Exercise 03 : Dynamics

As requested by the brief, i begin by searching for a sound that has no dynamics or was not compressed. The site that i used to search for those sounds is Freesound.org on where people post unprocessed sounds that they record by themselves. I chose this sound which is from a Rattle Drum.

I then added more dynamics to the sound by using the Ableton device Compressor.

After i was satisfied with the outcome,which was to make it sounds punchier and denser, i exported the sound to my computer and from there i uploaded it to Souncloud. Here is the result

Exercise 02 : Noise, Distortion and Lo Fi

I started by recording in a music studio in order to produce Hi-Fi quality. Here are the results:

1. I was reading a short paragraph from a book.

2. Playing a shaker

3. Hitting drumsticks together

This is the recording chain that was used (with help from my friend):
Mic > Pre amp > Compressor > DAW (Logic Pro and Ablteton Live 9) via Mac and PC
Mic: rødes k2 is a premium valve condenser microphone
Preamplifier: the avalon vt-737sp (preamplifier)
The el8- x distressor - digitally controlled analog knee compression
Mac pro dual quad core pc running DAW logic pro 9
Windown 10 dual quad core pc running Ableton live 9

Process of recording in Hi-Fi:

Using a standard template in Logic I recorded 3 separate sounds on 3 individual channels. Each audio recording was generated using the outboard recording chain (as listed above) On 3 separate occasions, I set a channel to record one at a time and then recorded myself performing 3 individual sound sources. I edited the sound sources to shorten the sample length. I then bounced/consolidated the audio to .wav And .mp3 file and saved to USB for the next stage of my work.

Process of recording in Lo-Fi:

I used my phone as a recording device to record the same 3 sounds in Lo-Fi. Then the files were transfer to my computer and uploaded to Sound Cloud. Here are the results :

1. I was reading a short paragraph from a book.



2. Playing a shaker



3. Hitting drumsticks together



Editing the Hi-Fi sounds using DAW Ableton Live 9:
I imported all original studio recorded sounds into Ableton Live 9 and then used different Ableton Audio Effects (Overdrive, EQ 8, etc) in order to mimic the Lo-Fi effects that come from recording sounds by the phone. The final track of each sound will contain 3 versions which are arranged in the order which the Hi-Fi sound comes first then the phone-recorded one and lastly the sound that was altered digitally using Ableton.

1. Reading

2. Drumstick



3. Shaker

Exercise 01 - Delay and Reverb

I started the exercise by downloading a mono sound from the internet.
The original sound is a record of some very simple beats and was record in mono as the brief requires.

The original sound uploaded on Soundcloud

My intention was to re compose the sound to makes it sound like it was recorded in a different environment, which is a larger room with some metallic constructions.The approach i chose was very simple as this is considered to be an experimental exercise to understand the concept of reverb and delay and to get to know Ableton Live 9 (i have never worked with the program before). I chose to manually adjust different settings of the Reverb effect as the goal was to understand how the settings work in order to produce the desired effect.

Here is the screen shot of my tweaks with the Reverb effect in Ableton.

The resulted sound is here