If you’ve ever wondered why musical metadata is so important you’re about to find out in this excellent conversation with this week’s podcast guest. Drew Waters has gone from high school dropout to PhD all in the name of music. Starting out as a working electric bass player as a teenager, he switched to upright […]
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I never had an opinion about mega-producer Mark Ronson either way. Sure, I’d admired his work with Adele, Amy Winehouse and Bruno Mars (just to name a few), but I had never seen him speak much until this TED talk below about how sampling changed music. I must admit that he opened my eyes to […]
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Recently I went back and began to read some of the Ken Scott biography Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust that I was lucky enough to co-write. It’s a great book (if I do say so myself) with some wonderful stories about Ken working with some of the legends of music business. One of my favorites […]
Continue readingDue to the large volume of spam comments that I receive, I’m temporarily shutting down the comment section of this site. I manually approve all comments, which up until now wasn’t a problem, but every day the spam submissions grow and now it’s near 100 per day. As a result, for the moment I’m suspending […]
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When Michael Jackson left his brothers and went solo, it didn’t take long for him to establish himself as a solo hitmaker. His first release “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” was an instant worldwide hit and continues to be popular almost 40 years later. Most listeners just take a song for granted but not […]
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Matching the sound of a mix has never been easy, yet it’s essential in learning the craft, or for pros, getting closer to a sound that the artist likes. In the past it’s all been done by matching by ear and as fruitful as that can be, it does take time. Recently there’s been a […]
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My guest this week on Episode #230 of my Inner Circle Podcast is Sweetwater’s editorial director Mitch Gallagher, who started his career as a guitarist/vocalist with various rock and country bands while earning a degree in music from Moorhead State University and studying with various classical guitar masters. After making his living as a touring […]
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Musicians tend to look down on DJs, but please keep an open mind here. Like everything in music there’s more to DJing than meets the eye. This Insider video features DJ, producer, and founder of Fool’s Gold Records A-Trak, who has been DJing for over 20 years. In 1997 he was the world champion of […]
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A lot of bands are naturally good because of the caliber of the musicians. Their innate talent causes them to automatically do some things that are important to band tightness, but many of the rest of us sometimes wonder why our band doesn’t seem as tight as it should be, either across all songs or […]
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Gibson has certainly had it’s share of self-inflicted troubles over the last few years, but it’s possible that the company finally got the message as it tries to get out from under bankruptcy. Gone is former co-owner and CEO Henry Juszkiewicz (the hunt for a new CEO is on), and the company is trying hard to get […]
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Universal Audio has always made some great audio interfaces and now the company has taken the to the next level with the release of the new Apollo X Series. The newly upgraded units provide 50% more DSP processing power and even better A/D and D/A conversion along with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity to your Mac or Windows […]
Continue readingMichael Laskow started Taxi in 1992 with the idea of helping songwriters, artists, bands, and composers get their music heard initially by record labels, and later by publishers and music supervisors. The company now has members in over 90 countries and features a host of placements with virtually every major television channel and film studio. […]
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Even skeptics agree that once you’ve heard a recording on a well-cut piece of vinyl, it’s hard to go back to listening to anything else, especially to the digital streams that we’re all now used to. The problem with vinyl is that it’s not all done well, sometimes using inferior vinyl, and that it ultimately […]
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Many engineers believe that miking a grand piano is the most difficult thing they’re called on to do. Getting it to sound natural can drive an engineer a little crazy sometimes, although that’s not always the sound we’re going for. That said, there are 4 main techniques and multiple variations of each outlined in the […]
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Every few years musical conspiracy theorists push forth a new iteration of how our A = 440Hz tuning standard was actually meant to be 432Hz instead. I’ve written about this in the past, but every so often a new video comparison shows up that makes it worth at least looking at and listening to. Just […]
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