Yorkshire Social coming soon, 2015 Emmy nominations, Resolution Creative Awards nominations, Walter Murch Fellow award, Studio Sound archive, future of music streaming, Soundscapes exhibition, new AMPS members, Giantsound new AMPS sustaining member, Sennheiser pro mic for your iPhone, news…

 

Anything you want to get off your chest? Please contact Tony Andrews at - newsletter@amps.net

 

Header image courtesy of John Rodda.

Beerd, 157-159 St Michaels Hill, Cotham, Bristol BS2 8DB, 7.00pm on the last Wednesday of each month is the place to meet up with other AMPS members and like-minded people! Apparently, great craft beers and amazing pizzas are available!

 

An enterprising AMPS member has been in touch with regard to arranging a regular meet-up in the Leeds/Bradford/Sheffield area. Dates and venue coming soon.

 

Make sure that you attend the AMPS Social at the De Lane Lea bar in Dean Street on the first Tuesday of every month - be social with your AMPS members! The first Tuesday in every month - 6.30pm.

Want a regular Social near you? It's easy to arrange one - contact us to find out how. Email admin@amps.net

Have you made yourself familiar with the freshly designed AMPS website?

Log-in and discover all things AMPS!

Many congratulations to our AMPS members who have been Emmy Nominated for 

 

David Lascelles as Production Mixer for Downton Abbey and -
Ronan Hill & Richard Dyer as Production Mixers for Game of Thrones.

 

Best of luck chaps!

 

And congratulations also go to Simon Bishop and Andre Jacquemin for their respective nominations in Location Sound Engineer and Film/Post Sound Engineer categories in the Resolution magazine Creative Awards 2015.

 

Again, best of luck chaps!

On Tuesday the 4th August a group of AMPS Fellows met for one of their
occasional lunches at the Cote Restaurant in Wardour Street. The Fellows
had invited Walter Murch to join them to be their special guest as they had
a surprise in store. Walter is working in London on a feature length
documentary for Working Title and expects to be here until Christmas.

Once everyone had arrived and before the meal Graham Hartstone, on behalf
of AMPS, presented Walter with his Honorary Fellow certificate. Graham
mentioned that the Association has awarded Fellowships to members for their
contribution to AMPS and the industry and to several other people such as
Ray Dolby and Stefan Kudelski.

The other Fellows present congratulated Walter and we all sat down to a
very pleasant lunch and discussed many sound and film issues both past and
present.

The list of Fellows who were able to attend were - Andrew Bolton, Colin Broad, Graham Hartstone, Pat Heigham, Peter Hodges, Peter Musgrave, Ivan Sharrock, Brian Simmons, & Lionel Strutt.

 

These are insanely complex times for musicians. With virtually no consultation, musicians and independent labels are being led down the path of the streaming music construct controlled largely by technology companies. Streaming royalties for these services remain mired in mystery. Nobody is privy to how royalties are calculated or assigned to different players in the streaming ecosystem.

 

Yet here we are, with the majority of musicians and independent labels playing ball with the Apples, Googles and Spotifys of the world, as if their industry vision is the only way forward. It isn’t.

 

"In what other industry would suppliers offer their goods to distributors without being told precisely how much they’ll receive for their inventory?"

 

 

The National Gallery is currently holding an exhibition that may interest some AMPS members.

 

Soundscapes has commissioned musicians and sound artists to select a painting from the collection and compose a new piece of music or sound art in response. Immersive and site-specific, the experience encourages visitors to ‘hear’ the paintings and ‘see’ the sound.

 

The exhibition is being held in the Sainsbury Wing and is accessible until 6 September 2015.

Click on the above image to see The National Gallery's Soundscapes exhibition teaser on their YouTube channel.

 

I feel honored to be accepted into the association and hope to both meet and work with many of you in the future.

Aaton was bought by Transvideo’s Jacques Delacour two years ago and a decision was made to concentrate on the new recorder. Cantar X3 is completely new and records up to 24 tracks. There is a new on board linear mixer and inputs now include 8 of their legendary mic pres, AES3, dedicated AES42 mode B as well as Dante. There are 8 balanced line, AES and Dante outs. The basic ergonomics, tried and tested over 12 years are similar but there is a significant addition: a big high resolution screen, gorilla glass protected and engineered by Aaton’s sister company, Transvideo.

The screen is a game changer: it is big enough to display PPMs for 24 tracks as well as record and metadata information, and is viewable even in bright sunlight. At IBC next month, Aaton will be showing their Cantarem 2 linear fader panel which has 12 full throw silky smooth faders and will be available later this year making the X3 a complete production recorder.

 

The iPhone's Lightning port is much more than a charging and headphone socket. You can use it to get high quality digital audio in to your phone. Sennheiser has taken advantage of this to make a very high quality microphone with an A/D converter - ideal for making voice-overs and pieces to camera out in the field.

Is there any limit to what you can do with an iPhone? Sometimes it seems not. I mean, it's a music player, a video player, a sat nav, a general purpose computer and - well quite a lot more besides. Oh, and it's a telephone, too! It's also a very good still and video camera? How good? Well, quite a lot better than a stand alone camcorder that would have cost a few thousand dollars just a few years ago. How they do that with such a small lens and sensor is still slightly beyond me but it's a fact.

 

The video camera is so good that it's now a reality that you could use it for broadcast journalism, as long as you understand that dedicated video cameras will probably always be somewhat better.

But what if it's the only camera you have on you, which as a "normal" person, going about a "normal" life, will usually be the case? What if you turn up at a news-making event and your iPhone is the only thing between you and making a complete piece for broadcast.

Well, you could just point it at the action and record the video. The onboard mic would pick up some ambient audio but it's not going to sound spectacular. After all, this is a telephone.

And if you plug an external mic into the headphone/mic jack, how well is that going to work? Well, probably quite well, but it will definitely be a few notches down from broadcast quality: good as the iPhone is, it's not going to have professional quality mic pre-amps.

 

We're keen to hear from you with ideas for seminars and training sessions which would contribute towards Continuing Professional Development.

 

We're very aware that keeping up with techniques and updates can be a full time job in itself, so if there's any way that AMPS can contribute towards maintaining and developing your industry knowledge and skills, please get in touch.

 

Please send your thoughts to admin@amps.net.

 

Also, have a look at Creative Skillset's website which contains career advice.

Making iPhone speakers from cups (just to check that you're paying attention at the back!)

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London

WC1N 3AX

Tel: +44 (0)1753 669111

 

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AMPS, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX

www.amps.net / +44 (0)1753 669111