Recording “live” with Spidermeow

January 31, 2009 @ 10:13 pm

As you can see on Focal’s website, IR101 features photos and interviews with some pretty great musicians and industry people. One of them is my friend and go-to engineer, Ron Guensche, whose New Vintage project studio is based here in the Bay Area. Ron’s recorded drums and vocals on a number of recordings I’ve worked on; he provided invaluable feedback on the IR101 manuscript, and he’s one of the most knowledgeable recordists and engineers I’ve ever met. He also plays a mean bass, as you’ll hear on some of my new recordings when I get them out around March ’09–just in time for the book’s release.

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Practice makes perfect

December 30, 2008 @ 12:10 am

Right now I’m reading Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, about “Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t.”

I’m only about 1/3 through, but so far, Gladwell’s put forth two big findings that validate how I’ve always felt about what it takes to succeed:*

– The first assertion the book makes is that being proficient at just about anything requires about 10,000 hours or 10 years

– The second is that there is a “threshold” for being good enough for most endeavors, i.e. there’s a ceiling for height required for being a pro basketball and IQ for winning a Nobel Prize

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Backing up your work

December 28, 2008 @ 4:51 pm

No one wants to lose their work because of hard drive failure or losing files, especially creative work like their audio tracks. The inspiration and time are gone.

That said, having a so-called backup strategy is critical, along with the right hard drives and software to do it.

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Maxing out your RAM

December 28, 2008 @ 4:30 pm

If you’re doing audio production—and promoting your band with your own web and graphic design, and maybe doing video production, too—you’ll obviously want to have the best processing speed and most RAM you can afford.

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Bass Tuner 5.2.1 for Mac OS X

December 28, 2008 @ 4:18 pm

You’re plugged in direct, ready to record a bass part. Instead of getting out the old-school bass tuner, stay plugged in to your audio interface and pull this little gem up on your Mac. You know what I love most about this tuner? It’s completely intuitive and only $9.

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Burning CDs and DVDs over multiple discs

December 25, 2008 @ 3:46 am

Disco for Mac

Let’s say you want to burn over 4.7 GBs of files (typical DVD-R maximum storage.) This is called disc spanning. Disco lets you burn data (music, audio files, photos… anything) across multiple CDs and DVDs (disc spanning). The interface and graphics are fun and attractive, too. I’ve left Toast for Disco. What I like best about it is that it’s easy to use and only $19.95—a very fair price for very good software.