Well, it’s been forever. I know. I’m sorry. How’s the family?

Honestly I haven’t had much to blog about on the audio side of things… I’ve been way too busy doing things like getting married… working overtime, painting, sleeping, putting up Christmas decorations, and otherwise being as absolutely boring as possible. It’s been smashing! I’m really ready for a nice 14 day vacation, but alas, there will be no such thing in 2009. Next year, maybe… just maybe, heck maybe we’ll even get a honeymoon. But not any time soon. After all, there “Ain’t no rest for the wicked” as they (Cage the Elephant) say. By the way, that is music you should buy… Plus, they’re our neighbors from the North (Kentucky, that is… not Canada).

What have I been doing lately, audio-wise? Well let’s see…. I’ve transferred tons of tapes for Sun Records & some Bear Family releases. I restored & remastered some very old Oak Ridge Boys material for a 3 disc release through Cracker Barrel. I prepared masters for the new Johnny Cash 3 disc Cracker Barrel exclusive… I’ve completely ignored my blogging responsibilities… I developed a custom database and digital distribution platform for the Sun Records catalog. I’ve started a modest web-hosting company… I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a digital-only record label but then I realize that I would probably want to press vinyl for every release (how’s that for a crazy?) More on that later… possibly.

I’m starting to feel musically constipated… like I need to take a big creative poo. Maybe I’ll let you look at it when I’m done.

Oh yeah, this was supposed to be my 2009 list of Music You Should Buy… Here you go:

1. Paramore – brand new eyes
2. The Glen Miller Orchestra – Glenn Miller Orchestra (2 CD Set)
3. Louis Jordan – At The Swing Cat’s Ball
4. JET – Shaka Rock
5. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
6. Matthew Perryman Jones – Swallow The Sea
7. Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs

What’s on your list?

James

Bandcamp.

Go ahead and say it with me…… Bandcamp.

Wow. This might just be the best thing to happen to independent music since….. well….. forever.

Seriously, this is staggering.

Here’s what their site says:

Bandcamp isn’t Yet Another Place to Put Your Music. Rather, we power a site that’s yours. So instead of ads for Sexy Singles Chat, your fans see your design, your music, your URL. You retain all ownership rights, and we just hang out in the background handling the tech stuff.
Choice. We offer your tracks in mp3, AAC, FLAC, Ogg…all the formats your überfans demand. Choose between giving away your music, setting a price, letting folks name their price – it’s up to you.

Viral distribution. We give your fans drop-dead easy tools to share your music with their friends, and most importantly we do it in a way that drives traffic back to you. We also give you complete transparency into how your music is spreading, with…
The motherflippin’ stats party. We show you where your fans are coming from, what they’re listening to, even which tracks they’re obsessed with versus which ones they’re skipping over. And we make it real purdy, too.

Your fifth (very nerdy) Beatle. We provide fast, dependable streaming and downloads of your entire catalog, adorn your tracks with all the metadata they need to sail into iTunes with artwork, titles, and so on intact, and mutter the various incantations necessary to get your site top-ranked in Google. All things we know you could do, but we suspect you’d rather focus on your music. Well, think of us as your invisible bandmate who loves that other stuff. And we won’t even ask to play tambourine.

And they’re not kidding… they provide a completely transparent platform to distribute your music online. Talk about power to the people! You create a profile, upload your art for the site, upload your music in WAV, AIFF, or FLAC and they automatically convert it to all major file types (mp3 (320k, VBR), Ogg Vorbis, Apple Lossless, FLAC and AAC (aka .m4a or iTunes store format), and they even add in all metadata information. You can add lyrics, decide how much to sell tracks and albums for, or give it away for free or in exchange for an email address to build up your mailing list.

Incredible.

Did I mention that it’s FREE?

You: “Seriously? Free?”

Me: “I know! Awesome, right?!”

You can check out their monetization strategy in their FAQ, which happens to be a well written and sometimes hilarious bit.

Overall, this service gets a total of 10 stars out of 5.

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.

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

I know tons of independent artists that have spent fortunes to make the perfect album only to realize that they now have to scrape together cash to do all the back-end work like marketing, web presence, touring, distribution, and everything else. I also know artist that are scared of digital technology when it comes to their music. These artists are afraid that their music will be pirated and they’ll never make any money once it goes digital. Wrong! Either embrace digital distribution, or watch your business go the way of the dinosaurs.

Seth makes some brilliant points about the decline of the music industry in general, and they offer a good insight to what the independent artist needs to be focusing (or not focusing) on in today’s market. Go read the full post on his blog, and make sure you grab a feed from it because it is one of the best educational resources on the internet.

Here are my favorite two:

10. Don’t abandon the Long Tail
Everyone in the hit business thinks they understand the secret: just make hits. After all, if you do the math, it shows that if you just made hits, you’d be in fat city.

Of course, the harder you try to just make hits, the less likely you are to make any hits at all. Movies, records, books… the blockbusters always seem to be surprises. Surprise hit cookbooks, even.

Instead, in an age when it’s cheaper than ever to design something, to make something, to bring something to market, the smart strategy is to have a dumb strategy. Keep your costs low and go with your instincts, even when everyone says you’re wrong. Do a great job, not a perfect one. Bring things to market, the right market, and let them find their audience.

Stick to the knitting has never been more wrong. Instead, find products your customers want. Don’t underestimate them. They’re more catholic in their tastes than you give them credit for.

11. Understand the power of  digital
Try to imagine something like this happening ten years ago: An eleven-year-old kid wakes up on a Saturday morning, gets his allowance, then, standing in his pajamas, buys a Bon Jovi song for a buck.

Compare this to hassling for a ride, driving to the mall, finding the album in question, finding the $14 to pay for it and then driving home.

You may believe that your business doesn’t lend itself to digital transactions. Many do. If you’ve got a business that doesn’t thrive on digital, it might not grow as fast as you like… Maybe you need to find a business that does thrive on digital.

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

The following excerpts are from Bob Katz’s web site, http://www.digido.com/

You should stop by and visit Bob’s site if you have any questions about mastering or audio in general. Bob is a major authority on all things audio. I highly recommend picking up a copy of his book “Mastering Audio” and reading the articles on his web site. You’ll learn more there then you would anywhere else.  – James

“It’s not how loud you make it, it’s how you make it loud!”

Mastering is an art and a science. Mastering is the final creative and technical step prior to pressing a record album (CD, DVD, cassette, or other medium). Compare mastering to the editor’s job of taking a raw manuscript and turning it into a book. The book editor must understand syntax, grammar, organization and writing style, as well as know the arcane techniques of binding, color separation, printing presses and the like. Likewise, the Mastering engineer marries the art of music with the science of sound.

The Craft of Mastering: The audio mastering engineer is a specialist who spends his or her entire time perfecting the craft of mastering. Audio mastering is performed in a dedicated studio with quiet, calibrated acoustics, and set of wide-range monitors. Signal paths are kept to a minimum and often customized gear and specialized tools are used. The monitors should not be encumbered by the interfering acoustics of large recording consoles, racks or outboard gear. In other words, the acoustics are first optimized, and all other considerations must be secondary to the acoustics. For optimum results, mastering should not be performed in the same studio as the recording or with the same engineer who recorded the work. It is important to find a mastering engineer who will bring his expertise and unique perspective to an album project, to produce that final polish that distinguishes an ordinary recording from a work of art.

What is a Mastering Engineer? The mastering engineer must have a musical as well as technical background, good ears, great equipment, and technical knowledge. Ideally, he should know how to read music, and have an excellent sense of pitch. He knows how to operate a range of specialized technical equipment, much of which is not found in the average recording studio. The successful mastering engineer understands many musical styles (and there are a lot out there!), edits music, and puts it all together with sophisticated digital processing tools. He is sensitive to the needs of the producer and the artist(s), and treats each project with individual attention. He must understand what will happen to the recording when it hits the radio, the car, the internet, or the home stereo system.

Can’t I just mix and put the file on the internet or CD? Every recording deserves good mastering. When you’re through mixing, your work is not finished. Mastering adds polish, it sounds more than just a record…it becomes a work of art. The songs work together seamlessly, their sound can take on a dimensionality and life that enhances even the best mixes.

Get more details at http://www.digido.com/

Here’s the link.

More stuff coming soon!

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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Cubase 5

Well… it’s almost here. I ordered the upgrade form C4 to C5 last week, and it should be here any day. I’m in the middle of a Contemporary Christian album, and I’ll be mixing it in C5, provided it doesn’t get lost in the mail or something like that. I’m going to try out the new version and let you know what I think.

It should be really good. They’ve addressed all of my biggest concerns with this new release and as always they’ve added in a bunch of new bells, whistles & toys.

BIG things they updated:

• New Automation Enable/Disable Controls!!!!! FINALLY!!!
• New export options (hopefully something like Pro Tools)

New toys:

• Convolution Reverb (though I LOVE my WAVES IR1)
• Pitch correction (though I swear by WAVES TUNE, it blows away Antares)
• New HALion 1 sounds
• Tons more stuff I’ll surely never use..

I got to sit in with Chuck Ainlay last year while he was mixing an album that I worked on and after watching him work in Cubase 4 (the latest release at the time), I decided to migrate all of my mixing over to Cubase where possible (because sometimes you do have to stay in Pro Tools for portability). I learned a bunch of little tips and tricks that day, what an cool guy. I also got to hang out with another famous Steinberg user, Gary Paczosa. Gary mixes in Nuendo and just reinforced the idea that I should be doing all of my mixing with Steinberg (well, I guess it’s Yamaha now). He answered a full page of questions I had for him and gave me some great insight into the making of some of my favorite albums (not ironically, engineered and mixed by him). He also taught me the importance of microbrew beer, golf, and having a dog in the studio. I met both Katie Herzing and Shawn Mullins over at Gary’s house… pretty cool indeed.

Anyway, (get used to hearing that from me)

Stay tuned for more.

———————————————————————————————–

Updated: 3/5/09

Well, UPS is supposed to deliver this tomorrow. I’ve been reading the Cubase Forums though, and I don’t think I’ll be using the new version on this project. C4 works flawlessly, and from what I’ve read, there are still a few bug that need to be worked out in C5. It would be nice to mix on the new system, but not if it’s buggy. I’ll let you know what I find once I get it installed.

UPDATED: 3/9/09

Seems I can’t install C5 because I’m still running Mac OSX 10.4  – that sucks. Didn’t upgrade the OS because i would have to purchase the WAVES “update” plan (which is REALLY overpriced), and now I can’t use C5 because of the OS.

Guess I’m just gonna have to suck it up and buy the WAVES update. Crap.

Cubase 5