Society Of Sound

15/02/2025

Last weekend with the Amici Chamber Ensemble at Trinity St. Paul, using the Yamaha DM1000. This is a great example of Japanese excellence and thorough design. Like having a swiss army knife of features, if you can think it, this console can likely route it in its many layers of audio processing. I normally don't do FOH duties but this concert needed three layers of audio to take care of.
1. Adding front fills to the existing PA required creating separate zones for the fills to be time aligned and equalized to match the existing PA with Smaart.
2. Mix for FOH
3. Discreet direct outs for each channel, post EQ and Fader, for recording and mixing in post to sync with film

I have another one of these tomorrow at Trinity St. Paul. I will go more in depth in another post with the Yamaha. Thanks to Amici for the invite.

20/12/2024

Just purchased this Beyerdynamic M88TG. Ever since reading that this was Phil Collins vocal mic of choice I’ve been intrigued by its sound. Developed for high SPL applications like kick drum this mic is an expensive version of a 57 and the build quality is outstanding. Made in Germany, the HyperCard pattern has great off axis rejection and a substantial low frequency response differentiating it from other mic’s in this lane. Looking toward too using it tmw on a session.

11/12/2024

I first started my journey into classical music recording back in the late 80's and would read, watch, study, listen and absorb anything I could get into to learn the craft. One of the pieces of gear I would consistently run into was the Studer 961/962 consoles. These portable broadcast mixers, although heavy, packed a large punch in the facilities it carried with aux returns, multiple talkback routing, signalling and on board compression and limiting. Not to mention the transparent preamps and simple, but very capable, EQ.

I've lusted after one ever since.

A few weeks back I met up with one of my long time colleagues and friends, Warren Beck, and I finally scratched that itch. Warren had a lovely edition of a 961 from the CBC vault and was gracious enough to let me evaluate it for a few weeks. After extensive remixing of orchestral and chamber recordings as well as getting a handle on all the monitoring, talkback and aux/send options, I pulled the trigger.

I will use this on location for recordings, but will also be used as a mix tool in studio. I primarily mix most projects in the analog world and the Studer will be part of that process. Oddly enough, the first release through the Studer is not a classical music one. Completed over the past two weeks, I recorded, mixed and co-produced a new Christmas song for the very talented singer-songwriter Delia Deacon, called Christmas At All. Check it out and give Delia some love.

More on the Studer later.

https://youtu.be/OGUb5Sbo_mg?si=zzMyN4u3PMW36HID

15/11/2024

Google Awards yesterday at Brickworks. Getting the orchestra mic'ed with 4099s, IEMs, mixed and balanced with playback is a challenge in patience. Just a few opening chords can tell you whether one is in the zone. Live sound is a different beast. We did manage to get a fairly flat response from 50-5kHz A-weighted.

07/10/2024

Society of Sound recording of Black Sand with the Hamilton Philharmonic, James Summerville conducting. Black Sand was commissioned by James Sommerville, music director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra at the time, through a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Composer, Kelly-Marie Murphy, was born on a NATO base in Sardegna, Italy, and grew up on Canadian Armed Forces bases all across Canada. She began her studies in composition at the University of Calgary with William Jordan and Allan Bell, and later received a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Leeds, England, where she studied with Philip Wilby. After living and working for many years in the Washington D.C. area where she was designated “an alien of extraordinary ability” by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, she is now based in Ottawa.

From the composer:
Black Sand was inspired by the world of metal work. Specifically, I was interested in making the comparison between the process of annealing (where metal is heated to a very high temperature and then allowed to cool slowly in order to remove any impurities) and the process of composing, which can be extremely intense. In researching types of metal work, I became fascinated with the making of samurai swords. Samurai swords are made from Tamagane which is a type of Japanese steel. The steel is made from black sand. The process of extracting and forging the steel is a traditional ritual that is preformed only three or four times a year under very specific conditions.

Black Sand is a journey through colour, from dark and shadowy to bright and intense; warm and cool. There is an overall energy to the piece that is powerful yet controlled. My artistic volition is the black sand and the music is the tamagane. It has been forged and folded, heated and welded, quenched and polished. Through my lonely ritual, the music annealed.

Recorded at Hamilton Place, James Sommerville, conductor.

30/03/2024

The Toronto Mandolin Orchestra at Trinity St. Paul. The challenge to overcome is balance and equipment that deals with the transients well. The cleanliness of this ensemble is all in the articulation. The other challenge is keeping ppl from knocking over mic stands. :(