Friday, March 12, 2010

Techniques of 408 4

This week during class, time was spent by each group getting some practice in the studio for mid terms. While this was happening, I was able to start diving into the world on Digital Audio, which is the topic of my mid term presentation. I have a long list of available sources and a rough outline of the topics that I will be covering. The area's of concentration that I will be focusing on are: The History of Digital Audio, Analog-to-Digital and Digital-to-Audio Conversion, Sample Rates, Bit Depth and Resolution, Digital's Subjective sound quality, Word Clock and Jitter, Storage Formats, and Digital Consoles.
Since most of the time in class was spent reviewing this week, I feel it's necessary to touch on a few key points of the presentation given by Alan Silvestri earlier today. When listening to Alan speak, it is clear that Alan loves what he does and he is very grateful to have 'fell' into the practice of creating movie scores. Because I don't necessarily want to write music for movies, when he was giving advice on how to approach working with movie directors I tried to apply his theories instead to audio production skills.
One thing he mentioned was 'when a scene can carry itself, you have a world of possibilities, you can go in any experimental direction (or theme) that you might highlight a feeling and be most appropriate.' I thought this statement to be really interesting. If a song is great, maybe the production possibilities are greater. You might considering adding more instrumentation, or adding a lot of auxiliary noises that compliment the song.
Alan said that 'if you are asked to do it, you are ready.' I think this is great a way to look at opportunity. It can also let an individual know if they are doing a good enough time putting there name out into the community and striving for something that can be recognized.
Alan was asked, 'what creates and how do you find a creative flow in a partnership?' It is important to be able to communicate clearly and effectively. He mentioned how sometimes it is not so important to talk technically as it is important to talk conceptually. An example would be; this part needs to be bigger and have more impact, rather than saying, have strings come in at this point and have a percussion break there.
A few times Alan has worked on a movie where the director has said, 'I need you to make a big sounding score because I don't have any big shots.' I think this can apply to music where a songwriter has songs, but nothing more. A producer's job should be to know how a song can grow and formulate from a rather small seed to a gigantic tree.
Someone asked Alan how he approached movie scores of sequels. Alan said that he approaches them similarly as any movie, but that he also takes into consideration the previous musical ideas. I think this can apply to recording a group that has already put out an album and is looking to improve upon there sound with a second record. Alan said that he feels its important to revisit what was good about the music of a previous project and how it can be either reinvented or completely redone to better a specific purpose. Expand on the good and continue to create your own vision of what it can be.

No comments:

Post a Comment