The West End Well is a coop on Wellington Avenue in Ottawa. They have a nice little eating / bar area and what looks like a great kitchen. And there is a small grocery store up front … the perfect mix for a neighbourhood gathering place.
And they have a space for musicians to play on Friday nights. Nick and Dylan were given an opportunity to be the entertainment on Friday, 20 February 2015 and they did a great job. I brought some of my recording equipment and a couple of stills cameras just in case and in fact I was able to tap the headphone jack with one Tascam DR05 and attach the other to the mic stand to hear the audience.
I put the Panasonic G6 with the Sigma 30mm 2.8 on the table I was sitting at, which was front row center in relation to the microphone and I put the Panasonic GM1 with its little 12-32 kit lens on a small ledge that runs down the side of that area right in front of the huge California window to the kitchen. I brought an extra battery and was able to record the whole show on the G6, with the GM1 crapping out toward the end of Dylan’s opening set. I don’t really know why that happened, but luckily the G6 is the better of the two angles anyway so not a huge loss.
I also shot many stills during the show and published a selection of them to Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/kim.letkeman/media_set?set=a.10153145534901057.1073741831.615766056&type=3
I should mention that the stills were shot with the Nikon D90 and Tamron 28-75 and with the Olympus E-PM2 and 45 1.8. Both cameras performed magnificently.
Dylan led with 8 original songs …
Here’s his first song “Mary and Daniel” mastered in Adobe Audition CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC (I used a trial version of them to evaluate whether I wanted to switch from Sony Movie Studio.)
Nick followed with a 13 song set, mostly originals …
Here is song number 19 from the show, one of Nick’s originals called “Time and I” … this one mastered in Sony Movie Studio Platinum Suite 13. I did reuse the Adobe Audition CC soundtrack, but Sound Forge would have pretty much equaled it.
This is a great place to gather and listen to music. I was really impressed. Check it out …
A note on mastering these videos … I have written a few articles lately about looking for something better than Sony Movie Studio and after an intensive learning curve with Adobe Premiere Pro and Audition CC and then for Cyberlink PowerDirector, AudioDirector and ColorDirector, I can safely say that Sony is the best bet for me. And frankly, anyone doing amateur video work on a very tight budget should have this on their radar …
http://kimletkeman.blogspot.ca/2015/02/sony-movie-studio-13-might-be-time-to.html
http://kimletkeman.blogspot.ca/2015/02/first-round-of-tests-powerdirector-13.html
