Hi I’m BOB,
I’ve been passionately involved with music in some form or another for as long as I can remember. I started my music career playing a Flugal Horn in a Valleys Brass Band at the tender age of eight (They didn’t have a spare Cornet at the time) by the time I’d left school I had made it to the glorious heights (It seemed so at the time) of principle Trumpet in the Monmouthshire Youth Symphony Orchestra…... During those years Father Christmas presented me with a Sony reel-to-reel Tape recorder and I’ve been striving to master the ever-changing leaps in tech gear to achieve the best quality music recordings ever since those remarkable Sgt Pepper days. I’ve played in many bands over the years as a bassist and keyboard player and am currently a guitarist in an inde rock band. For the last ten years of my life I have been lucky to work as a professional sound engineer/ producer and a recent highlight of my career was working in America at John Keane Studios in Athens (R.E.M., Cowboy Junkies, Indigo Girls). 21 days of watching the master of Pro-tools weaving his magic as I laboured to lay down piano tracks as a session player. Working the Sound Studios in Mid Wales I’m privileged to be along side equally passionate professionals striving to produce the highest possible standards of recorded music. You’ll experience the friendly relaxed and creative atmosphere as soon as you enter studios surrounded by stunning countryside. The Music Rocks on………….
Typical Recording Session
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Recording Times
A 5 song demo requires about 34 hours (2 or 3 days to record the basic tracks, vocals, harmonies, and solos, plus one or two days to mixdown and master). A good rule of thumb is: 1 minute of recorded music = 11/2 hours of studio time. Here's a "typical" recording project breakdown:
The Day Before The Session
We'll have your drummer come in to set up, tune, and get the drum sound the day before the session. When the drummer leaves, the board, mics, and drum kit are set and ready for the session the next day. Drums tuned for stage use are different from studio drums.
Day 1, Basic Rhythm Tracks
The bass can go direct to the board, or to one of our DI preamps or your bass player's rig. We'll usually mike the guitar amps and we have a range of classic valve condenser microphones, avalible at no extra charge.
Song 1 usually takes about 3 to 4 hours to record (including guitar amp setup, placing microphones, eliminating hums, hiss, and buzzes, setting headphone levels, getting everybody warmed up, etc.).
The rest of the songs take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or so per song, depending on the number of takes or effects needed. (One song will take a lot longer than the other songs - I don't know why - it just works out that way.) Figure about 6 to 8 hours for the basic session. It's a very long day but we'll take a lot of breaks. All you're going for on Day 1 is a good drums/bass/rhythm groove with a scratch vocal. The singer shouldn't push on any of the vocals today.
Day 2, Solos, Overdubs, and Vocals
You'll add solos, and possibly redo some tracks because you came up with something better. That takes about 5 hours. You did rough vocals during the basic session to help with timing. Now, you'll do the finished vocals & harmonies if you didn't blow your voice during Day 1. Figure on about 2 to 5 hours for vocals.
Day 3, Mixdown Session (Several Days Later)
Final mixdowns take about 4 hours for the first song and about an hour each for the rest of the songs. You'll listen on quality blue sky speaker systems and we'll adjust the sound to get the best compromise for the final mix. Figure about 8 hours for mixdowns, or longer. Add another 4 hours for mastering. A "typical" five song recording project runs something like this:
Session Hours
Drum Setup 2
Basic Tracks 10
Solos & Overdubs 5
Vocals & Harmonies 3
Mixdown 8
Mastering 4
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Total 38
Pro Tools 7.4 Software
Get ready for a revolutionary new way to work with Pro Tools®. Digidesign® Pro Tools 7.4 software, featuring the time-manipulating power of Elastic Time, will have you approaching your projects in creative new ways, making working with tempo- and time-based sessions a whole lot easier and imaginative. Plus, increased support for Avid® video and shared storage solutions streamline the workflow between audio and video editors.
Stretch Your Sound with Elastic Time
Whether you’re a musician, composer, music producer, ADR engineer, or sound editor, Elastic Time makes it easy to change tempo or time on the fly. Change the tempo and timing of loops, music, dialog, and other sound files without cutting up audio. Easily create loops from any audio file — even entire compositions — with the help of powerful tempo and transient analysis. And when you import audio files and loops, they automatically conform to match your session’s tempo. You can even use REX and Acid loops right in Pro Tools.
To ensure that you get the best results, Elastic Time lets you choose from several high-quality time-stretching algorithms, which deliver the best-sounding processing in the industry, on a per-track basis. Want to hear how a certain audio bit will sound in your song? The new Context Preview lets you easily audition loops and audio files in sync with the tempo of your session. You can also now quantize audio to the session grid or extracted grooves. What’s more, you can fine-tune regions with precision control over each individual beat using the new Warp track view and Warp markers.
Powerful Workflows with the Avid Video World
Pro Tools 7.4 software opens up new avenues for working with video editors, bringing Pro Tools|HD® and Pro Tools LE® users into the Avid® workflow to streamline post-production processes. For Pro Tools|HD users, Pro Tools HD 7.4 software and the new Media Station|PT™ with Video Satellite Option enable you to play back unrendered Avid sequences in sync with Pro Tools while maintaining full audio processing power. Pro Tools HD 7.4 software also provides tri-level sync compatibility with SYNC HD™, enabling Pro Tools to resolve to most HD and Slow-PAL reference signals.
Pro Tools 7.4 also lets Pro Tools LE users benefit from the great picture quality, easy navigation, and efficiency of Avid video in the Pro Tools timeline with new support for Avid Mojo SDI with most members of the 003™ and Mbox® 2 product families. Pro Tools users who have Intel-based Macs can now work directly with Avid Mojo® and Avid Mojo® SDI. And Windows XP-based Pro Tools 7.4 software users can play and record media directly from Avid Unity ISIS™ shared storage networks.
More Great Features
If you’re thinking of upgrading to Windows Vista Ultimate or Business, Pro Tools LE and Pro Tools M-Powered™ 7.4 software provide support for both Microsoft platforms (32-bit only). ReWire support has been improved; Pro Tools 7.4 software now accepts MIDI input (both controller and note data) directly from ReWire applications (such as Reason) for recording to a Pro Tools MIDI or Instrument track. Pro Tools 7.4 also brushes up on its language skills with support for language characters in Unicode. That means you can work in any language supported by Unicode (such as Japanese, French, Greek, Russian, and Hebrew) anywhere in the Pro Tools application for labeling and editing text.
