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aberdeen producers?


summerkid

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It doesnt cost the earth!!

It would cost about 300 a day all in for a Top studio and me. but when I am working for record co's that can go up to 900+ a day. It is best to spend time in pre-production first before getting to the studio so everyone knows what to do etc.. As said I do produce and engineer. If Im producing I like to engineer because I can get the sound I want without trying to explain it to someone else. When engineering it is my job to create what the producer wants quickly without fuss.

Mark.

Is the 300 deal in association with "The Byre" near Inverness? I remember you mentioning it. That is a fantastic studio. The manager is as mad as a hatter but really showers the place with top knotch kit. Didn't he buy Soundscape at your request?

www.the-byre.com

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Hi Mark how you doin....we met a couple of years ago at that Library studio' date=' Mark Nicol had you doing some stuff and I wanted you to work with Small Enclosed Area but of course it all fell through....ho hum!!

What studios do you use in Scotland?

G...[/quote']

Hi Graeme

As rootbeer said, The Byre is going to be my Scotland studio :) they have a good spec desk and mic's etc, and they want me to be the house prod/engineer. Ask Tom about it he has been there. But I can work in any studio really.

Mark.

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They could be the best producers in the world but...Skerries are more or less 100% scottish music and spook are mickey mouse and cant even cope with a drum kit!!!

And I assume you have worked with every producer in the N/E before declaring Sinton the best?

Sinton is currently re-mixing the corries back catalogue for DVD, was trained by Alan Spence who was trained at abbey road and engineered Abba. Sinton has won a golden rose for composing Faire Ah Bhata and there's not enough space to list the acts he has worked with but they include edi reader, john denver, the BBC, pilot, ect, ect. The spook studio is small and drum kits make it cramped, but their clients have included colin campbell, the SNP, Breeve, Little big men , philomena begley and many local acts too many to mention. They cope perfectly well with drum kits, albiet using a mobile system and in fact recorded the swing band I play in with 10 members (and drums) with a professionalism that was remarkable. Both these guys are properly trained and members of professional bodies and work mainly in the pro game where they are respected and have many contacts. I'm sure they would be amused to hear describe them as mickey mouse.

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i would say nail from the mill is one of the best in aberdeen. But only if you know what you are doing before you get there. There is no point going to the mill with half assed ideas or songs cause you'll just be wasting your time stick to toms if thats your case. Mark From Exile is also good and we plan to record with him early next year. Tom's is just what you pay for. its not very expensive so dont exepct amazing quality but still very good if you want a cheap demo or something done. Have worked one night with mark thomas at the moorings and he was a very nice guy but i dont think i worked enough with him to pass comment on how good he is. By what ive been told tho he is quite good. But yeah for me its nail at the mill, he is amazing at his job you only have to listen to some of the recordings that have come out of their over the last 5 years or so to be able to tell that.

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  • 6 months later...

Quote: "The manager is as mad as a hatter but really showers the place with top knotch kit."

____________________________________________________________________________

You have to love that description!

The truth is that we use completely standard equipment. If you check out the kit-list of any of the usual studios where artists (that people have heard of) record, the list of equipment is almost exactly the same.

There are just three standard desks (SSL, AMS-Neve, Amek) two pianos (Steinway, Boesendorfer) one organ (Hammond B3/A100) and only one reverb (Lexicon 960L) a handful of mics (Neumann, AKG, Shure, Audix, Brauner) a handful of DAWs (Radar, Soundscape, ProTools, Nuendo, ProLogic) two reel-to-reels (Studer, Otari) very few monitors (Genelec, M&K, KRK, Dynauduio and the inevitable NS10s) and a few makers of outboard (Eventide, SPL, Manley, Aphex, TC and others).

It is by using this standard kit that one gets the sound of a commercial record. You also need a good engineer that knows his way around this kit in his sleep.

____________________________________________________________________________

All this leads to the question: How does one choose a studio?

Well, certainly, listen to recordings made there and (possibly more important) listen to recordings made by the person who is going to record you.

A good engineer is the most important piece of kit in the studio!

But despite all the rubbish spoken about making a hit single in your own bedroom or in some small demo room somewhere, a good engineer needs good equipment just as a good carpenter needs a sharp chisel.

The problem for the customer is that those people in the industry that make the decisions (A&R, management, tour promoters, etc.) are no longer musically literate. In other words, they cannot hear good music for what it is. They are incapable of hearing past the mix and listening to the tunes. They expect to hear a 'record' (i.e. a complete and polished product) every time. In the 'good-old-days' producers and A&R would just liten out for a tune and the performance.

That means that if you are trying to pitch your music with a tour manager or a record company, you have to make a sound that sounds as goood as music that is produced for thousands and thousands of Pounds.

More importantly, you are expected to produce a sound that can only be achieved using the kind of kit I have listed above and by someone with a formal education in audio engineering and years of experience.

If all you require is a rough demo to pitch your music with pubs and small rooms holding up to a couple of hundred people, then a budget demo room is the right answer. But if you try to pitch a budget recording with one of the big boys, it will end up in 'file 13' after just 10 seconds.

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are there many good producers in aberdeen? im not too keen on captain toms and heard that mark at exile was pretty good? thankyou summer x.

I can't believe the thread got this far without anybody asking what style of music you want a producer for...

No point in getting in Mutt Lang to produce Kylie.. or Steve Albini to produce Bob Marley..

Most the names on the thread are Engineers, not producers, perhaps with the exception of NM but I'm not a big fan of his production style..

We offer our services as producers, if we like your music..

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I can't believe the thread got this far without anybody asking what style of music you want a producer for...

No point in getting in Mutt Lang to produce Kylie.. or Steve Albini to produce Bob Marley..

Most the names on the thread are Engineers' date=' not producers, perhaps with the exception of NM but I'm not a big fan of his production style..

We offer our services as producers, if we like your music..[/quote']

In Niall's defence (I have to defend him or he sulks) he is having to produce every form of music known to man...in any single day he could be working with a solo fiddle player an opera singer and some screamin ass punks like MMW... :D you say you dont like his production style, I dont know what you base that judgement on but thats fine, my comment would be, at least he has an identifiable style which is more than can be said for most of his local competition.

G...

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No point in getting in Mutt Lang to produce Kylie.. or Steve Albini to produce Bob Marley..

Not strictly speaking true as Mutt has produced many different styles very successfully...

http://www.bigbro.ca/produced.html

as well as writing for, and producing Britney who's not mentioned here.

My favourite local producer is a guy called Blair Cunningham who did all the BK demoes with us and produced a lot of stuff with Jo, and amazingly talented guy. MTA did some great stuff with Jo's live stuff and we've had some great engineering from Grant Milne.

*edit* Heeheehee I'm losing scene points for saying who I prefer, I can only comment on the people that I've actually worked with...

Cheers

Stuart

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  • 2 weeks later...
Quote: "The manager is as mad as a hatter but really showers the place with top knotch kit."

____________________________________________________________________________

You have to love that description!

The truth is that we use completely standard equipment. If you check out the kit-list of any of the usual studios where artists (that people have heard of) record' date=' the list of equipment is almost exactly the same.

There are just three standard desks (SSL, AMS-Neve, Amek) two pianos (Steinway, Boesendorfer) one organ (Hammond B3/A100) and only one reverb (Lexicon 960L) a handful of mics (Neumann, AKG, Shure, Audix, Brauner) a handful of DAWs (Radar, Soundscape, ProTools, Nuendo, ProLogic) two reel-to-reels (Studer, Otari) very few monitors (Genelec, M&K, KRK, Dynauduio and the inevitable NS10s) and a few makers of outboard (Eventide, SPL, Manley, Aphex, TC and others).

It is by using this standard kit that one gets the sound of a commercial record. You also need a good engineer that knows his way around this kit in his sleep.

____________________________________________________________________________

All this leads to the question: How does one choose a studio?

Well, certainly, listen to recordings made there and (possibly more important) listen to recordings made by the person who is going to record you.

A good engineer is the most important piece of kit in the studio!

But despite all the rubbish spoken about making a hit single in your own bedroom or in some small demo room somewhere, a good engineer needs good equipment just as a good carpenter needs a sharp chisel.

The problem for the customer is that those people in the industry that make the decisions (A&R, management, tour promoters, etc.) are no longer musically literate. In other words, they cannot hear good music for what it is. They are incapable of hearing past the mix and listening to the tunes. They expect to hear a 'record' (i.e. a complete and polished product) every time. In the 'good-old-days' producers and A&R would just liten out for a tune and the performance.

That means that if you are trying to pitch your music with a tour manager or a record company, you have to make a sound that sounds as goood as music that is produced for thousands and thousands of Pounds.

More importantly, you are expected to produce a sound that can only be achieved using the kind of kit I have listed above and by someone with a formal education in audio engineering and years of experience.

If all you require is a rough demo to pitch your music with pubs and small rooms holding up to a couple of hundred people, then a budget demo room is the right answer. But if you try to pitch a budget recording with one of the big boys, it will end up in 'file 13' after just 10 seconds.[/quote']

Sense. All of it.

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There seems to be some confusion here about who does what!

The producer of a record has much the same function as the producer of the film - ie, he or she brings all the different threads together. This includes money, session musians, booking studios, looking after the main artists, talking to the lable and making sure that everybody gets paid.

He is NOT the studio owner, the band's manager, the musical director or the sound engineer. All these people have very different functions.

Some tasks may overlap of course, but the main function of a producer is to have access to the money that gets the whole thing done. Hardly trhe task of the studio owner.

www.the-byre.com

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A 'producer' is somebody employed by your record company to ensure that a record is produced to their standards' date=' be these artistic or commercial. If you haven't got a record contract, what you need is an engineer (this is what you call sound guys when they live in studios). Producers tell people what to do, engineers do what you ask them. Bad engineers act like producers and tell you what to do, mainly because they don't have the skills to do as they're told.[/quote']

Couldn't have put it better myself :D

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A 'producer' is somebody employed by your record company to ensure that a record is produced to their standards' date=' be these artistic or commercial. If you haven't got a record contract, what you need is an engineer (this is what you call sound guys when they live in studios). Producers tell people what to do, engineers do what you ask them. Bad engineers act like producers and tell you what to do, mainly because they don't have the skills to do as they're told.[/quote']

OK so basically you buy a dog and then bark yourself. Doh!

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  • 1 month later...

Try Nathan Edwardson at OCEANROCKSTUDIOS ABOYNE

Hi! This is Nathan Edwardson. I have been working as a musician, record producer and computer technician out of my studio, www.oceanrockstudios.co.uk. As an example, some of the bands who come here are writing original metal after mastering tunes by Avenged Sevenfold and Trivium. Check out the site !!

Thanks

Nathan

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  • 2 weeks later...
Is the 300 deal in association with "The Byre" near Inverness? I remember you mentioning it. That is a fantastic studio. The manager is as mad as a hatter........

After listening to "Audio Talk" I must agree with the last line!! ;) Sounds like the 'Billy Connoly' of the recording industry :D

Good laugh.....and actually worth a bit of a listen!

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are there many good producers in aberdeen? im not too keen on captain toms and heard that mark at exile was pretty good? thankyou summer x.

we just recorded at floortom out in Clola by peterhead. Steve curtis is a brilliant producer who had a lot of input into our stuff and was excellent for string arrangements etc as well as having an excellent bank of effects and samples. also he is a drummer himself and gets a tremendous drum sound which is often the problem when you record at local studios. check out his website - www.floortom.com

should mention that if it is metal / heavier music probably not the place for you but if you are recording more commercial music it is definitely quality

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