Song Exploder Podcast – Eavesdrop on your Favorite Artists in the Studio
Song Exploder – Eavesdrop on your Favorite Artists in the Studio Everyone loves eavesdropping. And this podcast is all about eavesdropping on your favorite artists as they talk about their songwriting process. It’s a quick podcast—about 15 minutes—where an artist pulls apart one of their songs and tells you how it was made: the sounds, the inspiration, and the process. Song Exploder interviews a variety of different artists, from Odessa to the Lumineers, to Iggy Pop and Daedalus, Andrew Bird and Carly Rae Jepsen. Even if you’ve never heard of the artist before, or aren’t interested in that style of music, it’s always productive to learn how other artists approach the process. Here are some songwriting styles and stories that stood out to me the most—maybe they’ll fascinate you, too. -Did you know the intro bass line from Chet Faker’s “Gold” came to him in the middle of …
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Field Recordings – Capture and Incorporate your Sonic Landscape
Field Recordings – Capture and Incorporate your Sonic Landscape Shh. Take a moment to listen. You, my friend, sit in the nucleus of the infinite drum rack that is the soundtrack of your life. Surrounding you are limitless samples waiting to etch themselves into your tracks. Where to start. For one, if you have a smartphone you likely have a built-in recording app. You can also download an app which have more useful features for musicians. Try the Rode Rec app or Audio Memos for iOS for features like EQ, compression, and “extract markers”. While phones don’t have the best quality, they’re basically always in reach, and sound good enough. Make sure that you name the sound bit as soon as it’s recorded, otherwise you’ll get stuck finding “that one clip” from choices such as “New Recording 99” “New Recording 100” “New Recording 101”… you get the idea. If …
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2016 KVR Developer Challenge – Submissions Released (41 Freebies)
2016 KVR Developer Challenge – Submissions Released (41 Freebies) It’s that time of the year again! The 6th annual KVR Developer Challenge has published the submissions for their annual contest. The challenge receives submissions from sound designers and engineers around the country looking to release their software creations upon the world. Submissions include VST/AU plugins and sound ware products. The best part is, they’re all free to download. This year’s lineup features an array of plugins, from death metal vocal sound banks to psychedelic dub effects. Here are some we think are worth checking out. divider style=”clear” Lagrange This is an excellent granular reverb delay effect. By using granular techniques and firing each grain from a different point in the delay buffer, you can easily create vast soundscape and other worlds echoes. Use feedback to build droning soundscapes or shorten the delay to create a metallic-like chorus effect. Play around …
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Hooktheory Updates – Finding Cool Chord Progressions just got way Simpler
Hooktheory Updates – Finding Cool Chord Progressions just got way Simpler You may be familiar with Hooktheory already, but recent upgrades to their software have us checking out this cool software program in depth. Hooktheory is one of the best song analysis, creation, and education tools out there. It lets you choose from thousands of songs, then takes you behind the scenes to show you exactly how they “work” music theory wise. Then, you can open up Hookpad, a musical sketching pad that guides you to creating your own theory-savvy songs. So what’s new? divider style=”clear” Transposition Features Hooktheory now lets you transpose any song from its original key to any minor/major key or mode you want. This is a seriously cool feature that will get your songwriting gears spinning. In the examples on their website, you can see how songs like Hey Jude and Blank Space are thrown into an …
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5 Music Producers Killing the Game | Who Happen to be Female
5 Music Producers Killing the Game* *Who happen to be female. Whose your favorite male vocalist female producer duo? How about just your favorite female producer? No one comes to mind? This may not be surprising, as the beat making scene has historically been a boys club. The pairing of female vocalists and male producers is as prevalent as hi-hat rolls in a Drake song. The most up to date stats read that only 5-10% of music producer are female. And in fact, no woman has ever won the Gammy’s Producer of the Year award in a non-classical section (grr). This is not a reflection of the quality of work that women are producing, but the inclination of women to lean into (or be pushed into) performance roles instead of the technical ones. It’s a chicken and egg situation: women stay out of production roles because it’s a man’s world, …
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Pairing Music with Visuals – 7 Ideas to Get You Started
Pairing Music with Visuals – 7 Ideas to Get You Started Okay, so you’ve finally finished the dopest new song. It’s out on soundcloud, bandcamp, itunes, or what have you now. But you just don’t have a visual. As producers, we wear a lot of hats: instrumentalist, engineer, promoter, songwriter, manager… etc. And now? Tack videographer to the list. The importance of a visual accompaniment to any song cannot be understated. With youtube accounting for nearly 1/5th of all internet traffic, the importance of that video upload is indisputable. How much more likely is someone to share your song if it has a dope music video to accompany it? Yeah. Video is a powerful tool. But, while the idea of putting a video together can be overwhelming, there’s one thing certain: anything is better than nothing. So if the idea of a storyboard, film crew, budget, blah blah blah, isn’t …
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