3spada music

Shure Sm 57-58

2011-10-17T05:53:00.000-07:00

Sm58 Sm57

These microphones are simply brilliant!

58: Is perfect for live vocals as its durable, has a mesh screen with foam pop filter on the inside. The frequency response is 50 Hz to 15000 Hz, This mic can be used in many ways in the studio as well, for example a performer may feel uncomfortable singing into a condenser with a pop filter so to make the feel at ease wack this beauty in front on them and there you go!

57: Exactly the same as the 58 but without the mesh ball around it, generally used for instrument mic in a live setting as well as the studio. again being a dynamic mic its durable and able to be used for almost instruments.

Both of these mics are relatively cheap and easy to access at any music store.... if you have a home studio or are planning to build one do yourself a favour and buy one of these if not both!!!

Digidesign .... now known as AVID.

2011-10-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

Digidesign, the creators of SoundTools and ProTools. Technological masters!

There creation of sound tools in 1989, has sparked the revolution of the DAW (digital audio workstation.)
We have now seen the effects of this as almost every recording studio in the world will own one digital studio equipped with Pro Tools or a similar program e.g. Live 8 or Logic Pro.

With this we can edit audio to a degree that was not possible on tape! in saying this i am aware that there are a lot of purist analogue recording geniuses out there and i know that there are sounds that cannot be replicated digitally... yet! but i believe the extent in which we can play with the audio has increased immeasurably.

With digital recordings comes digital formats of audio and with this portable music player such as Ipods and MP3's have taken of....

A recent trend with these DAW's is to produce electronic music entirely made up of MIDI instruments. (see my post on MIDI.)

What i am trying to say is that with out Evan Brooks and Peter Gotcher and their company Digidesign none of these things would be avaliable to us!

Here is a link to an interview with Evan Brooks, he talks on how the company came about i highly recommend this!

2011-10-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs 1955 -2011.

Steve Jobs was the founder of Apple, and the ex CEO after stepping down earlier this year. Jobs was a revolutionary thinker for his time and the company Apple reflects his ideas.

The most stand out idea to me was in 1997 while the internet was very new to the world and sever based computing or 'cloud computing' as referred to today, was only ever seen in large scale businesses with huge databases of information. Jobs was seen to be thinking into the future and thinking wouldn't it be great if we could do all of our computing from an online server. He thought that this idea would take off as you could have all your storage online or on a sever and your computer could now be the portal in which you access it so no matter where you went you always have your information.

While earlier this year Jobs was seen again presenting on apples product iCloud, where it took the PC or Mac from being this so called portal or hub to being another device so now the cloud was your digital presence and you would use your computer, phone, tablet and any other device to access the your digital information literally anywhere you like.

As many will know Jobs passed away recently, this is a sad moment indeed to lose someone of such genius. i would like to finish this post on ...

RIP Steve Jobs.

First Recording Device:

2011-09-26T01:37:00.000-07:00

Phonautograph:

Invented in 1857, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph, the first device to record sound. it used a membrane (which vibrated in response to sound.) attached to a pen, which traced a line roughly corresponding to the sounds waveform onto a roll of paper. although able to record sound, this machine was unable to immediately play back the recording. however in one experiment it was recorded onto a metal plate which was then able to be played back.

Issues with this technology:

Photography, was still in its infancy, improvements to this inventions were required in order to make it as a sound recording and reproduction medium.

Dynamic/Condensor microphones:

2011-09-25T00:14:00.000-07:00

Dynamic microphones:

The dynamic microphone, extremely versatile and great for general purpose use. They feature a very simple design that works by a single coil that is attached to the diaphragm, when sound waves hit the diaphragm it moves the coil forward and backwards past the magnet, it creates a current in the coil which is channelled from the microphone along wires.

(As shown above.)

Common uses for the dynamic microphone/ examples:

Almost every microphone, in live sound is a dynamic mic and in the studio instrument mics are usually dynamic mics. (for example the sm57 or the AKG d112.) These microphones are usually used on the such instruments as the kick drum/ snare drum. But for a high hat a condenser mic is usually used.

A Dynamic microphone is often preferred in a live setting because they are robust and do not require external power. Mics such as the sm58 are the most common mic used for vocals in a live setting however their poor high frequency response makes them lacking in the studio. (this is why in the studio you would usually find a condenser as they have a much wider frequency response.)

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Condenser Microphones:

A condensor requires an external power such as a battery or phantom power from a mixing console. The audio signal is stronger than the signal of that from a dynamic. Condensers tend to be more sensitive and more responsive than dynamic mics, however they are not ideal for high volume work as their sensitivity makes them prone to distort and clip.

How condensers work:

A capacitor has two plates with a voltage between. in the condenser mic, one of these plates is made of very light material and act as the diaphragm. the diaphragm vibrates when struck by sound waves, changing the distance between the two plates and therefore changing the capacitance. specifically, when the plates are closer together, capacitance increases and a charge current occurs. when the plates are further apart the capacitance decreases and a discharge current occurs.

A voltage is required across the capacitor for this to work. This voltage is supplied either by a battery in the mic or by external phantom power.

Common uses:

Condenser mics are commonly used in the studio environment, for vocals and high frequencies. condenser mics are useful in a studio environment because they are very sensitive and in a studio you are not aiming for volume, but to get the best sound possible.

Audio timeline!

2011-09-14T23:21:00.000-07:00

History of the microphone!

1878- David Edward Hughes: First invented the carbon microphone. (this microphone was developed over the years up until the 1920's)

Carbon is a resistor, meaning it conducts electricity, but not very well. A current runs from one plate through the carbon to the other plate. The carbon molecules normally resist it somewhat, lowering the power flow. When a sound wave pushes down on the top plate, however, it squeezes the carbon molecules more tightly between the two plates. This increases their conductivity, creating more electric current. As the plate moves up and down with the sound wave, the current increases and decreases, creating an electric wave in the shape of the sound wave.

1920's-1942. with the invention of radio, new broadcasting microphones were invented. Drs. Walter H Schottky and Erwin Gerlach co invented ribbon loudspeaker technology, while Dr Harry F Olson began development of ribbon microphones. these mic's set a new standard in frequency response. (a type of dynamic mic.)

1964- James West and Gerhard Sessler create the electroacoustic transducer, an electret microphone. (a type of condenser.) the electret mic offers greater reliability, higher precision and lower cost.

1970's- Dynamic and Condenser microphones were developed and have have formed into what we use today.

Remix culture: 2

2011-09-12T02:18:00.000-07:00

Dave Smith: The creator of MIDI.

Dave smith is a Audio engineer and guitarist, who's groundbreaking technology led to the creation of the 'prophet 5' and is commonly referred to as the father of MIDI.

In 1981 Smith started developing the idea of MIDI. He presented a paper outlining the idea of a Universal Synthesiser Interface (USI) to the Audio Engineering Society in 1981 after meetings with Tom Oberheim and Roland's Ikutaro Kakehashi. The plan was to create a standard communications protocol between electronic instruments and equipment from different manufacturers around the world. The result was MIDI. MIDI was first publicly demonstrated at the Winter NAMM Show in 1983, when a Sequential Circuits Prophet-600 was successfully connected to a Roland Jupiter-6. In 1987 he was named a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) for his continuing work in the area of music synthesis.

After Sequential, Smith was President of DSD, Inc, a Research and Development Division of Yamaha, where he worked on physical modeling synthesis and software synthesiser concepts. In May 1989 he started the Korg R&D group in California, which went on to produce the innovative and commercially successful Wavestation synthesizer and other technology.

Needless to say anyone that remixes music or uses sampling in society today has used/ uses or at the very least used MIDI, it is a format that revolutionised electronic music.

( if you wish to read about MIDI, i posted earlier about it heres a link: http://3spada.blogspot.com/2011/08/midi-platform-that-survived.html and http://3spada.blogspot.com/2011/08/moar-midi-p.html )

Remix culture:

2011-09-12T01:53:00.000-07:00

With the recent trend in music of remixing a song to suit it to your desired audience, generally speaking this is seen in electronic music where vocal samples and sections of music are used and mixed together to create a new piece of music. Now as musicians that have grown up with this so called remix culture we don't really look into its origins and the people that really kicked off this trend.

'King Tubby' (January 28, 1941 – February 6, 1989)

A Jamaican born, electronics/ sound engineer, primarily known for his work in Dub music, His innovative studio work, saw him elevate the role of the mixing engineer, he would prove to be influential across many genres of popular music. He is often cited as the inventor of the concept of the remix, and so may be seen as a direct antecedent of much dance and electronic music production.

Tubby began as an owner of an electronics store where he built amplifiers for large local sound systems, and from this formed his own sound systems. Tubby began working as a disc cutter for producer Duke Reid in 1968. Reid, one of the major figures in early Jamaican music, he ran Treasure Isle studios. He was invited to produce instrumental versions of songs for MCs. Tubby initially worked to remove the vocal tracks with the sliders on Reid's mixing desk, but soon discovered that the various instrumental tracks could be accentuated, reworked and emphasised through the settings on the mixer and primitive early effects units. eventually Tubby began creating new pieces of music by shifting emphasis on certain instruments dropping tracks in and out and adding various effects.

His production work in Dub music is what makes Tubby one of the kings on remix, his knowledge of electronics allowed him to create his own studio with his own equipment where he built effects into his mixer allowing him to literally play it and drop samples in and out. Tubby was able to use his custom-built studio to take this technique into new areas, often transforming a hit song to the point where it was almost unrecognizable from its original.

King Tubby was shot and killed on February 6, 1989 by an unknown group of people outside his home in Duhaney Park, Kingston upon returning from a session at his Waterhouse studio. It is thought that the murder was probably an attempt at robbery.

For his work in Dub music and studio's and his innovative thinking King Tubby is worthy of praise and recognition and anyone producing music today should definitely go back to the roots of remixing and listen to Dub music and read up on King Tubby.

VIDEO POST .... MY ROOM (not complete.)

2011-09-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

Hey guys sorry i've been pre- occupied getting my shit together doing assignments and what not so heres my first video blog post :P!!

Also sorry about the flipped video macs cameras seem to reverse everything ??? lol wut i know right.

Web 2.0 social networking: Sound cloud.

2011-08-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

Ahoy and welcome to another enthralling post!

So ... Im sure we have all heard of sound cloud 'the music sharing site for any musician!'

The site offers a chance for musicians of any level with a varying quality tracks, to upload their music follow and be followed by musicians. The artist can create a free profile where they can upload 120minutes of music, simple waveform widget to share via Facebook and your other favourite social networking sites.

Sound cloud offers more than just a chance for upcoming artists and producers, it also it a site for venues, managers and promoters where people can listen to the tracks that others represent and can assess the quality of the business managing the bands.

Features: Sound Cloud features a number of ways to connect with your friends and fellow musicians via many social networking/ blog sites. It also allows the artist to upload their tracks from their phones with over 100 apps to chose from.

Key players in MIDI.

2011-08-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Native instruments:

One of, if not the biggest contributor to electronic music software/ hardware. The company began in 1995 in a small home office in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Here is where the vision of a new kind of musical instrument was born and turned into reality. Enter Stephan Schmitt, a hardware engineer by trade who developed mixing desks at the time. An active live musician and synthesiser player, Stephan Schmitt had reached the point where he felt profoundly limited by the instruments that were available to him. Hardware synthesizers seemed not only overly bulky and expensive but also very much limited in terms of sonic potential and musical expressiveness.

In his search for a solution, Stephan Schmitt realized that standard personal computers could be used as powerful musical instruments. The ever-growing computational power brought real-time software synthesis into the realm of possibility, and Stephan Schmitt envisioned a computer-based sound-generation platform that could leave existing limitations far behind. Together with programmer Volker Hinz, he developed the concept of the first modular software synthesizer, which was eventually called GENERATOR. A radically innovative approach, GENERATOR allowed for the construction of virtually any kind of sound generation and sound-processing device from a set of basic building blocks, and offered a sonic flexibility that was literally unheard of.

They offer a massive range of products: (excuse the pun as one of their plugin synths is named massive.) Software such as traktor/ absynth/ massive and hardware such as Mashine (a midi controller.)

However you see it native instruments have made some major advancements and created some of the best quality products on the market today.

(stay tuned for reviews of these products in new posts.)

for now 3spada out!

MOAR MIDI... :P

2011-08-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

Midi.... well a midi cable is designed to transport digital bytes (128). with this 0 is counted a number so the volume can be expressed as 0-127.

this means that the maximum amount of data that can flow through at once is 128 bytes. Of course now most midi controllers are connected via usb 'which allows a lot more traffic' but midi still only allows 128, it has been this way from the very beginning. (hence the earlier reference about midi surviving the ages.)

Midi... The platform that survived!

2011-08-14T20:37:00.000-07:00

Midi: Musical instrument digital interface.

Midi is the standard electronic language 'spoken' between electronic instruments and the computerized devices which control them during performances. Developed in the early 1980s, MIDI technology allows a keyboardist to kick off a drum synthesizer with one key or a computer to store a sequence of composed notes as a MIDIfile, for example. The keyboard, drum synthesizer and computer all recognize the same set of binary code instructions.

Brief history:

Before midi in the early 1970's electronic musical devices were becoming increasingly common and affordable although there was no compatibility between manufacturers.

In 1981, Dave smith(an audio engineer) proposed digital standard for musical instruments at the Audio Engineering Society show in New York. By the time of the January, 1983 Winter NAMM Show, Smith was able to demonstrate a MIDI connection between his Prophet 600 (a later version of the groundbreaking Prophet 5 analog synthesizer) and a Roland JP-6. The MIDI Specification 1.0 was published in August 1983.

MIDI brought an unprecedented state of compatibility which revolutionized the market by ridding musicians of the need for excessive hardware. In the early 1980s, MIDI was a major factor in bringing an end to the "wall of synthesizers" phenomenon in progressive rock band concerts, when keyboard performers were often hidden behind huge banks of analog synthesizers and electric pianos. Following the advent of MIDI, many synthesizers were released in rack-mount versions, which meant that keyboardists could control many different instruments (e.g., synthesizers) from a single keyboard.

Web 2.0 ........ next edition! .... BELIEVE IT!

2011-08-11T06:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome!

So not as many commented as hoped ... never mind i shall and continue any way.

Well to beging the web 2.0 really opened up many gateways 'some good, some bad' depending on who's side of the music industry you sympathise with. Moving on the web 2.0 really made its big leaps with sites like google and myspace, where a user could not only read information but interact with the site (not so much google, although it interacts with you as in tailors a search criteria on previous things you have searched and believes will suit you.) Social mediums such as myspace and facebook allow us to connect with a large number of people where we can talk about our selves and share our interests with anyone in the world that has an account.

These sites in relation to musicians have been extremely useful in many ways. The normal way for a musician to be heard just over a decade ago was to play regular gigs, hire managers and publicists etc. on the off chance they would be heard by a record label and get picked up and make it big. This is all a way of the past almost every band i know has an online presence of sorts to up load music, videos, information or even just an update of what is happening in their lives.

if i may contradict myself here just a wee bit, i said that the 'record label' option is a way of the past which in essence is incorrect to say but what i mean is it has taken a step back to these alternative options for an artist to establish themselves. having said this these record labels are taking advantage of the social media as well, they are browsing through these sites listening to tracks determining who the next star could be... as i believe the famed Justin Beiber was discovered via Youtube.

Two little video's to help any musicians out!

Internet evolution ..... GO! Web 2.0

2011-08-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

First of all excuse the pokemon pun, :P

But seriously, How many of us know of us actually know what the term 'Web 2.0' means?.... Well it is to my understanding that this term explains the change of the internet, from when websites were once just a page filled with information for us to read 'much like a Word document,' and are now a immeasurable network of connections which allow us to interact with the internet and the pages it contains.

Before i post any more of my thoughts i would be really interested to see others views on the effects of the Web 2.0 on the music industry.

also here is a link to a cool little power point i found online about this topic: http://www.slideshare.net/djwesty/web-20-effecting-the-music-industry

History of the guitar: Video

2011-08-06T21:06:00.001-07:00

This a just a short video i found on the history of guitars it does not give loads of detail although it is an interesting video, i do recommend watching it. (leave a comment on what you think)

History of the guitar:

2011-08-06T20:57:00.000-07:00

H3llo all,

Welcome i intend to be moving in some sort of direction with this blog as of now.

I will be flowing through a series of time and and historical events that have led the technology in music to where it is today.

First of all Guitars: where did they come from?

Guitar-like instruments have existed since ancient times, but the first written mention of the guitar is from the 14th century. In its earliest form it had three double courses (pairs) of strings plus a single string (the highest). The guitar probably originated in Spain, where by the 16th century it was the counterpart among the middle and lower classes of the aristocracy’s vihuela, an instrument of similar shape and ancestry with six double courses.

In the mid-18th century the guitar attained its modern form, when the double courses were made single and a sixth string was added above the lower five. Guitar makers in the 19th century broadened the body, increased the curve of the waist, thinned the belly, and changed the internal bracing. The old wooden tuning pegs were replaced by a modern machine head.

Another popular theory is that the guitar could have been invented by the classical-era Greeks. This is due to confusion, however, mainly with the similarity of its name with the Kithara. The Kithara was in fact a type of harp or lyre, which bears little resemblance with the guitar other than in name.

The guitar as we know today appears to be an ancestor of the lute. The lute had four strings which would be plucked, not strummed as with a guitar. The body was oval in shape and had a rounded back. The downside of this construction was that the lute was not a very loud instrument, meaning it could not be played along side other instruments. Although missing many of the elements of today’s guitar, it is an important step in the guitars evolution.

Welcome!

2011-08-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

Hello all i new to the whole blogging craze but ill do my best!

I would first like to offer a link to a band i am in that has a few recordings: ColourBlind

In this blog i will be mainly focussed on the technology side of music where i will explore the wonderful world and its many advancements over the past years!