Music Production Project @Studio Blue

My education at Studio Blue is soon coming to an end, and last Monday it was time to turn in the final mix for the music production project,  a project that I've been working on the whole second year! (although not full time!)

The purpose of the project was to manage a complete music production from start to end, with the following deadlines:

• Turn in a demo of the song you will produce
• Make a chord sheet for the whole song
• Write music scores for melody and bass, both handwritten and computer made
• Make a plan for all musicians rehearsing
• Make a plan for how long the recordings, rehearsing, mixing etc. should take
• Make a plan on how you will record the different instruments / vocals
• Make a plan for how you will do the mixing
• and finally turn in a final mix of the produced song

Handwritten bass score (That was a lot of eights... )

In my case I wrote a song called "Satisfied" for a competition hosted by Propellerhead in August 2014, just before the school started, and that song was a good choice for this project as it contained several acoustic recordings (electric guitars, bass, vocals, drums and an acoustic guitar). This was also the first time I wrote a song in the metal genre, so it was fun to try something new!

It can seem that one school year is a very long time to produce just one song, but we were only allowed to do recordings for our projects during the 'recording classes', and editing was done during the 'mixing classes', along with other tasks and exercises. We also had to use ProTools 11, which I do not have access to at home so I could only work during school hours. All students in my group also shared the studio time for all their recordings, so the schedule was pretty tight.

The project went along just fine, with no major hassles, though I had to re-record the bass, and also change vocalist during the progress, but as I had added some extra time to the time-plan it was no problem!

The song will be released soon, but if I haven't released it in a week, just wait longer! ;)

The Master mix on Audio CD, and ProTools project folder on DVD.

Mixing @Studio Blue

It's all coming together...  Music project deadline in a week and exam in four weeks! Time's running. Fast! :O  Got to do some mixing in the big studio this morning, and the mix is evolving nicely. It's funny how +/-0.1dBSPL really can make a difference to the mix. Expect the release pretty soon! :)

Getting satisfaction with Satisfied

Re-amping @Studio Blue

Stayed a bit extra at school today to help my classmate Paul with re-amping of some metal guitars in his exam project! \m/

AB-stereo with Line Audio OM1, as (almost) usual. :)

Paul in command

Peavay 5150 amp

One position of the cabinet

Vocal recording @Studio Blue

Assisted my classmate Selma today during the recording of Madeleine Jangklev, singing to Selmas version of "Ain't no sunshine"! The setup was AB-miking with Line Audio OM1.

It was nice seeing Madeleine again, hadn't seen her since last year when she sang on my own song "You". As always she did a great job and was really professional and easy to work with! :)

Selma - Producer in charge

Madeleine Jangklev

Forging metal - "No Change"

Spent almost the entire day in front of my computer, putting together a new metal-ish song called "No Change", which will be my second song in the metal genre! The guitars were recorded in Reaper using a couple of free VST amp plugins and then exported to Reason, in which I make the whole project.

The song is still in the idea stage, so see this post as a cliffhanger until the release! ;)

Where the metal happens