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The Singing Revolution

Makes me proud of my half Estonian-ness. Watch the preview.

In the studio last week

First I had the stomping banjo player. Old man luedeke.
His banjo didn’t have a resonator, it was just an open backed thing. He had his own mic installed inside. It sounded quite good, but I mixed in a bit of My microtech geffel from in front about a foot away just to add a bit of air. He was also stomping his foot as part of the sound, but on our parquetry floor just sounded like a bit of a slap, so I pointed a mic at his foot and wound out the top end, so it sounded like more of a thud than a slap.

Then I had Jenny Lewis. She turned up with her acoustic guitar, and another acoustic guitar player and a lap steel player. This is how you trick the engineer – sound check the song with 2 acoustic guitars, both with a blend of pickup and mic. Then when you go live to air, only have one guitar and don’t plug in the pickup. So I went from 4 channels of acoustic in sound check, down to 1 channel on air, without any warning. Yep thanks for that one. She has a great voice.

Neighbours

On Sunday my next door neighbour held a BBQ for the neighbours to say thankyou for putting up with his renovations. It was such a nice afternoon. I met neighbours I’d never seen before. Generally people just keep to themselves, so it was really nice to meet all the people who live around me. Everyone was saying what a great idea it was to get together and that we should do it again.

I thoroughly recommend it. Hold a street party. Get to know your neighbours.

The main talk of the afternoon was regarding the alleged murder that had happened behind my house. Behind me is a lane and directly on the other side is a garage. Late one night in February I noticed people in blue overalls in the garage. Which was not normal. Usually there were about 7 motorbikes and an absolutely huge muscly guy in there. He really was the biggest guy I’ve ever seen in my life, to the point where he looks absolutely ridiculous. Some serious steroid action going on there. But the bikes were gone and instead there were forensic police scouring every inch of the garage. I turned off my lights and spied on them through a crack in the blind. It was like watching CSI. They were picking up things with tweezers and there were chalk marks with numbers placed next to them on the ground. A photographer came and took photos of the chalk marks. Then they bagged up some rubber mats.

Then we got letters in the mail from local police asking if we’d seen a boat parked in the lane. I didn’t know if it’s just neighbourly gossip, but one of the guys at the BBQ seemed to have the knowledge that there had been a murder and the body had been hidden in the boat and then it got dumped in the ocean. Then yesterday I found a business card in our mailbox from the homicide squad asking to call them. I haven’t yet…

So yeah, get to know your neighbours. But be nice to them.

morning

This morning was one of those time I wish I had a camera with me. I had to go down to the Opera House early this morning to record a talk during a breakfast meeting. The sunrise was incredible. I don’t think I can recall a time when I have actually watched the sun come up over the horizon. I really don’t like getting up early. But this was worth it. But no photos unfortunately. The sky was all pink and orange and grey. I did get a Danish though! Remember, free food makes me very happy.

Blue mountains music festival

2 weekends ago DB and I went up the Blue Mountains music Festival to do a live to air broadcast. The plan was to record a duo from England, While and Matthews, at 7. Then at 8:05pm go live with and Australian Folk/rock group called Bluehouse. Then at 8:30 ish we would playback some of the recording of While and Matthews till 9pm. It was a great plan, except that there were huge problems with the PA, so While and Matthews didn’t start playing till 7:45, meaning that there was no way that Bluehouse were going to be ready to play at 8:05 and we wouldn’t have enough recorded material by then of While and Matthews to play at the top of the show. So after some mild panic, we cued up a recording of a recording made the previous weekend at another festival to play at 8:05. In the meantime we recorded While and Matthews and edited up a section to play back at 8:30. Finally Bluehouse got on stage and then at 8:45 we crossed to them live to play out the rest of the show. So, not what we planned but it all worked out fine.

We split all the channels from stage so we could do an independant mix on an Allen and Heath console. Then the mix output was split 3 ways. The first split was to get to the ISDN encoder. This is a little thing we call the Glensound, which looks like a mixer and has an ISDN output for sending the signal back to the ABC master control. We had a line run over to the Clarendon otel, which Telstra had set up for us. Well, they installed the line, but we had to run it over to the backstage area, so DB was climbing the ladder hoisting the cable in the air so that it was off the ground and not in danger of tripping anyone up.
Split 2 went to the laptop with Wavelab for recording the music mix. Split 3 went to a portable hard disk recorder, to be a back up recorder and also to be primary recorder while we were playing off wavelab.

The presenter was backstage with us doing live announcements. DB looked after the music mix and I looked after the broadcast mix.

We stayed the night at the Clarendon motel. It was really nice to not have to drive back after the show. We got to pack up and then sit and relax over a glass of wine and not rush to get back.


The back view of the mess we made.


Starting from the left - laptop with Wavelab,
Little black box - sound devices USB interface for getting the audio into the laptop,
CD player,
Glensound,
underneath the glensound - rack of compressors and lexicon reverb.
Allen and heath mixer.

audio verbal diarrhea

I need to draw attention to a comment on my previous post....

"I know a couple of guys who spend way too much time obsessing over their sound gear, I definitely don't want to use the word U87 around them as that would trigger a long and boring brain dump about every time they've used this or that mic until they're satisfied that they've established that they know more than me. Is that part of the culture because it's happened to me more than once!"

Can I say, I totally relate to this. I can't stand it when guys go on and on about sound gear, to try and prove how much they know. I'm just not interested. So, please tell me you own a U87, but do not dare to try and tell me about every single piece of gear that you have set eyes on and which studios they were in. I get bored to tears.

Is it part of the culture? Well I think it's a guy thing. The amount of times I have had to leave a room because of guys on this tell all mission thinking they really have to prove how good they are. I've never met a girl like this. Although most girls couldn't care about audio in the slightest. But I do know other female sound engineers and they just get on with their work and don't worry about trying to verbalise their skills or bore me to tears about the tech specs of some rubbish new piece of equipment that has just been released. I hate it whe guys give you a big speel about the jobs they've done and make out that it was such a huge gig and go on and on and on and on. I think if you have to tell everyone how good you are you can't be that good. Let your work speak for itself.


End of rant.

audio language

I have often said that I quite regret the fact that i can't speak a foreign language. But then Irealised tonight that I do. I speak the audio language. I was out tonight recording a lecture -not a very challenging gig, but part of the job. Anyway when i told the woman from the venue that i was taking a line out of the PA she freaked out a bit saying she didn't want me pulling any cables out. So I said "no, when i say i'm taking a line out I really mean I'm putting one in", which really didn't help the situation. She was completelt confused. So I had to show her the cable I had plugged in to the PA system, which was the line out I was taking. Are you all confused now?

So that's how I got to thinking that we really do speak a different language sometimes. I might say to you, "Gee it's all sounding a bit wet, and I'm not sure about the 421 on the hats. Deifinitely use the 421 on rack but put a 451 on hats and put a 414 on the floor. Wind up some sparkle on the pultec and widen the image a bit. And I think we need to put a pad on the DI and get rid of the pod and bring me a vox. Oh and the vox track (not like the vox from the previous sentence) needs to be in your face a bit more so squash it as much as possible without making it pump." Got it?


So I'm going to start teaching you my language bit by bit.
First some basic vocab.
Mic = microphone (easy one)
XLR - the proper name for the connector on a mic cable.
XLR cable = microphone cable
Neumann (pronounced noi-man) - German company that make really nice, expensive microphones. It's normal to use the word Neumann as a noun in it's own right - eg. "have you got any Neumanns?"
U87 - a standard studio microphone made by the Neumann company. Quite expensive, so it's quite good to say you have U87. No need to say Neumann U87. Just say U87 or even just 87 and we all know what you mean. eg. "I used a U87 on lead vocal."
This is what one looks like.






Ok that's enough for lesson 1. stay tuned for more next time.

Films

Today's top films to see are - 

The Italian - A Russian film about a 6 year old orphan who is about to be adopted by an Italian couple but decides to run away in an attempt to find his real mother.

Cool Hand Luke - Paul Newman plays a guy who ends up in jail for cutting the heads off parking meters.  Shows his time working in chain gangs - great acting , great script, great photography.

This is England -  a 12 year boy in northern england in the early 80's joins a gang of skinheads after he is repeatedly picked on because of his trousers.  They are a friendly bunch to hang out with until the ringleader gets out of jail.  It's a pretty rough film, but so are the lives of many people.  It's based on the real experiences of the director.

Slumdog Millionaire - this really was worth all the awards it got - Jamil who grew up in the slums of India goes on "Who wants to be a millionaire" and does really well.  The movie tells the story of how he happened to know all the answers to the questions.  Great storytelling...  

I started working my way through Federico Fellini films after hearing an album by an Australian band called The Umbrellas who did a recording of arrangements of the music to Fellini films written by Nino Rota.  That was long sentence. Anyway I was loving the music so much and I have never seen a Fellini film before, so now i'm on way...

The first one i saw was La Strada.  This is about a young woman who is sold by her mother to a travelling entertainer to be his assistant.  Interesting story, good acting.

Then I tried watching 8 1/2, and unfortunately it didn't survive my 30 minute rule - that being, if i can't get into movie within 30 minutes, I give up, it's not worth wasting my time.  I know I am at risk of missing some good things by employing this rule, but you've got to draw the line somewhere.  So 8 1/2 was just way too abstract for me and subtitles were so hard to read I just couldn't get into it.  All the reviews go on about how much of a masterpiece this film is, but I guess I'm just not arty or intellectual enough for it.

Which leads me to the dud film of the week - "Dingo".  An Australian film with Colin Friels and Miles Davis about a young jazz trumpeter in outback WA who dreams of going to Paris to be a professional muso.  Sounds like the type of story I'd like, but the movie was just awful.  The acting was pathetic for a start.  The only reason it survived my 30 minute rule was because the music was so good.  So i stuck out the whole movie, being completely infuriated by it, but enjoying the music.  The first shot is Colin playing his trumpet and it was immediately obvious he was miming.  Pathetic.  If you are going to act in a role, make it look genuine.  (the guys who played the band memebers in "Control" were not musicains, but they learned to play their instruments so that they looked genuine - that's proper acting.  I'm not expecting colin to suddenly become a jazz trumpeter, but at least learn to blow it and learn to play something so that you look like you are actually blowing the thing).  Then Miles Davis' character does an impromptu concert on the tarmac of this outback town.  He's in a 6 piece band, and the soundtrack plays this piece which sounds like a 30 piece big band playing in a studio.  Pathetic.  How about making it sound like a 6 piece band playing outside to match the pictures?  What director would do that?  If you are so ignorant about music that you can't see a problem with this, then don't make a music film.  And, love you miles davis, but you really can't act.  If someone can't act, don't cast them in a film.  

Great Mistakes #9

My Dad writes books.  The last one he wrote was published with a special American version with a hard cover.  And with a hard cover comes a dust jacket.  And with a dust jacket comes a photo and description of the author.  Usually publishers try to get a photo of the actual author, but sometimes they just grab a photo of any old person and stick that on instead.  So Dad received his copy of the book and low and behold there's some dude who looks nothing like him above his bio.  In the photo above you can see on the left the guy they thought was him, and then on the right, after they sold all the wrong ones, the correct photo of him. (No they didn't pull all the dust covers off  the stock and replace them, they waited till they all sold out and had to do a reprint.)  And apparently no one has any idea at all who the other guy is.

ID

Since I'm on the topic of age and you now all know my grand old age of 34, how's this...In January of this year, while working on a recording at the Sydney Festival, I walked into a licenced area. I didn't realise it was licenced and therefore didn't even occur to me that you need to be over 18 to get in. The security guy asked me for ID. I stupidly help up my ABC ID tag for him to see. He studied it carefully looking really puzzled, and I was growing more and more puzzled myself. What was the problem? I was there to work. Finally he said this ID was no good. I asked in a really confused manner "What sort of ID do you want ?"...He replied, "Something with your date of birth". And the penny dropped. "ooooh THAT sort of ID"
I got asked for ID at 34 years of age. Can anybody top that?

Life Expectancy

If I was Zimbabwean, my life would just about be over. I was watching a doco about Zimbabwe last night on DVD called "Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe". The life expectancy of a Zimbabwean woman is 34. Yes I am that old.

Mixing Camille

Last week I mixed the Camille concert I recorded during the Sydney Festival at Hyde Park Barracks. It’s the 1st time I’ve used the newly revamped P63 studio which has a new SSL C200 console and a super powerful Pro-Tools rig. I was a bit unsure about this as a mixdown suite at first as it is all completely digital. I thought a few 1176’s and pultecs would be nice especially for mixing music. But I’m really happy how my mix turned out. Plug ins of note are the MCDSP Analogue channels which simulate the effects of analogue tape. This was great on the beat boxing which just needed to be squished in and the tape saturation effect worked wonders.

Camille is a crazy French woman, with some great music. She was on stage with a piano player plus 7 other vocalists and beatboxers who did stomping and body percussion.

That photo is from the recording at Hyde Park Barracks taken on my phone of us with the JJJ rack with 48 channels of preamp plus 2 Tascam 48ch hard disk recorders.

photos

I went out with Camera Commandos today.  We were at The Rocks in Sydney.  2 challenges were set.  The first was to photograph red/pink.  

The second challenge was to photograph opposites.  

Opposite colours?

Nature vs non-nature

red vs white

mobile phone camera vs 10d with L series lens  (opposite ends of quality spectrum)

Nature vs non-nature

Big Day In

Sydney Anglican’s Big Day In happened on Sunday. It was a broadcast of a special service for all Sydney Anglican churches to tune into. It was a massive organisational and technical event. I thought there was no way this was going to work, but it did! There were a couple of small issues, but in the big scheme of things, these were pretty negligible. I work in broadcasting, and for this event to go so well was such a good effort and well executed. And for a first time effort, even better. The organisers need to be congratulated for pulling it together so well.

I was there to mix the broadcast audio of the music. Garage Hymnal were responsible for that and they did a superb job! It was a total walk in and mix gig. I didn’t plug in a single piece of equipment (except for my studio speakers) or run a single cable. The wonderful team from Crosstalk did it all and they did a great job. If I needed anything all I had to do was turn around and there was someone waiting there to take my instructions. It makes you feel like you’ve made it as a sound engineer when you do this sort of gig. Turn up, mix, go home again. And it was a privilege to be involved. It was quite a challenging mix actually. I do live to air music mixes all the time at work, but they are not usually this big. Bands this size we would normally multitrack and mix later. Garage Hymnal have eight members – drums, bass, 2 electric guitars, acoustic guitar, keyboards and 2 vocalists. So there were plenty of open mics to muddy everything up. In a live mix like that, the big challenge is to keep the clarity and not end up with a big pile of mush. And then on top of that you need to get a good balance and make it sound nice. I wasn't in a great acoustic space to hear what I was doing, butI think it turned out pretty well. A bit messy on the balance side in some places, but hey – it’s live, that what it’s like. No time to sit and make it perfect, just fly by the seat of your pants.

And the other thing of note – the weather. We were in Kellyville in western Sydney where the temperature was above 40 degrees celcius. RF’s car had no air con. Yep, that was fun travelling home in the middle of the day in an oven. But I stopped complaining when I got home and saw the news about the Victorian bushfires and all the tragedy surrounding them.

films

Films I've seen recently-ish that I'd be happy to see again...

The Black Balloon - Australian Film about a family with an autistic teenager and how this impacts on the the life of his brother.

True North - About scottish fisherman who try people smuggling. Has an ending that leaves you in shock - totally not what you expect.

Bolt - animated, about a dog who thinks he's a super hero. Good fun.

Michael Clayton - intense, but good law drama/thriller.

7 Pounds - This movie ends up not being about what you think it's about for most of the movie.

Photos

Today it's birds.
First up - black swans at Centennial Park. Then geese at Centennial Park.



















Next we have galahs from out the front of my house. This little photography moment ended because of having to go inside to change my shirt. Lesson learnt - do not stand under a tree full of birds to take photos. Luckily they didn't get my camera.

Sydney Festival

These last few weeks the Sydney Festival has been on. I’ve done a couple of recordings in the Spiegletent, which has lots of mirrors in it. And I found out Spiegel means “mirror”. So it’s the mirror tent. It gets really hot inside the tent when the temperature is 36 degrees. The poor air conditioner didn’t really cope with Sydney’s heat wave. I’m just glad I wasn’t in there on the 42 degree day. I was recording lunchtime talks by people from the Moscow Art Trio and the Cinematic Orchestra.
I was supposed to record the Joe Henry concert in there on Tuesday, but my other concert, “Camille” got canned in Angel Place on Friday because we couldn’t get recording rights. But then the record company found out we wanted to do it and desperately wanted us to do it, but it was too late. So I ended up doing the Tuesday night Camille show at Hyde Park Barrack’s and DB had to do Joe Henry. It was really hard to get any info about set up or anything, so we just arrived and hoped to find somewhere to set up, but there wasn’t anywhere. Finally we got permission to set up in the gate house, which because of being a historic house has railing all around to protect the bricks so the space ended up being about 1 metre wide – enough room for the gear and me, but no one else. Luckily I had borrowed Triple J’s gear which is all very compact.
Here are some Spiegel tent pics, but they aren’t very good because I was just using the point and shoot. Sorry - no photos of Hyde Park Barracks - too busy and too much gear to take already without worrying about cameras. The Hyde Park Baracks recording was about 28 channels, so would have made much more interesting photos for equipment buffs. Oh well.


My set up for the lunchtime performances of people talking and playing.


The splitters - what we use to split all the induvidual mics so we can mix our own recording without affecting the PA mix.

Photos

Today's theme - the christmas tree. Hey?!?!?!?!? What the?


It's a fibre optic christmas tree. I set the camera to bulb setting (the shutter stays open for as long as the button is pressed) and moved the camera slowly. There's a bit of zooming going on too. Exposure times were anything from 3 to 20 seconds.

Communion #5

Well I kept up my end of the deal. I bought port for communion. But we didn't have communion. I hope the bottle doesn't get lost. It's sitting in the sound equipment cupboard. Or was....
We didn't have communion, but we did have a happy chappy labrador come trotting into church during the sermon on prayer. He must have wanted to be like this dog...

Estonian food

My Mum, being Estonian, likes to eat strange things. And the rest of our family all like it too. We eat seafood on Christmas day, but on days surrounding Christmas we eat this -





These things aren't exclusively Estonian. They are popular in many European countries.

Starting with the pink stuff - Rosolje (Estonian name) - Russian beetroot and potato salad, containing herring, pickle, egg and probably other things I'm not aware of.

The green thing - Pickled cucumber. Easy to buy here, but hard to get the ones Mum likes. She likes pickles in brine, not vinegar.

Next going clockwise - Sauerkraut

Salami Sticks

Jarlsberg cheese

And most importantly - the fish - anchovy. This is NOTHING like the anchovies you put on pizza. These are pickled whole herrings, and are best eaten by holding by the tail and tilting your head back, as demonstrated below by my brother. Eat the whole thing, head, guts and tail.

Yum. And the jar you can see at the bottom. We used to buy these easily in supermarkets in Brisbane, but now they are hardly to be seen. I have to get them from Cyril's Fine Foods in Haymarket. Cyril has all the good stuff. Including pickles in brine.

Photos - my Christmas holidays

One of the agapanthas I didn't flatten while backing the car up the driveway trying to avoid mum and dad's letterbox.




Where I went most days.





The frog dad found living in the car.






Christmas day lunch. Growing up in hot Brisbane our family began a tradition long ago to eat seafood on christmas day. It's too hot to cook a turkey.

Mt Warning - the view from Mum and Dad's house.

The hen on it's favourite chair on the back verandah of the cottage up at Mt Tamborine.

More nice Mt Warning views from Mum and Dad's house.