If you count the green 1970s Carlsbro thing that’s presently in storage in a city 100 miles away, I’m now up to eight footpedal delay units. Before the Carlsbro there was a Watkins Copicat. I love my echoes...
Recently, it seemed the right time to sort all those boxes out – to decide what each was capable of and best at, and decide how to use them. It wasn’t long before it all got rather interesting.
Just a few days after the events in Brussels and in the wake of the killings at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, an incident at a London venue went largely unreported.
A recent gig at London’s Roundhouse Theatre was interrupted by what was later to be reported as a ‘false fire alarm’. A first-hand report of the crowd management offers an insight into the practical considerations now surrounding security at entertainment venues.
The world of bootlegging music has come a long way since I bought my first illegal concert cassette from a Walsall market stall. Its lousy artwork, poor recording and incorrect song titles brought their own excitement to my record collection.
Back then, a bootleg of studio outtakes offered an insight into an artist or band that was beyond the control of a major record label, while a live recording was an open ticket to a unique live performance.
Sitting down to write this shortly after the deaths of Lemmy and David Bowie, I’m presented with yet more sad news. I can add Mott the Hoople drummer Buffin Griffin and Eagles front man Glenn Frey to the count of lost talent.
Tony Visconti has posted on Twitter: To the assholes who are saying they're dropping like flies, you nitwits, they are Dying Like Heroes! January seems like a very, very bad month for heroes.
Like a finely crafted sequel, there was a perfect counterpoint between Ray Beckett’s passion for capturing film sound ‘on set’ at last year’s Sound of Story conference and Glenn Freemantle’s jubilance over having to build the soundtrack to Everest almost from scratch. But let’s begin at the beginning.
It’s Brighton, and the Lighthouse arts and culture agency is hosting its second Sound of Story to a full house…
With Apple promising ‘the future of television’ with the latest-generation Apple TV, the race is on for music streaming services to get onboard. Being Apple, this isn’t easy, but Mixcloud has secured an early win for its 13m monthly listeners.
Ahead of SoundCloud, Deezer and Spotify, Mixcloud looks set to help shape broadcast’s latest reinvention along with its streamed delivery, multi-device integration and new control models.
For some of us who grew up with the rigours of analogue tape multitracking, the term ‘infinite tracks’ has never really lost its shock value.
From a time when tracks were among studio recording’s most valuable resources – and played a quantifiable part in determining the recording process both practically and musically – they’ve become a cheap digital commodity. We think we want more of them.. but we may be a whole lot better off with far fewer.
Commenting on the former BBC Top Gear team reuniting for Amazon’s internet TV enterprise, presenter Richard Hammond enthused over making a programme ‘about a rapidly-changing industry from within another rapidly-changing industry’.
An astute observation, as both broadcast and the motor industry are in major periods of flux. Whether he is specifically aware of the impact of AES67 on broadcast, however, is unlikely.
To players of modest ability, entering a 1970s Birmingham music shop could be like entering the Arctic Circle – an inhospitable place where staff humiliated customers as therapy for their own musical frustrations.
The 1980s brought the ‘non-musician’, insistent on making tunes with machines and samples. Old-school players responded with renewed resentment, but it warmed the climate in the music shop. By comparison, today it’s almost tropical…
Two days ago, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music formally agreed to submit music videos to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) before posting them on YouTube and Vevo.
While presently only applicable to videos that are produced in the UK, the move sends a strong signal regarding the content of some of our music and the fears that surround the internet.
Coming at sound from very different directions, two UK art galleries recently put audio at the forefront of an installation – each making use of contrasting interpretations of sound zoning.
While Marcus Coates’ Dawn Chorus framed human beings in the context of birds singing in their natural habitat, Audint’s Delusions of the Living Dead demarked areas of the Tate Britain using what they term ‘unsound’.
While cylinders for Edison’s phonograph were the world’s first consumer music format in the late 1880s, the first music chart preceded them by around 50 years. Having originally represented sheet music sales, the music charts have tracked delivery formats through vinyl, cassette and CD to digital downloads.
Now, with music sales in a downward spiral, the UK’s first weekly vinyl chart has been launched.
Under siege from home recording equipment on one front and new music distribution models on another, as well as being eclipsed by the world of gaming, the wider music business has been forced into increasingly desperate attempts to re-evaluate and reinvent itself.
The latest of these is to turn the recording of music itself into an arts project. Can we make the recording studio a show?
Already resigned to its role of ‘poor relation’ to video and film, sound has recently seen new terminology further challenge its dignity. Locked film reels are increasingly being replaced with ones that are ‘soft locked’ or ‘parked’, giving the sound team a moving target.
A recent conference on sound for picture saw a series of high-profile speakers turning this to their advantage, among other insights, however…
Last Monday’s Daily Telegraph carried a short comment by Jonathan Liew on the current Formula One season – specifically, the debate surrounding the sound of the cars’ new engines. In a piece largely obscured by endless strings of similes, he rather missed the point.
He recognises that the broadcast sound is ‘as artificial as it is real’ but is clearly unaware of the reason why loud engines get our adrenaline flowing.
I have a poor memory. I have envied people whose minds enable them to retain, correlate and build upon their memories in ways I cannot. No surprise that I once found myself wondering what it would mean to be able to remember everything. And no small irony that I forgot about it.
I was reminded by a TV documentary that gave such a condition a name, and found myself on a ‘memorable’ journey…