AES Student Blog

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? Where and what do you study? What audio field are you in? What initiated your passion for audio? When did it start?

I study Music Technology Systems at the University of York, UK; the course is essentially Electronic Engineering with a focus on the design of technology for use in the music industry. I've always loved writing music, my desire to improve the quality of my music led me to become more interested in music technology. I have quite a mathematical background which sparked my interest in the engineering side of music technology.

Are you a musician yourself? What instruments do you play and in what musical context?

Yes! I started learning the piano when I was about 8 and still continue to play it to this day. My sight reading's always been pretty bad, so I mostly just improvise - which is more fun anyway! Pretty much all of the music production that I'm involved in is stuff that I've written and more often than not, I begin the writing process on the piano.

Tell us about the production of your submission. What is the story behind it? What was it inspired by? How long did you work on it? Was it your first entry? 

'Dancing on Our Own' is a track that my friend and I wrote and recorded around a year ago. I recorded the vocals in my attic, since that was the most suitable location I had available, with a Rode NT1-A that I bought off eBay for £50. I didn't have a microphone stand or even a pop-shield (we made one out of an old pair of tights!) - so I had to make the best of a very amateur recording setup!

I didn't really have a clear idea about how it should sound at the time, so I went through several different versions before creating the final version, which is just a combination of the better parts from the previous versions. 

Accidents happen: What was your biggest mistake in a production and what did you do to redeem the situation?

I was once recording some vocals using an AKG C-414, I'd never used one before and was very pushed for time. I played it back through the studio's speakers and thought the high and low end were lacking slightly, but I wasn't too worried as it sounded okay.

When I got home and listened to it through my reference headphones, I realised I had recorded the entire song with the microphone the wrong way round! I didn't have time to get the vocalist in to re-record the song, so I just used loads of EQ to correct it. The song was actually a piece of coursework and the marker didn't pick up on it - so I guess I got away with it!

 What’s your advice for engineers who are just starting out?

My best advice is to know your tools; read the manuals, experiment with them. This will enable you to work much more quickly; it's far better to have 3 or 4 plug-ins that you know like the back of your hand and use on every track of a mix than to have 30 plugins that you ... Of course it's nice to have a good selection of plugins anyway, for when you need something a bit special/different. 

Tech talk: What are your favourite pieces of equipment (microphones, outboard, plugins), and why?

The plugin I use most is Wave Arts' Trackplug, it's a channel strip comprising of an EQ, a gate and a couple of compressors and while it's not particularly ground-breaking or anything, it covers most of my basic mixing needs. More importantly, I've used it for long enough to know exactly how it works so I usually know what I've got to do to get a good sound from a given input, which speeds up my workflow.

Although it's a bit of an obvious choice, one of my favourite synths is the Minimoog. I've only played with one a few times, but I always come away from it feeling inspired. I think that it being monophonic forces me to come up with some great ideas, that I'd never have had if I was using something polyphonic.

Can you name one or multiple of your favourite recordings or productions and tell us why you like them/what you like about them?

Okay, here are a few tracks that I've been listening to recently that I think have great production:

Owl City - I Found Love: Owl City is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, but putting that aside, I love how clean the production is on this track. The electric piano, electric guitar and drum sounds just sound perfect together.

Hunter Hayes - Tattoo: The high end is the thing that impresses me most about this track, I'm not sure what it is but everything in high end sounds tight and combines together perfectly.

What do you like about the AES? How does it help you to become a better and more successful audio engineer? 

I always come away from an AES lecture with new ideas and a greater insight about a subject, which leaves me feeling inspired. It's one thing to know how to use your tools, but it's another thing to know exactly how they work, their limitations, and the thought behind their design. It's also great to experience all of this among a community of other like-minded people.

What is your favourite frequency?

I've been thinking about this all day! I'm going to say 41.203Hz in the hope that no one else has! For anyone who's sad enough to look it up (like me) that's the frequency of E1, which is (in my opinion) the note to use if you want to create an earth-shaking sub-bass that most decent speaker systems can actually reproduce.

What do you do when you’re not in the studio or doing anything music related?

When I'm not doing music I'm either eating, watching TV, socialising or doing some sort of exercise (as I can't seem to sit still for more than an hour!).

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? 

Hopefully I'll be making some sort of living from music production, but who knows!

Could you provide us with some closing comments?

Well, I can't pass up the opportunity for some free promotion! You can listen to my entry on my website: http://www.willshaw.net/ 

Find out more about Will at http://www.willshaw.net/ 

Links to his cometition work can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGAloLulo7g

https://soundcloud.com/willshawmusic/dancing-on-our-own-feat-lizzie-white