On Friday 31st of March, Chris Pettifer will be delivering an exclusive masterclass to the students of Abbey Road Institute on the topic of producing audio for film and television.

Chris Pettifer is a prolific and accomplished screen composer, songwriter, musician, arranger, music supervisor and producer and has been working in the Australian music and film & tv industries for over 20 years. His company, Ritzland Music, has serviced a wide range of film and television productions, both national and international as well as providing boutique recording services for select clients.

As one of Australia’s premier music editors for television, Chris’ CV boasts work on classic series, from The Flying Doctors to contemporary hits such as The Secret Life of Us and the Australian cult soap Neighbours.

In addition to his amazing television work, Chris has contributed his talents to numerous Australian films such as Romper Stomper and Eric Banner’s Chopper.

In 2014, Chris set up two new entities under the Ritzland Music banner – Ritzland Records and Ritzland Music Publishing – for the purpose of developing new songwriters and providing them with an independent level entry into the music industry. The latter, Ritzland Music Publishing has an an admin agreement with Mushroom Music Publishing to administer new catalogue from Ritzland Records.

After an hour of drinks the ceremony officially began with a welcome address from Abbey Road Australia’s CEO, Paul Ledingham. In his address he highlighted that this was the very first group of students to graduate from any campus in the world, adding to the significance of the occasion. Next to follow this welcome address was Paul Edwards, the Academic Coordinator who delivered an inspiring and motivational speech, encouraging the new graduates on taking their next steps along their music industry journey and to continue to learning at all stages of their career. After Paul concluded his speech, students were called up one by one to accept their testamurs and pose for photos.

After all the students had collected their certificates, Paul Edwards presented awards for students who had demonstrated outstanding work in the following categories;

These hardworking students were awarded prizes of Factory Sound gift vouchers valued between $200 and $400 to help kick start their production equipment collection.

Abbey Road Institute would like to thank the graduating student cohort of October, 2015 for their hard work and commitment to their studies as well as wish them luck in all future industry endeavours.

Abbey Road Institute was thrilled to have offered Study for a Day twice in the month of February due to unprecedented demand.  Last Saturday proved that once again, there’s certainly no shortage of passionate and talented lovers of music production in Melbourne!  Our students for the day were treated to a morning with rock royalty’s Lance Krive and briefly looked at the historical journey of Abbey Road Studios by stepping back in time and listening to the some of the historical recordings from Abbey Road London.

Students were then able to get their hands on ProTools and immersed themselves remixing some popular tracks.  Their afternoon was spent with our tech guru,  Brad Toan, who had all hands on deck in our performance space and API studio stepping everyone through the intricacies in how to prepare a mix session, utilise different studio techniques and how to work with various studio microphones.  We can’t wait to meet you at our next event, or alternatively, you can book an exclusive VIP tour and come and experience Abbey Road Institute for yourself!

Hi, my name’s Alex and I am an Audio engineer. I do mixing and mastering work.

From a young age i was always exposed to music. My mother always jokes about having no musical talent whatsoever, except for a good shower voice I guess. But she would always play records to me. My father was an audio engineer, some of his most notable works were doing the Pink Floyd tour back in England. Strangely enough he never really shared his talent or knowledge with me so much, and later on in life he would give me 5 seconds and listen to my song and be like “…sounds ok”. And that was it. It wasn’t a direct relationship to my job but obviously you can’t deny the connection there.

As i just turned 16 my parents moved my family to Australia. Funny now, i was pretty upset at the time, i had a girlfriend, just making some friends. My father felt really bad about it, and he bought me some turntables. And then i spent the first 2 months in Australia by myself because term had not started yet in Highschool, and i taught myself how to DJ, and then from there i got into DJing, and then i got into music production, and then i found myself part of the music industry, and from there i got heavily involved in audio engineering.

So there’s a little misconception in the world that as the artist, you know, that you’re recording it yourself, that you’re making the music all yourself, that you’re writing all the lyrics, cleaning up and mastering it, and in reality there’s lots of little industries within that process. You have obviously labels pushing out,  doing lots of A and R work for you. I am the person who cleans up the audio and has a perspective on the music which the artist is too close to to hear. So they might have their bass too loud for example, ill turn the bass down. Pretty simply put. And often when you are creating music yourself it’s softer. I push it up through a comfortable level of volume, which is why when you hear music on the radio it sounds homogenise, it’s got the same volume. Thats because its been mixed and mastered.

An interesting part about my job is that there’s no industry definition, there’s no set rules, so sometimes i can be creative with what i’ve been given. I can take some work and say “these drums aren’t quite cutting it for me, i’m gonna produce my own drums.” Sometimes i might want to add some excitement in a build-up. I specialise in the dance music side of things. So i can add more rises, add little tricks of the trade i do myself as opposed to it, And sometimes everything the artist is giving me is spot on, i just need to present it in the best way possible.

As far as i’m aware within my industry everyone who is an audio engineer is generally a freelancer, so you work for yourself. I would say 99% of your work is generated through word of mouth. At the time of my starting I had a manager, and he put me in contact with a label, and I did a good job on my first one, and then i kind of… the ball starts rolling from there. I’ve actually been very lucky and have had some of my clients just “hey this guy’s a really good engineer, you should check him out.” and you get one good client who ends up being successful, and they obviously have many more connections, it all just snowballs, it really does. It takes a while but it snowballs.

Within my industry, you go job to job, word of mouth, your representation is you last job, if you mess up a track thats going to been know in the industry. It is very competitive, but its not cut through and its not unpleasant, everyone… it seems like that on the outside but its actually a very nice community, because everyone’s an artist and everyone’s doing something creative. So every time you’re doing a job you’re putting yourself on the line, and everyone appreciates that, and if you’re an honest and good person then people people treat you as such.

Do not expect to get your next job, it comes when it comes, that is something i would definitely make very apparent for you guys. You have months with nothing, and then i one week every single label in the world can hit you up for a job.  It’s the trade off for having a safe office job. I love not having to sit in an office, and do that type of work. I love using that part of my brain that I dis-attach from myself when I’m into music. I don’t need to fall in love with any song that i work with, but for the few hours or the week that I work on it, i become part of something that’s different, may be a bit artistically cliched but it’s nice, you just fall into a song and get feelings that i don’t think i would get from another job. I love that i do, it’s stressful and it’s scary and my girlfriend hates the insecurity, but i love it and i would never do anything different.

Currently i’m involved at Abbey Road, it’s fantastic and it’s a game changer for me. I have such a better appreciation for the music industry now. For the 10 to 7 years before enrolling here i was kind of a lone wolf in the industry. Very under the impression that if i just kept slugging at it I would just make it, and i’d be by myself. And being here and being surrounded by other people, having extremely experienced professionals come into the school and talk candidly to you has been so eye opening, and it’s really made me feel a part of the industry then i ever have before, and it’s changed mind. I wouldn’t say i’m less naive, but I’m definitely much more savvy in the industry. And having education and people supporting you is paramount.

The lecturers here are fantastic, and we have professionals come though do masterclasses, and anytime someone like that, anybody who’s worked with Michael Jackson comes in your class, and you listen to what they have to say.

I would suggest if you are looking at furthering your education in the audio industry definitely look at Abbey Road. I genuinely thinks it’s going to give you the best shot at the music industry. The people here genuinely care about you, I’ve had lots of talks with my lecturers and tutors and showed them my own personal work, and they do care, and its nice. I would say if you don’t come here and you look at anywhere else just have a look at what they’re selling you, be wise about your choice, a university is something you’re paying for. Consider it, see what you’re paying for and see what they’re giving you in return. I think the return here is far, far, far beyond what you pay for.

From DJing for the past 10 years I am now 27, I got into the audio engineering and mix and mastering and it was kind of like a nice side project. And i was like “Yes, that’s actually a clear path i could bring up as well as the DJing.” I wish to position myself as ‘Australia’s go-to STEM mastering engineer.’ Ideally for all genres, I’m getting involved in more since being at Abbey Road, but i specialise in dance music. People specifically come to me because of what i can do in the realms of dance music. I’ve had quite a few successful tracks now, kind of in that Trap genre, and that’s doing very well at the moment, like, globally, and so that’s doing quite well for me, so that’s where i see myself audio engineering wise; ‘Australia’s go to guy.’ From there, the world. DJing, it’s always the end goal to be the biggest and the best. My music isn’t mainstream, so don’t expect to be a Tiesto type character, but someone like, you know, getting on the name bill like Oslar, touring America a lot. World success, you know, bring it on.

The skill set you need for this job will be you have to hear things that an average person might not hear in a track, you know, you need to be able to detect frequencies that are throwing the mix off. That comes with time, don’t expect… don’t finish school today and listen to a song and say “oh no i can’t hear these things, i can’t do this job.” You develop that skill over time, its like going to the gym. Your ears develop a lot over time, like in a big way. There’s little trick you can do to do that. Other skill sets, you gotta be a people person, be very open, friendly. You’re dealing with people’s art, ok? You can’t be rude, you have to be honest, so if you don’t like it say why, and give an alternative route. You have to be dedicated to stay up a lot at night, spend a lot of time on computers. You also have to be quite tech savvy, I mean i’m not very nerdy with computers, i mean i play games a lot, i’m a bit of a nerd in that regard. But you have to very into the programs you’re using, digital workstations, you have to understand the soft you’re using. ‘DAWs’ which are ‘Digital Audio Workstations’ which is what you’ll be getting into if you start this career, and you’ll have to understand that and there’s a lot of things involved in that which seem daunting, but you need to have skill and that as well.

To anyone who is interested in becoming an Audio Engineer, a mixing engineer or even just involved in the audio industry, you have to be like “I love music.” Make sure you’re serious about it and enjoy it and just take a jump, you know, take a leap. Don’t have a Plan B is not what your parents want to here me say, but yeah you can’t sit there and go “oh yeah i’ll try it for a few years then i’m going to go back to my banking job.” You have to be like “i’m going to be in the music industry, and i’m just gonna give it my all.” And it might mean that you don’t have instant success, and if you did I almost don’t want that for you because you’ll end up strange. You need to put in the hard yards. Be passionate about it.

We at Abbey Road Institute were thrilled with the full house in attendance for Study for a Day last Saturday.  There is certainly no shortage of passionate and talented lovers of music production in Melbourne!  Our students for the day were treated to a morning with rock royalty’s Lance Krive and briefly looked at the historical journey of Abbey Road Studios and also stepped back in time listening to the some of the first ever recordings made

Students were able to get their hands on ProTools and had some fun remixing a popular track.  The afternoon was spent with our tech guru, Brad Toan, who had all hands on deck in our performance space and API studio with our students for a day learning how to prepare a mix session, utilise different studio techniques and how to work with various studio microphones.

Unfortunately, there were many who missed out due to the overwhelming number of registrations, so we are excited to announce a second Study for a Day on Saturday 25th February. If you were not able to make the last event you can register now at blog.abbeyroadinstitute.com.au/study-for-day

Last week Abbey Road Students attended a masterclass from electronic music producer and A&R industry specialist, Arlo Enemark. Arlo’s shared his understanding and experiences of his both processes in the studio and a producer – renowned for some of the country’s most engaging club tracks – to his work in the production and development of artists in the expanding market of online sales and streaming services

Alex Mraz, who is in her first trimester at Abbey Road Institute had this to say about the day – “As well as giving us heaps of handy tips for how to go about building sessions, sampling and mixing beats in Ableton, Arlo had some really important industry perspectives on the way music is distributed and consumed. Tapping into streaming services, navigating contracts and self-marketing is much less of a mystery now!”.

Lance Krive (Senior Lecturer)

I come from the touring background, i’ve been touring with bands for over 35 years. I’m a sound man, I do front-of-house sound and also monitors for them. And now I teach at Abbey Road.

Who did you tour with?

I toured with Stevie Nix, I was with her for over 15 years. I was her engineer, doing her monitors and I also worked in the recording studios with her, as well as building studios in all of her houses. I went out with Madonna, I did the blonde ambition tour with her. I did Lionel Richie, I was out with Cher, I was out with Julio Iglesias, Anita Baker.

Did you always want to be an engineer?

I actually wanted to be a guitarist, but i released that I was no Eddie Van Halen and that I wasn’t going to make a living at it. So in my town we had a lot of bands there, so I used to hang out with the sound men because I thought they had a pretty good job, because they could make or break the band if it sounded good or it sounded bad. So I just really became interested in doing sound for bands.

What personal attributes do you need for the job?

Personal attributes and strengths that you need for this job is definitely working with all kinds of people. There are going to be times where you’re working with people you don’t like, and they can’t know that you don’t like them, so it becomes kind of a babysitting job, but at the same time its also you have to know what you’re doing because they’re expecting the best out of you, and they’re paying a lot of money for that, so when that’s happening you really have to know what you’re doing.

How do you find Abbey Road’s environment?

I think Abbey Road has one of the best environments. You come in and you’re working on the best gear out there. And just the attitude of everybody, everybody really wants to be here and everybody’s really into it. And that just makes it such a great working environment and it makes it for a great learning environment as well because the students pick up on that. And they want to be here because we want to be here, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Why did you decide to teach at Abbey Road?

I like Abbey Road because they are doing it right. They’re teaching students what they wanted to learn, not what the teachers think they want to learn. And that’s really important to me, especially in the music industry. There’s a lot of places out there that just kinda teach what they think the students want and the students don’t really want that, and here its about the students, which i think is fantastic.

What type of career paths are available to students?

The career path for students coming out of here, really the world’s open to them. I mean they can be producers, they could go do engineering in recording studios, live sound as well. They could get into film sound and doing sound for film, there’s just so many for them to work at, I mean really, its a huge industry.

What is the next step after graduation?

After they leave here they really just have to get out there and just start working. Whether it’s volunteering, or just going and finding bands that need engineers, or people who want to, you know, bands that want to record there’s always bands that want to record demos, and just start doing it. The cool thing is when they come out of here they actually have the skills to do that, so they don’t look lie the fool they actually look like they, you know, and they are, they know what they’re doing.

What advice would you give to young people thinking of becoming audio engineers?

Abbey Road Institute is proud to announce that our “Telling Lies” remix competition has come to a close and we have our winner! Congratulations to Bnszo

Bsnzo will be receive an exclusive one on one mentoring session with topline and electronic music royalty Paul Brandoli, has been invited to spend a day alongside the legendary team at Studios 301 and also receive an exclusive recording and mastering package at Studios 301 Sydney.

Abbey Road Institute Australia is proud of our connection with Studios 301 and would like to thanks Sony music, Chores & Boswell for their involvement in the competition! Watch blog.abbeyroadinstitute.com.au for more remix competitions, mentoring sessions and producer events! Congratulations again to Bsnzo!

Hi, i’m Bianca, and i’m a DJ and a music producer. So i was probably 18 -19. The whole dance music thing was probably not as big as it is today. I remember distinctly one night I went out and I saw, i’d never seen a female DJ before basically. I went out to a place with some friends, and i saw this girl playing music, and she was playing amazing, amazing music, and i just looked at my friend and said ”˜i want to do that.’ And that was pretty much, pretty much it. I went home, i bought myself, you know, CDJs and Decks, taught myself everything from scratch, and just kind of met people and networked and kept going along the way.

Starting out as a DJ it was very much a culture of just DJing, just playing other people’s music. It then changed very quickly as technology changed and, you know, those sort of things became more available I suppose at a cheaper, cheaper cost. People started producing their own music. So I guess, from an artist’s perspective, you jumped from being a Dj, you kind of had to produce to keep up with the game. Everyone else was sought of becoming a producer or playing their own music i suppose when they’re DJing, so that’s how that really, really came about.

I guess for me, being a DJ, i decided that, you know if I wanted to continue down this path i also would like to play my own music, so production kind of just works well when you are doing those sort of things.

A producer basically, you know, I see as kind of like the visionary of the project. You can be involved at several levels, so whether it is obviously using the programs, creating music. But it can be also sources like finding talents, singers, pianists, you know, any kind of person who plays an instrument that you want to incorporate into that project. I find it to be quite the visionary of the whole project, so pulling elements together to make that certain track a certain way or, you know, doing something for the artist. You know, the recording process, the mixing process, the mastering process, there’s all these different elements that come together to sort of make that, what the project is.
The thing I like the most about producing music I suppose is the overall, I just love sounds, as crazy as that sounds. I love music, so I guess for me incorporating elements and, you know, just working on projects that really, you know, are from my heart I suppose.

When you are a music producer and dealing with artists of different calibers, and i guess different backgrounds, and, you know, you’re dealing with people really, it’s really important to understand where they’re coming from, what their idea is and, creatively, what they want to get out of, I guess, the session. From a producer’s perspective, it’s you job to basically get all those insights and that information, and work out the best way to plan and organise what you’re going to achieve. I think just being really open and honest with the person that you’re working with, the artist or their band etc, and if it’s something that you’re not really interested in or its not really your thing or you don’t feel like you can work on it, I think that it’s important to also be upfront with that kind of thing as well. Because if you’re not interested or you’re not passionate about it, i don’t think that going to come through in your work , and then, you know, basically you’re not achieving the best results for anyone.
The thing about this is that it’s probably not the most traditional job, you know, being a lawyer or something like that you can always graduate and go straight into a firm or into an organisation, which is many jobs and many things that you are doing, but i suppose with production it’s probably not that traditional. Once you finish you really need to network and work with people with artists. You may do a lot of free work, you may charge, you know, a lower amount for your work and those sort of things. It’s really important to network and do great work and continue down that path.

With any industry it’s really important to keep learning. Growing up with my parents who, you know, love the Beatles and all those kind of things, Abbey Road to me was very much a London thing. You know, the big studio there, and they had made countless amounts of records and all those kind of things, so in that sense i knew it was a place that holds a lot of value and is respected world wide. When i did some research into doing production full time, i came across Abbey Road here in Melbourne, and i thought ”˜this is where i want to be.’

I love the flexibility of the place, and it doesn’t matter how old you are, or what level you’re at, or all those kind of things, you’re always learning something new. There’s people at entry level, there’s people at a few years in , and depending on where you are at in your journey there’s no right or wrong, or, you know, everybody helps each other, so i think that, for me, is the best part of it.
I’m really, you know, the ability to use the studios. I’ve never had access to this kind of equipment and studios beforehand, and so for me being able to be in here and using all the equipment, and the studios and recording things and, you know, it’s just taken my production and where i’m at to a whole new level. The amount of resources really available, so the teachers here and the facilities and the staff are second to done. They’ve been in the industry for, you know, 20-30 years each of them, in different areas as well; live sound production.

The best learning for me is from the theory perspective, you know. All the background things you need to learn and then that will get you to the next step.

To be a producer in sort of any music environment is to just have a passion for it and a love for it. Think also you need to sort of be a little bit technical minded, but, you know, i wasn’t sort of completely that way either, i’ve learnt along the years. Other attributes i think is just kind of having a good ear for music I think, you know, sort of needing to know what sounds good and what doesn’t sound good.

Music, you know, is something that you share between people I think, and it’s something you create a connection through, you know, whether you are just dancing in your bedroom or, you know, doing all these kind of things; music is music. It makes, you know, it basically changes your emotions very quickly, go from happy to sad and all these kind of things. having a good is just, I think me personally is being able to recognise what sounds good, so, you know, things that are gonna make people happy, things that, you know, are going to make people sad, depending on what kind of song you are producing, i suppose. I think recognising ”˜this is going to sound good’ or ”˜this is going to work’ you know, is super important as well.

Being a producer, you do have to have an element of being artistic or creative. I think the creative process can also be learned, you can learn how to apply things to be creative, which, you know, can lead you into doing this and doing that. So the more you do, the more you’re involved, I’ll think you’ll find that my creativity, I like to put certain sounds on things, I like to put my own sort of spin on things because that makes me unique; that makes my work stand out. So i think in this day and age, it really important to have a bit of an edge over, you know, the guy next door.
So if you’re interested in this particular field, i would recommend, honestly, just jumping online, jumping on the internet, start looking at programs and tools and elements for production. You basically need to work off something, so Protools, Ableton, anything like that. Logic, i think Apple does logic as well. So start looking into these programs and start really, you know, learning how to use these programs, i think that’s really their best advice. Start recording friends and start, you know, recording bands or, you know, go out on weekends and see what people do and go, you know, speak to maybe somebody who does recording and those kind of things, learning about microphones, learning about, you know, instruments and how things sound. Just getting your foot in the door whenever you can, I think that’s really important.

On the 10th of Febuary Abbey Road students will be treated to a exclusive masterclass from Arlo Enemark. Arlo is both a music producer and music industry professional, whose understanding of the process stretches from the studio to the sales/streaming platforms.

Under his moniker Watermelon Boy, Arlo creates sophisticated electronica over infectious carnival grooves. His music, unique blend of “Australian Sound” and Moombahton, has evolved to suit outdoor stages, and evokes the feeling of sand between your toes at sunset.

In addition to his own production work, Arlo has been at Xelon Entertainment for more than six years, helping artists and labels make their music available to fans. He was instrumental in setting up Noisehive (Xelon’s platform for single artists and small labels) and works with top-shelf club labels labels including Sweat It Out and Onelove.

Over the past year, he has acquired quality releases for Xelon’s own in-house labels 405 Recordings, Velcro, Drumb and Micropope, promoted to club and radio DJs, streaming sites and online press, worked on many successful club tracks and helped advise and establish artists wishing to start a label or go out on their own.

Arlo has spoken at Face The Music, Big Sound & EMC, and will be sharing both his production and industry knowledge on the 10th.

To hear some of Arlo’s music click HERE