Indablog

Paper Cha$erz Volume 1

Indaba Music — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0500

DOWNLOAD THE MIXTAPE HERE!!

With a titanic effort spanning three continents, and with participants from Stockholm to Cape Town, the Paper Cha$erz family is ready to release their first mixtape, created completely on Indaba Music. If descriptions were comprised of one word, the word for this mixtape would be diversity. Not only is the music encompassed in this album diverse, but, the collaborators and the subject matter is diverse. Spearheaded by the underground Philadelphia producer St. Paul and Canadian MC Kava-1, the mixtape has finally come to fruition after months of planning and recording. One of the standout, and rather surprising, qualities of the mixtape is the subject matter. Though the mixtape is titled Paper Cha$erz (Vol. 1), many of the songs focus on social issues, either personal or in story form, which circumvent the need to tout all the usual mainstream showings of bling, rims, iced grillz, and paper. Let's face it, one of the things that made Illmatic such a dominant hip-hop force was, while Nas' wordsmithing was impeccable, its continued, track after track, social commentary and imagery; and it is refreshing to see that this mixtape often follows in the Illmatic tradition. Of course, that's not to say that the whole mixtape is socially conscious or personal. Tracks like "My Grind On", "Paperchasin Anthem", and "FreshChick" show the more commercial side of the tape.

There are several standout tracks on the mixtape. The Paper Cha$erz family hits hard from the first track on the mixtape. "It Don't Matter" featuring MCs Sunny Tuff and Gangalee, is a bold condemnation of the commercial music industry, and glorifies the underground scene. The beat is catchy and well produced, which adds to the overall vibe of the track. Its hook claims, "You could be the best lyricist and don't prosper/ or you can be the worst MC and make it to the top/ It don't matter, it don't matter", and later, Gangalee notes, "...just 'cause you're dope on the block/ don't mean the A&R's gonna feel the same." With the emergence of "MCs" like Soulja Boy and Gucci Mane, it's easy to see where this commentary is coming from. Anyone who has been true to the hip-hop tradition from the first cypher knows that unfortunately, sometimes second rate rapping is more marketable.

Another standout track is "Just 17". MC Kava-1, one of the mixtape's organizers, paints a great picture of a down-on-his-luck 17 year old, which weaves together a story of loss, maturity, coming of age, and the trappings of poverty into some pretty clever rapping. It's refreshing to hear more image and story driven rapping, especially a story that continues from the beginning of the song and follows through to the end. Kava-1's flow is dead on, and it's easy to hear some of his more old school and underground influences. There's also a lot of texture to notice in the beat: subtle vinyl noise, effective chops, and some nicely chosen samples.

In a total 360, the track "My Grind On", is a banging, hard hitting, dirty south beat. MC ALLINGATOR focuses on more commercial ready material: the hustle and the need to be on your grind. This is more of a tribute to the Paper Cha$er name than the other tracks and is more club ready than the other tracks. In terms of subject matter, ALLINGATOR effectively provides one of the nicely placed and refreshing breaks from the heavier fare of the Paper Cha$erz mixtape.
One of those heavier tracks is "Gotta Be More" by MC Jah I Witness. Jah chooses to create three portraits with his words. The first is a boy looking for a way out of the ghetto, either through education or through something else. The second scene is a woman whose man is in prison, and is looking for something to fill the void. Lastly, and perhaps the hardest hitting, is the portrait of the crack fiend who has been shunned by the world, falling deeper and deeper into a hole; one with "quick highs and long lows". All of these images are codified by a fitting chorus, a message that there's "Gotta Be More" than their status quo. Jah's more melodic, Drake like approach to his flow, is very appropriate and does the subject matter justice.

St. Paul and Kava-1 have managed to pull together a good crew of artists, with a promise to release more in the future. "This is just the beginning!", says St. Paul. There's already another indaba session up for volume 2.

Them Twisted Cultures

Indaba Music — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:53:00 -0500

November 17 sees the debut release by Them Crooked Vultures,
the new rock supergroup project from Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age, Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters (and, of course,
Nirvana previously), and
Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Lead single
"New Fang" is a Queens-style mud pit (meant to refer to Homme's other
band there, not the NYC borough, although that too, I suppose) which I
must confess just makes me think of that riff from Johnny Winter and
Rick Derringer's hilarious "Rock and Roll
Hoochie Koo."

Funny thing about the word "supergroup," though -- it seems to
imply a certain longevity, mostly because it feels a little silly to
still use the term decades hence if the band hasn't really gone
anywhere (consider The Firm,
or, uh, The
Firm). Here, then, are some other current projects to which you
can apply the term for at least the next couple months without feeling
like an idiot.

Blak Roc

God-awful name here, but this would be former Roc-A-Fella mogul
Dame Dash squishing his new favorite rock duo The Black Keys up against
rappers including Ludacris, Wu-Tang's RZA, and most amusingly, Jim Jones of Dipset.

Monsters Of Folk

Permission to be a couch potato

Indaba Music — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:32:00 -0500

Earlier this year, Rolling Stone music biz correspondent Steve Knopper released Appetite For Self-Destruction, a birds-eye view book documenting the implosion of the record industry since its high point in the late 90's. That story is something I've been following for years myself, bit by bit and blog by blog -- kind of hard to miss if you're a musician, right?

I'll nix the urge to get into a sermon on the same here -- Knopper gives it a full 320 pages, so you can go read his take if you're in the mood -- and instead just point out the latest development: has book has been optioned by HBO for a new series helmed by the producers behind The Wire, the universally beloved drama about the gritty underbelly of Baltimore which wrapped up in 2008.

Now, it's hard to imagine this project seeing the light of day unless it's recast as fiction -- lawsuits from the major players would abound, I'd think, if they were to see their stories told out of their control on national television. I've had a very hard time getting into Mad Men despite its general and current hipness, in large part because it focuses on the advertising agencies of the 60's, a world that's totally foreign to me. But the prospect of watching banal party scenes featuring Tommy Mottola and Suge Knight is oddly intriguing, so I think at the very least this has the potential to engage the musicians who grew up when there was still enough of a record industry to write about, and even -- depending on how far they stray from Knopper's vision -- teach us a few things along the way.

In the meantime, I recommend Glee.

Musical Stairs

Indaba Music — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:58:00 -0500

by Seth

So, there you are…standing on the bottom floor of a building
with two options: should I take the stairs or an elevator? Most people (including me) would probably
wait and take the elevator, even though taking a quick walk up the stairs would
be great way to get some quick exercise. Culturally, the stairs just aren’t all that appealing anymore – we’ve
decided that the automatic, effortless option is the way to go. It’s time to change the way society
views activities; there has to be a way to get society more active in an
appealing way! By using something
called “task unification”, you can
assign a new fun activity to an ordinary task.

Overnight, a team of workers in Stockholm, Sweden
transformed an ordinary subway staircase into a giant functioning piano
keyboard! Within a short time, commuters in Stockholm began to take the musical
stairs over the escalator. Why is this? Choice Architecture is a way in which
decisions are influenced based on how the choices are presented, by presenting
the stairs in a fun exciting way people decided to walk rather then lazily ride. It is really very simple to decide to
take the easy way out, so we need to condition our minds into associating fun
with a task we don’t necessary enjoy. But is a giant piano the only way to get
people more active or are there other ways? How about a set of stairs that
lights up as you walk, or steps that give your motivational words as you climb?
This mode of thinking needs to be implemented to multiple facets of life and fast. But the question today still remains, would
you choose to take the stairs over the ease of and escalator? I’d prefer making music!

The Importance of Diversity: A Jazz Pianist's Non-Pianistic Influences

Indaba Music — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0500

by Rick

It is easy for a jazz pianist to become bottled up in a piano-centric world, completely oblivious to the other instruments that exist. This is normal. Pianists tend to see their instrument as the end all be all of instruments; the top of the mound, the king of the hill, the ace in the deck. Throughout history, keyboard instruments have been the ones used to develop theory, develop voice leading, and write symphonies! Solo piano is one of the oldest "complete" genres of jazz, dating back to the inception in New Orleans. In fact, some, like myself, would argue that the language of jazz developed in great part due to the efforts of pianists James P. Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton, Willie "the Lion" Smith, Teddy Wilson, Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, and Nat Cole (surely, the list goes on). As a budding young pianist, I had a piano-centric view of the universe; ignorant and unable to acknowledge anyone who wasn't a descendant of Oscar Peterson, my personal hero. I would listen to solo piano, piano duos, and, of course, piano trios. Any combo larger than three people was too large for me. Yes, the piano is great, and, yes, the piano has played a very significant role in sculpting the form of modern music, but let us remember hubris is the deadly Greek flaw.

Each instrument has a unique sound and mechanism. The combination of these two things, not surprisingly, guide the player in a certain natural direction. For example, jazz professors (and seasoned jazz veterans in general) make a huge ruckus about needing to leave space in a solo. A piano player, who does not need to breathe to play his instrument, can begin to play gratuitous lines, while a horn player will have to leave natural space to breathe (barring circular breathing!). Thus, looking outside the scope of your own instrument is important. Take J. J. Johnson for example. As an up and coming trombonist in the world of bebop, he was faced with a unique dilemma. Bebop was a developing language all about flash and trying to out play the other player, and the trombone was an awkward instrument to play fast and complicated bebop lines on. Still, wanting to sound like Charlie Parker, who was playing an instrument made for fast playing, he took that inspiration and transformed the instrument completely.

I soon realized this importance, and after escaping from the piano bubble I built for myself, came to find inspiration in many different instrumentalists and a few singers. One instrument I am very influenced by is the guitar. While the guitar is a chordal instrument like the piano, it is much less limited, in an expressive sense. You can bend, slide, ghost notes, and use vibrato in ways impossible on the piano. I'm always disappointed when I try to use vibrato on the piano and it doesn't come out, but I hope that the way I approach it does something to my overall sound. One guitarist I listen to for this expressive way of playing is Kurt Rosenwinkel, who comes up with the most interesting clusters and lines. He uses the guitar more as an extension of his voice, and on some recordings you can hear him singing along quite loudly (on his recording of "If I Should Lose You", he even sings the words at one point in the background). Another favorite is Allan Holdsworth, whose technique is simply impeccable, but he does not sacrifice musicality for gratuity (as I write this I'm listening to "Non Brewed Condiment", which is a difficult but gorgeous melody). I also listen to lots of trumpet players. Of course, I include Miles on the list. He's one of the few cats who can take one note played in quarter notes and use it to define the tone of his solo, the groove, and the time (for a classic example, listen to the first three notes of his solo on "Freddie Freeloader"). I'm always trying to emulate the way he plays the blues with that simplicity and dark tone. Then there's Clifford Brown, the trumpet player's Art Tatum. Out of all the great qualities possessed by Clifford, the one I find most inspiration in is his clarity. Clifford's first big gig, like so many of the great trumpet players, was with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and playing with such a rhythmic powerhouse, along with innate talent, surely had something to do with his rhythmic prowess. I'll close out this list with someone who is often taken for granted by the general public, Frank Sinatra. In my opinion, if you want to learn how to swing and lay back, listen to Sinatra religiously. He has recorded some of the most in the pocket melodies in the history of the language.

To be sure, there are many, many more to name, but, I would love to hear back from any of you guys out there in Indaba land with musical influences you take from outside your instrument or comfort zone- please feel free to comment below.

Amazing overdub performance.

Indaba Music — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:43:00 -0400

by Vijith

I'm a big fan of jazz pianist Chick Corea and have even
occasionally ventured as far as trying to play some of his tunes
myself, usually with fairly embarrassing results, so I'm a little
stunned by this performance by Fabio Valdemarin. The
song, "Got A Match?", might be the most excessive track on the debut
record by the Elektric Band fusion quartet Corea introduced in 1986,
filled every step of the way with blazing runs from instrument leaders
like bassist John
Patitucci and drummer Dave
Weckl. That Valdemarin can nail a remarkable rendition of such a
difficult song on four different instruments is at once a
vote of confidence in the overdubbed one-man band projects made
possible by home studios and also a reminder that I really oughta turn
off this bloody computer and go practice.

Video Wednesday

Indaba Music — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:00:00 -0400

Look, I'm not going to lie. I went to the gym the other day, picked up something way too heavy for me and ripped all the muscles in my hand. Every word, every letter, I type here causes a mini-seizure in my fingers. I had something planned just for this occasion, though. I knew someday that I would screw up my hands so I prepared a pose just in case that happened. And now that it has enjoy the blissfully wordless, "My Favorite Mash-Ups."

I adore mash-ups. They're fun to make, they're fun to listen to and, bonus, they make you think of each song used in a whole new way. Any music fan can see their appeal so I won't bother analyzing them. Instead, enjoy my three favorites and, please, if you have a few of your own, post them in the comments.

3. A Stroke of Genie-u

2. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals (10)

1. And the best I've heard in a long time...2008

SHOW YOUR CLICK TRACK WHO'S BOSS

Indaba Music — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:03:00 -0400

by Vijith

I'm having to start from scratch with a lot of workflow issues
after jumping ship from Digital Performer to Logic, and during a
project I worked on last week, I was forced to re-learn an old trick
that's definitely worth passing along here.

In part because I use a lot of MIDI, I generally try to adhere to a
click track unless there's an artistic reason to drift -- rubato, and
even rushing, have their uses, but I've always felt strongly that
DAW-based composition gets much easier when you can visually see and
edit the relationships between beats, bars, and whatever musical
content you've input, and -- not insignificant, this part -- snap your
musical phrases around in musically useful increments. Trying to
slide a keyboard riff back by one bar comes much more naturally than
trying to move it back by 191,387 samples, and having to calculate the
latter every time you want to move something around is, in my opinion,
one of the quickest ways to kill a productivity buzz.

Where I depart from a lot of people, I think, is that I think this
same reasoning also extends from matters of composition and
arrangement and into production. Delays and modulation effects, in
particular, can be incredibly effective when anchored to the tempo of
the piece, and even compressors can be made to pump in and out in
musically useful ways (though you'll rarely see any sort of
beat-oriented controls on those plugins). This means that I can
quickly turn quite surly when I have to calculate millisecond values
in order to get a basic quarter-note delay or swirl a flanger around
symmetrically on every bar -- again, it always feels like I'm
screeching to a standstill to address some stupid procedural hangup
(not unlike doing excessive paperwork, actually).

Most people, particularly when focused exclusively on mixing, don't
seem to worry about this -- in fact, I'd wager that an overwhelming
majority of the Pro Tools session documents in the world have the
metronome set to the default 120 BPM no matter what they actually
contain. I've heard arguments that unpredictable tempo asymmetries
can make the effects more interesting, and also that locking things in
too tightly makes it easier to forget that such details are usually
just meant to be frosting. Both are valid points, but I'm not
convinced, because if you want the asymmetry, you can always flip your
plugin back into millisecond mode. Properly placed beat and bar
reference points give you a very powerful new way of addressing your
time-oriented production effects, but there's nothing forcing you to
use it.

The obvious problem here: playing to a metronome is hard! And even
assuming that I've already won you over here, if any of the material
is tracked without you around to play resident click stickler, chances
are this line of reasoning will be dispensed with, and the project
tempo will be set to that dreaded 120.00 when you see it next.

There's a really elegant solution to this with most major DAW
platforms, though. No, not yelling at your drummer, although there's
often a reason for that too, in which case, have at it, Cowboy.

Rather, you can retroactively move the beat and bar lines of the
metronome's "grid" around to match up the musical content in the audio
recordings. Thus, it's not actually a grid at all in the end, instead
pulsing subtly over the course of the session to match up with the
musician's natural pacing. Or even wildly, for that matter -- who
cares? I just want to beat-sync my plugins, remember, so if the
wildly fluctuating tempos (rubato, incompetent, whatever) are
considered acceptable at this point, my cognitive flow has been
restored and we can move on.

This is not beat slicing or quantization or Live Warping or time
stretching or any number of other terms that might have just jumped to
mind. Most of those processes are ways of conforming deviating
performances to a rigid tempo grid. Here, we're conforming the
grid to the performance, and through it all, the audio is
absolutely untouched (for better or worse).

In order to set up your sequence for this, you'll have to do a bit
of prep (which I must sheepishly admit might feel a bit like doing
paperwork) but for me the payoff comes in never having to stop making
music to switch to a calculator.

Platform-specific:
Logic
Digital
Performer
Pro
Tools
Cubase

Jazz Bums

Indaba Music — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:38:00 -0400

This posting is taken from Greg Osby's Artist in Residence program on Indaba.

Somewhere
along the way, I haven't determined exactly when, it became acceptable
for some musicians to think showing up for live (Jazz) performances
wearing the same clothes that they wear anywhere else is the thing to
do. These days it isn't that uncommon that a patron of the music, with
hard-earned cash in hand, will venture out for an evening with hopes of
enjoying some high art but instead will be offered a gig where some of
the cats who perform will actually show up and get on stage with
prominent holes and stains in/on their jeans, wrinkled and tattered
t-shirts, dirty sneakers, visible underwear, greasy, unwashed hair (or
bodies), dirty fingernails, or worse.... What the hell happened? When
did it become acceptable for performers to look like they don't give a
s--t? A quick look at any vintage photograph featuring the champions of
the music reveals how much detail went into how they looked as well as
how they sounded. Neither was any accident. (For that matter, look at
the early photos of the Beatles....SUITS.) So why must the prestigious
and noble face of the music be tarnished now with this mass nose
thumbing at one of the more important aspects of performance etiquette?
Irons are cheap and there's a dry cleaners on every other corner.

Now,
don't get me wrong, in my private life, I'm just as casual and relaxed
in my dress as anyone else. Sometimes I would even classify my look at
home as "homeless chic". But once I step outside my house and venture
into the world where simple minded people sometimes size you up
immediately before you even have a chance to speak... well, let me just
offer this to any of you who happen NOT to be a Black man who is always
followed and eyed suspiciously whenever he decides to peruse the items
in any retail establishment..if this was a constant part of your life
that went back as far as you could remember, then you would understand
why it is imperative to appear in public at all times as if you mean
business. I certainly don't want to be mistaken for a thug, degenerate
or anyone else who doesn't want to be taken seriously or respected.
(Side note: Each and every time that I travel with casual wear , I am
detained and searched thoroughly at airport security and customs. EVERY
time.This is obvious character profiling, of course, but is definitely
avoidable if my garb and external profile don't resemble that of a
hellraiser.)

But
where musical performances are concerned, jeans, baseball caps,
sneakers and t-shirts and other extreme casual wear just doesn't cut it
for me in terms of stage apparel. Not in my band, it doesn't. The
exception, of course, would be some of the summer outdoor music
festivals where we're often found performing in sweltering heat, or
situations where we've had to rush to the bandstand directly form the
airport after a day of hectic travel and near-missed flights. Sometimes
there is absolutely no time that will allow for the band to "get it
together" and one must perform "as is". But dressing as if you just
woke up from falling asleep with your clothes on should not be an
acceptable norm. I'm constantly surprised to find the number of Jazz
musicians who feel that it's no big deal and argue that they're merely
"dressing for comfort". I doubt very seriously that any member of any
philharmonic orchestra would agree, or think for one minute that their
job would be secure if they didn't appear for work dressed
appropriately.

Once
in or around 1983 or '84, during a break on a gig at a location that I
can't immediately remember, Dizzy Gillespie, complimented me on the
sharpness of my suit and relayed to me some stories about how
meticulous some of the musicians had been about their "vines"
(Jazzspeak for suits - hanging on your body like vines). He told me
that a hip suit (and hat) were essential "the look" and that they would
have never even considered performing in anything less. He concluded
his story with the same phrase that I've heard said countless times
when referring to the audience: "They SEE you before they HEAR you". I
agree wholeheartedly with this and have to confess that I base my total
enjoyment of any given performance on a multitude of factors -
appearance and stage presence being two of them.

I
would further contend that this slacker mode of dress has contributed
to the devaluation of the music in terms of visual presentation and a
steadily increasing lack of respect for an art form whose very
participants sometimes don't appear to have much respect for anything
other than subjecting their audiences to 10 chorus length solos and
songs that last 30 minutes each - AND looking like derelicts while
doing it!

In
my own experience, I would have to admit that not only do I feel better
about my presentation when I'm secure that everything is in place both
with the music as well as with the business, but I also notice all too
well how different I am treated and respected when I am dressed like a
"grown-ass-man". In music, as well as in every other aspect of life,
respect for oneself and the rich lineage that we've inherited deserves
ample consideration and attention to every facet of the art form - not
just being a "bad ass" on your instrument. So to those to whom this
would apply: Clean up your act!

And
for those of you who are members of Facebook, here's a link to
trumpeter Sean Jones' online discussion that deals with the very same
subject.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=7762506156&topic=12383

Perhaps
it's time for musicians to, along with the refinement of their craft,
begin to reinvestigate the value and immediate benefits (WINK!) of
being "clean" and "sharp as a tack" once again. I know, quite
personally, a number of people who would support the music with a bit
more enthusiasm if the musicians themselves didn't appear so aloof and
disheveled. It's not so much to ask.

Thanks,

The Music Instinct Album

Indaba Music — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0400

On June 24^th, 2009 PBS premiered The Music Instinct Science and
Song, an innovative
documentary about the power of sound and music. Indaba Music was able to offer its
community the opportunity to participate directly in this
groundbreaking program, through two consecutive contests. These contests challenged the community to produce powerful pieces of
music from everyday sounds and also to reimagine a theme for the show.

Now's your chance to hear what the winners came up with. The Top Five submissions for each contest were recently released as part of The Music Instinct: Science and Song album

Download the album through
PBS or emusic and check out what they came up with!

CONGRATS TO THE WINNERS!

The Music Instinct Science and Song Part I:

David Minnick - Ignition

Andrew Westphal - Groovolution

Randy Colby - PBS Science & Song (RC Breaks Mix)

United Republic - Passin Windows

Royal Beatsmyth - Ambassador Lassiter's Phantasmic Antiquarium

The Music Instinct Science and Song Part II:

Sujan E. Bin Wadud - Instinct Tells Me

David Minnick - Small Enough

Bobak Salehi - Storm - Instrumental - Lama Mix

Dana "MiztaKlean"Essex - Miztaklean's Music Instinct Theme

Justin Nations (Jus Bus) - Music Instinct Theme

CMJ Showcase and Party

Indaba Music — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:56:00 -0400

Every fall, musicians, bands, and industry folk gather in New York City for CMJ, five days of non-stop musical mayhem (AKA heaven on earth). On October 21st, Indaba will be co-presenting an exciting artist showcase with our friends from Whitesmith Entertainment at one of our favorite venues in NYC, The Living Room. Tickets are free, and first come, first serve. If you're in town, stop on in, say hello and check out some great music!

Wednesday, October 21st

The Living Room
154 Ludlow St, New York NY
(212) 533-7235
21+, one drink minimum, & NO CMJ badge necessary

7pm - Emilyn Brodsky (with Brian Viglione of the Dresden Dolls)

8pm - Sydney Wayser

8:30pm - Pinky Swear (featuring Rachel Trachtenburg of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players)

9pm - Sara Benincasa (comedy)

9:15pm - Elon James White (comedy)

9:30pm - A special surprise guest! (comedy)

10pm - Family of the Year

11pm - Jason Trachtenburg (of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players)

11:45pm - Alina Simone

Multimedia: Media Vox

Hosted by Sara Benincasa and Emilyn Brodsky

Hope to see you there!

- The Indaba Music Team

Sellaband

Indaba Music — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:26:00 -0400

I was once again gearing up to write about some interesting developments in the digital music business (as I've done numerous times before) but -- spoiler alert -- in the end it turned out that's not really where this is headed.

The news that grabbed me, specifically, was that DIY music hub Sellaband recently made some major changes to their service. Their site essentially gives bands the infrastructure needed to get their fans to invest in future recordings, sort of like buying them before they come out so there's money in the recording budget, but with some cool bells and whistles along the way (profit sharing of the proceeds with the investors, for example). The biggest change here is the removal of the $50,000 minimum the bands had to hit before cashing in. It has now been moved to $10,000, which seems to me to be a much more reasonable baseline. With professional studios getting walloped these days by the impressive dollar-to-performance ratio of prosumer equipment (and, yes, that pesky economy thing everyone keeps carrying on about), budgets for even large-scale productions are dropping dramatically.

Public Enemy is the most recent big-time band to go indie, a phenomenon which I think people have (astonishingly) already stopped paying attention to for the most part (this conclusion largely because I heard nary a peep out of anyone when Counting Crows kicked their label to the curb a few months back). The twist -- and there must be a twist, else nobody will pay attention, as the Crows had to learn the hard way -- is that P.E. is doing it via Sellaband.

This time, however, the piñata threshold is set at a $250,000 collective whack. This is, of course, unnecessary on several levels.

The first problem is that it's clearly just a publicity ploy, since there's no way these icons could actually be so strapped for cash that they'd need to preemptively milk it from their fans. (Not without gross mismanagement, at least, though you won't have to try too hard to convince me that Flava Flav may have pissed away his fortunes on clocks and women.)

The second -- and please, let's just squash the accusations of rockism at the outselt -- is that I have trouble envisioning why it would cost that much to record an album's worth of hip hop, which is inherently cheaper to record than anything involving a drum set, and doubly so if you're willing to swallow your pride and get your 808 kicks from Kontakt. (Caveats to this include that you might be also covering some marketing costs, they might be buying beats from expensive big-name producers, etc.)

But here's where I went wrong with that last part: I made that calculation from the perspective of a DIY musician, which I am, and which these guys are apparently not, DIY financing approach notwithstanding. Thus, that quarter-mil budget -- though still excessive, possibly -- comes from paying through the nose for every second of potentially productive studio time with expensive expert engineers in high-dollar studio rooms. They're paying for the clock to tick while they think creatively, and even Flav's ample stash can't help get that under control. I just realized that's a calculation I've never had to make, and probably never will.

For obvious reasons, most readers here can record themselves, so if you're reading this, congratulations -- you have already figured out the financing problem Sellaband is trying to solve. $10k, if that, should more than cover your record. Should you be so lucky, you can spend the other $240k on a house to make it in.

Remix N.A.S.A + Promote On Twitter = $$$

Indaba Music — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:45:00 -0400

From Kanye West to David Byrne, M.I.A., and Tom Waits, N.A.S.A.'s Spirit Of Apollo remix program is an amazing opportunity to work with some of music'c most talented artists. With such incredible and diverse material for Indaba members to work with, we thought now would be a great time to teach you some simple ways to use twitter to promote your favorite remixes. And to encourage you to participate, we've put together an exciting contest that will help bring much deserved attention to your top picks, and maybe fatten your pockets at the same time.

Anyone who tweets using the tag #IndabaNasaRmx, AND includes a link to either the contest page (http://bit.ly/3IrpuU) or a contest entry, will be eligible to win $500 and a one year Platinum membership to IndabaMusic.com (a $250 value).

But, that's not all.

For every day that #IndabaNasaRmx is a top trending topic on twitter, we’ll increase the prize by $500… All the way until the pot is worth $2500!

Guidelines:
1. To be eligible to win, your tweet must contain “#IndabaNasaRmx”
2. Your tweet must also contain a link to either the N.A.S.A. remix program page or an entry from the program

Prizing & Winner Selection
When the submission period for the N.A.S.A. Remix Program ends on October 27th at 5pm EST, so will this twitter promotion, and we
will select one very lucky winner at random from everyone who included #IndabaNasaRmx in a tweet. The winner will receive up to $2500 and a one year Platinum membership to IndabaMusic.com (a $250 value).

Here are some specific ways to get involved:

First, head on over to twitter and setup an account. Once you've signed up, you can start tweeting:

Let people know you entered - Just entered the N.A.S.A. remix contest on @IndabaMusic. Can't wait to remix David Byrne! http://bit.ly/3IrpuU #IndabaNasaRmx

Let people know you're working on a remix - Mashing up Kanye West & Tom Waits in the N.A.S.A. Remix contest: http://bit.ly/3IrpuU #IndabaNasaRmx

Share your finished remix - Just uploaded my remix of M.I.A., Santigold and RZA to @indabamusic: "http://bit.ly/XXXX" #IndabaNasaRmx

And, of course, this promotion isn't limited to just contest entrants:

Fans can get in on the action and promote a favorite remix - Loving Matt Palmer's N.A.S.A. remix! "http://bit.ly/XXXX" #IndabaNasaRmx

Re-tweet something that we post from our twitter account - RT @IndabaMusic: Epic remix contest w NASA, Kanye West, David Byrne, MIA! Win $1K & official release! http://bit.ly/3IrpuU #IndabaNasaRmx

Simply add RT @IndabaMusic in front of something we tweet, and you will have successfully re-tweeted.

Follow @IndabaMusic

Making The Most Of Your 140 Characters:

Since you're limited to 140 characters per tweet, you'll want to use a url shortener to make the most of your 140 characters. We recommend using bit.ly. Simply go to http://bit.ly, paste in the URL you want to link to, then copy and paste the shortened bit.ly URL into your twitter post. This will give you more room to write about your remix!

Our favorite part about using bit.ly is that if you a “+” to the end or the url (i.e. http://bit.ly/3IrpuU+) you can actually see if your link has been clicked on and shared across the internet!

If you have any questions, just email us (info@indabamusic.com) and well be glad to help you out!

Happy remixing!

- The Indaba Music Team

Tweet A Sound (/Chord, /Session, /Creation)

Indaba Music — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:00:00 -0400

Say hello to the Indaba console's long-lost cousin. Or, well, pet hamster, at least.

Tweet A Sound is a standalone desktop program for Mac OS X built in Max/MSP which uses Twitter to send synthesized audio. Best I can tell, it's a collection of states for each of the controls in the simple integrated sound design environment, which, when captured as discrete numbers, fall below Twitter's 140 character limit and can thus be broadcast just like any other message. The app includes a login panel, so thanks to Twitter's extensive API, you don't even need to alt-tab your way into Firefox.

These tweets, collected under the #tas hash tag (which, sadly, is quite contaminated because of its application to other topics -- there aren't as many sound designers in the world as there are, say, teaching assistants) can then be fed back into the program to set the controller states at the other end, effectively reproducing a sound in Austin moments after it was programmed in Osaka.

A little nutty, sure, but in a way this makes perfect sense -- "Tweet" is onomatopoeia, I think, right?

While Tweet A Sound creator Andrew Spitz doesn't seem to use the phrase "proof of concept" himself, I'll go ahead and apply it here simply because this points vaguely toward internet music sharing in a way that's quite different from what we've seen so far. Specifically, it's capturing sound in an extremely raw state -- synth settings, even before they're rendered to audio at all -- and then disseminating it using a platform predicated on immediacy. There's podcasting, yes, but here we're transmitting sound that isn't in a sound file yet. That's a quantum leap.

Now consider that the app is written in Max/MSP, which has pretty badass integration with Ableton Live on the horizon. Imagine running this as a plugin in a DAW; another quantum leap there, possibly.

Regular RSS can hold more content than tweets and there's no inherent delay any more than there is with a Twitter post (every account renders to RSS, in fact), which means that the leap after that would take us into plugins with RSS I/O functionality, which wouldn't be limited by Twitter's character limit and could be used to transmit things like MIDI in much larger chunks. (Note that we're not yet talking sample-accurate audio, though I've heard of academics with access to the Internet2 network getting usable latency for remote audio -- ie, black box with 1/4" audio input, CAT5 ethernet output, and then the same in reverse on the other end.) Server configuration to allow them to publish outgoing feeds probably won't be trivial for right-brained musicians, at least at first, but a fair number of the kids who are going to spend their graduation money on microphones this coming May won't be intimidated at all, and if the plugin makers host the feeds the way Ableton recently started hosting collaborative session repositories, configuration can pretty much be automated.

Once we're there, Osaka programs the sounds, Austin arranges them into chords, and the world gets a little bit smaller once again. Better get started on that staff paper notation wiki.

--

Via Twitter:
Indaba
Vijith
Streeter

Via RSS:
Indaba
Vijith
Streeter

Yours below, we hope.

Synaesthesia

Indaba Music — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:55:00 -0400

Although male musicians have always been able to milk a staggering amount of mileage (mostly artistic, but also sometimes financial) out of writing odes to lovely females, Dutch theatrical and film composer Jurriaan Andriessen's Portret van Hedwig goes much farther than usual -- the score to the piece is a portrait of the lucky lady.

Not surprisingly, it took him five years to finish, the bulk of which was presumably spent trying to get notes to conform to the image in a musically sensible manner. This is a triumph of old-school pen-and-paper brute force, because for all their strengths, I'm fairly certain that modern scoring programs like Finale and Sibelius would choke on something like this.

As a modern analogue, there's this track from Aphex Twin's 1999 Windowlicker EP -- it's known informally as "[Equation]," because the title is actually this:

Hidden images pop up when you run it through a spectrum analyzer.

(Aside: the action really starts around 4:36, but personally I think it's interesting to listen to the whole song for context. Also, since I have the track as an MP3, I muted the crappy YouTube audio just now and listened via iTunes as the video followed along; at the end, the Grease soundtrack came up in the shuffle queue, which, for a moment, was very confusing.)

The track title is misleading -- the visuals weren't actually programmed, but rather generated using the image-to-audio sound design program MetaSynth. Other people have done this sort of thing too, but it feels a bit cheap in the face of Andriessen's thing, doesn't it? All the same, it's interesting to watch the visuals unfold from 4:36 on as you listen to the results and consider the mental and philosophical game of Twister that must result from creating art of one format in a medium meant for another.

Your songs in Rock Band!

Indaba Music — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:11:00 -0400

by Ryan

Hello fellow Indabans - I trust all is well. There are some really exciting developments occurring over at Harmonix and MTV Games! The Rock Band Network is preparing to come out of beta. You're probably wondering what exactly the 'Rock Band Network' is - well its a revolutionary system that enables bands, studios, and record labels to create and sell playable game content from their master recordings using the same professional tools used by the Rock Band developers. What this means to you is that your tunes could be in Rock Band alongside the likes of The Beetles, Led Zeppelin and many many more! The service is slated to launch sometime this year, but Harmonix has put up a preview site that explains how it will work. We've given you a summary here, so that you guys will have a heads up when the service goes live:

Step One: Author Your Track

First off you take the stems from any master recording (that you own) and create MIDI charts. The MIDI charts are translated into the ever flowing fret-boards in the game that enable you to view and play notes and chords. You convert your tracks via the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation from RBN, which contains their free authoring plugins. You can then easily audition the track to make sure it works properly. When you are have converted it to the best of your abilities you simply package it up and share it with the RBN community.

Step Two: Upload

When you're finally satisfied with the virtual interpretation of your track you can upload it to RBN so that your peers can evaluate it. Once uploaded you can receive praise, constructive criticism, and helpful tips. This will play a big role in the development of your song as a vitual track. Your peers will help you to make it as fun and challenging as possible!

Step Three: Review

Once you've uploaded a track it becomes instantly available for any other song creator (with a premium account) to download and audition. After you've taken all the feedback you can handle and polished your track so its ready for action, you'll have to submit it for a peer review to get it released into the world.

Step Four: Publish

All your hard work will literally pay off once your song is approved. After the review it will be instantly published and made available for purchase to the millions of Rock Band fans in both the Rock Band Store and the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. You will receive 30% of the royalties from all sales of your track! That's a really large audience and a really solid demographic for musicians of any genre.

Step Five: Promote

Getting your music into Rock Band is a pretty big deal - and you can believe that Harmonix and MTV games will be letting everyone know that this new opportunity exhists, which basically boils down to tons of free promotion for you. Make sure to tell all your fans and friends that they can now shred your riffs, and sing your melodies. You can also decide what you want to charge for your song from 50 cent to 3 dollars. So get ready to haqve your own songs in one of the biggest video games of all time, and make sure to start collaborating here so you'll be ready when this drops this August!

Circuit Bending for Sounds

Indaba Music — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:10:00 -0400

This is taken from Phil Moffa's Artist in Residence program, and is just one of many in-depth tutorials in that program.

by Phil Moffa

Have you ever heard about circuit bending? This hobby/art/way of
making very interesting sounds has been around for a while and has
gained lots of popularity in recent years. The web is full of
resources on this topic and now there are even some very informative
books out there, most notably Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments by pioneer Reed Ghazala, the man who coined the term.

In short, circuit bending is the modifying of electronic devices in
the interest of making sounds that the manufacturer did not intend. It
can be as simple as a wire that connects two points on the circuit
board, or as complex as adding countless knobs, buttons, switches,
patch bays, jacks, and rehousing the unit in a new case. If you don't
know anything about electronics, do not be intimidated. Circuit
bending requires no knowledge of electronics. All you need is a little
patience, some tools, some time, and something to bend. Old toys, drum
machines, Casio keyboards, or basically anything that is electronic and
generates sound can be bent.

Circuit bent Speak & Spell, also known as an incantor. I did this one with Ghazala's help a few years back.

Although I will shed some light on this toopic, the world of circuit
bending is way beyond the scope of this blog post. I recommend the
above book by Ghazala or the article that I found in Electronic Musician magazine back in 2003 that got me
interested in this cult hobby. From there, you can google many sites,
youtube vids, etc that will all give you a little knowledge. Keep in
mind that this is an art of discovery and you will also be teaching
yourself a lot along the way. Note about safety: wear goggles,
ventilate the room, and never bend something that is plugged in. This
is for low-voltage, battery-powered devices only.

Bending basics: After opening the case and
exposing the guts (circuit board and components) of a noise-making toy
or instrument, your first mission is to make connections of different
points to see if they change the sound in any way. This can be done
with a your fingers (you are a conductor), the tips of an rca cable,
any wire or probe. So, you need to continually make a sound while
poking around to find potential "bends". If something sounds
interesting, make a note of it. From there you can try any number of
switches, pots, or body contacts that can later be connected and used
to engage or tweek your new found effects. One of the easiest and most
essential bends is to put an output jack, either 1/4" or 1/8", on the
unit so you can send it to an amplifier or mixing board. The full
frequency range is never head thru a one inch speaker. In fact, the
first bend I ever did was putting a 1/4" jack on a toy piano from a
board game.

Notability, my first bend. Check out the output jack and the volume knob. Suprisingly, this sucker was LOUD.

This video shows my first recording of a bent Roland TR-626 - a 1 bar loop and some of the
possible bends that are now easily achieved by swapping RCA cables.
This is just the beginning of the possiblities here.

The above video and the description below are of a slightly advanced
bend, but very do-able to say the least. You may want to start with
something easier if you've never soldered before. All props to Burnkit 2600 for their extremely informative page where I learned about the 626 bends.

Basically, in the 626 there is a chip with 32 points that stores the
samples that make up the drum kit. It is known as IC15. (IC stands
for integrated circuit.) When simply connecting any of these 2 points
with a wire, the sounds get scrambled, distorted, flanged, and become
atonal. 32x32 leaves for a lot of possibilities. I connected 25 of
these to a DB25 port like the kind you would see on an old printer.
Then I made a RCA patch bay out of 4 panels of 8 RCA jacks glued into a
project enclosure. This new box has the 32 jacks and a DB25 port on
it, with 25 of the jacks connected to the DB25 pins. By using an old
25 to 25 pin SCSI cable, the two boxes are now joined and by using the
RCA patch bay, many combinations can be made. I regret not doing this
with a larger DB port, but these are the parts I had and I figured it
would still present a lot of possibilites.

Inside the 626, here's the IC15 chip connected to the lugs on the DB25 port.

Interior of the RCA patch bay

The 2 ports on the exterior of the Roland and on the RCA bay

Tools you will need: a soldering iron and solder, wire, wire cutters
& strippers, pliers, screwdrivers (small and regular), fresh
batteries, and whatever components (pots, knobs, switches, etc) you
want to experiment with. A dremel or drill is good for making holes in
things for surface mounting components. There's plenty more that will
be useful but these are essential. Just round up whatever tools
(especially small stuff) you can.

Good luck, and if you need help, let me know. If you make anything interesting, we want to hear it and see some pics.

Pro Tools Essentials

Indaba Music — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:33:00 -0400

by Vijith

Wired Magazine's recent article on what they're calling "The Good Enough Revolution" posits that technological advancement has largely outpaced consumer needs, and the name of the game is no longer upping the product specs, but rather finding the sweet spot regarding what kinds of performance compromises consumers are willing to eat in order to keep the price down. As a case study, it focuses largely on the popular low-end Flip digital video camera, which has proven quite successful with broke YouTubers despite its technical shortcomings. (Stick with the article all the way to the end and you'll even be rewarded with the theory that Predator unmanned aerial drones constitute the same phenomenon in the military, which feels totally gross.)

Even in the professional media production world, one might consider the Red camera that set the video world on fire a couple years back a sort of high-end analogue to the Flip, and a few years back there was a huge increase in the number of affordable condenser mics available to budget-conscious musicians. I am, of course, reluctant to dismiss the at-times-quite-oppressive cost of musical equipment, but at the same time, I do know that making a record is considerably cheaper now than it was twenty years ago, even if I'm not really old enough to have any perspective on that firsthand.

So now let's squish this up alongside Avid's debatably-earth-shaking announcement last week: Pro Tools has officially gone ultra-low-end with the new Essentials bundles, which hover around the $100 mark for a super-light version of the industry-leading DAW and your choice of USB peripheral -- either a condenser mic, a MIDI keyboard, or for a few bucks more, an M-Audio Fast Track interface.

Packages like this are old hat in the digital recording world by now, of course, nor is it any secret that Pro Tools has been moving toward ever since computers became powerful enough to outmode the process cards that allowed it to hit the market first and hardest in the 90's. Rather, my interest in this one was piqued largely by Create Digital Music's point that this puts genuine, legal industry-stardard audio production software -- no doubt quite capable for a beginner's needs despite the lack of multitrack recording and whatever other bells and whistles have been omitted -- in the hands of aspiring musicians for around the same price as Guitar Hero.

Not that it wasn't possible to get started for cheap before -- there's GarageBand on Macs, the free Indaba Console, and actually even Pro Tools had their old free version up through the Mac OS 9. (In fact, for years, Deerhoof used to record by syncing up three copies of that running on different machines, though that probably testifies more to their kookiness than any particular democratization of music production.) Branding and marketing matter, though, and for years Pro Tools has been getting sustained coverage in the mainstream media to a similar degree as the trendy Auto-Tune stuff has of late. To the layman, Pro Tools has come to be synonymous with audio production, Kleenex/Xerox style. Disregarding for a moment Avid's bottom line, for the sake of fostering creativity in our culture, hitting a two-digit price point with that is a very, very good thing. Or Good Enough, at least, which may be all that matters anymore.

UkeTube Sensation

Indaba Music — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:00:00 -0400

by Streeter

My friend Amir turned me on to this young lady on YouTube, Julia Nunes, who plays Ukelele. So far, so normal. But Julia, who has her own website, JunuMusic.com, is so more than your normal cute ukelele cover-song playing girl on the Internet (isn't it amazing that we live in an age where I can truthfully say that). Julia seems to be headed for a nice little career as a sing/songwriter/performer all thanks to the popularity of her YouTube videos, just like Bo Burnham before her. Now let's see why, in no particular order...

1. She has a nice voice: It's lower than your average girl voice, but there's a husky smokiness to it that's compelling and refreshingly different.

2. She's doing something different: Just check out her videos and you'll see. She mixes songs with talking and she suppliments the small sound of her uke with harmonies, knee-and-pillow drumming and other small instruments.

3. She picks good songs to cover: The variety is great - The Beatles, Weezer, Ben Folds - it's a very appealing cross-section of popular music over the last fifty or so years.

Now, let's see this young lady play. Here's her doing the aforementioned Beatles.

But here is where her story gets great. Rumor has it that Ben Folds saw her cover of "Gone" (http://www.youtube.com/jaaaaaaa#play/uploads/40/7pmpo8THQJk) and invited her up on stage when he was playing near her school to accompany her. Pretty amazing if you ask me. Make sure you watch past "Gone" for what had to have been the most terrifying and exciting moment of her life.

The Healing Power of Music

Indaba Music — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:00:00 -0400

by Ryan

We've all seen the cheezy music on the endcaps at the local Walmart. Supposedly those CDs will calm you and, (more than likely), bore you into bliss. I can't get behind listening to those discs, even for their theraputic properties. However after a bit of research, I've discovered that you won't have to listen to Yanni to activate the healing properties of music. There has been a general awarness of music's healing power since the time of Plato and Aristotle. Music is an integral part of people's lives all over the world and is a universal language that has inherent abilities to stimulate the mind, body and emotions.

During both World Wars, doctors and nurses used the beneficial properties of music on patients suffering physical and emotional traumas. This led to the modern incarnation of the music therapy field. Music therapy, according to the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), is a well-established health profession similar to occupational therapy and physical therapy that uses music to address physical, psycological, cognitive, behavioral and social functioning.

"Music therapy is used to bring about changes within an individual and bring about personal growth," said Dr Dellasega, professor of music therapy and coordinater of the Music Degree Program at Slippery Rock University. She said music therapists work in a variety of settings, including physical rehabilitation centers, psychiatric facilities, prisons, nursing homes, school systems for special-needs students, and general hospitals. Music therapy has been effectively used by professionals to treat people with myriad health problems ranging from physical disabilities, mental health disorders, chronic pain, cancer, substance abuse problems, AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, brain injuries, and learning disablitlies.

The hope with integrated medicine is that the least invasive medical practices will be tried first. Since music therapy and other alternative therapies are non-invasive and non-pharmaceutical, they are very safe treatments for patients because no surgery is performed and no drugs are administered, which eliminates the possibility of negative side effects from drugs, Dellasega said. Almost all Music therapists emphasize that music therapy is not just a passive listening technique, and works more effectively when using hands-on forms, such as making music, singing and composing. The positive therapeutic attributes of music lie in the emotional and neurological aspects people have with music. The associations we form with songs and music stay with us throughout life, and that plugs into the emotional responses we have. The sounds, vibrations, and rhythms of music create a whole-brain and even a whole-body experience that is effective in treating neuralgic disorders as well as physical disorders. Adding music helps stimulate the brain to be more active in sending electrical messages to the muscles and limbs in people with brain injuries and developmental disorders. The physiological properties of music like sound, vibrations and rhythm activate the body, mind, and emotions. Everybody has self-medicated with music at some time.