wire to the ear

Ableton just posted this interview with Paul Kalkbrenner the DJ and main actor in the soon to be released movie Berlin Calling.

“How many music software products can claim to be filmstars? As far as we know, only one: Ableton Live. A new film, “Berlin Calling”, not only features some outrageously prominent onscreen footage but also stars renowned DJ and long-time Live user Paul Kalkbrenner in the leading role. A big thank you to Paul and the film’s director, Hannes Stöhr, for giving us such wonderful publicity.

The plot goes something like this: Berlin electronic music composer Martin (Paul Kalkbrenner), known as DJ Ickarus, is touring with his manager and girlfriend Mathilde (Rita Lengyel) from club to club around the globe and is about to release his biggest album to date. All of his plans are thrown out of kilter, however, after Ickarus is submitted to a psychiatric clinic high on drugs after a gig.

Go and see the film to discover what happens next (hint: witness the therapeutic powers of Ableton Live!) “Berlin Calling” opens in Germany on October 2 and is expected to be released internationally soon afterwards.”

This is pretty stange and makes me a nervous for some reason. Maybe it just hits too close to home! I am happy to see Ableton get as much press as possible because every musician should be using their software. Let’s hope this movie doesn’t get the same reviews as every other electronic music film has.

For more info: www.berlin-calling.de

We all know that having a few music videos per album is great promotion. With inexpensive tools like iMovie and a Flip video camera there is no excuse for not producing them. Once your video is all finished you uploaded it to YouTube and MySpace and your done. But wait what about that gorgeous video site Vimeo? Or that site let lets viewers comment along the playback timeline… Viddler? You know having your video in Blip.tv is also cool because they offer an embeddable show player. Hmm it’s going to be a long day uploading the same video to all these sites. But alas there is a better way: Tubemogul.

Tubemogul is an incredible free service to which you upload your video to one time and they distribute it to over 20 sites. That distribution service alone is truly a gift from the time saving gods however they give you more goodies. Once your video or videos are uploaded and delivered around the web universe and a few days go by log back into your Tubemogul account and viola you can see Analytics. Analytics is the fancy word for “Who is watching, how many are watching and where are they watching.”. The data is presented to you with nice interactive charts and graphs.

You may end up surprised that YouTube is not getting you the most views. Remember your video on YouTube is lost in a huge ocean of content. Earlier this year I discovered videos from a music blogger named Vergel Evans in his studio via Viddler. I got to his video because I searched “drum machine” and because Viddler is low on content like music tech his LX7.ca videos show popped up.

Don’t worry if you already have your videos on a few sites already because you can still upload them to Tubemogul and deselect “distribute” to those you already have covered.

Be sure to check out Tubemogul’s video channel on YouTube which is full of usefull tutorial videos: click here

Here’s a great video visit to Daptone Records studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Co-founders Neal Sugarman and Gabriel Roth show you around their music making fun house. If you ever wished you could find new soul records produced the way they used to be this is the place to check.

Everything at Daptone is analog except their one single digital piece: a CD player! Incredibly they even edit without computers using good old fashion razor blades and tape. I really like how they floated a floor for a sound proof room using tires and used clothes.

Visit Daptone Records: click here

Here’s some video from a Rave called Tunnelvision which happened sometime in 1995. As you can see the event takes place in a public tunnel and lasts until 7:00am which causes the locals to complain. However, surprisingly the promoters secured all the proper permits so the event was not shut down. Between scenes of people dancing (which are hilarious) you get a glimpse of the local news coverage of the event.

I started playing events like this in 1992. I would bring a Roland TR-909, 2 TB-303s, SBX-80 Sync Box, a small Boss 8 channel mixer which when pushed distorted in a delightfully frighting way and a Shure SM-58 microphone to yell at people with. Sometimes I would let people come on stage and twist the knobs on one of the 303s.

This video is fun to watch but the events in New York were far more crazy.

It’s clear online music collaboration has potential. Mixmatchmusic came out of beta this week and there are a host of other similar services including Splice, eSession and digitalmusician.net. Electronic Musician magazine has an article online comparing a bunch of them but it’s from October 2007 so keep in mind things change fast online. To read the article: click here

Channelflip.com is a net “TV” channel full of tech stuff and they have profiled yet another competitor in the online music collaboration space called Rifflet. For any of these to succeed in the long term they need to be free (ad driven and paid pro-accounts sound good to me), beautiful, fast and have a strong community.

Have any of you tried any of these services? How was your experience?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QPMvj_xejg

Here’s a guy who spent more time in front of a microphone than probably anyone you know. Don LaFontaine was “the movie guy”. He is the voice you hear in countless movie trailers saying, “In a world full of…”. Don passed away on Monday at the age of 68.

“Donald LaFontaine (August 26, 1940 – September 1, 2008) was an American voice actor famous for recording over 5,000 movie trailers and (according to his website) over 350,000 television commercials, network promotions, and video game trailers. His signature voice was perceived as being both ominous and sonorous. His nicknames included “Thunder Throat” and “The Voice of God”. He became identified with the phrase “in a world…”, which has been used in movie trailers so frequently that it has become a cliché. He also parodied this cliché several times, most recently in a commercial for GEICO insurance.” - Wikipedia.org

I remember seeing a documentary about his work and noticed he had his own home studio. Over the period of his life he was a recording engineer, film editor, producer, and writer. He was also known to take the time to send fans personalized voice recordings. I wonder if he had a favorite microphone.

For more info: www.donlafontaine.com

With today’s massive computer power you don’t buy a TC Powercore or Universal Audio UAD-1 because you need a boost, you buy them because the plug-ins sound fantastic. One of the early posts on Wire to the Ear was about TC Voice Modeler which is not available in any native format and is a must have in my arsenal.

Universal Audio has posted a video teaser for the upcoming UAD-2 card. Here’s the highlights:

The UAD-1 had a 7 year life.
They will break any limitations enabling any kind of audio processor on UAD-2.
They discuss the SHARC chips.
The card is capable of 2 Gigaflops per second.
Native decoding.
Years of devolopment.
More new partners.

To view the video: click here

Cid from Ohm Force sent me this video. How can I not try this out during my live show?

I share with you a video we shot this morning, testing the iPhone application iTM Midilab and using it to play/control a VSTi plugin.. - Cid, www.ohmforce.com

Oh wait… what if someone calls?

Dr. Device Overview… from Audio Damage on Vimeo.

Ever since I saw André Michelle’s software physics demos I knew the concept would make it’s way into audio applications. Bouncing balls attached by strings colliding with walls, creating sounds all said to me: glitch sequencer. Audio Damage’s Dr. Device has kinetics built into it so you can start flinging filter and delay nodes around. Audio Damage does not offer demos so until today when Chris Randall posted the above video I wasn’t sure how cool this feature was. The good stuff starts at 7:55.

I expect a few years from now we will see sequencers that look like realistic rivers which you can drop objects/sounds into. You would control the flow of the water instead of tempo. The wind, sky, roads or even a heard of buffalo could be other “tracks”. Finally we will have a productive use for super expensive Nvidia graphics cards. And of course we will control all of these elements by reaching out and touching them on our screens. I can’t wait!

Check out André Michelle’s physics demos:
http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tag/physics/

To see more videos from Audio Damage head over to their new video channel on Vimeo:
www.vimeo.com/audiodamage

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Paul Mawhinney’s has a 50 million dollar record collection. I always imagined there must be people with insanely huge vinyl collections. I personally have 5000 records in storage all mostly from the 80s. My favorite 12″? A German edition of Depeche Mode’s “Leave in Silence” on clear vinyl.

Paul Mawhinney was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the years he has amassed what has become the world’s largest record collection. Due to health issues and a struggling record industry Paul is being forced to sell his collection.

This is the story of a man and his records. I hope you enjoy it. - veryapeproductions.com

So are you still hording a giant record collection? Do you have any records that are crazy expensive collectors items?