Over the past 12 months I have been working with 4ZZZ, Brisbane's local radio station, to provide recorded material from local live gigs to a greater listening audience. The segment is called Live Delay, and it has been my responsibility to assist with recordings at the show, as well as taking the multitracks and mixing them in post for airtime. Over this time I have mixed for numerous bands, as well as assisting at BigSound to deliver recordings from the event's guest speakers. Below I will reflect on some of the critical moments during my experience that have helped me to grow as an audio practitioner.
4ZZZ has been a staple for the Brisbane music scene since in spawned in the 70s. Since then it has provided an outlet for Brisbane's alternative music scene and community news, as well as being a forum for the voice of its youth. Being a community radio station, it aims to provide as much content to our locals as possible, which often sees itself extended beyond just a conventional radio station. This includes supporting live events, community workshops, guest speakers, journalism and obviously anything music related.
The station resides in its humble space in the Fortitude Valley, which is open 24 hours to a small roster of employees and a rotating one of innumerable volunteers. They host a very accepting community of like-minded individuals, and aim to keep all involved feeling comfortable, connected and supported. Within the building are three studios, two "on air" studios for presenters, and one live room for any visiting performers. There are also specialised phone booths for calling and recording telephone conversations, as well as multiple MacBooks with ProTools and Audacity for production work. Whilst over my time there I have gotten to use all of these facilities, I will be reflecting here on my time spent with the Live Delay team under Scott Mercer.
In January of 2013, Scott created the segment to "bring all the passion of the stage and the spice of the crowd direct to your ears, capturing the story of Australian music as it happens" (Live Delay, 2013). For years now Scott has worked with local venues, festivals, and events, such as BigSound, Jungle Love, Tivoli etc. Typically the work entails attending an event, setting up a Zoom H6 field recorder to capture the audience, taking the multitracks out of the desk, before returning home to mix the set.
Mixing in this environment has been extremely challenging at times, but also quite rewarding to be working with some of my favourite artists. Beyond the typical processes I have previously followed to mix, this has also required me to seamlessly piece together sets that in a live environment may not have always been so fluid. It requires a lot of automation, particularly when including the audience zoom track, to make it really feel like the listener is at the gig. It also requires me to 'bleep' any swear words, aligned with community guidelines: this specifically involves placing a 1kHz sine wave over the top of the vowel sound in the offending word.
I used ProTools for all of my work, although I was required to use Audacity for BigSound. This required me to download and install the free program, and spend a couple of hours familiarising myself with it. I learned very quickly that its capabilities are quite limited, and is not something I would prefer to use in future, however given ProTools' proclivity for shutting down unexpectedly, perhaps it was a good thing to be introduced to for a live recording capacity.
For the BigSound guest presentations that I worked on, I was required to focus on the diction of people's voices, cleaning up the tracks from all the lovely pops and cracks that happen in a live environment, or levelling where a guest hasn't consistently spoken into the microphone. Spending hours on end tidying up these talks was certainly monotonous, although I believe it sped up my ability to listen for issues with the voice dramatically. It tuned my ear to pops and cracks that might have otherwise previously gone unnoticed. It also got me thinking creatively about ways to bring the speech to the front; especially since a lot of the questions from the audience were not recorded, but rather just barely captured from the reverb of the room in the speaker at the front's microphone. This in particular got me playing a lot with automating multi-band compressors, as well as RX noise removal software. To further improve my skills, I researched how best to professionally clean up dialogue (Pro Audio Girl, 2018; SoundOnSound, 2008; Westlake Pro, 2017). In hindsight, whilst it's not a favoured field of mine, I'm glad I spent some time honing my skills with dialogue. It is a physical skill that I will be able to take with me to many kinds of audio opportunities: personally I'm hoping to be involved with films more in the future. I aim to continue practicing with the RX software, becoming more capable, but in the meantime I look forward to using the 'output noise only' or 'output clicks only' function for sound design purposes; often these result in favourable textures.
I particularly enjoyed working on DZ Deathrays' set, although it was simultaneously the most challenging. Heavy rock by nature, there was a lot of bleed in all of the microphones, and since the lead singer was running around a lot on stage there was forever a new source in the background challenging his voice. I particularly struggled when the cymbal was just behind him, as removing these frequencies removes intelligibility. In the end I reached out for some feedback from a group of professionals on Facebook which was quite insightful. You can read in more detail about the specifics here if you like. But ultimately that has been a useful technique I continue to turn to now, and it's reassuring to feel confident in reaching out and to hold a technical conversation with an audio engineer. In the end with a lot of experimentation and reading and reaching out I found what I believed to be the best possible result. I reached out to Guy Gray for some feedback, who responded positively, and then sent it through to Scott for feedback. "Niiiiice this is sounding appropriately massive! I'll shoot it through to the band..." was nice to receive in response (perhaps when your heart is in the music you really can bring it out more). Although after hearing back from DZ management, the band was a little apprehensive with their performance on the night (it was the last night of their tour). We have offered to cut out some songs or go through and pay more attention to a particular mic/instrument, but are yet to hear back. This process was insightful to be involved with as I enjoy understanding the little idiosyncrasies of a role. Whether that be how formally the email is written (it wasn't: professionally, but appropriately casual), or who one addresses in such a situation (his management team). It's insights like these that I can take with me that make me feel more comfortable to go into the real audio world.
I guess at this moment it is interesting to reflect back to where I first started with Live Delay, just one year ago, and was asked to mix local band Ex-Catholics. At this stage I was using feedback from our resident 4ZZZ "mix guru", James, who was guiding me to treat it not like a studio mix, but to capture the sound of the environment, mix in more zoom, automate the faders a little as it would be done live. Throughout our feedback sessions/email chains he also offered some advice that has helped to solidify a concept in my mind. Obviously every vocalist/microphone/environment is different, but this particular one he recommended looking at frequencies around 4kHz and 10kHz and boosting to bring out the clarity of the voice. The advice was burned into my mind after it blew me away with how much it helped, especially once I raised the HPF cutoff to ~300Hz as he also suggested. This helped clear up the mix a little, but also taught me that cutting away the bottom of the vocal in a weird twist of fate can make it sound like there is more vocal. It helped it to stand out from the rest, and surprised me that it was acceptable to change the sound of a singers voice (although quite minimally) in a professional environment. It was learning the unwritten "guidelines" of the industry and it felt empowering. I learned through this process that I do feel comfortable reaching out for feedback, and take it entirely objectively. Really I just love learning, particularly anything and everything related to audio, and anything that can help me to improve is a blessing. The final result was put online after broadcast and can be heard below (bearing in mind too that I believe one guitar and a snare drum was missing, but it was great to try and work with these potentially more "real" conditions):
Below is perhaps my favourite mix that has made it to air, from Melbourne-based Angie McMahon. This one was quite dynamic, and the crowd was very receptive (although very talkative near the zoom), which enabled (and required) me to play with the atmosphere quite a lot to really place the listener in the room.
When comparing those two, even though only 6 months apart, it is great to hear an improvement. In that sense it is has been a rewarding experience to improve my technical skillset. I feel like this experience has allowed me to understand a live environment a little more, which could be beneficial for not just post-mixing live performances but live shows themselves should I have an opportunity in that field. I certainly aim to continue volunteering at 4ZZZ and I'm sure as circles open up I will connect further with the live Brisbane music scene. It has been rewarding already sitting with fellow audio persons and discussing things like plugins, or techniques on particular records, that is forever contributing to my path.
Above all, I think from a professional perspective this experience has taught me the most about professional processes. It has reinforced the necessity to
set my own deadlines, and stick to them (reasonable turnaround times)
be punctual when meeting Scott
professionally (yet comfortably) communicate: interpersonally, over the phone, or by email
take things objectively
be positive, flexible, encouraging, understanding, supportive, of/for the team (be a team player)
Deadlines have been difficult to manage at times whilst also studying at SAE, but using my diary has been of great assistance. This technique I began using after unfortunately losing my first audio job. Since, I have not only been much better with organisation and time management, I have also cleared my head of a little clutter. Punctuality has been crucial to this role, as sometimes there are only small windows of opportunity to come into the office and meet with Scott. I also must be quite vigilant with getting the files from the shared drive before they are deleted to clear more room; in this sense it could be quite easy to lose an entire set. Finally, it was great to work around BigSound because we had to work as a team. Where one member fell short, another would offer to help, and it worked this way the entire time. It was nice to feel and simultaneously flex the muscle of kindness, encouragement, support, and positivity around a great team. I hope that the real audio world is abundant with humans like this, because I finally feel a little bit more at home.
Overall the experience has been a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding one. I have expanded my knowledge of the industry, improved my technical skills considerably, broadened my contact base, and it has encouraged me to keep working on the transferable skills so that I will be viewed more favourably for any role. In particular I would like to focus on reliability. I have had a rather tumultuous couple of years, and as such it has become incredibly difficult to stay on top of emails and workloads and phone calls and meetings. But working with Scott has been great, with some upfront communication he has been understanding, and with a quick email or phone call we have been able to problem-solve any issues that arise. In the end I have been proud of my performance, and it was reassuring to hear Scott commend me on my work. It gives me confidence moving back into the outside world again that I am employable, and even better, that I enjoy the work. Whether long days at BigSound, long hours in the studio, or quick visits to 4ZZZ, it has been rewarding at every step. As previously mentioned I will continue to help the Live Delay team into the future; who knows, perhaps I'll eventually be the resident 4ZZZ "mix guru".
Stay Tuned
- TA
REFERENCES
4ZZZ. (2020). 4ZZZ. https://www.4zzzfm.org.au/
Live Delay. (2013). Live Delay. Retrieved from http://www.livedelay.com/
Pro Audio Girl. (2018). Post-Production Basics: Sound Editing – Dialog
SoundOnSound. (2008). iZotope RX. https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/izotope-rx
Westlake Pro. (2017). iZotope RX Tutorial Videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csy6W9WDs&list=RDgwcsy69WDs&start_radio=1&t=167
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