The following is a selection of my relevant work.
To find out more, feel free to get in touch, or head over to my LinkedIn profile.
Production & Mixing
Callum Gardner
I recorded, co-produced and mixed the latest four singles for this super talented London-based singer-songwriter. I also played both fretless and fretted bass, in the studio and live.
Ember Rev
The co-production for the latest two albums of this fantastic rock-folk band based in Cambridge, UK, has been a great experience.
Mally Harpaz & Ciara Clifford
Recorded, co-arranged and produced the violas — played by Paolo Clementi, for two songs in Mally’s stunning new album, Zoom In Zoom Out.
For Ciara’s brilliant eponymous album, I wrote the cello parts, recorded and produced the violas together with Paolo Clementi.
Tøtem
Eclipse is a single by the young producer Tøtem, part of a different batch of new releases, where I upped the ante and played three different electric bass parts. Also, I co-produced, mixed and mastered.
Bass
Sound Design
Game Audio
During my years as a game sound designer, I was in charge of writing the soundtrack as well as creating and editing all the sound effects. Working with audio programmers, I also implemented an adaptive soundtrack in the in-house game engine. The playlist below can only show the linear ideas, later deployed as stems divided in adaptable chunks, so that they could follow the mood of the gameplay.
The following “Trailer” (with and without a light musical texture) is a full-motion extract from a promotional video (2002/2003). Almost all the sound effects were recorded in the studio using Foley techniques.
The following playlist contains a few examples and experiments, created for the action-platform game Ruff Trigger: The Vanocore Conspiracy:
Game Audio Portfolio Copyright Notice
© (copyright) and ℗ (sound recording copyright) by Simone Silvestroni (Minutes to Midnight), except: Boss, Tex Mex, Funk, Party © shared with Joseph Blanc.; Industrial City, Racing Pt 1, Tribal and Cave © Playstos Entertainment, ℗ Simone Silvestroni (Minutes to Midnight).Noise Removal
During a recent production, I received a Pro Tools session where a squeaky hi-hat pedal sound found its way through a couple of microphones, unnoticed. Using iZotope RX‘s spectral editing, I painstakingly cleaned it up with excellent results. You can listen to the before and after:
Tuning Correction
I once tracked twelve tracks of viola for a short song of mine. A few takes were skewing an otherwise perfect tuning, I went to correct the pitch in agreement with the player:
Forensic Cleaning
Because of my passion for historical recordings, this is arguably one of my favourite tasks. The following example is an audio cleaning I performed on a famouse 1968 live recording by Robert Francis Kennedy. I even ended up using it in a song of mine:
Drum Doubling
After receiving one muffled mono overhead track of a drum recording, I dug in and suggested drum doubling as a solution.
I sampled three tracks from the drums, and turned them into MIDI. Applying my digital drum kit of choice to those new parts and blending them with the original drummer, I was able to recreate both the missing room and a nicer round ambience, fixing the narrow stereo image. You can listen to the before and after:
Composition
Writing music, whether in the form of songs or bass and drums grooves, has always been an integral part of my creativity.
Under the moniker Minutes to Midnight, I released a concept album in the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall, titled After 1989: A Trip To Freedom.