theDAWstudio

Here’s a great new tool for those of you who have great drum samples but aren’t necessarily the greatest drummers. Instead of scrolling through thousands of MIDI grooves or trying to build a pattern yourself, you can use this tool to dynamically create a pattern similar to what a real drummer would do.

Here is the manufacturer’s description:
Mandelbrot Drummer is based around a simple idea. Groups of drum hits are placed across an image of a Mandelbrot fractal. The MIDI velocity of each hit is related to the color intensity of the underlying fractal. The variation in color intensity (i.e. velocity) across the fractal imparts subtle and unexpected rhythms which can mimic a human drummer.

When working on a music project it can be frustrating and unproductive to trawl through hundreds of drum clips looking for something with the right feel. Many musicians find that constructing patterns from scratch in a piano roll editor is a difficult task. Based around a simple concept, Mandelbrot Drummer is an alternative way to make rhythm patterns and is designed to be a practical tool for computer musicians.

Mandelbrot Drummer costs $19.00 and is available for Windows as a VST instrument plug-in.

Check it out for yourself at mandelbrotdrummer.com

Not in this Business
The movie ‘Field of Dreams’ has etched this quote in all of our hearts forever, “If you build it, they will come” but does it work for the recording studio business. Not usually. The recording studio business is very unique. Usual marketing and business practices don’t really work the same. You can’t simply build a studio, register in the yellow pages or on the Internet, post some ads and start getting business. They simply won’t come.

Referrals
The recording studio business is a referral-based industry. If you do a project with someone and they like your work, they will refer their friends and colleagues to you. It is very rare that someone will hire or book a studio without hearing examples or being referred by someone they trust. This is why traditional marketing doesn’t work.

The Goal
Your goal should be building your business through your clientele and equipment as you go. The mantra “if you build it, they will come” just doesn’t work for studios and I can give you tons of examples. If you start small, you can continue to grow as your business grows. So “if they come” and use your studio and pay you money, then “you can build it” by adding equipment and rooms to your setup.

Click here to read SIX guidelines of what to do and what not to do when planning to build a studio.

Have you ever heard a song where somebody sounds like they are talking on the phone? How do they do that? Do they put a mic on the phone and have somebody call and record what comes out of the phone? I guess they could do it that way, but it’s actually a really simple effect done with EQ.

The telephone effect (or phone effect) is heard in recordings all the time. It is basically a simple EQ effect that simulates the filters used in telephone systems. There is a high pass filter at around 400 Hz and a low pass filter at around 4,000 Hz (4 kHz). This can obviously be adjusted to taste, but the resulting sound is very midrange heavy and small sounding.

It is often used for a vocal at the beginning of a song later to be removed and reveal the full sounding vocal. It also is commonly heard with additional vocal parts (or adlibs) panned to the sides or sitting in the background. The telephone effect can be very effective at giving a different character to additional vocals. It can be used on drum loops or just about anything to make it sound like it is being heard through a telephone.

Read more about the telephone effect here.

Or read more about mixing techniques here.

People are always looking for a way to download Pro Tools and they are often fooled by free downloads. The thing to realize is that downloading Pro Tools is one issue, but the authorization is an even bigger one. Pro Tools 8 and earlier were all authorized by having a Digidesign hardware audio interface (Mbox, 002, etc,) connected.

The tricky thing is that when you first load Pro Tools (even with the hardware connected) you have to enter an authorization code for your version of Pro Tools (this basically authorized each new version with a new code). Pro Tools M-Powered required authorization from an iLok and required that an approved M-Audio hardware interface be connected. Pro Tools 9 and 10 require iLok authorization and can work with any audio interface.

Read more here.

Pro Tools Free was a trimmed down version of Pro Tools LE 5 that let you record up to 8 tracks of audio with any interface you wanted (It came out in 2000). There wasn’t a Pro Tools demo of the full version, because you could easily download Pro Tools Free and install it on your Mac OS 9 or Windows 98 computer.

There is a few close equivalents to Pro Tools Free today. Check them out here.

An Internet DAW can be used to create music without installing any hardware on your computer. Web based DAWs allow you to access your project wherever you go. Many are free, but all are simple and easy to use.

Here are some that you might want to check out to see which is best for you:

Sonic Producer
Mega Music Beat Maker
Cyber Sequence
Soundation
Audio Tool

If Web Based DAWs aren’t your thing than check out this great list of regular software DAWs here.

Some people think that it is difficult to work with loops in Pro Tools. It’s really quite simple if you know what you are doing and make sure to have the right buttons clicked. Check out the videos below to see how easy it really is.