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The second day of the surround recording sessions at Swansea Metropolitan University with the final year students of the BSc Music Technology course produced this fine version of The Devil’s Dream/Mason’s Apron, as performed by Roots & Galoots:

[As usual, just recorded straight to my N70].

Around this time every year I organize a set of recording sessions for the final year students on the BSc Music Technology course at Swansea Metropolitan University. The idea behind these sessions is to record a band ‘live in the studio’ in full 24-bit/96kHz surround. The past couple of years I’ve booked Gypsy Jazz but they weren’t available this year, and so on the advice of my colleague Pete Williams I booked Roots & Galoots, a Bluegrass band based in South-West Wales.

I have to say that initially I was a little dubious because, with three vocalists, I felt that it might be difficult to achieve any decent recordings in the time allotted—each group of 3 or 4 students gets 3 hours to do the recording—without recourse to setting up a PA etc.. The whole idea of it is that it’s basically an acoustic session. Anyway, it turned out very well. Roots & Galoots were highly skilled musicians and very professional in their approach, and you can see from the following video how they managed to balance themselves up:

Brilliant! Like a ‘real’ recording session from the 1950s (or earlier). No overdubbing, no drop-ins, no MIDI, no samplers, no editing, and no place to hide for either musicians or engineers. Just good musicians recorded straight with good equipment. Deep, deep, joy.

[Note: the video was recorded with my Nokia N70. No post-production apart from trimming the start and finish.]

A few days ago I was asked by the South Wales Evening Post to record an interview with Lord Sebastian Coe. I met up with Post reporter Shaun Greaney at the Liberty Stadium and was ushered into a rather soulless reception room where the interviews were to take place. After giving speech elsewhere in the building he emerged (with small entourage) for interviews, and fortunately we were first up. I just set the equipment up and lounged on the sofa, from which vantage point I took a couple of photos with my N70:

From left to right we have Coe’s PA (I think), Lord Coe himself, Shaun Greaney with his back to the camera, and Neath Port Talbot council leader Derek Vaughan. On the table you can see the Audio Technica 4050 used for the recording, with a nice yellow mic lead snaking down to the Marantz PMD 660 sitting on the chair. The recording quality was fine, only slightly spoilt by the hum from the air-conditioning. Here’s the recording as it appeared on the podcast:

The podcast has disappeared from the Evening Post site now, but you can read Shaun Greaney’s reports here and here. Subjects talked about include business opportunities offered by the forthcoming 2012 Olympics for businesses in Wales, participation in sport, his feelings about his involvement in the 2012 Olympic bid, his ties with Swansea, and of course the already infamous £400,000 logo:

What nuggets of wisdom can I pass on from this little experience? Well:

• Always check and double-check your equipment before you go.
• Be nice to people. Know your place in the scheme of things.
• You never know what you’ll be up against, so be prepared to be flexible and adaptable.
• Get there on time.
• Keep record levels on the conservative side. You’ll lose a bit of quality, but you need to ensure you don’t get any overloading (which in this context is just plain fatal).
• When submitting your work, provide as many formats as possible.

Yes, I really enjoyed it. The beauty of this kind of work is that it’s live: there’s no room for mistakes and no going back. You need to be alert and thinking on your feet…

Thanks for coming. See ya!

John Hardy is a BAFTA-winning composer with a pretty impressive portfolio of work that includes commissions for the BBC, Channel 5, The Discovery Channel, S4C, etc.. This week he delivered a talk on the Role of Music in Animation and Film at the amperSAND digital media forum (held at the lovely National Waterfront Museum in Swansea).

Anyway, I was sitting there thinking a) how interesting it all was, and b) why wasn’t anyone videoing the event? Surely everyone videos these things nowadays, don’t they? Cue trusty Nokia N70:

I certainly didn’t catch anywhere near all of it - he must have been ‘performing’ for a good two hours - but these clips give a good indication of the event. I was impressed with John’s attitude: realistic, enthusiastic, and seemingly unspoiled by a cut-throat industry. Technologically aware, and yet not a slave to it. Business-like, but still knowing where his artistic integrity is located. He’s grounded. Refreshing!

I particularly like his advice to film-makers trying to source music, and to those attempting to break into the industry. Anyone, anywhere, trying to ‘make it’ in any discipline would do well to ponder these wise words.

Nice one.