Audio Engineering

 Backstage at the Rozsa

I had the pleasure of engineering the recording for a two-night jazz concert at Michigan Technological University. The backstage of the Rozsa Theatre was converted into an intimate jazz club. Each night consisted of three sets. The first and last sets were the Research and Development Big Band and the Jazz Lab Band respectively. Each night, a different jazz combo played a short, two-song set in between the larger groups. The first night, Momentum performed, and the second night was Jazztec. Each night of the performance was mixed into it's own CD. In addition to engineering the recording, I mixed and mastered the CDs.

Sonomento

Since June of 2013, I've recorded several concerts of Sonomento, the MacPhail Center for Music's adult choral ensemble. Specializing mostly in classical and opera, Sonomento has performed concerts based around the works of Verdi, Bach, and Mozart, among others. Included here is a sampling of recorded works of the aforementioned composers. The pieces were recorded live-in-concert using a two mic setup, consisting of a cardioid condenser and a figure-eight ribbon in mid-side configuration.

Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra

In December of 2011, I ran a tracking session for the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Joel Neves, the director of the orchestra, wanted a high-quality performance free of audience noise to be suitable for radio play.

During the tracking process, we used 19 different microphones to close mic the instrument sections, 4 microphones to capture the orchestra as a whole, and 2 microphones placed in the back of the hall to capture natural reverb. By using so many microphones, we were able to capture all the necessary detail of the performance, however, being that there were so many instruments that were close miked, the recording sounded very "dry." We solved this by using Altiverb 7 to create the illusion of listening to the performance from the audience.

The two pieces that were recorded during this session were "Overture to Nabucco" by Giuseppe Verdi and "A Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky. In addition to the tracking, I mixed and mastered the recordings with input from Dr. Neves.

GhostFace

In December of 2013, Luka Belle contacted me about providing music for a short film he was making, called GhostFace. He was entrant in a film competition being put on by Bloody Cuts, called the "Who's There?" It was a challenge to make a 3-minute horror film for under $1000. Luka had a unique vision for the film, had already completed photography and was entering post-production when he contacted me. Instead of offering up one or more of my previous compositions, I offered to compose an original score for the film.

I composed the score over Christmas week in order to complete it before the film's deadline. I wanted to use authentic sounds, as I believe they can be more effective at providing chills than synthesized or sampled noises. Most of the music heard in the film was created with an electric guitar. Many creature noises were created by scraping the strings and running the sound through various effects processors. Even the bell chime sounds were created by plucking a string and shifting the pitch down. I wanted to twist the practical sounds and turn them into something that didn't sound quite natural. Strings were intentionally left slightly out of tune to provide an uncomfortable dissonance. In addition to the guitar, I recorded a 110-year old upright piano that hasn't been tuned in a while. The noise heard during the credit scene was created by scraping a metal potato masher across the piano strings while the sustain pedal was pressed. The percussive thudding was created by pushing down on the sustain pedal with excessive force, so the resonance of the thud could be heard through the piano strings. Some synthesizer drones were used softly in the background to provide a tense ambiance.

Compared to the more ambient and restrained parts, I wanted loud, cacophonous, distorted noises for major jumps. I used heavy distortion with random pitch shifting on a loud guitar pluck for one of the big reveals, then I built up to a loud mix of all of the instruments for the final shot. I submitted the score in time for it to get submitted. All-in-all, over 250 films were submitted to the competition, and GhostFace placed in the top 50. I am proud to have had the opportunity to work on this project.

 The Sound Machine

In the spring of 2012, I was a part of a group producing a radio-style adaptation of Roald Dahl's "The Sound Machine." The short story is about Klausner, an inventor who builds a machine designed to change the pitch of super-sonic sounds so they would be within the human range of hearing. To Klausner's horror, he discovers that plants emit bone-chilling screams when cut or damaged. The first screams he hears are caused by the woman next door cutting roses.

To achieve these sounds, we recorded screams from our actors. We then side-chained some of the female screams through the Sculpture modeling synthesizer to achieve the metallic-sound described in the story. We layered it with an inhaling scream and applied various processing techniques to both. Next came the daisy screams. The daisy screams were accomplished in a similar fashion to the rose screams. The major change was to increase the pitch to give the sound the impression of coming from a smaller plant. For the beech tree scream, we did the opposite. The beech tree scream was made using a pitch-shifted male scream, layered with a whale song. The effects were side-chained through a vocoder synth with granular synthesis simulation applied. The effects turn the scream into a monstrous roar as the tree cries out in surprise.

It was a challenge trying to realize the sounds as so brilliantly described by Roald Dahl, but in the end, we came up with what we believe are some interesting and creative solutions.