Editors Blog
From the Desk of Lorenz
Lorenz Rychner is Editor of Recording Magazine. He invites your comments and opinions on the state of the music industry as seen through the eyes of the recording musician. Things have changed, and they keep changing. We all know that music will survive no matter what, but in what form? Who will be up, who will be down, and why?
Recent Posts
My Behringer-in-China Trip: Friday, 2/26/2010—Part Three
March 6, 2010
Now - are you ready for the BIG FINISH to our trip? And I mean B-I-G!
Our buses pull up at the Nr. 2 Hall of the International Exhibition Center, Torch Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone, Zhongshan. A group of musicia...Read More
My Behringer-in-China Trip: Friday, 2/26/2010—Part Two
March 5, 2010
We had the afternoon off. Gunnar Ollson and I decided to brave the town. We wanted to go off the beaten track, to do some shopping in a less than obvious and maybe even non-touristy spot. Easier said than done, of course, especially without a city map, without any knowledge of Cantonese, and with English speakers a ...Read More
My Behringer-in-China Trip: Friday, 2/26/2010—Part One
March 4, 2010
Today is the payoff, the takeaway, the bottom line—today it’s all about Behringer. This will have to be in three parts!
Another superb breakfast, another bus ride, and here we are: Behringer City, location of Eurotec Electronics, the manufacturin...Read More
My Behringer-in-China Trip: Thursday, 2/25/2010—Part Two
March 3, 2010
It’s a pleasantly warm afternoon for a bus tour, partly overcast, and the trip takes us through scenery that shows the recent explosion of industry and population growth. There are still a few rice paddies visible from the main roads we travel, but mostly the area is built up, with the kind of variety in architecture of th...Read More
My Behringer-in-China Trip: Thursday, 2/25/2010—Part One
March 2, 2010
My Behringer-in-China Trip: Wednesday, 2/24/2010.
March 1, 2010
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010. As I ride into Hong Kong from the new Chek Lap Kok airport, on bus A21, a doubledecker with generous luggage racks, I have ample time to appreciate the steepness of the rugged mountains along the waterfront. From my window seat on the plane from Sydney I had been watching the approach to the landing, an...Read More
NAMM Show Winter 2010
January 18, 2010
Four days of meet & greet, show & tell, hurry up & wait. Foot massages, throat lozenges, and Ibuprofen are popular items. Constant ambient noise levels of 90 dB (as confirmed by an officer of the Noise Police), exceeded by frequent spikes of demos and announcements, make for long and t...Read More
Happy New Year
January 3, 2010
On Dec. 31, 2009 I sent the following to a great many of our editorial contacts and friends in the industry:
"We're a few hours a...Read More
Happy Holidays
December 23, 2009
Took my camera to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge here in Denver, on a recent very cold day, and when I came upon this scene, with hundreds of birds just sitting there, waiting for better days to come, the first thought that came to mind was "Jus...Read More
AES—Not Just A Yearly Affair But Local—For You, Too?
October 23, 2009
Every year we report on the AES Convention, and you could be forgiven for getting the impression that this is the one and only thing the AES is noteworthy for. Sure, it is the big tradeshow where equipment and product is trotted out, and where also numerous panel discussions and paper presentations take place, so it is a high-visibility affair.
If you have travel fever or need ...Read More
Posting Post-AES
October 14, 2009
OK, I lied, I never blogged during the show... My colleague Mike Metlay had better luck with internet access - read his day-to-day blog (the wi-fi situation at the Javits Convention Center was a joke, and not a funny one...). I'm back home, digging out from under, and looking back over the photos ...Read More
Hello From New York - It's AES Time
October 9, 2009
Just got into the Javits, hoping to see a lot of you blog-surfers over the next few days. Check out the happenings at www.aes.org of course - unlike the NAMM show, this one is open to the public. Lots to see, and lots of panel discussions and White Papers etc. to sit in and learn from.
Come on by the booth of RECORDING - nr. 644 halfway down the 600 aisle. I'll be at the booth daily ...Read More
Les Paul Departs, And Sennheiser Goes To Skywalker Ranch
August 17, 2009
Having spent time out of reach of wi-fi and t-mobile, in the depths of Marin and Sonoma counties (California), I only learned today about the passing of the legendary Les Paul. What a man, what a life! Until very recently he popped up everywhere, meeting with crowds at all manner of industry events. I am one of the many lucky th...Read More
Sad News: Rich Sanders
August 4, 2009
Rich Sanders passed away on Aug. 3, 2009, after reportedly having been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. He enthusiastically lived and breathed audio, in recent years specializing in forensics, securing grants for the establishment of a National Center for Media Forensics, and organizing two AES International Conferences on Audio Forensics right here in Denver where he lived and work...Read More
Scotland Yard Uncovers A Novel Type Of Digital Downloads Crime
June 14, 2009
An item I just read in the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jun/10/police-fraud-online-music) reminded me of a quote by composer Edward Elgar who probably didn’t have illegal digital music distribution in mind when he said “My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it...Read More
Someone Give The Guy A Job!
May 12, 2009
Did you read the one about the Dublin uni student who got the better of the international media? After the recent death of famed movie composer Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, A Passage to India etc. etc.), young Shane Fitzgerald went on Wikipedia and posted a few sentences “supposedly” attributed to Jarre. Others on Wikipedia soon found out that this quote was...Read More
Great New Music — And A Pox On Ticketmaster
April 27, 2009
HoHoHo it is CoCoCo – Colorado Composers’ Concert, a yearly affair that took place on April 25 at the Kenneth King Center Concert Hall on the Auraria Campus in Denver. The ever so competent group of Denver musicians that form The Playground (www.playgroundensemble.org) diligently performed 13 pieces that were ch...Read More
Have You Heard a VRAS?
April 15, 2009
A what, you say? I know, it has nothing to do with recording, but I went anyway, and I heard a VRAS in action. WOW!
I have just come back from a most interesting AES outing earlier this evening. Leslie Gaston, Chair of the Colorado Section of the AES (www.aes.org/sections/colorado), invited members and interested parties to tour the recently completed Edith Kinney Gaylord Co...Read More
Kendra Shank Tours With New CD
March 18, 2009
In August of 2007 we brought you a session report of New-York based singer Kendra Shank's CD A Spirit Free, done by Marc Urselli, frequent contributor to Recording, at Lou Holtzman's Eastside Sound in Lower Manhattan.
A happy coincidence of travel schedules allowed us to visit with Kendra and hear her concert performance at the fabulous Seasons Hall in Yakima, WA, l...Read More
New Zealand Reader Taken Care Of
March 15, 2009
Recently we learned that subscriber Matthew Clayton, on staff at the School of Music at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, had trouble holding on to his copy of Recording. While it pleases us to know that our magazine is popular enough to get swiped on arrival by others in the department, we commiserated with Matthew and promised to remedy the situation. <...Read More
Congratulations To A Worthy Winner—Tyler Gilmore
February 4, 2009
Tyler Gilmore has won the 2009 ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award (see the NEWS item elsewhere on this website). He has also won the even more prestigious commission by the ASCAP Jazz Commissioning Program for a new work as the composer selected in the Emerging Jazz Composer Category. On Feb. 20 in Chicago his piece will be premiered under the directorship...Read More
NAMM Day Four—The End
January 19, 2009
It's over for another year. Hoarse throats and sore feet notwithstanding, we took stock among our crew and found that we had not only seen everybody we had planned to see, but that many unforeseen but welcome encounters had made the trip even more worthwhile.
Good things happen when so many people congregate with basically the same idea—to renew old and to make new busine...Read More
NAMM Day Three—Saturday
January 18, 2009
This is where we are headed every morning, and the weather is at least as nice as it looks here!
In case you're wondering what NAMM stands for - this is a bit of a mystery these days. There was a time when it clearly stood for National Association of Music Merchants. But no more - NAMM ...Read More
NAMM Day Two—Friday
January 17, 2009
You'll be reading about them again soon in RECORDING: Bunny Brunel who brought his new CD, and Chris Cox who came by with publicist Shelli Andranigian:
Whimsy rules down ...Read More
NAMM Day One - From the Sublime to the Sublime
January 16, 2009
As I was headed for a press conference today at NAMM I turned a corner and my eyes confirmed what my ears had already been telling me: Dr. Lonnie Smith was at the Hammond organ, giving Billy Strayhorn's Chelsea Bridge his incomparable treatment.
I waited around, hoping the good Doctor would go down on hands and knees for his trademark funk-bass solo (by hand, but on the peda...Read More
A perfect recording—do you have one?
January 15, 2009
While bopping all over the Southland in my rental car I've been giving my iPods a good workout, and DJ Random has been heavily favoring Aretha Franklin's Spanish Harlem. Listening to it for the umpteenth time today, somewhere between Studio City and San Diego, it occured to me that this, to me, is a perfect recording.
So let me ask you—what's yours?
Before...Read More
Not your average squeezebox gig...
January 12, 2009
Royce Hall at UCLA has fabulous acoustics, and last night, on Sunday 1-11, it was just as well, or the capacity audience would not have been able to hear the many nuances of Osvaldo Golijov's new orchestral work Azul. He writes what is basically tonal modern orchestral music, but he mixes colors and timbral gestures like a synthesist.
It was a big-deal ev...Read More
iTunes new pricing—just wondering, who gets the money?
January 7, 2009
So now you can buy songs without limitations on how you use them, with no more DRM (Digital Rights Management: transfer songs to no more than five computers or burn no more than seven copies to CD). (As per http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1711)
For 30 cents per song you can upgrade all songs you’ve ever bought on iTunes, and the upgradeed songs, now at 256 kbps (up from the curre...Read More
Jeremiah is still a bullfrog after all these years...
January 4, 2009
...and that line still doesn't make sense, but that didn't stop a big crowd from singing along last night at Denver's Boettcher Concert Hall.
Drummer Pat Bautz, no stranger to the readers of Recording, was in town again, in his 16th year of gigging with Three Dog Night. He drives the band with his inspired drumming, while behind him on this gig the Colorado Symphony Orchestra was con...Read More
And The Winner Is...
January 2, 2009
You've been hearing them, over and over, whether you liked it or not, and maybe you're as glad as I am that it's over for another year—no more Christmas songs.
Which do you think was broadcast on the radio the most over the last five years (not including 2008 yet)?
The winner is (scroll down, the suspense is killing you):
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...Read MoreHappy New Year!
December 30, 2008
New Years Eve - La Noche Vieja - Sylvester - Saint-Sylvestre - La Festa di San Silvestro - with our friends the world over we’re ready to take the leap again, looking ahead to whatever 2009 may bring.
Many people to thank in looking back - readers, writers, fellow MMP-ers, artists and industry contacts of all stripes - you know who you are. Keep in touch, keep striving, a...Read More
Fond Farewells
December 29, 2008
Eartha Kitt and Freddie Hubbard, two GREATS, have left us. I heard them both, live, several times on several continents, in very different settings, and although there is nothing musically or careerwise to connect them as far as I know, it was obvious from watching them on these live gigs that they shared a seriously independent streak. True originals. Fond farewells.
Read More'Tis the Season
December 24, 2008
A dear friend gave me a book for Christmas that will brighten many a day for a long time to come: The Quotable Musician—from Bach to Tupac. By Sheila E. Anderson. Allworth Press.
Allow me to share two gems from it:
Decca Recording Company’s explanation why they didn’t sign the Beatles: “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way ou...Read More
Our Michael Nickolas scores
December 7, 2008
Lorenz Rychner here, giving you the heads-up about an upcoming TV Documentary that uses a lot of music provided by our frequent contributor Michael Nickolas: "Walk Wisconsin" at 5PM ET on Dec. 11, to be seen on the "Big Ten Network" (Direct TV or Cable).
Read MoreImprovisers invade Denver
December 6, 2008
Hi, Lorenz Rychner here again. Do you like improvised music? I’m not talking about a rocker shredding a lead solo, or a jazzer taking choruses after the head, but about the entire genre of improvised music, as nurtured by the International Society for Improvised Music (http://isim.edsarath.com/). What a treat it was to hear some great players this weekend here in Denver!
...Read More
Readers' Tapes are ramping up
December 5, 2008
Good to see that many of you have caught on to the new and easy way to submit! So much so that Marty had to upgrade the power supply for his mp3 player. (Click on the blue header.) If I hadn't taken this picture myself not long ago I wouldn't have believed it, either... Keep'em coming!
Read MoreEditor's Welcome!
November 7, 2008
Change, does the word even still have a real meaning in the real world, away from politicians and pundits? For us, and for you, the reader of Recording, it sure does - just look around www.recordingmag.com and see what has changed!
A lot of work has gone into our new site, and we are celebrating its launch ...Read More
