We have a Winner!

Entries have been submitted, the community has voted and now, the judges have endured a week of poking and proding by yours truly. And we’ve decided on a winner for the IHR Theme Contest!

Check it out here: February Fanaticism

To the entrants:

A HUGE thank you to all the entrants to this contest. I am amazed, humbled and totally blown away by the response that this event has generated.

The diversity and creativity of all the entries has opened my eyes and ears to so many things … and I LOVE that! I received over 50 entries from six different continents in so many different styles and genres. Opening up and posting each of the songs was a lot like opening a Christmas present for me … every single time.

You have my appreciation and gratitude for all the time and effort you spent crafting your song and sharing it with IHR and the site visitors.

Thanks, thanks, thanks!

Dave

A sincere and heart-felt thanks to the most generous support of:

• PreSonus
• Audio-Technica
• Home Studio Corner
• The Recording Revolution
• KRK
• Production Advice
• Audiofile Engineering

Well, I’m off with my family to take in a few days of snowboarding before Christmas.

Should be filled with lots of snow and fun. It’s been a wild year with many ups and downs. I sincerely hope that everyone has had a fantastic year full of adventure and new discoveries.

I’m hoping to get one more post in before New Year’s, but if I don’t, here’s wishing everyone a year of happiness, peace and wonderful recordings.

Now, onto this past week’s list of posts that caught my attention:

• When I was going through my music degree, if you didn’t play an orchestral instrument, you were required to be a part of one of the faculty choirs. Every ensemble always has its’ prima donna member(s) who receives the brunt of jokes and such … usually because of their ego and sensitivity. It was always the sopranos who got the jabs. This thought resurfaced after reading Kim Lajoie‘s recent blog post: “Are singers more sensitive than other instrumentalists?” – some interesting perspectives on what to keep in mind when dealing with vocalists.
• Jeff Tolbert over at Film Scoring.info posted a link to Film and Game Composers that is probably of interest to a lot of established and budding composers: “Finding Scoring Jobs Online“
• Audio Issues hit me with a double-whammy this week. Björgvin Benediktsson posted some advice on “How to Use a Reference Track to Improve your Mixing” and then went on to drop some more opinions on a topic that a lot of us ask: “Is Second Hand Audio Recording Equipment Just As Good?“
• Not to get topped by anyone, Bobby Owsinski posted a funny, you-know-you’d-get-one-if-money-wasn’t-an-issue product: “The 10,000 Watt iPhone Dock“. He also dropped a top-10 list to add to everyone’s Gear-Acquisition-Syndrome priorities: “10 Holiday Gifts for Musicians and Engineers.“
• Matt Mcglynn over at Recording Hacks posted a timely (for me) blog entry that’d be of interest to anyone building a studio, or just wanting to get better sound in their room: “Mounting Acoustic Panels with a Variable Air Gap“
• Jon Tidey posted some details and examples over at Audio Geek Zine from the segment he did on the Home Recording Show concerning “Time Adjusting a Multi-mic Performance“. Lots of interesting theory and opinions to chew on!
• Just wanted to leave you with a post that came through today that gave me whip-lash doing a second-(what-did-he-say?)-take. Ian Shepherd published a post on his blog, Production Advice, entitled “How to Master a Song Loud“. He hasn’t abandoned the crusade against loud mixes, but rather, advocating some techniques to produce decent loud mixes. If you’ve gotta do it, then you may as well learn how to do it properly…

Until next week, Happy Recording!

As everyone starts getting that last-minute panic tingle rising up in their body, why not take a break and look through some of the blog posts that have been coming through IHR’s syndication feed? It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

For those of you who’d rather have things pre-screened, well, this is what these posts are for – I go through and pick out posts that perked my interest from the week past:

• Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you know that Inside Home Recording Episode 97 was released – David Andrew Wiebe was my guest host and we chatted about a whole slew of topics.
• Gary Ewer over at Essential Secrets of Songwriting seemed to be pulling out all the stops this week. It seemed like every day there was a post that came through and caught my fancy:
  - Building Song Energy With the Dominant Note
  - 5 Ideas for Creating Melodies When Your Mind Goes Dry
  - Working a Meldoy in an Upward Direction
  - 10 Reasons That Songs Fail, and How to Fix them
• Kim Lajoie had some fantastic ideas on how to make creative use of delays in Interesting Things to do with Delay.
• Jeff Tolbert over at Film Scoring.info dove into one of my favourite topics – making use of non-standard scales and chords to get that interesting sound: Create Your Own Scales Using Tetrachords
• Bobby Owsinski seems to have his finger on many different pulses all the time. His post “The Death of Artist Development” was a very interesting read.
• I’ve been threatening to release an EP of my music (okay, it’s been sidetracked quite a bit) and of course Graham Cochrane comes out with a relevant post that got my juices flowing again: Short EPs Verses Full Length Albums.
• And of course, not to be outdone, Joe Gilder offered a guest post from Nick Lewis on a topic that is probably at the top of mind for most of us: “Making Money From Your Home Studio“.

There’s probably going to be one more summary post before the holiday break, so don’t fret – more to come soon!

Cheers, D

Gobble this up folks!

Yes, Canadian Thanksgiving was over a month ago, but there is no freakin’ way that we can ignore the holiday celebrated to the south this weekend. Well, especially when I’ve also got three little dual-citizens running around here. That, and the bombardment of advertisements … even Canadian retailers get into the spirit with “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” deals.

It’s been a bountiful harvest of blog posts out there in the audio-related blog-o-rama world. I’ve actually categorized them this week. Enjoy!

Recording, Mixing and Mastering

• We’ll kick this section off with an off-the-wall post from Bobby Owsinki about analyzing annoying sounds and how that might help in mixing: Scratching the Blackboard Sound.
• Björgvin Benediktsson at Audio Issues was on a where’s-my-signal? kick this past week with a couple of posts: Connecting Your Equipment – The Basic Rule of Signal Flow and The #1 Thing to Avoid While Routing and Subgrouping.
• Home Studio Corner was active this week. Joe Gilder finished up his “Five Steps of Recording” series with “Step 5 – Mastering” and then has some sage advice on “Why Your Mixes Need to Be Critiqued” and on recognizing gear-acquisition binge activity with “Why Your Home Studio Might Be Bloated (and why that’s a bad thing)“.
• Not to be outdone, our friend Ian Shepherd finished his 11-part mastering series with “Day 11 – Check your level“. He then turns around to navel-gaze and ponder “Do mastering engineers deserve any credit?” He also posted a very eye-opening comparison analysis of the RHCP track “I’m With You”: Vinyl versus CD.
• Can’t forget about Graham Cochrane. He posted a video showing us how he recorded his band using only 8 inputs: “Recording My Band With Only 8 Inputs“. Later in the week, he posted some great tips on how to enhance your live show with some pre-recorded tracks: “Take Your Studio Tracks To The Stage“

Creative

• Kim Lajoie kicks off this week’s creative section with some tips, advice and pointers on “What makes a successful collaboration“. As with a lot in this business, talent and equipment only really take you so far – it’s all the other soft-skills that get you to the finish line.
• Gary Ewer over at The Essential Secrets of Songwriting always seems to have some thought-provoking angle to think about songwriting. He didn’t disappoint with an entry entitled “Songwriting Tips and Tricks: Changing Tonal Focus” which looks at ways that you can make things interesting by avoiding the stereotypical resolution to the tonic chord.
• On one of my favourite topics, Jeff Tolbert from FilmScoring.info provides some head-nodding common-sense advice for film composers with “The Role of the Score“.

Business

• Jeff Tolbert kicks things off this past week with some thoughts on website design and points to some easy-to-use resources one can use to get a good-looking site up quickly with “How’s Your Website?”
  
• Bobby Owsinski did not hold back this past week:
  - Online Music Store Showdown – a very interesting chart comparing the “specs” of online music stores.
  - How We Currently Discover Music is an interesting article on a study done by NARM and the NPD Group
• David Andrew Wiebe posted some thoughts on looking to enhance the user’s experience at your site with “Fewer Clicks“

Dang! That was a huge amount of fantastic blogs. I sure hope these guys eat a whole lot o’ food this weekend and spend some time resting and digesting… ;)

I’m quite sure that you’re all feeling SOOOO sorry for me.

If you’ve popped by the site the past week, you have probably noticed that it’s been getting updated again. I may have shed a few tears getting on the plane in Maui, getting off the plane in Vancouver and waking up on Friday morning to find snow covering everything outside… I won’t admit to anything though.

Next IHR Episode

Just to ease any fears out there, I am currently recording / editing episode #96 of Inside Home Recording this weekend. I hope to have something out this coming week. It’s going to be a solo show as I wanted to get something out quickly so that you don’t think I’ve disappeared or abandoned the podcast.

Posts this Past Week

There has been a lot of quality stuff out there in the audio blog world!

If you haven’t visited Ian Shepherd‘s blog lately, head on over there as he’s been posting a blog series since 11/11/11 entitled “11eleven easy ways to improve the sound of your music“. I’ve linked to the first post of the series and you can go from there. Some very sage advice, as always, from Ian.

Karl Winkler over at ProSoundWeb reposted a quiz to “Test Your Knowledge of Microphones” – had a couple of “doh!” moments myself on this one…

Björgvin Benediktsson from Audio Issues goes on a rant about “Why the F@#$ing Software Doesn’t Matter” – we’ve all come across this at one point: Someone judges you and your work by the application that you use or don’t use (i.e. ProTools for example). When he’s not ranting, Björgvin writes some very salient points in “What are the Essential Ingredients of a Great Production?“

Bobby Owsinski’s post “The “Too Much Gear” Flowchart” was too funny to not put on this weeks’ list. He also blogged about a semi-viral video that’s going around of the band One Like Son recording their song “Start the Show” on the iPhone.

This round-up of posts will have to do you for the next as I’m off to Hawaii with my family. I know, I’m really, really bummed about having to go to a warm, sunny, laid-back, drinks-on-the-beach climate too, but … it’s just one of those things I gotta do. ;p

I think the coolest thing that came out this past week was Ian Shepherd‘s posting rampage on various topics surrounding compression and limiting in Mastering!:

1. Multiband compression – the mastering engineer’s secret weapon?
2. Are brickwall limiters really pure evil?
3. The heart and soul of mastering
4. See and hear multiband compression in action

Ian also has a fantastic bunch of eBooks, videos and webinars on the topic if you care to poke around his Production Advice site.

• Kim Lajoie had some great ideas on how to get that elusive bass tone in your mix: 6+ ways to get bigger bass
• Björgvin Benediktsson did a guest post over at Pro Audio Files with some common-sense ways on How to be More Productive in Your Home Studio and he also posted over at his own site (Audio Issues) an observation that I can definitely relate to: Music Mixing Confessions of a Caffeine Addict.
• Graham Cochrane writes a blasphemously-titled post: Is Mixing Even Necessary? over at the Recording Revolution where he outlines how good planning and attention paid in the recording process can ease your burdens in the mixing phase.

There are so many other fantastic posts on the site this past week … I say that every week. Check them out! Until I return… Hang Loose.

A wee bit tardy this week as it’s been a flurry of activity in my life. That being said, the week leading up to Halloween has been fantastic. People must be in some sort of idea- harvest mode as the blogs have been chock-full of some fantastic information, advice and tips. Here’s a bit of what I found out there:

• Graham Cochrane‘s been busy compiling his 6 Common Mixing Mistakes series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) – some great tips that you may or may not be aware of.
• Joe Gilder is obsessed with treating his room! He’s moving his studio to another location and has a lot to say about how he’s gone about tuning his room with these posts: Accoustic Treatment vs. Digital Room Correction, How to Choose the Right Room for Your Home Studio and his review of the Auralex Roominators Project 2 bundle.
• I, (Hatched Productions) launched my own “series” on studio setup with a post where I tell of the fun I’m having designing my new studio with a Google CAD package called SketchUp in “Where’d the Morning Go?“
• ProTools X was announced at the recent AES convention in New York. We’re starting to see some reactions and impressions – Bobby Owsinski has a post on the overview of features and Jon from AudioGeekZine has some news of 3 top ProTools resource sites joining forces.
• Ian Shepherd has a fantastic post from his end of the mixing chain with “The Top 10 DIY Mastering Mistakes“
• Audio Issues bucks the trend of advising applying HPF’s by adding in the opposite advise as well: “Get Rid of that Oh-So Unnecessary High-End“. Björgvin also writes a great post on “How to Record a Punchy and Powerful Bass Guitar“.
• Finally, Gary Ewer had a bumper crop of songwriting tips this past week with Chord Modifications for Songs with the Same Verse/Chorus Melodies, Creating Melodic Symmetry to Strengthen Song Structure and Writing Songs That Are On The Cutting Edge

This week has been busy on the IHR campus. Besides a bumper crop of posts from blogs around the world, show number 95, with Craig Sowby as my guest, got released. In this show, I review Native Instruments’ “Studio Drummer” sample library. The fun ensues.

Looking back on the week – it’s yet again an embarrassment of riches. So many great posts that kept me engaged and interested. Here’s some of the gems I found:

• I’m going to start off this week’s list with a few posts from Bobby Owsinki‘s blogs – blogs that have been a regular staple on this end-of-week list.
  > He had a great post on tips to use click tracks in your recording process – using them to get more out of your performances in “Secrets of the Click Track“.
  > A bit of a rant on “Feature Creep On a Guitar” – what IS Gibson thinking with their new Firebird X?
  > On his Music 3.0 blog, Bobby looks into the crystal ball to see some possibilities for Digial Music with “10 Ideas of What Digital Music Will Look Like“
• Joe Gilder, has been on a Reverb and Delay kick the past week with some fantastic pointers and tips in: “Reverb vs. Delay” and “4 Quick Delay Tips“
• His partner in crime, Graham Cochrane, has been mulling over using stock plug-ins which is something both he and Joe chat about on their latest podcast Simply Recording – Episode 4. He has a 8-minute video of him using stock plug-ins on a mix (Mixing with Stock Plugins) and also contemplates a readers’ question on the subject in “Is It OK To Use Stock Plugins?“
• Matt Weiss over at ProSoundWeb.com had a fantastic post explaining Parallel Compression with a few great tips in “Two  Effective Ways to Use Parallel Compression“.
• Deane Ogden, another staple here on the weekly recap, seems to be kicking off another one of his insightful series into the mind of a Film Composer with “Planning and Executing: Part 1“. He writes about some of the personal and administrative pre-creative things that will help when things start to get rolling.
• Finally, there seemed to be a bit of a theme that popped up today (Friday) with a couple of posts mulling over the influence of technology on music making:
  > Gary Ewer asks: “Has Technology Changed the Length of a Song Intro?” – he looks at Top-40 song intros of a few decades ago and compares them to today’s hits.
  > Björgvin Benediktsson over at Audio-Issues.com asks “Is Your DAW Making You Lazy?” – he mulls over how things like patches, templates and presets can contribute to laziness in creating and mixing.

I’m cooking up another episode of IHR – I don’t know whether it’ll be out before the end of next week, but it’s coming.

Until next week!

Cheers, Dave

Next IHR

… should be coming out soon. It’s been a struggle for me getting the next show out – lots of business, personal and family stuff taking priority. I hopefully should have something out by the weekend.

In the meantime:

Looking through the posts that came in last week, here are some of the ones that caught my eye:

• Bobby Owsinski’s always got something interesting to read about from all aspects of our lives – no matter what hat you wear in this industry. His blog entitled “The History of Digital Storage” that he sourced from Mashable was pretty darn cool – I remember a much shorter list when taking my first “computer 101″ class back in high school.
• Audio Issues had some good advice about advantages of planning out your sessions with “What can the Cheshire Cat Teach you About Pre-Production?” They also have a post on “3 Super Simple Ways to Use Chorus for a Shimmering Mix” – an alternative to grabbing that EQ or reverb…
• Although it’s Logic-centric, Danski’s Logic Pro Blog had a video post from PointBlankBlog on the Basics of Compression.
• Ian Shepard, a self-proclaimed U2 fan, posted some sage advice that seems to fall on deaf ears a lot – commercial success does not always equate to “sell out” – a band such as U2 connects with a LOT of people through their songs. Taking the time to analyze and look at a catalogue of songs that have lasting power can definitely help in songwriting: “What U2 can teach you about writing great songs.”
• Ken Deloria posted a fun read over at ProSoundWeb about his “times-they-are-a-changin’” experience when he recently got back into mixing FOH after a hiatus. He compares the then vs. now way of touring in his post: “Time After Time: Perspectives on Touring, Then and Now…“
• Deane Ogden seems to pop up on these end-of-week lists a lot (and I can’t quite understand where he gets time to actually compose music with all the posts he generates). His seventh installment in his blog series entitled “Essential Skills of a Modern Day Film Composer” is yet again, sage advice: “3 Things Your Creativity Desperately Needs from You“
• Rob Schlette over at ProAudioFiles posted: “Charging an Hourly Rate vs. Charging per Song” – a great discussion on where and when you should consider each method for getting compensation for your work.

Now back to getting that show out… ;)

I couldn’t really say that this past week was a “best of” as the main topic of attention was the passing of Steve Jobs. I’ve collected the blog posts I follow that are related to comments, opinions and reactions to Steve’s death here. It’s going to be interesting to see how his legacy affects the future direction of technology and, of course, how the lack of his direct influence will affect the future of Apple.

This past week, Deane Ogden has been writing blogs on a topic thread that has been most interesting: “There is no such thing as being self-made”. It’s been an inspiring read and has gotten me to take a look at my own actions and connections I’ve made on my professional journey. His thinking on this topic started way before this past week, but this recent thread started with “Why I Give a Damn About Creatives” and spawned, “In Defence of Your Benefactors” and “Your Achilles Heel and Your Secret Weapon“.

Graham Cochrane has thrown up a couple of useful tid-bits again this week: “Is It OK to Use Plugin Presets?” and a video on “The Cymbal Knob“.

Gary Ewer had a fantastic post on analyzing and getting inspiration from not just songs that are popular today, but also songs that have stood the test of time in “What Can Today’s Songwriters Learn from Yesterday’s Songs?” He also had a post come in just before I pushed publish on this post entitled “Turnarounds: How They Work, and 10 Examples” – you’ve heard of them, you’ve probably heard examples of them, but what exactly are they? Hmmmm….

Joe Gilder has reached his 500th post over at Home Studio Corner – he celebrated with “500th Post – Share What You’ve Learned“. As always he had some sage advice for recording vocalists – close miking has some advantages (proximity effect), but there are also some things you should consider in support of “Back That Vocalist Up“.

And finally, I wanted to end it all off with a shaking head and a smile with a couple of posts from Jon Tidey: “A Great Example of Doing it Wrong” – Jon rewrites an email he received – kindly correcting spelling and grammar mistakes. “#BadAudioAdvice” is a tweet dump of a Twitter meme that Big Al and Slau.

Until next week!