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Ronan C. Murphy’s Aphorisms On Recording

Big Al — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:35:13 +0000

Ronan C. Murphy

If you don’t know Ronan C. Murphy, GET TO KNOW HIM!

He’s a great engineer/producer and has a great video podcast, Ronan’s Recording Show.

He also conducts the famous Home Recording Bootcamp all over the globe.

I found Ronan’s list of Aphorisms Of Recording, and immediately thought to myself, “What the @$&* is an ‘aphorism’? Is that anything like a ‘trueism’?”

Interwebs to the rescue! (Dictionary.com)

aph·o·rism (āf’ə-rĭz’əm)
n.

A tersely phrased statement of a truth or opinion; an adage.

A brief statement of a principle.

Well, I was close.

Here’s what Ronan has to say about the genesis of this list of adages…

“I began writing this collection of Aphorisms while living in England working on several King Crimson albums with Robert Fripp. Robert had written a large collection of aphorisms about art and life and I decided to write a collection that focused on recording.”

Without further ado…here they are. Definitely pearls of studio wisdom.

Aphorisms and apparent truths about making records.
(a work in progress by Ronan Chris Murphy)

There is no such thing as over-production, only appropriate and inappropriate production.
Emulation is always a compromise.
The only endearing elements of emulation are found within the artifacts of its failure.
The quality of a recording is governed by the performance.
Sometimes people who know less than you about making records are right.
There is often an inverse relationship between the sound quality of a pop rock mix and the number of times over 2 the drummer strikes the snare drum per bar.
The sound of a mix is seldom the most important element.
Snare drums that ring are pitched instruments. Just like flutes.
The abstention of studio effects is an effect.
Guitars over-driven from digital racks or amp emulators will dominate or be submissive to the group. There is seldom a middle ground.
Great records are made by great people, not great studios.
If you don’t have the answer to a recording dilemma, the music probably does.
If the music does not have the answer it is probably not music.
What you can throw away is often more important than what you can add.
The factual integrity of a recording decreases exponentially with every mic and tape track used
There is always a producer(s) on a record.
Some of the records you loved when you were younger sound horrible and you never noticed.
You are making the soundtrack to some one else’s life.
If you require academics to defend your music, you have already lost Music as an ally.
Recordings without goals usually go no where. Recordings with goals rarely go where you plan, but they get there.
Good “composition” does not always result in good music.
Many people mistake “drums sounds” for “production”
The fact that the “CD” can hold over 73 minutes of music does not mean that the “album” wants to.
The general pubic thinks records by famous people sound better then those by non-famous people.
Perfect recordings seldom make for perfect records.
Production and adding effects are not synonymous.
Sometimes not participating is the greatest contribution you can make
A good producer knows that sometimes going away is a contribution.
Appropriate production is bringing to the project what it needs, clearing away what it doesn’t, and not touching the rest.
The question “Why?” should be asked before “How?” or “When?”.
The music is more important than any one in the studio.

While we’re at it, here’s the latest episode of Ronan’s Recording Show as of the date of this post:

Ronan C. Murphy’s Aphorisms On Recording is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

“I Wear No Pants” – PSN Listener Gets Song On During Super Bowl XLIV

Big Al — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:05:24 +0000

Stu Venable, a long time listener to the Project Studio Network podcast, has had a song picked up by the Dockers clothing company for a commercial during this years big game, Super Bowl XLIV.

The song is called I Wear No Pants.

I asked Stu if he wouldn’t mind telling us all a little bit about how this happened. Here’s his very interesting report…

In November of last year, I received a phone call from an advertising agency wanting to purchase a song I wrote, “I Wear No Pants” for use in an advertising campaign for Dockers, to begin during the 2010 Super Bowl.

The deal went through, contracts were signed and I sent them the score for the song. A preview DVD of the spot is being Fed-Ex’d to me as we speak, and my wife and I are hosting a Super Bowl party for the first time in our lives.

Almost as an after-thought, I asked my contact at the ad agency how they found the song. Our band has never pursued placements in commercials (or anything else), as we’ve been content performing at the local Renaissance Faire and a few other local venues.

She told me that they hit upon us during a brainstorming session when someone Googled “I Wear No Pants,” and they found a video of us, taken by a fan, performing the song live at the Faire.

In recent weeks, we’ve been working to make sure that anyone who sees the ad and wants to hear the original version of the song (or find out more about the band) can do so easily.

This has included purchasing the url http://IWearNoPants.com and asking our fan-base to act as a virtual street team to put as many references to the band, Dockers, I Wear No Pants and the Wear the Pants campaign in the blogs, Facebook and Twitter posts and anyplace else they can. We also made a video of the song, which was posted on Youtube a few weeks go.

You can’t help but run through all the possible scenarios of something like this. Last year, nearly 100 million people in the United States watched the Super Bowl. If one percent of those people buy the song…you get the idea.

Here’s the video of the soon-to-be-well-known-song, I Wear No Pants.

Using a screen reader? Click here for the video.

Here’s teaser for the actual Docker’s commercial featuring I Wear No Pants:

Using a screen reader? Click here for the video.

You can find more about Stu’s band here: http://PoxyBoggards.com

Here’s Stu’s podcast: http://AngryFolk.com

From high atop the PSN towers, we proclaim throughout the land:

Congratulations Stu on I Wear No Pants!

“I Wear No Pants” – PSN Listener Gets Song On During Super Bowl XLIV is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

ASCAP Now Demanding License From Venues That Let People Play Guitar Hero

Big Al — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:38:50 +0000

Wait…what?

Breaking news from Tech Dirt:

from the can’t-listen-without-paying-up dept…

We’ve been detailing how the various collection societies around the globe have been trotting out all sorts of dubious reasoning to try to get more people to pay up for a license. In the US, ASCAP has been particularly ridiculous, seeking public performance licenses for (legally licensed) ringtones as well as the 30-second previews you find on music download stores like iTunes. ASCAP has already succeeded in forcing YouTube to pay up as well. Of course, the end result has actually been harming many up and coming songwriters and musicians, as more and more venues are choosing to forego music entirely, because it’s just not worth having to pay up the fees that ASCAP charges.

In the latest overreach, sent in by reader faceless, ASCAP is demanding a licensing fee from a venue that has the video game Guitar Hero for people to play. While the venue does sometimes have live musicians, it has purposely chosen to only allow original music (no covers) from artists and songwriters not covered by ASCAP, to avoid having to pay the fee. As the venue owner notes, it’s ridiculous to think that the venue should have to pay for a license just to let people play Guitar Hero, saying, “patrons are paying for the entertainment of the game not for the listening value of the music.”

But, of course, that’s not how ASCAP views any of these things, insisting that the value itself comes from the music, and thus the songwriters must absolutely be paid. Of course, this isn’t the first time ASCAP has come down hard on music video games. Earlier this year, it insisted that the video game companies themselves should pay performance licensing fees as well — so in this case it looks like they’re trying to double or triple dip.

Of course, the most likely end result? The venue will drop the game, and fewer people will hear the music. This harms everyone — the songwriters, the musicians, ASCAP and the venue. But ASCAP seems to think it’s the right move. This is why more and more musicians are recognizing that what’s good for ASCAP is not good for songwriters.

Click here to read the original article and see the user comments…

ASCAP Now Demanding License From Venues That Let People Play Guitar Hero is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

Why Not Spend a Few Moments With Legendary Producer and Engineer Ken Scott?

Big Al — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:41:40 +0000

Ken Scott

Ken Scott’s discography reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ from the recording industry, just look at these credits:

Engineered:

America – America
The Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour – White Album
Jeff Beck – Truth
David Bowie – Man Of Words, Man of Music (Space Oddity) – The Man Who Sold The World
Duran Duran – Thank You – Pop Trash
George Harrison – All Things Must Pass
Elton John – Madman Across The Water – Honky Chateau – Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player [Grammy Nominated]
Lindisfarne – Fog On The Tyne
Mahavishnu Orchestra – Birds Of Fire
Harry Nilsson – Son Of Schmilsson [Grammy Nominated]

Also: Pink Floyd – John Lennon – Ringo Starr – The Rolling Stones – Joan Armatrading – I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing ( Coke Ad ) – Lou Reed – Procul Harum etc etc

Produced and Engineered:

Jeff Beck – There And Back
David Bowie – Hunky Dory – Ziggy Stardust – Aladdin Sane – Pinups -
dada – Puzzle
Stanley Clarke – Stanley Clarke – Journey To Love [Grammy Nominated] – Schooldays
Level 42 – True Colours
Devo – Duty Now For The Future
Mahavishnu Orchestra – Emerald Visions Of The Pure Beyond [Grammy Nominated]
Supertramp – Crime Of The Century [Grammy Nominated] – Crisis, What Crisis?
The Tubes – Young And Rich

And many, many more!

Here’s a really nice two-part interview with Ken where he talks about his past experience and his latest project.

PART 1

Using a screen reader? Click here to play part one.

PART 2

Using a screen reader? Click here to play part two.

Why Not Spend a Few Moments With Legendary Producer and Engineer Ken Scott? is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

Which Are The Best Digital Music Distributors For Your Songs?

Big Al — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:45:26 +0000

So, you’re ready to sell your songs online. There are a lot of choices out there with various fee structures. Many are also aggregators and by default will get your tunes listed in services like iTunes or Amazon when you’re listed with them.

This is taken from an interesting post over at the RouteNote blog:

It’s been a while since we last ran through the comparison between our digital distribution service and those of our competitors. Let’s open with a table looking at…

The USD$ price of signing up various types of release to a few of the major digital distributors out there on the Net

Follow by links to the information pages from which these figures were derived

A brief look at the pros and cons of each service

[A UPC is a barcode, necessary for most online stores to identify your release as a unique product.]

Click here to read helpful breakdowns of each of these services.

Which Are The Best Digital Music Distributors For Your Songs? is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

File Sharers Spend More On Music, Also Responsible For Decline In Sales

Big Al — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:38:24 +0000

Wait…what?

There was a great post by Andrew Dubber over at Music Think Tank addressing this apparent contradiction in the media of late. Here’s what he had to say…

———-

I’ve read two very interesting related articles this week.

The first suggested that people who download music via peer-to-peer services spend more money on music than their non-filesharing peers.

The second insisted that the net drop in CD and download sales overall has increased concurrent with, and as a result of filesharing.

It’s difficult to argue with either, since they’re both backed by respectable-seeming research and surveys – and yet they can’t possibly both be true.

Until you realise the fundamental logical flaws in both positions: the presupposition that unauthorised downloading of music has a causal effect – indeed, is the only causal factor – on the fortunes of the music business.

Clearly, as soon as you take a step back and think about it logically, so-called ‘piracy’ cannot possibly be anything more than one of a whole range of factors affecting the music industry as a whole, simply because the world is a complicated place and people are complex and interesting.

There are political, economic, social, cultural and technological factors all influencing the industry’s affairs – and it stands to reason that different influencing factors are pulling in all sorts of different directions.

To blame piracy for the decline of music revenues – or to single out pirates as the main source of income – overlooks that complexity, and merely provides a PR sideshow to the main story (that almost never gets covered in the mainstream press), which is that the entire ecosystem of music business is changing.

Click here to read the rest of this article

File Sharers Spend More On Music, Also Responsible For Decline In Sales is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

Google Launches Music Search With Lala, Pandora, Rhapsody, imeem & MySpace

Big Al — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:36:31 +0000

This just in from the Technology department at the Los Angeles Times:

Google this afternoon began rolling out its widely rumored music feature, which lets users search for and listen to entire songs for free.

The search engine banded together with several music service sites that are responsible for streaming the songs on Google’s search results pages. Searching for Coldplay, for example, will yield the band’s album cover art, alongside four popular songs that users can play once for free. Once a song has been played by a user, they will only be able to hear a 30-second sample of tune. (The feature is being gradually rolled out over the next 24 hours, so some folks may not see the feature until tomorrow.)

Google itself isn’t paying record companies for the rights to play millions of songs on its search page; its partners are. Those include Lala, Pandora, imeem, MySpace Music and Rhapsody, a subscription service from Real Networks. All have licensing agreements with record labels to stream or sample millions of songs online.

The Mountain View, Calif., search company said it’s not interested in competing with digital music retailers such as Amazon and Apple’s iTunes.

“We’re not in the music business per se,” said R.J. Pittman, Google’s director of product for the music search project. “We don’t license the music nor sell the music directly on Google. We are merely a music search feature.”

Read the rest of the article at The Los Angeles Times…

Google Launches Music Search With Lala, Pandora, Rhapsody, imeem & MySpace is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

Is The Future Of Music Really This Bleak?

Big Al — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:29:56 +0000

Here’s an interesting article from the Chicago Tribune about album sales in 2008 and what it could mean for the future. Personally, I think it’s more evidence that the future is bright for the inventive independent artist.

The Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit got rolling Sunday, an annual meeting of musicians, tech-heads, artist managers, academics and music-biz entrepreneurs. The summit’s forward-looking approach is all about making the best of the new reality created by Internet technology and how that might be affected by government policy decisions.

Sounds like heavy stuff. But wonkiness goes hand in hand with the myriad possibilities that await artists in a music industry very different from the one that existed a decade ago, before peer-to-peer file came along.

Further evidence that sales of recorded music are not the way of the future for artists. Instead, it increasingly appears that recordings will be more like advertisements for opportunities that actually do make money: live performances, merchandise, licensing to movies, commercials and video games, ring tones, etc.

We”ll have plenty more in upcoming days, but as a backdrop for the summit, here are a few tidbits of information shared by publicist Ariel Hyatt about U.S. album sales in 2008:

More than 115,000 albums were released

Only 110 sold more than 250,000 copies

A mere 1,500 topped 10,000 sales

Fewer than 6,000 cracked the 1,000 barrier

Further evidence that sales of recorded music are not the way of the future for artists. Instead, it increasingly appears that recordings will be more like adverstisements for opportunities that actually do make money: live performances, merchandise, licensing to movies, commercials and video games, ring tones, etc.

Link to the original article

Is The Future Of Music Really This Bleak? is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

How Can You Possibly Make Any Money Giving Away Your Music For Free?

Big Al — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:13:21 +0000

At this year’s NARM Connects event, there was a very interesting talk given by Michael Masnick called Learning From What’s Working: Success Stories From The Music Commerce Frontier.

You might recognize Michael as one of the founders of TechDirt. As for NARM (the National Association of Recording Merchandisers), it’s a not-for-profit trade association that serves the music content delivery community in a variety of areas including networking, advocacy, information, education and promotion.

I feel he makes a lot of salient points here. One that I’ve soap-boxed about is taking stock of what’s going on and turning it to your advantage, i.e. get creative, no matter what type of business you’re in.

He refers to some of the usual pioneers referred to as creative music marketers, like Trent Reznor.

However, to counter the argument that Trent was already popular (due to the old, dying business model) and therefore predisposed to be successful at whatever he did, he gives several examples of musicians starting from scratch and the ways they’ve found to make decent money with their craft in today’s music business climate.

They all have one thing in common; a large portion of their music (or all of it) is available absolutely free.

So, how can you possibly make any money giving away your music for free?

Observe a few of the ways (please ignore the kinetic Powerpoint) . . .

How Can You Possibly Make Any Money Giving Away Your Music For Free? is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

Trent Reznor On Social Networking: “I’m Out.”

Big Al — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:58:28 +0000

Trent Reznor Of Nine Inch Nails

For Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor, social networking is not working.

“I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it’s now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule,” he said.

Reznor is very forthright about the kind of idiots he has in mind. For him, they have ruined the beauty of eschewing record companies in favor of direct contact with real people out there.

His first example of idiocracy are posts to the Nine Inch Nails site: “On nin.com, there’s 3-4 different people that each send me between 50 – 100 message per day of delusional, often threatening nonsense. We can delete them, but they just sign back up and start again.”