Never mind that Sun Records hasn’t signed a new artist in 30+ years so these people obviously haven’t done their homework… What are these people thinking? Isn’t that the equivalent of emailing a law firm and saying that you argue with your wife constantly and you always win so can you please have a job as a lawyer?

Come on people… don’t be stupid. If you want to be an artist then you basically want to have a JOB as an artist. If you just want to sing songs then great… go sing in the shower or with the alley cats. If you’re really going to try to make a living as an artist, and especially if you’re trying to get other people to consider helping you, you’d better do some work first. You will never get considered for a record deal via email. Now if your email says that you’ve sold 10,000 units on your own and you’re currently on tour in our town with 2 sold-out shows and you’ve put us on the guest list to come see you, then that’s a different story.

If you want to attract a record label and be taken seriously, do these things:

1. Perform: if you only sing in your shower, then that’s exactly where your career will start and end.
2. Record your own material (not cover songs): Labels need to be able to hear what you’ve got.
3. Be unique: Sound-alikes don’t last… think of every big star and find their unique quality, what’s yours?
4. Have a professional web presence: www.yourbandname.com, Facebook, Twitter, & MySpace pages. This is what a label will look at first.
5. Sell your music and track your sales: Labels want people who will be successful. The easiest way to prove that is to already be successful on a small scale.
6. Build a buzz (market yourself): Labels have A&R people who seek out bands that are creating a buzz… combine the top 5 to do so.

Once you’ve done the above… THEN send me an email inviting me to see you perform at a local show in MY town. I’m not flying to Maine to see a wannabe country star. If you’re not touring, then your not trying, and we don’t want people who don’t make the effort.

James

My favs are:

• CMX – a stereo pitch shifter with delay
• 1973 – a Neve 1073 type EQ (I love this EQ… it’s like magic)
• Major Tom – a dbx 160 Type Compressor

I haven’t used Bombardier much yet, but it certainly looks pretty promising.

Go check ‘em out at www.stillwellaudio.com!

The CMX Microshifter

I’ve been doing a lot of site design lately, and thought I’d share some links to what I consider to be the basic essential WordPress plugins. They’re all in use on this site, and are going on all of the other sites I’m currently running and a few that I’m building. BTW: If you’re a friend of mine, and you’re in need of hosting or a site, let me know and I can probably get you set up.

Disclaimer: This is a basic necessities list and not something experienced designers wouldn’t know.

Links open in a new window.

Basic Must Haves:

• WordPress.com Stats : Stats on your Dashboard. Yes, I do run Google analytics (via the next recommended plugin), but this is a great plugin for a quick look at your stats.
• Google Analyticator : A simple way to install Google Analytics on your WordPress site.
• Akismet : You should know this, but just in case: use this plugin. Stops 99.9% of  spam. Requires no work after the initial 30 second setup.
• WP-DBManager : Simple way to backup your site with multiple options. MUCH easier then writing the cron jobs yourself. It also lets you optimize, repair, empty/drop tables & run queries. As a side note on backups, all of my sites auto backup to a folder on my server and I have a FTP program run on a schedule to grab a copy to store on my local machine. Plus, my hosting service makes daily backups of all of my MySQL databases so I also have those to fall back on should the unfortunate happen.
• Google XML Sitemaps : Creates Sitemaps and automatically notifies Google. If you have a website (that you actually want people to know about), you should have an account with Google and go to their “Webmaster Tools” and look around. There you can manage your sitemaps and view tons of information about what Google thinks of your site and how they’re indexing it.
• All In One SEO Pack : Easy Search Engine Optimization. Important if you want people to find your site.
• Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button : Easily give your readers the ability to bookmark any page of your site or share it with others using the method/web site of their choosing. In today’s age of social media this is a must-have.
• SEO Friendly Images : Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.
• Login LockDown : Adds some extra security to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range.
• Twitter Tools : A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Show your tweets in your sidebar, and post tweets from your WordPress admin.
• Worpress Firewall : A MUST have. Hacker robots hit my sites all the time trying to get in and this tool stops all of them. If you only use one thing in this list, use THIS.

What are your “Must Haves”? Leave some links in the comments!

Well, it finally happened to me.

My 002R got the flu. Last night I powered up my rack, turned on some hard drives, and started Pro Tools, only to get a “Can Not Detect Hardware” message. Crap.

For a few minutes I blamed the cats. I assumed that they must have chewed through my 25′ firewire cable, but it was intact. I checked the unit with a new firewire cable but it still would not connect.

Here’s the symptoms:

1. 1394 light on the back of the unit doesn’t light or goes out right after plugging in a firewire cable.
2. Mute button won’t un-mute.
3. Pro Tools “Can Not Find Hardware” error messages.

The above are usually accompanied by a swift feeling of dread and worry about the check book.

Here’s what you do.

002R’s are certainly not under warranty anymore, so don’t call Digidesign Tech support and expect a new unit. Instead, they will tell you to call the Pay-Support line ($2.50 a minute). Don’t worry, they won’t charge you, but you will have to enter a credit card number to get to talk to a support rep. Tell them you’ve got the dreaded power-harness issue and they will ship you a replacement power harness free of charge. You’ll need your serial number off the back of the unit (it’s right above the firewire connections).

They shipped my replacement same-day and free of charge. The service was excellent.

I’ll post some picture of the repair once the new power harness arrives.

UPDATE 7/13/09:

Well, I’m back up and running. In fact I have been for a few days with no issues to report whatsoever. The repair process was simple and even came with decent instructions. The short explanation is this: open the unit by removing the 14 screws on the top. Remove the old harness (noting the polarity of the cables, trust me, take a picture). Clean the terminals with the included contact cleaner (thanks Digi), install new harness (polarity!) and put cover back on. Simple.

I only had 1 problem… I screwed up the polarity of the cable and couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong. I had the unit re-assembled and all my plugs and wires hooked back up and it wouldn’t power on. It was dead. It was my fault. I felt a strong feeling of dread come over me as surely I had fried the unit by reversing the polarity of the main power harness… but thank God for whatever engineer laid that thing out. I’m not saying you can’t fry it by hooking it up backwards, but mine didn’t fry and I had it wired backwards (doh!).

Anyhow… here’s the last picture I was able to snap before my camera died. If you forget how your cable was hooked up, check it against this. If the colors don’t match look for which pins they left empty. That should get you on the right track.

Back to making music,

James

761mph.com

Fader #2 Failed Calibration

I had big plans for this weekend… I was going to run some cables and hook up some more of my gear in my new home studio. I got the cables run, but then I noticed a major problem with my Mackie Control. Three of the faders were messed up. I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but if you’ve come across this article from a search engine, you probably already know. I’ll try: Basically, when you run the fader upwards from -Infinity to +6 it get’s all funky feeling around Unity (0.0dB).

A few years ago I called Mackie to get a replacement fader for one that had the same issue. They happily shipped one out… at a price-tag of around $100… and explained how easy it was to replace- just open the unit, unplug the old fader, plug in the new one, and you’re good to go. (I’ve since learned that the price has come down considerably and is now $40.00 plus shipping so keep that in mind as you evaluate your fader situation).

This time around I had 3 funky faders (one truly funky, and 2 slightly funky)… and I wasn’t about to shell out that much dough without at least trying to fix them on my own. As I was finishing up I realized that I should probably document and share this with everyone, since I’ve been bailed out MANY  times by some random blogger announcing a quick fix to one of life’s problems. Here is a detailed step-by-step to get you back up and running if you’ve got the same problem.

Thanks to all those who are contributing to the article by leaving some comments! I’ll keep updating as better methods come in.

First, I need to mention that there are 2 distinct different problems that you could be seeing.

1. The fader motor is no longer functioning (completely dead fader syndrome).
2. The fader motor is functioning, but the fader doesn’t move freely along the path from top to bottom.

I will address both issues, but keep in mind that #2 is much easier to fix then #1.

You will need:

• A Phillip’s screwdriver (or screw-gun, if you’re careful)
• Needle-nose pliers (bent worked well for me)
• A Flat-Head screwdriver
• Hex key that fits the hex head screws above and below the fader (1/16 standard: Thanks, Adam)
• A smaller jeweler-size flat-head screwdriver (just for prying, other tools will work)
• Some good music
• Some time (1-2 hours if you go slow).

My choice of music was Ryan Adams… I suggest something similar.

So, here we go. You’ll need a place to hold a bunch of screws.

1. UNPLUG THE UNIT.  Don’t blame me if you skip this step and electrocute yourself.
2. Take off the fader cap for whatever channel you need to fix. No need to take off the others.
3. (Updated Method) Take off all the screws on the bottom of the unit and all around the side, the raised screws in the back of the unit can stay in but do take off all the flush screws in the back of the unit along the bottom.When you are done the entire bottom comes off and you will have a nice wide open space to work on the unit as the entire top comes off with the jog/shuttle wheel intact to the top metal housing. That way you won’t have to balance the bottom and the top and try to keep the ribbon cable on the jog/shuttle wheel from ripping. (At this point, discharge any static electricity by touching the inside base of the unit.)
4. Find your broken fader by counting (duh). It’s attached by some snap connectors. You can remove either end, just be careful not to pull the wires out. Grab it by the plastic only! Use the pliers if you have to. If you rip your wires out don’t blame me, you were warned.
5. If your motor works, skip this step. If your motor was not working at all before (completely dead fader syndrome), try re-attaching the cable and checking the connections. (I’m not instructing you to carefully plug in the unit and test it at this time, but that is something to think about). If you still don’t have any motor function in that fader, switch the fader end of the cable with one of the faders that is working during the fader calibration at start-up. See if it will work from another channel. If it starts working, put it back together and go make some music, if not, read on.
6. Using the hex key, remove the screws that are holding the fader in place. It should fall into the unit, that’s okay.
7. You should now be holding the fader in your hand. Set the rest of the unit aside. You’ll notice that the fader has a hard plastic base, housed in a metal casing.
8. Pry the little tabs up that are holding the metal casing in place with the jeweler’s screwdriver. Two of the tabs are right next to the solder points for the fader motor, DO NOT MESS UP THESE SOLDER POINTS! If your motor wasn’t working (dead fader syndrome) then check these solder points. There’s a black & red that attach up to the perf-board above the motor. Re-solder carefully if necessary. If you don’t know exactly what your doing, Google soldering and re-evaluate (maybe consider calling Mackie). It is VERY easy to fry the perf-board so don’t try it if you don’t know how.
9. When all of the tabs are bent away, the fader should slide out of it’s metal housing. Be very careful, as the metal housing is there to protect some VERY fragile parts inside.
10. The main culprit is dirt and crud in the fader (which you can clean out now), or a bent or mangled grounding cable (the brown ribbon cable you see in the pictures attached to the fader). This is the cable that allows for touch sensitivity. When you touch the fader, you’re grounding the circuit via this cable. For some reason they have a habit of getting bent, kinked, and generally messed up inside that metal housing.
11. Gently straighten any kinks or bends out of this cable with whatever method you choose. Personally, I just used my fingers to bend it into a nice gentle arc. Replace the metal housing and check your work. If you think you’ve got it, bend the tabs back into place. (Again, being very careful around those motor solder points).
12. Reverse the other steps to re-assemble everything, and you’re good to go.
13. Make some music!

(You’ll notice that the first few pictures show my unit opened from the top, which is more difficult since you have to be very cautious with the connections for the jog/shuttle wheel. Opening from the bottom as mentioned in step #3 is definitely the way to go. Thanks to Adam for pointing this out.)

[View with PicLens]

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