Monday, June 15, 2015

Box Girl project

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B53vKrLdhon7WFoxeGp2d2FZT2c/edit?usp=docslist_api 

This is a project that I did for digital audio for and collaborated with another student from the art institute of Connecticut. The video was shot and edited by him and he gave me permission to fully strip the audio, dialogue and sound effects. I scored his entire video using a midi controller and ProTools nine I also recorded all of the dialogue and sound effects myself. The characters were played by my sister and her husband and I recorded them using a Shure SM 58. The sound effects were all recorded using a Sennheiser shotgun microphone and were then cleaned up in ProTools nine using the waves platinum bundle pack. This was very fun to do because I was working with another student in the city but we kept in constant communication on how he envisioned the audio to be for his project. 

Monday, June 8, 2015

Breadboarding a Tube Mic Pre Amp



Breadboarding is not my favorite thing to do in the world. It's not even my 2nd favorite. If you tell most people that you breadboarded anything they look at you with a dumbfounded look on their face that yells, "Why?!"
This tedious and complex process is extremely time consuming and very technical. You are working with very small electronic components and one wrong placement could potentially and literally make your project go up in smoke. However, this process is extremely beneficial. It allows you to see, feel, and understand your components from an entirely new perspective. Instead of just following directions and soldering right away, you are able to closely examine every piece and see where your signal is going as well as where it is coming from. This is extremely beneficial because you are more in tune with your components and you can figure out what is wrong whenever the need for troubleshooting comes across. Have you ever had any electronic device stop working, and you just couldn't wrap your head around what the problem was? Well, if you breadboard that device, I promise you can find out what the issue it. At the very least narrow the problem down. This specific pre amp took me about 12 hours to complete, from the first resistor to the very last capacitor. It does take some time because you also want to test your components every step of the way and make sure your signal is going where it needs to. I am very excited to solder this pre amp now and use it to record dialogue and vocals.

Friday, May 29, 2015

Radio show Broadcast

Hot 107.1 by José Fernández-Maldonado

https://soundcloud.com/jos-francisco-fern-ndez-maldonado/hot-1071

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO OUR RADIO SHOW 

One of the most difficult yet fun projects I've ever done has two have been creating my own radio show. I essentially had to create five radio shows for this class however the one I chose to describe was by far one of my favorites. We  had to come up with a 15 minute radio broadcast that consisted of advertisements interviews music as well as the DJ Ing of the radio show and intro and outro of everything. Everything was done ourselves from recording the commercials to writing the scripts. It was a lengthy process because it is extremely difficult to get a team of five individuals come together but overall I feel our final product came out amazing. To me one of the most exciting parts of our show was getting someone to sound like Steven Tyler and interviewing him. The theme of the show was set in 1992 I believe so we also had to do our research as to what was going on back of them and incorporate that into the show. 

Vocal Recording

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO OUR SONG

RussBac - I Got Rhythm by José Fernández-Maldonado

https://soundcloud.com/jos-francisco-fern-ndez-maldonado/russbac-i-got-rhythm

This was one of the most fun experiences I've ever had recording vocals. I met Russell through my wife and immediately we connected on a musical level. Once he found out that I was in the audio industry and also recorded at home he immediately got together with me and asked if I could record some of his personal projects that he has been wanting to do for some time. Of course I said yes and the result was amazing we started out using two different microphones and audio Technica 2020 as well as an MXL microphone 900. I recorded multiple songs and is using ProTools nine and after hours and hours of recording and mixing and editing and mastering we came up with about five solid tracks that we are very proud to share with others. Russell has sort of an old-school voice and he loves the era of Frank Sinatra and the rat pack. We have already planned on getting together couple more times and hopefully we can continue our recording relationship further and further. 

Monday, May 18, 2015

Night Of The Living Dead. Sound Design/score/foley






This project was one of the most tedious yet exciting projects I have ever done. To give you a slight insight on what the goal was for the project we had to strip all audio including dialogue sound effects and music and reconstruct the entire film from beginning to end. This project took me about five weeks to complete. I was in charge of scoring the entire film beginning to end and once that was done I also assisted heavily on Foley and sound design for the last 10 minutes of the movie. To me scoring is an extremely fragile and delicate Art you have to be able to put the view were in a certain mood and or environment that the movie or the director want. I feel I absolutely accomplished the theme and tone of the film with my scoring as well as provided clean and accurate sound effects for my designated design segment. I primarily used ProTools nine for the scoring using my novation 49 midi controller. The Soundesign was recorded with a Sennheiser shotgun microphone and eventually process and cleaned up through ProTools nine using thenwaves noise supressor plug in. 

Monday, May 11, 2015

Soldering/bread boarding headphone amplifier


This project was actually very fun even though it was extremely tedious work and very time-consuming. This was done in our electronics to course and this headphone amplifier project took about six weeks to complete. We began bread boarding the entire circuit from every jumper wire to every resister to every capacitor. Once bread boarding was complete and it was a proved by our instructor, we began to solder the circuit to the board. This specific amplifier allows three additional headphones to be connected to one output source. since this splits our audio signal it also amplifies each individual split the signal so each individual headphone will not lose amplitude. I have used this amplifier on numerous occasions such as sending a signal to an individual in another while recording vocals. Overall this project highly developed my soldering skills as well as my general understanding of circuitry and signal flow. 

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Score To Film


A couple years ago, I was assigned a small project. I had to score a 3 - 5 minute scene from a movie of my choosing, All audio had to be removed from the film and I had 1 week to do it. This was one of the best experiences I had and introduced me into the art of scoring. Although I did not have much experience, I still feel my work came across just right and matched the film very well. It was composed entirely through ProTools 9 using the MiniGrand instrument, with a FocusRite Impulse 49 mdi controller. Click Here To View It!