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Thursday, November 22, 2012

How Not To Fire Your Drummer

There are right and wrong ways to do things, and this video below shows the wrong way to fire your drummer. It's hilarious and sad at the same time in that someone would actually have a meltdown like this on stage. The band is the Antaris, and the frontman is Kris Roe lobbing Rob Felicitti's drums at him at a gig in Asbury Park, NJ.

First of all, regardless of how badly someone is playing, on stage in the middle of a gig is not the place to do this. You may think the guy is ruining your gig, but the fact of the matter is the audience may be blissfully unaware that anything is amiss. All gigging musicians have had nights when they thought they played poorly only to have fans tell them it was their best gig ever, so you just never know.

Secondly, you're there for the fans, and an action like this is terribly self-indulgent. Give the fans the show they paid for, and I don't mean something that's better suited more for Ultimate Fighting than music.

You wanna fire somebody? Great, do it after the gig. The stage is not the time or place. You can read more about the social media aspects of this over on my Music 3.0 music business blog, since both the band and the drummer replied with some videos that were very astute from a PR perspective.



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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

A Review Of This Year's Lists

Mild Turkey image from Bobby Owsinski's Big Picture production blogHappy Thanksgiving for those of you who celebrate it. I thought that today would be a good day to review some of the posts from the past that contained some lists. Here we go with 10 of them from earlier in the year:

8 Street Performance Tips

5 Reasons Why Concerts Sound So Bad

4 Ways The Internet Could Go Down

The 5 Best Cities For Live Music

5 Live Show Mistakes Bands Make

6 Common Songwriting Problems

8 Tips For Mixing For Mastering

DJ Shadow's 13 Secrets Of Music Biz Survival

9 All-Time Bad Tech Predictions

8 Indicators Your Mix Is Finished

Enjoy the lists (and the football and turkey if you're in the US).
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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Introducing The Mastering For iTunes Video Course

lynda.com logo image from Bobby Owsinski's Big Picture blogThe iTunes store is certainly the 800 pound gorilla of online distribution these days, but if you want the best audio results, you need to be aware of a some tips that can really improve the sound of your audio files. That's why my new Mastering for iTunes video course at lynda.com is so important. Not only does it cover what you have to do before you send your files to the store to be encoded, but it also covers the exciting new Mastered For iTunes high-resolution audio program that Apple quietly introduced a while back.

The best part of the Mastering for iTunes course is that it's free! These are the movies that you'll find:

A look at ACC, the iTunes file format
Mastering for iTunes tips and tricks
Exploring the Mastered For iTunes format
Exploring the Mastered For iTunes tools package
Using the iTunes Plus tools: iTunes droplet
Using the Mastered For iTunes Audio To Wave Droplet
Using the Mastered For iTunes AU Round Trip AAC Audio Unit tool
Using the Mastered For iTunes Test Pressing feature

As you can see, there's a lot of information on how to use the various tools for Mastered for iTunes and this is information that you won't find anywhere else. So if you want to start taking advantage of your hi-res files (that's anything that's 24 bit, but up to 96kHz/24bit) on iTunes, here's a great place to start. Did I mention that it's free? Click here to go the Mastering for iTunes course on lynda.com.

By the way, you might want to check out my other lynda.com courses as well; the Audio Mixing Bootcamp and Audio Recording Techniques.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

Monday, November 19, 2012

The 3 P's - The Key's To A Great Vocal

Vocal Recording image from Bobby Owsinski's Big Picture production blog
The mic is set up and it sounds great, the headphones mix sound good, and all you have to do is press record. Occasionally it's that simple, but most of time recording vocals requires some production help to get the best performance from the singer. That's where the 3 P's come in.

Pitch, Pocket and Passion are the keys to a great vocal performance, and in this excerpt from How To Make Your Band Sound Great (there's also a similar section in the Music Producer's Handbook), you'll see just how they come into play in capturing a dynamite vocal.

"In the studio, the three P’s, pitch, pocket and passion, are what a producer lives by. You’ve got to have all three to have a dynamite vocal. And while Pitch and Pocket problems can be fixed by studio trickery, if you don’t have Passion, you don’t have a vocal. On stage, the three P’s apply maybe even more so, since you don’t have any of the cut and paste and autotune advantages of the studio to fall back on.  Let’s take a look inside the three P’s.

Pitch
Staying in Pitch means singing in tune. And not just some of the notes - every single note!  They’re all equally important!!  Pitch also means following the melody reliably. There’s a trend these days to scat sing around a melody, and while that might be desirable in some genres, it doesn’t work in any genre if you do it all the time.  Scatting might show off your technique and ability, but a song has a melody for a reason. That’s what people know, that’s what they can sing to themselves, and usually that’s what they want to hear.

Pocket
The Pocket means singing in time and in the “groove” (the rhythm) of the song. You can be in pitch, but if you’re wavering ahead or behind the beat it won’t feel right. All of the things that help instrumentalists, like dynamics, turnarounds and articulations, apply to vocals as well. Concentrate on the downbeat (on beat 1) to get your entrances. Concentrate on the snare drum (on 2 and 4) to stay in the pocket.

Passion
Passion is the ability to sell the lyrical content of the song through performance. It’s the ability to make me believe in what you’re singing, that you’re talking directly to me and not anyone else. And passion can sometimes trump pitch and pocket. A not-all-that-great singer who can convey the emotion in his voice is way more interesting to listen to than a polished singer who hits every note perfectly but with little emotion. In fact, just about any vocalist you’d consider a “star” has passion, and that’s why he or she is a star.
On-stage, Passion can sometimes take a back seat to stamina, since you have to save yourself for a whole show and you can’t blow it all out in one song. That’s why many singers have only one or two big “production numbers” where they totally whip it out. This means that you have to learn the limits of your voice, learn how much of you goes into just cruising and when you can do it, and how much you need left in the tank to do your biggest, most effective show stoppers.
In the studio, there’s never any cruising - you’ve got to give all the passion you can give for every song and it’s the job of the producer to pull it out of you. That could mean getting the singer angry to stir some emotion, building him up by telling him how good he is, or making him laugh to loosen him up. Anything to sell the song! But once you know how to summon it up from inside you, you can do it again and again."
You can read more excerpts from How To Make Your Band Sound Great, The Music Producer's Handbook, and more at bobbyowsinski.com.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

New Music Gear Monday: USB/iOS Squire Strat

Here's something for New Music Gear Monday that isn't exactly new, but it's getting a lot of buzz. It's the "new" Squire Strat with USB, which allows for direct connection to your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Mac.

The reason why it's not exactly new is that there have been USB connected guitars around for a few years, but Fender has gone one better in that this one is designed for iOS device so you can record without any additional hardware. A USB to 30 pin cable comes standard with the guitar, and the axe also has as a built in 1/8th inch headphone jack for some silent practicing without even plugging in.

I have to say that while this seems cool on the surface, one of the worst connectors for a guitar is a USB connector. Wanna bet how many times it disconnects on your first session with it?

Plus, why buy a guitar just because it has a USB connector on it? For not all that much money you can buy an adapter to plug directly into your iPhone or iPad (this Petersen cable is less than $10) or something more sophisticated like the IK Multimedia iRig, the Pocketlabworks iRiff Port, the Line 6 Mobile In, or even the Apogee Jam. All are a lot cheaper than the $199 for the USB Strat and you can use your existing guitar.

All that said, at least Fender has moved into the future somewhat, even though it's more like sticking you little toe in the water.



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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

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