Callum Price

As this CD consisted of two slightly different bands I had to make sure that when switching between tracks the levels did not change.

http://www.robtoulson.rt60.co.uk/rt_docs/RT_CompilationMasteringLoudness_ARP2013.pdf

This PDF by Dr Rob Toulson gives a really good overview of mastering a compilation CD.

Fortunately for me, I was mixing both of the tracks and both bands a relatively similar. This meant that getting them to the same level was a lot easier.

I approached the mastering by making each band’s music as good as I could get it. I then referenced their level against each other. This made sure that even if the levels were out with other music they would be the same.

My main research in regards to mixing and mastering of this project was done with these books.

Mixing Secrets – Mike Senior

Mixing and Mastering in the box – Steve Savage

As we wanted the mixes of a high standard doing some background research was needed.

Even though I was relatively comfortable with my skill level when mixing, it was mastering i didn’t know much about.

Both books offered good insight into the whole process with both stressing the quality of the recordings and the balance of the mix. Both of these in our case worked out really well from the recordings to the mixdown. We used around 5 sets of speakers to reference the material to try and get a good balance.

I found mainly that the best methods involved little to no processing. Both books talked about the importance of Dynamic range and that is something we tried to keep. I learned about the overuse of compression and how a lot of the time EQ can give you a similar result.

During the mastering stage, I got stuck with trying to get the material to the correct level. The Savage book definitely helped here as it encouraged me to go back to the mixing stage to tweak the initial mixdowns.

The Docs are an indie rock style band. They use overdriven guitars and fast playing to create songs with a good amount of punch.

I found they were a mix between the Artic Monkeys and the Foo Fighters.

They incorporated a large amount of stylistic elements from the Artic Monkeys.

I read an article by James Ford, on the production of the Artic Monkeys 4th album.

http://www.soundonsound.com/people/james-ford-producing-arctic-monkeys

In this article he talks about wanted a simplistic vibe. They talk about the enjoyment of not wanting to tweak little things and having a basic natural sound. We tried to embrace this philosophy by being minimalistic in the recording stage.

The recording method we used allowed us to keep a large amount of the natural aspect of The Doc’s playing. Without using a click the band to be more comfortable and relaxed while recording creating a live feel to the songs.

As we recorded in a live scenario mixing was rather simple. The main goal was to blend all the instruments together while maintaining the band’s vibe. From watching them play the songs in the session I noticed they were very guitar driven. I used this overview when mixing.

The drums for their style needed to be punchy and hard hitting to help keep with the paces of their songs. I compressed the drums relatively heavily to create this vibe and to compensate for some recording problems.

Overall I was very happy with how their mix came out as I feel it fits their style well.

Sunda Strait was also done in a similar process to this.

 

The vocalist from the band Sunda Strait came back in to redo vocals. This was due to the fact he was ill for the previous session.

During this session, we also re-tracked his guitar parts as last time his guitars intonation was out causing his tuning to fluctuate.

For vocals, we tracked using a Neuman U87 running through a sony rack-mounted compressor. This gave very rich sounding vocals with a lot of expression.

This session was very easy and we were finished in a few hours. We were all really happy with how everything came out.

Over the course of the past week, I have done some research in how to market a product towards a school.

There are some main principles that products marketed to schools need to have. They mainly need to be.

• Cost Effective
• Educational
• Quick

All the sites I looked at which explained how to sell towards the education sector all said these things. The product must be at an affordable price, due to the funding of schools. The product must have some kind of educational value, and it must be done quickly.

This website gives a list of essentially everything that you need to do in order to sell products in the education sector.

https://www.incensu.co.uk/news/view/effective-education-marketing

This website contains more information on the school format and what kinds of products the schools buy. It even talks about who has the money and who to talk to.

http://read.businessadvisersdirect.co.uk/2013/10/24/how-to-sell-to-schools/

We have used this information to tailor our products presentation towards the education sector.