Perth

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

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

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

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

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

Gonks at the Chrissy Party

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Fort Scratchley

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gould's

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

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

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.

Citizen Kane

I saw this film a few years ago when I wasn't very well and didn't appreciate it at all.  I decided I need to give it another go because so many people go on about how good it is.  So I watched it the other night when I wasn't feeling sick, and I'm really glad I did.  I must say it's not a "chill out and relax" type of film, but one that does require mental energy. 

I actually found it worthwhile to go back when it finished and watch the first 15 or so minutes again, to get a full appreciation of the significance of the opening scenes, which kind of tie the whole movie together.  I think this is one of those movies you can watch over and over again and gain something new from it every time.  It would be worth owning the DVD.

The story is loosely based on the life of newspaper man, William Randolph Hearst.  According to Wikipedia, he prohibited the mention of the film in any of his papers on its release.  The main character is played by Orsan Welles, who also directed.
I have developed a new interest in photography which I didn't have the first time I saw the film, so this time I was able to appreciate the technical and artistic way the film was shot - apparently quite innovative for it's time.  It is definitely worth watching for the visual artistry.

The final shot solves the mystery of the entire movie - what was the main character referring to on his deathbed in muttering the word - "Rosebud"? It's quite a significant way to tie up the movie as throughout the film we see a character being portrayed as a rich tyrant.

Definitely watch it, but not if you want brainless Friday night entertainment.

Dangerous Ideas BBC Forum

During the first weekend of October I spent the whole weekend at the Opera House recording several sessions of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas.  One of them was for the BBC program The Forum.  It was quite an interesting program about Australian stereotypes.

You can hear the program by clicking here.

Microphones used were the Neumann system made up of the KM100 phantom supply, with an AK40 cardioid head, with a gooseneck inserted between the 2.  These sounded really good.  Each person also wore a lapel mic for if they ever went off mic.  When mixing this I was constantly riding the levels of each person, so that only the person talking at the time was at full volume to eliminate as much echo as possible.  You have to be quick with the fingers doing this and sometimes you miss the start of a person's sentence, but it's the the risk you have to take.  If you leave everyone's mic up at full volume there is just not enough clarity in the voices.

You can hear one of the voices is quite echoey as the woman didn't have a very loud voice, meaning that the PA operator had to keep pushing her louder through the PA, causing her to not sound as direct as the others. It's one of the problems with doing these things.  If people don't speak up, as I have written about in a previous post, it makes things very difficult to mix.