The doctor was in…
Daniel Lanois was in town over the weekend. But no, he didn’t make a house call, we went to him as he was performing with Black Dub at the Cedar Cultural Center.
Simply put, the show was sublime. Switching between guitar and pedal steel, this master of sound was a frenetic and colorful foil to Black Dub singer (and auxiliary drummer) Trixie Whitley (daughter of the late Chris Whitley), bassist Daryl Johnson, and drummer / percussionist extraordinaire Brian Blade. Supported by opening act Rocco Deluca (whose 2009 album Mercy was produced by Lanois), the evening was a demonstration of pure passion and musicality.
Wandering out, I grabbed a copy of the new Black Dub on vinyl as well as Lanois’ new book, “Soul Mining: A Musical Life”. Sometime around 2am, almost 150 pages along, I finally put it down…
This was not expected. But, if you’re the type of person who has spent the last 20 years in a recording studio, know what an 8068 is, and idolize Lanois’ albums with Emmy Lou, Dylan, and U2, this book is fantastic.
Often our idols and their lives seem untouchable as their skills and success are surely unattainable by mere mortals like ourselves. Instead, Lanois shares his last 60 years in a forthcoming and open manner. Life isn’t easy for anyone. Despite critical acclaim in one arena, personal, creative, and professional challenges can affect us all. Every day.
This book was a wonderful read. Real, honest, and inspiring. Check it out.
And in response to Lanois’ assertion that he feels somewhat responsible for the inflated prices of Sony C-37a microphones, Dan, you are to blame. But we’re not that upset (even though we can’t afford one). We’ve got Wrecking Ball playing in the studio right now and it sounds amazing.
Thank you.
“Revelatory”, revolutionary, and just plain cool.
On the surface, technology can seem so simple. Or even nonchalant. Sure, it must be convenient to stream audio from your mobile to your speakers, but conventional wisdom would question whether there is any viable real-world application for technology like Airplay?
David Hyman, CEO of MOG (which we love and are streaming now over Airtunes) thinks this software is “revelatory”. Check out his interview with Elliot at Evolver.fm here. Pretty revealing.
But then, last night, we finished a new mix for a client. We put it in our iDisk. The client was in the neighborhood. He stopped in, wanted to hear what we had been working on. Weeks ago, we’d have to turn on the computer, find the audio files, bring up ProTools… It was a process.
Last night, we clicked on our iDisk app, and pressed the song file. Boom. Sharing, collaborating, streaming, Airplay will truly change our workflow. For the better.
Technology is marching on, and we’re pretty grateful…
“Better music services deter piracy.” Steve Purdham, we7
We couldn’t agree more.
There’s an old adage often quoted to Ralph Waldo Emerson that if you “build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door”. In many ways, we see that happening everyday in our industry, technology, and our communities. Without question, we feel this is an exciting time.
Quite a few people questioned our decision to start building a new music and media company at the beginning of this year. True, physical music sales have plummeted. Since 2006, Tower, Musicland, and the VirginMega Stores have all shut their doors. And just this past September, Best Buy started cutting their floor space allocated to music. Again. And the culprit for all of these ills? Many claimed file sharing was to blame.
But what we’re really witnessing is not the death of music, but rather an evolution of a retail channel and distribution system. While many have been pouring over recent financial data from music streaming site Spotify, a recent post from GigaOm suggests Spotify is adding over 40,000 users per month. And earlier this year, Pandora was experiencing record growth. We love MOG. And Apple announced that over 7 billion apps have been downloaded since the launch of the App Store.
Our world is changing. And innovative companies are developing powerful new tools which will help produce and distribute music around the globe as this torrent of app downloading includes applications for music listening, music discovery, music making, music sharing, etc… Music remains a powerful method for communication and self expression. Today, inspired artists are writing, performing, and recording songs that will change our world. Good on them.
We agree with Steve Purdham. New mobile and Internet based tools will eventually be so compelling that they will slowly erode the interest many have in illegal file sharing. Evolver.fm even posted last week that some data suggests this is already happening.
Read the full Hypebot interview with Steve Purdham here. We think its spot on when he concludes, “I remain very optimistic that the music industry is heading for a very positive place but with a few bumps along the way.”
Thanks Steve.
Its time to make some music.
Tech 12′s are awesome.
By our count, Panasonic has discontinued the Technics 1200 series turntable three times in the past two years. Unfortunately, it seems like the rumors are true. Permanently.
While we don’t want to be alarmist or judgmental, this sobering reality is unfortunate. Tech 12′s, beautifully machined turntables, are really magnificent. We’ve got ours running everyday, spinning everything from Jimmy Smith to the Friendly Fires and Phantogram to Art Tatum. To celebrate Apple’s “Exciting News” last week, we even played the Rolling Stones.
Prices will eventually rise, so grab one while you can.
Goodbye old friend.
Mix Magazine has the story.
We (really) want an iPad.
We want an iPad. Seriously. Almost everyday, exciting new tools are made available for the iPad which simply blow our minds. Last week, the launch of Rebirth for the iPad absolutely floored us. The week before, we were blown away with Aweditorium, a new music exploration app which creatively combines both audio, live video, biographical, and interview based content.
This week? Full remote WiFi ProTools 9 control available from V Control. This is slick. We’re always moving from one room of the studio to the other, behind this instrument and that one… As such, the idea of controlling ProTools from one environment is really intriguing. We don’t get excited about technology for technology’s sake, but when innovative companies keep developing such powerful, efficient and cost effective tools, we think its a really fortunate time to be involved in this industry.
That’s it. We have to buy one. Soon. Unless you don’t want yours…
Check out this demonstration video of Rebirth for the iPad. And then call us and make fun of us for selling a Roland TR 808 for $600 a few years ago (they’re now going for over $2000).
We actually love the Beatles. Seriously.
The mood was apprehensive this morning at 8:59am this morning at NoWare. Streaming iTunes. Cloud. Nirvana…
And instead, we got the Beatles. (Sigh)
That said, we love the Beatles. Seriously. John, Paul, George, and Ringo are one of the reasons we are musicians. When I was in middle school, my dad took me to see Paul McCartney during his Flowers in the Dirt tour. The lights, rotating piano, rockets, and music were life changing to say the least. I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And, I know I’m not the only one that has had such a reaction.
So while we’ve got every Beatles record in LPs, 45s, and last year’s remastered CDs, we’re still happy for Apple. Maybe another generation of digital natives will be so inspired as we and generations before us were years ago.
And speaking of streaming, we still think its coming. Recent statistical reports suggest staggering growth rates for streaming services worldwide. We think cloud based systems will emerge from not only Apple, but Google and maybe even other providers in the very near future.
Its an exciting time for music. Aspiring creatives have more tools and more opportunities for distribution and promotion than in any era previously. All in all, we feel the moment is ripe for a revolution- don’t you know its gonna be alright?
Seasons change and so does… iTunes?
We had a mild snowstorm over the weekend. And despite the unfortunate need to break out shovels and find our boots, we took the time to reflect on the season. Recently back from AES, there is alot of change in the air. Protools 9. HD Native. New plug-ins. New consoles. And active AES participation from a variety of online and mobile / app based music services.
And what happens in the midst of our contemplative mood? Apple posts another ominous announcement on iTunes. Could this be the stream service we’ve all been waiting for? Will this new potential feature disrupt the already flagging recording industry?
We’re not sure. But if the mood and creativity that was on display last week at AES was any indication, the music business, equipment business, and creative business is thriving and we’re more than excited to continue watching it evolve. And, we’re pretty optimistic as well.
Introducing the Yamaha YC 20!
If you’re a musician, the conversation starts so innocently, “Hey honey, can we stop in here and look around?”
We’re hunting. We can’t help it. You never know what magical lost-to-the-history-books instrument you might find in local antique shops, music stores, and garage sales. Well, this week, we scored. Big.
Introducing the Yamaha YC-20, an organ built between the late 1960s and early 70s. We’d never seen one before, but the instant you plug it in, you know you’ve heard it. Think of the organ intro to “96 Tears”, “Green Eyed Lady”, and “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”. Yep. This thing is a beast. Great sound, cool imposing black profile (also available in white and red apparently), and tremendous flexibility in terms of sound shaping for a combo organ. Its got all of the Vox and Farfisa tone you could ever want.
We brought it back to the studio and played non-stop for about 3 hours. Come by and check it out.
And, a special thanks to the purveyors of www.combo-organ.com who helped us identify the YC 20. This is a great site and a huge resource for combo organs of every ilk. Check it out.
Yep, we’re excited. ProTools 9.
Hating has become a somewhat popular activity. And, not surprisingly, the ire of the media-Tweet-o-blog-o-sphere is usually directed at who ever is the current king of the roost. For a while, everyone rooted for Apple. Then, they became the second highest market capitalized company in the United States, and everyone started gnashing their teeth at every iPhone dropped call and feature Fail.
In our world, ProTools has taken quite a bit of heat lately. But, now, that might change. It’s here. After months of speculation, ProTools 9 is here. And, while manufacturer presentations are always filled with at least a little hyperbole, we think Avid is right- ProTools 9 has a bunch of great features that people have been waiting for. Automatic Delay Compensation? Yep. ProTools untethered from Avid/Digidesign hardware? Check.
Its true. ProTools has left the protective bonds of their hardware-software cocoon and anyone can get up and running on a PT rig with their choice of Avid or 3rd party converters (word on the street is the new Avid HDs are amazing). We think this is an amazing step. All of us here at NoWare are educators and work with hundreds of aspiring audio and music creatives every semester. For them, this is a big step. Users can get into a ProTools system that works for them, and scale the system as needs warrant.
We’re really excited. We’ll be waiting in line on November 12th for our own copy. And a new HD Native system. Are there other DAWs out there? Absolutely. Do some tools work better for certain applications than others? Of course. But that said, we think ProTools is a great tool. We use it everyday. No hating required. Users and creatives should feel liberated to use the tools at their disposal. All things considered, with today’s processing power, plug-ins, software feature sets, cost of computing, and cost of storage, its a really exciting time to make music. Game on.
Speaking of good news…
We’re leaving town. No, that’s not the good news. We’re heading to San Francisco for the annual Audio Engineering Society gala. We’re going to drool on new gear, see old friends, eat good food, and find out the latest and greatest in the audio world. Rumor has it, we’ll also see the newest version of one of our favorite DAWs.
(someone cue “Revolution #9″ to celebrate not only John Lennon’s 70th Birthday but also the release of…)
We’ll post on all the goings-on. Giggity, giggity, goo.
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