(y)

there was a pretty good interview with Shippen in the last issue of Tape OP

I had to stop watching after he said it's a great, exciting time for music. They will make their corporate projections because the corporations now monopolize music. Bands, are much extinct as pretty much every bar would indicate by not even having one anymore.

I dislike when corporate music folk call the shots and set the game. This seems more like a pep rally political campaign to push the modern "industry".

:)

I watched it through to the end, enjoyed it all.
I like the sound of Spotify. I found their opinions on PT and iTB mixing interesting.

I managed to watch it to the end. If all the name-dropping had been edited out, it would have been more watchable and only half the length.

Watched it all. I'm already tired of hearing about transformer coupled conversion. Lol I want a tube coupled 768k converter.

Anyone know what shippen meant by ''nested VCA" faders when he was talking about orchestral mixing?

I'm going to stand on my soap box again, look out :). As much as I hate being marginalised by venues who don't want to pay for live music and put on open mics for free music, at least a lot of them about, means people do come and listen to live music. Now if you're any good, you then have more chance when you launch into gigs of people knowing who you are, word of mouth, and coming along. I have witnessed that with young local acts where I currently live.

While it is a long way from my gigging and touring days, it's keeping my hand in, and people do appreciate still my level of competency. I enjoy performing again, and with no pressure or expectancy, I get to play my own material all the time, and guess what?, people have started to sing along with my songs they remember words of :). The music industry won't change, we have to, and it's back to our roots, recording can be done by anyone, performing not so much.

Tony

Makzimia, post: 458806, member: 48344 wrote: recording can be done by anyone,

Recording compentency has never been lower, and mixing is nearly impossible to nail in the avaetahe home environment. People have no idea of the use of mic position, or the luxary of a decent mic locker. You'll almost never hear someone using a baffle or blanket in a home recording, which is where they need it most.

The difference between hitting record and practicing the art of recording are two different things. So while it can be done by anyone, it's by and large not done nearly as good as it could be. Many times the available tools for sound replacement aren't even implemented properly.

Performing is by and large a ticket selling contest, and a bar tab contest at least from my experience.

kmetal Kyle you missed my point :). ANYONE can do recording, I never said they could do it well. If you can't perform remotely well, you'll get to hear about it, eventually admittedly, low bar there too sometimes LOL.

hey! "the record companies are throwing parties again. "

the music business is just different now than it was even 20 years ago. it's going to be different than it is now in another 10 or 20 years. it's going to keep changing. grow or die. if you want to monetize your music, you need to find the market for it or find a need and fill it. business101.

what seems to be working for a lot of artists is to sell digital downloads of their music with or without a record company and to play where ever they can for what ever they can get to promote the band in order to create a demand for the music.

Really? Who'd buy a digital download? Who's actually "seeking" music to buy to begin with? Personally, unlike most here, probably, I don't really even listen to music anymore and buying it? The younger generations have absolutely no concept of ever buying music and about 0.00% interest in seeing a "band".

Not to sound pessimistic :)LOL: - yea right), but we're just old and tend to still see things from our perspective.

:)

-Chuck

@eternalsound you old pessimist Chuck.

Having recently discovered bandcamp, I've been buying music again after swearing off CDs in 2013. I actually biy CDs again too, usually at bargain stores for 3-5 bucks, since it's harder and harder to even get the master version of a song or album. With my nas drive and Plex I should be able to have my entire collection accessible

Wow - I haven't bought anything in years myself. I just could never really get into anything post 12:59:59 December 31, 1989. It was all magic then, and before ..years before too. The era of the "band".

One thing I noticed in the early '90's, watching rock cover bands, was that there were absolutely no more younger bands trailing in on then scene to join and continue the party. It was at that point I knew that this was were the "rock cover band" was going to historically cut off; at least where I am from.

No one younger than me (48) would really ever care about a "band" ...a "rock" band anymore.

Shortly after that time Lenny Kravitz released "Rock-n-roll" is Dead". It was, and the "band" was no more.

I feel like saying "The End" :LOL:

-Chuck

Everything is being manipulated...

Just learned that movie companies in China are buying up seats in the movie theaters to drive up the stats even when the public doesn't watch their stuff. It results in better stock values. You might think this is a Chinese problem. Happened in France too...

The music industry has been dumping their stock in Spotify. I wondered why. Now it seems clear that's because Spotify is trying to pay musicians directly, cutting out the middle men...

It was a record year for the music industry. Fourth year in a row. Despite that, they're still shouting that piracy is killing them. Not so, according to a hefty report by Citibank. But only 12% of the revenue is going to the people who created the music in the first place. Marketing takes up 36%...

kmetal, post: 458805, member: 37533 wrote: Anyone know what shippen meant by ''nested VCA" faders when he was talking about orchestral mixing?

Sorry, K, I didn't spot this until today.

I don't think "nested" is really the correct term. It should be more "heirarchical" or even "series". Take the example of a multi-miked drum kit. You could have the tom mics each feeding a sub bus through VCAs used for balancing up the toms. Another sub-bus could have the snare top and bottom fed through VCAs, and more sub-busses with the overheads etc. Each of the sub busses could then feed a stereo drum bus through their own VCAs so that the balance of the kit could be changed easily between tracks, or even between verse and chorus of a single track. The drum bus would be available at the main mix.

VCAs are cheap in a DAW, so having them on every sub-mix gives almost infinite control of the balance of complex miking setups. Depending on the architecture and capabilities of the particular DAW, the overall effect would be similar to volume enveloping, except that the signal levels themselves are controlled dynamically. If that signal is fed to more than one process, the input to all the processes is changed by the same amount.

Boswell, post: 458845, member: 29034 wrote: Sorry, K, I didn't spot this until today.

I don't think "nested" is really the correct term. It should be more "heirarchical" or even "series". Take the example of a multi-miked drum kit. You could have the tom mics each feeding a sub bus through VCAs used for balancing up the toms. Another sub-bus could have the snare top and bottom fed through VCAs, and more sub-busses with the overheads etc. Each of the sub busses could then feed a stereo drum bus through their own VCAs so that the balance of the kit could be changed easily between tracks, or even between verse and chorus of a single track. The drum bus would be available at the main mix.

VCAs are cheap in a DAW, so having them on every sub-mix gives almost infinite control of the balance of complex miking setups. Depending on the architecture and capabilities of the particular DAW, the overall effect would be similar to volume enveloping, except that the signal levels themselves are controlled dynamically. If that signal is fed to more than one process, the input to all the processes is changed by the same amount.

Thanks Boz. I was mentally mapping out my main writing session template the other night and I was stuck at the sub-busses as to wether I wanted to leave them at unity and mix with grouped track faders or not. VCA'S are seemingly the missing link allowing me to purely adjust the volume whilst keeping the rest of the gain staging in tact, so I can leave my busses at unity (to send to an external summing mixer, or print stems quickly) and still have full control over the VCA'S.

Can't wait to try it out, thank you so much!

As far as the industry, I wonder of we will see any more world-wide sensations as we used to up until the early 2000's. From Elvis to Nirvana there always seemed to be a "band of the era". I think the current distribution methods have shone more light on more bands while diffusing the light on a single star. Artists like Adele refuse to adhere to a certain look or incorporate dancing onto her act, which wasn't commonplace. It seems like there's champions on each weigh class vs a champ ruling the music world. I wonder if we will see a return.

Less than 3 minutes at the beginning actually discussing the future of the music industry. I'm perfectly happy listening to 20 more minutes of someone's first foothold in the business and workflow, but did find the namedropping mildly annoying.

I would certainly agree with their comments about committing certain sounds to "tape" early on and building around that signature sound - rather than wanting a 1000 options at mixdown. I feel like too many options often muddies the water and just ends up dilluting the original vibe that made the song 'work' in the first place. Kurt, I'm pretty sure you subscribe to that philosophy.

Kurt Foster, post: 458809, member: 7836 wrote: what seems to be working for a lot of artists is to sell digital downloads of their music with or without a record company and to play where ever they can for what ever they can get to promote the band in order to create a demand for the music.

I was struck by how oddly enthusiastic you seem to be about that part though - since just a few weeks ago you seemed to be saying anyone who self-published should expect 100% of nothing and fully expect their material (even though copyrighted) to be illegally downloaded the minute they put it online.

i think i'm being a realist. i don't see any way to stop it but it seems like there are some who have found a way to make it work. how are the record companies doing better?

i'm all for artists and producers getting paid. but as soon as it's digital data and not a physical thing you can hold it's up for grabs. the last election showed us that.

I used to tape songs off the radio, and tape my friends tapes and records too. I think the mod teir artist has a better chance of getting their music purchased, than say someone like Eminem. Eminem might sell more overall but of you look at the percentage of bootleg vs legit, the ondoe artist will probably have a higher percentage of legit.

I think things like YouTube are crushing sales more than actual downloads. Streaming is super easy.

The strangest things seem to work. A friend's band sells a lot of cassette tapes, fi, next to downloads. He also sells photo books on paper, with links in them to free downloads of the music.

It's certainly not a major part of the band's income, but it helped a lot to find fans. They are quite famous in the former countries of the East block, fi.

It's certainly much better than the major label they had before, that created a lot of obligations and no income, quite the contrary.

Boswell, post: 458845, member: 29034 wrote: Sorry, K, I didn't spot this until today.

I don't think "nested" is really the correct term. It should be more "heirarchical" or even "series". Take the example of a multi-miked drum kit. You could have the tom mics each feeding a sub bus through VCAs used for balancing up the toms. Another sub-bus could have the snare top and bottom fed through VCAs, and more sub-busses with the overheads etc. Each of the sub busses could then feed a stereo drum bus through their own VCAs so that the balance of the kit could be changed easily between tracks, or even between verse and chorus of a single track. The drum bus would be available at the main mix.

VCAs are cheap in a DAW, so having them on every sub-mix gives almost infinite control of the balance of complex miking setups. Depending on the architecture and capabilities of the particular DAW, the overall effect would be similar to volume enveloping, except that the signal levels themselves are controlled dynamically. If that signal is fed to more than one process, the input to all the processes is changed by the same amount.

This ....

kmetal, post: 458805, member: 37533 wrote: Anyone know what shippen meant by ''nested VCA" faders when he was talking about orchestral mixing?

i had to watch the whole thing again to hear what he was talking about. i think he meant this;

i had an MCI 636 with tape based automation. on the faders for the channel strips there were thumb wheels with settings for 1 through 8 which corresponded to 8 VCA groups that acted much like sub group faders on a buss. the advantage besides avoiding extra amps and noise of a subgroup was you could turn down the vca group and the effects sends followed the faders as opposed to staying up as they would if you turned down a group subfader.

you could assign say the drums to vca 1 and then control all the faders on group 1 on another fader that you assign as the master for that group. my console had 4 wild faders in the master section although i could have installed 4 more for all 8 groups but if i was running automation i would only have at best 20 or 21 tracks for audio as 2 tracks went for automation data and at least 1 track for a buffer, so i could assign the faders on the surplus channels as master faders for the vca's.

cyrano, post: 458833, member: 51139 wrote: Just learned that movie companies in China are buying up seats in the movie theaters to drive up the stats even when the public doesn't watch their stuff. It results in better stock values. Y

Well, this isn’t really a new business concept. It’s been happening in the record business for decades - artists and their management companies - and sometimes even the labels themselves - buying up thousands of copies of their own albums, in order to inflate the sales figures - albeit falsely - but units sold are units sold, and the higher the numbers for sales, there’s a greater potential that the album will receive more attention. A records’ success - or lack of it (business wise, not artistically) is often determined by sales that are tracked through Soundscan, those numbers on the surface may be “false”, because in this scenario, 100,000 album copies were not bought by 100,000 different people; in the end it doesn’t matter because Soundscan tracks sales - Soundscan doesn’t differentiate - or care whether 100 thousand different people buy a record, or if 1 thousand people buy 100 albums each.
It’s been happening for a very long time in the record industry.

I know the practice. What's new to me is that they do it to drive stock value. Not the charts...

cyrano, post: 459104, member: 51139 wrote: I know the practice. What's new to me is that they do it to drive stock value. Not the charts...

I think that’s the business model now; I dunno, maybe in the past, they did both; inflating the numbers “artificially” to manipulate chart positions and radio play, as well as hoping their stock value would rise, too.
But, there isn’t any “radio” anymore, at least not as what previous generations had growing up on the 60’s thru the 80’s ... which was also a great time for live music at nightclubs, theaters and other venues.
One of the things that has changed the most, is the money that artists now receive in royalties. Streaming is popular with the public, but it pays shit to artists and songwriters. And, I’m not seeing all that many venues for bands to play anymore, and those clubs that do have live music pay such paltry sums of money...
I believe that there are niches out there that can be lucrative; music for film, TV, video games, etc. - but even in that market, there are people who don’t care about getting paid, those who just want to be able to say that they’ve placed a musical piece in that media.
I do agree with Kyle, that the quality of music has suffered as a result of “anyone” having access to the tools used to record and mix...
Someone could give me the finest surgical and diagnostic tools available, but that doesn’t make me a surgeon. I mean, I’ll cut into your brain if you want me to, and if the money is good; but it’s probably a good idea to get your affairs in order and secure your funeral arrangements before I do.
- donny thompson, MD, Pathologist, Mortician ...and Bar Tender.
;)

cyrano, post: 458833, member: 51139 wrote: Everything is being manipulated...

Just learned that movie companies in China are buying up seats in the movie theaters to drive up the stats even when the public doesn't watch their stuff. It results in better stock values. You might think this is a Chinese problem. Happened in France too...
...

China is doing this in the BC real estate markets as well. Crafty business on their part, terrible for the youth wanting to start a life in a community they and their families grew up in. What happened?