Christmas party in history. We were rock stars as usual. Actually we were pretty rotten.
The set list was -

634 5789

I Saw Her Standing There

Play That Funky Music

Pretty Flamingo

Knock On Wood

Midnight Hour

Don't Stop

Is She Really Going Out With Him

I Got You (I Feel Good)

Make Me Smile

Moondance

Dancing In The Street

Brass In Pocket

Overkill

I Shot The Sheriff

Living For The City

Take Me To The River

Boys In Town

Superstition

Eagle Rock

Listen To The Music

Call Me

Sultans Of Swing

Old Jobs 2

2010-09-24T13:57:00.001+10:00

If you've known me for less than 10 years you may not know that I used to work on a magic show. For nearly 3 years in the late '90s I did sound for this guy... (including 1 month in Sweden)

He's Swedish. I had the option to stay and work a lot longer in Sweden, but I wanted to do other things.
I'm not going to tell you how all the tricks are done. I do know how they are done. But I had to sign a secrecy agreement and although I'm not up on the ins and outs of international law and how long it was binding for, I don't want to take the risk of being sued. So no magic secrets for you. It's more fun when you don't know anyway.

Statues

2010-09-22T15:06:00.001+10:00

Basel Town Hall

In Dublin

In trinity college Dublin

Outside Minster Cathedral in York

In Oxford

Roman Baths, Bath

Roman Baths

Picadilly Circus, London

Trafalgar Square London

Outside Buckingham Palace

Albert Memorial, London

Basel

2010-09-16T16:58:00.000+10:00

Doors and Windows in Europe

2010-09-14T16:26:00.001+10:00

Frankfurt Pics

2010-09-10T18:29:00.000+10:00

Bikes

2010-09-09T09:31:00.000+10:00

There are lots of bikes in Europe so I got a bit of a bicycle theme going with my photography.

Holiday is over

2010-09-09T09:13:00.001+10:00

I'm back at work again after my long break. Back to reality. I have to earn money. It was a good break mentally and physically. It was really nice to not be at work all day and then have to go home and cook dinner and do all the other things that need doing. Being able to do life chores during the day is nice and to get plenty of sleep.
The trip was good. I didn't get sick once - I'm still in shock that it could go so well. Thanks for all your comments and sorry for not replying. I was posting by email from my iPhone and therefore not replying to comments because trying to access blogger on the iPhone is a nightmare. They have just released an iphone ap a few days ago, but too late for me. Photos will come soon. The photos I posted while I was away were just mobile phone photos, so I will post some proper ones soon.

Love never dies

2010-08-24T10:28:00.002+10:00

So if you've read the comment on my last post you will see a very unfavorable review of the show. Although I enjoyed it it because I like live musicals, I have to agree in part. It has not the class of phantom and spoils the characters.
There are some really nice songs but because it is set in a carnival vaudeville setting the chorus numbers are in vaudeville style which I'm not a fan of. Phantom was so beautiful and majestic with it's opera house setting and big operatic chorus numbers. An over earnest young boy plays the son of Christine and while he sang in tune it was all a bit forced like most childhood singing is. The only time I've seen really natural extraordinary children in live musicals is in billy Elliot in Sydney. The other performers were exceptional. The cast didn't need to be propped up by talentless celebrities - this is London- the people on stage really do know how to do musical theatre and I did get goosebumps several times.
The storyline is simplistic and not where you wanted to see the characters end up and is a big disappointment if you loved the story and characters of phantom.
There are some great moments with the use of animated puppets and projected images are used a lot to create the scenery. It's interesting to see how new technology has been used to effect in live theatre.
So I wouldn't say a complete disaster but I can't see this show going down in history as one of the great musicals. I'll be very surprised if it comes to Australia. I do wish I could have had more time in London and gone to see les mis. Even though I've seen it twice it would be so good to see it in London.

London 4

2010-08-22T16:11:00.000+10:00

I got going a little earlier to get to liecester square where the discount theatre ticket booths are. I couldn't go to London without seeing a west end musical, seeing as seeing live musicals is one of my favorite things. So I got a discounted ticket to love never dies which is the sequel to phantom of the opera. I'll do a bit of a mini review in another post.
After I got my ticket sorted i headed to St pauls cathedral. I walked most of the way past the royal courts of justice, BBC bush house and a few other nice old buildings. I paid to go inside St pauls. It's worth going in. It's really beautiful inside and you can go up to the top of the dome for a great city aerial view. I spent a couple of hours in there altogether looking around and climbing millions of steps.

London 3

2010-08-18T19:36:00.001+10:00

Day 3 I just started off wandering around and got to the national portrait gallery which was awesome. It contains portraits painted in the 1500s which were really interesting to see. The British portrait awards were also on display. Then I walked around some more and then got on a bus to see where I'd end up and got off when I saw a camper store and got a pair of shoes which would cost twice the price in Australia. Then it was time for a nap before heading to the proms again. I couldn't resist! It was the London philharmonic playing a program of Russian composers. Loved it. Especially the Prokofiev symphony no3. And no I didn't stand up. I paid the extra money for a seat in a fancy box. Still cheap tho. Not every day you get see the London phil.

London 2

2010-08-18T19:35:00.001+10:00

Day 2 in London I did the obligatory sightseeing of the places of royalty and parliament. I saw the horse guards then the police with guns guarding the start of Downing St. Then i walked down to the houses of parliament where big Ben is. It is quite beautiful with all that gold trim. Then saw Westminster abbey and then walked around to Buckingham palace and saw lots of squirrels in the park along the way. Then it was time for a nap before heading to royal albert hall for a Bach organ recital for the BBC proms. The proms are cool. They were started so that concerts could be accessible to the common person. So for £5 you can go in and stand in the stalls like the Shakespeare globe. But this is under cover. I was going to do that but a scalper sold me a £10 seated ticket for £5. I was a little nervous the ticket might be a fake but it was worth the risk. It was a good ticket so I got to sit down.

London

2010-08-18T19:33:00.001+10:00

This was my last stop before heading home. In my first 24 hours I mastered the tube and caught buses as well. London public transport is so cool. It was raining so I thought I'd take cover in the Tate modern. I got on a bus but missed the stop so decided to go and see the tower bridge and discovered there is a big castle right near it. I've never seen pictures of this tower of London. But I've seen millions of pictures of tower bridge so I always assumed that the tower was one of the towers on the bridge. But it's not. Then I got on the bus back towards Tate and decided to stop in at burrough markets because I'd been told there is good coffee there. It must be good because the cue was so long I couldn't be bothered waiting. Then I went to Tate modern to see some Andy Warhol and picasso and other whackies. I really liked the series of photos of the new York subway by Bruce davidson. Then I thought I may as well call in on shakespeares globe theatre seeing as it's right next door. I ended up going in for a tour which was worth it because rehearsals were happening for the merry wives of Windsor and we were allowed in to watch. It was a nice little taste of the theater experience without having to sit or stand through a whole production. Yes they have kept it authentic with open air standing room in front of the stage with seating in the round. Performances still go ahead if it rains and umbrellas are not allowed.
Then later on I met a friend from SMADD days long ago and had dinner before he started playing his piano bar gig.

Stonehenge

2010-08-12T06:39:00.000+10:00

Bath

2010-08-12T06:37:00.000+10:00

I'm in bath now. I really like it here. I could stay longer. I've been on a free guided walking tour which was good for pointing out interesting architectural things such as the dunny hole in the back garden wall (not what they called it) and how the fronts of buildings all had to fit the style but the back could be whatever they wanted. So the backs of the apartment blocks are really varied and messy looking while the fronts are all uniform. I've walked around in the rain too. I went to the roman baths of course. They're definitely worth seeing. The whole town is worth seeing. It's like nowhere I've been before and seems like you are not in England. Not having been to many places i can't say what it's like but it doesn't seem englandy.
And I went on a bus trip to stone henge so I've been the ultimate tourist. They are a nice bunch of stones. I was relieved to see that they are bigger than the ones on Spinal Tap. I also saw Salisbury Hill. This is significant if you like Peter Gabriel.

Bath

2010-08-10T21:29:00.001+10:00

The view from my window.

Oxford

2010-08-10T05:46:00.000+10:00

I got to have another train trip and went to oxford. I was feeling a bit lazy and didn't really find out much about what I was seeing. I just walked around and took photos. It's a nice looking town with all the old colleges and churches everywhere. I went up a tower hoping to get some good aerial views but they weren't so good. It just wasn't that good a location to see any of the significant buildings close enough or high enough.

Oxford

2010-08-09T06:45:00.000+10:00

Sheffield

2010-08-09T06:35:00.000+10:00

I spent a couple of days just hanging around Sheffield relaxing and enjoying the company. The local main street has some nice little shops. The butcher has DVDs in his front window along with meat and also some old medals. I also enjoyed looking in the gallery of a Sheffield artist Pete McKee .
On Wednesday n and her friend took me to clumber park for a picnic. We didn't really have picnic because it had been raining but we ate our sandwiches and went for a walk. We accidentally walked for 2 1/2 hours. By the time we realized how far our walk was we were already half way and couldn't cut through to shorten it because there was a lake in the way. It was a really nice walk though. Clumber park is part of Sherwood forest and is where the dukes of newcastle used to hang out. It's nice going on forest walks in other parts of the world because there are so many types of greenery that we just don't have in Australia. I saw squirrels for the first time too. And mole holes. And real holly. We ate raspberries and blackberries off the bush along the way too.
On Thursday N and I caught the train up to York for the day. York is an old walled city with lots of interesting little buildings. Lots of them are very crooked. I climbed up the tower of the minster cathedral which is about 275 winding steps.

Fish therapy

2010-08-04T06:55:00.001+10:00

The fishes nibble the dead skin off your feet. It felt funny and nice.

My highlights of Ireland

2010-08-02T05:04:00.000+10:00

- the scenery and the live music and the pub and street in Doolin
- beating the fog at Slieve League to see the most amazing view ever
- climbing on Ballycarbury Castle on the Ring of Kerry
- visiting Belfast
- having a Guinness in Temple Bar area in Dublin
- lots of the scenery

Sheffield

2010-08-02T04:58:00.000+10:00

I've left Ireland and am now in Sheffield in the north of England staying with my friends R and N. And Felix. It's so good to see them.

Ballymeena

2010-08-01T06:26:00.001+10:00

We left our b&b in enniskillen and headed to to ballymeena just north of Belfast where kg's friend's parent's house is. We got there for lunch with them. Kg and her friend k went off sightseeing while I stayed back at the house for a rest and a went for a late afternoon walk and talked to the cows It was a nice relaxed day.
The next day after a full ulster grill for brekky at midday we made our way into Belfast. We got on a city sight seeing bus which we had all to ourselves. It was a good tour for about an hour and a half. It took us through the area of town when huge fences had been erected to separate the Catholics and Protestants and there were heaps of murals to do with the tensions and different peoples alliances. Really interesting.
One thing really noticeable about northern Ireland is the number of union jacks flying everywhere. There weren't very many Irish flags flying in the republic. Bit you very quickly know you have crossed the border onto northern ireland because of the union jacks. And because the speed limits all seemed really slow. We didn't realize for a while that they were in miles per hour and everyone had good reason to be overtaking us. There is quite a different look with the buildings too. In the republic there seemed to be a lot of painting of homes and shops in bright colours or white. But it seemed to me that in the north most houses were grey. And Guinness didn't taste so nice.

Enniskillen

2010-08-01T06:04:00.000+10:00

We left claremorris and headed the extra long way round to enniskillen to see if we could make it to see slieve league. We headed up to Sligo where there is a huge tableland called benbulben. We saw the bottom of it. The rest of it was covered in fog. We were starting to think we were going to miss all of the speccy views because of fog but kept going anyway. We drove through donegal and finally saw what we had imagined as the rolling green hills of Ireland. We stopped at some lookouts where you were supposed do be able to see slieve league from across the water of donegal bay but all you could see was fog. But we kept going anyway. We got onto the coast heading towards slieve league and went down a little peninsula called St johns point and saw some nice coastal views but the cliffs of slieve league were foggy. But we kept going. Slieve league is sheer mountainside cliffs going into the water. They're not vertical but pretty steep and about 600 meters high. The road going up was really steep and windy. We got to the top car park and could actually see the cliffs. There was cloud up the very top so couldn't see them in all their glory but we got a pretty decent view. It has to be the most breathtaking view I have ever seen. You could walk higher up the mountain past the viewing area and higher than where they had built the protective fences. It was a fun climb up into the fog and higher views. The fog came down really fast so we walked back to the viewing area and the view was completely gone. If we'd been 15 minutes later we would have completely missed it.
We then doubled back to donegal and headed to enniskillen which is in northern Ireland. It was a long day but really worth it. Enniskillen is quite a big town but in a really beautiful green area. A nice place to be.

Northern Irish cows

2010-07-30T04:21:00.000+10:00

Claremorris

2010-07-28T21:43:00.001+10:00

We left doolin unfortunately after only one night. It's such a nice place with live music every night. We had toforget about the cliffs of moher again because of the thick fog. So we drove around the burren area for a bit in the fog. It was actually kind of nice driving in the fog. It was safe fog. You could see where you were going but it was thinck enough to create a real eeriness. Daytime fog is not a normal experience for me. Neither is night time fog. We stopped at a 5000 year old burial tomb which was interesting and the landscape is all limestone so something different too.
Then we headed to Cong and stopped and looked around at the old monastery ruins and saw the the ashford castle across the river. It's a really green leafy town with lots of parkland which is rare. We are getting frustrated with ireland's lack of places to stop and eat your picnic lunch. We keep ending up in the car in some bizarre town parking area to eat as picnic areas just do not exist like they do in every single town in Australia. Ireland has plenty of paddocks but they are all fenced off for cows and sheeps so you can't really have a picnic. It keeps raining anyway.
We got to our b&b in claremorris where we stayed for 2 nights. My bed had ten pillows on it.
The next day we drove part of the Connemara ring out to clifden. The mountains around there in the Connemara national park are beautiful. We saw kylemore abbey from a distance. It's really nice but you have to pay to go in so we continued on. This area you need to stay a while in so you can go for walks and explore properly.
One of the nearby towns called ballinrobe, that we had to drive through three times, has the dumbest intersection EVER. It gave us grief each time and I even ended up driving the wrong way down a one way street. I can now tick that one off the list of things you never want to do.

Some Irish green hills

2010-07-27T06:26:00.000+10:00

Live traditional Irish music

2010-07-26T07:59:00.001+10:00

Doolin county Clare Ireland

Doolin

2010-07-26T07:49:00.000+10:00

Today is Sunday and we headed up to county Clare to see the cliffs of moher but the fog was too thick to bother. Our b&b is in a nearby town called doolin, famous for traditional live music. We wandered around and ended up in the pub for an early jam session and dinner. It's really cool. The musos sit around a table in the pub and different people come and join in while others leave.

Killarney

2010-07-26T07:45:00.000+10:00

We left cork and headed to the blarney castle where the blarney stone is. I was happy just to look and not lie on my back and lean backwards over a big gap way up in the air and kiss a stone that hundreds of others have kissed. The castle was nice as well as the Druid gardens.
Then we headed toward Killarney and ended up on the wrong road but realized before too long. We got to kilarney around lunch time and discovered the self service salad bar in the department store and took our salads to eat on the grass next to Ross castle. Then went to muckross abbey which is an old ruin of a friary. Killarney is a nice town but way too much traffic for a little town. Our b&b called salmon leap is about 15 km out of town. Really nice rocky mountain views and very quiet.
The next day we drove the ring of Kerry. We took the skellig ring detour which was great because we found an old ruin of a castle to climb on. It was great because it was unattended and just standing in a cow paddock. We could easily have fallen off it and hurt ourselves but didn't. Then we found an old fort to climb on. That was fun too. Unfortunately the views weren't great because of the fog. But still a really nice drive. We stayed in the same b&b two nights just outside Killarney.

Cork

2010-07-26T07:37:00.000+10:00

After Wexford we headed down towards cork. The only real stop we made was just before cork in cobh which is a port town and where the titanic left from. It was a little eerie walking along the dock. We arrived in cork and decided we didn't really like it. It's an old grimey depressing looking place. We walked around the town centre and struggled to find a nice inviting looking pub. Eventually we found one and then wandered around trying to find a cheap feed and discovered that doesn't exist. Our guesthouse was very nice which was lucky. It was nice to leave cork the next day.

Wexford

2010-07-26T07:34:00.000+10:00

We picked up our hire car and headed south and stopped at he town of a avoca where ballykissangel was filmed. It's a really picturesque town with a hand weaving factory which was interesting. We arrived at our b&b and were greeted by some really friendly people. We told them how our grandmother was born in the nearby Glebe house which they knew well. We were escorted by one of the b&b family members to the house and also to the grave of several of our relatives in the yard of the church where our great great grandfather was the rector. After dinner we ended up in the kitchen at the b&b for some fun conversation.

Dublin

2010-07-26T07:32:00.000+10:00

The next leg of my trip is in Ireland. My sister kg and I arrived in Dublin and booked into our hotel and then went for a wander and had dinner and Guinness in temple bar. I really enjoyed the Guinness. I haven't liked it before but now I do. Our hotel was pretty close to the centre of town.
The next day we went for wander to trinity college then the national gallery then the Dublin castle then St Patricks cathedral and back to hotel for dinner. And Guinness.

Walking in the Swiss alps

2010-07-19T22:44:00.003+10:00

Swiss mountains

2010-07-19T22:44:00.001+10:00

Switzerland

2010-07-19T21:54:00.000+10:00

I've spent a week in the Swiss alps. It has been very relaxing. The view here is amazing. You look across the valley to snowy mountains. And the mountains are really steep. I've loved the walks. We went up a cable car to the top of one of the ski slopes and walked down. It was hard walking down because it was so steep and gravelly so very easy to slip over. Another day we went walking up in the cow pastures. All cows have bells so you can always hear them even if you can't see them. We did see them on the way back. They were right near the path and came over to say hello. I was glad because I wanted some cow photos. Twice this week we have eaten fondue for dinner. Melted cheese with bread dipped in. If you don't want tummy ache you have to not drink any cold water until the next day. You have to just drink wine and hot tea.
I went down to montreux for a day for the jazz festival. Unfortunately not much happens during the day. But I did see a uni band play and there are markets all along the edge of the lake. Montreux is on a steep hill overlooking lake Geneva so I walked up the hill a bit and explored the town. Switzerland is so cool because everything is so old.

Switzerland

2010-07-16T22:35:00.000+10:00

Switzerland

2010-07-15T20:40:00.001+10:00

I'm now in Switzerland at my sister's place up in the alps. We are having beautiful weather up high here because of the heat wave - the temperatures here are around the mid 20s. On Sunday I got on a train to Basel and spent the night there. The big thing you notice about Switzerland is how clean and tidy it is. I thought Frankfurt was quite clean and tidy but compared to Basel it looked really grotty. I wandered around The town centre in Basel on sunday afternoon. All the shops were shut so not many people were around. But heaps of people were floating down the river. They don't swim, they just float downstream.

Sorry I can't post any photos right now. I don't have the technology here to do it.

So then on monday I got a train down to Lausanne and then caught another one to Aigle where my sister picked me up. I really loved the train journeys. I'd love to do more. It's a great way to see the countryside and all the little towns. Switzerland is full of little traditional looking towns with their old style house, very ornate a lot of time, and with a village church up on the hill.

I've been lazing around, going for walks and eating cheese. It's great.

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Some Frankfurt observations

2010-07-11T05:03:00.000+10:00

There is a park that circles the main city area with bike paths. Actually there are bike paths throughout the whole city. There are rabbits everywhere in the park and rabbit holes and rabbit poo so you don't sit on the grass. Tonight is the world cup playoff for third place between Germany and Uruguay. Every place has big tvs out for it even the ice-cream shops. No world cup no business. The city is not very congested. There are high rises but not heaps and they are interesting to look at and quite striking because they often stand alone amongst low rise buildings. Everyone smokes and there are lots of little beer joints that only serve alcohol and no food.

More frankfurt

2010-07-11T04:54:00.001+10:00

More Frankfurt

2010-07-11T04:53:00.001+10:00

More Frankfurt

2010-07-11T04:52:00.001+10:00

Pretzel

2010-07-10T22:09:00.000+10:00

I could pass as a german person today walking around in my Birkenstocks with my pretzel. I've manage to come to Europe on the middle of a heat wave. Heat wave for them. Normal Sydney hot summer for me. Except the sun is still shining at 10 pm.

Frankfurt

2010-07-10T02:45:00.001+10:00

Frankfurt

2010-07-10T02:40:00.001+10:00

Lunch

2010-07-10T02:36:00.000+10:00

Frankfurt

2010-07-10T02:25:00.000+10:00

So this is my first stop. The plane flight was typically long any uncomfortable. I got a frisk search done on me in Sydney. I guesss that's what you get for wearing baggy cargo pants. I got into Frankfurt at 6am and of course couldn't check into my hotel that early so I spent several hours walking around the city without a map. I managed to find my way back to where I started. It took a while to get train from the airport because you could only get a ticket from a machine and there was no English instructions. All the machines were being poked by non German speakers trying to work out what to do. I kept pushing things that weren't actually buttons and eventually a German man pushed the buttons for me. Not a very tourist friendly place. There is no English anywhere. Makes life fun though.
I couldn't find any coffee because at 8 in the morning no one is out. The place got going by about lunchtime and the coffee shops opened up. But what about morning coffee? There are pretzel shops everywhere like the Chinese cake shops in Chinatown. And heaps of kebab joints. Today I got on a bus that loops the city and you can get on and off as much as you like all day. Lunch was frankfurts, sauerkraut and beer.

blogging from email

2010-07-04T16:21:00.001+10:00

I'm going to blog a bit from hotmail while I'm on holidays. Sorry about the advertising and rubbish messages at the bottom. Can't be helped - it's hotmail.

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Leave

2010-07-04T16:16:00.001+10:00

I'm on long non-service leave at the moment. That's what you give yourself when you've spent most of your working career freelancing so have never accumulated long service leave. So after 15 years of working I'm finally having a big break.

I'm taking a combination of annual leave and leave without pay to have nearly 3 months off. Yay.

Here in Australia we get long service leave after 10 years. I've only been a permanent employee in my job for 6 years, so another 4 to go. I couldn't wait that long. Some European countries get it after 7 years. That would be nice.

Anyway, I've been bumming around at home, recovering from working really hard, catching up with friends, and getting ready to go overseas. This is a kind of big thing for me to do because last time I went overseas five years ago, I got really sick and ended up with chronic fatigue. I've never mentioned this before because I wanted this blog to be about the joys of life, not about the despairs of life. But there you have it. I've had a really rotten five years with bad health and other things going wrong, so it's just really nice that my health has improved enough that I feel up to trying travelling again and actually having a go at living life again after being shut up indoors for most of my life for 5 years, and going to work and not doing much else.

I'm confident I will stay healthy this time as I have my plethora of things I take which I'm pretty sure are doing me good. I'm hoping to blog regularly while I'm away. Hmm, we'll see how that goes, knowing my record at being a regular blogger...

Paintings

2010-07-04T16:15:00.000+10:00

Here's another belated post - Back in April I went for a day trip to Canberra with fray and nag (not their real names) to see the masterpieces from Paris exhibition. It was a collection of post impressionist works from the Musee D'orsay.

It was pretty special to be able to see this collection as it never usually leaves Paris, but it came to Canberra, and I saw it.

The artists included Van Gogh, Gaugin, Cezanne, Degas, Monet and Serusier. I was interested to go and see them, but I was not expecting to be as blown away as It was great to see these famous paintings, many of which you would recognise from pictures in books etc. This was because seeing the paintings in real life is so much better than seeing a photograph in a book. The colours are so much more alive and you really get so much more of a sense of depth and illusion of light with the real thing. I had so much more of an appreciation of the talent and genius involved in these paintings after seeing them for real which I didn't have before.

A good example of this is Van Gogh's bedroom painting. The real one has such a better perspective of depth that just doesn't come across in a little photo.

I also really liked Albert Besnard's portrait of Madame Roger Jordain for the way the illusion was achieved in making the fabric of the dress look shimmery and three dimensional. Again not an effect you see in the photo, but if you stood back and looked at this painting from a distance the effect was really extraordinary.

See it by clicking here.

I think my favourite painting of the day was Beach at Heist by Georges Lemmen. Again, a little unimpressive in the photo, especially because the colours don't reproduce very well. But this is an example of pointillism, used by many artists painting with little dots and creating new colours by the combinations of dots rather than mixing the colours on a palette. It was fascinating looking form a distance to see the finished product and then looking really close to see how they had created the image with a series of different coloured dots working together.

Click here to see it.

Canberra is about 3 1/2 hours drive from Sydney, so we spent most of the day in the car and only about 2 hours in Canberra. It was good.

Writer's Festival.

2010-06-18T14:56:00.000+10:00

All right so I dropped of the earth for a while. Blame it on the writer's festival. I have resurfaced finally, even tho the festival finished about a month ago. It was big, a lot of work, but really awesome. We recorded 45 events, built a radio station on site, broadcast for 8 hours a day for 4 days in a row, lost a lot of sleep, but also had a lot of fun.

Our studio we built and me.

The view from the studio at the Writer's Fest. at Walsh Bay

Collard

2010-05-01T13:42:00.000+10:00

Last week for CFs birthday we went to the Vanguard and saw Collard Greens and Gravy, a blues trio who play heavy old timey, Mississipi style blues. The Vangueard is a great venue - small and plenty of vibe. we were upstairs where the air con was freezing. Here's a taste of the band.

Discovery Pics

2010-04-30T17:13:00.000+10:00

One of my favourite jobs is to record Discovery at the City Recital Hall. Richard Gill conducts the Sydney Symphonia and discusses the music. We set up in a little studio overlooking the stage from the side. See some piccies.

Writer's Fest

2010-04-29T13:39:00.000+10:00

The planning for our presence at the sydney Writer's Festival is well underway. We will be recording about 65 events and going out live on digital radio for 8 hours per day. It's full on. I have to co-ordinate all of the recordings in about 10 different rooms. This involves making sure all the engineers have all the equipment they need, installing equipment into the rooms, looking after OH&S stuff, liasing with the venues and PA companies and Writer's festival people plus more...We are building a studio down at the venue to broadcast from. This is how it's going to work -

The Swell Season

2010-04-28T17:16:00.001+10:00

Yeah I know this happened weeks ago, but I've got a bit of catching up to do on my life experiences. This blogging thing is after all so that I can remember what has happened in my life. So, easter monday at the Opera House from the very back row right in the middle I watched the Swell Season. I loved it. It was one of those concerts I wasn't sure how much I was going to like it, but I did. Ali has written things about the concert that I can't be bothered writing. In short, they sounded Irish, because most of them are, so the music has that Irish sound about it. The fiddler from the Frames did a fiddly solo which I loved. There was too much kick drum in the mix, probably because we were on the back wall. But you'd think the opera house would have perfect acoustics. Haha wink wink. NOT. UUUmm ... they write nice songs and play well. If you want a taste of who they are, watch the movie "Once". And the bit in the movie where they are in the recording studio take the cassette of their recording for a ride in the car to hear how it sounds in the car stereo - stuff like that really does happen. We used to go on many a car trip around the block to listen to the mix. And here's one you can watch on youtube, not the whole band, but still cool.

Check out his totally shredded guitar.

The adventures of Basil the basil - 6 months on.

2010-03-24T09:18:00.001+11:00

Well here is Basil

Amazing isn't it?! Actually it's not Basil. It's another lot of basil I had to buy because Basil just wasn't coping with life.

This is Basil

Sad huh. Refuses to die, refuses to flourish.

redback

2010-03-22T14:43:00.002+11:00

I found a large redback spider living in our outdoor furniture today. In ten years of living in Sydney this is the first redback I've seen here. Growing up in Brisbane we saw them all the time in our backyard and sometimes in the house. Once I pulled the mail out of our mailbox and there was the biggest one I had ever seen sitting there on the letters just near my fingers. I dropped the mail and ran. For you non-Australians, redback spiders are highly poisonous. Adults will generally survive a bite but it will make you pretty sick. Children can die from it.

Anyway you should be proud of me. I managed today to be brave enough to run and get the camera to take a picture of the spider before freaking out and killing it. However it did shake me up a little bit as later on when a cockroach ran over my foot I have to say I reacted quite unprofessionally.

Classic Tracks

2010-03-18T09:41:00.002+11:00

Read up on how some of your fave songs were recorded.

http://mixonline.com/classic-tracks/

Mixing Al Green

2010-03-17T17:11:00.001+11:00

Well this has to be one of the hardest mixes ever. With 40 channels of audio, and heaps of spill going everywhere, it's really hard to control the sounds. If I could leave all the vocals out it would sound really good. But the vocal mics all have heaps of drums spilling into them, meaning that you lose all the clarity in the drums. When you turn up the vocal channels the reverb on the vocal also adds to the drums reverb, plus the indirect sound of the drums in the vocal mics makes for mushy drums. So lots of compromising has to be done as far as reverb levels and drum levels go. Also we have to remember that vibe is good. Try to get across the feeling of being at a live concert without it sounding too crappy.

The other thing to deal with mixing a live concert as I've mentioned in other posts is to remove all the mud from the sound. With loud PA systems and foldback on stage you get a lot of general low to low mid frequency wash that just muddies up the sound. So this needs to be removed, sometimes at the expense of the induvidual sounds. But that's part of the trick of making things mix well together. Soloing a particular instrument and making it sound good on it's own usually does not mean it will sound good mixed in with all the other instruments. So you need to treat each element in the context of what everything else is doing. I've gone through and edited the tom tracks and the percussion tracks cutting out sections where nothing is going on on those channels to reduce unwanted noise.

The other thing throwing me into turmoil is learning to use the automation on the SSL. It's great having this so you can record all of your fader moves. In such a large band with so much going on it's good to be able to shift the focus and also help in reducing the mud and spill, and the automation is very handy for this. But when you don't know the automation system very well you get yoursef in all sorts of trouble with faders jumping all over the place. It's a good way to scare people into thinking there is a ghost in the room, but not a good way to get a mix done when time is so limited anyway. In the long run it saves time because you can keep going back finessing the mix, so it's worth the pain learning how to do it.

Apple

2010-03-16T10:07:00.001+11:00

We had to clean out our pigeon holes at work for refurbishing of our lounge room. All that was left was my apple. A great opportunity for some artistic shots. But I wasn't as successful as I'd hoped. Most of the shots didn't turn out very well. This was the best I got. The dark background made it really hard to get a good setting for the lighting to look good.

Gonks

2010-03-02T11:07:00.001+11:00

The world famous Gonks played a gig on the weekend for DBs niece's 21st. It was in the smallest venue ever. I had to leave all my extra basses at home. Here's what we played -

A Whiter Shade Of Pale

If You Leave Me Now

Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)

Better Be Home Soon

Besame Mucho

Light My Fire

634 5789

Stuck In The Middle With You

I Saw Her Standing There

Pretty Flamingo

Midnight Hour

Knock On Wood

Is She Really Going Out With Him

Moondance

After Midnight

Living For The City

Take Me To The River

Happy Birthday

Listen To The Music

Cajun Moon

Black Magic Woman

Cocaine

Eagle Rock

Ode To Billy Joe

I Got You (I Feel Good)

Johnny B. Goode

I Shot The Sheriff

Superstition

Sultans Of Swing

Some Fremantle Piccies

2010-02-25T15:25:00.001+11:00

Fremantle is the port at the mouth of the Swan River near Perth. It's been done up into a trendy place with cafes and shopping. Here are some of the old buildings.

Moonlighting

2010-02-24T12:37:00.000+11:00

I have been spending the last 3 weeks at Classic FM, our classical music network. I'm filling in for someone away on holidays. I'm really enjoying the chance to work on some large classical recordings - something we don't get much of a chance to do at Radio National. I was trained in classical recording at uni, but I haven't had as much professional experience in that area as I have had in recording contemporary music and jazz. So I'm pulling out a lot of long lost information about classical recording techniques. And learning a lot. It's great.

Wind surfing in Perth

2010-02-23T12:01:00.002+11:00

I'm sorry to all my fans - I went underground for a while. But as a special treat, I'm going to post photos of me trying wind surfing for the very first time in Perth on the Swan River. My cousin MH who is really experienced had access to a learner board and took me for my own special lesson. It was a lot of fun. The learner board made it a lot easier because it's big and floats easily, so I just had to balance on it. That wasn't so hard as I already had good balance from my childhood skateboarding. Now I wasn't really good or anythig, but I used to skate up and down our driveway as an 8 year old on my own green fibreglass skate board that I bought for $8 from K-Mart.

So once you are crouching on the board you have to pull the sail up and stand, which is quite difficult with wind blowing around. And then you sail. It was hard keeping control of the sail with the wind gusting and blowing it out of my hands, but I managed to have a good surf once I got the hang of it.

The good thing about the Swan River is it's very shallow for a long way out, so when you fall off it's pretty easy to get back on again. At one stage I got a bit carried away and ended up quite a long way out and fell off and to my shock my feet didn't touch the bottom!. And getting back on was impossible, so I had to swim the board closer to shore untill i could touch the bottom and scramble back on again.

The other thing you need to work out is how to go back the other way and and sail against the wind do you don't end up way down the other end of the river. I managed to even turn araound on the baord and sail back the other direction, right when MH wasn't watching. And then I wasn't able to do it again to prove I could do it.

I had to stop when the wind started to pick up too much and all the experienced surfers turned up. But I had a decent go. I ended up with very bruised shins from getting back on the board, plus a really big bruise from a fin scrape. Plus really sore arms from pulling the sail up.

The damage

Perth

2010-01-28T12:42:00.000+11:00

I'm in Perth at the moment for KFs wedding. There is a 3 hour time difference between Perth and Sydney. It took me 2 days to recover from the travelling and jet lag. The flight took 5 hours. What a crazy long time to travel within the same country.
I'm feeling more normal now, on my 3rd day here.
The nice thing is being able to see some relatives while here. I'm staying at my aunt and uncle's place. Although sadly I haven't seen my aunt yet as she is in hospital with a bad back. But I have seen 3 of my 4 cousins so far which is great.
Last night was the hen's dinner. I didn't eat any hens. But I ate chilli mussels. Lots of them. 39 in all! I had to count them because the pile was so huge.
And last night I saw the sun set over the water which is a novelty for those of us from the eastern states.

Recording Al Green

2010-01-23T16:12:00.001+11:00

The Sydney Festival is on at the moment. I recorded Al Green at the state theatre in Sydney. That was a pretty exciting gig to do.
We set up in the dressing room under the stage and were able to drop the cables through a hole in the floor. We used the Sadie LRX. It was a pretty big lineup - 40 channels in all. Drums, bass, guitar, 2 keyboard players, trumpet, trombone, saxaphone, 4 backing singers.

Here's some pics of the sound check.

I went for the 2 performances which was lucky because the first night he was in a bit of a bad mood. But night 2 was great. I was able to go and watch bits of the show from side stage. And on the second night, because I already had the levels set from the first night I was able to nick out the front for a bit to watch the show. The only problems i had was a badly distorted vocoder on the first night because I didn't get a level check of it, but Al hated it so much he banned it from the show. Then on the second night I had a bit of a scare when the show started and it appeared like we didn't have Al's mic coming through. When I investigated I found out that his radio mic had had it's output level switched lower and no one had told me so the level coming into my recorder was way too low.

Here's the channel list with mic choice and inserts.

AL GREEN INPUT LIST

1 KICK BETA 52 GATE 1

2 SNARE TOP BETA 57 COMP 1

3 SNARE BOT SM 57 GATE 2

4 HAT SM 81

5 RACK 1 BETA 98 GATE 3

6 RACK 2 BETA 98 GATE 4

7 FLR 1 BETA 98 GATE 5

8 FLR 2 BETA 98 GATE 6

9 OH SR SM 81

10 OH SL SM 81

11 CONGA 1 BETA 98 SUB GROUP 1&2 COMP 3-4

12 CONGA 2 BETA 98

13 BONGOS BETA 98

14 TIMBALES SM 57

15 CHIMES SM 81

16 TOYS SM 81 SUB GROUP !&2 COMP 3-4

17 BASS ACTIVE DI COMP 2

18 GTR SENN 609

19 GTR SENN 609

20 LESLIE L 57

21 LESLIE R 57

22 LESLIE LOW 421

23 PNO L AKG 414 OR DI

24 PNO R AKG 414 OR DI

25 MOTIF 8 ES L DI

26 MOTIF 8 ES R DI

27 TRITON L DI

28 TRITON R DI

29 MOTIF 8 L DI

30 MOTIF 8 R DI

31 RHOADES DI

32 VOCODER 58

33 SAX 421 COMP 5

34 TRUMPET 421 COMP 6

35 TROMBONE RE 20 COMP 7

36 COOP KSM 9 COMP 8

37 DEBRA KSM 9 COMP 9

38 RUBY KSM 9 COMP 10

39 AL GREEN WIRELESS KSM 9 COMP 11

40 AL GREEN SPARE WIRELESS KSM 9 COMP 12

holiday snaps

2010-01-21T17:06:00.000+11:00

I've been holidaying and then got back to work for some busy times and was not thinking about blogging at all. Here are some piccies I took on my holiday over Christmas up at the Gold Coast.

Mt Warning

At the beach

Christmas Recipe Meme

2009-12-18T14:31:00.001+11:00

I don't even know what a meme is. But I've been tagged for one. By Ally. By golly I hope I spelt that right.

I have to do this -

1. Link to the person who ‘tagged’ you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Post your favourite Christmas recipe – something traditionally festive or something that has become a tradition in your house.
4. Tag four people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by commenting on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know the entry is posted on your blog.
7. Post your own Christmas recipe within a week of being tagged to keep this on the move.

Well, the thing is, we don't cook in our household at Christmas. We eat seafood. You buy it, as close to the day as possible, if not on the day, pack it on ice with collanders underneath so the water drips out and the seafood doesn't go soggy. Then you arrange it on a platter. Then you eat it.

The tricky thing is cutting up the crabs. You have to get all the guts and gills out. Luckily they have their own builtin can opener thing. The flap undernneath - pull it up and then pull the top shell off. Then cut the body down the middle and then run it under a tap to wash away the gills and yukky stuff.

Ok here's the recipe bit -

Cocktail Sauce to dip the prawns and crab in.

Some mayonnaise
Some tomato sauce
Some worcestershire sauce
Some lemon juice
Some pepper.

Mix it all up.
Sorry, no quantities, but you use mostly mayonnaise and add bits of the other things till it tastes good.

Now the tricky bit is finding 4 people to tag who haven't already been tagged. Ummm Soph, Alison, Bonnie, and Nix.

Garage Hymnal at the ABC

2009-12-18T09:35:00.000+11:00

I'm in the video too, with lots of dancing meters.

Gonks at the Chrissy Party

2009-12-17T09:35:00.000+11:00

The world famous gonks performed again last week at our work Christmas party. It was a hoot. Who are the Gonks you ask? If you haven't caught up with the phenomenon,the Gonks are the band I play in. We started up in 2005 after a discussion one lunchtime between me, DB and JD in January that year. We thought it would be a good idea to put a band together out of the pool of sound engineers and play at the next Christmas Party. So we did. The Gonks were formed and this was our 5th Christmas together. No one has told us they are sick of us yet so we keep playing. And we had a bunch of guest artists join us (other staff members of RN). I'm the bass player. And there were no cools shots of the band taken this year for me to show you. They were either all out of focus or the lights were in the way. So instead enjoy the photo of me and LM acting up for the camera.

Set lists were -

Overkill (Lazlo Baine)
Is She Really Going Out With Him (Joe Jackson)
Copperhead Road (Steve Earle)
Money (Beatles)
Total Control (Motels)
Ode To Billy Joe (Billy Jo Spears)
Delta Dawn (Helen Reddy)
Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen)
The Times They Are A Changin’
Dancing In The Street

Come Up & and See Me (Steve Harley and Cockeney Rebel)
Man, I Feel Like A Woman (Shania Twain)
The Ballroom Blitz (The Sweet)
Besame Mucho (Luis Miguel Armando Manzanero)
Moondance (Van Morrison)
I Got You (James Brown)
Living For The City (Stevie Wonder)
Take Me To The River (Talking heads)
Stray Cat Blues (Rolling Stones)

Boys In Town (Divynils)
Don’t Stop (Fleetwood Mac)
634 5789
Black Magic Woman
Play That Funky Music
Knock On Wood
Pretty Flamingo (Manfredd Mann)
Better Be Home Soon (Crowded House)
Addicted To Love (Robert Palmer)
La Bamba

Where the Wild Things Are

2009-12-10T14:35:00.000+11:00

I saw it. Yes I did. I was reluctant, but my friend was keen. I really liked it. She didn't.
It was total childhood fantasy. There were big furry creatures and problems were solved by wrecking things, throwing each other around and jumping on each other without anyone getting hurt. It was fun. The last half hour or so did get serious when furry creatures did start to get hurt and they got serious about the issues and how people should be treated.
The experience was even more enjoyable for me because the theatre was filled with young children and throughout the whole film you could hear little voices asking "why did the monster...?" and "what's he doing...?" and why this and why that. I kept laughing because of the kids. And then in the film the main boy character and the big furry thing howled at each other, so after that kids in the theatre were howling. Very funny.

Musicals I have seen live (professional productions)

2009-12-09T09:56:00.001+11:00

Phantom of the Opera (twice)
Les Miserables (twice)
Cats
The Secret Garden
Crazy For You
Pirates of Penzance
Singin in the Rain
The Lion King
The Boy From Oz
Billy Elliot
My Fair Lady
Wicked

Wicked

2009-12-03T17:13:00.002+11:00

I saw Wicked the musical last night. I liked it. I like seeing musicals. Wicked is the story of the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz, but it takes place before the story of the Wiazard of Oz.

It was at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney. This is a beautiful old theatre. It lookes like a castle inside and you look around in awe at the ornate decorations. If you want to book tickets there - the dress circle upstairs is pretty good because it's pretty steep seating so if you are short you won't have your view blocked. But don't get a box like we did. Sounded good until we couldn't see half the show because of obstructions.

I liked - the storyline, amazing costumes, interesting characters, set, sound, good production.

What it lacked - amazing memorable choruses and dance routines.

It was a good show, but would have been better if it had some great music to remember it by. And please don't cast famous people as a drawcard if they really aren't the most talented people available. Like the Idol reject Rob Mills, who had one of the lead roles. He can sing in tune and his acting was ok. But he wasn't fantastic, and he can't dance. I bet there are unknown musical theatre performers out there who could have done a much better job.

Mixing Garage Hymnal

2009-12-01T12:38:00.000+11:00

Last week I had a very short amount of time to mix the Garage Hymnal sessions for the broadcast on ABC. Yes I was recording them for work purposes, not just for fun. They'll be broadcast on our religious music program this Friday night at 2105. Radio people always talk in 24hr time. We are clever in that way. Click here to find your fequency to listen to them.

Anyway, because we are churning out so much stuff all the time we don't spend heaps of time doing stuff. If I was mixing this session for an album release or something, I would have spent up to a day per song for mixing. Not because I'm slow, it just takes that long to get all the details right. But for this radio broadcast, I spent a day and a half on 7 songs. Then I spent a couple of hours mastering it. So it's a little rough, but it's meant to sound live anyway, otherwise you might as well just stick on the album. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out considering the time limitations. I would like to go back in sometime and do a bit of polishing, just for my own satisfaction.

So, some tricks in the mix. Don't tell the drummer, but I replaced the kick drum with a sample, thanks to the Drumagog plugin. It's really good because it replaces things sentitively and takes into account changes in dynamics, so it's not all the same level hits. It follows how the player played it.

Reverbs I used were the M6000 - 4 different engines going at once, plus the Lexicon 224. It is a bit of a luxury having so much expensive reverb to choose from.

The SSL automation is really nice and easy to use. And because the desk is fully digital I can go abck and recall all my mixes and tweak them anytime. The only problem is finding studio availability.

I had a bit of trouble getting the bottom end right becasue this was the first time I've mixed on the new speakers we have in the studio. they are Dynaudio Acoustics Airs. These are really nice speakers, but I just wasn't used to them so the bass is a bit out of whack. I really want to go back and fix that especially.

Here's some more photos from the session on the GH facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Garage-Hymnal/9949777114?ref=mf#/album.php?aid=133102&id=9949777114

What I like to eat for a late night snack

2009-11-28T00:45:00.008+11:00

I think I need to change my blog into a food blog.

Gorgonzola cheese, olives and a glass of port. mmmmm
These olives are the absolute bomb. One of my work colleagues buys these kalamata olives in 10kg buckets from South Australia and we put in for our 1/2 kilo of them. Ironically these olives have no preservatives in them and last about 6 months, if you don't eat them all in about a week and a half. The ones you buy in the supermarket with preservatives only last about 3 weeks. There is something wrong there. I have to put my olives in that little dish to limit how many I eat in one go, so that they last me a little bit longer than a week and a half.

What to do when the temperature is over 40 degrees celsius

2009-11-26T22:22:00.001+11:00

Go to the movies.
I did. Wonderful air conditioned comfort.
I saw The Boys are Back. An Australian/British production. Looks at the topic of fatherhood. A nicely scripted and nicely acted film. Some films start out happy and get sadder as they go along. This one starts out really sad, and gets less sad as you go. I really enjoyed it.

People always come for the food.

2009-11-26T22:14:00.002+11:00

It's amazing how you can write a blog with a main theme of sound engineering, but the obscure post about what my family eats at Christmas time continues to pull in the most readers. This post (click here) - constantly has the most number of hits. It's getting close to that time of year again. I'm looking forward to a trip home to the almost Gold Coast and eating yummy things and experiencing that rare thing of being around family.

Photos I Took For Work

2009-11-17T12:20:00.002+11:00

Check out the slideshow of pics I took of a band rehearsing in our studio.

http://abc.net.au/rn/musicdeli/galleries/2009/2730724/

-

Homemade Hommus

2009-11-15T16:26:00.001+11:00

I made this today. It's good. Quantities are very approximate. Modify to taste.

1 can chick peas - leave the liquid aside till later
2-3 tbs tahini
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs olive oil
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 cloves grated garlic
1/4 tsp ground coriander seeds
1/4 tsp cumin
paprika or cayenne pepper to taste
salt to taste

Blend all this up in a food processor and add as much chick pea liquid as you like, depending on how runny you like your hommus. If it's all a bit tart or salty for your liking try adding a little bit of sugar, but not too much! Taste as you go, you might like more or less lemon, or cumin or paprika. Choose your own adventure.

Snail

2009-11-13T10:38:00.000+11:00

One of the rotters that eats all my herbs. Except for Basil. This was before the accident with the garden fork.

Fort Scratchley

2009-11-12T17:57:00.002+11:00

We went to Fort Scratchley in Newcastle to record a forum on coal. We had five guests on stage plus our presenter Geraldine Dougue. We did it inside the function centre, not around the canons.
That's our gear in the bottom piccy. We were trialling a system of radio mics made by Lectrosonics. That's it over on the right with the little laptop. The roadcase under the laptop holds a single rack unit device which contains 6 receivers for the radio mics. The laptop holds the software which lets you monitor all the mics' activity and modify frequencies. Other gear - little mixer on left for providing talkback to Geraldine. 2nd mixer for the PA system, then splitter racks and compressors, and then the 3rd mixer was for mixing the recording.

The adventures of Basil the basil - 9 weeks on.

2009-11-11T15:45:00.001+11:00

Poor Basil is really not doing too well. I really think I need to move to Brisbane so I can grow some decent Basil. Even the snails don't think much of this specimen.

This is it

2009-11-11T15:36:00.001+11:00

If you haven't seen The Michael Jackson film "This is it", you should. It shows rehearsals for his concert tour which he never got to do. It's a great film. Definitely see it on the big screen with the big sound system. Lots of glorious bass. It's great to see MJ at work. Although he was just rehearsing and sometimes only walking through his steps, you could see how precise he is in everything and still looked really cool. I laughed when the director pleaded with MJ to please hold on on when he was testing out the cherry picker for the first time.

It was also really good to see a female guitarist in the band. Seeing girls play band instruments is a little uncommon. I often feel like I'm crashing a boy's club being a bass player. Now you don't all need to write to me and tell me the examples of females playing band instruments that you know of. I know they exist, but my point is, they are a much rarer breed than males playing drums, guitars and basses. Usually if you see a girl in a band they are singing. So good on this chick for making it into the band of such a famous artist.

Boyer Lecture Live

2009-11-08T17:30:00.000+11:00

Today I recorded General Cosgrove delivering his first lecture live in front of all the important people. We recorded the 1st lecture in the studio as a backup, but the the live version is now currently going to air as I write this. All the subsequent lectures will be the studio versions. You can podcast it from the Radio National website.

There is no gig which you want to stuff up, but this is one of the ones you REALLY don't want to stuff up. This is a big event for our Network. So I had 2 recorders going, each recording to flash card and hard disk so that there was no chance of not getting a recording. I put my own mic on the lecturn, so that we didn't have to listen to the horrible gooseneck mic which was feeding the PA. My mic was a Neumann KMS105. Plus we had a lapel mic on the General as a backup in case the microphone fell over or something horrid. My recorders were the SoundDevices portable hard disk/flash recorders model 744 and 722.

I didn't stuff up luckily.

Then we had to run upstairs and compile the program and get it loaded into the autoplay computer. I was sitting in the studio playing it from another computer as a backup in case the autoplay didn't work.

Then I freaked out when the producer came running in saying it wasn't the right program going to air. But really it was, she was just having a moment.

Garage Hymnal at Work

2009-11-07T18:00:00.004+11:00

I recorded Garage Hymnal at the ABC the other day. It was fun being able to record friends. It was a full on day. They are an 8 piece band and we only had till 3pm to get 6 songs down. That is not a lot of time. It wouldn't be unusual to spend till 3pm getting set up for a band that size. So it was a speedy set up and record.

The instruments were - drums, bass, 3 guitars, keyboards/piano.
They have two female lead vocalists.
I put all the instruments in the large recording room together and the vocals went in the isolated booth so that they didn't get lots of loud instruments spilling into their mics. I put baffles around the drums to get some isolation from the rest of the band. Then the band all played together and and did 2-3 takes of each song before moving onto the next. All the vocals were recorded live with the band.

Some pics thanks to various band members.

My channel list. For a setups this big it's good to be ultra organised and work things out before you get into the studio on the day. I had several of these printed out so I could easily keep track of where everything was going. The last 6 channels were only for an option if they decided to do some unplugged stuff, but they didn't, so we went the electric band, using up to channel 26. Plus I added in 2 DPA mics for the acoustic piano, plus a mic underneath the snare drum as well as the one on top. The other change was to use a 414 on one of the vocalists and an 87 on the other. It's sometimes good to use different mics on different singers so that you get a slightly different sound quality which makes it easier to blend in the mix.

Hug an Estonian Week

2009-10-30T12:23:00.001+11:00

I found out today that Hug an Estonian Week is this week and it's nearly over. But someone at work found out and alerted my colleagues, so I have been getting hugs today.

Boyer Lectures

2009-10-28T14:56:00.000+11:00

This week I'm recording the Boyer Lectures, which are are an annual series of lectures given by a prominent Australian. It's a major event on the Radio National calendar. This year's guest lecturer is General Peter Cosgrove, the former chief of the Australian defence force.

He's a rather friendly chap. So far we've recorded 4 of the 6 lectures. I really liked what he had to say on leadership in his 3rd lecture. Despite swallowing his words a lot like all good Aussies do, he does a pretty good job in the studio, for someone who is not a professional voice artist. He can hear when he gets the emphasis of a sentence wrong, or stuffs something up, so we don't have to keep stopping him to make him do it again, he just stops himself and does it again. The editing shouldn't be too hard.

Not like last year. I had to edit Rupert Murdoch. I spent days and days editing out all of his saliva noises and replacing horrible breaths. He really did sound terrible before I got to him.

The benefits of offering rewards

2009-10-28T09:49:00.000+11:00

I lost my work ID tag yesterday. It drove me nuts because you can't move around the building very easily without it. I checked all the most recent places I'd been to and couldn't find it. So I sent out an email offering a reward for its return. One minute later I got a phone call. The thief had owned up and wanted their reward. Of course it was an unconditional reward, so I still had to pay up despite the fact that they had stolen my tag, by mistake of course.

The reward - dried apricots. It's amazing what people will do for a free feed. I even had people emailing me pretending they had my card so they could collect the reward.

So the moral of the story - if you want anything, just offer a reward.

Lane Cove National Park

2009-10-27T09:17:00.001+11:00

I went for a walk in the park a few weekends ago and got some pics.

Gould's

2009-10-26T14:58:00.001+11:00

Have you been to Gould's Books in Newtown? It's an experience. 2 storeys of shelf after shelf of second-hand books piled up. How anyone finds anything they want I do not know.

ACO recording

2009-10-25T18:20:00.001+11:00

Every house engineer now and then has to baby sit a studio for a hire without actually doing any engineering. I've done that this week. The Australian Chamber Orchestra are using our orchestral studio for a recording with the Swedish record company - BIS Records. I'm the on call house engineer this week with nothing to do. Well, I did help them set up and I turn up every day and make sure the lights and air conditioning are good.

I don't mind occasionally doing brainless work. It's a nice mental break to not have to have anything to think about except be on call to help out if needed. It's always good to see how other engineers work as well. As a sound engineer I believe you never stop learning. There is always a different way to do things.

The orchestra are recording a buch of flute concertos with a flautist whose name I don't know. It's good to have details sorted out isn't it... the ACO consists only of strings by the way, with a guest flute player.

1st violins, 2nd violins and viola sections each have 2 spot mics - Neumann KM143 which are a wide cardioid pattern.

The 3 cellos and 1 bass are spotted with KM140 which are a standard cardiod so have more rear rejection than the 143.

The flute is being mic'd with 2 KM143 on a stero bar just above the height of the flute, approx 3 feet from the flute, panned hard left and right. I thought that was interesting to mic the solo instrument with a stereo pair.

Then there are 2 KM 130 omni mics as a wide stereo pair out front about 3m high pointing down to the centre of the orchestra. But because the flute player is facing the orchestra for the recording, she has her back to theses mics, so there is another stereo pair in the midst of the orchestra, facing the front, pointing down at the flautist, and about 1.5 m apart. These are DPA 4006 omnis.

Hot Fuzz

2009-10-25T12:14:00.002+11:00

If you like British humour you should like this film. It's a send up of English policeman officers. A little bit too long, but I thought it was quite funny. A policeman in London is promoted and sent to the country because he is too efficient and makes everyone else look bad. In his new small town he tries to solve the mystery of the multiple deaths made to look like accidents, but he is convinced they are murders. This is definitely brainless Friday night fun.

It's made by the same guys who made Shaun of the Dead.