babalini

The Tote Hotel, Collingwood. Photo: Jeremy Tang. 

Before beginning this project, I assumed I had a decent depth of understanding when it came to live music in Melbourne – I attend live gigs, I am surrounded by musicians, artists and DJs, I listen to community radio stations and keep up to date with Melbourne music news – but there is so much more that concerns the everyday going-ons of venues than I originally allowed myself to consider. I have gained such a greater understanding of the inner workings of Melbourne’s venues from hearing from a range of people behind their scenes.

        Bar Open, Fitzroy. Photo: Jeremy Tang.

FAD Gallery Bar, Melbourne CBD. Photo: Jeremy Tang.              

           The Old Bar, Fitzroy. Photo: Jeremy Tang.

​The venues, their owners, their bookers, their managers, all want to help bands and creatives express their work, to give outlets to artists, and provide places for patrons, of all ages, of any social-economic status, to appreciate art, feel at home, be a part of something grander than themselves, and the mediocrity within our everyday lives. With the measures and ambitions of organisations like Music Victoria, and the considerations and initiatives of the Melbourne City Council, venues are given the ability to do all this.

It is widely acknowledged, across all spheres, that our live music scene in Melbourne has value, great potential and importance. Music for enjoyment, creative expression, mental health, relief, community and human-interrelation. From thereon, it is a matter of working as a unit, to maintain, better and improve what we already have and where we are at.
Everything is stronger as a network, as an ecology of cooperative parts... It's a family really.

Music Victoria offices, South Melbourne. Photo: Jeremy Tang.        

        City of Melbourne Council House, Melbourne CBD. Photo: Jeremy Tang.

​This has been a brilliant assignment to have been a part of, in its outward-facing relevance, as an opportunity to talk to people in the crux of the industry, an industry I care greatly for, and that I am studying with the intent of being a part of!

​I feel very grateful and indebted to have had such insight shared by those that have given us their time:

Joel from the Old Bar
Oriana from FAD Bar and Gallery
Dannie from Bar Open
Rich from The Tote
Matt from the band Chook Race
Patrick from Music Victoria
Hannah from Melbourne City Council.

It has been an absolute pleasure, and an ear-opening experience, thanks to each of them. I hope it will be the same for our podcast listeners!

This is probably the exact level of dedication my group and I had in the studio.
​YouTube URL: ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tr6dukTeTI

Working on the Hot Rod clip was absolutely hilarious. It helped that I had a group as fun and uninhibited as a film the likes of this one necessitated. Like the need to replicate vomit sounds for example (we ended using water being convulsed onto gravel). The most enjoyable part, for me, was recording the dialogue. It was greatly entertaining having voices of people you know matched to entirely different characters. I realised how important the initial performance is here – it is very fiddly to edit words to fit a visual mouth pronouncing them – it's so much easier if they work well to begin with.

​I’d say the foley was the most challenging aspect – it calls for unreserved creativity. It is quite fantastic though that even when a sound in itself may not exactly match that of the desired (natural) sound, once you put it to the image the connection is made by our minds and the genuineness is plausible.
Here is a short clip I enjoy (not ONLY for the scene at 6 seconds) that, though a little vintage, illustrates well what foley artists do:

The Foley Artists: Los Angeles Times. YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNvKhe2npMM

Actually I have changed my mind - THE most difficult aspect of this project was session maintenance. We ended up with an absolute beast of a Pro Tools session - there is ridiculous amount of tracks - working through them has been a brain strain to say the least.
I have duly noted that in any future post-production sessions I work on, I will do anything in my power to stay right on top of any possible method of organisation, so when the time comes to work through them all my future self can thank my past self for being orderly and sensible.

Working on the D-Command was great too – it’s basically a control surface for ProTools. It was strange at first reminding oneself to not attack the mouse straight away for everything we wanted to do in-the-box, but use the board in front of you. The longer the project went on the more I felt comfortable using all the controls, but it still never became extremely natural. I do think though that once one is used to it it would make in-the-box work much faster and easier (even just having actual faders and knobs to physically adjust).

Our product isn't entirely finished, so I won't share at this time, but soon I will be able to link to the clip we created the sound for.
 
Something I have found, with all previous post-production assignments, is how incomparably invaluable the atmos sounds are - a scene really doesn’t feel real, whole or complete without that underlying ‘sound of scene’. There’s always this strange hollowness and manufactured-vibe until you put in the reality-based background sounds, and apply a suitable, believable reverb.
It’s weird, because some of these sounds you certainly wouldn’t explicitly notice in real-life, but all spaces have their own sound - spaces affect our perception of the sound waves within them - even a classroom, a corridor, a garden, a quiet street… There is an underlying aural familiarity to each of them.  

​This is a brilliant educational video (with some great facial expressions) that covers in interesting depth a range of aspects of sound design, including atmosphere and ambience beginning at 1:29 (ELEPHANTS):

Holey Foley: Sound Design at Earth Touch. YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li6TSwybqjU

I've been thinking recently how weird it is trying to make art a profession.
Maybe 'weird' isn't the best word, but confusing and difficult...
It's something we do because we love it, it's a way of life really, so it's an odd feeling to try to turn it into a profession - some sort of a money-maker, a full-time 'job'. 

I worry that doing so, with the build-up of stress associated with work and responsibility, would potentially dissipate the natural fulfilment I feel in making, purely making - for me.

​I have experienced this before with my visual art - I have often stopped painting for periods of time because it became a task - in doing what people wanted and expected. It didn't feel natural, I felt frustration in trying to deliver a particular look, set a suitable price, create work that reflected what someone paid... And it takes time to re-centre and get back into really painting...

For this reason I had my hesitations in beginning a music course. I thought that studying music in depth; having a huge music-based workload, with assessments and deadlines, would somehow take the love away, the natural enjoyment.

[It's the same reason I was sceptical about doing a course in fine arts (not the only reason however) - I feel that art is too big-a-passion of mine to combine with study; too fundamental, too personal to be tutored in. Obviously there would be much to gain from it (I'm not putting down art courses) - for many it broadens their craft, refines skills, develops ideas and what not - but I don't make art to be 'good', or respected, I do it because it makes me feel good... I enjoy it... and I was afraid studying would taint that]. 

Contrary to what I thought may happen however, I've found that studying audio has given me a deeper appreciation of music - in analysing it, breaking it apart, re-arranging it, putting it back together... Delving right within the art form has allowed me to understand it better, better than I have ever.

So maybe I've been completely wrong in my hesitations. Or visual art and music are essentially different - visual art is a very solitary activity (in the way I practise it), whereas I've found music to be a more social, external outlet of creativity. The more I progress through my course, the more I feel at ease in aiming to make a career out of music.

The idea of potentially balancing art-making, a form of creativity, with a financially stable job, is extremely appealing.

I know there would be times I'd need to work like a mere craftsperson - possibly working with music I don't particularly enjoy, having deadlines, working all sorts of ridiculous hours... But at the bottom of it all, I'll be working with an art form - one that I love, that gives me great satisfaction, that sparks my mind and my spirit.

Music is a lively, interpersonal, poetic avenue, and it genuinely ignites in me huge delight at the prospect of possibly being a part of it someday, with people who, like me, care about music and revel in it as an art form. It's exciting to consider such a future profession! I can see myself being within the industry without compromising my passion, but instead, delighting it.

Does a song really need lyrics to be a good song? No I don't think so, not at all!

Whilst words in a song can add to the emotion, imagery and meaning of a track, it is definitely not necessary that words are present for a song to have quality. I believe that the music bears more weight in whether a song translates than the lyrics do - that the sound is more important than the lyrical content.

Mainly because, well, music is a form of language - it does not need a verbal one alongside it to be effective! The two features, word and sound, whilst interconnected and interwoven, address different means of expression and communication. Lyrics do talk, but music is a language in and of itself.

All I have to consider is the multitude of songs I enjoy, and that many others enjoy, that have no words in them at all.

In considering this topic I recalled a concert I went to a few years back by a wonderful pianist - Ludovico Einaudi. The emotion projected throughout the room, without a single lyric uttered, was unreal. I'll never underestimate the power of sound - to present heart, to give meaning, to affect one's spirit, with music alone.

Classical music has also proven itself to be ridiculously successful - some of the most well-known, sampled and referred to music of all time is classical music. There is an innumerable amount of classical compositions that have surpassed the classical era to still be admired and revered today, even with modern musical counterparts.

The popularity even still of Wagner’s The Ride of The Valkyries, Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, Rossini's William Tell Overture, Beethoven's Fur Elise (to name only a few) ​is a great indicator of the power and influence of classical music to transcend generations.

Not to mention the countless film soundtracks that have made use of classical music - to convey the plot and where it's heading, to evoke particular emotions, to enhance the feeling of a scene or even to provide a quirky twist, with a jarring of styles and contexts.

This continued use of classical music beyond its era confirms its ability to stand the test of time; connecting to people of different time-periods, generations and contexts, through music alone.

With all of this talk though, I am not saying that lyrics aren't important. They add extra depth to music, and give an element of great relatability and connectivity between artist and audience. There are songs that just would not be what they are without their lyrics, and that I wouldn't feel so attached to were their words not so meaningful to me.

This again goes back to my ‘unity’ argument - the need for the parts to be on the same page - that the music and lyrics are working to the same end. If Adele sang about a love for shoes rather than humans the heartfelt music would certainly bear less emotion ("nevermind I'll find a new pair of shoes")... Surely Yesterday would not have been as successful if the lyrics stayed as "scrambled eggs"... There's just not the same profoundness there.

The two factors (music and lyrics) are simply different - they work within (and without) each other as features of a whole work of art, so both are extremely important. My point though, is that I just don't think a song's efficacy is in its written words, but in the way the words are conveyed - the melody of their projection, the soul of the music alongside them, and the meaning in this interconnectivity... Often it is the lyrics that touch us, but it’s their relationship with sound that really makes them sing.

As a nice way to sum all of this up (and to hopefully add credit to my argument), here is a video I did not make -