Studio Insider #98 February, 2006
MacWorld, Supergrass
Supergrass
I hope you make it to Bakersfield for the CBA's first annual SuperGrass
Festival. This indoor event will be held at the Holiday Inn Select on February 3, 4,
and 5, 2006. Several great bands are appearing, and this sounds to me like a
mighty fine way to get a mid-winter bluegrass fix.
Industry Trends
I’ve been meaning to give you updates about a few industry events, and
after a day at the annual Apple Computer “MacWorld Expo” in San Francisco, I
have even more to add. As for the Expo, I’ve noticed a change over the last few
years. Gradually, some of the more techy companies have been leaving the
show, being replaced by more consumer-oriented enterprises hawking iPod
accessories, iPhoto and iMovie devices and other consumer products that work
with Macintosh computers or other Apple products. Apple has clearly been
focusing on wide-spread consumer support with products that are easy to use for
non-techies. While it’s frustrating for engineers and pro audio geeks to see their
vendors and suppliers leave the show, a wider acceptance of Apple by the
mainstream public will result in greater numbers of Apple devices being sold, and
this can benefit us all by lowering prices. “Economy of scale” takes on a
completely different meaning when it’s applied to ten million computer users
instead of to five thousand ProTools users.
That Intel Thing
The major announcements at the show were about Apple’s adoption of Intel
processors for their new Macs. The first company to go to market with Intel’s new
generation of low-power, dual core, blazing-fast processors, Apple will be
releasing new portable computers with much longer battery life and extended
capabilities. And the switch to Intel may help Apple deal with its perennial
problem of slow supply of parts for newer devices. For now, Apple’s operating
system will allow the new Intel-based computers to run software applications
designed for OS X (10) on the Power PC chips they’ve been using from Motorola
and IBM; eventually, however, programs will have to be rewritten to work on the
new Intel-based architecture. Economies of scale may make the newer Macs
cheaper and easier to build – and those of you with home studios may find more
Macintosh computers worming their way into your studios and then into your
living rooms.
Legal Jobs?
On the legal front, watch out for sparks flying from the major record labels
and New York’s Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. He has recently launched an
investigation into price collusion among the majors and their attempts to charge
higher prices for some music downloads. While this is a complicated issue with
varying sub-plots, the majors want to use their power to charge higher prices for
downloading music that they believe has more value than the rest of what’s
available. Apple’s iTunes store is the largest single provider of legal downloads,
and Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, has been chiding the labels for being “greedy.” He
has told them that if they charge more, it’ll just drive the public back to piracy,
(i.e., free music downloads) and the music labels will lose in the end if they raise
prices. This will be one fascinating fight to watch, and I’ll keep you posted.
Yet Another Fight?
Remember the market fight between VHS and Beta in the early years of
home video recording? Brace yourself for more fisticuffs. The fight is already
under way, and two distinct camps have emerged in the effort to supply the world
with the next generation of technology for home video. As people look for higher
definition video to enjoy on the emerging HD televisions, they will need to move
beyond the capacity of today’s DVD disks, which can only hold about four and a
half gigs of data. Movies must be highly compressed to fit onto today’s DVD
disks, and when these movies are viewed on HD screens, the artifacts of that
compression are easily seen. So the push for a higher-capacity format is in high
gear.
On one side is the “BluRay” team, with disks that can hold up to 50 gigs of
data on dual layers. On the other is the “HDDVD” team , with a better name, but
with smaller capacity and a claimed lower price of manufacture. Each side boasts
the allegiance of major HiFi manufacturers and content providers. Talks between
the two sides recently broke down (each side wanted the other to go away), and
it’s looking more and more like a replay of the old VHS/Beta wars. Watch less
television and play more music!
Producing in the Studio
Here at Highland Studios, I’ve been helping Bay Area singer-songwriter
Chuck McCabe finish his album, “Sweet Reunion.” Chuck, a wonderful talent both
as a writer and performer, has won the Woody Guthrie Songwriting Competition,
the Sisters Folk Festival Songwriting Competition, and several other national
events. Chuck and I decided early in the project that when it came time to
assemble all the tunes on the album, we wanted to do something different from
the traditional ten or twelve songs with two or three seconds of silence between
each. We wanted to take the listener on an extended trip that would start with the
first tune and continue until the end of the record, but still allow for casual
listening and sales of individual cuts via downloads. The album's central theme,"Sweet Renion," drove much of our planning. When we were doing the tracking
for many of the tunes, we sometimes asked the musicians to give us a personal
take on the tune they had just been working on. “No overdubs, no click track–just play the tune as you hear it,” we’d say. Sometimes we got wonderful results.
John Lee Sanders, our pianist, grew up in Louisiana, forging an intimate
relationship with many southern music styles. Some of John’s varied
interpretations of the title cut made it onto the album as between-the-songs
pieces or as reprises. The “Irrationals,” a fabulous acapella vocal group who did
some overdubs, were inspired by John’s performances and came up with some
great spontaneous gospel singing and shouting to mix in.
Since we’ve sequenced the album cuts with various environmental sounds
and between-song musical pieces, we were presented with some challenges
when it came time to master the album and decide where to place the beginnings
of each cut. We decided to make the album into one long sound file and then cut
that file into pieces, with the cuts just before each tune’s first note. This way, a
CD player could see each cut as an individual track and play it if commanded to
do so by the remote control. But for a more contemplative listening, the whole
thing can unroll as one long piece of music. If you’re curious about the CD, you
can check out Chuck’s web site at “chuck-mccabe.com.”
Joe Weed records acoustic music at his Highland Studios near Los Gatos, California. He has
released six albums of his own, produced many projects for independent labels, and does sound
tracks for film, TV and museums. His latest production, for Appleseed Recordings, is “Spain in
My Heart,” featuring Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Laurie Lewis, Norton Buffalo, Lila Downs, and
many other great artists. You can reach Joe by calling (408)353-3353, by email at joe@highlandpublishing.com or via the internet, at www.joeweed.com.
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