Category: Guest Lectures

The lecture with Ken was very interesting, he ran through a lot of aspects of his job and employability factors. Ken is a classical music producer and owner of BMP: The Sound Recording Company, based in Lincoln at ‘Sparkhouse Studios’ on the Universities campus. A lot of travel is involved with job, so one day he will be in London and the next a completely different place! Also a few times a year he goes over to America to work in a studio. Ken detailed the kind of differenced between his recording and popular music recording. Most of his kit consists of AKG-c414’s and other bits of kit which are set up to get more of a room sound, rather than an up-close instrument sound. However, if there are certain parts he wants to highlight in the music he would use spot mic’s on those instruments. This is the main difference between popular and classical music recording.

In the future I could apply these methods to my work, so this lecture has been extremely useful.

Katia is a person in the industry who is involved in a programme called ‘Women in Music’. As she put it women in music is not a feminist group, she merely wants to let the industry know that there is still the problem of jobs mostly being took by men. The organisation is not completely run by women either, there are men who work as part of this company, so this backs up the fact that it is not a feminist company. So what she aims to do is for people to sign up and help get them recognised.  She has worked all across the music industry herself, she has been the artist and the producer. Katia also gave us some information about successful female producers in the past, an example of someone would be Bjork.

There are two types of programme in radio features, these are presenter led and a montage. Presenter led is what it says it is, a presenter has the information which they give to the audience. A montage has no presenter so it must be good at communicating what is meant. A montage is very time consuming to create. However a feature is the most visual type of media, it encourages the listener to use their imagination to bring to life what they are listening to.

This lecture was based around two radio shows which had been played on BBC Radio 4 and what the process was going through the creative process in making these. The first was an Australian train journey, it is one of the most well known line’s in the world and runs from Sydney to Perth taking a massive two days to complete. The aim of this feature was to show what the train journey was like, what other people on the train thought of it and why it was so famous. As Dan said “A good feature will let you explore your imagination”. Thinking about this a good feature must have great sound qualities, it must play with the audience and make them feel like they are in the area. In the first five minutes we are gripped instantly with the sound, we hear everything that would be heard in a train station, most of these are real sounds from location the only sound from a sound library is the level crossing bell.

The second show was a ‘cut-up’. This means a range of different things spliced together over the show. This was a presenter led feature which was scripted and recorded in the studio. This is a much more conventional feature than the montage. In terms of production for this show no outside recording took place. There are a couple of issues with this type of feature. The first is the important question of what is the need for a presenter? The context is there and it can be shown to the audience.

 

This lecture was an interesting one in terms of sound art. Jez is a microphone master, he works with contact and hydrophone microphones in particular. A contact microphone is something that goes is used on the surface of what is being recorded, it picks up a lot of the sounds around it and more importantly in the recordings you can hear some sort of vibration from the microphone. This is very interesting. All of his work has no post production sound on it, all the sounds are landscape sounds. We listened to a few pieces of his work, starting with a metal staircase.

Metal Staircase:

This was recorded at an Architecture building in a University in Sheffield, the sound was quite thin and tinny – but Jez told us this was normal for a contact microphone to give these qualities in recordings. There was a musical tone in this piece of work which we were told is quite unusual for this work and was really a massive fluke.

“Teleferik”:

This recording was of a transportation system called a Teleferik. The contact microphones were placed on the metal wires of the Telefrik. The sound given from these wires sounded exactly like a sound effect from Star Wars! We were informed that this was the same technique, just on a smaller scale. As weather was a massive factor in how the sound of the wires changed the microphones were left recording for five days, this gave enough time to show how the sound of the wires changed.

Inside the beehive: 

This was a particularly interesting piece, there was two contact microphones placed inside a beehive, what we could hear was everything, you could hear the bee’s crawling around, making their hive. It was quite a weird experience. This sound has been used in nature programmes.

All of his sounds are used throughout the media. Although his main role is a sound artist the pieces have been used in film, television and even games. This is because they extremely atmospheric.

 

This lecture was very interesting, we learnt a great deal about organisation in a project. The premise of the lecture was around a real case study, a project Bryan worked on for the BBC called ‘The Chronicles of Freedom”. It was based around William Wilberforce and his journey to freeing the slaves. Bryan was called into the project as producer 9 months in to the 12 month contract and found that the whole thing was unorganised. By this time it was September, the 5 part radio drama had to be finished and the first one played on Boxing day. From the point where he came in there was so much more to do in terms of recording, post production and even finding the locations!

Budgets are the most important factor when beginning a project and what was agreed was way too small for the scale of this project. But it was something that could not be changed, and therefore it had to be worked with. What Bryan found with such a small budget was that it was quite hard to get an on location recording in Wilberforce’s house in Hull. The council wanted to charge in excess of £1000, so the whole recording was done in Lincoln under the Stonebow! This was for accuracy in the sound recording. Some of the public were not happy with this due to it not being the real location. If the budget were correct then maybe this could of worked!

This was a very interesting lecture, and also a great insight into what a music supervisor is and what their role is in film. Lol has been working in the industry for 14 years for a company called Vertigo Films. He was originally a DJ running clubs in Brixton. The company is quite large and there have been many blockbuster films directed by them. Lol has worked on films such as: Football Factory, Bronson, Monsters, The Sweeney etc. So he has a lot of experience in choosing the correct songs for film.

To get the right song for a film they sit in a studio, watching the film with no music coming up with different tracks which could go there, and when they present to the director there should be about 3 or 4 choices. So in this role it is very important to be creative. It is a job which is all about good relationships with everyone they come into contact with, they can’t be too pushy while negotiating.

The music supervisor is involved in a lot of the work with the Director to put songs into film and most of this music is paid for. Prices for songs vary but the most expensive examples of artists are: Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Pet Shop Boys and Michael Jackson with prices from £500K+ a side! (A side means that £500K will go to the record company and 500K will go to the publishing company). However this can only be used within context of the film. If they want to use this song in a trailer, opening and ending credits the price can go up drastically! This is the most extreme example, usually songs go for 1.5K a side.

The music supervisor must track down the people who published a song and the people who own the rights to a song in order to use it in a film (this is where the bartering happens). Sometimes if an artist wants their work to be in a film they can call their publishers and tell them to reduce the price for the film company. It is a bit different with composers, here the music is a lot cheaper and they can negotiate the price more. When the music supervisor gets permission to use a song they get it either ‘for the world’.