NYC Recording Studio News

Booking time in a recording studio to capture quality audio is obvious. But few people think of how valuable it can be to capture quality VIDEO content in a studio. At just 18 years old, Akira Sky is savvy enough to do both and use our beautiful live room in Midtown Manhattan as a backdrop in her video submission for a scholarship program. Akira is a multi-dimensional talent, plugging her stylish red semi-hallow Julio Giulietti into our Egnater tube amp and singing a few of her best original songs for the submission. Not to mention performing with a live loop pedal in HEELS!?

Happy to offer our multi-dimensional recording studio to help showcase Akira’s multi-dimensional talent. We wish all the best for her and her music endeavors!

The process of exporting or ‘bouncing’ audio files is usually pretty straightforward. But it can also get complicated and time-consuming depending on what files are needed after a recording session is complete. As a studio that offers mixing and mastering services, our clients often leave with a radio-ready ‘master’ file of their song and that’s about as simple as it gets. But even then, if the mixing process included a lot of production and fx, it can take a few minutes to render and export a single high-quality master.

There are plenty of other projects that come through the studio whose goal is only to record as much as possible with their time and work on the mixing and mastering later. At the end of those sessions, instead of exporting a finished product on a single audio file, we export what are known as ‘stems’ which are separate files with different parts of a song (vocals, guitar, drums, etc.) on their own files. These stems can be loaded into audio editing software later for the editing, mixing, and mastering process; and this is also a great way to back up data for a recording session. With more files being exported, it’s obviously more time-consuming and demands more organization to keep track of everything and make it as easy as possible to reassemble those files when they are worked on later.

Sometimes a client may even prefer to have ALL the ‘takes’ of everything recorded in the session so they can sit and sort through everything, making sure they select the absolute best recordings and/or ensure that they have plenty of options if they want to alter anything about the song later in production. Again, this can take additional time and it becomes even more important to label and organizes things nice and neatly.

Not to mention the time it can take to upload and send multiple high-quality files online…

Are we belaboring the point that exporting audio takes time? Yeah, guilty. But the real point is to shed some light on how the exporting process affects the quality of audio files, and that the organization of those files will make someone’s job (hopefully ours 😊😜) a lot easier later in the process.

Be sure to carve out enough time at the end of a recording session to get the best files in the best way. Usually around 20 minutes will do it, but the more productive you are in the session, the more you should think ahead to the exporting process.

Over the summer we’ve been working on a wonderful film called ‘On Our Way’. We had writer, director, and star of the film, Sophie Lane Curtis, in the studio along with her co-star, Micheal Richardson, to record some ADR. ADR is ‘Automated Dialogue Replacement’ which is dialogue in a film that is re-recorded in the post-production phase. It can be a tricky process to recreate and dub a line of dialogue so that it syncs up with the timing and feel of the original on-screen performance. And because the re-recording takes place in a studio, it can sometimes be challenging to avoid the feeling of manufactured acting. But Sophie and Micheal were able to adapt and together we kept things patient, creative, and fun throughout the session. As we finish the mixing and sound design for the film, stay tuned for more details on the release of ‘On Our Way’.

One question we get a lot in sessions is, “Is it okay to take a picture?”.

Is it okay??? Heck yeah it’s okay! In fact, we’d prefer you to go gangbusters on photos while you’re in the studio. Grab some video content while you’re at it. Obviously the most valuable thing you can do in a recording studio is… record… but the SECOND most valuable thing might be getting visual content. Images and videos are great ways to promote your project on social media (some might say it’s an absolute must!) and it’s also good visibility for the studio. Tag us @mirrortonestudios and let us know your handle so we can tag you in our content as well.

Whether it’s a celeb photo op, your first time in the studio, behind the scenes of your next passion project, or you’re coming in as a hired talent for commercial voice over, we encourage you to take a photo (or two or ten) before you leave.

One of the most unique projects we’ve had in the studio recently is recording ensemble backing tracks for the raunchy, long-running NYC musical comedy revue ‘Naked Boys Singing’. After years of success in New York, the production is on its way to Las Vegas. Having people in the studio with a sense of humor always makes the work easier. And producer / session director Michael D’Angora was more than capable of having a laugh while coaching the vocalists to get the best performance. We like our men like we like our recording sessions, professional, polished, and playful!

Best of luck to ‘Naked Boys Singing’ on their Vegas run 🙂

We had the pleasure of working on this great documentary from filmmaker Kabir Chibber. Doing the sound editing and mix for a documentary is an entirely different animal from working on narrative films. Much of documentary filming is done on the fly and often the technical side of things is less than ideal in order to capture the moment at, well… a moment’s notice. This film was no exception, with the subject being the story of boxer Kalief Lindo thru the Olympic qualifying tournament.

A lot of the environments were a literal battleground of fighters in multiple rings or doing intense training throughout the space. In the sound mixing process, it’s our job to help the subject and the story prevail over the competing backdrop. For a documentary it’s a fine balance of cleaning up audio while preserving the natural ambience and the raw energy of each scene. Fortunately, in addition to our post-production expertise, Kalief as the subject along with Kabir’s storytelling are both compelling enough to cut through the noise!

We love our mixing console, the Trident Series 65, a board that was built in England in the ’80s and made its way to our NYC recording studio. Just about everything we record runs through the preamps and channel strips of our board, giving its amazing signature sound even 40 years later. So it’s important to us to take good care of it.

After a year in pandemic, we haven’t been able to give our board a good clean. But this summer, as we continue to see more sessions getting booked, it was finally time. We took off all the faders and pods and gave it a good surface makeover. No matter how well you take care of a board like this, or how good it looks at first glance, it’s important to take everything off and clear away the dust that inevitably finds a hiding spot under the buttons and knobs of this robust machine.

Busted out the vacuum, q-tips, and cleaning solution and did right by the centerpiece of our Midtown recording studio. Nothing beats that look and feel of a freshly cleaned analog mixing console.

Here’s to another 40 years!