D8 Skills #140 & D9 | Unit E | Busy Day

Firstly, one of my tutors taught me how to choose and tune a snare drum, and mix a kick drum. He showed me that if you're unhealthy, a good doctor won't prescribe you with loads of medicine, they'd tell you to change your lifestyle. This is the same with recording in the studio.

I then packed up the drum recording gear that I'd set up yesterday, because the drummer didn't think he'd be able to perform his perfect take yet.

I spoke to one of my tutors about whether he has any examples of producer/artist contracts because I'm going to write one between me and Andy Ford. He found one on the internet, and we spoke about what sort of things that should be included. I then began writing it, copying from the example, and will make changes accordingly.

I spoke to one of my tutors about how I should go about multitracking during the live Unit E gig as this is my defined technical role. He introduced me to a student in a different year who'd done this exact thing a few weeks previously. She showed me though everything, and I took notes/photos.

Lastly we had a lesson on mastering where we learned about parallel compression. The most valuable thing I learned was that I shouldn't slam my tracks with compression to make them louder because it gets tiring to listen to after some time; “If your meters don’t dance, then why the hell should I?” - G Martin.

After college, I filmed and directed a live performance video of 'Ground Floor (again)' by Andy Ford.

The only thing I forgot to add to the equipment list was a power extension reel, so I ran around the whole college like a mad man asking everyone I found whether they knew where I could find one. After a while, I finally found a lecturer sitting in a classroom with a huge reel next to him. I asked whether I could use it, and he kindly let me. At first it wasn't working, but when I pressed 'RESET' on the plug, it did.

The shoot went well, and we left with an hour to spare before the time we had to be out by.