MichelleAthens Recording Connection

Recording Connection Week 1 (Jan 24th - 26th) Posted on 2017-01-31 by Michelle

In all seriousness, I am in love with this program and the opportunity to further my music career in the years to come. 

 

I meet with John Keane at his studio ranch house in Athens, GA. Keane has produced with some of the best bands to come out of my hometown, Athens, GA, among which are R.E.M., The Indigo Girls, and Wide Spread Panic. He personally enjoys working with bands in the genres Americana, Rock, Experimental, and Folk music. He seems to be a very focused and hardworking producer! I enjoy listening to how he mixes the music to get the pitches perfect for the musician’s records. 

January 24th, 2017 Day 1:

We met at the studio at 11 A.M. and went over the details of chapter 1. We talked more in depth about phase such as how it affects the timing of the tracks. We also talked about masking and how loud, intense sounds can mask other less intense sounds on tracks. We also discussed ProTools. Plugins are the essential parts in ProTools that alter the sound of the track you are mixing. Hertz is the unit of measurement used in ProTools. Hertz are used in measuring the frequency of the sound waves. When mixing, you are trying to get a clean product out of a lot of music that can be muddied up by excess noise or banging on instruments. Next, I observed John mixing an artist’s record. We met with an artist named Jim White. He is an Americana/Folk musician and uses as many instruments as possible in his songs. He told us he is telling stories with his songs so all the instruments play a part in painting the picture and setting the scene for the listeners.  

January 26th, 2017 Day 2: 

I met the other student from the recording connection! His name is Joey, and he is 20 years old like I am. The first question I asked him was what is your favorite type of music (lol) to which he responded he's mostly into the Alternative music scene. His favorite band right now is Two Door Cinema Club. (I also love them. Here is a link to listen to them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXwYJyrKK5A ) We started observing John as he worked on Jim White's song 'Reason to Cry." He started off by manipulating the sound wave of the lead vocal to take away some of the harsh twangs in certain areas of the song. He smoothed out the sound so that it would flow better in the song. John made the pitch of each note that was twangy sound more put together instead of choppy. He is literally readjusting sound waves to make the lead vocalist sound better. In this song alone, there were at least 100 tracks with vocals and instruments. 

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