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An Artful Experience
Expresso@8 with The Legendary Engineer/Producer
Eddie Kramer Draws An Experienced Music Crowd
Wild About Music Gallery,
May 19, 2006
Hosted by studioexpresso
and Wild About Music
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Event Coverage here)
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Wild About Music Gallery in Santa Monica (1450 2nd St) was site of a very special artist reception and photo exhibit on Friday May 19. "It was truly a magical evening attended by over 150 music and pro audio leaders and master magicians, including a real magician who entertained the guests," says Claris Dodge of studioexpresso who co-hosted the event with Shelley Meyer of Wild About Music. "Rock'N
Roll, beer and parties go together... award-winning
Firestone Walker Fine Ale was poured for the guests and one
of the sponsors, Ultrasone
gave a pair of their brand new iCans (winner announced below). "The photographs are transparent and honest. Kramer has managed to break the thick glass in the control room that separates the artist from technicians. He has made the camera lense disappear all together. This is what great producers do when they capture a magical performance in the studio. They make the artist be themselves. Eddie's photographs are work of an insider, better yet, work of a good producer," says Dodge. "Many of
the photographs in the Kramer exhibit go far beyond single-image
compositions, although they can be ordered in a variety of sizes
and combinations. Instead, Kramer engages the audience with storyboard
vignettes comprised of four to ten or more images thoughtfully placed
in three-to-seven-foot wide photographic montages," says Shelley
Meyer of WAM.
"It was
a great event and Claris had the perfect guest list to make it hopping
and feel right," says Shelley Meyer of Wild About Music about. Eddie Kramer
is best known for his innovative Rock production contributions over
the past 30 years. In 2002, he won a Grammy for his work with Carlos
Santana and Michelle Branch on the single, "The Game of Love."
More recently he was featured on an episode of "Queer Eye for
the Straight Guy," in which he gives a framed limited edition
print of Jimi Hendrix to the episodes "Straight Guy."
Eddie is scheduled to work with a new Capitol artist in June. Winner Announced!
Sponsors of expresso@ with Eddie Kramer are: Budda Amplification - www.budda.com; ESP Guitar - www.espguitars.com; Harman (http://harman.com); Las Vegas Pro Audio - http://lasvegasproaudio.com; ROYER Labs - www.royerlabs.com Ultrasone - www.ultrasoneusa.com and Firestone Walker Fine Ales
Golf In June
Anyone? A 2006 Mustang convertible provided by Vista Ford of Woodland Hills, CA, will go to the golfer who hits a hole-in-one. New this year will be a chipping contest, in addition to the various competitions managed by Pin-Up Golf Girls. Following the tournament, there will be a barbecue dinner with acoustic entertainment by music producer and singer/songwriter Alder, and jazz vocalist Sarah Schweppe. A raffle and silent auction will also round out the day, featuring an assortment of donated audio equipment, musical instruments and gift packages. Gibson Les Paul Standard model guitar, donated by the Gibson Foundation; as well as an Apple iPod-60 GB; a BOSE Companion 2 multimedia speaker system; and, a two-night stay at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. "“Word has gotten around that this is a great chance to connect with industry colleagues, lose that studio tan, and raise thousands for hearing health and education," says tournament director, Karen Dunn.
Sponsorships,
foursomes and individual tickets are still available. For more information
about these and the silent auction or raffle, please visit www.mixfoundation.org,
or contact Karen Dunn at (925) 939-6149, or send email to KarenTEC@aol.com.
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A two-time Grammy nominee, and winner of three Dove Awards, Troccoli, has had seventeen number one songs on Christian Radio, and her best-selling "Everything Changes" hit number one on the adult contemporary top 40. By paying meticulous attention to the choice of vocal mic, Fuston was able to deliver the sound that Kathy had always wanted to hear. "She had never been totally happy with the vocal sound on her records, going back for 15 albums," says Fuston from his studio, 3D Audio, Inc. "With this mic, she just sounds incredible, like she's singing right into your ear. It's the sound her friends and family have heard before, but it wasn't on her records." The production of Troccoli's new CD, "Glory of Love," is the latest phase in a new course for the singer that has replaced the heavily produced style of her earlier works with smaller, more acoustic ensembles and sonic environments. With several songs consisting solely of vocals and piano, and maybe an acoustic guitar and cello, Fuston knew that Troccoli's voice, which he has been recording on and off since producing her first raw demos 25 years ago, would be front and center more than ever before. "For this album, we decided her voice would be in the spotlight, instead of the studio production." Fuston prepared for the recording sessions by planning an intensive vocal mic/preamp shootout, and made sure that the ELUX 251, with its faithful recreation of the legendary Telefunken ELA M251(tm), would be one of the mics Troccoli tried. "I've used the ELUX 251 on a lot of vocalists in the past, and it wins out 90% of the time, which is an unusually high success ratio," says Fuston. "It's the first mic I've found that I can put up in front of a vocalist and not worry whether there is something else in the room that will sound better. Kathy wanted a clear and satiny top-end that would also pick up the depth and richness in her voice. The ELUX 251 gave her exactly what she wanted to hear. I paired it with a Buzz Audio MA2 mic pre and there was absolutely nothing lacking at all." Designed for mid-range focus with a strong, powerful bottom and airy, unabrasive top-end, the ELUX 251 brings out the most intimate, natural details of male and female vocals, thanks to features such as a true transformer balanced output, and NOS dual triode with traditional resistive (not transistor) load and enhanced original circuitry, for a unique vintage amplification curve and dynamics response. "It's patterned after a classic microphone, but vintage Telefunkens routinely go for $20,000, whereas the ELUX 251 comes in way below that," Fuston notes. "We definitely accomplished a new milestone using the ELUX 251 on this album. "When I'm
looking for the right mic for a singer, it's like trying to find
the two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly," continues
Fuston. "That's why the ELUX 251 did such a great job on Kathy's
voice. It was the perfect match. The sound of the Soundelux on these
recordings is huge, robust, so sweet and rich that it's almost like
caramel or melted chocolate. TransAudio Group's product lines include A-Designs (USA) AEA ribbon microphones (USA), ADT Toolkit, AEA, ATC Loudspeakers (UK), Brauner microphones(Germany), Drawmer (UK), Geoffrey Daking & Co. (USA), Enhanced Audio (Ireland), George Massenburg Labs (GML) (USA), Heil Sound (USA); Mercury Audio (USA) Mission Audio (UK) Phoenix Audio (UK), PAULY Superscreens(Germany), SABRA SOM(Brazil), Soundelux (USA), SoundField Microphones (UK), Z-Systems (USA) and Weiss Engineering (Switzerland) and Z Systems (USA).
Aldo Fights
Aids The campaign is titled, “Hear No Evil? (no, not Hear No Evil Studios in UK) See No Evil? Speak No Evil?” and features black and white images of stars like Christina Aguilera, Ludacris, Elijah Wood, Salma Hayek, LL Cool J and many more as they either cover their ears or have their mouth or eyes covered by duct tape, with the intent to get people to stop and notice. It turns out
that Aldo
Shoes has launched this huge cause-related marketing campaign
(by Calder and partners in 2000) in conjunction with YouthAIDS,
an HIV/AIDS education and prevention initiative. The relationship
was launched to foster deeper awareness toward education and prevention
of HIV/AIDS among teenagers and young adults. Madonna Confessions & Gear According to artist web site, fans snapped up every ticket for the first two Wembley Arena gigs as soon as the box office opened at 9am. Earlier, festival goers jammed into the Sahara Tent at Coachella where Madonna kicked off her worldwide tour using her long-time favorite Sennheiser 3072 wireless mic (pictured blow Right).
Her Confessions' Tour kicked off In L.A. this week and the Diva of Pop is pushing her merchandising in high gear. You can order yourself wine with her image sketched in pink on the bottle or choose from the tasteful prints on large canvases.
Studio Upgrades StarCity Recording in Bethlehem has expanded its world-class recording studios by bringing in a custom-designed SSL Axiom MT Plus Digital Multitrack Console. After extensive research, Jeff Glixman, executive vice president of StarCity, was convinced that the MT Plus was the perfect solution for StarCity's Studio B. According to Glixman, StarCity has revamped the control room acoustics creating a heavily trapped room with a more linear, tighter bass response. The monitoring system has been upgraded to a full time, four-way system with 18-inch subwoofers. The outboard gear selection includes the usual classic pieces, Lexicon reverb, and modern gear one would expect in a high-end room. Additionally there are more than 24 channels of class A mic pre/eq available for 'direct to storage' recording. A Case For Scott Key
Francis Scott
Key first published his impressions of the Fort McHenry victory
as a broadside poem, with a note that it should be sung to the popular
British melody "To Anacreon in Heaven." Soon after, Thomas
Carr's Baltimore music store published the words and music together
under the title "The Star-Spangled Banner." The song gained
steadily in popularity in the years before the Civil War. By 1861
it shared with "Yankee Doodle" and "Hail Columbia"
the distinction of being played on most patriotic occasions. Nonetheless
Congress did not make the song the national anthem until 1931. The
recording, dubbed "Nuestro Himno," which means "Our
Anthem" in English, is set to "rhythmic Latin musical
arrangement" but respects the song's traditional structure,
said Adam Kidron, who heads the record label Urban Box Office (UBO).
Mexican pop diva Gloria Trevi, Puerto Rican reggaeton Ivy Queen
and Tito El Bambino and other Latino artists are recording a Spanish-language
version of the U.S. national anthem in a show of support for migrants
in the United States. The Latino-oriented record label Urban Box
Office said it plans to release the new version of “The Star-Spangled
Banner” to coincide with the U.S. Senate’s debate on immigration
legislation earlier this month. Profit or Not, GIVE
Charity
Folks is the leading online charity auction venue. Increased
competition is motivating nonprofits to diversify fundraising methods
to attract more donors and improve stewardship AES Pro Audio Expo & Convention is held in the Porte de Versailles earlier in May 20-23. Digidesign ran seminars in French and English on hot topics like Mixing in the Box, Avid Workflow for 5.1, Pro Tools in Music Production, Film Mixing with Icon and previewing Pro Tools HD 7.2.
Ascend Marketing
VP, Christian Hellum has the upcoming “The Fast and the Furious:
Tokyo Drift" The sound editorial team at Soundelux sent me
action-type digital video clips from some of their field recording
sessions. To the extent you are interesting in having access to
this stuff and/or utilize video content for your web site, please
let me know 323.603.3226," says Hellum. The Ironworks
Label Actor Kiefer
Sutherland and producer Jude Cole have formed their own record label,
Ironworks, to promote musicians other studios are passing by.
Sutherland built the Los Angeles recording studio operated by Cole,
his rock musician and producer friend. Sutherland
told the TV tabloid show "Extra," the idea for Ironworks
came from seeing "fantastic artists who were not getting signed"
by other recording companies. "We started Ironworks to be about
real artists," Cole said. The new label is distributed by Fontana.
Among those already signed by Ironworks are musicians Rocco
DeLuca (pictured above) and Ry Cuming “MTV, the US cable television music channel owned by Viacom, will launch a digital music download service called ‘Urge’ designed to compete with Apple Computer’s highly popular iTunes service.” It uses Microsoft’s latest Media Player technology. Users will be able to download individual music tracks for 99 cents each – the same price as iTunes – or sign up for an unlimited subscription service that will cost $9.95 a month or $14.95 if subscribers want to load the music onto a portable player. iTunes does not offer a subscription service. At launch, Urge will have more than 2m music tracks from 110,000 artists, 500 playlists, 130 streaming radio stations and more than 20 specialist ‘blogs’ – online commentaries – written by music experts.
This week, the recording industry sued XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., alleging its Inno device that can store music infringes on copyrights and transforms a passive radio experience into the equivalent of a digital download service like iTunes. The suit accuses XM Satellite of "massive wholesale infringement," and seeks $150,000 in damages for every song copied by XM customers using the devices, which went on sale earlier this month. XM, with more than 6.5 million subscribers, said it plays 160,000 different songs every month. The suit says that XM has touted its service's advantages over the iPod and cites XM's advertising literature that says "It's not a Pod. It's the mothership." XM said it will vigorously defend this lawsuit on behalf of consumers and also called the lawsuit a bargaining tactic. The labels are currently in talks with XM and its rival Sirius Satellite Radio, to renegotiate digital royalty contracts for broadcasts.
Warner Chappell
April Appointment B3 For Your
Shopping Cart
Recording
Live With John Rodd On May 4th, West L.A. Music featured an evening with John Rodd speaking about many things from microphones to mixing. John knows a thing or two about making great recordings of music for film and tv as he worked as the orchestral scoring recordist on numerous Hollywood blockbusters, including Seabiscuit, The Matrix (trilogy), Lemony Snicket and I, Robot. Recent projects include 5.1 surround mixing of score for Sony Pictures sci-fi action film "Ultraviolet"; mixing the orchestral score for the video game "Onimusha 4 - Dawn of Dreams" for Sony PS2 (which recently won the M.P.S.E. Golden Reel award for best sound editing); mixing the 5.1 score for DreamWorks short animated film "The Penguin Christmas Caper" and many other feature film score projects. John was recently interviewed in Mix Magazine (January 2006) and EQ Magazine (June 2005) Berger Design
For Richardson's Garage Like many musicians, Dallas-area professional drummer and award-winning audio post engineer Scottie Richardson dreamed of a home studio where he could practice and teach. To ensure that his dream studio wouldn’t be intrusive to family and neighbors, Scottie contacted renowned studio designer Russ Berger of Russ Berger Design Group (RBDG) to help convert his garage into a practice space. To help eliminate the “dead box” problem, SpaceCouplers (designed and manufactured by pArtScience for Auralex Acoustics) were installed to give the small space a “large sound.” Two coupled spaces are connected to the volume of the main room by 2 x 6 foot apertures. Each aperture is filled with three 2 x 2 foot SpaceCoupler diffusors. These diffusors make the room “live,” and also enhance the drum sound. “There was a concern for noise leakage into the bedroom adjacent to the practice space,” Berger continues, “particularly during late night sessions hammering out the monkey beat. The shell construction and interior walls were designed with appropriate mass and sealed airtight to ensure adequate sound transmission loss.”
During the installation,
Berger utilized 3.0 pcf glass fiber board covered with acoustically
transparent stretched fabric on the walls and ceiling as the primary
absorptive treatment. Behind these materials, decoupled wood and
multiple layers of drywall were installed to assist in isolating
the sound. Wood flooring was laid over a new concrete topping slab
to help level the sloped garage floor and enhance the room’s
sound quality.
Donny &
Marie in 5.1
Brother-sister
duo DONNY and MARIE OSMOND made audiences laugh 30 years ago as
the precocious, apple-cheeked stars of the song-and-dance variety
series, the "Donny & Marie" show. For several years, Roskelley provided mix and mastering services by request for numerous area studios, as well as for individuals working in music composition and arranging. In addition, he offered "educator-consultant" services, assisting others in properly setting up their studios, in particular advising about acoustics and recording techniques. Eventually he saw the need to establish his own studio, with the first iteration carved out of a room in his home to keep overhead under control. Later came the process of developing a "purpose-built" studio of his own design, located in a separate, new building constructed on his home property. "After spending a lot of years compensating for difficult situations, particularly in terms of acoustics and limitations of monitors, I wanted both a room and monitors that would eliminate all of the guesswork in what I was hearing," Roskelley explains. As a result, his new studio is expressly designed with a critical eye on both factors. And in addition, he doesn't work with a mixing console, preferring to eliminate surfaces with unpredictable acoustic reflections. This keeps the direct sound waves from speakers to listener as pristine as possible, as well as taking advantage of his fluency with alternatives like Digidesign ProTools. Just before construction of the new studio commenced in October of last year, Roskelley began evaluating monitoring systems, and subsequently had several potential candidates shipped to him for critical listening and comparison. His preferred choice proved to be ATC SM 20A compact two-way monitors, but he was concerned about not hearing the extra lower octave of the bass and kick that is so prevalent in the house/dance tracks he mixes. "The reproduction of high and mid-range frequencies of the SM 20A is among the best I've ever heard, and the imaging is stunning," he notes. Attention then turned to the three-way SCM 110A, which offers identical mid and high performance, in addition to a 314mm bass driver in a larger enclosure. "After all of the personal time and money that went into this studio, I was a little concerned with specifying monitors that I hadn't heard," Roskelley says. "But when we set them up and threw the switch, the sound was breathtaking, simply amazing. I might be biased when I say this is the best listening environment I've ever been in, but this has also proven to be the consensus among all the colleagues who have come by to listen." Specifically, what Roskelley seeks most in an acoustic environment is accuracy. In addition to the obvious, (the bass modes that are inherent in even the best rooms), he was equally concerned about the high-mid and low-mid frequency ranges, and finds that these are often the first victims of smearing characteristics produced by improper acoustic design and poor loudspeaker reproduction. Utilizing three
acoustical software packages to assist in the math for the design
of his room, combined with his own extensive experience, he worked
in particular to avoid surfaces like glass that add and magnify
reflections. "I attribute the quality of this listening environment to the monitors working with the room design," he says. "There are three specific aspects of the ATC monitors that I really like. First, the center image is rock solid. While listening to a vocal panned center in a stereo track, I have had clients actually think the center speaker was on. Toggling back and forth between stereo and mono, the center image remains completely in tact, absolutely no phasing. Second, the clarity of reverb is amazing, from trigger point all the way through the very end of decay. And third, the midrange is so detailed, revealing so many subtleties. For example, I can hear a half-dB of attenuation or boosting in the midrange while equalizing or compressing because of the clarity of three-inch mid-dome in the 110." Roskelley has been involved with an interesting project of late, collaborating with fellow Salt Lake City resident Donny Osmond on remixing the audio tracks in 5.1 surround for an upcoming DVD release of highlights of "Donny & Marie," the popular 1970s television show. Working between their two studios, Osmond and Roskelley found that the quality of the original recordings - most of them 16-track and 24-track - varied dramatically. "Another
challenge is that many of the original multi-tracks could not be
found leaving us with only a mono source for a good portion of the
cues," He and Osmond
hunted for potential solutions, landing on the Z Systems z-K6 multi-channel
processor. "Donny went ahead and acquired a z-K6 and sent it
up to me for evaluation," Roskelley says. "I put in a
call to Bob Katz, who designed the processor's algorithms, to get
a feel for it. After about ten minutes of clear instruction from
Bob, I had a pretty good understanding of how to get around in the
box and started experimenting on the mono tracks. Roskelley has been handling the mix of the music tracks, with Osmond doing the rest, including the overall final mix. The first of the planned three DVDs has been finished and sent to mastering, with the other two following shortly. "One of the great things about working in a market like Salt Lake City is that you get to do a wide variety of projects and musical styles, as evidenced by this project," Roskelley concludes, highlighting his point by noting that he will soon be returning to his new studio to begin work with Kaskade on a new release. "You don't get typecast into one particular genre, which keeps it fresh and challenging." ATC drivers
are manufactured in-house to exacting tolerances and are legendary
for their many design innovations, such as the innovative SL magnet
system and the company's renowned Soft Dome midrange driver, which
achieves exceptionally broad and even dispersion to produce a flat
response anywhere in the room. Situated in Aston Down in rural Gloucestershire,
England, ATC was established in London in 1974 by acoustics engineer
and musician Bill Woodman. TransAudio Group's product lines include A-Designs (USA) AEA ribbon microphones (USA), ADT Toolkit, AEA, ATC Loudspeakers (UK), Brauner microphones(Germany), Drawmer (UK), Geoffrey Daking & Co. (USA), George Massenburg Labs (GML) (USA), Heil Sound (USA); Mercury Audio (USA) Mission Audio (UK) Phoenix Audio (UK), PAULY Superscreens(Germany), SABRA SOM(Brazil), Soundelux (USA), SoundField Microphones (UK), Z-Systems (USA) and Weiss Engineering (Switzerland) and Z Systems (USA).
Busy May For Paramount Encore Ameaycan Studios
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