What the HECK is going on with the Music Industry‽‽‽

Yes, THREE interrobangs!

But seriously, what is going on? It seems every day over the last week I've been reading about incredible change, and yet I'm still seeing business as usual.


First off is the whole debacle over Trent Reznor's remix site remix.nin.com. After butting heads with Universal (apparently releasing NIN samples in this manner would impact Universal's lawsuit against Youtube/Google, lol), Reznor just threw the site up anyway. Universal's control is weakened, but not completely absent as Reznor did make some small concessions. From LiveDaily.com:

The head-scratching apparently ended on Monday (11/26), when Reznor unveiled remix.nin.com, where an FAQ explains how the site is dealing with the aforementioned concerns about fans using unauthorized materials in conjunction with their NIN remixes. The site describes unauthorized materials as "samples of songs by other artists, or samples from movies, TV shows, or video games," and says that any remixes containing such elements "will be rejected during the approval process."
"Please understand that it is not our wish to impose these restrictions on your creativity or the functionality of this site, but we have no choice in the matter," the FAQ continues.

So Universal's been hamstrung, and apparently so has Warner. Hot on the heels of Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr's admission of mishandling music's digital conversion (add that to Doug Morris bumbling through his explanation of how these new intarwebs frighten his age-ed soul, via Wired), we're now witnessing an accelerating drop in CD sales. Warner specifically, is reporting a 58% drop in CD sales over this time last year, and a net profit of only five million dollars (as opposed to twelve last year, via Yahoo/Reuters).
Warner's plan is to get more involved in artist "packaging" including image rights, management, advertising, and touring revenue, but for a company that is, admittedly, reactionary and obstinate about change, one has to wonder if they can actually shift gears fast enough to stay relevant. Madonna has already left to pursue more non-traditional distribution, not to mention a whole slew of others like NIN and Radiohead. Will others follow their example, or stay with the current, failing business model?
[Cartoon from HijinksEnsue]


Lastly, EMI is considering pulling funding for the RIAA. One of the Big Four that support the fan-suing organization, it's looking to cut a significant portion of the $132 million it contributes to the RIAA each year. This would be a positive step in my opinion, and right in line with EMI's new radical stance (Idolator), but I can't let go of that number. One HUNDRED and THIRTY TWO MILLION dollars, every year! That's TEN times the profit Warner made LAST year on album sales. You really have to question an industry that will pay ten times what it makes to sue and harass the very customers it's trying to attract. [Story @ Ars Technica]


So, we've got all this news, newsnewsnews, and yet the RIAA is still blackmailing people, artists aren't getting paid any better for their work, and it still costs me $15+ for a new-ish album (unless I go "gray market", or locked DRM crappy low bitrate download). Great.

*sigh*

Enough bitching from me, back to work...

Conan O'Brien pays salaries of 80 people

Conan O'Brien is digging deep to help his staff weather the WGA strike. Host of NBC's "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" will cover the salaries of his non-writing production staff for the foreseeable future, an NBC U spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.

read more | digg story

Natalie Portman Interviewed by NYT - 'Screentest'

I usually hate interviews. I don't want to know too much about the actors I enjoy watching. I used to enjoy Tom Cruise movies, for example, but now I can't separate his characters from the nut that jumped on Oprah's couch and told Matt Lauer that he was being "glib".

That's why it's so refreshing watching Natalie Portman in this interview. She's classy cool, and demonstrates a remarkable poise for woman her age. Engendering an instant respect, I think she'll be one of the only child actors from my generation to make it out alive...

This interview is beautifully shot in black and white, creatively edited, and they ask her "What are your 5 favorite non-musical sounds".

THAT'S SOMETHING I WOULD ASK!

WGA Strike: A Love Story

Sent in from my friend A.

Biggelow keeps stealing the remote...

He hasn't used it for a chew toy yet, but shouldn't he know that bad things happen to those that get in between a man and his remote?




*sigh*
He can be such a little jerk...

***UPDATE***

He KEEPS doing it!
Caught two more times...

T-Amp over at Think Geek

Think Geek has the scoop on the T-Amp, a tiny inexpensive amp, that apparently out classes amps that are many times more expensive.

To put it short and sweet... The T-Amp line of amplifiers from Sonic Impact are revered by audiophiles everywhere for their amazing sound and incredible price. These amps have better sound than others that cost 10 times as much.

The key to the T-Amp is - amazingly enough - Class T amplification. Class T amplifiers offer both the audio fidelity of Class AB (which you'd likely find in your home stereo reciever) and the power efficiency of Class D amplifiers (often used to provide the punch for subwoofer amps).

Think Geek Preview

Product Page @ Sonic Impact

Warburton talks to Kotaku - has funny voice - is big guy

Reading through Kotaku's interview with Patrick "Puddy-The-Tick-Brock-Sampson" Warburton, I just can't shake his voice. It's just plain funny.

Anywho, if you haven't figured it out, Warburton is a pretty accomplished voice actor, and while the interview is pretty interesting, I found this bit to be the most telling:

"Videogames are fun to do," said Warburton. "I don't really see how you could make a living off of it. These games can make jillions of dollars, but the piece of the action that actors get is really miniscule compared to what these things do. But any paycheck is better than a kick in the pants. It's fun to work on them and be part of them."

This guy is most certainly making bigger deals than scale, and even HE thinks video game voice actors are underpaid. It really is time for videogames to start paying out residuals.

READ THE WHOLE INTERVIEW HERE @ KOTAKU

P.S.

Jerry: So, Puddy, this is a pretty good move for you, huh? No more "grease monkey".
David Puddy: I don't much care for that term.
Jerry: Oh. Sorry, I didn't know...
David Puddy: No, I don't know too many monkeys who could take apart a fuel injector.
Jerry: I saw one once that could do sign language.
David Puddy: Yeah, I saw that one. Uh... Koko.
Jerry: Yeah, Koko.
David Puddy: Right, Koko. That chimp's alright. High-five.

HIGH-FIVE!

I kid you not: What to do when your computer randomly plays Fur Elise

Wow!This is a REAL Microsoft support page. Some one has HAD this problem...

read more | digg story

Adam Sessler on Mass Effect - Has a lot to say about the voice acting...

We all know how I feel about voice acting in games. All to often it's overlooked for fancier graphics, or it feels like it was tacked on at the last minute, or it's just plain bad. It's made even more disappointing by the fact that it doesn't have to be that way.
While I think most gamers value innovative game play over story telling, games like Portal, Oblivion, and Half Life 2 show us that it's the subtleties of good performance that really add to the immersive effect of gaming. In essence good performance helps build that fourth wall around the player, helps create that suspension of disbelief, made all the trickier by the fact that gaming is interactive.

The player controls the action, but also has to lose themselves in the game at the same time.

What's been most frustrating for me, is that all to often you'll hear about games with bad voice acting, but you rarely hear anyone really talk about voice acting positively. In a review you might see some blurb at the end of a review "Oh, uhhhh, I've got 100 words to go, so, uhhh, the voice acting didn't suck...yeah". I mean, this year Spike didn't even include a "Voice Acting" category in their awards show line up!

That's why it's so refreshing to hear Adam Sessler talk about how refreshing good voice acting is.

The Easiest Work Space Upgrade YOU Might Be Overlooking - Computer Monitors

So, I'm a big fan of dual screens. In fact, I get a little claustrophobic when I have to use just one monitor.
Up until recently I had two different types of screens, one 19"LCD (flat panel) and one 19"CRT (bigboxybulky). Well, the CRT finally started dying, so I replaced it with a 22" LCD I found on sale. The extra space has been fantastic!

So why am I so excited? We're just talking about 3" right?

Well, not really. The amount of information you can see on screen is actually governed by your monitor's resolution. Each image you see, be it on a computer, cell phone, or TV, is made up of a series of dots or pixels. The greater the number of pixels per inch, the smoother the image will be, and the more information you can fit on the screen.
My 19" monitors had a native resolution 1280x1024 or 1,280 dots across and 1,024 dots down. The actual dimensions of my monitor are 14" x 11.5", or 161 square inches. When you divide the resolution by the surface area, you get the dots per square inch. This is sometimes know as pixel density. For every square inch on my 19" monitor there are over 8,100 pixels (fun fact: your standard 19" computer monitor is almost FOUR times the resolution of standard definition TV).

So, moving up to a 22" monitor SOUNDS like I get an extra 3 inches, or a 15% increase in screen size, but lets do the math.
Resolution of 19" = 1280x1024 --> 1,310,720 pixels
Resolution of 22" = 1680x1050 --> 1,764,000 pixels

This actually means that I've increased my resolution by 34%, or I've achieved a 34% increase in screen "size". That's pretty good for one little upgrade. I can now see a lot more audio on my screen at any given time, and with two monitors (one 19, one 22) I can see a tremendous amount of information at any given time. It really changes the way you use your computer.

Monitor's also tend to share resolutions over multiple sizes. Hmmmm, what does that really mean? Well, a monitor's resolution is not dependent on it's physical size.
Generally:
15" = 1024x768
17" - 19" = 1280x1024
20" - 22" (wide) = 1680x1050
23" - 28" (wide) = 1920x1200
30"+ (wide) = 2560x1600 (!)

By comparison "HDTV" (if it's "full" HD) is called 1080p, but it's really a resolution of 1920x1080. As you can see above, computer monitors are already a higher resolution at a smaller size. The expectation with a 42" TV is that you'll sit far away from it, and that you'll sit closer to a 24" computer monitor. However, upgrading to a monitor over 22" might mean having to upgrade your computer's video card, or installing new graphics drivers.

Here are a couple examples of what two different resolutions will look like (click the pics to see them full size).

Desktop @ 800x600

Desktop @ 1280x1024

Sound Forge @ 800x600

Sound Forge @ 1280x1024

Sound Forge and Vegas on dual screens (19 and 22)


Nice!

Susan Savage writing for Huffington Post

My pal Susan is currently blogging on The Huffington Post. She's a featured columnist writing about the WGA strike, and she lends a very personal perspective.

You can check out her work here.

Free VST! Free tube plugin! Free!

LOL, I love writing obnoxious post titles...

Anywho, if you're looking for decent little tube plugin to add a little warmth (or overdrive it for some nice crunchy distortion), Togu Audio Line has you covered ... for free!

It's simple, and it works well. I dig it!

Download it here!

New episodes of Irrational Public Radio!

I've been bugging Joe about this for months and he's FINALLY gotten around to gracing us with some new episodes of IPR. If you're not familiar with IPR, it's a perfect send up of NPR, and it's really funny.

Here's a sample from the new full length CD (on sale now):



Here's IPR on MySpace.

And here's the official IPR website.

The Sweetest T-Day Gift of all...

So, Mrs AudioGuy and I decide to hit up some of the Black Friday sales to see if we can find some good gift ideas. On the whole, pickings were kinda slim by the time we hit stores in the evening, though we did encounter plenty of really rude salespeople, so that was a plus.
We were getting tired, and decided to try Chevy's for dinner. It's totally a TGIF-ified Mexican chain restaurant, but some of her co-workers really liked it. Service was a little slow, but it was nice as she and I got a chance to really talk, which we don't ever just get to do anymore.
Anywho, after a long chat about missing home, she has to take a call, and the waitress comes by to see if we want dessert. I jokingly ask if they serve Sopapillas, and she looks at me like I've just said something inappropriate in Martian to her. With a sneer "What is that? Have you had that at some OTHER Mexican place?" I explain it's a New Mexico thing, and that it's no big deal, though I'm oddly disappointed. Maybe she saw that, I don't know, but she makes some off hand comment about checking with the kitchen. I say again that it's REALLY no big deal, but she's already off.
About 10 minutes later I see her conversing with an older gentleman, and she motions to us. He approaches to ask what it was that we had wanted, and he's wearing his stern face. I preface again that it wasn't really a big deal, but asked if they had any sopapillas.
His eyes get super wide, and a grin climbs across his face, and he very emphatically declares that they do indeed have a stash of sopapillas in the kitchen. They're no longer on the menu, but he'll have the kitchen staff whip them up for us.
We're shocked (I know I was almost tearing up).

About 15 minutes later we get the plate. It's fancy, dusted with cinnamon, smothered in honey and whipped cream, center dollop of vanilla bean ice cream, but there they are, four perfect little sopapillas.
The Gentleman checked on us two more times to make sure they had come out ok, and that we were doing alright.

They were delicious!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

VIDEO: Seth MacFarlane Gives Impassioned Speech About WGA Strike

Well the pic is actually from a speech he gave at Harvard, but close enough right?

This is an interesting video to watch in light of the recent announcement that FOX will be signing off on episodes of Family Guy without MacFarlane's approval as show runner. He's been withholding his show runner duties along with his writing duties, which I can't say I'm in favor of. In the video he mentions studios firing assistants and staff, but that was in direct response to writer/producer/show runners striking on all fronts, not just on their writing duties. Variety has a great write up of THAT situation over HERE.

Anywho, I caught this vid on Digg, so here's the original posting (spelling corrected):

Earlier this month the creator of "Family Guy" and active WGA member Seth MacFarlane gave an impassioned speech at Fox Plaza in Century City in front of 4,000 fellow striking writers guild members in witch he lambasted Fox and other Hollywood studios for not paying the creators of profitable content what they are due.

read more | digg story

Super Mario video game MIDI art music thing

Really you just have to watch this, but in short, when you write music in MIDI you're really creating a complex piano roll (like those old-tymie player pianos would use), one large sheet where all of your instruments (and what notes they're playing) are all arranged for you visually by little dots, dashes, and lines.
The fact that some one drew pictures using this music note information isn't all that remarkable, the fact that it's not only well composed, but identifiable as a mash up of Super Mario musical themes is incredible.

Moby is ready to help you soundtrack your student or indie film! For FREE!

I don't know HOW I missed this!
Futuremusic's blog posted this up a week ago, but apparently Moby is feeling for indie, student, and ultra-low-budget film makers.

I just signed up for an account to check it out, and there is a pretty substantial chunk of his catalog up to help you out, 90 songs in all.

Check it out here!

Now before you go crazy requesting licenses for everything up there I would highly recommend reading the terms of use. If Moby holds to his intention of this being non-profit (for him) that's great, but this is still the music industry, and if you aren't careful (holding to the terms of the agreement), you could manage to put yourself in a pretty actionable position.

From MobyGrais.com:

hi,
i'll keep this brief.
this portion of moby.com, 'film music', is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password.
you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short.
the music is free as long as it's being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.
if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that's generated being given to the humane society.
i hope that you find what you're looking for,
moby

Ripping DVD Audio to MP3! The fun and easy way!

Hey all!
I've gotten this question a couple times now, and thought I'd record a quick tutorial on it.

There are some ad agencies that are really good at giving voice over clients a copy of the commercials they record. In this digital age, the copy usually comes in the form of a DVD. However, when the actor wants to put together a demo, it can be difficult to pull the audio off of a DVD to mix into a demo (usually an mp3 in this day).

Before I would either run a line in and record in real time, or there were always really tricky methods of converting DVD's to AVI's, and midway through the process you could grab a rendered WAV file. More recently, I've been importing DVDs into Vegas, and then saving the file from there. Vegas, however, can cost almost $600.

I just caught a tip on Lifehacker with a much easier (and FREE) piece of software to get this job done!



Here's Lifehacker's link.

Here's a link to another program that will pull audio off of other video files (avi, wmv, divx, mov, etc).

So please pardon the fact that I was a little congested when I recorded this, and as a fun bonus, see if you can find the moments where my wireless mouse was wigging out on me!

Writers Strike to End? Talks to Resume Between WGA and AMPTP!

Variety has just announced that talks will resume between WGA and AMPTP beginning on November 26, following the Thanksgiving break. There's no word on why this is happening, or what caused the sudden change in progress, but hopefully this means enough movement has been made to finally end this thing.

read more | digg story

Ghostbusters Game = Teh hAwTneSS!

This isn't NEWS per se (I posted about Aykroyd's slip back in February), but it's REALLY cool to see that this is actually being developed.

And, like, we'll be able to PLAY it!

Even cooler knowing that Aykroyd AND Ramis are working on it too!

Check out this clip from AOTS's "The Loop" on G4:

Jonathan Coulton Performs "Still Alive" live! And Acoustic!

What?
It's been like a week since I posted ANYTHING about GLaDOS!
Deal!

Anywho, here's Jonathan Coulton at a gig singing the end credits to Portal. He wrote the song you know...



Speaking to the power of gaming, the audience sings along the whole time, and cheers at the reference to Black Mesa.

Awesome...

TeH fUnNie - "Not the Daily Show, with Some Writer"

Being "Some Audio Guy", I totally identify with this "Some Writer"...

Anywho, these guys are NOT actors. They're writers, but they're still hella-crazy-funnie!

Audacity Updated to 1.3.4

Your favorite free audio editor is now a tenth of a tenth of a point better!

Just recently updated to 1.3.4, I'm seeing some nice improvements. Switches like solo and mute seem to work smarter (and you can no longer jam the program up by muting and solo-ing a track at the same time). You can now add meta-data to files other than MP3, and a few of the plugins have gotten decent updates (I can't remember if 1.3.3 had a "gverb" but it's a really decent reverb/room shaping plugin).

My only complaints are:
**You still can't record to the same track over multiple takes. Every time you stop recording and start again it opens a new audio track, so you can't ever go back to review and re-record without having to cut and paste a file back together.

**Also, I still hate the "Preview" feature. You only get 2 seconds to hear if you like a change, and that's SO not enough if you're doing a lot of editing. You end up just rendering the edit, listening, and rolling back the edit if you don't like it. The preview feature has always been a waste of time in Audacity.

**Lastly, there's still no decent marker. I know you can hit CRTL-M (or remap it to something else), but the way it forces you to name the marker, and the fact that the marker isn't a part of the audio file itself (it becomes a new "track" just for markers) makes for an awkward and cluttered work environment.


<----Click pic to see what I mean.







All in all, it's an awesome package that totally rivals (and in some ways surpasses) programs like Sound Forge XP (about $80), but it's totally free! CLICK HERE to download and see the full list of updates from 1.3.3!

Enjoy!

Audio Guy is now on Freesound!

Hey all,
If you haven't checked it out before, the Freesound Project is great place to find enthusiast sound effects, recordings, and music samples. All clips submitted are under a Creative Commons license.

I finally got around to posting some of my work up (including some Unhelpful Robot), so if you're needing elements or sound effects, you should check it out.

I've also added a link to the right hand side (Audio Guy around the web) ------>

The Alarm sounds like ... WHAT?

Whoop!
Originally uploaded by Avicado

NOT Well Said! Response to "Why We Fight" from shirtless dude...

Yup,
He's a tool...
Here's GhostCow's (LOL!) response to "Why We Fight".

"Writers Are Greedy"



A perfect example of "teh intarwebs are a privilege, not a right"!

***EDIT***

This is the winning comment from GhostCow's video page!

LeFlaneur00

I'm sorry, but your video is structurally weak. You need a good hook at the beginning, plus you need to clearly state your thesis. Your copy tends to meander and your points (ie "the average writer makes...") are not well supported. Plus, the piece is really lacking a solid conclusion.

I suggest you hire a better writer.

Well Said! Clear simple viewpoint on WGA Strike - "Why We Fight"

It's amazing what four cents can do...

"Why We Fight"

ST:TNG - Episode guide to all 7 seasons, IN SONG!

Yup,
This guy wrote a song out of the episode names of all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Yup,
I'm a big enough ST nerd, that I watched the whole thing.



What's kinda cool though, is to watch how far the show evolved. The look of the later episodes (even in tiny little clip form) is far and away more sophisticated and evolved than the first couple seasons. It almost makes one wonder what you could do with shows today if you were to give them more than three episodes to mature.



Things that make you go hmmmmm...

Don't Worry! We'll be fine without the writers.

No really! The producers have it covered!

WOW! Crazy Craigslist slam on Oracle Post

Mrs. Audio Guy was surfing around on Craigslist, and stumbled on this:

GREAT AUDIO ENGINEER INTERNSHIP (WITH POSSIBLE FUTURE POSITION)

To Jimmy and Paulette Lifton,

Well, I finally got a job as an engineer with a starting pay of $16.00/hr and excellent benefits at a successful postproduction studio that works on high budget feature films. I just wanted to thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn at your facility. The most important thing that I learned is that your facility is the most unprofessional, immoral, poorly run business that I have ever worked at or been involved with in my entire life. I believe from prior experience with successful businesses that in a perfect work environment all of the employees try to make each other look better, all of the employees make enough money to live on, all of the employees are paid overtime for motivation (and because it’s a California state law!) and all of the employees have the capital to create the best product for the client. At Oracle Post none of these simple ideas and laws are even remotely put in to play.

And it goes on from there. Whoa damn does it keep going...

I can appreciate being pissed, or frustrated (hell I've worked some less-than-ideal gigs), but I'm just not sure what this would really accomplish. People talk in this town, but no one really cares if you're trying to shame someone.

Anywho give it a read. If you've ever had to start at the bottom, it's almost ... nostalgic?

Craigslist RANT!

Jon Stewart perfectly sums up WGA strike

From November 1st's "Moment of Zen":


Perfect. Subtle. Smart.
I'm going to miss this show most of all...

Spike Announces Video Game Awards Nominees, I don't care that much...

But I do care enough to post on it!

So even though I went last year, I'm just not that stoked. The list of nominees is pretty much what everyone would expect, and I'm sure it's going to be a Halo sweep because of all the Mountain Dew tie ins.

If YOU'RE interested, you've probably already seen the list somewhere else, but here it is again for good measure.

I mean, there's not even a voice acting catagory. LAME!

Killer Bean Forever! Check out the trailer!

This is really cool.
The lead animator from Matrix Reloaded is working on his own feature film.

All by himself.

The animation is incredible (to be expected), and I love the stylized look and sound.
Check it out:


Killer Bean Forever - Official Trailer


HERE IS THE OFFICIAL MOVIE SITE!

I'm not sold on the MBox2 Micro...

Future Music (my favorite "DVD-stuck-to-the-outside-of-the-magazine-with-sticky-goop" magazine) has the scoop on the new MBox2 Micro, just announced by Digidesign.


It's small.
It's sexy.
I just don't get what it's for.


Near as I can tell it's a thumb drive with Protools software and a headphone jack. There are no inputs, so you can't record into it, and at $279 it's just $20 less then the MBox2 Mini or the M-Audio Firewire 410 (what I use).



I mean even the MicPortPro, at HALF the price, has an XLR port with phantom power and a dedicated headphone jack, and it's not much bigger than the micro.


It just doesn't come with ProTools...


Here's FutureMusic's write up, and here's Digidesign's announcement.

Wired and PBS test Analog versus Digital

Wow,
This is a great run down on the differences between analog and digital recording.



I started out as an all digital kid. Nothing but software and plugins, but recently I've been branching out into more hardware. I'm kinda in love with tubes right now. Mics, preamps, anything you can cram a tube in I'm sold.
I think in terms of recording the argument is kinda silly. If you keep your audience in mind, then doing a bunch of analog tape recording only to bounce it to a CD (or a full digital setup to transfer to an LP) seems like a waste. Why not just use the best of both worlds?
A rack full of crunchy warm vintage gear fed into a 32bit float at a high sample rate sounds just fine to me...

Sub Pop Jumps into the MP3 Retail Arena

Not much to report here, but your favorite neighborhood fanzine turned record label, Sub Pop has started up it's own MP3 retail site.

The selection isn't huge (currently about 200 albums), the bitrate is low (192Kbps), and right now you can only purchase full albums (not singles), but they are working on updating all of that.

What's nice is that they include album art, and when they increase the quality of the rip, you will be eligible to re-download the track for free (I'm looking at you iTunes).

What I'm most excited about is the idea that they'll be focusing on rare and out of print albums a staple of their catalog. With iTunes, Amazon, etc focusing on more commercial catalogs, this move really appeals to the "long tail" theorist in me.

Check out their announcement here.

Time Waster: Gracenote Music Maps

What do the Beatles, Led Zepplin, Bruce Springsteen, JK Rowling, U2, Kanye West, Pink Floyd, 2Pac, Carrie Underwood, and Linkin Park all have in common?

Why they're currently the top ten "listened to" audio artists in California, of course!

I have to say I've had this up for a couple days now, and it's a lot of fun to page through the different countries around the world to see what people are jamming to.

Check it out here!






Who'd of thought that Michael Buble, High School Musical 2, and Fallout Boy would be in the top albums for Indonesia...

Beginner Audacity Tutorial, WITH VIDEO!

Yes, an exclamation point in the title!

So, I've put together a little video with some basic tips to improving the sound of home recordings using Audacity.

And here it is:


Basically, we just want to clean up the sound of an audition. As an example, here's a sample of the audio used before cleaning:



And after:



Also, since the streaming vid is a little hard to see whats going on (even when you expand to full screen), I do have a high quality version hosted on divshare, but it's big (180MB) and DivShare is moving DOGSLOW right now.

AUDACITY TUTORIAL HIGH-ISH QUALITY

If anyone has any advice on better file hosting (for CHEAP), please let me know!

The inspiration behind Futurama's theme song: Pierre Henry "Psyché Rock"

Just a fun little factoid post tonight.

Ever heard of Pierre Henry?

(He looks intense --->)

From his wiki:

(born December 9, 1927 in Paris, France) is a French composer, considered a pioneer of the musique concrète genre of electronic music.

Between 1949 and 1958, Henry worked at the Club d'Essai studio at RTF, founded by Pierre Schaeffer. During this period, he wrote the 1950 piece Symphonie pour un homme seul, in cooperation with Schaeffer; he also composed the first musique concrète to appear in a commercial film, the 1952 short film Astrologie ou le miroir de la vie. Henry has scored numerous additional films and ballets. Among Henry's best known works is the experimental 1967 album Messe pour le temps présent, one of several cooperations with choreographer Maurice Béjart featuring the popular track "Psyche Rock".

Perhaps one of Henry's most well-known influences on contemporary popular culture is to the theme song of the TV series Futurama. The tune is inspired by Henry's 1967 song "Psyché Rock."

Ceremony (1969) (in collaboration with English band Spooky Tooth)

In 1997, Fatboy Slim issued a remix of Psyche Rock.

Sounds like a pretty cool guy!

Here's his vid from 1967:


Here's the Futurama theme composed by Christopher Tyng (with four seasons of their title card jokes, so dont listen to the whole thing I guess...):


And here's Fatboy Slim's remix:


ENJOY!

Gaming Angels Interviews David Sobolov and David Pizzuto, PART 2

The SEQUEL!
Here's the rest of David Sobolov's and David Pizzuto's interview with Gaming Angels.

Being asked what their favorite characters to perform:

Sobolov: I showed up for an audition for Transformers and they said they were looking for a David Sobolov-type. At the end of the audition I said, "Was I David Sobolov enough for you?" My favorite characters are the delicious villains that are tortured yet powerful and are feeling all this inner turmoil, but then they use it to strike out at people. Again, it's not who I am, but it's fun to play. There was this character called Malebolgia in this game called Spawn. (In Malebolgia's voice) "Down low, and they put the microphone close to my lips and blow it up huge." And it sounds like I could kill a thousand people at once.

Pizzuto:They are the best, in a general sense, the dark twisted guys. It's kind of like a delicious meal that you wouldn't eat every day. I think it's a universal thing with actors, especially if they allow you some latitude and breathing room with this thing, no pun intended, because a lot of these guys are very down low and just kind of wallowing in this sickness and evil. It's a cathartic thing.

Click HERE for the rest of Part 2!

Click HERE for Part 1!

Audio Guy mail bag: Booth for home recording?

Just got this email in:

Hey,
Should I be worried about setting up a booth? Most of what I do is auditioning from home, but I do get the occasional gig which would be nice to do too.
-J.S.

Thanks J. I get this question quite a bit. Should you be "worried"? No. Should you be considering it? Yes. But with anything else we do, you really need to be honest with yourself over what you want versus what you need.

If you were recording promos and trailers every day, then you would be making the kind of income where devoting a whole room of your house, and getting an ISDN, and hiring a part time engineer (like ... me for example) would make sense. If most of what you're doing is auditioning though, then I don't think a booth is the way to go.

Would it help? Sure.

Enough to warrant the building cost and support? Probably not.

Most people at this stage of the game are much better served by taking a few simple (and cheap) precautions to ensure your recordings are as clean as possible.

Really, it's about knowing your equipment.
Most microphones are directional to some degree. Meaning, they should only pick up sound from a specific side or "face" of the mic. Most vocal mics are cardioid mics (cardioid ... cardiac, heart? Get it?), and they will have a subtle fan or "heart" shape recording pattern on one side of the mic. The other side of the mic will be dead.
Generally speaking, as long as the room you're in is fairly quiet (fairly closed off from the rest of the house), then you should be able to reduce reflection by treating just one or two walls or a corner of the room.

When you have flat hard walls in a room, and you're trying to record, the sound is bouncing all around. So, when you speak, the sound of your voice travels all the way across the room, bounces off a wall, travels all the way back to the wall behind you, bounces off that wall, and goes back into the mic AGAIN. Of course, that bouncing delays the sound going back into the mic, so you get a slight echo or reverberation ("reverb") effect. Now a little room tone is good. It gives the listener a sense of perspective, but hard surface reflection is often the first sign of an amateur recording (kinda like taking your headshots with a disposable camera).

So how do you fix it?

Well there are two main schools of thought on that. You can either try to block your voice from reflecting on the far wall, or you can block the reflection from the wall behind you. Ideally you would want to do both.
I find it's easier to hang a nice heavy blanket or rug, and record with your back to that. It works best if you can set it up in a corner, and make a little "blanket bowl" to catch reflected sound.
There are contraptions that can bolt on to mic stands that should absorb some of your voice's reflections, but they can be a little pricey, and I think some of them are a little too small to block ceiling and floor reflections. They also wont solve the problem of a hard surface behind you. Ideally, again, you'd want something behind you AND behind the mic, but I don't really think that's always necessary.
Keep the mic as far from your computer as you can (and try to point the "dead" end towards it), and if you have hardwood floors, it's time to throw a rug down.

Steps like these will work wonders for beginning home recording, and are easy and inexpensive to set up. As you become more successful, THEN you can look at the cost of building a room, or plunking down on a pre-fab Whisper Room type thing (the tinniest starting at almost $3000, whew!).

If you want something modular (that you can put up and take down easily) check out this PVC pipe project from PalmCityStudios.

Here's an article from a Wired blog about a professional marimba player, and what she had to go through to sound proof her NY apartment.

And lastly, heres a great Sound on Sound article about (not) setting up a booth.

Enjoy!

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