So last month I was in lovely Köln/Cologne again to record and mix the music I composed for a short adventure film,"Kuwululu", which was shot in Ghana and directed by Dolunay Gördüm. It's a 25 minute film project of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
I learned immense amounts of stuff...and realised how much I have yet to learn. Motivation is not amiss! I'm definitely looking forward to the next time I get to do a recording session with live string, percussion and woodwind players. But let us go back to the near past, as I've been sitting on this blog post for too long:
Here is a smartphone video I shot in the studio while I was editing the recordings. I'm used to using PreSonus Studio One for everything from composing to picture to recording to editing to mixing, but this time I had to jump into ProTools territory.
In the meanwhile, I've gotten so used to ProTools that I sometimes mistakenly try to use its keyboard shortcuts in Studio One! Hehe. It's never too late to start working with the standard industry software, especially now that I've starting working outside of my little home setup. That said, I hope Studio One becomes more popular in the near future. I find it easier to browse and search for the effects and plugins I need in it.
So much for the software. Our "hardware" for this project was composed of strings, varied percussion instruments and flute as well as an Indian bansuri and a Nigerian Udu. On the receiving end were some pretty nice microphones all set up in the Cologne Academy for Media Arts studio by the amazing in-house sound engineer, Judith.
Here's a picture of the room we recorded the strings in. There are also people in it. These are string players. And Dolu. He is the director. Now the rest of this paragraph is more technical and should serve as a future reference for myself because it was all new information to me. It might be a bit boring for anyone else who usually reads my blog (shout out to my one reader: thanks, Baba). We had two cardioid mics for a focus on the violin and viola each. Violin was left and viola was right, just like in an orchestra pit haha. The double bass had a pick-up mic glued to the bridge as well as a supercardioid mic for more focus. On top of that, the in-house sound engineer set up her special stereo mics on the ground on the polar opposite of the double bass about one and a half metres apart to take in the whole atmosphere of the room, so that we had more than one option to mix the bass (whatever sounded better: bass from the room or bass from the more focused supercardioid or pickup mics). I ended up ditching the pickup in the mix because it was just too powerful. You could hear the individual resin particles scratching the tiny grooves in the strings and the horse hairs of the bow very slowly tearing. It all sounded like something from a horror movie. The best bass sound came from the room mics- they added a space to breathe.
More making-of pics. Here we are rehearsing some parts with the flutist to picture (he had a screen showing the film parallel to ours in his booth to watch as he played). The director said that I gave the players instructions on how to play -breath, dynamics, nuances- much as a director would for his actors. Never thought of it that way but now that I do think about it- I have to start working more on my peepol skillz and polish up my presence for when I conduct a whole orchestra. Ha.
Here are a couple of roughly edited pre-final mixdowns of pieces from various points in the soundtrack.
https://soundcloud.com/zazuka/kuwululu-soundtrack-prefinal-mix-part-01
Enjoy!
Bonus! Phone Photo! Köln Dom by Night! No tourists! I was walking alone after a long night of editing in the studio and passed by the Cologne Cathedral. The square before it is usually buzzing with bumbling tourists and their selfie-sticks but this night, it was just me and his magnificence, face to freakishly huge face. In the silence, he spoke to me and said something in stoneish that I seemed to understand in some archaic part of my subconscious brain. It was something about carrying your heavy burden gracefully...but to really understand it, you have to confront him yourself.
I learned immense amounts of stuff...and realised how much I have yet to learn. Motivation is not amiss! I'm definitely looking forward to the next time I get to do a recording session with live string, percussion and woodwind players. But let us go back to the near past, as I've been sitting on this blog post for too long:
Here is a smartphone video I shot in the studio while I was editing the recordings. I'm used to using PreSonus Studio One for everything from composing to picture to recording to editing to mixing, but this time I had to jump into ProTools territory.
In the meanwhile, I've gotten so used to ProTools that I sometimes mistakenly try to use its keyboard shortcuts in Studio One! Hehe. It's never too late to start working with the standard industry software, especially now that I've starting working outside of my little home setup. That said, I hope Studio One becomes more popular in the near future. I find it easier to browse and search for the effects and plugins I need in it.
So much for the software. Our "hardware" for this project was composed of strings, varied percussion instruments and flute as well as an Indian bansuri and a Nigerian Udu. On the receiving end were some pretty nice microphones all set up in the Cologne Academy for Media Arts studio by the amazing in-house sound engineer, Judith.
Here's a picture of the room we recorded the strings in. There are also people in it. These are string players. And Dolu. He is the director. Now the rest of this paragraph is more technical and should serve as a future reference for myself because it was all new information to me. It might be a bit boring for anyone else who usually reads my blog (shout out to my one reader: thanks, Baba). We had two cardioid mics for a focus on the violin and viola each. Violin was left and viola was right, just like in an orchestra pit haha. The double bass had a pick-up mic glued to the bridge as well as a supercardioid mic for more focus. On top of that, the in-house sound engineer set up her special stereo mics on the ground on the polar opposite of the double bass about one and a half metres apart to take in the whole atmosphere of the room, so that we had more than one option to mix the bass (whatever sounded better: bass from the room or bass from the more focused supercardioid or pickup mics). I ended up ditching the pickup in the mix because it was just too powerful. You could hear the individual resin particles scratching the tiny grooves in the strings and the horse hairs of the bow very slowly tearing. It all sounded like something from a horror movie. The best bass sound came from the room mics- they added a space to breathe.
More making-of pics. Here we are rehearsing some parts with the flutist to picture (he had a screen showing the film parallel to ours in his booth to watch as he played). The director said that I gave the players instructions on how to play -breath, dynamics, nuances- much as a director would for his actors. Never thought of it that way but now that I do think about it- I have to start working more on my peepol skillz and polish up my presence for when I conduct a whole orchestra. Ha.
Here are a couple of roughly edited pre-final mixdowns of pieces from various points in the soundtrack.
https://soundcloud.com/zazuka/kuwululu-soundtrack-prefinal-mix-part-01
Enjoy!
Bonus! Phone Photo! Köln Dom by Night! No tourists! I was walking alone after a long night of editing in the studio and passed by the Cologne Cathedral. The square before it is usually buzzing with bumbling tourists and their selfie-sticks but this night, it was just me and his magnificence, face to freakishly huge face. In the silence, he spoke to me and said something in stoneish that I seemed to understand in some archaic part of my subconscious brain. It was something about carrying your heavy burden gracefully...but to really understand it, you have to confront him yourself.
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