Reinventing The Album: Keeping Releases Relevant in The 21st Century
May 6, 2013
These days when listeners do buy music, it’s predominantly in the form of ones and zeros on a hard drive or a broadband stream. It was just this past year that paid digital downloads finally surpassed CDs as the most popular consumer format, but to put it that way only tells part of the story.
If you poll young people today, you’re likely to find that most of them do their music listening through streaming services, and have been doing so for some time now.
Today, streaming is far bigger than piracy, and despite newfound variety in this field, there’s still one streaming service that dominates. It’s not Pandora or
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How Long Is This Gonna Take? The Time and Cost of Recording a Full-Length Album
May 6, 2013
Vintage record clock by Etsy user "geoartcrafts"
Over the past few decades, the costs of recording equipment have plummeted. Today $5,000 to $10,000 in funds can allow you to assemble a recording system that might have required a half-million dollar investment in 1993.
There are some things that don’t change, however. In 2013, the most expensive parts of the recording process remain time, talent and labor. Although the costs of transducers and microprocessors may go down, the price of rent, utilities and soundproof construction will always rise.
Non-musicians are often surprised to find that despite all of our...
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Tales of the Tape: Cassette Culture in the Digital Age
May 6, 2013
This is a post by associate editor Blake Madden.
In his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, psychologist Barry Schwartz slaps us with a provocative theory: The modern consumer’s unlimited freedom of choice is actually a burden that leads to anxiety and unhappiness. Schwartz isn’t culling ideas from Orwell’s 1984, but from extensive research into the psychology of “want”. Think about the last time you ate at a restaurant with a textbook of a menu. How long did it take you to order? Did you change your mind a...
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Vanishing Borders: Latin American Music Production in a Globalized World
April 15, 2013
This is a guest post by Costa Rican musician and engineer, Bruno Cubero.
If you page through the calendars of South American music festivals this year, the lineups may seem familiar. Whether in Santiago,
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Podcast InputOutput Podcast Audio Gear Review: Brainworx bx_rockrack
Hosts Geoff and Eli review bx_RockRack, the new amp simulator plugin from Brainworx. Join them for an in-depth audio tour of the plugin with help from guitarist Robbie “Seahag” Mangano. How does it sound?... Studio Tour Taking Control of Your Music OnlineA couple of weeks ago, a good friend watched her laptop’s screen in horror, as a complete stranger began uploading her entire concert from the night before onto YouTube. She hadn’t seen this unknown cameraman, filming from the middle of the audience with a shaky, low-res cell-phone camera and... |
Gear Reviews The Best Small Tube Amps For The Recording StudioIn the recording studio, you don’t always need a lot of power from a guitar amp. If anything, sometimes less is more when it comes to level, and many seasoned engineers will tell you that some of the biggest guitar sounds can come out of some of the smallest amps. Orange Tiny Terror There are... Studio Tour Beyond the Basics: Harmonic Motion and the Root of All MusicVibrating String Music is a rare kind of art form that is made entirely out of vibration. It’s at once both ephemeral and yet inherently physical. We will never be able to reach out and grab it in our hands, but it certainly touches us in the most literal sense of that word. If you’re feeling... |
