Feeding Starving Artists…
This is a video I did a few months ago in hopes of attracting some sound engineer volunteers at Open Mic Night. As far as I know, nobody was interested, however after watching this video, you might find yourself curiously drawn to a position as a front of house sound engineer.
Be sure to email chrisweatherly@btcchurch.com if this video has revolutionized your life and you want to volunteer.
I’ve made more than a few comments about the changing music industry and what ideas seem to be working more than others. Everyone seems to realize that people aren’t willing to pay to listen to music but would pay small amount of money to “own” it. The success of iTunes shows us people are willing to pay small amounts of money and be selective about what they want to listen to. The success of Pandora (and the like) shows that people still want to listen to music for free. Unfortunately neither appeals to both desires and neither has a great user interface. Instead of listing all of the problems with both platforms, I’d like to present you with the solution.
www.lala.com
Here’s why you should switch to Lala:
Your library is going to move online eventually: Lala allows you to upload all of your music library to their site which (for most of the songs) means that rather than uploading your copy of “My Heart Will Go On”, Lala, will give you unlimited online streaming to any song in your music library. No more trying to cram all your music into an 8GB drive… it’s already online.
“Buy” songs for 10 cent: Buy unlimited web streaming to any song for 10 cents. You can buy the MP3 (usually for under 99 cents) but then again, why would you?
Easy to use: By far the best user interface of any music application I’ve used. It’s intuitive and attractive. Just like my wife.
A social media environment: Although I’m not big on this, you can follow people, share playlists and interact with other music lovers on Lala.
Listen to the whole song for FREE: Instead of annoying 30 second previews, listen to the whole song once. Actually for a lot of things I listen to, once is enough.
As an incredibly mediocre sound engineer, I have had my fair share of experience with singers using improper mic technique. The funny things is, most of the singers I work with are very talented. They have great voices and often admirable vocal technique. It may be that these singers have never thought about mic technique or the difference it makes in sound production.
Consider yourselves aware. The principle behind mic technique is about as basic as you can get. I demonstrate it (and poorly) in the video below but check out the other videos for some examples of phenomenal mic technique. (Not and endorsement of the artists).
Basic Microphone Technique from Axis Institute on Vimeo.
Better examples of vocal microphone technique:
As I was working on adding cool buttons onto my blog I realized I have a problem. Despite the countless hours spent reading tech blogs and following geeks on twitter, I haven’t yet managed become a user of enough geeky web media to have the requisite 6 buttons on my sidebar. 5 just looks incomplete. There’s an awkward space. Glancing through the folder of geekcons (I may have invented that word) that I stole from another WordPress theme, I realized, I don’t use any of the services I had graphics for.
Could this mean I’m not actually that geeky?
Could it be one of the “cool” people that just happen to use, twitter, facebook, vimeo and Google Reader?
Obviously that isn’t the case so the only practical solution was this. I must start using a web service I had a graphic of.
FriendFeed was the obvious choice (and definitely solidifies my geekiness, but I still haven’t figured it out. It basically takes all of my other feeds and aggregates them (geek term alert) on one page. Could be useful. Stay tuned to find out.
Some of you may remember my new years resolution to create something every single week for the year of 2009.
Amazingly I’ve been able to keep to my rash promise and here are the results: 16 pieces of music, most I wrote, some I produce or helped write/produce. Some I did for work, some I did for friends and others, just for myself. Here is a mash-up of snippets from each of the pieces.
I wish I had an endorsement that would pay me money for suggesting that artists switch from their PCs to a Mac, but I don’t.
I do, however have three good reasons. I’m well aware that Macs are over priced. I know that on them, software crashes and indeed (in fact it happened to a co-worker this week) they do self destruct to the point where one can’t use them, but here are my reasons for suggesting you get one.
Thanks to the great response we had for our inaugural Axis Open Mic Night, we’re proud to announce the 2009 Open Mic Night: Summer Jam.
Once again we’re offering a low pressure environment for artists at BTCchurch to perform as well as an atmosphere of fun and hang out. This time we’re stepping up the creativity and encouraging participants perform:
Original songs
Instrumental pieces
Short Films/Videos
Full band arrangements of songs
At Axis, we’re all about challenging you, as an artist, to be more creative and always be developing your skills and abilities. This is a great opportunity for all of us artists to push ourselves.
If you’d like to sign up, click here to fill out the online form.
Digital of course.
For a limited time one can (and I did) download the Studeo Edition of IK Multimedia’s Fender amp modeling software for only $50 dollars. Think about it; One Fender amplifier would set you back almost 2 grand but digitally, you can have 4 of them for a fraction of the cost.
Viva la Digital Revolution.
Of course there are those who would tell you that digital amps just don’t sound the same. I uploaded a small sample of what Amplitube Fender Studio Edition can do with my mediocre guitar skillz. Actually in this track, all the intruments benefit from the warm sweet sound of a Fender amp converted into zeros and ones.
Ampli-Jam
According to Michael Arrington on TechCrunch; music streaming services are avoiding publicity like the plague.
What is the reason you ask?
Apparently these services can’t make enough money to pay record labels the hefty fees they are charging for streaming songs. Not only are the labels determined to make themselves obsolete in the next 3 years, they’re trying to take down as many startup companies and their investors as they can. I’m sure that will help our current economic situation.
See the full Tech Crunch post here.
In this weeks loop, I pay homage to one of Hollywoods creepiest composers. Maybe it’s the fact that Danny Elfman has scored far too many of Tim Burton’s movies, but I always think of his music as being eerie. This little melody is in two forms, one is meant to be looped, the other; not.
As always, comment and let me know what you think.
creepersloop (120 Bpm)
