Sage Audio provides advice for beginning home studio engineers choosing their first free recording software. We go over the pros and cons of GarageBand and Audacity. GarageBand is included in any Apple computer. It provides an intuitive recording process and also includes effects like reverb, compressors built in, and even includes guitar and amp modelers. Audacity is a free, open source recording program for Windows and GNU/Linux. Audacity functions closer to DAWs like Pro Tools and Logic. The software will also prepare you when you move up to more of a high-end recording software.
Merlin, a group representing thousands of independent record labels, claims MySpace is hosting unauthorized music streams. This seems to be the first major challenge of the “New Myspace.”
Headphones play a huge role in home recording studios, used for recording, overdubbing, mixing and editing. The use of headphones is also very useful when you need to avoid bleed. You will want to mute the studio monitors as well and use your headphones as your reference to the previously recorded track. They also provide a great sense of your L-R pans sound and also give you a good sense of how clean your mix is sounding.
Grammy Amplifier illustrates the power of social media campaigns for independent artists. Grammy Amplifier was launched by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. The site is free and artists can upload songs via SoundCloud. Independent artists should take advantage of social media and use the web marketing of established brands to help promote themselves.
New products this week include virtual horn instrument software and an audio file editor. Also included is the Google web app Jam with Chrome. Jam is great to play instruments online with friends from the touch of a keyboard and/or mouse. Native instruments did a great job of making some awesome virtual horn sounds which are pretty difficult through MIDI. Triumph edits audio files and has very advanced features.
Chartburst is a new service that sends the most popular independent music, as voted by fans, to representatives at major record labels. Labels only promise that they will provide email feedback but the founder of Chartburst realizes that the site depends on record contracts. Chartburst charges a monthly fee for an artist to submit their music after they have evaluated a free two-month trial.
Sage Audio looks at the quality of headphones like Beats by Dre that have become a new fad in recent years. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show 50 cent, Snooki, Drew Brees, Ludacris, Rohan Marley, Tim Tebow, Tyson Beckford, Sugar Ray Leonard and Nick Cannon were all a spokesperson for a pair of headphones. Apple of course had their hands revolutionizing the way society listens to music by implementing the iPod. Now we have entered into a new era of popular headphones by Dr. Dre. This could only be done because Dr. Dre decided to team up with some other major players in the industry, record exec Jimmy Iovine and Monster Cables.
Sage Audio takes a look at some of the best products at the 2013 NAMM Conference. This year the NAMM Conference was held in Anaheim and attracted around 100,000 people in the music industry and fans. Fender came out with their new reissue “Vintage” line of classic Teles and Strats. Another very interesting reissue came out this year, the brand hasn’t been manufactured since 1969, which is the legendary Magnatone Amps. Some other products mentioned were the Telefunken M82, Waves IR-Live, and JBL M2 Master Reference Monitor.
Sage Audio offers a variety of tips for best monitor placement in your home studio. The better your monitor set up, the better mixes you can produce. As a normal rule of thumb you will want to set up an equilateral triangle, with the monitors representing two points and you as the third. Normally have the speakers be about three to five feet from your ears and of course make sure the monitors are at ear level.
Reverb and delay are two of the most common effects used on vocal tracks. These tips explore how to properly use these effects without producing an unnatural vocal. With the way modern sound is today you typically want to add just a little reverb or delay to give a little bit of depth to your vocal but in most cases choose one or the either. When mixing put your vocal effects on your main track, this will give you more control over the effect you are adding.
Nashville is spotlighted in a recent New York Times article as America’s new “it” city. Reasons include job growth and a relatively stable economy. Nashville is now called “Nowville” by GQ magazine and is also one of the best places to begin a technology start-up. A lot of Nashville’s success though is due to a few major industries including healthcare management, car manufacturing, and higher education.
Streaming music service Last.fm announces that it will charge most U.S. users a monthly subscription for its services. Last.fm is already charging users in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Brazil. It will be closed off to all other countries besides U.K. and Germany. The company was founded in 2002 and was essentially the grandparent in the streaming music industry.
Billboard figures show Adele is the best-selling artist for the second year in a row. Adele’s sophomore album 21 crossed the 10 million mark in the U.S. alone and that makes it the eighth record in history to reach that in less than two years after its release. The top four selling albums of the year are in order from first to fourth with Adele – 21, Michael Buble – Christmas, Drake – Take Care, and fourth being Taylor Swift – Red.
Waves Audio and Abbey Road Studios have worked together to produce plugins that replicate the legendary sound of three consoles, the REDD.17, REDD.37, and REDD.51. REDD and Mirek Stiles, Head of Audio Products at Abbey Road, originally developed the consoles. Some features of the plugins are Amp Type, Channel Select, Bass Lift, EQ Select, Tone High, Tone Low, Monitor, Spread, Drive, Analog, Output, and VU Meters.
Labbler is a new social network aimed at connecting all players in the professional music industry. Labbler wants to act as a niche in the music industry world in a similar manner that LinkedIn has for the business professionals. Labbler is offering six different categories that are Artist, Label, Club, Media, Promoter, and Booking. They soon hope to add a Suppliers category that sells digital and physical music. In return would make the site useful for both music fans and music professionals.
