Recording Festival

Many a musician has had that lovely daydream about recording for free with an award winning producer in a legendary studio, and making it big so they could travel the world. Recording Festival has captured all these dreams and combined them into one reality, offering artists the chance to win a free two week recording session with a stellar team of music producers (with awards, even Grammys, on their resumes), and doing all this recording in the heart of Ireland in an all expenses paid trip. Is this a dream come true? Most definitely. It will be a dream come true for not one, but for three lucky artists / bands.

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Blind Melon Frontman Releases Debut Solo Album and Label Proceeds Go To Charity

Travis T. Warren, the current frontman for Blind Melon, recently released his debut solo album Beneath These Borrowed Skies from Clarity Way Records, a newly established record label owned by Clarity Way, a drug and alcohol rehab facility. All of the proceeds from Clarity Way Records will be donated to MusiCares— a charitable organization created by The Recording Academy (Grammys) in 1989.

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What the Ek? Music Metaphors and Meaning

How do you place a measurable value on music? Thanks to a tweet from Hypebot I came across an interview with Spotify’s Daniel Ek on Grammy.com, posted in early February. Aiming to keep this post shorter than my last; I won’t dwell beyond this paragraph on how awkward it is for Grammy, the self-appointed standard bearer for artistic expression in music, to be asking anything of Ek. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Representatives of music distribution services should interview Grammy insiders about trends in popular music - to gain insight into the creative forces behind music. Or not. Anyway, the interview was pretty typical Ek; Too focused on technology and consumption for my tastes. He is the future as he sees it. Best to read it for yourself though.

I’m trying not to be a Spotify hater. It has done a lot to innovate in the music space - especially on the consumption side. The social integration part is well-executed, though it too has its detractors. I have met some of Spotify’s developers, ran into them at an industry conference hosted by Amazon. They are nice folks, very enthusiastic about advances in local network caching and reduced edge-server latency. They are also particularly fond of that “bringing the pirates into the light” narrative. The story about how people do not need to torrent/file-share/steal music anymore, thanks to Spotify. It seems to come up a lot. It is probably in their welcome packet for new employees. Whether or not they are misguided is debatable, but they certainly aren’t all bad. Spotify is not the “Death Star”, back to destroy what’s left of the music industry. It also isn’t the industry’s savior, it is no Luke Skywalker, if you will.

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3 Tips For Studio Pre-Pairedness

We have all been there, booking studio time then when the day comes we end up working out parts & dealing with issues that should have been taken care of before hand. The clock is ticking in the studio and money being used that could have been saved or used for what it was intended for… tracking the magic.

Here are some tips to make the most use of your studio time:

1. Your Going To The Grammy’s. Practice & Pre-Pair like it.

A. Give yourself 15min to practice each song a day. Don’t burn yourself out, it is important to maintain your sanity and stay focused on the song. Two Times through each song is a good goal. Do this each day for 1 week before the session.

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