As technology has been each day more accessible to everyone, the human material can more than ever make the difference. If you want your project/work to be executed in a professional way from the beginning of the process until to its delivery, book a meeting by phone, email or via Skype. Click here You can also book a meeting if you are in Rio de Janeiro.
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Below, I’ll list and talk about some offered services and the importance of each one of them:
Sound Engineer and Music Production
- Editing
- Mixing
- Mastering
- Music Production
- Private classes, workshops and seminars
- Jingles, Movies Soundtracks, music for advertising
- Score writing and digitalization for music copyright.
Other Services Related
- Project Studios and Acoustics Consultancy;
- PC-DAW (digital audio workstation) Optimization (with restore disk)
- Hardware installation and configuration.
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EDITING
The possibilities of manipulating recorded material have become easier, trivial, and virtually unlimited. The perfect take that was once considered a dream, is a totally reachable goal today.
Editing’s peculiarity is that time, dedication, know-how to master the softwares, and the musical sensibility make it a much more complex task than it’s supposed to be.
Why should I look for a professional to edit my project?
Having a piece of work edited by someone that doesn’t have enough musical knowledge, background and commitment with art, may ruin all the musical components of a performance or arrangement. Relying on automatic/default patterns, graphics and numbers is not enough.
You need to have sensibility and an inner gift to imagine what the real intention of the performer or arranger was. Without that, the result would be soulless music. Everything would sound just right and organized, but robotic and dull. Most of the editing tools offer “automatic” setting that may useful sometimes, but we are still the ones that should judge and revise them at the end.
In the other hand, a detailed editing adjusts performance without losing its original intention and therefore, makes music clearer and, later on, speeds up the mixing process. Besides that, a good performance can make a certain piece of music sound good on its own. And then, mixing process would just be focused on giving it the best “atmosphere”, in spite of providing lame fixes to a bad performance. At the end, a cheap solution may get really expensive.
Some editing possibilities:
- Tuning singers, sax, trumpet, violin and others instruments out of tune.
- Correcting bad timing performance
- Noise cleanup
- Producing “the perfect take” by mixing parts of different takes into a single one.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com
Mixing
Today, it’s possible to mix a record in many ways, and the costs are much cheaper than people suppose. Most of the time, it becomes much more “healthful” and fruitful if you hire a qualified sound engineer for this process. You don’t pay just for the result, but also for the speed, the deadline respected, experience and the formal/technical knowledge associated with the musical background.
It can be done long distance or not, in my studio or at any other studio. It can be even done at the client’s home, provided that he/she has the right equipment.
The mixing process is done in 3 steps that are:
1- Organizing the takes: Clean up noise in the tracks, discard takes, group similar instruments etc…
2- Editing: Correct bad performance and produce “the perfect take” if there are multiple takes of the same instrument.
3- Sound enhancing: Add dimension with effects, equalization, establishing dynamics and volume balance of each instrument.
These 3 steps are extremely exhaustive, repetitive and demand a lot of concentration to get a good result. All this process can be done in the presence of the client or not. As a matter of fact, the client doesn’t take part in the mixing process, but he/she can later on, add his/her opinion from a different perspective. Taking part in such a tiring and hardworking process might ruin the importance of having the first impression when a piece of work is first listened to. This may be just what we need in some cases – getting to know how the real listener would react. By showing the final results of this process (mp3 file) via internet or in person, it’s possible to get to the result expected or even achieve something better.
The last step, more delicate than the others, depends on the client’s concept and goals. So it requires some availability, room for talk, time for listening references tracks, and monitoring the results in person, or over the internet. Mutual respect and trust is essential.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com
Mastering
It’s possible to do a mastering at distance mailing your mixed tracks or sending them over the internet. This process requires not only ability, but also experience to find out potential problems, and fixing them up quickly, in order to avoid hearing fatigue.
What is mastering, anyway?
I suppose that you take your music/song as your most expensive jewel. In the beginning it was just a rough draft. You could imagine it in all sorts of ways, sizes, formats, and styles. When you were finally sure of how it should be, you went to a studio to cut and polish it. You worked really hard to turn your piece of musical inspiration into reality.
During the mixing process, it was shaped and it began to shine. At the end of the process, it was there -the perfect size, shape and color.
But a piece of jewel won’t really gleam if you don’t polish it. It’s the final touch. And that’s mastering. It’s like polishing an album that was already recorded and mixed.
In other words, in the mastering process the levels of your tracks are adjusted, the low/mid/high frequencies are balanced, some background noise is removed and the most important: that’s when your album finally sounds like a solid piece of music.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com
Music Production
A recording studio is a really interesting place, but also “dangerous”. It can be fun at first, exhaustive in the next few hours, and really stressful even for people that is used to working there.
Besides that, endless possibilities and technologic evolution make it too hard for the client to know/choose what he can make use of during the process of recording a song or album.
When you decide to hire music production, you are hiring someone with deep knowledge in many aspects -technical, musical and psychological ones- that involve album recording.
The main duty of a music producer is to understand your music proposal, translate it into technical terms to the sound engineer, coordinate, and point out the best way to work towards your goal reducing, therefore, stress, time, and unnecessary costs.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com
Classes, workshops and seminars
Although you can enroll in the Music Production at Home Studio course at In Concert (Ipanema-RJ) where I’m the coordinator and teacher, there’s still a possibility of asking for private classes. This way, you can suggest specific subjects that you that you would like to work on. Private classes can be hired to be given at your home (Zona Sul, Rio de Janeiro) or in my private studio (Jardim Botânico – RJ)
If you have a store, studio or belong to a group of students, you can schedule a workshop in your own city! We will define the subjects of your interest and a workshop (including a PowerPoint presentation) can be booked.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com
Jingles, Movies Soundtracks, music for advertising
Jingles and mottos/slogans are the most powerful devices that advertising companies can make use of in order to build up a successful brand image.
Offering jingles and soundtrack services mean that we are not talking about one single person that can play all kind of instruments, sing, write lyrics, and be capable of recording more than 1000 music styles.
We are talking about a big team, partners, and outsourced services that can be hired to perform anything you feel important for your company or product. You can count with: musicians, singers, arrangers, lyricists, composers, voiceovers, and actors.
The same applies to soundtracks, when not only music is important, but it’s needed to be accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com
Score writing for music copyright.
This service is aimed at two situations:
If you have hand-written scores and would like to have the digital version of it like the example below:
Or, if you are a composer, it’s important to copyright your music by registering the works with the Copyright Office. This will ensure your rights to the songs and provide proof of your ownership of the copyright in the event someone else tries to claim the music as their own. It’s not possible to register the song by using cds, tapes, dvds, mp3 files- you need the printed version of your work (score and lyrics).
If you don’t know how to write scores, you can send your recorded song (it doesn’t need to be professional recording) and I’ll write down the score for you, print a copy and send you the file in jpg or pdf format, for you to print as many times you need it.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com
Project Studios and Acoustics Consultancy
Having a recording workstation has become easier than ever. With a reasonable budget and a good computer and you can achieve good results. You have the chance of recording new ideas in real time. And for those who already own a studio, or home studio, there are so many possibilities in audio equipment/gear that we might end up getting lost.
It can be very frustrating buying some equipment that isn’t useful at all, or even worse, finding out that there is a similar one which costs half price.
So, the audio consultancy helps you decide what is better for you based on your plans and budget. We develop a tailor-made project and a market research offering you three budgets (on an Excel spreadsheet) for you to choose from.
For a modest home studio or a big studio, a consultancy can be a real time-saver and money-saver as well, from building the place to the equipment choices.
Click here to see an example of a spreadsheet.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com
PC-DAW (digital audio workstation) Optimization (with restore disk)
It’s known that Audio Recording softwares make a large use of CPU power, and there are some widely known tips on how to improve your computer’s performance. Ex: avoid installing games and unnecessary softwares, quit using anti-virus, etc…
There are some “tweaks” (fine adjustments) that can provide you with your PC’s best performance. The process consists in a clean installation of Windows (XP or Vista), audio recording softwares, plugins and accessories, followed by a configuration setup. As a third step, a complete hardware/software test is done. And at last, but not at least, a restore disk is created.
What is a restore disk anyway?
A Restore disk works like a “time machine”. Let’s suppose that you receive your computer working just fine and you start installing new stuff. Now, let’s imagine that you have found out that one of them has made your computer slow down or worst than that, it has activated a virus.
In this case, in spite of paying for a system cleanup and PC-Daw optimization again, by using a restore disk you will be able to recover the system in 10 minutes without losing any data.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com
Hardware installation and configuration.
It can be divided in two situations and prices:
1- With no need of windows installation
- PCI / AGP boards (network, wireless, video, modem, multimedia etc…)
- IDE and SATA component (CD, DVD, Hard disks)
- RAM memory installation or upgrade
- CPU cooler installation
- External peripherals installation (printer, scanner, palmtops etc)
2- Windows installation needed
- Motherboard installation
- System hard disk installation
- Format and system cleanup
- Processor installation
You can bring your computer/laptop in (there’s a fixed cost for this service), but it can also be done at home, charged per hour instead.
Book a meeting or ask for estimated costs using the contact menu or send an email to cmoura@cristianomoura.com