Record Studio,Music Recordings,Christmass GiftsEntertainment,Movies

Archive for December, 2008

Keeping in view the hectic lives of people and the need to relax at the end of the day, dance, theatre and music have become an integral part of one ’s life. Advancements in the field of technology have made the entire experience of music a truly wondrous one and a well-equipped recording studio with every necessary recording studio equipment can contribute a lot to fine quality music.

Basically, recording studios are sound-proof rooms designed on the principles of the room acoustics for recording sound with accuracy and precision. The material with which the surface of this room is built is able to absorb and diffuse the sound and it may also have an added room that is especially designed for recording voices. This room is generally known as vocal room. There are mainly three rooms in a recording studio: the studio or the live room in which the sounds for recording are created, the control room in which the sounds are manipulated and recorded and the machine room in which all the audio recording equipments are kept. A recording studio equipment is kept in a separate machine room because it may create a lot of noise that may interfere with the process of sound recording and may affect the quality of the sound produced.

Some of the audio recording equipments that are a must in a recording studio machine room are mixing console, microphones, multi-track recorder, digital audio work station, music work station, compressors, equalizers and reverbs and reference monitors and loudspeakers. A mixing console is used to control each musical instrument to achieve the desired effect and sound and the role and importance of microphones is beyond mention. With the help of multi-track recorders, it has become possible to record singers and instruments separately on different tracks at different times on the same tape. A single analog tape is able to contain 24 different tracks and a master tape is then printed which contains all the recorded tracks.

All the artists are able to use a home studio or a project with synthesizers, microphones and multi-track recorders for making inexpensive recording products on digital hard disk. A keyboard is also highly realistic recording studio equipment, allowing great ease and variety to the sound recordists. If you are also looking to set up a recording studio of your own, then you will need all these audio recording equipments in your studio.

The question: “What features should I look for when choosing audio recording software?”

The answer: “It depends on what you want to record.”

There are many low cost recording programs available that can be used to record from existing media (tape, cd’s, vinyl lp’s) or from radio and internet broadcasts. Even these low priced software programs have editing features and native effects that can be applied to the recording.

Live recording is best accomplished by using multitrack recording/editing software that incorporates tools and effects suitable for application to live voices and instruments, one of the most important being compression. Compression is essential to level the extremes in volume that inevitably occur in live recording.

Several features/capabilities should be considered when choosing software for live music recording (listed below).

Required features:

1. Recording – record multiple stereo tracks

2. Editing – edit a track’s waveform

3. Mixing – mix multiple tracks into one stereo track

4. Effects – native (built-in) effects such as delay, reverb, fade in, fade out, flanger, compressor and various high/low filters

5. File conversion – convert to/from the most popular music formats such as wav, wma, mp3

Additional useful features:

6. Plug-ins – accepts 3rd party software plug-in effects and tools

7. Ripping – pull individual tracks from music cd’s

8. Burning – copy recorded tracks to cd audio

Optional features (depending on need):

9. Midi – record midi instruments (midi keyboards, synthesizers, guitars)

10. Video – synchronize audio with video files

So, in conclusion, if you are recording music to computer from pre-recorded media, you can certainly get by with software on the low end of the price spectrum. But, if you want to create professional sounding mixes from live music, you’ll need the higher level of sophistication available in a quality multitrack recording program.

Cost shouldn’t be an issue in the choice as the difference in price between the low end software package and a quality multitrack program can be as little as $10 – $20.

Are we no longer in the Information Age?

Are we destined to be “gamers”?

Whether you’re in marketing — particularly the digital side — or just looking for a job in marketing and related fields, you may have noticed the growing emphasis on entertainment. Entertainment activities becoming more the focus of our digital and offline lives.

And, as you’d expect, entertainment marketing seems to be following that growth. I don’t mean entertainment marketing as in promoting movies, actors and actresses. I’m talking about entertainment marketing for the sake of having fun with a brand wrapped around that fun.

The traditional, age-old tactics of marketing to customers and prospects via one-way communications is falling by the wayside. Ads of all type. Direct mail. Mass-distributed news releases. Yes, they will always have a place – some place – but those tactics of marketing communications are becoming a smaller part of the total marketing effort. Today’s successful marketing is individually-focused and better targeted to people’s own interests. Mass marketing is slowing going the way of the dinosaur.

The strong potential of wrapping marketing around entertainment first hit me a couple years ago after reading an article in BusinessWeek. Here is an excerpt:

 

“Plenty of advertisers…have been putting their products in video games for several years now. But marketers and game-makers successfully pushed Nielsen Entertainment last year (2005) to start measuring the impact of in-game product placement, where there had been none before. This in turn is drawing more ad dollars and making game-makers as eager as TV networks, perhaps more so, to open up their stories to the highest bidders.” In-game product placement is targeted and part of the users’ activities. It’s immersed in what the marketplace members do. It involves marketers in prospects and customers’ lifestyle and interests.

We’ve all read a lot about viral videos and how to create them. Of course, the main aspect of viral videos is their entertainment value. No one will share a commercial with friends and family – unless they see it as entertaining first and foremost. Any marketing push in the video must be secondary and indirect.

But, a successful viral video is not easy to develop and is not right for marketing every company, product or service.

The trick in the entertainment and marketing combination is to develop some level of connection with your audience. Create tools, services and experiences that complement your company, products or services while being part of your customers and prospects’ entertainment habits and interests.

One good example of this approach is Southwest Airlines. According to a June 26, 2008, MediaPost Marketing Daily story, Southwest Airlines “has signed on to sponsor the Midnight Gaming Championship (MGC) 2008 video gaming season to capture mindshare from tomorrow’s professionals, now ages 16 through 25….The marketing message tied to the sponsorship focuses on educating consumers about several Southwest services such as the downloadable computer desktop widget ‘Ding’ that offers exclusive fares on flights; along with the company’s weekly email, Click ‘n’ Save, that reaches 6.9 million subscribers; and Rapid Rewards.”

Southwest Airlines is marketing its services that are tied to the interests and habits of its targeted 16-25 years of age demographics. There’s a connection between what Southwest is pushing and its audiences’ habits.

There are other ways to connect marketing messages with customers and prospects’ lifestyle. One is video – and not on TV. The use of online video is becoming more and more popular. And, video is being used for entertainment purposes more and more, according to a June 25, 2008, eMarketer article. Based on a study it conducted, Solutions Research Group “predicted that total hours with video-based entertainment would grow by nearly one-third to an average of about eight hours per day by early 2013.”

Another key stat from the eMarketer article is the trend to online rather than offline video:

“Key research from Deloitte Development signifies the shift away from TV to the Internet, with 69% of respondents in the firm’s second annual ‘The State of the Media Democracy’ survey saying their computer has become more of an entertainment device than their TV.” That same Deloitte study also found that 36% of all respondents use their “cellphone as an entertainment device.” That percentage soared to 62% for the Millenials (13-24 age group) – who will be the future targeted prospects for many of us as they age.

Marketing is evolving to have companies become connected with their audience much more so than just communicating to them. And, as more of the audience members are focusing on entertainment, it’s up to the marketers and communicators for companies to develop ways to connect brands with their audience around their entertainment preferences.

Hope you have been practicing singing in the past week and your vocal chords are now prepared to take on the nuances of getting on with the real thing- the actual recording.

Moving on from where we left off the last time around – here are the rest of the gadgets you will need to set up your very own recording studio.

Gadget 2 – Your Microphone:

While your standard microphone may be adequate to chat with your long distance friend, you may require something more technical for your recording needs. You’ll need one that will record your music perfectly. Microphones are the most important feature in recording your music because their quality varies widely and they are what you hear.

There is a wide range of microphones available such as condensers, dynamics, tubes and many more .It has been observed that live mics are not always great for the studio. Generally, wide diagram condensers are what you want for vocals. That again you have to decide seeing your pocket. Remember that if you are going to record in groups, or different types of instruments, you’ll require more than one microphone.

Another negative for using computer microphones is the connectivity issue. Many microphones have a balanced output cable. You are likely to be on the right lines if your sound card or audio interface has the corresponding input slot. If not, you will have to go in for an alternative like running it through a mixer or a pre-amp. Another possibility is to acquire a pair of good dynamic microphones that use an unbalanced jack which you can insert to get the desired output. You could also get an adapter for your sound card. As far as recording into digital multitracks is concerned, it should not be a problem as they are usually made for all microphones.

Gadget 3 – Audio Interface Recording Sound Card:

Much as we have seemingly maligned the computer, it is still required even if you’ll be recording externally as you’ll still need to get the sound into the computer for audio mastering, burning, MP3 upload or whatever else. If you want to get it in a high quality, some of the factors to look for are types of input, quality and connectivity.

The advantage of using a digital multitrack as compared to a purely analog one is that it doesn’t lose music recording quality when copied to another device. Your digital multitrack can send it’s music out digitally, so its better to have a sound card that can accept digital data as well. The standard formats are called “spdif”, and come in two categories, requiring two different types of cables: optical (spdif/o) and electronic (spdif/e).

Gadget 4 – Studio Headphones, Playback Gear:

As you will be playing the new vocals with the backing tracks you have to make sure your backing tracks are synchronized to the device you will be recording your vocals to.

A computer program generally does this automatically. If, however, you are using a multitrack with a computer, your synchronization may need to be tweaked a wee little bit. While doing your home recording, all you will be required to do is connect the computer and multitrack via a MIDI cable and then specifying on each (the program and the multitrack) which sync signal (MMC, MTC, SMPTE) is sent/received. Besides, you also need to check the frame rate, which device is the master and whether pressing ‘Play’ on the master starts playback at the beginning or at the song position of the master.

Use the tips of this article to have a wonderful recording experience. Soon your name will figure amongst the successful singers.

In today’s recording industry, hundreds of thousands of dollars can be spent producing just one album. There are recording studios, however, where the word retro applies to finances as well as the overall vibe of the place. Take Arizona music studio Uranus Recording of Tempe, where less than $10,000 can produce a world-class recording that would cost $50,000 in most comparable studios. Yet the price tag is not the only thing reminiscent of years past at this world-class Tempe recording studio. Its Atomic Age theme emulates the classic music production studio of the Fifties and Sixties when musicians understood and appreciated the possibilities and value of Live Room acoustics.

Gin Blossoms lead singer Robin Wilson built this retro-style Arizona recording studio inside the Tempe Creamery Complex – a registered historical Arizona landmark. The Live Room in Wilson’s Tempe music studio is a 22′ x 24′ x 10′ space featuring hand made acoustic treatments, allowing musicians who record here to achieve a fuller, more organic sound than in the acoustically “dead” booths and studio rooms typically favored since the Seventies.

Of course, the best acoustics in the world mean little on an album without the right recording equipment for quality music production. Wilson’s full-service Arizona recording studio is equipped with Pro Tools HD and a Neve sidecar mixing console, as well as a host of mics, guitars, amps, pedals, and electrical outlets too numerous to mention. In addition to the Live Room and control room, Uranus Recording has a vintage bank vault turned custom-built isolation booth, and what’s become a famous signature wall in the bathroom where musicians mark their permanent place in the rich musical history of this Tempe recording studio.

Some of the biggest names in music have recorded in this Arizona music studio. The Gin Blossoms wrote and demoed material there for their Platinum LP, “Congratulations I’m Sorry.” Lee Hazelwood and his legendary guitarist Al Casey, who together pioneered the Arizona rock scene and went to write number one hits for Duane Eddy and record some of the biggest hits of the 1960s, recorded here twice. And Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, Arizona’s biggest live draw, called the recording of their most recent album, “No More Beautiful World, at Uranus “the best time we’ve ever had making a record.”

When it comes to producing an album in the modern music industry, musicians often must choose between top-of-the-line music production and affordability. But at Tempe music studio Uranus Recording, you get both – access to the world’s finest equipment and professional acoustics for a fraction of what you’d normally pay for the best record you can possibly make.