Category Archives: AS Music Tech

The 1960s

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The ’60s was an incredibly creative time in pop music with new genres emerging and technology developing in leaps and bounds. This was combined with a heady sense of youthful freedom and experimentation. The Vietnam war was raging and their was a new found political voice coming from teenagers across the globe..

Below are two documents that cover the early and late 1960s. There’s is a lot of listening to be done here, dive in flower people..

This is a fascinating insight into the making of this top tune, one of my Beatles favourites..

Jimi’s take on Like A Rolling Stone…don’t get me started on how good this is…

to say this is heavy gets nowhere near it…oh my days..

AS Music Tech – Bass & Beats

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Your task is to create FOUR, four bar grooves in a Logic Project using two different basslines found by clicking on Bootsy Collins, below:

bootsy-collins

You will need to figure out how to change tempo using the TEMPO TRACK. So that each bass line plays at the correct tempo…!

  • First download these bass lines, then choose one that you like and drag it into your project. YOU WILL NEED TO CREATE AND AUDIO TRACK FIRST, then drag the bassline audio file onto the audio track.
  • Each bass line includes the TEMPO that you will need to set for the project.
  • Then create a four bar drum groove that works to enhance the inherent rhythms of the bass groove. Your grooves might include a drum fill in the fourth bar of the groove.
  • You must create the grooves yourself using drum kit software instruments. Please try to make the grooves sound as “natural” and human as possible with careful velocity shaping.

SUCCESS CRITERIA ARE THE SAME AS AGREED IN CLASS:

1. Is the groove in time and correctly quantised?

2. Is the drum kit choice appropriate for the style?

3. Is the groove stylistically appropriate?

Sie Medway-Smith Mixing Masterclass 16th October! One for the AS Music Tech crew..

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I am absolutely chuffed that we will have the pleasure of Sie Medway-Smith coming in to present a Song Mixing Masterlcass.

He will be coming in to school on Wednesday 16th October (AS MUSIC TECH CLASS) to leave us with mixing pearls of wisdom… To give you some background here is a potted biography from his website…

  • “Sie is a music producer, mixer, md (musical director) and studio engineer. He

regularly works in Los Angeles, Sydney, Paris and Milan with regular clients. He works across a range of genres and styles in varied media ranging from commercial record production to film, TV and animation.

Having started out as a ‘tape op’ at Milo studios in London’s east end, he went on to become in-house engineer and mixer before launching a respected name for himself as a freelance producer. He signed to Sony ATV publishing in the mid nineties and has enjoyed composing and songwriting ever since. In 2012 Sie has 100% control once again of his publishing.

Sie has worked with artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Chemical Brothers, Bjork, Massive Attack and Gang of four, in a variety of roles ranging from producer, mixer, engineer, programmer to writer.

His music and productions have afforded him worldwide recognition for commercial releases on both major and indie record labels, not to mention advertising campaigns. He has produced and published music with various artists who have been Grammy, Brit and Mobo nominated.

…..Sie took on the role of MD/ Live production for Rudimental, Following the success of “Feel the Love” Sie took the band from the studio to the stage, the result was a 17 piece band for their debut gig at The Radio 1 Big Weekender. Sie has since taken on MD and live roles with Jamie Woon, Electric Guest, Sandi Thom, Hard-fi.”

You can check out one of his productions here…

AS Music Tech lesson today

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1. Open your multi-track recordings, BYPASS ALL signal processing by pressing the ‘bypass’ button in every plug-in (gates, compressors, and any EQ and effects you may have begun to use). Bounce a mix as “your initials unprocessed trial”.

2. Email this bounce to austind@simonballe.herts.sch.uk.

3. “Save as…” your project with today’s date, then re-instate all gates, compressors. Bounce a mix as “your initials dynamics trial” and email to Mr Austin.

4. Now read the information on EQ which I emailed to you earlier this week (only Harvey responded). Save your project again with a name which signifies that you’ve used EQ and spend 20-30 minutes experimenting with EQ. Use the channel EQ in the insert slots in the same way you opened the compressors and gates.

5. Record your progress, keywords and new filenames in your feedback google documents in the recording sheet.

6. If you get all this complete, please spend the remainder of your time working on synth timbres for Task 1a. Focus on refining skills with ESE/M/P synths and ES1.