Reflections

Reflections

At first, I never thought MMS 172 will be this fun.  Learning the intricacies of audio production made me appreciate what I hear. I never thought a lot of effort is needed to produce even a short clip. Good thing our class was under the guidance of the two best professors in multimedia, they were able to impart their knowledge and techniques in audio production. The knowledge I gained will absolutely help me in my future production courses as well.

Wildsound Studio

 Attending the F2F sessions is one of the best experiences I've had in this course. It was my first time to visit a recording studio, and seeing how audio is processed. "Parang magic," especially for someone clueless like me. But magic it is not; it's a product of hard work of all those people behind audio production.

Sir Al and Sir Mike

 For the blogging activity, I find it very helpful. Writing down your thoughts and experiences is a way to help understand ones self. It's like asking yourself over and over, "What have I learned today". This can be particularly helpful especially for other students who would like to learn more and improve their skills. Learning based from the experience of other people is one good way to improve our own.

Samson Microphone

I would like to thank our professors who taught us the basics of audio production, and my classmates who were actively participating in discussions. I admit there's more to learn about audio production, but knowing and understanding the basics is a foundation I will always be grateful for.

The Project

The Project

When I learned the details for our final project in MMS 172, I got excited. As in really excited. Several ideas came into mind, such as doing a voice over from my favorite kiddie show Batibot, dubbing a clip from some anime shows, and making a radio commercial. However, my wife prodded me to make a song cover instead. "That would be very useful when you're going to record my guitar covers," she said.

The wife has spoken, the wife must be obeyed. :D

I browsed through several songs and I found one I really liked. Whistle for the Choir by the Fratellis. I thought, maybe I can do this. However, there's a few problem with this. I don't really sing, and I'm not confident enough with my guitar playing skill. So, I asked two talents to join me in this project, one who will play the guitar and another one who will sing.

To lessen the unwanted noises, we recorded in the office during the wee hours of the night. There's an inner office where I work, which is fortunately carpeted. We positioned our blankets in a chair for the recording of guitar tracks. For the singing part, I did not use a magic voice box but a large wall-mounted rack lined with soft blankets. The Zoom H1 microphone was mounted on a small camera tripod, and I used some rubberbands to secure the moving parts of the tripod and the soft cloth which served as filter.

The Rack

Noise-Cancelling Blankets

Zoom H1 + Tripod

The New Superhero - Zoom H1 Microphone

Rubber Bands

 Guitar tracks were recorded first, and mixed using Audacity. This was then uploaded in a smartphone to serve as a guide for the singer. The bass line was also recorded in this manner, using the previous recording as a guide. This made it a bit easier to mix later on since they are using the same guide.

The Guitarist - Fernan

The Singer - Mariku

For processing, the four tracks were laid in Audacity, removing the unnecessary part at the start and end of each track. When the timing is acceptable enough, noise reduction was applied. The left and right channel balance was also adjusted.  Finally, Studio Fade Out was applied.

Audacity

Although it was a bit hot in our makeshift "recording studio", we had a great time while doing this project. Even though we had to retake several times, we still managed to have fun and enjoy the time spent for this song cover project. Hearing the tracks blend together in the final output makes it all worth it.