Bill Porter – Sound engineer

Bill Porter was a sound engineer who is recognized for his work with such stars as Elvis Presley, among other rock and country artists. His career as an engineer began in 1954 as he worked for WLAC TV whose role was to mix the sound for microphones used on television filming. In 1959, he moved on to work with RCA records as a mix engineer for musical recordings. His big breakthrough in the industry happened when he mixed the track ‘Don Gibson – Lonesome Old House’ as it became successful in both pop and country music charts. This resulted in Bill Porter becoming a desirable candidate across the industry. Later that year, Bill mixed the sound for ‘The Browns – The Three Bells’, though during the process of his work on this track, he accidentally damaged the original recording which resulted in distorted pitch. Knowing that his job was on the line, he sliced off damaged part of the tape (which was the intro), and attached the intro from a different take hoping that nobody would notice. He was lucky enough that it went on to become number one in the pop and country charts and nobody noticed, and we only know this because he confessed this incident around 40 years later.

Bill Porter continued to work with Atkins until 1963. In this time, his work began to influence what would become known as the ‘Nashville Sound’; a style of country music that has a smoother sound as opposed to the traditionally rough sound of country. During his career, he worked on 579 records that charted, 49 that made the top 10, 11 that made number one, and 37 were certified gold records. Bill Porter’s work in this period  was done in a studio which had poor acoustics as it was resonant and the frequency response was uneven. To resolve these issues, Bill acquired fiberglass panels and cut them into triangles, and then hung them from the ceiling at a range of heights in order to balance the sound. Another one of Porter’s techniques included using an air conditioner to cool down the reverberation room in order to direct audio to the plate reverb device, as well as to allow a cleaner sound to be returned from the device. He did this in order to achieve an echo that sounded fuller and brighter.

Another signature style of Bill Porter included mixing background vocals towards the front of the mix, as well as revolving his whole mix around the vocals as opposed to the percussion as he did in his previous works before his time working with Roy Orbison. Bill become such a popular engineer among clients outside of RCA that RCA even decided to emphasize their business as one for independent clients and used Bill Porter as their selling point. In 1964, Bill Porter left RCA to work with Colombia Records, and then Monument shortly after that.

Unit 11 – Judith Work

Since the start of the course, I have seen my understanding and abilities in music, music production, marketing, business grow substantially. I have gone from being an novice DJ with a handful of experience with Logic and Cubase on rare occasions, to a DJ who can mix seamlessly 90% of the time who is at a great enough skill level to be playing on radio and clubs, a producer whose relatively sufficient in using a professional studio with tracks that are approaching release-worthy quality, a sound engineer who can play as part of a team in setting up a 3-way soundsystem, a sound designer for sound-to-picture as well someone who has gained much deeper knowledge on how to actually sell music with knowledge of licensing, PRS, A&R and other roles among the promotion and licensing side of music. My production improved as I learnt how to use the plugins included in Logic properly as previously before joining the the course, I did not know how to use them. The most significant tools I learned to use were compression, space designer reverb and the EXS24 sampler as they allow me to ‘smooth out’ my productions as well as allowing me to create my own sound. I have greatly developed my hearing over the course as I have learned to pay more attention to detail to sound and their dynamics.

The intention of my work is to create soundtrack, sound design and leitmotifs for a film that a friend of mine (who is a screenwriter) is creating. An influence of mine regarding this project is Vangelis; a soundtrack composer who revolves more around synthetic, electronic sounds and instruments; a style and sound that resonates the most with me amongst other soundtrack composers. Soundtrack designers will often try to create music that reacts with what is going on in a scene on a frame-by-frame basis in order to evoke an immersive sense to the viewer, as opposed to traditionally making a song without the thought of the film itself coming to mind. Sound design is an occupation that has only existed for around 100 years. Initially, there was no sound to footage pre-1910s, though soon soundtracks and narrations dubbed over the picture itself. Some early examples of sound design in films include classic cartoons such as ‘Tom & Jerry’ where the continuous soundtrack defines the mood and the energy of the scene, frame by frame. These type of early cartoons where almost entirely dependent on the sound to portray the story as it happens. I intend on creating leitmotifs for the main character first as that was what was requested by the project manager. The next step would be to create the soundtrack to support each scene of the story one at a time as the footage is given to me.

The Music Industry

In the present day, the music industry has more diverse applications than it ever has been. Producers have the choice on whether they want to use analog or digital equipment without being concerned with what the next big, upcoming tech is going to be; there are many producers who use equipment that is 20+ years old in their current productions. For some, the appeal with analog is that it adds ‘warmth’ to the sound and isn’t excessively clean. On the other hand, many producers prefer to use computerized digital equipment. Digital’s appeal is that it is much much more accessible as it is far cheaper, and you only need a PC/Mac (which the vast majority of people, musicians or not, own anyway) and a DAW of choice which often costs around £200 on average (£200 could barely get you a single piece of analog equipment) and usually includes a large enough variety of VST’s, plugins and samples to make a variety of music without getting boring too quickly or sounding too generic.

If there does come a time when a digital producer gets bored with their DAW, there are thousands of software accessories available to buy online to bring something new to play with, each of which is tailored to deliver their own ‘sound’ and to have a variable amount of parameters which could suit producers of all skill and experience levels. Alternatively, you could also implement analog hardware via MIDI and/or an interface. This can also be of interest to the analog producer who wants to experiment with digital. What I am ultimately getting at here is that in this day and age, music producers are not limited to certain types of tools/equipment, and can create a bespoke setup which orientates around their style and approach, rather than having to adapt around the equipment in question.

The same can be seen in DJ-ing; at this point in time, you are not forced to adapt to analog vinyl and there is a decreasing pressure to use digital CDJ’s or other forms of controllers due to the resurgence of vinyl (it never really disappeared from DJ-ing/dance music, however there was a decreasing amount of music being pressed onto vinyl and a pressure to convert to digital, until recently). There is also DVS systems for those who like the feel of a turntable, but want to reduce costs with cheaper files or not have to carry heavy vinyl to the venue that they are to play at. I believe that DVS has proven to the music industry that some people prefer turntables, despite the rhetoric that suggests that vinyl is ‘outdated technology’. There has even been experimentation in recent years with 3D printing vinyl records. Despite the recordings not sounding anywhere as near as clear as regular pressed vinyl or a file for that matter, it is still new technology and these experiments where mostly undertaken by university students, so there is much potential for 3D printed records to become as good as standard vinyl one day should there be more funding and research applied to it. Personally, this is something that I’d love to see happen as 3D-printers are expected to become household items in the near future, and it could save vinyl from the dying pressing plants which are ran by only a handful of people, whom are the only people that know how to press records as they are from the generation when vinyl was the standard format. It could also reignite dubplate culture in it’s traditional sense, and be better for the environment as there has been experimentation in recycling regular waste plastics into plastic for 3D printers.

In essence, the point I am conveying is that the music industry is coming to the realisation that there is not one single, right, correct way of producing and performing music as an electronic music producer, but rather a variety of ways that suit different individuals.

dBs Interview – How I created a track

Track Link:
https://soundcloud.com/crystalpressure-spiritualremedies-coldmist/dont-wanna-live-this-way-final-40/s-nXdOG

The track ‘Don’t Wanna Live This Way’ was created almost exclusively out of selected audio samples, excluding two of the bass instruments which included an 808 plugin included on Logic Pro X, and a custom-made instrument created on Logic’s EFM1 synth.

The first stage in creating my track involved importing breakbeat samples, converting them to mono and chopping them into individual hits except on parts of some breaks where there snare rolls where you need to try and make a cut that would keep both sides of the file a similar length so that you don’t get excessive silent zones when you transfer the break to the EXS24 sampler and quantize.

The strings were actually made from a vocal sample where I took a section where the singer’s tone was consistent, then duplicated it into different channels to layer reverb, then deleted the original channel with no plugins, looped the samples to about 1 minute long (so that it will be long enough to play at higher notes should I want to when I import it into the EXS24), created a track stack to insert all of channel layers into and add glue compression to unify the layers. I then exported the track stack as an audio file, then imported the audio file for use with the EXS24.

The problem with Logic’s preset 808 bass is that it often creates a popping sound initially and lacks ‘weight’. To prevent this, I removed all preset effects, and then added about 15db of overdrive with a low pass filter up to around 100Hz. This gets rid of the pop, and also makes it sound softer and warmer. I then applied a compressor with high ratio settings so that the levels don’t drop down so quickly, allowing the bass to have more presence in the mix with lower volume allowing space for other instruments.

With the vocal samples I sampled from a documentary, I carefully adjusted the EQ to focus on the speaker’s vocal range and to compensate for loud consonants (especially ‘s’ and ‘t’ sounds) and quieter vowels. This required more than one EQ plugin as it required great intricacy. I added some tape delay with relatively low wetness, and then added hall reverb on top of the delay to give a deeper, immersive feel to the vocals. Despite the EQ changes, the vowels were still not cutting through the mix so well, so I applied a compressor with a high ratio and threshold settings with somewhat low attack and release settings to push down the consonant’s frequencies. This made the vocals clear in the mix without being over-powering regardless of the instrument’s present.

As with all of my tracks, I created track stacks for different types of sounds/instruments (drums, strings, keys etc) and added subtle glue compression to each track stack to bring the instruments together, and then finally add some glue compression to the output channel to then bring the whole track together.

Other Portofolio Tracks:
https://soundcloud.com/crystalpressure-spiritualremedies-coldmist/interdimensional-portal/s-pmkKd
https://soundcloud.com/crystalpressure-spiritualremedies-coldmist/coldmist-run-siren/s-DwYYb

primary research

http://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/whats-on/film/film-festival#MLAaXrDBtx4EMEMC.97

 

http://shortfilms.org.uk/

Sound Engineer Research – Tom Coyne

Tom Coyne is a mastering engineer who is well-respected in the music industry as he is widely regarded one of, if not, the best mastering engineer there is. He has been active for over 40 years, and specializes in R&B, Hip Hop and Pop. He started his career at Frankford/Wayne Recording Labs in 1978. His early career revolved around mastering dance music.

http://sterling-sound.com/engineers/tom-coyne/#biography

http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Tom_Coyne_(music_engineer)

https://www.discogs.com/artist/272899-Tom-Coyne