Local Animality Reflection

I don't even know where to start this hey! This trimester has been so crazy I have honestly learnt most of what I know from recording and mixing this project which is nuts. I am to begin with super proud of all the bands who came along for this fast paced ride with us. Everyone performed so well and were super well rehsed at their songs. I was really impressed with the interpretations that they all took on the classic Brissy classics. I am also super proud of Mike and I we spent over 140 hours recording this thing and about the same each mixing and a year ago there is now way in hell I thought I would ever be able to do this!

I think the most important things I learnt from this project were mostly interpersonal skills. I had recorded in the NEVE a lot before and I had record a lot of m own stuff in there. However I had never had to manage 10 different bands over 12 weeks planning for it to take about two days to record each song. I learnt how to communicate with bands and organise sessions as well as meet them, make them feel comfortable, get to know who they are and how we should best approach them while producing. These are things that we haven't really been taught at SAE and only come with experience. We were really luck that we reached out to bands that we either knew personally or who we have seen at shows and been fowling for a while. I guess in a way we felt like we kind of already had a connection with them because we picked who we wanted on the album. It was nice to meet these people as they were all so lovely and I think we can safely say that all the bands seemed super happy with how the tracking went on the day. No sessions really had any huge errors to technical difficulties which is honestly a miracle considering that we had over 20 session to record this! I think that this played a part in how the artist felt as we comfortable in the studio and they didn't feel like they were begin a part of a uni project.

As far as my technical skills when it comes to using consoles and Pro Tools I have defiantly learnt the most this trimester compared o the others. I had recorded in the NEVE rooms a fair few times but with a fair bit of time in between so I never had the consistency to get confutable. This project defiantly gave me the confidence after the first session going well that I was more than capable use the console as well as experiment with the outboard gear in the NEVE. One of my favourite thighs that we used was the Distressor. This we used on almost every track on their the trash mic on the drum kit or Vocals. I had never tracked lived with compression before so this was a new a scary learning curve. After a few takes sessions I feeling way ore confutable to use it on vocals especially. I feel if I was to do this again I would use more outboard gear when recording as it really does add another element to the tracking session that is exciting as well as that lovely analogue sound (which we can replicate pretty well these days but still).

I have learnt a lot of protools short cuts for recording this trimester which has been super helpful! I am defiantly more confinement at using Protools now while tracking I really don't have many fears with using short cuts and I defiantly work a lot faster too!

I honestly when it comes to mixing I have learnt a lot but I just know that my mixes have far to go and that only comes with practice. I have a good set up now for mixing at home so when I leave SAE I can mix. I spent a lot fo money on plugins and a laptop this trimester to set me up for the future. I have done na fair bit of plug in research as well I think this is the topic I have researched the most. This was mostly because I didn't know which fancy ones to buy so I watches some YouTube video and demonstrations to see what ones I liked the interfaces for etc (see my plug in haul blog).

I feel as though my ears have defiantly become more frequency tuned this trimester which is great and I have found myself really hearing the difference in compressors and EQ's that I haven't before. I think this was really happening when I was doing my plug in research to be honest I had to really use my ear with some of the comparisons and think about how they manipulated frequency's differently (see vocal compression post). I also learnt how to make mixes sound huge with distortion and parallel compression that I had never done before. I think I really concurred a fear of mixing this trimester and thinking that I wasn't good enough. I know that I am still only learning and that if I keep practicing (which I can using free stems, old sessions ect) then I will continue to improve as I have been Over the last three months!

Next time it would be nice to have a constant space to track this in we are hoping that next year we will do a volume 2 (yay) of this project in a studio space somewhere in Brisbane (see future Local Animality post). It would save us so much time tracking if we didn't need to load in absolutely all the gear into the studio barre the desk every time we wanted to record one song. I think that we could cut the tracking time down to a song per day if we had a permanent drum kit set up.

Over all I am super proud of Mike and I and I am so excited about all the skills I have learnt over recording and mixing local animality. I am excited to see what happens next year and I am so damn glad I never have to write another blog every again. Bye forever its been real.