G’day

This week I worked on an outside project which will constitute my freelance component for the course. The client is the National Institute of Integrative Medicine who specialise in providing complimentary and alternative treatments to people with chronic health conditions. They have a large practise in Hawthorn that hosts a number of GP and specialist clinics, as well as a lecture theatre for information sessions. I’ve had a working relationship with them for a little while through a friend who works in management. The project is a CD compilation of guided meditations featuring a number of established practitioners in Melbourne. I have produced two of these in the past with NIIM and they have been well-received both as an introduction to the various styles of the practitioners, as well as a useful resource for patients. This latest edition will be slightly different as it will be designed to help children overcome anxiety. The practices are scripted to be accessible to children, and the youngest voice on the CD is a 12 year-old. I think this will be an interesting challenge from a production angle because the feel has to be right to maintain the interest of the audience while also getting the message across.

We have completed 2 of 4 scheduled recording sessions at Sing Sing studios in Cremorne. The M-room studio is great for our needs, with Protools HD and some 1073 preamps. I used a u87 and an NTG3 shotgun mic which I think gives a nice combination of focus and space. Each voice needs the right EQ contouring which I have done loosely as we go, but that will be more critical in the mixing stage. For dynamics I have been referencing spoken-word recordings on iTunes which seem to peak around -14 LKFS. In the previous projects I used the waves RVox compressor quite a lot, but I think I’ll try something more subtle this time around.

I’ve been working with Rob Bujnowski who is the Corprorate Programs Manager at NIIM and the producer on this project. This week we were bumped up to the SSL studio which was nice, so Rob and I took the photo op.

Thanks for reading!