Artist: DJ Lees M.O.B.
Title: Midnight Flow
Composer: Nick Lees
Producer: David Ellingham
Audio Engineer: David Ellingham
Mastering: David Ellingham
You can download the free Mp3 from DJ Lees M.O.B. Sound Cloud: 
http://soundcloud.com/djnicklees 

An original track by Lees M.O.B., engineered and mastered by David Ellingham.

This track started Life as a nice sounding song in Ableton, but something about it still gave an unfinished feeling, so it was promptly exported as wave files into Pro Tools for some extra effects and a Balance Mix. Reason 5 was also used to create some filler sounds inside Tools. To finish the track off, some quick in the box mastering was employed for that polished sheen. 

Midnight Flow - DJ Lees M.O.B. - Original (Engineered by David Ellingham)

The Bounty Hunt “Journey” and Reaching out to Space “Futurism” 
By David Ellingham, 201042
The ‘noises’ that I recorded to create my songs with were:
•	The sound of an Xbox 360 internal fan starting up, running, switching on the external fan, that running and then power down  and fans slowing down
•	The various sounds of opening, turning, flicking pages and closing the hardcover “Mixing with Your Mind” book.
•	The ting, jingle and crunch of my car keys
•	The game audio of a bounty hunt mission in the Xbox 360 game Red Dead Redemption
The Xbox fan noise relates to the theme journey, in that the loud fan noise of the Xbox is a distinct sound that only an Xbox fan sounds like, which I associate with using the Xbox as an escape from reality taking me on a fantasy or hyper-real  journey.
The book “Mixing with your Mind” by Michael Stavrou is a kind of journey of learning in itself, in that it takes you on a logical progression of audio, microphone, and mixing techniques and tips aiding the student in the journey to became a quality engineer.
The car keys are relatively self explanatory i.e. your use them to start your car to travel from A to B, thus undertaking a journey. 
All sounds were recorded using a Rode NT1-A going directly into my M-box into Pro Tools.  
The concept I had in mind was from more of a somewhat Dada frame of mind in that I envisioned a well thought out structured piece of music from pre constructed midi files but produced by abstract synthesised noises heavily re-worked along with a cacophony of effects and the ‘Red Dead Journey’ played under the music reversed with the sound of the horses hooves galloping in time with the music as a percussive element. I wasn’t afraid to venture out of the constraints and conventions of any genre, taking elements from a variety of movements, predominantly influenced by Metal music.
I used the fan noises for all my melodies if you can call them that, having a main fan act out the main melody, a harmony fan to do just that, but mostly discordant, one for underlying chords and effects with another used for a rough bass line. These tracks had a myriad of delays, reverbs and modulation type effects thrown on them throughout the piece mostly to further enhance the noise aspect I was aiming for. I also tried to make them sound somewhat like guitars by putting them through various bit-crushing plugins and through guitar amp modelling software, such as guitar rig.
The percussion sounds were created through using samples of the book as the kick snare and toms, with my car keys as the cymbals. I also discovered if a knocked the mic stand with my knee I could achieve a short low frequency swell perfect to use like a subkick track in a kick drum sound.   The majority of processing here was done through parametric equalisation, a bit of compression and combining synchronised samples of the recorded tracks to create the various drum tones.  Reverbs and delays were also used on the percussion to again add to the sense of noise.
After playing this track to the class the main feedback I received was how your piece is a journey and they couldn’t really get a sense of what was going on under the cacophony even when listening hard, the extremity in the effects to make it a little more intelligible, without compromising the noise aspect Inspired by dada. 
I didn’t take the theme journey so much in the literal sense of how the piece sounds but more from the perspective of the process undertaken.  Whilst I did have the Red Dead game sound in there for the literalist, I personally found the journey as an adventure in achieving a cacophonous explosion of noise through structured melody, linear rhythms and dissonant harmony. 
 For the Futurist Piece I used the same sound sources, but this time I wasn’t worried about any melodies as neither such, nor any real rigid rhythm. My main concern was what would a futurist piece sound like and be inspired by today. Obviously it would still be a celebration of the new technologies, then it was mechanisation and combustion engines, now I would think space exploration, and super computers might be sources of the types of sounds conjured up, and hence the sort of sound I was aiming for. I was inspired by our continual need of resources and as such I wanted to create a piece that celebrated our search for a suitable planet to mine for said resources. 
In terms of mixing I again relied heavily on modulation based effects as well as equalisation, reverb and delay. My main theme I wanted to convey through timbre was of space and the unknown, the final frontier if you will; almost dream like, but with the chunk noises and the freeform structure of the piece reminding us of the mechanical side of space exploration and the vastness of space. 
The ultimate task was to convey the ultimate conquer over nature.
By David Ellingham, 201042   
 


limozn