Tomás was a very thoughtful interviewee.
His ideas with regard to teaching made me think I’d like to be in his class !
For me , a very informative podcast .
If you'd like to buy me a coffee - Many Thanks ...
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/GeniusMove
Tomás was a very thoughtful interviewee.
His ideas with regard to teaching made me think I’d like to be in his class !
For me , a very informative podcast .
If you'd like to buy me a coffee - Many Thanks ...
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/GeniusMove
My guest today is Tomas Mulcahy, who is a lecturer at TUS Limerick. I recently interviewed him from his home studio on a hot day, so we left the windows open and the noises that are there are there. I began by asking him how long he'd been lecturing there and about the courses he lectures on.
Tomás Mulcahy:I've been there 15 years now. I started teaching on the music technology and production course, then moved over onto the creative broadcast and film production degree, as it's called now. So I'm across both. You know, back and forth, depending on what's needed staff-wise. So currently I'm teaching live sound on the music tech and all aspects of audio production in first and second year for the creative broadcast course. So we have a degree, two degree courses. There's a level seven on each, a level eight on each. That's three years and four years. Yeah, I mean, they're both popular courses. We get more than enough applications for the places that we have. We could provide more places if we had the resources provided to us.
Tomás Mulcahy:That's you know, like the rest of the public service, that's an issue. One of the interesting paths people take actually I think is a good one is coming in on the music tech and then for the fourth year, when they do the level eight, they go over to the AV side and do a mix of music production and production for film and TV and broadcast. And I reckon those students have, you know, they've got a nice broad skill set. They're probably the most employable, Whereas, as you know yourself, like the music business isn't, you know, I wouldn't recommend anyone trying, you know, open a studio or whatever.
Paul Brewer:Not to make money anyway. Yeah, yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:Like how many is in a class. It starts out like about usually around 30, 35 in first year. Fourth year then it's usually I'm not sure about the numbers on the music tech because I haven't done fourth year there in a good while, but it'd be around 20-ish, something like that So we get to teach more than lecture really and do a lot of practicals. So you know you can easily do a practical with. We do the practicals, divide them into two groups, maximum 15. So I mean it's the best way to learn a little bit of theory and a lot of putting it into practice.
Paul Brewer:You mentioned 20 in fourth year, so does that mean a third of them quit, drop out?
Tomás Mulcahy:Well, yeah, like you do get like. Ireland has the highest number of people with third level degrees And it's an issue across third level really that there are too many people doing degrees. You know there are some people who are doing a little bit better off doing an apprenticeship.
Tomás Mulcahy:Well, you know the system is isn't perfect. Like this year, the apprenticeships were put on the CAO to try and address that. So you know, you'll always have some students who are they'd be better off doing an apprenticeship. But you know, sometimes people get attracted by the sexiness of music and film and all that And they think maybe I should work in that area, when just a regular nine to five job doing a craft, probably more appropriate for them. You'll also get people who are just doing a degree, because you know one must get a degree And career guidance. Career guidance depends on the school. Career guidance isn't great really. Kids, you know it takes them a while to figure out what they need to do. So it's not so much people dropping out but they'd change course. You know they'd realize after first year that oh right, this is the wrong course for me. If you look at the figure, it's across third level. That's pretty high as well. People, the dropouts, and first year they move to another course or another career path.
Paul Brewer:So is that first year a kind of a dry run, let's see how college works type of year? Is that how that kind of works? Is it acceptable to have a 40% dropout, do you think, or 30%, whatever?
Tomás Mulcahy:No,I mean I wouldn't. like we don't have a 30% dropout rate, like if you go to third year you get your level seven degree. then you may or may not choose to go to fourth year to get the level eight. Yeah, for a lot of people a level seven is sufficient, you know, to get a job of some kind, not necessarily in the area. I mean, for example, you have students who they'll go and work for Intel, just an ordinary job, but you'll need a level seven for a job like that.
Paul Brewer:Right, and is it the fact that you've done a level seven?
Tomás Mulcahy:No matter what the kind of subject is, Yeah, yeah, it's not Intel, Dell, yeah, that's a. You know, that's kind of there. That proves you can count. It proves you can read a brief and follow the instructions and meet the deadlines. Do a little bit of critical thinking. You have some research skills. You can work on a team.
Paul Brewer:Right.
Tomás Mulcahy:You know, if you look at the QQI guidelines for degrees, you know those are important fundamentals on any course Coming out of the leaving search. You know, depending on the school again, they might not have those kinds of skills and the age group as well. So you know, things like critical listening and teamwork, reflective practice, those kinds of basics, those fundamentals you know. I mean, yeah, we are teaching, like music production, our film and video et cetera.
Paul Brewer:We're also teaching you know how to learn kind of skills that you need to.
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah, exactly, learning how to learn. Yeah, that informs a lot, of a lot of what we do.
Paul Brewer:Is the music thing less focused on the music thing? do you think overall in your current teaching?
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah, for my current teaching. yeah, it's just that, like it's a distribution of staff skills, i would have worked during location sound and post and life sound, you know, before. I did my teaching diploma So I've got the experience to teach those, so I get to do those ones.
Paul Brewer:The teaching diploma. Where'd you do that?
Tomás Mulcahy:Oh, i did that in UL in 2004. And then I spent two years, two years, two or three years yeah, it's more actually. Yeah, three years teaching second level. Oh right, we do maternity leave, covers and subbing and that kind of stuff.
Paul Brewer:Music, All right music.
Tomás Mulcahy:And CSPE.
Paul Brewer:This is our second attempt at doing the interview due to internet bandwidth issues, and in our first run you mentioned what was a dual teaching. was it two teachers per class?
Paul Brewer:Oh yeah, team teaching, team teaching, yeah, team teaching, yeah, yeah yeah, like I've never heard of that And that seems like a brilliant idea to me And so far as my experience of teaching minute last year or whatever, to be going for the hour constantly is a hard gig to do. It didn't have huge numbers but nevertheless it was a difficult thing to do. How does team teaching work? Do you both plan to? this is what we're going to teach today. Is that how it works, or Do.
Tomás Mulcahy:You've actually raised two interesting issues there in the art of teaching, like you have the hour to work in and how do you use it. That's one thing, but team teaching, like my dad started teaching in 1973. And I guess it's in the blood because my mother used to do a knee and row. That'd be a nursery school, a school, so they're both teachers And it took me a while to come around to the fact that it is in my blood to do it. But he used to do a lot of team teaching. Like in the 90s He started doing it and he developed kind of a formula in his school to do it.
Paul Brewer:Like when you have colleagues that you can collaborate with yeah, secondary school Yeah. All right, okay Yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:So it's just collaboration and teamwork. So we'd work together, Like Peter Diffley that you mentioned that's our mutual friend. Yes, Like Peter was amazing. Peter was employed as a technician, but he had so much experience, so enthusiastic for the subject and a highly intelligent guy. I mean. He eventually got head hunted by a pharmaceutical in the US. That's what happened there.
Paul Brewer:That was a surprise. It was a surprise, yeah, i know. Yeah, i know. Oh, you do that as well, yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:He's just an engineer, like a proper engineer. So he's doing production line electronic stuff. Initially it was his thing. So real electronics. If you wanted someone to build a fuzz pedal, peter could just draw you the circuit diagram. It's basic stuff. I mean I remember him. Actually there was a new lecturer came in who was a little bit thrown into the deep end and Peter was tutoring him on PLC systems, that's the production line system for controlling productions electronically on a factory floor. Peter was amazing But like a team teacher at Peter because, like you know, he Peter did sound with Daniel O'Donnell You know, big stuff, but proper productions.
Tomás Mulcahy:You know everything's everything's done right. So he had so much experience And the two of us working together, teaching live sound was just great, because you have a slightly different perspective on things. You know, we had the same goal ultimately sound reinforcement But Peter is just so clear, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, passionate about the subject And we just it's just a collaboration. I think it's important for students to see staff collaborating because it's all about teamwork on anything, especially in the world of film and TV.
Paul Brewer:That's true as well, yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:So we do a lot of what we call integrated projects on the editing module. The simple model would be the students will do a production, a documentary or a short. They'll do it as a team. They'll have different roles but they'll have the editing assignment.
Paul Brewer:Yeah, it's a process.
Tomás Mulcahy:Isn't it? It's kind of negotiation and then figuring out where their skills are Right. Ultimately, they'll get a taste of every role, The idea being I mean, for example, like my subject, I think teaching sound on a film course. It's like teaching economics on a business course or biochemistry on a medical degree. It's the subject that everyone hates and everybody fails, And they don't like it because they don't understand it. It's just not their thing.
Paul Brewer:So teaching sound to you, know well they're visual.
Tomás Mulcahy:They're visual, creative people, so sound, just. You know it's interesting teaching on the film course versus the music course. The music course they come in and they have a lot of ideas, maybe preconceptions, about sound and music, whereas the film kids come in with no perceptions, no preconceptions. So I find that different challenges teaching each possibly easier to teach the film students because they don't have any preconceptions really. So you can start with the fundamentals and build it up.
Tomás Mulcahy:So I use I don't know if you've ever seen Jason Cory's critical listening, ear training stuff. He has a book and a bunch of research and software modules for practicing, you know, recognizing frequencies, recognizing reverb, stereo image, all this kind of stuff very well thought out. So I did a master's a few years ago just researching how to teach those kinds of things. All right, okay, and we got deep into it, so figured out a system and we have a PhD at the moment who's developing a software system that would possibly be a lot better than what Jason Curry has. So he's doing amazing work. I sort of was the internal examiner for that project, but I mean, really it was just us and they're going. This is fantastic, this is amazing. Keep doing what you're doing.
Paul Brewer:Right.
Tomás Mulcahy:So Jason Cory is the guy's name yeah. Jason Cory is the original guy who did the research in the US.
Paul Brewer:Yeah, Yeah, I like to check the house.
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic, it's really good, very accessible, like the. It's amazing how people with like no idea like what timbre is or what reverb is or what dynamics are, you can give them a mental model of that and they can practice it, and they can you know they get your point where they're going. Why does the dialogue sound bad?
Tomás Mulcahy:Well, it's because the microphone is Too far away or too close, or it's too close to a wall, or there's too many reflections in the room or in post-production They can go well, you know, there's a bit too much of 2k, or there's not enough above 5k, or Yeah, just know what to do, right, okay, i mean my kind of, my kind of basic criteria really is they need to go out the door here as film students and be able to record or get get perfect location, dialogue and And like that's just the godsend then for the, for the post people, because they're like, well, we have the dialogue, we have the ms, so now we can just they're not fixing stuff, they're just putting it together right.
Tomás Mulcahy:I think that's. That's Not to blow my own trumpet, like. I'm not the only person teaching sound. Um, i have other colleagues on the same course, like, and we work together on on the stream from first year to fourth year. But we hosted the I forget the exact title of it, but it's the film festival for all of the third level courses in Ireland and they all, most of them completely lacked sound. I mean, there were some productions that had no sound at all, like you're looking at animations that have little or no sound. You know there wasn't even credits for sound. Nobody did it. Like nobody's doing the sound on these short films that students are making.
Paul Brewer:And it looks like we're the.
Tomás Mulcahy:We're the only, so the only degree course that that includes sound.
Paul Brewer:Would that be a way for a student to get ahead of the of the posse You know, to accept that sound is needed?
Tomás Mulcahy:That's a really interesting question because funnily enough, like in in the TV and film business, the sound jobs are kind of over subscribed. There's lots of people who want to do those jobs. I don't nobody wants to be a boom-up, but lots of people want to do post and they want to do mixing and the kind of the showbiz side. Yeah, but what we need is like assistant directors, vt, operators you know the less glamorous stuff or the titles that nobody knows.
Tomás Mulcahy:Don't know what that job is right but once they go through our degree and you know on the theory side, you give them the framework and the language and the understanding of How it works, you know. Then they start to understand what all the roles are and they figure out where they can slide in. Well, am I allowed to complain about broadcasters that are bad? Yeah.
Paul Brewer:Yeah, I actually use.
Tomás Mulcahy:I actually use not all, but some RTE stuff. Now I mean I say RTE but, like You know, their productions are so sliced and diced and subcontracted, subcontracted out, and all this does it's hard to say. They does a systemic issue in RTE, like they don't pay people enough, they're under resourced and they don't retain people who learn the craft They don't train. It's not really one person's fault or anything like that, it's just the way the system works or doesn't work. But you know, i've used I've used Rd news broadcast as examples of how not to do stuff. You know you get things where there's clicks in the edit.
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah the dialogue level and timbre changes drastically from one person or journalist to the next and you're like What did they just say?
Paul Brewer:I don't know. From one sentence to the next in the same, in the same clip.
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah and then you compare that to the BBC where this they've got of. You know, on the face of it It's a pretty simple template, but they've got strong production guidelines. Like you compose. If it's just camera up and journalist and no sound up, there's a way to compose the picture. There's a set of colors that they that they use. They have a palette. There's a place to put the mic as a level, to set the mic width. You know they don't have a big furry oak in the picture. They do it right like it looks nice. And so Not that it looks nice. But there's a consistency on the BBC news, like when they go from one report to the next You're not suddenly jumping from one picture composition to a completely different one. The timbre, level of dialogues is consistent. You can actually hear what people are saying. You know. My favorite one is that they keep standing every time. That I mean for years. They do report RTE, they do report from the dial and they stand across the road in front of the gate. Oh yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:That's pointed direction. Let's point a directional microphone at the noisiest thing in the place. Yeah, the traffic. You know, i was like what, like listen, but see they don't listen to it. There's nobody monitoring because they don't have the crew.
Paul Brewer:Yeah, to do it like. I think I had a sort of a couple of visits with RTE as well and The overall feeling I got was that there was a lot of guys trying hard, but it didn't have much to try with yeah. You know. So that's the sad truth of the matter from an RTE Overview. If everybody else is doing it badly, let's do it badly as well.
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah well, you know it does motivation. It's motivation as well, Like if you're not being paid for your skills. Yeah if you don't have a permanent contract like you know, if you're not being properly Rewarded for the skills and ability and if you're not allowed to learn on the job and develop your learning over a long period of time, then of course people get demotivated. Like it's again, it's a public service kind of model, like it's just So.
Paul Brewer:I could say Indeed, yeah, we might edit that out actually, anyway, yeah, yeah, like in terms of a student, are you getting somebody who's just left school and things that might be interesting for them, things that might be interesting sound That, that sort of students? that a first. is that a model of a first year student?
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah, it is. It is, yeah, and You know they have a bit of experience, a bit of skill. You know they'll have done something like these days. It's not Not, it's not even the. It's not the least bit expensive to get a DSLR and shoot some picture, edit it on your laptop. Same with music. Obviously You know you can. You can be making stuff already.
Paul Brewer:So they'll come in with a show. Real students.
Tomás Mulcahy:Well, we don't require a show, real, but they would have. They would have done some a bunch of stuff either in school or on their own or both. The better resource schools will have, those will have done those things, especially in TY. When you get a group where people you have people like that in the group and their enthusiasm Spills over into the rest of the group and people can see that you know this can be a fun thing to do. And There's the work. The work is fun and the work needs to be done and then that's a good group. That's. That's usually the way things go most of the time.
Tomás Mulcahy:You know the enthusiasm is what dominates. Very occasionally You'll get you'll get kind of a bad apple that can kind of mess things up for the group. But you know we deal with those, we deal with those things. But yeah, mostly like people coming in. You know well, i mean you were talking about dropout race, like there will often be something. You know, five out of those 35, roughly that kind of average number I'd say just realize this is not the course for me.
Paul Brewer:And you know they, they, they move out of first year, But that's, that's okay, Like they've learned that. Yeah yeah, And do you have ever have mature students?
Tomás Mulcahy:Yes, we do. I love having mature students because 99% of the time, they're the ones who aren't afraid to ask the stupid questions. I guess I'm seeing the stupid question, which would be guaranteed, like what they're asking is what everyone else is thinking in their heads that they're afraid to say it.
Paul Brewer:Absolutely yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:And just the work ethic as well. You know the if it's, if it's the younger age group 18, 19,. There's still a bit of that like oh, go away, swat A little bit, you know but if it's a mature student, everyone goes.
Paul Brewer:Oh okay, let's, you know, they just, they just work Just work, so that's a sort of a calming effect on the class. Then is it Yeah yeah, i mean, it works both ways Or a model of how to work?
Tomás Mulcahy:It's good to have a mix, yes, but I mean, you know it stands to reason, like you know, if you're, if you're 18, you know, you kind of don't really know what you want to do. Like, if I think of my own career path, when I was 18, i taught well, i like fixing radios and making amplifiers and crappy little mixers, so why don't I do the electronics course?
Paul Brewer:Sbx 90s.
Tomás Mulcahy:They would tell us that would have been luxury. It was like I tried to make a mixer using using a 741 as the summing amp And the design was for four inputs but I wanted to make it 16 inputs so I could have stereo and lots of channels And it sort of barely worked. So that kind of stuff, i wanted to learn about that kind of stuff. But of course now when I did the course it was all about what they call PLC. It basically, basically it was about a production line. So there's a lot of digital control systems. Very little about audio. I mean, there was a bit of audio obviously.
Tomás Mulcahy:And then the maths was a big challenge for me because I didn't discover until I had about 10 or 15 years ago Yeah, about 10 years ago that I've just calculated, which is like the maths version of dyslexia.
Paul Brewer:So that's been where it took me four years to do a level six.
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah, i used to really struggle with the maths, the engineering maths, so I've been four years trying to do a level six.
Paul Brewer:Right, okay.
Tomás Mulcahy:And, again, like it's good to have that experience because, like learning difficulties or something I'd be very aware of and having had the experience of a learning difficulty, and trying to get through just gives you that bit of empathy with the students, I think.
Paul Brewer:Towards the end of the process. Can you see, like huge growth? Did they sort of flower Is that? would that be a fair description of Yeah?
Tomás Mulcahy:you really can, you really can. Yeah, i mean, i'm thinking of I can think of an extreme example A student who was, like you know, i was having personal issues outside and he accused several of us, including myself, of bullying, just very confrontational, And but he was just dealing with stuff, personal stuff.
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah, he came in like kind of into music and did the film course And like at the end he did like in terms of sound was a perfect documentary and you wouldn't even have known watching it, the kind of challenges that were involved in the sound production. He did a talk about an actor and his audio was from all kinds of places iPhone recording off a lectern at a speech, various places But the actor, he used that actor's dialogue as the VO kind of all the way through and it was just seamless. He managed to EQ it, compress it, de-noise it, all that stuff. So to the end, to the audience, they're like oh, this is just somebody telling me their story.
Paul Brewer:Yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:But behind that was all that dealing with all those production challenges and he just seamless, brilliant production, amazing. To go from that to that. Our students that come in and you know have very basic kind of. I mean this is a story that I like to tell it. And it was during the swine flu and I was giving out tissues you know, i was a while back, so you know just to keep the hygiene in the lab because people didn't want people sneezing all over their computers. And this first year kid comes up after the class. He picked up the tissue and he said to me I don't actually know how to use this.
Paul Brewer:Just the tissue.
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah, yeah, i mean you have no idea what people are, what backgrounds people are coming from in terms of the care they have or haven't received from parents or poverty and things like that.
Tomás Mulcahy:And then he went on to like be a director and to a brilliant short film And again solve lots of problems on production and you watch the final product and you have no idea that any of these problems were dealt with. You only know from his report, and haven't been a supervisor, that he dealt with all these things and it was just, you know, it just took it in a stride, just dealt with it And did the work and made the product. So it's just. You know, the ones that get to fourth year, definitely, you definitely see that growth And even in between, you know, my favorite one is, like you know, learning the frequency bands. You know, by the time students get to fourth year, they're like, oh yeah, it's a touch too much there, 500 Hertz or you know, they know the band, they just take it in their strides like, and it's just part of their vocabulary.
Paul Brewer:Yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:Whereas in first year they'd be like what's the Hertz? Or they'd you know they'd write one Hertz and two kilo Hertz. You know that's how misunderstood the concepts would be. So they go from one extreme to the other. Yeah, definitely they do. I mean it's not entirely down to us, i mean it's the age group There's. Personal growth happens anyway between 18 and 22. So you know, we just help them along that path, but it's great to see it.
Paul Brewer:Could there be some argument for, instead of doing the course straight after school, they go and live a life for a year or two years and then do the course Totally Right, Totally yeah, move out of home, get a job.
Tomás Mulcahy:I mean I sound really old fashioned, but like yeah, definitely.
Paul Brewer:Yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:Or you know go volunteer for a charity and work in Africa or India, or you know, see the world. Right, just you know realize first hand that we, we are in the top 5%, 1%. here We live like kings or we're privileged. here We can complain about public service and resources, blah, blah, blah. but this is a fabulous country to live and learn and work in, compared to what 95% of the world's population deals with. So, yeah, definitely Get some first hand, hands-on experience of life.
Tomás Mulcahy:It'd be great if that was, if that was facilitated, a gap year. Or a gap, two years, whatever, yeah A gap two years, yeah, But I mean that's grand if your parents can afford to ship you off.
Paul Brewer:Yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:And to have the money or, if you want, to live on beans for a year, and we get. I mean we get students who they work through college and that's a struggle But we, you know we've had students that are, you know, they're the shop manager or whatever. They have a bit of responsibility and they struggle in first year because of time And then you can see the what they learn from the responsibility of the job. They apply it to their college work and they get it done. And it's a struggle like, but they do great.
Paul Brewer:So how long is the actual course per week?
Tomás Mulcahy:hours per week, sir, then There's something like six or seven modules in each year.
Tomás Mulcahy:A student would do three. They get four hours a week on each module. There's two lectures, one practical, about 20 hours or something. It's prescribed on the course, like how much homework you'd be expected to do, like well, i say expected that's the wrong word, it's. You know it would be wise.
Tomás Mulcahy:You know an unwise first year student to stay on my course will just come in and sit in the lecture, twiddle their thumbs, not take any notes, go to the lab, stare at the computer, watch YouTube, maybe touch a few things in Reaper that's what I teach them. And then you know, not download Reaper, not know how to install any plugins. You know, even though they have a laptop at home. You know you get that. And on the other side is you get students who are like oh cool, where's a good place to buy a camera? Like which headphones should I buy and what microphone should I get? And you know like you can send them to. There's some good second hand sites for all that kind of stuff. There's tons of free apps for video and audio, as you know.
Tomás Mulcahy:So, you know, those you know. If you're, there's no point like Paul White in Sound and Sound said that years ago, like there's no point in doing a media course like one of ours if you don't live, breathe, eat and sleep. It. Just do something else if you're not that interested.
Tomás Mulcahy:Really It's true though the studio kind of thing is very solitary, whereas the film and TV is all about. you know you cannot do a production without a team like. so it's always a team effort. That's a good thing about it. So, having worked in both fields, i just found the film and TV set of things was better paid, more sociable, better ours, you know, better crack people, better chats. It was less kind of tunnel vision-y. you know You meet lots of different people and you travel around the country And it was all during the day, right, okay.
Tomás Mulcahy:It was all late night stuff like in the live sound.
Paul Brewer:So really it's more grown up than the music's made. Is that fair description?
Tomás Mulcahy:That's an interesting way of putting it. Yeah, I mean, there's some other interesting differences. Like you'll notice that the film people are much more into what's the latest tech, What's the latest tool that can make our job more efficient And we can meet the deadline and get it done better, Whereas the music car is still like oh, analog tape, oh, vintage synth, And you're like, okay, that's brilliant, you've got vintage synth, but is it actually working at the moment? Can we use?
Tomás Mulcahy:it on the session No no we need to get it repaired, whereas the film car it doesn't work. Well, just fix it like get the job done. We have to shoot now like Right, there's 30 people on the set. If you're vintage. Now I'm in the microphone, isn't it working? And you're not gonna bring.
Paul Brewer:I remember actually I was in RTE Radio and they had a load of Neve preamps And I was thinking, yes, we can use the Neve preamps on the session like deadly And your man said no, we can't use that Because it was doing a live session to air. So the last thing he wanted was to take or to snare might drop out, so yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:Yeah. It's funny like the 32 bit field recorders now are becoming a lot more affordable because Zoom have them And, like I'd say, some music people think that's the work of the devil, but what you don't set the level. You don't have to the level you can do it in post, what. I think that's pretty because it takes your mind off one like pure technicality, like you said the lens thing doesn't clip or it's not too noisy.
Tomás Mulcahy:You're focusing on the time where you're moving the microphone, you're listening. You don't have to worry about level that's fantastic. It's a god sent.
Paul Brewer:Yeah, and that's a thing that I've sort of been trying to teach myself. If you record at a low level, you just forget about it because it's never an issue. It's just a thing you don't have to think about. If your signal is popping around minus twelve, whatever it is, just rock on.
Tomás Mulcahy:I just teach it like to the ebu guideline minus eighteen for for capture and the process. Then it in post with the limiter and all that kind of stuff but the headroom. But like yeah, i mean That only works if you've got decent gear, like for a long time the zoom, the zoom H4 was like the sort of go to budget field recorder and We have a pile of those at work. I would like to take every single one of them on to the car park and individually smashed into pieces with a sledgehammer because The noise floor and those is terrible. It's like barely minus seventy is not pointing to any for good and nothing.
Tomás Mulcahy:Right this very poor headphone amp in it. You can't, it's just too quiet. There's no mixer so you can solo your two input channels. Terrible, terrible things. I mean just the fact that it's hand held. The wrong form factor for for location sound. Fine, if you want to do if your journalist doing interview or if you want to capture some at mass, lovely for that.
Paul Brewer:That's it and what is that not a case of picking the wrong tool? then you know, i mean, that is obviously the wrong tool, so you have to be the right to.
Tomás Mulcahy:Exactly, yeah, but like this is the you know the kind of. It was a clash ever since, like the video camera portable video camera back in the 80s came out as a bit of a clash between You know, affordable equipment, you know the one and gone approach, trying to get you know, trying to tell your story with a small budget, versus like the pro gear. Do you learn? the reason there is such a thing as professional gear is not because it's expensive, it's because it doesn't break, it's super quiet, you can just rely on it. It's not going to get in the way and you meet your deadline Efficiently. That's. That's what it's about. I think you're talking to Chris walls there and then interview. That's something that needs to be experienced as well. I think you know when you're, when you're mixing in a room, like that time when I met you first, that was in Peter Marr studio oh yeah just done that one oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was 2009.
Tomás Mulcahy:Eight or nine my man, yeah, sure yeah but you know, i mean, it would have been maybe the second time I was in a room that good. But you know, it's the kind of room where You put up the theater and you listen to the vocal and you go. You just know, if it doesn't work like if you're listening to your favorite albums you just hear, oh, so that's, that's the vocal. Take the pic. Is it works? they're going for it. You just, there's no second guessing.
Tomás Mulcahy:Like in the in the podcast there Chris mentioned you know that you can have a cognitive process going. Your brain can compensate for all kinds of problems in a room. The system you know you can learn. The room comes to point over. That's really taxing your, your stamina and it's just gonna tear you out. His example of the guy who was having the issue with whatever frequency it was And I'm afraid to see Smith yeah so I mean, obviously he's a seriously good listener.
Tomás Mulcahy:he could hear the other problem, but it just didn't know the cause, like a really basic level with students. Like if I'm teaching critical listening to students, they're completely wasting their time trying to do it on Apple Airpods.
Tomás Mulcahy:Absolutely they need a decent pair of headphones like the minimum decent currently would be like audio or the tech to get in twenties. That's a very decent device for critical listening. You can. You know it's pretty much not gonna get in the way. I mean you could do better, obviously, but it's affordable for a student. They're not gonna be able to do any learn anything about critical listening if they haven't got something that's reasonably transparent.
Paul Brewer:But then in a room like that when you actually experience it.
Tomás Mulcahy:You could just you bring up the volume, go Oh there. It is like yeah second guessing.
Tomás Mulcahy:It's just right there, viscerally, you know you don't have someone telling you all this is a flat signal from 20 years. You can just hear it, you can experience it, you can feel it in your body. You know, just right there, just speaks education speaking. That experience is so important because, like our sound, our hearing system, the meat, the head, the HRTF, whatever they want to call it academically or technically, it's a connected directly to your instinct, like it's a survival mechanism. Your ears don't Go off, you can close your eyes, which can close your ears. So we experience sound on a very instinctual level. It's not largely subconscious and that's why it gets neglected in film, because It's until you actually experience amazing sound that you viscerally, instinctively, feel all right. And then you know it's the sound that's making me connect with this, that's making me have this feeling like In film, the sound work.
Tomás Mulcahy:You know the sound is good when nobody says anything about it. If the sound is bad It'll be criticized or you know and people want you know. The other thing I really to test hearing is people going but you're the average person. They don't know. You know they don't know. 10 killer it's versus 5 killer it's a one north, there's only 10k bandwidth versus 20k. Yeah, they might not be able to describe or tell you what the problem is, but they'll go. I don't like it. Yes, it's just instinctively.
Paul Brewer:There'll be a visceral response, like an emotional response to yeah, or even a sort of immaterial response, as in no response.
Tomás Mulcahy:You know that can.
Paul Brewer:that can Because nobody's complaining yeah, how do teachers teach that appreciation? like when you're talking about the visual guys, like why does somebody have to be purely visual or purely audio? why can't they be About?
Tomás Mulcahy:Well, they are. They are both. It's just that the interest with the film students is is visual. That's their kind of creative field. Like I'm not subscribing to this Model. That's misunderstood of you know there's what do they call it, the kinesthetic learners and visual learners and all that. That's. That's a much misunderstood teaching practice. I forgot the name escape. You know the guy that originated, but he originated as a model to approach teaching and how the mind works. He never said One person is one way, another person is another way. It turns out in the research that it depends on what you're being taught. We all deploy different senses depending on the thing we're taught. We're being taught and if you're teaching any anything, you have to engage different senses you know if you know.
Tomás Mulcahy:For example, you can teach somebody by just standing there and telling them the thing Works for certain things in certain situations and the notion that you'll you know all. You have to learn using practice. That doesn't work either, because there's lots of Very experienced studio engineers out there who have no clue about impedance or bandwidth or how sound propagates in a room and they have lots of misunderstandings about how about it because they never had the theory. And equally, you have people who have all theory and Just keep them away from the musicians or band because they just wind them up. You know you need both. Like, like people often say, oh, i never learned anything on the degree, on the land, on the job. But the thing is you wouldn't have been able to learn on the job if you hadn't got That framework of language even and just be able to talk about and have the mental models to describe the concepts in your field and then go and do the job. And then, in terms of teaching students just the critical listening well, it's called reflective practice. It's a very standard enough teaching tool. So the way I give an example of it, like it's with first years who have no experience of sound, they get the zoom app on their phone, they go out into their environment and I get them to record what they hear And then come back and do an evaluation of what they've heard and just simple questions like describe what you heard, what was good about it, was bad about it?
Tomás Mulcahy:I've given them very basic definitions of Tamber and space so they have kind of vocabulary to talk, to, describe it and talk about it.
Tomás Mulcahy:So they would do that at least three times and each time you know they would Look at their previous reflection and think okay, so I'll do this thing differently the next time. So simple things like Well, it was, it was too quiet, so this time I moved the phone closer. And then they go well, now it sounds completely different because I've moved the phone closer, because the space sounds different or the timbre sounds different, so, and they do it a third time and they'll get the exact spot. So it's a process of reflection and but you have to give them the structure to go through that and you have to do it within a time frame where they can remember what they already did before, right, and have a record of what they thought. So that's all you know, basic teacher stuff for you, you have a plan, you have a timeline and You have a structure that they can work in what would you use from music when you're doing critical listening?
Tomás Mulcahy:Like I have one lab with mono and stereo classical recordings and they listen to them in terms of space and dynamics. What song today? Yeah, i'm trying to remember because I haven't done it in a couple of years, because I don't do it with those younger groups. I would have used the Body Holly Remastered stuff for the mono because it just sounds so amazing. And another great track, like there's a lot of tracks that the core is forgiven and not forgotten. That's just. There's a lot in that educationally, in terms of space and timbre, you can hear the individual instruments but there isn't this kind of false notion of separation. It's a composite whole, it's a story. That song, there's a feel in it, but you can break it down easily into its component parts. At least a new listener can. Another one I like to use is I have the multi-track of Killer Queen.
Paul Brewer:Oh right.
Tomás Mulcahy:So actually that with the second year broadcast students they would do, they would mix like maybe the intro, first chorus, first chorus and throw on a fade on the outro, But like that's the kind of song where you can put up the faders at zero and it's pretty much there Mixed, yeah.
Paul Brewer:You've got to add the reverb.
Tomás Mulcahy:You've got to add the reverb because reverb is a big feature, but you don't need. You'll get largely close to the original without EQ, even Because it's the way they played it. I mean, you listen to that.
Paul Brewer:Yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:Bring up. The only thing that's overdosed is Brian May, because he was sick when they were doing the rest. So what you hear on that is that's what the band actually sounded like, that's Queen, yeah. So when you have something like that. But the other thing about that song is it's a narrative, it's a story and it builds. So they just basically just gets a little bit louder in each verse and chorus and builds to a climax. So in terms of automation, that's an easy thing to do because anyone can connect to the narrative of the story in the song And then they go okay, this is what the song feels like. How do you make that happen technically? So you've got to do some automation.
Tomás Mulcahy:The panning on it is very simple. So it's a good one for students to learn the difference between reverb and pan, because people don't know the difference. So on that one, if it's panned it's going to be LCR. So the panning is going to be very obvious. If it's panned, the reverb is real obvious on the voice because it's a feature, and then reverb on other stuff. It's like okay, if it sounds to you like it's sort of panned, put reverb on it. So it's a really simple.
Tomás Mulcahy:You know, i make it a very simple lesson and simple criteria, but the great thing about it is a very achievable goal. You can get super close to the original mix with some very simple steps and it's very doable. It works like a film because there's a story in it. They mark out verse, chorus, middle bit, outro, and then it's like scenes in a movie and each one gets a slightly different treatment. So that would take, you know, that's about three, possibly four, to our labs and they get to the end. They'd have amics of it. They might. Maybe at the end they might put the phaser on somewhere as a bonus.
Paul Brewer:Like. Is that four classes, then on four different occasions, or is it?
Tomás Mulcahy:a process. Yeah, four to our labs, Right okay.
Paul Brewer:So will they reflect on the work done so far and make changes appropriate? Is that the teaching? Not with that?
Tomás Mulcahy:particular one. No, not with that particular one, like I've finally found out, where I know how long it takes them to do each bit of the production to reach a certain level. Right, and then I'd assess it in class and give them feedback Like it's continuous assessment, so they get feedback on each I've built in time. At the end I can sit with each student and give them time. Now that's assuming I've only got 15. If you've more than 15, it's a bit of a balls Right.
Paul Brewer:You could do that.
Tomás Mulcahy:Because if you can imagine, like, if you have, you know, if you're 15 students, you have two hours, five minutes per student. That's an hour of your time Just talking to them once And that's assuming you know nothing happens at the computer. They know how to download it off OneDrive, they know how to load it into Reaper, all that stuff. So but you know I would have done other things beforehand where they've practiced those kind of basics and that kind of thing nailed Right.
Tomás Mulcahy:But you'd be surprised how basic it can be. It can be, like. You know, some like kids coming into first year. We think they're digital natives, but they're using mobile devices all the time. So they have no idea that the media files are large things and the project file is just a tiny thing, and even the size of a file. They don't know what the difference between a file and a folder is.
Tomás Mulcahy:So you have to get through all that first, before you can get to the stage where you're talking about Ooh, is there too much of two kilohertz?
Paul Brewer:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:How long does that project take? About two years? That's a good question. It depends.
Paul Brewer:Like, are you six months in it before the groove?
Tomás Mulcahy:Well, with those basics, i would say at most two months, i would do a bunch of simple and off labs where there's kind of if they've not got the media files uploaded, then they fail that. but it's only a few small marks, so it just gives them a solid kind of oh, i failed that because I didn't do this right. I better get on top of that I better do that. It's a punishment and reward kind of system, like you know very basic old school teaching, except it's just a grade instead of a cane.
Tomás Mulcahy:But again, like the other thing with teaching is you have to do that stuff over and over and over again. Sometimes it can be a bit like.
Tomás Mulcahy:Groundhog Day because you could have. you know you'd have a second year group. you'd have one half of the group for two hours, then you'd follow that with another one for two hours And exactly the same problems would come up. But you know, as I was saying, like by the time they get to even the end of first year actually, like I uploaded the I get the first year is to do a sound design project And they take their own field recordings and they do a bunch of processing, very simple reversing, time stretching, bit of reverb, bit of EQ, make a structure piece one minute long with your own sounds.
Tomás Mulcahy:They even do a little bit of subtractive synthesis and a little bit of sampling. Put all that together and make this mad one minute sound piece. They do amazing stuff. I mean, because these are people, they're not musicians, but they're making a kind of musical piece and just the ideas they come up with. I'd say at this stage I've got a collection of the synth. plug and ous is the TAL noise maker, like the sounds that the students have come up with. make a bank of presets with those.
Tomás Mulcahy:They're amazing Things I'd never think of And like I do sound design you know, as a kind of a side gig, and some of the stuff they come up with is like I would never have thought of that. That's cool, because they're just their approach. The way they look at it is totally different to yours.
Paul Brewer:I guess you can learn as well from your students as well. Teaching is the best way to learn.
Tomás Mulcahy:And that goes back to what you were saying at the start about team teaching and trying to work on it to get things done. You know, trying to use that hour, that hour can be intimidating. You feel like you have to fill it up, but after a while you realize I need to let the students do some work, i need to collaborate with them and let them teach me stuff as well. Then you realize it becomes.
Paul Brewer:Unfortunately there's no examine that.
Tomás Mulcahy:You can make it an examinable thing. You can, especially with some of the second year as this year I did their reflection on various critical listening things. I just had a chat with them like what did you think of it, what did you feel about it, what did it do or what did it didn't do? That's what I graded them on a discussion, individual discussion. I did that with a few of the practicers. Then they take what they learned from that and they'll use it in the project.
Tomás Mulcahy:So this would have been mainly to do with EQ and compression and limiting well limiting that compression, just on dialogue and what it does. Also, different microphones We did that with different microphones as well. On dialogue, i pushed the bottle a little there with the second year as to do that. They would try different microphones and have an opinion on how they sounded, on different voices. It's great. Some students say, oh my God, i hate raw 95s. They're so esy. That's fine. It's great that they have a strong opinion about a microphone because it means they have an aesthetic that's associated with the practice.
Paul Brewer:But is that sound and sound speaking, or is it the student speaking?
Tomás Mulcahy:It's amazing. No, they can hear that stuff, jesus, they wouldn't be reading sound and sound at all. This is the film, students.
Paul Brewer:That's true as well, yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:I mean when I was doing fourth year as I used to do I haven't had fourth years for a couple of years, but we do foley I'd give them a bunch of mics to try out. So we've got nice mics, we've got four and four. We've got a U87. We've got a KM184. They try the 184. They try the NT5 and the NT55. They try Auditectly 2020.
Tomás Mulcahy:And what's really funny is they don't even have no mass in the cost of these microphones. They're not reading the magazines, they're not getting advertised at, they're film students. Given the U87 and the 2020, they nearly always preferred the 2020. That's because our 87 was a bit broken for a while. There was something loose in the grill, so sometimes it would sound fine and other times it would be weird and phasey. But they could hear that and they would go for the 2020 instead, the 184, which I personally don't like it.
Tomás Mulcahy:The original 804 is nicer. Anyway, i can't remember the number Same farm factor It's a small day for a pencil capacitor mic. But for their purposes, for Folly, they'd always go for the NT5. Because it's got the boost that the older Nymans would have had, that nice top end thing, whereas the 184, for me anyway, it's kind of this weird halfway between It's got a bit of a boost, but it's not enough of a boost, it's just sort of. But these are all subjective opinions. If students can start to relate those kind of subjective opinions with objective things like the frequency response to the microphone, no, they wouldn't get as far as transient response, but the music techs would. But they'll have an opinion and they'll have an idea which tool they need to use for a job and they start to realise that they can be creative with microphones and the same way they can be creative with lenses, because it's kind of a similar thing.
Paul Brewer:I found that the idea of how does a microphone sound is a tough concept to understand. that were. So I found that putting 57 up first and comparing a microphone to that was a useful way to. You can always go back to the 57 and have a sound. there's a reference, and it's a brighter than that and it's a bassier than that, and all that sort of stuff. Would you ever do that sort of thing? Is that right? Yeah, okay.
Tomás Mulcahy:Jason Corry has a good bit of well-grounded, evidence-based teaching plans around that sort of approach. One of the biggest issues there is you're I'm not sure if I'm using exactly the right term now, but your auditory memory has in your ability to remember the timbre. Yes, for most people it's about five seconds.
Paul Brewer:Yes.
Tomás Mulcahy:There's not enough research. as far as I know, i haven't looked for a couple of years now, since I did my MA, but there's not enough. I don't do any research with expert listeners to see what their auditory memory is like. I find myself I might be maybe eight or nine seconds. That's what I can do. But I usually build the practical so that if they're doing some kind of comparison, try and keep it within that five-second window that does a meaningful They can meaningfully hear the difference.
Paul Brewer:Right, yeah.
Tomás Mulcahy:But when you have more advanced students, like the music tech students that you're talking about, and maybe not third-years and fourth-years, then you can start to have those kinds of 57 or try different mics on the Katera cabs, such between them, and they'll have it. We'll have a chat about it. It's great when you get to that level, because that's the real nitty-gritty. then It's all about. When you're at that level, they're able to think critically. So that means if they can have an opinion about a microphone, then they can articulate about lots of other things because they have a mental model of all the different concepts they need to, like time, space, dynamics, and they can put it together and make a plan for a project.
Paul Brewer:So that's Tomas' way to do it. Many thanks to him for taking the time to chat. Do visit GeniusMoveie to find out about recording courses to suit you. Thanks for listening.