At Level/Grade 6 and above, you will be able to specialise in one of three areas:
- Audio Production – focusing on traditional studio production technique.
- Electronic Music Production – focusing on techniques for electronic music genres.
- Sound For Media – focusing on techniques relevant to Film and TV sound.
Audio Production
You won’t always be working with artists that are experienced in the recording studio. Even Brian Eno had to start somewhere before he worked his way up to producing Coldplay and U2.
You may find that the artist needs their hand holding a little and that the recordings you achieve with them require a little work to smarten them up.
A common issue which affects all vocalists, but more so the less experienced, is an inconsistent recording level. Some phrases might be easily heard while others fade into the background of the music.
It’s your job to ensure that the words can be heard clearly and that the vocals sit in the mix at an appropriate level. Listen to a commercially released piece of music that you like and hear how clear the vocals are. This is what you’re trying to achieve.
Compression can solve some of these problems but it also affects the tone of the vocal, so should be reserved for reducing the last 1% of the dynamic range.
In order to fix any issues with inconsistent level, the channel fader for the vocals should be adjusted, perhaps for every word.
In the early days of recording this would be achieved by ‘Riding the vocal’ – a technique which requires the sound engineer to sit with his finger on the fader altering it for every word or phrase during the final mix. This would take some rehearsals, and any mistakes would mean starting again.
These days we have the power of automation to help us and modern DAWs are very capable of performing this task without too much bother.
For the Audio Production Level/Grade 6 Coursework Task you will be required to use automation to fix an uneven vocal recording.
Electronic Music Production
As an electronic music producer, your sound is your identity.
Think about some of the biggest electronic musicians, they all have a distinctive sound which is instantly recognisable when it is heard on the radio. This is what you should aspire to achieve.
If you only ever use the preset patches that come with your synthesiser or software instrument, then the best you can achieve is sounding like everyone else who has that piece of equipment. Be unique.
Your DAW will have numerous software synthesisers available, so using your knowledge of the components and how they interact, put together an original synth patch. Practise doing this, create lots and lots of patches in the same way that a successful songwriter will write hundreds of songs to find the one that is a hit.
Use your skills to develop additional layers to the synth, allow the tone to evolve over time using LFOs and envelopes creating a soundscape on which you can build a new piece of music.
As you become more fluent with the synth components, you will be able to get to a good result more quickly.
For the Electronic Music Production Level/Grade 6 Coursework Task you will be required to create an original synth patch.
Sound For Media
Media work comes in all shapes and sizes, from multi million dollar Hollywood blockbusters to small budget sound design projects.
Almost everything has sound elements and a lot of the time the consumer won’t even notice it’s there. If it wasn’t there, however, it would seem eerily quiet.
One example is on home entertainment systems which offer menu screens. The sound you hear in these isn’t particularly complex but it sets a relaxing mood which fills the silence while you interact with the options on screen.
This background sound or music may be used for 10 seconds or 10 minutes, depending on what the user is doing. Therefore the sound needs to flow in such a way that there is no beginning, middle or end and it must loop without the join being too noticeable.
For the Sound For Media Level/Grade 6 Coursework Task you will be required to create a suitable sonic or musical atmosphere for the provided image.
Course Progress
