Sound Recording - the WellMixed.com Blog

Trent Reznor seems to be getting a lot of play on this blog, but perhaps that’s because the guy is so forward thinking about the music industry and likes to talk about it.

Reznor’s band, Nine Inch Nails, is on their “final” American tour this summer. They were through Kansas City a couple of weeks ago, and I scored a backstage pass.

We had a short Q&A session with Trent, during which he said, “[bands] can’t making money on record labels any more. Or if they do get paid, they have to sue the label.”

WellMixed was started because I had observed that artists are often just as well financially on their own without a label. Trent’s statement re-enforced that idea, and I did a quick Google search to see how many artists were suing their labels to get paid for their art. Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Smashing Pumpkins, Hawthorne Heights, The Allman Brothers, and Bay City Rollers were all in the first couple pages of results.

More →

CD Baby founder Derek Sivers’ e-Book on Music Marketing (available HERE) has long been a favorite of entrepreneuring musicians.

I just came across this free e-book/blog by a gent in England named Andrew Dubber that focuses on promoting one’s music in the Web 2.0 era.

The blog version is more informative (or more distracting), as there are plenty of nice hyperlinked references.

Written about 2 years ago, it contains twenty still-fairly-relevant tips that aim to “help independent musicians and music businesses cope and thrive in a changing media environment.” It creates an excellent companion to the Sivers book.

Dubber lectures at the Birmingham School of Media at Birmingham City University so he knows a little bit about the subject. But as always, I advocate thinking for oneself and disagreeing where appropriate.

You may have seen 44.1 KHz on CD packaging. This number indicates that the audio on the CD is composed of 44,100 “samples” every second.

What are these samples of?

They are samples of loudness. (Click here to read about loudness and bit-depth.)

So this means ——> There are 44,100 different loudness levels stored on every second of CD audio.

AND (theoretically) —–> The speaker in your car, home stereo, or headphones moves between 44,100 distinct spots every second.

So, in digital recording, we want to have a lot of samples every second; at least as many as are going to be played back for CD quality audio.

During recording, computers take “samples” to determine how a microphone’s diaphragm is being moved by air. (This trading of information is known as transduction.)

When a loud noise pushes air against a microphone’s diaphragm, that diaphragm is moved far from its resting place. If the diaphragm position is sampled when it is far from its neutral resting place, the computer will record a large number.

If the diaphragm position is sampled when it is at rest, the computer will record a zero.

There are, of course, many numbers in between.

Since the introduction of the CD in the early 1980’s, we have been listening to 44,100 unique volume levels every second whenever we play our favorite music. With DVD Audio, SACD, or digital download, we may begin to hear 48,000  or  96,000  samples per second.

41,000 samples per second, however, are more than adequate for reproducing all frequencies that human beings are capable of hearing.

Mr. Reznor began in the business more than 20 years ago with his band, Nine Inch Nails. In this excerpt from Digg.com, he gives advice to musical artists planning on distributing themselves via the internet.

Reznor gives his music away for free nowadays. You can download Nine Inch Nails’ most recent album, The Slip, at NIN.com for free.

You can check out TopSpin here: www.topspinmedia.com

The full interview with Reznor can be found at Digg Dialogg

Hulu just posted a handful of documentaries, including “Before The Music Dies.”

There are several points in the film that are pretty whiny, overdramatic, and lamentful of that old thing…what is called? Radio?

I really like this excerpt, though. Find a way to do what you love. You won’t be rich, but you’ll be happy.

How much of a difference is there between a mic that’s $99 and one that’s $1199?

This (sorta’ old) link lets your ears be the judge.

Brandon Drury at Recording Review, created this on-line experiment. He mashed up several combination of preamps, AD converters, and microphones, then recorded a short excerpt of hard rock with each combination.

(Will you like the SM-57 or Royer 121 better?)

You get to choose which recording you enjoy more. His emphasis was on cost. There are several unavoidable flaws in the methodology, but in short he tried to make every take sound as platinum as possible.

http://www.recordingreview.com/quiz/signal-chain-form.php

Yep, Zoom’s new H4n allows you to record 4 tracks simultaneously. That pretty much makes it not only a great solution for traipsing around town and interviewing people, but also makes it a nice music production solution.

You can put a mic on your kick drum, a mic on the snare, and use the built in mics as stereo over-heads.

And although, it only plays back 4 tracks simultaneously, Zoom has included Cubase LE for stacking up tracks.

For more, check out:

http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h4n/index.php

My friend, Sylvia Maria Gross, at our local NPR affiliate in Kansas City, forwarded this to me. It hits the highlights of how some of the Neumann U87 is assembled.

It is from the Discovery Science Channel’s How It’s Made television show.

[Via Sound on Sound]

This new Windscreen by Rycote is for most popular handheld recorders.

Reminds me of:

Called the “MiniWindjammer,” it is a lined fur cover designed to fit directly over the microphones.

Available Models:

• Edirol R09
• Marantz PMD620
• Nagra Ares M
• Zoom H4
• Olympus LS10/20/30
• Sony PCM D50
• Tascam DR1
• Zoom H2

More at their website: http://www.rycote.com/products/mini_windjammer/RycoteMiniWindjammersDigitalRecorders.php

Create Digital Music has posted a summary of all the hot new software synthesizers revealed at NAMM last weekend. It includes: minimoog V 2.0, Brass 2.0, Trilian, Largo Waldorf, D.CAM, and impOSCar 2.

Most intriguing to me is the Trillian Bass Module pictured below.

It won’t be available until May, specializes only in bass, and will cost MSRP $300. But the control for synth-o-holics looks to be pretty amazing.

Read more at Create Digital Music.