Classic Tracks and the Mix

Like a whole lot of other people, I've spent the last weeks playing a lot of David Bowie, and watched the BBC documentary "David Bowie: Five Years".   A lot of musicians have passed this year, but some have much more impact than others.  Bowie was one.  Jon English was another.

The comments from Robert Fripp and Tony Visconti have been food for thought on the making of some of Bowie's tracks. It all means more now that I have done this recording thing and have my own small project studio.

But listening hard to the actual track "We Can Be Heroes" doesn't give a lot of insight. It all seems very murky.  Eno's synth stuff isn't very audible.  Fripp's feedback main part isn't clear either.  Not the way you can hear it in the Tony Visconti YouTube video where he points these things out and solos the parts.

Yesterday I came across Sammy Hagar's interview about the 30th anniversary of Van Halen's 5150 album from a Guitar World Facebook post, and pulled that CD out for a listen too.  Eddie was a real hero of mine at the time. A real innovator, but I've come back to this again looking at the mix.

In Metallica's Black Album on tracks like "Enter Sandman", there are multiple guitar parts playing the same thing to produce a thicker sound, panned across the sound stage.   This isn't what you find in 5150.  You will have Eddies guitar panned leftish, then a plate reverb on it panned hard right. And then a single over dub with the solos.  Of course Eddie's playing is so interesting it doesn't need embellishing.  Most of the early Van Halen albums have this minimal production.

I don't play like Eddie, but was playing with this left guitar, right reverb, minimal production  yesterday afternoon on a little thing. It was the first time in about a year and a half I plugged in my J-Bass too, so not a bad way to spend some time on an Easter Saturday.

Something to unwind with...   and it sounds ok to me.  The Jet Flanger on the Lead Guitar is over the top though and the progression is .... very basic, shall we say.  It is more about the sound with just 5 tracks.

We have an Audio Technica AT2020 Condenser Microphone and run that through a Behringer MIC100 phantom power Tube Preamp, directly into our Audio Interface.   All the instruments are DI'ed.

This is the link on SoundCloud of this minimally produced clip.  It isn't at all serious in any of it's 1 min 13 second length!

Being Known For...

We post on a few different subjects.  Music Production, Artwork, Electronics and Software Stuff, but what actually gets on going views is always our Automotive Artwork related material.

Our website  views are more evenly distributed between Guitar/Audio topics and the Car Cartoons and Logos.

We hadn't posted anything new for a few weeks, so that when we look at our Blog Stats this morning we see the above older posts coming up consistently.

Any new post gets an immediate blip of views, then dies away in a day or two. Especially if you link to it from Twitter or Facebook. That is why so many are continually posting to keep that blip a  constant on those platforms.     It is a bit like a sugar hit. But has little on going benefit.

The Long Tail, was a thing a few years ago (look it up), but has been disproved as viable business model now.

My take away from this is that I can post about anything I feel like, (like my 15 years living and working in the Music Technology Business in Japan) but what actually is appreciated is the Car Caricatures, Logos and Cartoon stuff....

When to "Pivot" (or give up!)

"Pivot" is the term used in the world of the "Start-up" when you decide what you have been focusing on isn't working, and you need to change to something else, or change focus.  

A good example from Steve Blank would be your developing this great THING1 and to check if it is actually as great as you think it is, you go to the people you think will buy it, and ask  1 or 2 of them, “If we gave you THING1, would you use it?”   If they answer NO, because they have too much invested in what ever they are currently using, you are probably wasting your time doing THING1 at all. 

But what if it is more personal than that?

You do something, pretty well, and people get you to do it for them, for money, but it doesn't pay enough to be a full-time job, or you don’t have enough customers and it starts to interfere with you actually making a real living?

These more personal things are what can face your typical writer, musician, actor, dancer or artist.  They are doing this thing because they enjoy it, and they are trying to make it a full time gig, possibly as they don’t have any other practical option.  They can also do it just part time, but what if they have to make a decision to continue on a dream or be more practical?

How long then?  “Before the money runs out”, may be one answer, but for others it may be more along the lines of “Well it is fun, but it doesn't pay enough to be worth while with our current other commitments and available energy, I need to give up and just keep it a hobby”.

I know of a Band that produced several albums, toured, but decided they couldn't give up their day jobs......  and it took a year or two to work that out.

Don’t think there are any hard and fast answers, but suggest, “Taking a break”, can help in deciding how to move forward…especially if the special thing isn't what your relying on to support you.....  it is all good experience forming the “rich tapestry of your life”

Jean-Michel Jarre ‎– Magnetic Fields (and the cool stirred glass of water)

Les Chants Magnétiques, at about the 23 minute mark, after a train passes, has a track that has this weird rhythmical sound as a foundation.

That sound was on one of the sound discs that we used in the factory in those far off Fairlight Instruments CMI Series I assembly and testing days.

It is actually the sound of a tea spoon being stirred in a glass of water.  At normal pitch it is nothing special, and just another sound effect.  In the track it is played at several much lower pitches and is the foundation of the track and I think it just sounds "watery"...

So why am I bringing this up?   

In the promotional material about the release and making of Jean-Michel Jarre's latest  Electronica Part 1 album, he talks about many old instruments, and the 8bit , max of 22 kHz, 1 second sampling time CMI Series 1 gets a mention as being instant cool.  Now, I was central in the design of the much high sound quality (better than CD) Series III which doesn't get this label and will explain why I think this is so.

Because the CMI Series I had such a short lo-fi sample it made people use it in very creative ways and so was a synthesiser of strange sounds as much as for realistic (if very short!) sounds.  The lo-fi made everything thing sound different too.   So it is these factors that make it cool and as much a synthesiser as sampler. These are in addition to it being a one man band composers machine.

Users of the CMI Series III didn't have that sound restriction, and so used it much more as a replacement for real instruments and players.  That is pretty much what Hans Zimmer and ZZ-Top (like Afterburner) did.
  

Anyway, that simple stirred glass of water became a magical sound in the hands of a synthesist after electronic sounds, and from that POV, yes the CMI Series I has instant cool. 

Steampunk Wonders Of The Worlds - Watercolors and Music

Have been working on a series of watercolor paintings that all involve strange locations and a Steampunk Airship with the theme of a tour of wonders of the worlds.  And by watercolor paintings I really mean black ink sketches colored with watercolors.

The music and surround sound effects for videos using the paintings has been an ongoing task for some time too.

We put up low and high resolution videos on YouTube today of what we have been working on.   The first new video for over a year now.

The HD version being here:

Even though the video is up, we are still considering the format, and how it should look.  We didn't just want a slide show with a soundtrack, so we have images titles, panning and zooming on the images....and a screen that could be from a following camera drone or surveillance video, but haven't made any of that clear.

It is put together in Sony Vega Movie Studio HD and rendered as mp4. The music tracks were done in Reaper and some of the strange sounds were done in SuperCollider, and others in the ArpV2600 vst.

The Dolby Surround Encoding just involves having effects sounds assigned to the rear, mono channel, which is encoded with +90 and -90 versions added into the front channels, all just done with the Reaper PhaseAdjust JS plug in.

To do more complex movement a Surround Panner is required, like this one, but we haven't done anything in this video using it.

We have our own simple LM833 based surround decoder device for driving the rear channels in our studio, prototyped on Veroboard and in a previous Blog post.  Have now also tried a HD Audio Rush Sound Decoder  (bought on eBay from HK) , just with the analog in and found our own device sounds better and is quieter.  The HD Rush also comes with a switch mode plug back that generates audible hash, that is not there when powered from a 5V linear supply.  

We have more ideas for the series, to make more episodes, but we will see.....  this type of music video, that isn't focused on cars don't get much attention on our video channel.  It is interesting to see that we have some 3 digit subscribers to our channel, yet only single digit views on a new video...

I guess they aren't interesting enough and don't say very much to a general audience.