Introduction: Part II (2005-2025)
The original Half-Light home audio production studio (2009)
Half-Light Studio (2021)This the second of a two-part blog which is intended to give an overview of my sound journey to date, you can read it here.
My first attempt at a formal sound education was not entirely successful, but neither could I say it was unsuccessful. After my undergraduate degree in Arts I enrolled in the Music Management and Sound course at Colaiste Stiofain Naofa in Cork, now known as Cork College of FET — Tramore Road Campus. Everything I knew about sound to that point had been self-taught by studying the manuals of the products I had bought, by reading articles in Sound On Sound magazine, by chatting to strangers in forums, and by shadowing sound engineers in local venues. I had a weekly sound engineering gig in a pub in town but it was basic stuff — a few microphones, a few D.I. boxes, a twelve channel Dynacord mixer hooked to a very basic two-channel PA system.
It didn’t quite go as planned for me. The curriculum was heavily skewed towards music theory, song-writing, and performance, with only a small portion of our time spent learning about sound. At that point in time I had no training in music theory and so I struggled to keep up with the others. Interestingly though I also learned that my song-writing output was pretty eclectic, varying wildly from quirky instrumental numbers to heavier lyric-based songs. A classmate commented once that my compositions might fare better on a film soundtrack than a live venue, and they weren’t wrong.
I decided to drop out of the course and go back to work full time during the day, with sound engineering in the evenings and weekends. But it wasn’t long before I got the urge to continue my education. I applied for a masters degree in Linguistics at my alma mater, and commenced my studies a few short months later. When the time came to begin writing my thesis I was happy that my professors gave me the latitude to bring sound back into the frame. I focused my dissertation on the area of Acoustic Phonetics, the study of the physical properties of speech. This involved analysing the frequency, amplitude, and duration of speech fragments using various hardware and software tools. My thesis hypothesis was that synthetic speech was at a point where it could be employed in a classroom environment. I devised a study that would directly compare natural speech samples with computer-generated speech, and using these recordings I ran blind tests with groups of students. I ended up graduating with a top grade, and following this I was offered a teaching position at Université de Lille, France. At the same time I had also successfully applied for another masters degree, this time in Audio Technology at the University of Limerick.
A fork in the road had appeared directly ahead. I turned down the teaching position in France and headed instead to Limerick for one last attempt at formalising my education in sound. The course was tough, much tougher than I expected, but it opened my eyes to sound practices and practitioners that I had never encountered before. I learned about computer programming techniques for sound production , I learned about musique concrete and the troubadours who laid the foundations for the broad spectrum of sound and music we are familiar with today. I also learned for the first time about the art of sound design for film and television.
And then something interesting began to happen, I found that I could no longer sit down and just watch a film. I was breaking the soundtrack down in my head, separating the dialog track from the ambiences and the sound effects, making mental notes of where the score stops and starts, and what notes are being played by what instrument or source. It would be years before I would relearn how to follow the plot of a film for enjoyment, to watch a film purely for entertainment.
My cousin was working with Apple in Regents Street, London, and had written to tell me they were looking to hire an audio software specialist for the new Apple Store in Bristol. The role was to teach customers and staff how to use Apple’s proprietary audio production software — Logic Studio. I took a flight to Bristol and did the interview. They let me know that there was a high number of applicants, something I could have guessed having spoken a guy on the flight from Ireland who was also traveling for the interview. To my surprise I was offered the job and happily accepted. This meant packing a bag immediately and moving to Bristol, UK and restarting my life there. In this job I met a revolving door of fascinating people who arrived looking for tips on using this audio software. At the end of one particular tutorial session, a customer turned to me and said ‘No offence, but if I knew what you know about audio production I wouldn’t be sitting in this store teaching’. ‘None taken’ I said. He was right, and a plan began to form in my head.
Gradually this role began to shift into more of a sales position, and when I wasn’t busy giving classes I was expected to sell iPhones and MacBooks on the shop floor. So in 2009 I decided to move back home to Cork and I wasted no time in putting my plan into action. I assembled all of the audio gear I had amassed over the years and formed a studio in an unused room in my home. I took out an ad in the local film maker’s forum and offered my services as a sound editor and composer for short films. My cousin who had earlier given me the heads up on the role in Apple built a website for me, and I chose Half-Light Audio as the name of my one-man company.
Working with composer and arranger John O'Brien on the mix of an advert for Cork Opera House at Half-Light Studio, 2017.
Recording voiceover with Jeremy Irons on Mercedes Benz F1 documentary ‘Road to 2015’ at Half-Light Studio, 2015.Within a week or so I had my first work request on a ten-minute short film. The director asked me to edit and mix the sound, as well as composing the music. I was given a little over a weekend to turn over the finished result, and me being completely naive agreed. I think I stayed awake that entire weekend, with the exception of a couple of power naps here and there. The finished result was rough and ready, and the first public cinema screening at the Dare Media film festival was a white knuckle ride. But the experience will never leave me — hearing my music and my mixes resonate from the same speakers where only a few years earlier I had watched Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Word of mouth spread and I began to receive more requests for film music and sound work.
Before long I devised a plan to build the first bespoke audio post production facility in the Cork. Up until this point all audio post production on the island of Ireland was being done either in Dublin, Galway, or Belfast. After many, many pitching sessions I eventually raised the capital to finance the build. I outlined a studio design and found a suitable location to build. It needed to be somewhere that could house a soundproof studio, within striking distance of the main roads and the airport, and with convenient parking for clients. I commissioned a studio construction company to finalise my design for a 5.1 mix room, live room, vocal booth, and small canteen area. After a huge push I was finally ready to open the doors of Half-Light Studio. The reception from the local film and television community was great, now they had a place to work on their soundtracks, and voice artists no longer had to travel to Dublin to book a voiceover gig. Foreign productions could now readily tap into the local voice talent pool which was a great deal for everyone involved.
Over time I dropped music composition from my list of services. It was extremely time-consuming, and ultimately such a subjective thing. A director might like my ideas one day, and change their mind the next day, and the only solution was to start again. I was working in the studio on engineering duties during the day and writing music at night, burning the candle at both ends. Something had to give. So I put all my focus on the mixing and voice recording side of the business and things took off. I was receiving sound editing and mixing commissions from the national broadcaster, RTE, when they did not have capacity in-house. The very first voiceover that I recorded was for an online promo for a local start-up company, and one of the final recordings in the studio was ADR recording with Denis Villeneuve and Mark Mangini for the Oscar-winning soundtrack of Dune: Part I.
Ultimately the studio was unsustainable — the work flow was unreliable and overheads plus cost of maintenance and investment made a compelling case for relocating back to a home studio. When the pandemic shuttered worldwide productions long-term it was the beginning of the end for the studio. I made the difficult decision to close the doors for the last time and removed the facility. I did however manage to hang on to my audio equipment and brought it home to form a high end home studio.
A knock-on benefit from the closure of the studio has been that my interest in field recording has grown. I now have a mobile ambisonic recording rig for capturing immersive ambiences in the Irish landscapes to use in my sound design, as well as a smaller handheld stereo recorder that comes everywhere with me. The world is now my studio.