Do D.A.T.

Everybody meet Do D.A.T (Dat for short). Dat has been around in the Bay Area hip-hop scene for many years in a group called The Attik. As a group, The Attik has performed with artists such as KRS-1, E-40, Native Guns, and Zion I. As a solo artist, Dat released an album titled Oakland in Blue. Oakland in Blue is a jazz/hip-hop blend in which every song contains a sample from Duke Ellington. You can find his music at www.revernation.com/dodat.

Now why the promo? Well, Dat will be joining us in our program today to facilitate a writing workshop. Everybody be prepared to work on some writing because these works will become the start of us using the D.A.S. for recording!

Bouncing Video in Pro Tools

To bounce video in Pro Tools you want to do the following things:

1. Make sure that your video is complete. The sounds are in their proper place and your mix is how you want it to sound.

2. Go FILE > Bounce To > Quicktime Movie

3. Set your audio to be Stereo, 44.1, 16-bit. Click Bounce

4. Now choose a destination folder and click bounce. You should now see your movie play in real time for the entire length of it. It will then be ready begin the converting process and turn present you with a Quicktime file in your folder of choice.

Don't Forget Mixing!

Good work so far on your movie trailers! There are definitely great projects in the works! Just a reminder for you all: Don't Forget Mixing! Once you have your sounds in the right places, your dialogue recorded and your music produced, it's time to work on the different audio volumes, panning and FX. If you recorded any live audio and want to make adjustments to the pitch, here's how!




1. Use the Grabber Tool to select the specific audio file.

2. Go to the AudioSuite menu at the top of the screen in Pro Tools.

3. Select Pitch -> Time Shift.

4. Under the Time Shift feature, notice pitch on the bottom right. Adjust the pitch knob to the left for a deeper voice and to the right for a brighter voice.

5. Make sure that you preview the audio so you know it sounds like what you're looking for. After that, click Process.

Editing Tips

Today we will be continuing on the Trailer Post Production project that we started on Tuesday.  On Tuesday you picked a Trailer to work with and began the process of adding sound effects to match the actions in the trailer.  The goal is to make it sound real.  The audio should be a perfect match with the video.  

Remember there are three parts to this project.

1. Add Sound FX

2. ADR- Replace the dialog (mics are available)

3. Add a music score using Reason as an instrument in Pro Tools

In order for you to properly edit the audio for your trailer you will need to use some of the handy tools in Pro Tools.  Lets Review....

The Smart Tool

This is the combination of the Trimmer Tool, Selector Tool and the Grabber tool.  

When Editing with the Smart tool there are several things that you can do.  Watch how the mouse transforms depending on what part of the audio region you place the mouse.

If you put the mouse in the middle of the region.... you should be able to you the selector tool which selects a portion of the region.

If you put the mouse at the bottom of the region you will be able to use the Grabber Tool witch selects the whole region and allows you to move it from one place to another.

If you put the mouse at the end of the region you will be able to use the Trimmer tool.  This will let you trim the ends of the region.

There are also two other functions that you can use with the smart tool. They are Fade in/out and Cross Fade.

If you want the fade out at the end of your region place the mouse at the upper right or left corner begin to make your fade.

If you would like to cross fade, which is a way smoothly blend your regions together, put your mouse at the bottom right or left corner.

These tools should be very useful for you.  Make sure that your audio is believable!

Also remember you can zoom in and out in order to be precise with the timing of your sound so they are in sync with the actions in the Trailer.

Post Production Part 1

This week we're going to take a look into the world of audio post production.


What is post production?

Post-production is part of the filmmaking process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures,television programs, radio programs, advertising, videos, audio recordings, photography and digital art. It is term for all stages of production occurring after the actual end of shooting and/or recording the completed work.

Post-production is, in fact, many different processes grouped under one name. These typically include:

• Editing the picture / television program
• Writing, (re)recording, and editing the soundtrack.
• Adding visual special effects - mainly computer-generated imagery (CGI) and digital copy from which release prints will be made (although this may be made obsolete by digital-cinematechnologies).
• Sound Design, Sound Effects, ADR, Foley and Music, culminating in a process known as sound re-recording or mixing.
• Transfer of film to Video or Data with a telecine and Color grading.
• 
  

Typically, the post-production phase of creating a film takes longer than the actual shooting of the film, and can take several months to complete. (Wikipedia)

Here are a couple of videos that give an example of the job(s) someone would do during post production.





This week we're going to begin working on our own post production work. In the Audio A folder you will find a Videos folder with 6 files in it. Choose one of the video clips that you would like to work with. Once you have the video clip that you like, we're going to import it to Pro Tools and begin making our own versions of the trailers. Let's take a look at the step-by-step process that we'll be using.


1. Go into Audio A Folder. Watch trailers. Pick which one you would like to work with.


2. Create a folder on your desktop labeled "yourname_trailer"


3. Open Pro Tools. Create a new session titled "yourname_trailer" and save it inside the folder you just created.


4. Once Pro Tools is open, let's import the video clip. Go to File > Import > Import Video File. Find your video file and import it. You should now have a video track on Pro Tools with an audio track under it.


5. Watch the video and analyze it. What sounds are being used? How is the timing on the sound fx?


6. Mute the audio.


7. In the Audio A folder you'll see a folder labeled Hollywood Edge. In this folder are sound fx and different audio clips that can be used for post production. Drag it to your desktop.


8. What sound FX will you be needing? Go to the Import Audio section of Pro Tools and check out the different sounds in the folders. Import the sound FX that you'll need for the video clip.


9. Next, let's work on using the grabber (hand) tool to place the sound fx where they need to be. Does it need to start at the beginning of the trailer? Play at the end? Play throughout the entire trailer? Place the sounds where you feel they need to be.

Frequency, Amplitude and EQ

Today we will be learning some fundamental elements of sound.  First of all, what is sound?

Sound is vibration that we detect with our ears.  When we hear sound, we detect different Frequencies.  


When looking at a sound wave, the frequency of the wave describes how frequent the wave cycle is.  The image above depicts waves that are different frequencies.  The top red wave has a low frequency and the bottom purple wave has a high frequency.

So what does Frequency mean to our ears? 
High Frequency sound waves are higher in Pitch
Low Frequency Sound waves are lower in Pitch.

 

What is another way to describe sound?  Sound can be High and low in Pitch, what else can you notice about sound?

Sound also has a Volume level.  When looking at a sound wave a louder sound would have a larger Amplitude.

You could say that Amplitude is how tall the wave is and Frequency is how long the wave is.
For your ears, Amplitude is how loud the sound is and Frequency is how high or low in pitch it sounds.

 

 

In Music the instruments that we love have Frequency Ranges.  For instance the Flute would have a higher range then the Bass Guitar.  Here is a chart showing the frequency ranges of instruments and the human voice. 

 In order to understand this chart we need to know how frequency is measured.  Frequency is measured in Hertz, Abbreviated Hz.  This Chart ranges from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. This is also the range of human hearing.  Dogs for instance can hear higher frequencies than humans.

Hearing test!

SO how is all of this information useful for us as we work with music?  

Well.... we will be using what is called an Equalizer.  This is often called EQ.   When we use an equalizer what we are doing is changing the volume at a specific frequency. 

You may have seen this on a stereo.  For example many stereos have to option of boosting the BASS.  What that means is they are using EQ to increase the volume of the low frequencies in your music.

Today we will be using EQ in Pro Tools in order to Effect the Guitar or Vocals that you recorded earlier this week.

Assignment

1. Open up your "who I am" Pro Tools Session

2. Go to the window menu to display the mixer

3. Find the inserts on the vocal or guitar track that you will be working with

4. Insert -> multichannel plug-in -> EQ -> EQ 3 7-Band (stereo)

5. Take a look at the EQ

6. First, experiment with the EQ. See how cutting or boosting the volume at different frequencies effects the sound. 

To EQ the vocals and guitar, the yellow green and blue sections will effect your sound the most.


7. Usually when using EQ it is a subtle effect but today feel free to experiment and see what you can do with the sound. 

ps. check out the Presets!

Using the MBox for Recording

By now you probably have a little bit of Pro Tools knowledge. You should know how to use some of the tools such as the trimmer, selector and grabber. We will continue to do those today, but let's talk more about the actual MBox itself.


What is the MBox? The Mbox is a piece of hardware that allows you to use Pro Tools LE on your computer. This piece of hardware plugs into your computer's USB port and becomes an audio interface. Practically all computers come with an Audio Interface built-in to them. To put it simple, you need an audio interface to control the audio signals going in and out of your computer. On the mac computers that we use, your computer speaker is the output of your audio interface. With the Mbox plugged in, the headphone/monitor port (front left) is the output of the audio interface. This means that if you don't have a pair of headphones or monitors (speakers) plugged into the port of your MBox, you will have no sound. However, this isn't the only output option, we'll discuss this further in a little bit.

Notice the knobs on the front of the MBox. There are 4 in total. The 2 on the left control output volume, the 2 on the right control input volume. So if we wanted to control the overall volume of our session, then we would use the knobs on the left. If we wanted to control the volume of a microphone or instrument, then we would use the knobs on the right.

Now let's take this time to look at the back of the Mbox. You'll notice a lot of inputs. 6 in total (if you include the USB).  On the left side of the Mbox you'll see a Mic input for Input 1 and a DI (Direct Instrument) that can be used alternatively. We have a DI input for Input 2. On the right side of the back of the MBox we have a Monitor Output (Left and Right) for 2 monitors. Many monitors on the market will require they're own power source and do not plug directly into each other like cheaper computer speakers. The monitors in our room plug into each other with a final output going into the front of the MBox. In other studios, it is quite common to find the monitors plugged into the back.

So what does this all lead to? 

Let's put some of these inputs into use this week. You'll have the choice to use either a guitar (for guitarists in the program) or a microphone to record an audio piece. If you are using the guitar, first work on making music in Reason, followed by recording your guitar in Pro Tools. If you are using the Microphone, you will use it to answer the question "who are you?"
You will record yourself answering the question first, followed by producing music for it in Reason (similar to the MLK speech assignment).


If you would like to use both the guitar and the microphone you can as well. 


Now that we have the assignment, here are the instructions. By the way, this will be a tough assignment so I highly recommend that you SAVE OFTEN!


If you are using the Guitar


1. Open Pro Tools

2. Create a session named "YourName_WhoAmI"

3. Set your tempo in Pro Tools.

4. Create a Stereo Instrument Track. Name the track Reason.

5. Load Reason into the track as an insert.

6. Once Reason loads up, begin producing a beat. Make sure your beat contains the rhythmic and melodic instruments. Work on the arrangement of the beat until you have something that you like.


7. Go back into Pro Tools and create a Mono Audio Track. Name it "Guitar".

8. Plug the Guitar into your MBox Line 2. Press the Record button on your Audio Track. You should now be able to hear sound from the guitar.

9. Practice your guitar melody. When you're ready, begin recording your guitar part(s) in your song.


10. When you have the guitar parts that you're looking for, begin working on the mix of the song in Reason (adjusting levels/panning/FX).


11. When you're finished, save your work.


12. Now it's time to bounce your assignment from Pro Tools. Bouncing is considered real-time exporting. To bounce, go to File > Bounce to Disk. Your file should be a Stereo Interleaved, 44.1khz 16-bit audio file. Click "Convert After Bounce". Now save it in the Audio Files folder of your session.


If you are using the Microphone


1. Open Pro Tools

2. Create a Session named "YourName_WhoAmI"

3. Once your session loads up, Create a Mono Audio Track. Name it "Vocals".

4. Plug the microphone into the Input 1 XLR port. Press the record button on your track. You should now hear the sound of the microphone and be able to adjust the volume of it (if you use the Input 1 knob on the front of the MBox).

5. When you're ready, begin recording your answer to the question. Of course let's not answer this with a simple "i am (insert name)" and call it a day. Start by saying your name, then take the time to talk about yourself. Things you like, things you dislike, issues that you find to be important, etc.


6. When you have all of your parts recorded, Create a Stereo Instrument Track. Name it Reason. Load in Reason as an insert.

7. Begin producing music for your vocals. Make sure that your music has both rhythmic and melodic instruments, as well as an arrangement.


8. Once you have finished arranging everything, try to add some mixing (volume levels/panning/fx).


9. Save your work.


10. Now it's time to bounce your assignment from Pro Tools. Bouncing is considered real-time exporting. To bounce, go to File > Bounce to Disk. Your file should be a Stereo Interleaved, 44.1khz 16-bit audio file. Click "Convert After Bounce". Now save it in the Audio Files folder of your session.