The next meeting of the AES Melbourne Section will be an online event held on Monday 11th August 2025 via Zoom.
It will commence at 7:30 pm AEST with a brief Section Annual General Meeting, which will feature reports from the Chairman and the Treasurer, followed by the election of Section Officers and Committee Members for the 2025/26 year.
Bookings are required – please book at https://www.trybooking.com/DCYKW
Then, at approx. 7:45 pm AEST, Paul Messick will present on the topic of:
The next meeting of the AES Melbourne Section will be a social event held on
Monday 23rd June 2025 at 7:30 pm
That’s not far away, so book now.
Join us at Shavan’s Indian Restaurant in Patterson Lakes for an evening of good food and good company.
You will need to book at https://www.trybooking.com/DCRTI so that we can advise the venue of numbers.
Continue reading “Meeting Notice: June 2025 – A Social Evening”Members and guests of the AES Melbourne Section connected via Zoom to hear Ross Cockle recount his days at the Bill Armstrong and Armstrong AAV Studios in the seventies and eighties.
Following an introduction by Section Chair, Graeme Huon, Ross started by recounting how he had started at Armstrong Studios in Albert Road, South Melbourne in 1973 as part of the workforce needed for the transition to the new Armstrongs Studios in Bank Street.
This was just after they had taken delivery of the first Australian-built Optro 16-Track recorder. Ross joined as Armstrongs was bolstering staff numbers to handle the move into the “old butter factory” premises that Bill Armstrong had just purchased in Bank Street. He told of how he started as a “gofer” fetching cigarettes and “recording fluid” (alcohol) for the producers and engineers – not an issue at all in those days, despite being only 15-16 years old. We then got a rundown of the microphones being used at that time, lots of EV RE20s, Neumann U67s and some FET U47s, as well as a classic valve U47 that was kept for special sessions. He went on to tell us how he graduated to dubbing duties, where he had to make multiple copies of radio commercials for distribution to stations, and how recording radio commercials and jingles was the money-making enterprise that subsidised the music recording operation, and how jingles were being recorded during the day, and bands being recorded at night at a lower studio rate. He described the Ampex 351 and Rola 77 tape recorders used for dubbing.
Continue reading “Meeting Report: 10th February 2025 – Ross Cockle – The Armstrong Studio & AAV Years”We are back on Zoom for our February meeting
You can book via this link https://www.trybooking.com/CYMKO
The next online meeting of the AES Melbourne Section will be held on
Monday 10th February 2025 at 7:30pm AEDT (UTC+11) – via Zoom.
Long-term recording engineer and studio manager Ross Cockle will give us a journey through his early career 1972-1986:
Ross will take us through his time at Bill Armstrong’s Albert Road South Melbourne location as it expanded from 1972/3 into the multi-studio complex at 180 Bank Street South Melbourne. He rose through the ranks, from dogsbody to dubbing room, and assisting on sessions to eventually recording music of all styles and with some of the biggest bands, composer/arrangers and labels.
