George Lauder Bursary - Week 2

Well, time certainly isn't slowing down and we are already onto week 2 so let's just get right into everything that happened this week! As you will discover, a lot of my mid-week days will consist of classes so there might not be a massive amount of interesting information but I will try to keep things fun and add some variety!

Monday 16th June

My day started once again at 9am with 'Engineering the Record I' (ETR I) where we finalised our first projects and started beginning preperation for our final project! This project involves us to create/recreate a full song, recording a minimum of 7 instruments and utilising some of the studio outboard gear in the recording/mixing process. We formed our new groups and I was paired with Jackson, JV and another classmate called Amy. To plan for the project, we all went to the dining hall for lunch to discuss what we were looking to record. Amy presented one of her own songs that she had written and partially recorded as an option for us to do. After we all had a listen to the demo, we all agreed that there was a lot we could do with the track to easily meet the requirements for the project.

Following lunch, it was time for my second class 'The Virtual Producer: Beats & Beatmaking' where we presented our homework from last week. The goal of the homework was to recreate the first 32 bars of a famous song's drums. I chose to present my "Juicy Fruit" remake which my lecturer was impressed by! Moving on, the main goal of this class was to get familiar with drum patterns, specific drum sounds and the concept of 'humanised drums' (essentially drums which sound like they are being played by a person, but are actually all programmed using MIDI). The homework for next class was to come up with two drum tracks, a trap beat track and a humanised drum beat track.

I decided to continue the rest of my day in an edit suite to work on my personal projects. I've been making sure to utilise the audio facilities as much as possible while I am here which in-turn has meant I am making good progress on these projects!

Tuesday 17th June

Once again the day starts off with 'ETR I' where we continued our learning by focusing on gain structure, impedance, types of loudness metering, etc for the first part of the lesson. For the second half, we had a lovely drummer called Ed come in to teach us about drum tuning (how to tune, identifying when to tune, etc). As someone who has recorded a lot of drums but never thought about tuning, it was interesting to learn more about this so that for future sessions I could easily tune a drum kit myself if required! Following my first class, I managed to stop for lunch before travelling through to Manhattan for my second class 'The Basic's of Music Licensing'. I actually arrived early so that I could catch up on some blog work for my first couple of posts and made up some good progress on them! My class consisted of learning about the concepts of song value in relation to it's intended use, rights, fee structures and legal constraints as well as considering what we would like to focus on for our final project (more on that next week!). For now, we finished up with class and I ventured back to Brooklyn to grab some groceries, have dinner and get ready for tomorrow!

Wednesday 18th June

Onto the next day and next round of classes! 'ETR I' began with us focusing on the 'principles of sound' for the first half of the lesson. This covered areas such as the key characteristics of sound (frequency, wavelength, timbre, envelope and environmental effects like room acoustics), while a lot of this information was already knowledge I possessed, it was interesting to cover these topics in a different way compared to how I was taught. The second half of our lesson consisted of learning about guitar microphone recording techniques as well as understanding the key parts of a guitar. We had a lovely guitarist (who unfortunately I did not grab his name, but we had an amazing chat about Scotland!) come in to demonstrate the differences between certain guitars like a Fender or a Gibson, the difference in pickup points and finally the ideal areas on an amp to record. Again this is all information I have gathered from back home, but I really enjoy having my knowledge be consolidated while also allowing me to question and query about differences in techniques, microphone usage, etc compared to how I learned it back home.

Following my first class and a quick bite for lunch at the dining hall, me and Jackson wandered back for our next class of 'Beats & Beatmaking'. Today we showcased our two homework projects from Monday including a trap beat and a humanised drum beat, both of which my lecturer was happy with my work. The class today was primarily focusing on sample chopping (a technique where a sampled audio phrase or break is divided into smaller segments, then rearranged to create a new musical sequence or pattern). We learned a lot about what elements of a song or piece of audio are ideal for sampling, how to warp audio to fit within your track and it's tempo, etc. I had only ever briefly touched on this side of audio back in college, so it was good to have a bit of existing experience going into this class.

After class I decided to head back to the accomodation to call my other best friend, Brodie since we hadn't spoken properly since I left so we had a lot to fill each other in on. We finished up after nearly an hour chatting, not long before I decided to relax for the evening and grab a couple of slices from Fascati Pizza just down the street, rounding everything off by watching the latest YouTube video from Ted Nivison, one of my favourite content creators on the platform. A productive but relaxed day overall!

Thursday 19th June

No classes! Thursday was a national holiday for Juneteenth so all university facilities and classes were closed. I figured that I would jump the subway into Manhattan to visit a shop that I have been eyeing up since I arrived, this being the Golf Wang store. For those who don't know, Golf Wang is a clothing and designer brand owned by Tyler, the Creator, who is currently one of the biggest hip-hop artists in the world right now. The shop is located in Lower Manhattan, so it was easy to get to from the accomodation. I arrived at the shop and was immediately in love with the shop design, clothing options and accessory choices that they had on display. I had a look around before deciding to purchase one of their t-shirts from their "Save the Bees" collection. I would not be surprised if I find myself back in here before I leave!

Upon leaving the shop, NYC had decided to localise a thunderstorm directly over me so I had to wait under cover until the heavy rain cleared which thankfully didn't take too long. I grabbed some lunch quickly before taking a wander towards Thomas Paine Park which sits outside the NY Supreme Court. The heat was getting quite extreme so I took shelter under the trees at the park to relax andcool off. As such I ended up calling my family as it was my sister's birthday so I wanted to make sure I got to speak with my family. Once the weather got bearable again, I figured that since I was relatively nearby I would walk back to the accomodation via the Brooklyn Bridge! Unfortunately the head did not get any better, the views from the bridge were worth the suffering! It was amazing to see the northern NY skyline from this angle as well as a lot of northern Downtown Brooklyn. I arrived back at the accomodation and briefly caught up with my dad over the phone after he finished for work a bit later than usual which was really nice since it had been a moment since we last properly got to speak. I rounded off the day by completing a little more homework for a couple of my classes before heading to bed.

Friday 20th June

This was an exciting day as I was going to get started on a music project for Sabrina from 'ETR I'. To sum up the situation, she is looking to record a song for her upcoming single and she asked myself and Jackson to produce/engineer it. So today was the first day where we managed to get in the studio. We managed to get some good things recorded, primarily vocals (lead & backing) and some piano. Upon finishing our session, I once again decided to get more work done on my personal projects in the edit suites. Before I went back to the accomodation for the night, I decided to explore around the west side of Brooklyn Heights and I stumbled upon the Promenade. I had actually been here before on my first day when I caught the sunset over the NYC skyline, but it was a lot later in the day so it was dark and the city was lit up in all of its glory. I decided to sit and stay here for a bit, it was incredibly peaceful sitting watching the city lights, the boats in the river pass by and the occasional siren in the distance (as you will learn in future weeks, this became a key relaxation spot for me going forward). After sitting for just over an hour, I ventured back to the accomodation to round off some final bits for my homework before heading to bed.

Saturday 21st June

After high temperatures and a lot of work to balance over the week, I felt like a long lie in was overdue! Once I got showered and dressed, I decided to use today to explore more of the south end of Brooklyn Heights and Downtown to get a break from some work. I explored down towards Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, just south of my accomodation before looping back uptown to grab some food. I decided to give my best friend Fin a call while I was out to catch up and see how we were both doing which I really enjoyed, especially as it had also been a while since we last spoke. I rounded off the day with some catchup on my homework for both Music Licensing and Beats & Beatmaking!

Sunday 22nd June

I decided to dedicate today entirely to focusing on my personal projects. I wanted to take a big step towards completing them for my client as we would be looking to get them released in the coming months. So I woke relatively early to grab some breakfast and a quick breath of fresh air at Columbus Park before heading in to get the grind on! Unfortunately while I am not able to disclose much about the projects until they are released, we are incredibly happy with what we have created and we look forward to sharing it with everyone soon enough!

What I can discuss with you though is what I am doing! To sum up what I've been doing with this project, at this point in time I am currently mixing two songs for my client. We recorded back in May before I departed for the States, and I decided to work on them while I was away to allow me time to focus on on my own work and also deliver a mix to the client without them having to wait until I'm back to begin mixing. I also decided upon arriving and visiting the Clive Davis Institute, I would be attempting to use their facilities to the maximum to ensure I was delivering a professionally mixed and mastered track for them. More to come on this though!

Apart from that my day did not really consist of much more other than mixing and occasional ear breaks throughout the day to stop any ear fatigue while I worked.

While this week may not have been filled with as exciting adventures or activities, it really consolidated and affirmed my daily routine and typical week in NYC. So I believe that it was still overall a productive and successful week! Let's check back in again for week 3!