week 10 blog - Posted on 2014-09-11 by Brett Robinson

Earlier this week I met my mentor at Hyde st studios in SF, to sit in on a tracking session. It was pretty cool. The session was just a hip hop artist recording vocals over a beat that was already made, but it still provided for an interesting experience. It was good to see how things run in just a basic session like that. At first the artist seemed a little worried b/c he found out that he had been sent the wrong files for the instrumental beat he wanted to use, but my mentor reassured him that they would figure something out and they did. They just ended up using the mp3 of the the instrumental that the artist did have on his phone and he could send him the individual tracked waved files later. Then, the artist wanted to have part of the arrangement changed by copying and looping a certain section. It was kind of confusing understanding what he specifically wanted at first becuase he couldn't expalin it very well but my mentor was able to ask the right questions and figure it out. After that everything went smooth. They recorded moe taked until they like what they had, my mentor made some suggestions and then did a rough mix. The artist was happy with the way it sounded and then that was it. It was important for me to see how possible problems were avoided by my mentor having complete control over the situation and did his best to make the artist feel comfortable and reassure them it would work out fine. -Brett Robinson