The Magazine
April 2014
April showers bring Songwriter Power in this month's RECORDING! This special issue focuses on the tools every successful recording songwriter should have handy for capturing ideas and presenting them in the most effective possible ways.
Sven-Erik Seaholm comes from a long and successful career as a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer/engineer. He introduces novice songwriters to some of the basic tools and workflows that he's found effective in creating and recording new songs. Eleanor Goldfield is no stranger to world-class studios and equipment, but in this issue she offers a wide selection of useful songwriting and recording products that readers can obtain free of charge. And Paul J. Stamler discusses the basics of choosing and setting up a studio's equipment from monitors to mics, concluding his unique "from the outside in" perspective begun last issue.
And that's not all. Eric Alexandrakis notes that his current success came from many years of making mistakes and learning from them; in a funny and accessible article, he walks readers through no less than 25 of the biggest goofs he's seen in the songwriting world and gives advice on how to avoid making them yourself.
Songwriters wanting to learn about the very newest studio equipment will find lots of reviews to love in this issue, including AEA's songwriter-friendly N22 ribbon mic, Dynaudio Professional's desktop-friendly DBM50 monitors, the very powerful and portable TASCAM DP-008EX Digital Portastudio, CME's unusual and playable Xkey controller, and more.
All this plus our regular features, full coverage of the 2014 Winter NAMM Show in Anaheim, and more. If you want to get your hands on the very best tools for recording your song ideas -- and to learn how to use them -- you can't miss the April RECORDING!
Dynaudio Professional DBM50 Monitors
|
Reviewed by
Lorenz Rychner
Dynaudio Professional DBM50 Monitors |
Reviewed by
Lorenz Rychner
An unusual shape and outstanding audio performance on your desktop.
For much of the past hundred years the tiny country of Denmark, much smaller in population than even Switzerland, has produced outstanding audio companies with inno......Expand
An unusual shape and outstanding audio performance on your desktop.
For much of the past hundred years the tiny country of Denmark, much smaller in population than even Switzerland, has produced outstanding audio companies with innovative products. On that historical timeline, the impressive thirty years of Dynaudio's existence make it nevertheless one of the younger members of that Hall of Fame. The company's experience and range in audio is deep and vast -- Dynaudio Professional is only one of four divisions, the others being home audio, automotive, and multimedia.
You may have come across this question -- is there a typical Danish sound? Some folks in audiophile circles say there is, and in a way I tend to agree, although I remember it to have been more distinctly true in the '70s rather than now; back then I owned a pair of rather pricey Danish hi-fi speakers in one room, an American Quad system in another, and an early Revox model in my music room. In those days, differences in design philosophies and the resultant variations in tonalities were quite pronounced.
Since then, ever-expanding multinationalism in tastes, designs, and manufacturing provenances has had the effect of blurring such distinctions. Still, if you are very familiar with this Danish tradition, you may feel somewhat at home when listening to the DBM50. I did...
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
AEA N22 Ribbon Microphone
|
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
AEA N22 Ribbon Microphone |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
An entirely new design from the classic ribbon maker, aimed directly at the small recording studio.
Audio Engineering Associates (AEA) is famous and well-respected for its Big Ribbon mic designs, handmade in Pasadena, CA, wh......Expand
An entirely new design from the classic ribbon maker, aimed directly at the small recording studio.
Audio Engineering Associates (AEA) is famous and well-respected for its Big Ribbon mic designs, handmade in Pasadena, CA, which mimic -- or, more often these days, modernize and revitalize -- vintage microphone construction methods used by RCA. So when AEA announces an entirely new mic design, heads are going to turn. I was eager to try the N22, the first mic in AEA's Nuvo ("nouveau", French for "new") mic line.
The most obvious "nouveau" trait of the N22 is its appearance. Its champagne-silver finished body is just shy of 9" tall and a tad more than 1 1/2" diameter; it is the smallest microphone to ever grace AEA's lineup, looking nothing like AEA's R series mics.
The N22's ribbon is surrounded by an internal steel spring cage with multiple layers of specialized blast protection fabric similar to that found on the R92 (reviewed February 2006). Unlike the rest of the AEA family, it features no built-in mic mount or shock mounting. Instead it comes with a rubber shockmounted mic clip. The package also includes a plastic foam-lined case and a felt mic bag.
While the N22 is visually new, it has a an old soul -- it makes use of the same classic large ribbon pressure gradient transducer found in AEA's other figure-8 mics...
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
TASCAM DP-008EX Digital Pocketstudio
|
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
TASCAM DP-008EX Digital Pocketstudio |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
Think the portable recorder is a thing of the past? Nope! This new design offers songwriter-friendly and DAW-friendly features aplenty.
It's true that the most common audio recording device in the studio of 2014 is the perso......Expand
Think the portable recorder is a thing of the past? Nope! This new design offers songwriter-friendly and DAW-friendly features aplenty.
It's true that the most common audio recording device in the studio of 2014 is the personal computer. Affordable DAW software and interfaces let any computer, even the old PC you use for web surfing or the second-hand Mac you got to play with iMovie, record and mix audio with features unheard of in old-school digital recorders.
But let's not count the digital recorder out just yet. With the advent of really affordable high-capacity digital media, specifically SD and SDHC memory cards, it's become possible to build digital recorders that are small, light, bulletproof in operation and crash-free. And with better and more affordable DSP chips, they can have great-sounding digital processing on board as well. Whether it's a field recorder with a couple of extra inputs for multitrack work or a full-sized tabletop digital studio with built-in mixer, digital recorders are still out there and still doing their jobs.
TASCAM invented personal multitracking with the original Portastudio 4-track cassette recorder (and some of the first home-friendly reel-to-reel recorders, too). Other firms have come and gone over the decades, as cassettes became MiniDiscs (remember those?) became hard disk drives became flash memory cards.... but not a year has gone by without a TASCAM Portastudio out there for hands-on recording musicians to rely on. In recent years TASCAM has gotten way into packing more features into less space at a lower price than ever before with its Digital Pocketstudio line.
In this review, we take a look and listen to the DP-008EX, the newest and hottest of the Digital Pocketstudios... a perfect tool for the songwriter in a hurry....
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
Studio Projects SPM5 500 Series Mic Preamp
|
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Studio Projects SPM5 500 Series Mic Preamp |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
This clean, high-gain mic pre adds flexibility and sonic punch with cool extras.
Studio Projects is a California-based company with a 15-year legacy building highly affordable quality microphones such as those found in their......Expand
This clean, high-gain mic pre adds flexibility and sonic punch with cool extras.
Studio Projects is a California-based company with a 15-year legacy building highly affordable quality microphones such as those found in their B, C and CS Series. In addition to offering these well-respected mics, Studio Projects has also ventured into the audio hardware realm in past years. Notable examples include the VTB-1 tube microphone pre amp, as well as the now-discontinued SP828 which was both a Burr Brown-based 8-channel mic preamp and 8x2 mixer in one.
Now Studio Projects is expanding its hardware line with a trio of 500 Series modules that cover a typical channel strip. The line features the SPM5 Mic Preamp under review today, as well as the SPE5 Equalizer and the SPC5 Compressor, both of which are still forthcoming.....
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
CME Xkey USB MIDI Keyboard
|
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
CME Xkey USB MIDI Keyboard |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
A totally original approach to the problem of portability vs. playability results in a controller that excels at both.
I first got to know Mr. Zhao Yitian, the prime mover behind CME, some years ago, and I have always been i......Expand
A totally original approach to the problem of portability vs. playability results in a controller that excels at both.
I first got to know Mr. Zhao Yitian, the prime mover behind CME, some years ago, and I have always been interested in the uniquely powerful and sexy new controllers and keyboards he brings to market. But even with CME's impressive track record, the new Xkey portable USB MIDI controller keyboard still stunned me. The Xkey is truly unique: it's designed from the ground up to be not only very portable but to be very playable as well.
Unlike pretty much every other ultra-small keyboard controller out there, the Xkey starts with 25 keys that are full-sized, like a standard synth's. How do you provide 25 full-sized keys in a product that's still small enough to fit in a laptop bag? By cutting away everything else around the keys, and building the keys into a frame that provides strength and stability while adding virtually no size....
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
Louder Than Liftoff Chop Shop
|
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Louder Than Liftoff Chop Shop |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
A new audio firm debuts a filter module that combines great tonal flexibility with a very approachable price.
Louder Than Liftoff is a new company formed by gear designer Brad McGowan with his brother Kyle. Readers might rem......Expand
A new audio firm debuts a filter module that combines great tonal flexibility with a very approachable price.
Louder Than Liftoff is a new company formed by gear designer Brad McGowan with his brother Kyle. Readers might remember Brad from our review of the Kush Audio Electra (March 2014), a super-clean and musical EQ which he helped design. The first Louder Than Liftoff offering is a 500 Series module dubbed Chop Shop.
The Chop Shop is billed as a 500 Series EQ, and it is... but then again, it kind of isn't, at least not if you are expecting an EQ in the traditional multi-band sense. It's a set of filters, both highpass and lowpass, rounded out by a Focus EQ. Each section also includes some unique features as well, adding to the flexibility of this seemingly simple design....
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
For Your Bookshelf
|
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
For Your Bookshelf |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
Three cool titles help songwriters maximize social media, learn the role of the producer... and get themselves into and out of all sorts of trouble.
I had the pleasure of hearing Bobby Owsinski talk to a rapt audience at Pre......Expand
Three cool titles help songwriters maximize social media, learn the role of the producer... and get themselves into and out of all sorts of trouble.
I had the pleasure of hearing Bobby Owsinski talk to a rapt audience at PreSonuSphere last fall, and was so tickled with his take-no-prisoners attitude to the effective use of social media in marketing oneself that I immediately asked him for a copy of his book. I wasn't disappointed, and I don't think you will be either...
We always hear about producers -- this person produced this hit record, while that person has been working as a producer in this or that genre forever, and this other person has been called in to produce a project because they had to let the previous producer go. But exactly what is a producer, and what does he or she actually do? Richard James Burgess has been in the business for decades, as an artist, engineer, and producer, and in the late 1990s (remember back then?) he wrote the first edition of this book as neither more nor less than a comprehensive answer to that question. Now we're up to the fourth edition, and while there's been a lot of updating to reflect new realities in the business, the book's basic premise remains firm...
Martin Atkins, musician, producer, educator, and probably a lot of other things, handed out a fair bit of painful enlightenment in his book Tour:Smart, a guide for bands on how to tour effectively without killing themselves along the way. We're still waiting for the prequel, Band:Smart, but in the meantime Martin has tickled us with a lovely little tome designed to help us understand just how fu*ked we are... and then telling us how to go unfu*k ourselves, in careful, meaningful, hilarious detail...
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
2014 Winter NAMM Show Report
|
Written by
Mike Metlay with Paul Vnuk Jr. and Lorenz Rychner
2014 Winter NAMM Show Report |
Written by
Mike Metlay with Paul Vnuk Jr. and Lorenz Rychner
The gear was everywhere, the innovations were impressive... and we were there. Check out the highlights of Anaheim's annual gear blowout.
We kicked off the New Year with a trip to Anaheim, CA, for the 2014 Winter NAMM Show........Expand
The gear was everywhere, the innovations were impressive... and we were there. Check out the highlights of Anaheim's annual gear blowout.
We kicked off the New Year with a trip to Anaheim, CA, for the 2014 Winter NAMM Show... four days (January 23-26) packed full of great new gear and technology for musicians of all kinds. The forecast was sunny in more ways than one: for the first time in years, showgoers were greeted by sunny skies and pleasant temperatures in Anaheim rather than unseasonable cold and rain, and at NAMM itself the optimism of the slow but steady economic recovery continued to manifest itself, with many booth personnel commenting on the strong attendance.
Here's a quick listing of just some of the great products we saw at Winter NAMM. As always, we can't possibly list everything we saw, and we apologize in advance to anyone we omitted. Many makers were showing products that first debuted at AES in San Francisco the previous fall; you can read about those in our January 2014 issue. On with the show!...
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
Capture And Craft: The Songwriter's Toolbox
|
Written by
Sven-Erik Seaholm
Capture And Craft: The Songwriter's Toolbox |
Written by
Sven-Erik Seaholm
The songwriting process can be made quicker and more creative with the right tools. Here's one successful songwriter's approach.
"A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true." -- Bob Dylan
A song ......Expand
The songwriting process can be made quicker and more creative with the right tools. Here's one successful songwriter's approach.
"A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true." -- Bob Dylan
A song comes to us with a blend of three complementary ingredients: lyrics, melody and harmonic structure (chords). Each of these essentials supports the others, so while the lyrics may often directly refer to a particular feeling or emotion, the melody can actually help to emphasize or even embody that sensation. The chords contextualize things further by defining and establishing major and minor key relationships -- the exact same melody can be made to sound either happy or sad, depending on which notes surround and support it.
It all sounds very complicated, and it certainly can be, but the act of songwriting can also be fundamentally broken down into two simple phases: Capture and craft....
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
Audio In The Land Of The Free
|
Written by
Eleanor Goldfield
Audio In The Land Of The Free |
Written by
Eleanor Goldfield
You can find audio software for everything from basic tracking to mimicking live instruments, for the incredible price of absolutely nothing.
There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but believe it or not, there is such a......Expand
You can find audio software for everything from basic tracking to mimicking live instruments, for the incredible price of absolutely nothing.
There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but believe it or not, there is such a thing as free audio software. For those of you looking to get into demoing, writing, or simply laying down ideas in your own studio setup, this land of the free has some cool tools to get you going.
It's tempting to spend big money on audio gear; much of it is expensive, and money can seem insignificant when you're passionate about something like audio. It's not like having a passion for collecting seashells.
That being said, the amount of expensive gear you have is not indicative of your abilities. This point was made starkly clear to me one day when I asked Ed Cherney (Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Iggy and the Stooges, etc.) what his thoughts were on home studios. He spun around in his Aeron chair, a Neve 8048 console behind him and an iPhone in his hand. "Got one of these?" he asked, pointing to his phone. I nodded. "Give it to me and I'll make you a hit record. It's who's behind the tools, not the tools," he said with his contagious grin.
Not all great gear is expensive, some of it is even free (read on!), and you can build your rig one piece at a time. I can't tell you how many great producers and engineers I've spoken to that started their stories with "All I had was..."
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
From the Outside In: A Different Approach to the Startup Studio. Part 2: Now We Add Gear
|
Written by
Paul J. Stamler with the Staff of RECORDING
From the Outside In: A Different Approach to the Startup Studio. Part 2: Now We Add Gear |
Written by
Paul J. Stamler with the Staff of RECORDING
Last month we worried first about how our room would sound. Now we stock it... starting with the monitors.
Last month, we concentrated on the first and most important part of any Startup Studio: the room. Now we can finally ......Expand
Last month we worried first about how our room would sound. Now we stock it... starting with the monitors.
Last month, we concentrated on the first and most important part of any Startup Studio: the room. Now we can finally get to the gear that goes in the room, starting with the second most important piece of the puzzle: the monitors.
Note that in this article, the Editor is supplementing my concrete recommendations with some of his own, based on recent reviews in this magazine and on the track records of our other contributors, most notably Paul Vnuk Jr.. The fact is, I haven't heard everything on the market, and I prefer to recommend pieces I've actually heard, or whose close relatives I've actually heard. And that leaves a lot of latitude for very worthy gear that might otherwise go unmentioned here.
Where feasible, I'll provide a basic, rock-bottom recommendation from my own experience, and another recommendation that I feel is a solid step up from the basics. We'll then fill in some alternatives. My original intent was to name prices, but they go out of date too quickly; online searches are your friends for numbers like these. Punchline up front: in the spring of 2014 it is possible, using the basic recommendations I make below, to outfit a Starter Studio for under $4000, including the room treatment and a very good computer....
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
25 Mistakes Artists Make
|
Written by
Eric Alexandrakis
25 Mistakes Artists Make |
Written by
Eric Alexandrakis
Can you find one or more classic errors that you're making right now? We hope not, but...
They're everywhere, like cheap wine in a crinkly brown Mini-mart bag. Some think they look cool walking around drinking out of it, but......Expand
Can you find one or more classic errors that you're making right now? We hope not, but...
They're everywhere, like cheap wine in a crinkly brown Mini-mart bag. Some think they look cool walking around drinking out of it, but in the end, it shows no control... no discipline... no clue. Yes, you know what I'm talking about. Or do you?
I see them every day: those constant mistakes that artists make without thinking. Some are minute, some are grand, some are just so incredibly dumb -- but all can be avoided with some simple logic, and restraint from laziness.
WARNING: The things you are about to read are real. They have been taken from real examples of bad promo campaigns and bad career decisions. If you happen to recognize yourself in any of these examples, I apologize, but... No I don't. If you haven't fixed what you're reading about yet, here's hoping you're now embarrassed enough to do so!...
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
Fade Out
|
Written by
Sven-Erik Seaholm
Fade Out |
Written by
Sven-Erik Seaholm
What Looms On This Horizon?
On a recent laundry day, I picked up my favorite jeans and noticed an unusual wear pattern on the back left pocket: A white rectangular outline that came from the interaction of good old-fashioned......Expand
What Looms On This Horizon?
On a recent laundry day, I picked up my favorite jeans and noticed an unusual wear pattern on the back left pocket: A white rectangular outline that came from the interaction of good old-fashioned denim and modern smart phone. Sensing an awkward union of the present and the distant past, I thought about the weavers...
Although this is a music magazine, I'm not talking about The Weavers, the Greenwich Village folk group that inspired and led the way through the folk music boom of the '50s and '60s. I'm speaking of the silk and cotton weavers, particularly those of the early 19th century...
Read more in the April 2014 issue of RECORDING!
Collapse
