New College Nottingham (www.ncn.ac.uk) wanted to install an innovative Music Technology suite at their Nottingham Clarendon campus. The teaching room had access to a live recording area, and head MT technician Andy Oakley wanted to see if it might be possible for a whole class of students to independently and simultaneously record live musicians on multiple workstations. With a crazy glint in his eye, he enlisted the help of Jigsaw's Rob Williams and Rob Holsman to see if it could be done. We love the opportunity to come up with innovative uses of technology and, after some research and some lateral thinking, the new facility was installed using Digidesign rack interfaces, Apple Powermacs and several drums of cable. We caught up with Andy recently to see how the suite has been working for him.
Where did the idea for this room come from?
I'd been teaching Music Technology for some years and wanted to find another way to teach groups of students the basics of recording a live session. Traditionally, we'd have a group of students crowded around a mixing desk, watching a couple of students or a teacher leading the session. This works for older students, as they like to discuss what's going on and talk about alternative methods and techniques. For beginners and younger students though, it was baffling and too easy for the quieter students to miss what was going on. Hands-on recording early in the course gives more of a feel for what effect your changes are having, so I wanted to find a way to give each student a workstation of their own, where they could experience real live recording firsthand. Rather than just mixing projects, students would have control over their own mic preamps, gain structure, eq and so on. I wanted everyone to have the same experience, from the most talented, extroverted, pushy students to the inexperienced, quiet or serious ones.
How did you set about achieving that dream?
We needed to split all of the microphone signals coming out of the live room to feed 16 Pro Tools LE systems simultaneously. It was important to be passing identical signals at microphone level to each workstation, so that students have to make decisions about gain and so on. We hooked an eight channel Octopre mic preamp into the back of each Digidesign rack with a lightpipe and fed all of the mic preamps from a custom made active mic splitter rack. All 16 workstations receive absolutely identical mic signals from the live room.
How do students react to having to make decisions in real time during a live session?
It's OK, because we spend the first few sessions showing them the basic stuff like how to record and track arm and so using the master workstation. They know what all of those techniques are before we put them in front of their own stations. They'll do some midi sequencing, mic placement and investigate the software first. When they all know how to use the software properly, we go live! They cope very well and it feels like they've made some real progress by the time they're in control of their own session. At that point, there's more pressure for them to apply those techniques quickly and accurately, which is very important for them.
So does the lab do what you expected it to do now that you've been teaching in it?
Yes, it works really well. We've had no cabling issues, partly because we spent a lot of time on the looms and used high quality components. All the machines are synchronised together so, once everyone is happy that their levels and settings are right, the teacher can start all 16 systems recording at the same time. That avoids the problem of a single student not being ready and missing a cue. It means that we can overdub tracks and do drop ins without sync problems too. We've had a few digital clocking issues with the lightpipe connections and if I was doing this again I'd make sure everything had a proper wordclock connection on it to avoid that problem (the latest Digidesign 003 Rack and 003 Rack Plus both do - Ed). The actual experience we're able to give the students though is perfect. They're getting 5 or 6 times the amount of hands-on experience now and progressing faster as a result.
Which students get access to the lab?
Generally, the lab is used by BTec National Diploma and BTec National Certificate students learning Logic and Pro Tools, but we also have BTec First Diploma and FDA Sonic Arts students coming in, even though they might use it with Ableton Live and so on rather than Logic and Pro Tools. We put the Waves bundle on all the machines too, because we want students to appreciate the difference in quality when they use high end plug ins. Lots of different groups come in here at all sorts of levels, because as well as the specialised live recording sessions, we can use the lab as a conventional music technology suite too. It's in pretty heavy use, I would say.
We're working on a new project with you now. Tell us about that?
Ah well, that's a portable solution for the performance students. I'll keep that under wraps for now and you can ask me about it when we roll it out next month. I went straight to Jigsaw for that one, because I knew that the other music suppliers would have no idea what I was trying to do. Your guys are always open to trying exciting new ways to use the technology, and I'm really excited by what we've come up with. For now, though, it's a secret.