Award Sounds

About Award Sounds

Alan — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:59:49 +0000

Award Sounds has three main strands:

1) Music composition - bespoke compositions to meet your requirements. Modern guitar, drum, bass, synths and orchestral creations. TV themes, idents, sound tracks, intro, outros, shorts, features, corporate themes.

2) Business and ICT consultancy in Business Analysis, Project Methodology, facilitation, CRM and Customer Access primarily in Local Government, Telco and Utilities sectors.

3) Photography - stock photography, incorporating a variety of themes such as music and audio, macro and landscapes.

Award Sounds provides a series of weekly articles offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

To promote knowledge sharing within the wider community, part of the website discusses the issues involved in building this site complete with the problems encountered and any resolutions.

Add the RSS feed to your reader to keep up to date.

Use the contact form if you want to get in touch. We'd be happy to discuss your requirements.

Radial Engineering Re-Amping Kit

Alan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:03:33 +0000

I like it when something just works, but I always feel a bit ambivalent when I can't really notice it working.

The Kit

In this case, I've just been using the Radial Engineering Reamping Kit. It consists of two main components (the J48 active phantom DI and the X-Amp amp driver) plus a power supply for the X-amp and a plastic box to hold it all in.

Plugging In for Re-Amping

I read the instructions, mainly to figure out what happens with signal levels, plugged the Radial X-Amp in and in less than 5 minutes I was recording a guitar track again. It really was a case of plugging a mic XLR lead between the audio interface and the X-Amp, connecting up the power supply to the X-Amp and plugging a normal guitar lead between X-Amp and guitar. It's worth reading the manual for the order of connections and powering-up. I spent longer configuring the software mixer for my audio interface to output the guitar signal on a separate channel than I did connecting everything together.

Advantages

I can record the clean, DI signal no matter what the amplified sound is (ok, this is just using a DI box).
I can then re-record many times the clean through a number of guitar amps and/or cabinets with different eq and gain settings.
I find it goes a long way to reducing the lifelessness from direct recording into software amp emulation.
I can record a clean sound at unsociable hours, knowing that I'll be able to crank up the amp when it's more socially acceptable.
I can play with mic placement and room acoustics in a way that I can't when I'm the guitarist and recording engineer.
Allows me to record a heavier, overdriven version of the same track and blend this is with a clean recorded sound.

Disadvantages

You have to be disciplined or you can spend a lot of time tweaking the amp settings and re-recording the same track many times.
That's it, the components seem to work so well, I don't notice them working.

Overcoming Lifelessness

I mentioned the lifelessness of a guitar track recorded using software amp emulators. I believe they can produce great results, but for me as a guitarist, it doesn't feel the same as playing through a pure valve guitar amp and a 4x12 loaded with Celestion Vintage 30s (that just happens to be my longest-running preference). Some of my best guitar tracks have been recorded using software emulators, I only wish I'd been able to record them with at a mic'ed amp at the time.

I think it's down to the interaction between guitarist, guitar and amplifier/cabinet. Guitarists adjust their playing relative to what they hear coming out of the speakers, hence guitars recorded direct through software amp emulations can miss out the way that the guitarist changes their playing. Actually I think it's further than that, the guitarist changes their playing to suit the software emulator, after all, it's just another amplifier/cabinet combination to handle.

This kit goes a long way to helping me overcome the lifelessness of the software route, while still giving me the flexibility to record when I want to. It does not overcome it completely; you can't beat using the guitar, amp, speaker, effects and mic combination at the time of tracking that you want to hear on the finished song.

So in this case, the product's great and it does the job it's designed to do well. My ambivalence comes from the fact that it's such a simple job that, from that perspective, it has to do that it doesn't seem worth spending the money on. From the perspective of having something that works and does the job well, then you probably can't beat this re-amping kit.

The Honeymoon is over

Alan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:21:17 +0000

This site's been quiet for the last 4 weeks, mainly because I've been on honeymoon. Well, totally because I've been on honeymoon. I took a conscious decision to not write and just enjoy the time instead. I'll step back up the writing over the next few weeks to get to the original one of two articles per week.

You may have read some of my posts about the Panasonic DMC FX150. I bought the camera specifically because I needed a small point-and-shoot that was suitable for taking decent quality images, had RAW capability and was easy for anyone to use. After all, it was a honeymoon so a fair number of the images were taken by others offering to take photos of us. I'll write what life was like living with that camera for 4 weeks

I'll also get back to writing more articles for The Musical Creativity series and the Fundamentals of Process Mapping.

PhotoShelter Collection will discontinue stock photo licensing

Alan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:38:56 +0000

As of the 10th October, the Photoshelter will discontinue stock photo licensing.

That's a shame. Out of the agencies I've been using, that's the one with the best user interface. Well, it was the best in my opinion for photographers anyway. I've used a number of other site/agencies and I much preferred the submission route to Photoshelter than any others.

First Use of a Panasonic DMC-FX150

Alan — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:36:52 +0000

I've just purchased a Panasonic DMC-FX150. There aren't that many in-depth reviews around yet, I'd still like to see a detailed study at www.dpreview.com or similar.

To keep you going, I've uploaded some images from the camera so we can assess image quality. The camera was set to record in jpeg and RAW (.rw2), but OS X/Lightroom doesn't yet decode the RAW file, so I've only uploaded the jpeg files so far.

I used three cameras that I had to hand today and took the same photo with each. The different camera sizes and lack of accurate focal length measurements made it awkward. I tried to keep the metering and focussing options similar where possible.

Panasonic DMC-FX150
Nikon D80 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens
Canon Isux 400 (it's a few years old and is a 4MP point-and-shoot camera)

I've uploaded the following images:

Panasonic DMC FX 150

Nikon D80

Canon IXUS 400

All were taken at roughly 75-80mm (35mm equivalent) on a tripod using the 2 second timer available on each camera. The D80's images were in raw (.NEF) and only had the autotone feature in Lightroom applied. I never usually apply that, but in this case it gave the most similar tone compared to the Panasonic images. No out-of-camera sharpening or noise reduction has been applied.

Judge for Yourself.

You can see the images and judge the quality for yourself.

Initial Thoughts

The FX-150 is still a point-and-shoot. The sensor size is small - it's larger than most point-and-shoots - but it's still small.

Aperture Selection

The aperture selections are only available in manual mode. There's no aperture priority mode (or not that I've found one yet anyway). Ordinarily, that may not be a problem, but making all the selections of ISO, aperture and shutter speed is fiddly on this camera. In fact, ISO is in a completely different menu to aperture and shutter speed.

Aperture Options

Read the specs carefully. There are only two aperture steps per focal length; there are no steps inbetween the extremes. For example:

at wide-angle: f/2.8 and f/9.0
roughly mid-point: f/4.6 and f/14
at max zoom/telephoto: f/5.6 and f/18

I'll read through the manual at some point, but from what I can gather so far, getting a portrait image at roughly 70mm (35mm equivalent) with the f/2.8 is impossible on this camera. Say goodbye to ideas of a nice bokeh with portrait shots.

The Case

The tripod socket is metal and located off-centre, far to left-side of the camera. The battery and SD card are accessed through the same panel on the underside of the camera, to the right of the tripod mount. It feels flimsy. In fact, the IXUS 400 has a much nicer access panel. If the camera is mounted, then you won't be changing batteries or cards easily.

Overall, the camera casing is metal, but some of the switches have a plastic feel to them, especially in the travel before the press is sensed.

The casing is slippy and like a lot of compact cameras, it doesn't leave a lot to grip on to. There's a small square of raised dimples where a right-handed person would put their right thumb. By the looks of it, if you're left-handed, you're still going to have to put your right thumb there.

I'm convinced the included strap and eyelet will come in very useful.

Verdict

It's not a DSLR replacement, not even a 4/3 replacement. It is small, it's quick, it detects faces well and the jpgs so far have come out well. The lack of aperture-priority is very frustrating, probably because that's the normal mode for me. I intend to take it out and find out how well the f/2.8 aperture when the camera is in wide-angle.

For the size, I think it's great. I was looking at Canon G9 and similar, but they're too bulky for what I'm looking for right now, which is a compact camera that will fit in my pocket and is easy for anyone to use. It's also easy switch to the intelligent Auto mode, hand over to a novice and still achieve decent results. More than that, the scene modes (landscape, fireworks, portrait, night portrait, soft skin, etc) are all easy to understand so in many cases, I'd feel happy putting it on the scene menu and telling the photographer to select the scene mode they want

Update

There's no manual focus. That's not really much of a problem. The focus-lock will help avoid that most of the time.

The image quality is specific to the recording mode (movie, scene, manual, Program AE and intelligent Auto). RAW isn't available in intelligent Auto. Seems an odd omission.

Second Update

I've uploaded some images taken using an aperture of f/2.8.

Third Update

I've uploaded a video showing the speed from off to first shoot.

edit:
I've also posted a report on what it's been like living with the DMC FX-150 for 4 weeks.

New Haven

Alan — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:26:37 +0000

I've been on the look-out for a Sci-Fi movie series a to get involved with. I wanted a side-project and after coming across a few old books I read and a few movies, I decided on the Space Opera theme. Lots of scope for over-the-top thematic music, a bit of rock and some atmosphere.

New Haven

I picked the New Haven project (previously known as Ticonderoga) as it fitted everything I was looking for out of a side-project. This had to fit alongside the normal jobs and projects.

New Haven's a good project. They had a gap for a composer, partly because the full feature's a long way off. That means there's a lot of other work to be done. The concept is original with a fresh perspective on sci-fi in space. It has potentially similarities with other sci-fi series (it's based around the military in space - hmm sound familiar?). It's difficult not to make comparisons really.

Fortunately, there are easily enough differences to make it stand out.

Firstly it's set in our own system, secondly there's no FTL travel, thirdly no aliens. Those three features alone set it apart from almost every other space opera. Add in a few other differences and it's easily headed to sit apart from the rest of the sci-fi series crowd.

What else?

I'm still looking out for other projects. Currently New Haven isn't taking up that much time. There's a long gap before I need to compose music for the soundtrack.

End of Year Review - 1st year

Alan — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:00:16 +0000

The Award Sounds website had its first birthday yesterday. One year old. Wow. I posted the first articles on 15th July 2007. They were mainly placeholders stating what I was going to place on the site.

Musical Creativity

And a year on, we're up to 43 articles on the Musical Creativity series, for ideas for overcoming composer's block/writer's block. That's a little less than the one a week that I'd intended, but not far off. I'm happy with that amount, especially as some of the articles have been more in-depth than just a blog article.

Fundamentals of Process Mapping

I also started the Fundamentals of Process Mapping ebook series to help me mentor analysts and users on consultancy projects. That series still needs a couple more articles to make it worthwhile. I've already got a few mostly-written. They're in the pipeline. I can see that growing although each article takes longer to write than any of the other articles on this site.

Photography

It's the articles on photography that have gathered the most interested. Thanks to those that have commented. This is an area that I don't get much time for, but when I do it's enjoyable. It's even better to hear from others about their experiences.

Side-Project

The Space Opera side project has captured my own imagination more than my past side-projects have. I'm not that sure what to do with it now. While I'm on consultancy assignment, it will remain a side-project. I'll continue to write music that I think is suitable and clean up previous ideas, getting them into a fit state for publication. Some of that music may remain ear-marked for the side-project, some I may release out through other channels.

Memory and Venn

Spinneyhead Presents released Memory in 2007. It was the first release from the team, I was involved as composer, but also offered advice on how to plan the production; some advice was taken, some not. Most importantly, what wasn't heeded was the advice on location audio (not something I've that much experience in, and I don't claim to, but I do follow basic audio engineering principles). The result was that the location audio was horrific and I spent more time editing in post than composing. I wrote up the lessons learned so others can learn from the team's experiences.

That may sound harsh, but it was a first release for a new team and there are two real positives came out of Memory.

The team delivered. It finished what it set out to do. Despite the quality of the footage and hard work involved, the team completed the project. There are enough teams that fail, lose their way or find the work is too difficult.
The team learned from the experience and the following (and unrelated) series Venn is so much better, it's hard to believe the same team is behind it.

Progress Update

Alan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:23:38 +0000

Wow, I knew I've been busy on other tasks for a week or so, but I hadn't realised it had been over 4 weeks since my last post. That's the first time I've had a gap of this size since I started out with this site.

Screening

One of the projects I'm involved in had a screening of its pilot episode in the main cinema complex in Manchester last week. Unlike other projects where I'd had more control of the timing and placement of audio, this was a project where I had only provided musical intro, outro, stings and a few themes, and some of that was in collaboration with another musician. I was interested to see how the director had chosen to place the music in the episode, how it had been mixed (e.g. forward or placed back in the mix) and I was also interested in watching the episode. Up until that point, I hadn't seen the episode.

Business Change, Process Mapping and BPR

I'm working on a long-term transformation project at the moment. As I'm doing so, I'm keeping an eye out for the common pitfalls of process mapping. I don't think there's much I want to change in the process-mapping series, what I've already written is still valid. There are a few points that I think could make it easier to understand. Plus I want to continue the series, it's only a few articles long so far and there's so much more to write. One of the main points I'll discuss is the time it takes to do full As-Is and To-Be models and how other tools and processes such as those found in Lean can be more beneficial, depending on the context.

This is actually the reason why there hasn't been much other activity on this site. The demands of a full-time client plus travel there and back is leaving little time for the updating. It does however leave me with time to write, just not time to research and upload the texts.

So what now?

The good side is that I've been writing some articles off-line for the musical creativity series. I'll publish those soon. Some will take longer than others as it will take time to prepare samples.

Status of the Musical Instrument Retail Industry

I've been watching the failure of Sound Control/Turnkey/Soho Soundhouse with interest. Over the last few years, I'd only buy from one or two named individuals in that chain to the point that I'd drive past 2 of my local shops and purchase from the shop in another city a couple of hours away for better service. Add to that the fact that the sales stock was getting progressively more budget-based for the items I'd want to buy meant that I was looking around for a better store.

New Kit

The failure of Sound Control comes at an odd time. I am looking for a new hardware compressor to complement what I already use. Sound Control didn't really sell much pro outboard beyond the SSL range, so I was already wondering how to broach this with them or to branch off to other companies such as KMR.

Indie Filmmaking

venn is still progressing. Shooting was completed a couple of weeks ago for a few scenes. Means I should have some rough edits to write to soon.

Space Opera

I've also watched a few independent sci-fi projects collapse over the last month or so. One or two appear to have collapsed outright, others have been delayed as the respective teams understand more about what's involved

Stuffed

My own short-movie project, Stuffed, is on hold while I think about what background I want. When I started out with Stuffed, I wasn't thinking about the background. That's not an oversight, just that I hadn't noticed the opportunity. One day I was looking at the footage and the idea hit me. I've had a few short attempts using Public Domain footage from archive.org but that hasn't proved sufficient quality. I'm not on the look-out for a good background which will convert well to PAL-I resolution - this isn't a HD project. I'd like to get it finished soon.

Slight change of focus

Alan — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:15:51 +0000

I've just booked in a time-consuming consultancy role for a few months, so there won't be as many updates on certain areas of this site. Here's how I see the site changing:

I am still aiming to publish the articles on Musical Creativity every week.

I will still continue to post articles in the Music and Audio section, especially for any projects that Award Sounds is involved in.

I still want to continue with the Fundamentals of Process Mapping series that I've recently started. I think it's a really valuable piece of work that should come in useful with a number of clients. There's a lot more I want to write there, we've barely scratched the surface of the fundamentals. It will be interesting for me to look back after the role and see if my perspective has changed.

The side-project will probably suffer most, it's been great while I've had the time even if only from being able to understand what others have to go through, but it's not a priority. I will still post relevant articles, but I can't imagine getting involved in the 3D/Blender side of things as much as I had wanted to.

Thank you

Alan

Planned Upgrade to Drupal 6.x

Alan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:01:50 +0000

I'll be updating the underlying content management system of this website in the next week or so. I'll be moving it to Drupal 6.1. I know there will be a few features missing such as Similar Entries.

You'll also come back to a new look - ok, I'm cheating there, I'll be using on of the default themes while I'm waiting for contributed themes to catch up. That suits me, I wanted to change from this theme since it was looking a bit too busy.

I'll leave a maintenance message up, hopefully for only an hour or so.

Edit - I was going to upgrade today, but there's one feature I still want to have confirmed for Drupal 6.1, it's the ability to integrate with Feedburner. Currently I'm using the Feedburner module, but I've been looking at using the Path Redirect module instead. I'll probably hold off upgrade until I can happily integrate with Feedburner.