YouTube Series?

So lately I’ve been doing a lot of vegging out of various sorts…making music, playing video games, and watching a lot of YouTube videos. I watch lots of different videos, from politics, world news, music news, and of course…more video games. Anyway, long story short I have come up with a plan. It will be grand in scale (think Hoover Dam, Empire State building, Golden Gate Bridge, or better yet Death Star!) It will involve a lot of work and hopefully a great amount of community support.

What is it you ask? Have you heard of a thing called a Let’s Play Series on YouTube or other places? Well someone sits and records themselves playing a game, usually explaining how to improve or just being silly. And they don’t post clips and segments of what  they are playing, they upload the whole thing, from start to finish.

Recently, while in veg mode, I was watching videos of other music producers giving tutorials and sharing the knowledge they have come across while producing. Sometimes it’s helpful, but in the act of trying to keep it brief to hold our short attention spans, they breeze by concepts and things that need more explanation.

So my brilliant idea is to start a Let’s Make Music Series. In this I will work on a track from start to finish taking as long as it takes to complete the thing. Now look, I’m not saying I’m an expert. I took some entry level music production classes in college, but not enough to be an expert. But this is where you come in. As I work on the songs I hope to share knowledge as well as receive.

My goal is to build a community of producers and supporters to make music with and hopefully we all learn something along the way. This might be some time from now as I figure out how to accomplish this in a productive way, but I ultimately wanted to share with you my idea. Let me know what you think about this. Would you participate in a community song project?

Hurry Up Ableton 9!

Ok…I’m super late on talking about this, but since the release is supposedly right around the corner I guess now is a good time. If you still haven’t heard, Ableton is releasing a new version of their amazing DAW, Ableton Live, sometime in the first quarter of this year. If you are an Ableton producer you are probably just as pumped as I am for this release.

Those witty developers in Berlin (where Ableton was born) have created some awesome new features that are sure to help elevate anybody’s production. For instance, as with most creative people, we musicians, composers and producers get some of our best ideas when we aren’t sitting in front of our instruments or in the studio. Inspiration can come at any moment and some of us hum, sing and beat box our ideas onto our phones or other voice recorders to capture the idea. Unfortunately, unless you are some musical genius, it takes some time to transpose your ideas back in the studio, but not anymore…

Ableton Live 9 allows you to capture a thought and transpose it almost immediately. Live can now extract midi from harmonies, melodies and drum beats. Though its not perfect, it will save us loads of time trying to figure out what notes we were humming, or the harmonies in your favorite song. See for yourself!

Here’s a full list of new features!

Ableton Live 9 new features

• Session automation: In Session View, automation can now be recorded in real time directly within clips. Automation can move together with clips between Arrangement and Session View.
• Find sounds fast: Live’s new browser puts all instruments, effects, samples, and plug-ins in one easy-to-navigate view. Drag and drop folders from anywhere on your computer, search as you type and navigate from the keyboard to find everything quickly.
• Discover new sounds: Live comes with a large selection (3,500 in the Suite edition) of production-ready sounds, which were carefully crafted with the help of over 40 artists, sound designers and engineers. All sounds feature Macro controls for fast access to their most meaningful, musical parameters.
• Get your sound right: Live’s studio effects have all been reworked for even better sound and usability. The Glue Compressor is a new effect – an authentic model of a legendary 1980s console bus compressor. EQ Eight has an audition mode for isolating frequencies and an expandable spectrum display. The Gate and Compressor effects feature a Gain Reduction view which shows changes in signal level over time.
• Extract music from samples: Live’s new Harmony, Melody and Drums To Midi tools extract natural-feeling MIDI directly from the favourite parts of your music collection. You can also sing, tap a rhythm, play any solo instrument, then use Melody or Drums to MIDI to turn your recordings into MIDI clips that you can edit and reuse with any sound.
• Edit the details: Transpose, reverse and stretch MIDI notes or warp clip automation and add curves to automation envelopes. New tools and an improved workflow allow fast and flexible editing of musical ideas.
• Max for Live – now in Suite: The Suite edition of Live 9 comes with Max for Live and its many unique instruments, effects and tools. Max for Live itself includes 24 new devices such as a convolution reverb, new drum synthesizer instruments, MIDI echo as well as reworked versions of classics such as Step Sequencer and Buffer Shuffler 2.

I also own an Akai APC 40, the Ableton specific midi controler. It’s a really cool piece of hardware and I talked about it more here. However, Ableton has annouced a new midi controller called Push. This thing blows the APC, the Launchpad, The Maschine and most other midi controllers off the face of the planet…just see for yourself.

 

Cool!

 

 

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Chicago, from a perspective you are not used to hearing. Had to give my props by reblogging this one. Check out W.O.H. (We Out Here)

What the Music Industry is Doing Wrong

So today, during my daily stroll through the internet I came across a super short article with the headline: Universal Music’s Top Exec Declares Proudly: “We’re Not In The Art Business”

Now my first reaction to this statement was anger and outrage. It proved my idea that the music industry has become an assembly line for bland, over-processed, over-hyped garbage that they call “hits”. These big poop factories known as the major record labels all seek that one artist that will allow them to put any moderate talent (sometimes no talent at all) through the wringer and suck them dry for as long as that artist is alive. They focus on these “hit” artists and use them to drive the revenue of their business. This is how the recording industry got so big, but times are changing.

In college I read a book called “The Long Tail”. This explains that there are essentially two types of products, popular products and less popular products (please excuse my paraphrasing, haven’t read the book in a while). The popular products (Justin Bieber, Jay-z, Beetles,etc) sell in large numbers but the amount of products in this category are low. The less popular products sell in dramatically smaller numbers, but the amount of less popular products is limitless. Here’s a visual of what I’m talking about:

What does this even mean?

Now if I asked you which of these two pieces would you rather focus on, you will more than likely want to focus on the popular products, as they seem to be more profitable. That would be a safe assumption, and one that almost all major business have followed. However, the less popular products making up the seemingly infinite tail in this model has more power behind it than that of the popular products. As far as music goes even some of the worst music has fans, and when combined, the number of fans for less popular music is far greater than the number of fans for those few “hit artists”.

We are living in different times than these record labels are used to. The early industry had limited distribution methods, like vinyl, cassettes and cds, which meant if you wanted your music to be heard by more people than your hometown groupies you had to go through a label that had well established means of distribution. The record labels would bottleneck the artists seeking to make it, only releasing artists that they thought would sell. This worked out well for them until the internet came along. Now all artists seeking to make it have a chance to grow a fan base. Though not all artists will become multi-millionaires, if their product is good, the potential is there for most of the artists to earn a modest living. No more assembly line music. Real artists with real talent are finally going to make a comeback, it’s just a matter of time.

Music is more than a product, but it is more than just art. Music portrays our emotions, our desires, our fears and our souls, or at least the music I like. 

 

 

The Beast Behind You

I’ve been working on my skills. This is my newest creation.