Iron Imager VI: Meet the CONTENDER – Enter Brad Leask!

It is official, here is the contender! Guys, I am so proud to present you one of the best guys out there taking it up against the champ Sidey from last year’s Iron Imager. Sidey vs. Brad Leask. This will be epic!

Brad appeared on my radar since I checked some of his Soundcloud audio and reached out to the blog a few years ago. He is a super talented bloke and his technical skills are really impressive, especially for his age! He woks for NOVA in Australia. Enter Brad Leask!

 How do you feel?

Humbled. This is such an amazing opportunity.
I have a huge amount of respect & admiration for Sidey, to say I’m nervous would be an understatement, but I’m really looking forward to it.

Have you been to LA / California / the US before ? Are you excited to come?

Never. I have ALWAYS wanted to see America, I’m so incredibly excited to come over & spend some time there.
If you need me, I’ll be the guy sitting up the front of the ‘L.A. sightseeing’ bus.

Of course you know Sidey – whats your strategy against one of the best Imagers out there ? How do you want to win this battle?

It’s a tough one…
I’ll just go with my gut & give it a red hot crack.
Maybe I’ll get Sidey on the sauce in the days leading up to the event & see if I extract a few pointers out of the reigning champ…

How difficult will it be to work off a portable workstation vs. your fully equipped Studio? Whats your setup?

It’s always a challenge working outside of your usual work space. I’ve never worked off a laptop before, so this will be interesting!
I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a portable pro tools set up for quite a while now, maybe this is the excuse I needed to splurge? I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

What is your favorite plugINs right now? New findings?

I keep it pretty simple when it comes to plug-ins:

Cliché I know, but I couldn’t live without Pitch ‘n Time, it’s such a powerful tool.

Waves Tune is also a favourite.

SuperTap 6 from Waves is one I’ve started playing around with recently. The ‘Pensando Exciter’ preset is a super cool effect to layer VO tracks with.

Filter Gate & Vintage Filter from AIR are great fun to play around with.

What techniques you are using most often these days?

I always find myself reaching for WavesTune. I’ll usually figure out the key of the music I’m working with, then I tend to duplicate the VO part & treat it with WavesTune. The ‘formant’ button in the top left of the plug-in is really cool, when it’s in ‘non corrected’ mode, you can really weird sounds out of it, perfect for layering VO with. I’ll often layer the main VO with that, then send the affected VO layer to a delay bus to get some stereo shape. Staying in grid mode is super handy when using this trick, always keeping the VO delays in time with the beat.
Also…panning! I’m always reaching for the pencil tool to draw in cool pans.

Anything you want to tell Sidey?

Any tips on avoiding jetlag???

Good luck mate! Can’t wait.