Net Music Makers acquires My Virtual Band
The website will allow bands and solo artists to create personalized websites, join a band, collaborate, and mix tunes. The new site will also provide a multi-channel internet radio station to showcase original songs.

iTunes sales ‘collapsing’
While the iTunes service saw healthy growth for much of the period, since January the monthly revenue has fallen by 65 per cent, with the average transaction size falling 17 per cent. The previous spring’s rebound wasn’t repeated this year.

iTunes sales NOT collapsing
Apple’s music sales, according to Forrester’s sample, fell 65 percent in the first six months from the previous year. Not through December, through June.

Either way,
Are blanket licenses in our future?
A blanket license for digital music, now being considered by labels (big and small), songwriters and performers, gives you the right to exchange music freely over computer networks – for a small fee. The pool of money is then divided up according to the exchanges …

Tags: newsdigest

A few weeks ago, I discussed Gert’s experience collaborating online. Peter Wolf offers another perspective on virtual collaboration in his article The Care and Feeding of a Virtual Band.

You all know how difficult it is to find the time to get together and rehearse, write, record and produce, but, nevertheless, it usually works out somehow. But imagine the difficulty of trying to do this when you and your music partner don’t live on the same continent.

If you have an interest in making music this way, guitarz-for-ever.com has some tips to get you started.

Tags: collaboration

Many of us learned the basics of compression from books and magazines, but compression can be difficult to grasp this way, especially for hands-on or visual learners. If you’re in that category, you might find enlightenment in these videos (with minimal sales pitch) from t.c. electronics. Straightforward overviews of compression, expansion, limiting, and parallel compression.

Tags: compression

Here are 5 things you can do right now to improve your recording and mixing skills:

Stop worrying that you don’t have a major label sound: You also lack the mics, preamps, converters, and tracking rooms of a major label band. But that shouldn’t hold you back. Remember: listeners want to hear songs, not production; And Myspace proves you don’t need a big budget to reach fans.

Update your reference CDs: It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture while you tweak a mix, so you should periodically check your progress against commercial CDs you enjoy. And as your tastes and skills evolve, so should the list of CDs you reference. Make sure your collection is up to date.

Listen critically to a song you’ve never heard: Analyzing a mix is like getting a free mixing lesson from the song’s producer. But your ears adapt to the sound of a song after a few listens, so the tracks you know (and love) best are also the hardest to critique. Instead, choose a track by an unknown artist (you’ll easily find something new on The Hype Machine,) and listen with fresh ears to the mix. Ignore the lyrics and music, and focus instead on the levels, panning, EQ, and dynamics. Ask yourself why the producer set these things just so. Reproduce the best parts in your own mixes.

Solicit feedback: The Internet has communities of musicians and recording enthusiasts happy to critique your talents. The Homerecording.com MP3 Clinic, and the Gearslutz Show and Tell forum are great places to start. (They’re also a source of mixes to test your listening skills, per the tip above.) Or try Garageband, and its patented review process which guarantess you useful feedback in exchange for your feedback on other artists’ tracks. Or, post one of your finished tracks to Somesongs (and remember LightningMP3 if you have nowhere to host an mp3.)

Finally, and most importantly:
Go record something! It’s a truism for good reason: “Practice makes perfect.”

Previously: The importance of checking a reference while you mix

Tags: reference-cd, songfight

Stripping away digital rights management could shake up online music.
Last February, Yahoo Music chief Dave Goldberg told Music 2.0 conference attendees that record labels should try selling music online without copy protection.It has taken nearly a year to see that sentiment put into play because content owners are hesitant to open up music files for repeat distribution once purchased.

Music Industry Wants to Cut Artist Royalties
The RIAA has asked the fedgov’s Copyright Royalty Judges to lower the rate, which hasn’t been changed since 1981.

Music industry frets over popular guitar Web sites
The tussle over the online guitar tab, which is short for tablature, is another manifestation of the great clash between the freewheeling Internet and the cold reality of business law. It pits an industry struggling to combat what it sees as piracy against the Web ethos of swapping information for free.

Tags: newsdigest

Tips and suggestions for faking the sound of an upright bass with an electric bass:

You’re probably not going to fool anyone but it might be enough to imply the sound of an upright by having (or exaggerating) a few of its distinguishing traits. I think the decay is important. Uprights seem to have less sustain than electric bass. Try the Carol Kaye trick of putting some fabric near the end of the strings (near the bridge is best bet, but you could shove it between the strings and the fretboard at the nut) to dampen them.

Why do CDs use a sample rate of 44.1 KHz?

44.1 kHz came about because digital audio was encoded and then stored as video on video tape as white and black bits.

Since there are a number of video standards a sampling rate had to be chosen that would be divide up well on to video formats having different frame rates and scanned lines per frame.

And more, on the technical details:

Video recorders… were adapted to store audio samples by creating a pseudo-video waveform which would convey binary as black and white levels. The sampling rate of such a system is constrained to relate simply to the field rate and field structure of the television standard used, so that an integer number of samples can be stored on each usable TV line in the field.

What recording chain did John Mayer use on his album Continuum:

Vocals were Mic -> 1073s -> 1176 (or two chs with one into a Fairchild 670)
Neumann U47 (most), Neumann M269c & RCA 77 (“I’m Gonna Find Another You”)

How do you place your monitor speakers? Even if you’re mixing with computer speakers, there’s lots of useful advice here:

Tags: bass-guitar, monitors

The DAT-Heads Microphone FAQ, while no longer actively maintained, is a great repository of information on microphones. Much of the information targets DAT recording, but the descriptions of mic selection based on venue, microphone response patterns, and stereo miking techniques apply to all mediums.

Tags: FAQs, microphones

Guitar players think of distortion as “that pedal I stomp on to add crunch!” But in signal processing, distortion has broader meanings and uses.

Harmonic distortion, in particular, is of interest to recording engineers. Aural exciters, such as the industry-standard Aphex 204, use harmonic distortion to alter the sound of recorded tracks in (hopefully) pleasing ways.

Technically, these devices create harmonic distortion by generating new partials from an audio signal, and adding those partials back to the original sound. When applied to mid and high frequencies, this adds presence and brightness to a signal. And while an equalizer can sometimes achieve the same result, EQ’s can only boost frequencies that are present in the original signal. Exciters add completely new frequencies, and often, when an EQ boost results in a harsh sound, an exciter can be used instead for a more pleasing boost in presence.

Since the principles employed by harmonic exciters are based on simple physics, simulating the effect is relatively straightforward:
(more…)

Tags: distortion, guitars, mixing, snare-drum

This instrument/frequency chart from The Independent Recording Network (and Southside Productions) is the most detailed I’ve ever seen.

It shows the fundamental and harmonic ranges for more than 25 instruments (including drums,) along with the perception each creates (“boom”, “warmth”, “crunch”, etc.) in various segments of the audio spectrum. Tufte would be proud.

You can also download “Compression uncompressed,” a detailed ebook on compression techniques, from the Independent Recording Network’s main page.

[Note: updated 01/16/2007 with new permanent address. Thanks Glen]

Tags: compression, mixing

Music Labels Smell Money in Second Life
Sony BMG has cast the longest musical shadow in the virtual world so far, purchasing an island in Second Life called Sony Music Media Island, where residents can listen to music and watch music videos.

Music lovers mourn ‘whole universe’ of jazz history destroyed in Katrina
These deeply personal troves disintegrated in the flooding that followed Katrina. From the rare historic instruments that clarinet star Dr. Michael White stashed in his bedroom closet to the career memorabilia that Fats Domino stored throughout his home, the material floated away, forever beyond the reach of scholars and historians.

New Report Blames The BBC For Music Industry Losses
Rather than taking advantage of the rich UK music scene, the BBC has been manufacturing pop bands and bland elevator music (what Dodge refers to as the BBC’s “own version of music reality shows”) and sticking that on the airwaves

Music industry bouncing back with ringtone sales
Despite the average price of $2.49 for a ringtone, which is only a portion of a song, the ringtone market has increased drastically within the past year, outselling full-length song downloads that are $0.99 on legal downloading stores such as iTunes.

Tags: newsdigest