NEW YORK
- SoundHound (www.soundhound.com), which specializes in music, sound design and
audio post, recently hosted sessions with comic genius Mel Brooks and American
Idol
judge/musician/producer Randy Jackson.
Mel
Brooks worked with engineer Marc Bazerman on a new campaign for the upcoming
Broadway musical “Young Frankenstein.” The campaign will include television and
radio spots. Bazerman's
biggest challenge for the “Young Frankenstein” project was capturing the
spontaneity of Mel Brooks.
“The last thing I wanted were any technical issues
interfering with Mel’s creativity,” says Bazerman. “My goal was to make sure I
didn’t get in his way and [that he] had enough comfort to do his thing.”
The TV
spots have a very improv-like feel to them as Brooks is seated in a director’s
chair making a series of hilarious B-roll style off-the-cuff remarks, separated
by film beeps.
Bazerman
used Digidesign Pro Tools|HD3 running on a PowerMac G5 dual 2.7GHz system with
8 GBs of DDR SDRAM. A Sennheiser 416 microphone was used to record Brooks, and
Sony Oxford EQ and compression plug-ins helped achieve the desired sound.
Randy
Jackson teamed with SoundHound engineer Frank Cabanach to record the audio for
the new DVD videogame American Idol Karaoke. Cabanach worked out of the
Fairlight DREAM Station-equipped Studio G on the American Idol project. The game uses a
computer to measure contestants’ pitch, timing and performance, with triggered
analysis and responses from the three Idol judges. Cabanach recorded literally
hundreds of responses from Jackson that will be used in the game.
A Neuman
U89 and Focusrite Quad mic pre-amps were used to capture Jackson’s performance.
Studio G has JBL LSR 28P monitors in a 5.1 configuration.