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Year: 2010

Mixing a Big Band CD – Part 1

Posted on February 2, 2010February 2, 2010 By ericdano No Comments on Mixing a Big Band CD – Part 1

Back in August of 2007 and January of 2008, a Big Band that I play in recorded two live performances for a “Demo CD”. Well, in the 2 some years since we made the two recordings, the project has become a full-blown album that is currently playing on Jazz Radio stations and available on the iTunes store. This is the multipart story of how I mixed 8 of the 17 songs on the CD.

The original idea was that we wanted more gigs, and that a lot of people wanted to hear the band before booking it, so we needed a “Demo CD”. At the time we had live recordings that I was making using my Rode NT 4, but a lot of them suffered from crowd noise, wind noise, etc. We wanted something a little bit better. So, we hired someone to do a live recording of the band. Each person individually mic’d, etc, etc. The first concert was in August of 2007, part of a Jazz thing the area puts on (though I don’t think they did it this year…..darn economy). It was held at the Blackhawk Auto Museum.

If you have been to the museum, or look at the pictures…..it is a recording person’s nightmare. Marble floors, surfaces where things bounce off of (cars, pillars, people), plus crowd noise. The crowd was there for a night of socializing and stuff, and as the evening went on, the noise became louder and louder (more on that in later). Anyhow, we had the concert, I made a live recording using my gear, and listened to it. Lots of noise, people talking, eating, dropping glasses, etc. Lots of reverb from the room (more like a Batcave to me).

The mix engineer pretty much decided that the session wasn’t going to yield a lot of material. I think he looked at 3 tracks or so. The project pretty much sat in limbo until the next concert where the scene was totally different. An actual performing arts center. A quiet audience. Acoustic grand piano (the Blackhawk gig the piano player used a keyboard). Different lead alto. Different microphones. Pretty much totally the opposite of the first recording session.

In the interval between the two concerts, I won a contest. Yeah. It DOES happen to people. So, suddenly I had stuff that was like…..pro level. Stuff I didn’t now how to use (I was a Digital Performer person since…..forever). And in January of 2008, my trusty old PowerMac Quicksilver 2002 (or my hackintosh, since I upgraded it to dual processor, etc etc) died and I replaced it with a 2008 MacPro Dual Quad-Core. The stars were aligning. In I believe March of 2008 I got to go to a mixing session. I had mentioned to the engineer that I had recently come into a ProTools setup (M-Powered), and if I could maybe get the tracks to the first concert to mess around with to get my feet wet in ProTools and whatnot. He agreed, and during that session in March, I brought a portable drive with me, and he loaded up a blank session (with like 3 edits he did) that was the Blackhawk concert. Something like 18 tracks totaling over 20 gigs of data……

Part two (what I got…..what a mess!) Coming soon.

Articles

Big Thanks To All!

Posted on February 2, 2010February 8, 2010 By ericdano No Comments on Big Thanks To All!

About a year or so ago, I added Google Ads to my various websites. I chose to do a rather unobtrusive banner ad rather than something more obnoxious like everything you click on brings up a popup. Well, I finally got a check from Google. So, those clicks on ads do actually turn into money! It took about a year to get past the $100 mark. Can we do it sooner this time? Maybe? So far we are at $6….

Perhaps I’ll put something cool up from my archives if we can reach $100 within a shorter time……wonder how much money I could make if everything little thing caused a popup ad to happen…..hmmm………

Featured, News

The Apple iPad…..Revolution

Posted on January 31, 2010 By ericdano No Comments on The Apple iPad…..Revolution

Ok, so, unless you have been living in a Cave, you know that there was a great event held on Wednesday. Something all the media covered. Something everyone was waiting for with baited breath. Steve Jobs announced the fabled Apple Tablet. (And some guy named Obuma was doing some standup comedy later in the evening as well).

A lot of Gadget people were bemoaning the lack of this or that. No camera (front or rear), no USB, no HDMI, no Verizon, no Multitasking, no FLASH. Waaa! Sadly, these people are missing the point. It does need to have these things and was designed not to (except maybe the camera…rumors are that there was a prototype version that had one, and the software seems to have hooks for them).

So, what does this mean? And what does this mean for musicians. Can start scanning all our books into the computer? Can we ditch that lame electronic music things like this, this and this? Well, for traditional musicians, I think that scanning your music is a music regardless of what you plan on viewing it on. It might sound like a waste of time, but when you can’t find that book of etudes by so and so that you know you have but don’t know what happened to it….and that it is out of print. Yeah, you’ll be happy that you had the foresight to scan a copy for your archive. Now, viewing music that was made for 8 1/2″ by 11″ pieces of paper on a 9.56″ x 7.47″ device (slightly smaller actual viewing area)? Dunno. Obviously the music would need to be scaled down. Would that make it unreadable then? Dunno. However, if the music is formatted for that size, it would be no problem. Perhaps some witty programmer will design a program that will slice up music PDFs and make them more viewable. I for one plan on offering up iPad versions of stuff here. So, people with iPad can practice the tomb of II/V patterns, or Brecker solos, or whatever.

I think the bigger impact is going to be the cool apps for this. If you have an iPhone/iTouch, you already know all the handy apps out there for it. Now, increase the screen size 3 times and make it faster……can we say mixing applications? Slowdown apps? Multitrack recording device? Practice tool? Tuner? Hmmm….

Articles

Run ProTools On Mackie Hardware? Say What???

Posted on January 31, 2010 By ericdano No Comments on Run ProTools On Mackie Hardware? Say What???

This summer, Mackie unveiled a new line Onyx-i firewire mixers that you could, with the purchase of a $50 driver, run Pro Tools M-Powered 8 with. You don’t need to own a M-Audio interface. It would just “work”. A lot of people thought Mackie was going to get a taste of Digidesign’s lawyer division in short order. BUT….it seems they have indeed licensed something with Digidesign, so it is now “legal” to run Pro Tools on a Mackie Onyx mixer.

So, why? And why should you care? I think the reason is that Avid (Digidesign and M-Audio’s parent company) has seen that tons of people are using other pieces of software. Logic, Sonar, Digital Performer, Cakewalk, to name but a FEW. Allowing Mackie hardware to use ProTools allows the software, which is really great IMHO, more exposure. Plus you could have a full 32 track studio happening if you bought 2 Onyx 1640i mixers. True, you don’t get the motorized faders that something like the 003 has (if you have Pro Tools LE) or the Project Mix I/O. But both of these only have 8 preamps.

Anyhow, It is great news. Mackie and Digi working together? Hmmm….

Articles

Rock Band Network…..Saxophone Hero?

Posted on January 29, 2010 By ericdano No Comments on Rock Band Network…..Saxophone Hero?

I’ve seen this around the net, even linked from SyFy.com. It’s kind of neat, but…..could we please have real notation? Also….why bother doing this in the first place? I mean, it’s one thing to play pop/rock songs on saxophone (which I have no qualms about doing), but I don’t really see this doing much for anyone….

Articles, Videos

Misa Guitar

Posted on January 18, 2010 By ericdano No Comments on Misa Guitar

Ok, forget that Eigenharp Alpha. What Akai needs to do for the next EWI is something like the Misa Guitar.


Engadget describes it as “Essentially a MIDI controller, the Misa guitar has 24 frets and a large multifunctional touchscreen, which you can use to interface with the appropriate software on your pc.”

Ok, now someone get on putting a large, 10 inch by 2 or 3 inch touch screen on something you can blow into. That would be amazing I think.

Articles, Videos

Skywalker Ranch

Posted on January 17, 2010January 17, 2010 By ericdano No Comments on Skywalker Ranch

Philip Bloom visited the Skywalker Ranch and did this great video of the place. Very cool stuff. Here is another link to it.

Skywalker Ranch from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Articles, Videos

Want better Relative Pitch? There’s an App for that.

Posted on January 12, 2010 By ericdano 5 Comments on Want better Relative Pitch? There’s an App for that.

Yes, the iPhone/iTouch is amazing. 100,000+ Apps. A lot for free. There are a few diamonds in the ruff, and this one is looking like another find.

RelativePitch is an an iTouch/iPhone app that will drill you on intervals. There is a lite version of it as well. The interface is OK, but I have a few complaints about it. The application does not, at least in the lite version, allow you to vary the root note. Maybe the full version does this, I dunno. Second, the intervals are always UP, as in root then the note above. Down would be a great thing to have in this app as well. Perhaps the full version does it. It would be simple enough to add in an update.

The price? $7.99. Forget that. If the developer knocked it down to $1.99, maybe. You’d be better off searching the web for various free trainers, like http://www.trainear.com/. Hopefully someone will do a better version for the iTouch/iPhone soon. Or a cheaper version. $7.99. Come on people!

Articles

Gordon Goodwin Holiday Concert

Posted on January 2, 2010January 5, 2010 By ericdano No Comments on Gordon Goodwin Holiday Concert

Yamaha has two videos up of the Gordon Goodwin Phat band playing a holiday concert.
https://www.yamaha.com/thehub/default.html?CTID=5041999&CNTID=5042480

It is also in iTunes under Podcasts->Yamaha Wind Instrument Podcasts (there are lots of other good videos in there too)

Note: the two solo mics sucked. WTF. The rest of the mics were good, but shure 58s? Really? Should have stuck with sennheisers or something.

Videos

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