For my college gig, we set up a PA system in a group of five, line checking and then individually sound checking a band each. This involved working with three monitors and the front of house speakers when sound checking and running the gig. For my band, I had to set up a bass guitar using DI, an electric guitar, drum kit and three vocal microphones, however one vocalist was not singing on the song attached. Two stage boxes were used, one analog and one digital, with the digital one being the primary stage box and the analog one being used primarily for the drum kit microphones and monitor, as well as the bass DI. I also showcased my knowledge of passive and active speakers, as two of my monitors were passive, and the rest of the speakers were all active. My band was a bit different due to the fact a vocalist microphone was moved to the drummer, who was also a vocalist, it did cause some spill from the drum kit in the recording, however it was mixed to the best of my ability. For the drum kit, four microphones were used, one for the kick drum, one for the snare and two overhead microphones. One thing I've worked on since is trusting myself and my ear more, as no matter how good it sounded live, I felt like someone would notice something I had missed, such as EQ on a vocal being off or something to that effect, however there was no such issue.

For my remixing project, I was given access to the stems from the song Warrior by Bdy_Prts, this was my final remixing project from my HNC in Sound Production, and it involved showcases all the key skills I had learnt from that class involving automation, splicing, sidechaining and many more skills. For this project I was very inspired by the remix of Echo that was done by The Living Tombstone, and so I wanted something very high energy that I'd also enjoy listening to in my free time. Another thing that was important to me creatively was that some sort of story or theme was carried throughout it, and so a lot of lyrics surrounding lies and being a warrior remained in my song so that it could be looked at in a narrative way. Overall I'm very proud of this project as I believe it showcases a lot about why I fell in love with music and sound production, as I was able to be extremely creative with it, and combine all my interests with my class work.

For my Post Production project, I chose a video clip belonging to Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service to display my technical and creative skills in a number of areas including sound effects, foley and ADR. Before I began any of that however, I created a script for my voice actors to use, as well as a sound map and recording plan (embedded below). I did this so that I would stay on task and easily keep track of what I needed to record and/or source from a library, as well as where in the clip each sound had to be inputted. 

This was probably one of my favourite college projects, as I think displayed a lot of my passion and skills in regards to Sound Production and completing this work was a lot of fun! I was able to work with various voice actors, which tested my communication skills as I quickly picked up on each voice actor needing me to vary my approach to the voice directions I gave them depending on their confidence and how I knew them, each of them also had different requirements to what they needed to see/hear before recording their line. For example, Kiki was voiced by one of my friends, Cassie Kai, who picked up voice acting very naturally and wasn't nervous at all, despite never having acted before, so we were both able to have a lot of fun with recording and experimented with trying out different accents as well as intonations for certain lines. I also worked with Cassie's mum, who voiced Kiki's mother in the clip, she also hadn't voice acted before and was slightly more self conscious about it so my voice directions were given with more care to avoid hurting her confidence, I also created an altered script for her with different coloured text to make it easier to read, as she struggled with certain font colours. 

For the foley aspect of this project, I recorded footsteps, cloth and the sound of Kiki shaking a tin and I was able to get one of my classmates to help with this through working as a foley artist, we also recorded the other SFX on the same day. I was also able to learn mixing and mastering standards that Post Production engineers have to adhere to in Europe, and so I utilised EQ, compression, reverberation and was able to achieve the final integrated output level of -24 LUFS easily. Overall I think this was one of my biggest projects of my educational career so far, and I am beyond proud of what I was able to produce in just a couple of months.

For my Spatial Audio recording exam, I and 6 other classmates worked together to record an orchestra from the perspective of the conductor using microphone arrays taught in class.

For my plan, I chose to use the double mid side technique, which uses 3 microphones, two cardioid and one bi-directional positioned on top of one another, with the bi-directional microphone picking up the audio from either side and the cardioid microphones picking up the front and back audio. I chose this so that when the 5.1 recordings were bounced down to stereo there would be less issues with phasing. Additionally, with how close the microphones would be to the conductor I felt like it would work well at replicating the room audio from his perspective, however since creating that plan I understand that it would’ve been difficult to capture the full extent of the orchestra with just that microphone array and some spot microphones.

The microphone arrays that the group decided on was the Decca tree, two flank mics and two rear mics, alongside additional spot mics where needed - percussion, strings (plus harp), woodwind and vocals. These arrays worked better for this assignment than the double mid-side, as it allowed for a wider area to be recorded.

The microphones we used were three AKG C414s for the Decca tree placed in front and to the left and right of the conductor at roughly the same height, all facing forwards and set to a cardioid polar pattern.
For the flank microphones, we used Austrian Audio OC818s in a cardioid polar pattern positioned at the same height as the Decca tree on the left and right hand side of the orchestra.
For the rear mics we used Aston Spirits placed farther back in the room; to capture the audio heard behind the conductor, which would mainly be the room reflections, these mics were positioned at the same height as the Decca tree and were set to an omnidirectional polar pattern.
Additionally, we used three Oktava MK-012s as overhead spot mics and a Neumann TLM107, Audix D6, Sennheiser e604 and SM58 as close miked spot mics. 

Overall, our spatial audio recording went well, as we achieved a pass for our achievements, and I believe it benefitted my ability to work on a project as a group and made me more capable at making judgements and decisions with others. 

I then mastered a clip of the recordings in stereo as evidence (attached above) of my recording work using Ozone 12 on ProTools with a Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen audio interface and DT 770 PRO headphones.

On Wednesday the 6th of May I completed my Sound Reinforcement class when I completed a gig at Memories Party Venue in Kilmarnock with four of my HND classmates. 

Together we built the system and line checked together before each working with our own band to sound check. Building the system was likely more chaotic than it would have been normally, as we arrived at the venue an hour late due to a hired van not turning up on time, however between the set up and sound checks, we made up for a lot of lost time and finished the event on time. 

I found that my previous work both in and outside of class made me significantly less nervous than I was expecting and my only fault was struggling with the dynamics of the electric guitars and vocals, as finding a good balance was difficult, especially when the song changed and sometimes the entire genre was different. 

I was able to pass this exam on my first attempt and despite thinking I'd be stressed for the whole exam I actually found that I was able to thoroughly enjoy it. 

This exam will probably be an event I look back on fondly, as despite the difficulties, I was prepared for them and the only area I struggled in was a minor fault that I spent most of the set manually fixing during the songs, where instead I could have applied a slight amount of EQ or compression to make the vocals and guitars stand out from one another.