How to be Pro!

As I type this, I'm uploading the latest batch of samples I've been cutting for this project called Hoopfighter.

This project has been in "concept" for a long, long time according to a close friend of mine who is the creator of the IP.  They've gotten quite a comic strip started online. I'm helping out with Sound Effects for the next phase they're building: a short animated series.  I've been told the plan is to start releasing episodes as early as next April.  Check them out on Facebook and join the following so you can stay in the loop on when episodes are released!

I've been doing an awful lot of documenting my own personal stuff as well as stuff I've been doing for this project just to keep track, which led me to that template I designed for managing field recording sessions with the Zoom H4N.  (you can find it here on my article "Got Zoom?")

Universal Audio has AMAZING documentation and their manual provides a session recall sheet on page 35.  I love my 4-710 D.  In fact, I've used this beast so many times I've lost count (thankfully I keep session logs), but I just started backing up my paper logs back to digital domain and storing them in PDF's along with my other session logs.  Thanks to the power of Photoshop I now have this master template for doing session recall sheet "digitization".  Click on the image below to download the .PSD file.

Here's a few tips on how to edit and navigate this photoshop file.

Layout contains the altered session recall sheet from UA's manual.

Channel Notes contains text layers for each channel of both the top and bottom recall layouts.  Simply double click on the text layer and start typing your information about that channel.  What mic was hooked up, whether the mic's pad or roll-off or other switches or pattern select was used.

Session Title contains the upper text layers,  double click on the "TITLE" layer and start typing out the title of the session.  It also houses the date text layer, and the engineer text layer.  You can change your studio title as well.

Notes area is something I added in.  there's 2 vector lines and a text layer for adding in further text information about the session.

Dials which you can see all the layers of in the image to the right, contains an easy way to create the dial drawing information.  Simply select the hard circular brush (or default brush Photoshop uses).  and make the brush size small enough to your liking.

As you can see above, I started painting in on the appropriate layer.  The easiest way to keep a clean look, is to click once and create a dot at the center of the dial with the brush tool, then hold Shift and left click at the outer edge of the dial to create a straight line from the last "click" you made.

My finished example below from one of my earlier sessions.

So there you have a free Photoshop template, and a basic walkthrough of how to use it for your own sessions.

This isn't all I've been up to.  I've made session time log templates, material checklist templates, Sample archiving templates, etc... etc...  I've spent just about as much time building documentation as I have actually recording and producing audio material!  Imagine that...

Other news, I've been working off-and-on for a DJ friend of mine helping him change aliases and start a new "brand image" building marketing material and video work for his music.  Check out VRTRA on facebook and show him some love!  He's got an EP he's working on right now.  I actually mastered his track "IDGAF (Original mix)".
We've been back and forth with development of the text logos and stripping out a "zebra" design he originally had made by another artist and wants to shift gears to a more edgy look.  Here's a look at the progress and changes I've done just iterating through some design requests.

 Some alternate text banners he decided against.

After a week or so He decided the Zebra head wasn't the image he wanted, but he liked the idea of fractals and wanted them to shape the V as his logo.  I had a couple of issues with this as getting the same way I designed the fractals as BG fx for the Zebra head don't work with text well, so I had to imrpovise.

After some more chatting back and forth and letting him know my difficulties with getting the same geometric shaped fractals to work with the V, I took some more creative liberties to develop some different looks for the V.

Just some super rough ideas for a background V shaped fractal.  I've designed my fair share of fractals with Apophysis and just started manipulating them in Photoshop to get the V look.  But this still wasn't what he envisioned so I took a new approach with the Geometric shape fractals I had created with the Zebra head.

More news to come with several other projects I'm involved in.  Shot video and assisted a photographer friend at a Wedding over a month ago.  I should be getting the footage and some photos to post up for the work we did soon.  Lots on my plate!  Also, if you haven't already, go back in my blog and check out my article on the latest commercial project I did music for: SIMple is as Simple does not.

Stay fresh friends.  As always, I appreciate any and all feedback, so feel free to comment below.  My question to you all is: what do you think o the V logos, which is your favorite? Do you think any of these make for a good logo design for a DJ?