Boston Duo in the Studio

Over the last year I’ve had some great sessions in the studio recording the acoustic guitar duo - Boston Duo, which is made up of Dave Boston and his daughter Naomi.
As anyone who has grown up in Hawke’s Bay knows, Dave is a bit of a legend of guitar, having performed and taught for decades in the area.
Dave and Naomi have played as a duo for many years too, and the first album we’ve released, ‘Guitar Sunrise’ is 100% original compositions. There are a few percussion touches throughout, added by Cameron Budge, but in general it’s the two acoustic guitars.
Mastered by Chris Chetland at Cog.

Since releasing the album above, we’ve gone on to record around 20 more cover songs, which will be released this year.

And alongside all of this, Naomi and I have also has recorded an album’s worth of original ‘Songs for Little Ones’, featuring her daughters, Dad and brother Sean - it’s a family affair for sure :) That album is also in the mixing stage and will also be available soon.

Massive thanks to Naomi and Dave :) Stay tuned for more!

Blending in, Thai Style...

I recently mentioned in a Facebook post this project that I worked on with film maker Tim Pierce. This was a passion project, filmed while he was travelling through Thailand. Early discussions led to the goal of creating a really textural, detailed sound mix that would give the whole piece an extra dimension, so my first approach was to work through each scene, creating atmos tracks and foley sounds for all the pictures.

Now... sometimes our initial ideas seem great at the time, but down the line things just don't feel right when we step back and look at the big picture. It's a brutal thing to turn around and look at the piece objectively, and truly realise that the approach was just wrong for the feel of the piece. In all productions, the emotion has to come first, and the truth was that the constant bombardment of sounds was actually distracting from the images and feel!

Dang! (bangs head on desk)

So there were 2 options - strip it all out and just go with images and music, or find some way to incorporate the effects without standing on the emotion's toes. I wanted to try the second option (over killing my babies) so came up with some ideas...

The first was to try and push the effects BACK in the mix. A good way to do this is using EQ to adjust frequency content. Because in the real world things get more muffled, or lose high frequency content as they move further away from us (as well as losing low frequency content) we can roll off the highs to push things back in the mix. I often do this to push things back, and bring things forward, kind of like a pan knob for depth. Of course I didn't want all the effects to be far away, I wanted some to come out to the foreground (like the bird flaps and effects at 0:30) so I automated the frequency cutoff to give the effects that movement.
In general the EQ rolls off everything above about 2KHz, with some dips going down to 1KHz, and some peaks going up to about 5Khz.

Here's a screen shot of the FX bus EQ automation, showing how the frequency cut off moves around to push and pull effects.

I also used a big ol' reverb over the whole SFX bus to make the effects seem more dreamy, which is something I've never done before!

This is probably not the most exciting thing to read about, because it's not a case where sound jumps out and amazes you, but I found it a real challenge to come up with ways of making the effects LESS outstanding, yet still be there to add some value and depth to the images. It just shows that it's not only about choosing the right effects and getting everything to sound perfect - sometimes you have to think outside the box to make the sound work well with the pictures.
Thanks Tim for challenging me on this one!

Sound Design Overview: Audi AP4 Hotlap

For this overview I thought I'd share a perspective that the general public doesn't usually get to hear - just the sound effects, without the music track.

By the way - it's good to listen LOUD! :)

All the sounds except a couple were selected and placed in sync to match the shots. The team at Resonate provided me with a good collection of sounds recorded on location, so after going through, cataloguing, renaming and importing into Sound Miner I could find the sounds I needed reasonably quickly.

I usually break the soundscape down into 3 categories: Atmos, Literal SFX and Abstract SFX.

Atmos tracks are the sounds of the spaces the action is taking place in - cold wind, icy air etc.
Literal SFX are the sounds that relate to what's happening on screen in a literal sense - car sounds, flag whips, crowds, skids etc.
Abstract SFX are additional sound design elements that give weight to edits - booms, hits, slams, whooshes, sub rumbles, drops etc. These don't necessarily sound like anything on screen but they add to the feeling and the impact of the video.

You can see in the Pro Tools session below, Atmos tracks in bright green, Literal SFX in red and Abstract SFX in dark red. I also broke out the car sounds into a separate colour (the darker green above the atmos tracks. Music is blue and the dialogue/gopro tracks are orange.
We all have different ideas about what tracks should be what colour - these are just the ones that make sense to my brain!

A cool aspect of the video that inspired particular sound design freedom was the use of slow motion and speed ramps - especially the shot at 0:38 which really allowed me to go get creative.

Here's the Full Mix version with the music track so you can get an idea of everything working together. That is the goal after all - to make all the elements work as one.

You want to be able to hear each element, but it still has to sound like a cohesive whole. An approach that really helps this is timing the effects to be exactly in sync with the music track.

All in all, another cracker project from Resonate Productions. This video was one of a series of 3 videos, 3 teaser cut down versions and a series promo. You can find them all over on Audi NZ's YouTube Channel.

Thanks Simon, Arthur, Chris and Stefan at Resonate.
http://www.resonate.co.nz/