Flash back Friday(XMAS)

Going Back to before Christmas now, I recorded and produced a Xmas card for Cancer Research UK. I recorded and Produced a nice little acoustic guitar piece and got creative with some percussion, which I think gives it a very natural yet humbling feel to the track. Perfect to represent the brief and even mimic CRUK attitude. After I constructed the music, I then went on to sound design the animation in which I had the pleasure of recording my friends kids Singing a christmas carol. Although the session was very demanding, it paid of in the end and added a great sense of dynamics and joy to the film.I created all aspects of the sound design with props and things I had knocking around the studio. for instance a ruler on a table for the birds on the wire. Think it works well. Enjoy

SOUND DESIGN VIMEO CHANNEL

Check out my sound design video links that appear on this blog at:

https://vimeo.com/channels/348671/50385424

Hays - Composing/Sound Design

A Project I Sound Designed and Composed for the global brand Hays.

AstraZeneca Animation

Here's another Project from the team at Conran Design Group that I sound designed a few weeks ago. This piece had to be turned around in a few days as it was going to go live without any sound, so Reuben (the animator) contacted me and asked if I could do something quick as he couldn't let there be no sound. Reuben wanted a more dynamic digital theme for this project with more of a action/sci-fi Esq influenced tones and clicks.

Watch the annual repot below or on AZ website her http://www.astrazeneca-annualreports.com/2011/#

Associated British foods 2011 Report

Been working closely with Conran design Group over the past few mouths and this is the next project I was lucky to be apart of. This one was a lot of fun as I got to record Foley and compose a organic but still inspirational type track which accented and supported the animation throughout.

also see the individual sectors by clicking the link below to see how each sector is different in terms of music and sound design.

http://www.abfreports.co.uk/report_home.htm

Conran Design Group Showreel

I Have been working with Conran Design Group over the past month or so now, and had the pleasure of sound designing and composing their showreel for them. Conran are a very inspirational company and translate that into their work. Along with the Conran slogan "creating momentum", Inspirational later became my sort of buzz words I used when constructing the sound design but most importantly the composition, which was to deliver this quality of the Branding giant. The Music track I created supports the visuals, edited to frame changes and correlates to the many client case studies. Editing and composing the music to picture, much like how the sound design process is constructed helps the viewer to understand what they are experiencing.

Lumacoustics Idents - Sound Design Branding

This short sequences of Lumacoustic Idents were created for a re-branding project by Reuben Armstrong. wanted to deliver a crisp but urban design to match the edgy visual graphics.

Untitled from Jamie Frye on Vimeo.

Storm Over Morocco Animations

This is a excerpt from a documentary about Frank Romano life tales. I provided additional sound design to the animations as well as final mix to this short clip. designing the Four short flash-back sequences for the documentary called Storm Over Morocco was a very time consuming task as they had to mimic the environments, thus helping tell the story of Frank Romano as he describes it. Animated by Reuben Armstrong and illustrations by Fariq Aziz.

RDA Sound Design Branding

Here is a small piece i designed for a moving image designer from london. real fun to do so hope you like. there's 50 SFX in this 9 second clip. layer upon layer.

Flow TV Channel

Flow is a new online TV channel showcasing new and innovative art, vision and sound. Think of it like a blog but with a constant creative stream of art and creative nourishment. Early stages of this new brand so have just been working on some short ad teasers/promotional content to get the buzz going.

More to come from this project as there will be a full 2 minute promotional advert for the channel, which will go into more detail describing what flow is. This really tested my editing and sound design skills on a full Pro Tools HD rig, so I hope you enjoy.

Head In The Cloud Documentary

This is a short teaser of a documentary I sound designed about social networking. I really wanted to experiment with different tones and sounds for a futuristic vibe, but meet with an authentic approach to sound design to provide a complete soundtrack.

The National Gallery Soundscape Project

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/learning/inspired-by-the-collection/sound/*/chooseMedia/3/

The National Gallery is collaborating with Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication on 'Transcriptions: Sound’, an innovative new project which involves sound design students producing a three-minute response to a painting of their choice in the Gallery's collection.

My soundscape is a 3-4 minute soundscape piece inspired by the 1708 painting by Jan Weenix entitled "A Deerhound with Dead Game and Implements of the Chase". NG138. I wanted the viewer to experience this scene from the perspective of the heroic dog. I contrasted natural soundscapes with dramatic film-like production, in the form of reversed gun shots, low-frequency oscillations, bass rumble and sonic booms, to place the viewer in the action: from the huntsman’s approach from the right, to the distant hunt and climactic last breaths of the prey.

The renowned Soundscape artist Chris Watson and sound Designer Dave Humphries also joined this project, giving their interpretation of "The Cornfield" by John Constable and "An Alchemist" by Adriaen Van Ostade.

Muffin? Xmas theme Sound Design

muffin? from Reuben Armstrong on Vimeo.

I just produced this for a group of students in about an hour, as they had very little time. they created this animation to launch an online branding campaign, which was a great success and quiet a different way of branding.

I sound designed the animation with a xmas theme, then went on to create a fun but quiet silly composition, which was the aim and brief set. This went on to be featured by the media branding website Turquoise. link below:

http://www.turquoisebranding.com/2010/blogs/12/06/the-creative-market/

The Ghost In The Machine (Phase two)

This project has moved on the the next stage with Jonathan(the director) formulating a project management programme called Basecamp, were he can upload each scene and where others can use as a file sharing platform for the movie. As there are a number of different sound designers involved in the project, Bascamp has been very useful and has also been used as a forum to discuss techniques, approaches and problems we've been having. So far Jonathan has uploaded the first batch of scenes, of which we have to choose from and mark our name next to, making sure no one else completes the same scene. We have been told to only apply Atmos+FX to the scenes, as the Foley and ADR are being completed by another group of professionals in a London studio. My first scene I chose was scene 7 - "Sophie and Mark argue", because it's based by the sea and I can accurately recreate this, as I live in a coastal town.

My first scene without ADR+Foley:

Untitled from Jamie Frye on Vimeo.

HARDCORE STRAIGHT EDGE DOCUMENTARY

The Straight Edge Documentary by jamiefrye

I have produced a Punk fuelled hardcore straight edge documentary for Resonance FM, Which is a central london based radio station that kindly gave myself and others the chance to produce a three hour show. This documentary follows the birth of American Punk and continues with how it became hardcore, which then leads to the current UK scene and how Straight Edge still influences bands today. Making this documentary involved:

• Researching through interviews and other punk films, as to how the American Punk scene started.
• Writing and developing a narration script with Leeds based hardcore veteran Nate Bean.
• Recording interviews at shows.
  
• Recording and producing an interesting narration that would keep audiences griped throughout.
• Piecing it all together to create the final product.

This documentary will be aired on the 19th May 2010 on Reaonance FM and at Ravensbournes, Ravelive.

Flowers - Short Film

I was contacted by Sarah(who is a third year content student) to help with sound on her final project called flowers. This is a short film which was filmed both in college and on location at a house in Bromley. Sarah needed both sound mixer and boom op, so asked a classmate to help boom op so I could concentrate on cable bashing and sound mixing.

Battling with trains, Plains and lawn mowers

The problems we came across were batteries running out and not being able to get the boom microphone close enough to the actors. we also film outside and had to wait for plains, trains and lawn mowers to stop, so it wouldn't be captured by the personal and boom microphones. This was important as the producer didn't have enough time to perform ADR to replace the dialogue so had to get the best production sound possible.

The Allen Family Band - Demo Recording

This was an interesting project as this oldtime bluegrass band from New Mexico is lead by a grammy award winning fiddle player, and is accompanied by his four kids. All of which were all under 17, which I found incredible as they played with such confidence and experience. They recorded 4 oldtime tracks in there own hillbilly style. The band played to all together in a live atmosphere much like a transatlantic type session. The Vocals were even record live, but then would get Roby (the vocalist, 17) to over dub and redo lines that were pitchy or not in time. Acoustic guitar, Bass guitar, Mandolin, Banjo were all performed live and then went on to multi track Fiddle. I used a:

Rode NT3 - Acoustic Guitar
NT3000 - Vocals
Sans Amp D.I - Bass
NT5 - Banjo, Fiddle

What I liked about this recording was that we recorded it in the afternoon, went for Dinner, then returned to mix in the evening. So the turn over was very quick. I used a high pass filter on most instruments to remove room hum and rumble from other instruments. It was a pleasure recording this family because their family band goes back to the 1850's. Problems I faced during recoding was the amount of bleed from the other instruments in the vocal microphone. This happened because the band wanted to be close to each other, as they would be in there natural playing environment. I could have prevented this by using a more directional microphone like a hyper cardioid 416, Instead of a large diaphragm cardioid condenser.

COLD SNAP RECORDING

This was a difficult recording as I had a very short deadline, which was given to me by the record label. This recording is set to be release on a 7" on Dead and Gone Records, with a release date in early June.


http://ctwrecords.bigcartel.com/product/cold-snap-bad-moon-rising-7-pre-order

• Edited drum tracks so were constant in tempo as I refused to record to a click to help song flow and drummer comfort.
• went on to enhance bass drum using an edited version of the original. Also used a medium plate reverb on drums to get that trade mark New York drum sound.
  
• Bass was recorded using a sans amp pedal to give that signature No Warning/Terror presence.
• I used a Marshall JCM 2000 and 900 to get an authentic Hardcore tone.
• Vocals were recorded over 2 sessions as vocalist lost his voice mid way through the first session, Therefor having to make voice sound similar on the next session as punk/hardcore vocals can change over time.
  

SKYLARK - ALBUM RECORDING

This record eventually took four days to finish, which is not bad for an album as we used the fourth day to add organ and percussion. I think this was because they were extremely focused on what was need and what wasn't, which is unlike a typical rock band with egos and differing tastes. Charlie the bassist, wanted a big and more distorted sound much like converge or daughters, which strays away from your common bass tone. We tried some of my different techniques and foot pedals to achieve this.

Peadal selection used on different tracks and sections. From left to right. Boss Bass overdrive, Boss BluesDrive, Rat. and using a AKG d112 to mic up the bass speaker for a true representation of sound.

Organ Recording on intro of record.

Using organs and vintage amps and equipment always brings a record to life and was fortunate to do this here. was very excited to use a 1962 JMP1 Marshall guitar head(above) on this recording and found it easy to record and work with when mixing. As the recording went so smoothly, I'm in the process of mixing and have chosen to leave most of the instruments dry to achieve absolute roarness. This reflects the bands aim on this record.

BREAKING POINT SPLIT RECORD

Due to be released on a split 7" with WireTap from Wales, these two tracks were recorded in a few days but was only scheduled for one day. The problems I had when recoding were:

• Getting the drummer to play tight. So having to edit multiple takes into a passable single take.
• The guitarist had a some tuning problems with his guitar, and found it hard to play tight to drums tracks so spent extra time on guitars than usual.
• Recording Vocals for these tracks became difficult as he has problems with his breathing techniques. this means we have to record line by line and sometimes breaking up sentences into two to make it sound powerful all the way through. This process became a time consuming task and my patients was tested.

Louis struggling with Vocals