A Project Reflection blog
So, I have been in a project for around 13 weeks at this point. Within the last five to six weeks have seen the production of a 4 track E.P. by an artist named Moni or MTEA, recorded and mixed by the audio crew I’m in, Team Bedlam. This team consists of me (Wyatt Nicholls), Connor Artur and Zoe Stewart. Us three all recorded and mixed the E.P, with Zoe and I mixing one track individually as well as Connor mixing the last two tracks. The following within this blog will analyse the team itself as well as me personally and how the group and myself have fared throughout this endeavour. This is just a rough overview reflection.
Team
As a team we seemed to flow okay. I wouldn’t say we were perfect as a group as there were times of constraint and difficulty within our ranks. From the get go, I found that we as a group individually had different expectations on how we were to record this acoustic E.P. I happened to be in the same boat most of the time, however, I wasn’t too keen on how relaxed everyone was being. Simple things like setting up the live room 
took a half even 45 minutes longer than it should and although we were recording an un-confident artist, I think that the amount of sessions we did was a little excessive, especially since we weren’t finished recording the E.P. I found that we as a group did work well when in the throw of things. I was a little annoyed that I didn’t get a particular track to mix, as I was putting the mist input and ideas into it. This would have been okay If I had have got a decent track to work with for the mixing stage, but my track wasn’t even finished. I found that upon recording the guitar for the track that I didn’t have either Connor or Zoe looking at the protools session or check the metering or nothin. It was just madness why you wouldn’t give your recording artists (which is what I was) enough attention to tell what sections to loop and if I am even recording. I found that I had to make a large sound with my guitar to snap them out of looking at their phones so I could ask the simple question of “Was that take okay?”. I find that there is a difference between Mixing and Fixing a mix that you have been given and I had to do the latter. This track had an acoustic guitar that was tinny and cheap (that was meant to be stand in for
something better to be recorded) and an electric guitar that was unusable because I wasn’t given any time to work out the chords so three of the takes are just me finding out the chords are and the fourth take (the only usable one) was a scratch take at best. This comes back to bite me in the but as I find out later that out of the two microphones that were used to record my electric guitar, only one recorded the take with the end of the take having both mics. Let’s recap, I have a track with decent vocals, below average guitar (both tone and playing wise) and a very tinny electric guitar that is also below average in quality. This would have been the nail in the coffin if it wasn’t for the fact that this track just happened to be the only track out of the four that was in 96kHz. This meant that I had to Frankenstein an unfinished track using inly select studio computers and as a that had Protools HD and make a good song out of it. All in all, the project was a scrape to get done. I would have preferred to improve my mixing skills on a completed track in my own time as opposed to scraping in booking time.
Personal
I think that this whole thing was a big learning experience for me. I wasn’t in charge of the group, I wasn’t in charge of the direction, I wasn’t in charge of who gets what track to mix, I was just a group member, doing what my leader told me to, and that is fine. There will be times in my life when I don’t like what is going on (direction wise or whatever) in the studio and I will be powerless to do anything about it, because I won’t be in charge. I’m glad that I got to experience getting an unfinished track and asked to make a golden nugget out of it because I know that at some point in the future this could very well happen. It is because of these experiences that I will be able to better prepared in the future for when this does happen again. So, I believe I am able to keep a level head in situations that are stressful and irritating. I think that This experience enabled me to be the guy coming up with potential track ideas and things to improve the track as no one else was doing this. Out of everything else, I learned to be a team player and stuck with the team and never complained and always leant a hand to my other group members as that is what being in a team is all about.
Wyatt Nicholls
Novice Audio Engineer
Student at SAE
References:
[Image] http://www.voicerecordingstudio.in/music-branding/
[Image] http://alive-at-night.com/whats-in-a-song-is-the-meaning-behind-music-fading/
[Image] http://infowallpapers.blogspot.com/2012/06/cool-music-wallpapers.html
Wyatt Nicholls 