What Is It?
Located in in Banff National Park in the mountains of Alberta, Canada is The Banff Centre. The audio program at the Banff Centre is a work/study program three times a year with about 8-10 associates/assistants. Its overseen by Theresa Leondard, and senior engineer John Adams. I attended the summer of 2007 from May through August.
About:
The Banff Centre's audio program enhances skills in jazz and classical recording, editing and mastering on industry-standard gear. Recording is done through high-end microphones, preamps and converters including Schoeps, Neumann, DPA, Lavry, and Meitner. Training in post-production and editing is done on either Pyramix or ProTools, with the main control room housing an array of classic analog gear, and a Euphonix digital/analog mixing board. Banff's Pyramix systems are housed on location in a beautiful acoustic concert hall, and in a critical listening room equipped with Cedar's Retouch, and 5.1 surround. Two Protools HD systems reside in the main recording studio and in a post-production/soon to be surround-capible room.
My Experience:
Recording jazz was not a strong point for me, and being exposed to several weeks of intense jazz training as well as meeting other very talented young engineers helped build more confidence towards the genre. I tried several new mic placement techniques in classical recording, as well as try new gear, particularly high-end analog to digital converters, and outboard analog gear. Throughout the term I remastered older orchestral recordings from Michigan State for surround, and try various surround rigs. For concerts I assisted on, and after getting permission I made mixes of concerts and sessions for practice.
Quotes from Master Classes
David Horrocks, mastering
Make my record sound like "this"... what that really means is "I like the songs on this record."
Music is wallpaper to young people lives.
Mastering engineers are only as good as the content they are sent, and the top 10 mastering engineers get the best content.
Sending a pre-compressed track to me "just limits my choices"
Graemme Brown, mastering
Making clients feel like your stuff is good.
Recording is a presentation of the music, Mastering is a presentation of the mix.
Jim Anderson, recording engineer
PCs are good, Macs are great.
Joe Furla's to come...
