Guest writer Brian Casel is a freelance web designer, blogger, and musician.  He runs the songwriting blog, Serve The Song.  On his personal blog, Brian writes about web design, freelance business, and other topics.  Follow Brian on Twitter @CasJam.

10 things My Home Recording Studio Can’t Live Without

These days the home recording studio has become the creative hub for aspiring songwriters and professional musicians alike.  With the plummeting cost of computer-based recording gear, these project studio setups are more accessible than ever.
 
In a recent post at Serve The Song, I asked readers what they pack in their gig bag when they take their show on the road.  The responses ranged from earplugs to hand-held video games!  Anything to pass the time between sets I guess.
 
In this post, I will list my personal checklist for my home recording studio and then turn it over to you.  These are items I have accumulated over the years and they’re things my creative song lab can’t live without.

My Must-Have Recording Gear:

• My Mac – This is obvious.  If you’re running a home studio, chances are it’s a computer-based recording setup.
• Shure SM57 Microphone – It’s my go-to mic for many things.  Great for laying down a quick vocal take, and the perfect choice for micing a guitar amp.
• Headphones – I use Bose headphones.  Any decent pair should do the job.  These are important since most of the time you don’t have isolation booths.  You’re often recording and mixing the same room.
• Boom Mic Stands – Much better than strait mic stands.  Boom stands are perfect for capturing the perfect microphone location, or working around a crowded room.
• Acoustic Foam – For mounting on the walls.  This is important for controlling the weird sound reflections in your room.  Home recording studios often reside in bedrooms, basements, or even closets!  Acoustic foam is what you need.
• MBox / Pro Tools – Yup, I’m a Pro Tools guy.  The MBox meets all of my needs for my home recording set up.
• A Comfortable Chair – Super important to use an ergonomically friendly chair when working long hours recording and mixing tracks.
• MIDI Keyboard – Utilizing the power of MIDI instruments introduces a world of options when producing killer tracks.
• Stack of Blank CDs – Sure, most music is transmitted online these days.  But it’s always a good idea to burn mixes of your songs to CD to listen back on various stereo systems, pass around at shows, pop in your car stereo, etc.
• Good Coffee – It wakes me up for a full day of music work, and keeps me going all hours through the night!
• How About You?

Share your must-have gear list for your home recording studio using the comments section below.

On today’s guest blog, the first in a series of blogs from the Indaba team at SXSW, David talks about user-generated content.

I’m easing into the panels here at SXSW, so this post may seem a bit marketing and businessy, but I thought you all might be interested in hearing some of my thoughts from panels and discussions we’re having before those thoughts are clarified, solidified, culled, prioritized, and applied.

______________

I’ve been here just over 24 hours and I’m already struck by the lack of clarity in the market around the definition and application of social media in general, but user-generated content (UGC) in particular. 

THE FALLACY OF PERVASIVE BROAD “SOCIAL MEDIA” AND “UGC” LABELS
I often overhear marketers and brands talking about how they are (or are becoming/integrating) social media into their offerings and it sometimes concerns me that we’re moving colloquially toward a bad spot where “social media” means anything that involves people. 

The challenge is that defining it so broadly makes incorporating the concepts into programs extremely difficult, in part because there’s less distinction between posting a comment or testimonial and, say, collaborating on a film online using only video generated from the camera on your laptop.  More than that, an overly broad and unspecific definition implies that anything a person posts to the web is social media and, by extension, that because people post the core editorial content on most sites, a website itself is inherently social.

I’m of the opinion that the market will eventually work out something it’s comfortable with and that it doesn’t need me to define social media at a high level.  I will, however, note that I believe the line lies somewhere around [a] interactions primarily occurring between users vs. just between users and a site, [b] structure that encourages interactions between more than one user (so it has the potential to be a social setting vs. an intimate one-on-one discussion), and © is multidirectional (so interactions have more than one axis). 

My bigger concern is the impact a broad definition has on how we look at and talk about UGC.  The UGC panel I went to yesterday epitomized the problem:  too often, organizations don’t (or won’t) differentiate between different types of UGC and the reasons people create it.  If we don’t differentiate, we run a very real risk of not reflecting the creative process of the users and offering the right tools to facilitate the creativity that makes social interactions so enormously interesting.

After talking to several other organizations (for and non-profit alike) about their communities, I’ve begun to see two important points in working with UGC. 

EXISTING VS. ORIGINAL CONTENT
The first important distinction for an organization to make is between discussions, activity, and content that focus primarily on using existing content and those that center on original content (or content that the person creates without incorporating media created by others).

Organizations that fail to do this will end up with either underlying brand issues, technology/usability issues, or process issues.  A great example is YouTube, which falls prey to the first and second:  it both has a lot of great original content that gets lost among the poor-quality repostings of people’s favorite TV shows and hasn’t addressed some of the key underlying audio issues (e.g,. mono audio) that would drive many more serious users to post more completed content.

THE DYNAMIC OF COMMUNITY INTERACTIONS
More and more, the way people interact in a UGC setting influences the type and format of media they contribute. At a high level, interactions fall into three broad categories:

Observation + aggregation.  Basic interactions such as commenting and tagging media.   Examples include any site that allows basic comments, feedback, or reviews:  Netflix, Facebook’s photo tagging.

Distribution + dissemination.  Interactions focused primarily on viral dissemination of content or content sharing and hosting.  Examples include sites that encourage sharing insights or content organization:  Flickr, Twitter

Creation.  Advanced collaboration-focused interactions. Users not only post content they’ve created, but allow other users to engage during and around the creative process, whether that’s music or essays, design or film. The market will start paying more attention to these sites, in part because it’s where the content for other sites will increasingly come from.  

I have some initial thoughts for how organizations can approach
social media – and UGC specifically, but I’ll save those for another
posting.

From Indaban Joe S.’s Blog

The Producers: Tony Visconti

Mega 70’s Producer Tony Visconti talks about his life and art
through an interview for his autobiography. He has produced Bowie, the
Moody Blues and Morrissey.

I love his comments about the record industry promoting a “samey” formula.

Enjoy!

From Joe S.’s Blog

Chuck Mangione Band members die in plane crash

Two members of the Chuck Magione Band, saxaphonost Gerry Niewood and
guitarist Coleman Mellett, were killed when a Continental Airlines
commuter plane Flight 3407 crashed into a house Buffalo, NY Thursday
night.

I meant to post this yesterday but IndabaMusic was “tuning up”.

This video shows them performing “Feels So Good”

RIP and Jam On, you are in good company.

From Indaban Joe S.’s Blog

Ok maybe not historic…but full of history! Just in time for Valentine’s day I’ve started a session based on the note a Union soldier wrote for his beloved during the US Civil War.

I was inspired to compose a dirge, with The Band’s and a New Orleans
style funeral march sound in mind, and lyrics tell a story that roughly
follows the Sullivan note. Stop by and check out the session. I could use some help with a refrain, vox and instruments.

Come on, Indaba.  Pitch in! 

From Indaban David B.’s Blog

Extend The Life Of Your Guitar Strings

Well here’s one for all the thrifty ladies and gentlemen out there!  I’ve gone
through a lot of strings, as i’m sure almost every one of you has, and
i know every case is different-in my case, my strings were breaking by
the bridge a lot. So heres a pretty easy way to fix that. This doesnt
change the tone of your guitar/bass at all (well at least i havent
noticed) and it seems to be working fine for me so i thought i’d share
it here:

1. Loosen all your strings..If you havent changed ‘em in a a while it
   might not hurt to go all the way and just change them-it’ll make this a
   lot easier.
   
2. Grab some felt and cut a piece small piece to fit over your bridge.
   Anything with fabric (not TOO thick, socs would probably not work)
   should be fine.
3. Slide the felt in evenly making sure you cover the sharp parts completely.
4. Tune it up and give her a go. Hope somebody gets some use out of this! For more tips head down to my Amateur Recording group.

From Mantis Evar’s Blog

From Indaban Jesse C.’s Blog

From Indaban JALYN’s blog

How Fragile They Are

One of the biggest challenges of being a musician is dealing with criticism. I’ve always understood the value of “constructive” criticism, but in my experience it is rarely given out. Some artists love being critiqued and are energized by what people have to say about their work even if it is negative. They view it as an opportunity to be better artists, and I say God bless ‘em. I always felt it was more of a cheap shot to criticize an artists end result without having gone through the entire creative process with them. Yes, of course there are a million different directions any artist can take, but in the end, its not a democracy. Ive grown to expect and even understand when people express their opinions about my work, good or bad, and Ive learned to not let it effect me either way, because after all, it is my journey. Criticism from fellow musicians is the worst. I blame part of that on the competitiveness of the industry, and the fact that we are all trying to by heard. The rest is pure ego. We all can do it better than everyone else. That to me is the biggest reason why musicians want to collaborate, but rarely do. I’m no different. I love the idea of sharing, but most of the sessions that Ive been involved in slowly become one persons vision instead of a collective effort. Its a shame really. Musicians make a band. Even virtuosos surround themselves with support. The technology that we are blessed with today allows us to do everything on our own, we don’t need anyone. The remix competitions have been fun to be a part of, but the “competitiveness” has taken away from what I believe this site is all about. Be easy.

Got something you think should go here?  Email me at Streeter [at] IndabaMusic.com