Most beginners are stuck at the problem of getting sounds from their Cakewalk Sonar software, whether it is audio or midi. We’ve received emails and comments about troubleshooting this problem.

I think that’s why Cakewalk themselves created a video tutorial specifically to tackle this trouble faced by mostly beginners, or new Sonar users.

In this video, you will find out how to:

• look for the drivers, midi and audio devices installed on your computers
• rename the devices with easy friendly name
• setting up controller/surface
• explanation of ACT (Active Control Technology)and WAI (Where Am I)

7/30/2010 Chris Millsap demonstrates installing and using this new accessible email client based on the powerful open source k9 email program. 20.1 MB

The setting is your typical California day; the type you see on TV all the time.  The sun, the cars, the people and the sand leading to the famous Santa Monica Boulevard which is filled with a plethora of interesting characters.  Just another typical day?  Really?  Not for R1CKONE; actually there is no such thing [...]

Last week, Disc Makers CEO, Tony van Veen, spoke at the New Music Seminar in New York City about how artists, no matter where they are at in their career, can make more money. Digital Music News, the premier news and information authority for the music industry and technology executives, put together their top five takeaways from the three-day seminar, which we thought was worth sharing:

(1) DYI is not DTF, and DIY has its limitations.

DIY – or ‘do it yourself’ marketing for the uninitiated – was widely viewed as an early startup approach during the sessions. ReverbNation CEO Mike Doernberg called pure DIY “crap,” though at the earliest stages it can help an artist get some initial traction. “The DIY problem is that people think it’s DIY for life – it’s not… you cannot do it yourself,” said Steven Van Zandt. “All the best records ever made were made by an army of people.”

By contrast, DTF, or direct-to-fan, is highly related but ultimately something different. The marketing team surrounding Amanda Palmer, for example, is going direct-to-fan. But Amanda is not doing it all by herself.

Read the next 4 takeaways on DigitalMusicNews.com.

Related posts:

1. What topics do you want covered at our next seminar?
2. Disc Makers Atlanta Seminar: The New Music Business Model
3. 10 Major Milestones In Modern Music Marketing

7/27/2010 Terry Hadley introduces libraries in Windows 7. Libraries are a list of related folders. Windows provides several default libraries. Most tasks ou perform on libraries are accessed through the context menu. 12.3 MB

Doesn’t it just stink when you do something that seems like it should work, but it falls flat and leaves you more confused and frustrated? This can seem like a way of life for many independent artists. We try to do something to promote ourselves but instead we end up just spinning our tires in the mud and getting nowhere. We want to make something happen but can’t see the relationship between our actions and our results. Many of us just end up concluding that the world doesn’t make sense or that we don’t have what it takes, yet we don’t know why.

We humans tend to see the world in terms of linear cause and effect: If I do this, then that happens. The problem is, the truth is much more complex than that. The gap between the simplicity in our minds and the complexity in the real world can cause an awful lot of frustration and pain. Most musicians I know, including myself, have spent a great deal of time dealing with this confusion and frustration.

Unfortunately, not many of us are taught models of cause and effect that are useful in the real world beyond a very basic level. We might try a strategy and when it fails to produce immediate results, we drop it. We want to use push-button strategies in a world that simply doesn’t work that way. We want to do one thing and then see another thing happen as a direct result. What’s really happening is a series of complex reactions and interactions.

When we look at other people who succeed, we can never really see the whole picture of what got them there. We oversimplify and then we wonder why what we try doesn’t produce the same results. The success that we’re after is really the product of a system of things that work together to create a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

A practical illustration of this is a cake. A cake is something that’s not like any of the ingredients that it’s made of. The ingredients that go into the cake react with each other and create something on a whole new level.

If you want to bake a good cake you need to add quality ingredients in the right proportions and bake the cake for the right amount of time. And so it is with your career as an artist.

Every point of interaction for a fan is an ingredient to the bigger picture. Nothing stands alone. Each interaction a person has with you or your band has a sort of chemical reaction to every other interaction they’ve had with you. If someone has seen you play live then that will have an effect on how they interpret what they see on your website or what you tweet about.

In light of this, what’s often the most effective strategy is to fix the points of interaction that could have a negative impact. You can have the best frosting and flour and everything else on your cake, but if the last ingredient is dog food then your results will not be good. So you could be pushing really hard to kick some butt on Facebook, but if your website is hideous then you’re still baking a cake with dog food as one of the ingredients. Adding more eggs to a dog food cake won’t make it taste much better. Just stop using dog food and start using an ingredient worthy of the cake you want to bake and your results can skyrocket.

So stop trying to push buttons and go to work on your system. See each of your contact points with your audience as a part of a system and work on getting those parts to work better with each other and to hold up their end of the deal. Remember, it takes time to bake a cake. There will be a delay between your efforts and your success. You can count on that, so be prepared for it. Just stop asking where the right button is and start asking how you can bake a better cake.

For further reading on this subject, I recommend studying the work of W. Edwards Demming and Eben Pagan.

Article by Scott James of The Independent Rockstar Blog.

Related posts:

1. Start Your Own Scene
2. The Self-Made Musician
3. Are You a Beggar or a Rockstar?

7/21/2010 Chris Nestrud shows how to set up a remote Windows Server 2008 on Amazon's Elastic Cloud 2 and use JAWS or even NVDA or System Access to access it. 39.9 MB

The following interview was done by Music Consultant Rick Goetz.

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

Gabe Roth is the bass player, producer, main writer and founding member of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and the head of their label Daptone records.  Gabe also recently won a Grammy award for engineering the Amy Winehouse record “Back to Black”.  I was lucky enough to be in a band with Gabe in college back when he was a drummer.  He is one of those enviable musicians who can pick up any instrument and make it look effortless.

Musician Coaching:
You founded Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and the Daptone Label and have been able to sell thousands and thousands of records and tour the world – how did you get to this point?

GR:
I think it was probably a little luck, just like with anyone else. Mostly I think I was in a unique situation because I was not that interested in being part of the music industry. I think that gave me a perspective and a pig-headedness. It was one of those things where I was too stupid to do things the way I was supposed to do them, and it ended up working out well. I never followed a lot of the paths and things that we were supposed to be doing to make, record and market records. We really relied on a lot of grassroots stuff and slowly built up an audience.

Musician Coaching:
There was no real scene for retro soul prior to the predecessor to Daptone (a label Gabe founded with a Partner called Desco Records). You were the architect of bringing these people together, right?

GR:
It’s probably true, because there wasn’t really a scene then. It’s a strange perception and an inside-outside thing. You don’t realize there’s enough going on around you to consider it a “scene” until someone says, “Hey, where did this scene come from?” It’s like a spontaneous party on a subway platform. We never really architected it, planned it or anticipated it. I think by not trying to concentrate on what people were going to listen to and instead of concentrating on what kind of records we were going to make, we ended up making a bunch of records that people wanted to listen to.

Musician Coaching:
You wound up collaborating and producing with tons of different people over the last ten years ago. Was that the plan or was that just what you did to get by?

GR:
It was mostly just what we had to do to make ends. The Amy Winehouse stuff and working with Mark Ronson (Producer – Amy Winehouse) didn’t open up the kind of doors that are perceived from the outside. For example, when we’d go on tour with the band and go play Madison, Wisconsin or some city where we’ve played for many years, and we went from 30 people, to 50 people, to 100 people to 200 people, to 800 people, to 1,000 and 1,500 people, we’d see this curve from our point of view that was based on going out and playing music and selling 45’s – a very grassroots, organic approach. But part of the timing of that Amy Winehouse project was the door that it opened. It was not that people listened to that record and came to us. There were really very few consumers and fans that we got from this record. At these shows, I’d go and ask people, “Where did you hear about the band?” The overwhelmingly most popular answer was “Terry Gross, Fresh Air.” Doing an NPR show is for an independent artist is twenty times more important than doing David Letterman or Conan O’Brien.

The thing about doing those kind of established shows and working with Amy Winehouse and doing these major label, major production things is that those things give a different perspective on who you are to the music industry, music writers and people like that. After the Amy Winehouse thing, there were countless writers that contacted us for interviews:  Sharon; myself or anyone else at the label. They would tell us that they had been fans of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings or the label for years. They would tell us they’d been buying our stuff since the Desco days. But they could never go to Entertainment Weekly who they worked for and tell them they were going to write a story about us, other than some tiny little preview in the back. But the Amy Winehouse thing allowed them to go to the editor and say, “This is why this is a big deal.” It’s a little enigmatic – the Amy Winehouse effect, the Conan O’Brien appearance or having Sharon Jones in that Great Debaters movie. It wasn’t a direct marketing effect. It wasn’t that people saw those things and came to us as listeners or consumers. It was just that it opened the door and gave us a strange leverage with print editors and A&R people at major labels. It gave us a very strange clout that opened up different doors. Like you said, in a lot of interviews, especially after the 100 Days record, people would ask me, “How are you dealing with this overnight success?” For us it seems very bizarre. I couldn’t think of anything less sudden. We’ve been doing the exact same thing for fifteen years and very slowly record by record, ticket by ticket, people have been telling their friends and very slowly have been coming up. And then we finally breached a certain ceiling. It’s not the big ceiling – we’re not up there with Madonna or Britney Spears anything. But we breached a ceiling that acknowledged us as major independent artists. I don’t know where you’d file us – not as rock stars or major celebrities. But all of a sudden certain people said, “Where did you come from?” And we thought, “Are you kidding me? Where did you come from?”

Musician Coaching:
How on earth did you just take playing around NYC with a bunch of guys living in Brooklyn into an international experience?

GR:
Firstly, we did no promotional gigs. I never played for exposure. We never played in exchange for exposure or to meet somebody. We actually do it more now than we ever did then. We played for cash and valued what we did. In this market there are too many people that are too hungry, and you can’t rely on marketing yourself. You have to rely on having something people want. We really tried to concentrate on creating demand by having something people wanted. We spent our energy thinking about how we could make the show better, not how we could get more people there, and let the people figure out how to tell their friends how good the show was. It took a lot longer. If you’re a major label, and it’s 1989 and you’re putting out a new Pearl Jam record, this is an irrelevant approach. But right now, the approach they had is also kind of irrelevant. It’s a different time and a different structure. The whole game has changed.

A lot of majors are complaining about the CD market shrinking, sales going down and the sky falling, but we’ve experienced a really successful time. It’s because the basis of our business is very conservative and value based. It’s based on the idea that the reason why somebody is going to buy a Sharon Jones record is not because they saw it in a Best Buy sampler or free with a can of Coke or saw it in a Disney cartoon. The reason people are going to buy it is because someone said, “Have you heard this record? It’s great,”  “I saw the show” or “My local college record DJ played this.” It’s an old school, traditional record marketing technique. Most of what we’ve done that has been successful hasn’t been innovative.  It’s been really, really conservative and old school – the way people promoted records years ago. It’s “Get on the road, get on the bus, talk to the DJ’s, talk to the record store clerks, keep everything on a grassroots level and try to connect with people directly.” We’ve stayed away from hype and big marketing schemes, big marketing money and the types of things that endanger our business and livelihood. We tried to sell records the way someone would sell ice cream or paint at the local store. We tried to cater to the customers and not think about, “How are we going to become bigger?” By staying away from that, we’ve kept ourselves safe, secure and stable in a time that has been very volatile for a lot of companies.

Musician Coaching:
You were self booked, put together the label you signed and produced records on, didn’t have a manager until six or seven years ago. How did you go about breaking a second market? Who did you call?

GR:
The call I was making was to better musicians. I wasn’t staying up all night trying to figure out how to get people to shows. I was staying up trying to write a better horn chart.  It was all value based. I never spent a lot of time trying to hustle friends and family down to shows. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but I have family and friends that come into town and ask to come to shows, and it was the same way before. They’re not calling me because I’m their buddy; they’re calling me because it’s a good show.

Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of tips other than that. I think concentrating on the music and putting a lot of heart into it is important. To be fair, I think a big advantage I had is I didn’t have a lot of illusions about or aspirations in this industry. That was a huge advantage. I think a lot of people have this itching in the back of their head:  “How am I going to make it? How am I going to break this record? How am I going to break this band and take over the world?” Those things work against you and make a lot of people fall victim to predators in this business. There are a lot of people that make their living off artists giving things away. Artists are so hungry to make ten million dollars that they’ll never make $1,000. If you concentrate on making $100, next thing you know you’ll make $1,000, $10,000 and $100,000. But if you’re walking around the streets with your demo trying to think about breaking a record or being a pop sensation all you’re going to do is give yourself away for nothing. And if anyone makes money, it’s not going to be you, it’s going to be somebody else.

When you look at the whole American Idol picture of the music industry, you have a bunch of people signing the worst contracts you could imagine, because they want something so badly that it puts them at a horrible disadvantage negotiating wise. And you can say, “Okay, that’s kind of a far out hypothetical when you’re talking about a TV show and people coming from all over the world and signing a contract with the biggest label for a million dollars.” It’s an extreme situation, but I think it exemplifies the same psychology that goes on when a band drives from South Carolina to New York and plays a gig for nothing. The reason they’re playing a gig for nothing is because they think that’s going to make them bigger. If they were thinking, “How can we make $50?” they wouldn’t play a gig for nothing. Maybe they wouldn’t come to New York, but if they didn’t come to New York, the demand for bands would be higher. The club owner in New York could not be expecting bands to play for nothing. It really drives down the value of music when there are that many people out there that are that hungry and that anxious to give their stuff away.

That’s one of the problems in the CD market as a whole on a different scale. It has to do with devaluing music and trying to mass-market music. The only way you’re going to be able to sell a million of anything is to give it away. But that’s not a great strategy if you’re on the corner selling lemonade. It’s stupid to sit there on the corner selling lemonade for 25 cents and say, “I’m going to give this away for free for a couple days to people that look like they might want to buy lemonade, because in the future they’re going to want to buy lemonade.” It doesn’t make sense. Take the 25 cents and go make some better lemonade and keep going.  I was patient enough to take those organic steps and it’s put me in a situation where I’m very secure and not depending on anyone for anything and it is because we were very patient and we didn’t take those huge leaps to try to make ourselves bigger. We tried to keep the business focused inward.

Musician Coaching:
You did make certain bets. You borrowed money. You invested in your career but not in such a way that you couldn’t hope to pay it back without a huge titanic success. I clearly remember times you telling me your credit cards were maxed.

GR:
Yes, but they were my credit cards. They had a stake in my ass, but they didn’t have a stake in my music. There are a lot of perspectives on credit card money, especially now. But I built a career out of it. I built businesses that makes a lot of money off credit cards because that’s all I had. I borrowed money from people in my family and credit cards, and none of them have any interest in my business now. I was able to pay them back in full, and now I own everything completely. I’m not recommending that, but that was the only option I had. The other option would’ve been to try to find somebody who will invest money in my career.  I never went that route, and I had a lot of opportunities. Since then, every day we have offers on the table to buy the label. If we wanted to sell the label and become an imprint of one of the majors, I’m sure we wouldn’t have problems doing that. We could get a lot of cash, and we wouldn’t have to worry about a lot of things, but in the long term we would lose interest. I think the other thing is I was never set on being wealthy. I want to have money and take care of my family, but if I can go to work every day and do something I love and own what I write and record and record exactly the way I want and live my life the way I want to, I’m going to be a lot happier than if I’m making ten times as much money but not doing something I enjoy. I definitely couldn’t stomach the music industry if I had to be part of it in that way. I don’t have the constitution for it.

A lot of times you find the things that are profitable are not necessarily the most fun.  I’m no monk, we do a lot of things I don’t like doing. But there are some things that come out funny. For example, Chase commercials. When we got approached to do replay music for Chase commercials, it was very distasteful because I hate Chase. You go in there, and they’re assholes. They charge you too much, and it’s not a company I want to help promote in any way. But musically what they asked us to do was so unbelievably rewarding for me. They were asking us to replay Stevie Wonder songs. And what that meant was for me to go into the studio in one day and go soup-to-nuts rhythm section through background singers and strings and mixes and everything and try to recreate Motown masters. I learned more in those couple days doing that than I learned in years of engineering school. It was really going to school. It was a very humbling experience getting inside those masters in that way. It turned out to be a very enjoyable thing and it paid well.  Of course, there have been other things I didn’t enjoy.

Musician Coaching:
Any words of caution or mistakes you made along the way that you’d advise people to avoid?

GR:
The first thing I would say – and it seems little, but it crushes me every day – is that at Dap-Tone we get piles of demos and packages with full glossy photos and DVDs, press clippings, CD’s with full artwork and digipaks. I would tell people not to send anything unsolicited, because that’s a lot of money you’re spending. If you’re trying to make a living as an artist, you have to look at it as a business. You can’t be banking on selling a million records. You have to look at it and think, “How can I make $4,000?” The first way is, don’t spend $4,000 making and sending demos to labels that didn’t ask for them. It seems stupid, but it’s the first thing everybody does. If you’re looking at what you do as a career, it doesn’t make any sense. It is another thing driven by an illusion – that something like that is going to give you your big break. If somebody’s looking for a huge break, I don’t have any advice, because I never got one. If you’re looking to really do something like I did – more conservatively create your own business and market – you have to really watch your pennies and spend your money on things that are important like rent and food and paying good musicians – things that are going to make you survive and do this for a long time.

There are a lot of people that end up giving up on music because they feel like they fell on their faces, but I think a lot of times their energies are misdirected. Instead of looking inward and local and trying to create something small that they can build from and concentrating on their music and their craft and relating to people on a direct level, they’re shooting for stars. It’s like playing the lottery. It’s fun, and if you win it’s amazing, but it’s not a business plan. You don’t say, “Okay, we want to start a business and want $500,000. The first thing we’re going to do is buy $4,000 worth of scratcher tickets.” It’s kind of the same thing when you start sending demos around. If you have $4,000, don’t press up full CD’s and glossy pictures and sent them to me, especially if you haven’t done any research to find out if I’m into that music or I could be slightly into that music or you’ve never made any contact with me. I’m not saying people shouldn’t make demos or connections, because they should. But I think trying to make meaningful contact is much more important than any kind of shotgun approach.

Please check out Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings and their label Daptone Records.

For more interviews and articles like this, check out Rick Goetz’s blog MusicianCoaching.com

Related posts:

1. Are You Too Old to Make It?
2. The Self-Released Album – A Four Part Series
3. Top 10 Mistakes Artists Make

Check out this DIY performance video featuring Sugar Water Purple performing "Before This Began."

Over the past five weeks, we’ve explored the pre- and post-production processes involved with the DIY video shoot I did with the band Sugar Water Purple. We’ll wrap this series up by adding the final touches to the video and then publishing online via YouTube.

Step 3: Adding Titles

iMovie offers intuitive titling and transition features that help give your video a professional look.

iMovie comes with a nice assortment of titling options, readily accessible from the right side of the bar at the bottom of the project window (directly above the window in which your original source video is displayed).

Before adding the opening title, we decided to add three seconds of black screen, using the “Maps and Background” tool, which is represented by a globe at the far right of the small tool bar. This totally black video would be at the top of the finished video, over which we would add the opening credit that would include the song title, band name, location, and date of recording. To add the black Dan clicked on the “Black” option and dragged it up to the front of our Project, then trimmed it to three seconds.

To give the opening a more polished look, we decided to add an iMovie transition to smoothly move from the credits to the live setting. This was easy using one of a set of 20 pre-made transitions found in the “Transition” browser (it’s right next to the “Maps and Backgrounds” browser and looks like an hourglass). Choose one and drag it anywhere in the project window at the point where you want a transition. iMovie seamlessly added in the transition we had chosen, called a cross-dissolve, which lasted about three seconds. This gave us a smooth and professional-looking transition to the live setting.

Now it was time to add the opening title. While we had our play head parked on the opening black section, Dan clicked on the Titles Browser (a tool represented by a capital “T”) and selected the first title set shown, “Centered.” He clicked on it and an editing window appeared. We chose the “Show Fonts” option to pick a basic and easy-to-read font, knowing that the HD video would be compressed going to YouTube. We wanted to have different sizes for each line on the opening credits, but found that changing font size automatically altered all of the words on the screen. We learned that by clicking on the title we had added over the black and then choosing the Text menu and “Show Fonts,” we could then highlight any letter or word and change just that element. After a little tweaking the font sizes of the various lines, we had the opening titles nearly set. We decided to add an additional second to our opening black sequence, so that the credits would be on screen a bit longer.

Dan repeated the process at the end of the song, adding five seconds of black this time, typing the band’s MySpace address as the title for the closing segment. We repeated the same duration cross-dissolve, this time taking us from the live setting to the closing title. After taking a break to stretch, rotate our sore neck muscles and get away from the computer screen for a few minutes, we came back to double check our sync, and the opening and closing sequences we had created to frame the band’s performance. All in all, we felt that everything worked quite well. Total time to complete the first three steps of our post-production plan was just under two hours.

Step 4: Video Distribution

Among the many options to share your video, there are four quality levels available to post on YouTube.

Music video distribution has come a long way since I worked on my first music video back in 1983… when I had to make $25 U-matic dubs and ship them to managers, labels, and TV stations one at a time. For the Sugar Water Purple Video, we agreed to distribute the final product via YouTube, which is a straightforward process using iMovie’s built-in options.

After taking a day to get away from the project, I viewed the final video edit a few times and was still happy with the result, so decided to post it to YouTube. (You’ll need your own free YouTube account in order to post your videos online.) One of the menu options in iMovie is “Share,” which gives you various options to share your completed video projects. After selecting the YouTube option, a menu box appears with four different quality options: Mobile, Medium, Large, and HD. I had heard that YouTube now allowed posting of HD content, so I started out by selecting the HD option and went through the next steps in compressing and adding more credits information (songwriter, video and audio crew, etc.) to the file. This process took more than an hour, so I did a few other tasks while my computer crunched the HD video down to size.

You can add additional information and credits to your YouTube posting, as shown here including contact information, songwriting credits, etc.

Later that evening, I was ready to post the video to my YouTube account and started the process, again leaving the computer working with the small progress bar creeping along at a snail’s pace. I actually went to bed and the next morning was greeted by a message telling me that at 4 GB, my video file was too large to post to YouTube! (An article on YouTube confirms that uploads are limited to either 2GB or 10 minutes in length.) This was a bit disappointing as the HD video quality was really nice. I emailed a colleague who has been working a lot with DIY video and he suggested instead of using the HD setting, select the Mobile setting, which would compress the Sugar Water Purple video down to a 480×272 video image which would easily upload to YouTube and even be viewable on high-end cell phones such as the iPhone or Droid.

This time, the video compression took about twenty minutes and the successful uploading to YouTube took less than a half-hour. Voila! Our DIY video project was now ready for distribution, courtesy of YouTube. I emailed Dan and the band members so they could check out the video online and give the final distribution copy their approvals. Everyone thought it looked great and the band members especially commented on how good the audio mix sounded.

Post Mortem
Working as a team, the band and our crew had completed what we had set out to do: plan, shoot, edit, and distribute a DIY performance video for almost no money. Looking back on the experience and the end result, there are only a few things that I would have done differently. First, I would have taken more time to test out the cameras and tripods, especially since we wanted to pan, zoom, and tilt while we were video recording. Next, I would have arranged to have a mixing board with at least sixteen mic inputs for a band this size. As a result of being limited to ten inputs, we had to drop the background vocal harmony parts on the song. Finally, I would have taken more care to ensure that I actually performed a distinct, sharply articulated handclap as our sync pulse on each take. Since I was holding the sign with our various take numbers up and then fumbling with the paper signs while I counted down and prepared to clap, only take one had a really loud, clean handclap. Next time, I’ll have one of the band members hold up the signs with the song title and take numbers so I can just concentrate on my small but important contribution to making the next DIY video.

By borrowing the cameras, tripods, Zoom recorder, mics and cables, and arranging to rent a local all-ages club on a Sunday afternoon, we got the video done for the following budget.

Black plastic sheeting for walls: $25
Black gaffer’s tape: $15
Case of water: $4
Hall rental: $50
Post-shoot pizzas for band and crew: $40

Total DIY Video Production Cost: $134

By careful planning, realistically defining what your goal is in making a performance video, and assuming you can borrow the necessary equipment and have access to a Mac or PC with DIY video editing software, you can experiment and learn how to make an effective music performance video to help advance your career.

Good luck and please feel free to post your own thoughts about any DIY music videos you have made.

Special thanks to Dan Faughnder, Erik Urbina, Ralph Roberts, Middagh Goodwin and the band Sugar Water Purple for collaborating on this project. Thanks also to James Gonzalez, Jeff Crawford, Jace Hargis and Dave Chase for the loan of various pieces of video and audio gear.

Story Links
DIY Performance Video Part 1: Pre-production and the Shoot

DIY Performance Video Part 2: Post-Production

iLife Suite of software from Apple (includes iMovie, Garage Band, iPhoto and iWeb) – $79 to purchase or upgrade, will only run on the Mac platform

Windows Live Movie Maker – don’t have a Mac? If you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7, try Microsoft’s free video creation app, which has many similar features to iMovie

Related posts:

1. DIY Performance Video – Part 2: Post-Production
2. DIY Performance Video Part 1: Pre-Production and the Shoot
3. Do You Have a Video Policy?

Midi quantization is a standard function in most digital audio workstations.

For example, when you are arranging music and recording the drum (played with your fingers using keyboard or drum pad), there are certain notes that are not quite on the beat. The easiest way to edit the MIDI notes data is by using the MIDI quantization features. Some DAW allows real time quantizing but I personally prefer to quantize the notes only after auditioning the track.

Below is a video tutorial by Dustypuppy, showing you how to use the quantize function in Sonar.

7/15/2010 John Hess explains how to podcast. He says it is the least exensive way to make your message available to the whole world and reviews the tools and techniques needed to start your own podcast. 73.6 MB

The manager of Disc Makers’ Authoring House talks about common mistakes, post-production, and multimedia programming

Tell me a little about what you were doing before you came to the Authoring House.
I have over 25 years of experience in video and film production. I received a Bachelor’s Degree in Media Arts, with a concentration in film and television from The University of South Carolina. I worked for Comcast and then Sony and was a freelance producer before coming here. I’ve done everything from writing, producing, editing, and shooting to pulling cables – all the jobs involved in production and post-production – and I also was a multimedia programmer.

Is multimedia programming what you’d describe as the work we do here?
It’s a combination of multimedia programming, DVD authoring, and video post-production.

Tell me about the distinctions between those two. DVD authoring involves what?
DVD authoring involves taking a finished video or film and encoding it, designing a menu or interface, then putting everything together – programming it so the menus work, the chapter buttons go to the correct spots in the video, and then converting it to the DVD specification so that it will play in a DVD player.

With DVD replication you can’t send in a video tape and get 100 DVD copies made like you could with VHS duplication. For DVD, you actually have to take that content and encode it and covert it to the DVD format. From that master, you can then make your copies.

What is multimedia programming?
That involves taking raw files – video, word docs, etc. – and creating an interface so the end user can play the video. This can also link to a website or other documents like PDFs and Word docs. It’s very similar to having a website play from a CD.

Are you typically getting a finished master from the client?
No. When something comes to the Authoring House, it’s mostly just the raw parts – a video tape, a digital QuickTime file, an AVI file, or sometimes even the previous version of the DVD. With the latter, the client often needs us to make a change – a phone number or removing a small section of video. We can’t go in and just erase it like it’s a Word doc. We have to rip apart the DVD and extract the video and the raw parts – the menu and the audio – at which point we can make the changes and then re-author the master,

Also, there are some clients who don’t have the equipment or ability to put their content together – in which case we can author it for them. And if they don’t have a finished video we can make one for them. Or like I said, sometimes the client has their video mostly finished and they need someone to put finishing touches on their project like color correction or sound mastering. They may even just need a couple of tweaks done. Sometimes they can’t burn the physical master and they send us their authored files and we can create the master for them.

What about sound editing?
That would usually coincide with the video editing, and if they want audio mastering, we can send their files to the SoundLab. They’ll master it, send it back to us and we sync it back to the video and then finish the DVD. We will also encode videos for the web and digital distribution on platforms such as iPod and iPad.

So that’s for films as well as corporate videos?
Yes, films, corporate videos, and music videos. We can work with whatever format you have at whatever stage in the process you may be. And it’s always best to give us the original, most uncompressed files (video, film, audio) to use for your project. For example, we can work from a DVD, but it’s compressed, so after we make changes, it will be recompressed, which may not always yield the best results. Oftentimes it’s fine, but it’s always best to start with an original video master and audio master because it’s uncompressed and will produce a better quality product. But sometime that’s just not possible and the client only has a copy of the DVD.

Is there any number of common mistakes you generally see people falling into?
People wanting to send a Flash file and make that into a DVD, or a PowerPoint document – mostly sending in some sort of computer file and wanting to make it into a DVD. We can do that, but oftentimes it means starting from the ground up and rebuilding it. If they haven’t designed it as a DVD from the beginning, the screen size is going to be wrong, the resolution may be wrong, and it may cost more to convert it to a DVD then had they designed it for TV from the start.

They’re coming to you with something that’s designed for a computer?
Yes, so they have a PowerPoint or a Flash project and the interactivity is not going to translate to a DVD. We have to eliminate most of it or re-program some of it. Another issue is having web-sized videos that aren’t the (720×480) standard definition video size or the (1920×1080) high definition video size. They’ll send in a 320×240 web video and want us to make a DVD, which means it’ll have to be stretched and blown up and it’s going to be grainy and fuzzy and not look as good if they had sent us the uncompressed or original file. And keep in mind, an uncompressed video file is going to be huge. We’re talking about 101 Gigabytes per program hour for Standard Definition video. You’ll need to send it in on an external drive. (we prefer firewire 800 drives)

For someone who is planning on using the Authoring House for post-production work, do you recommend they confer with you before they even get their project started?
Yes. Any of us are more than happy to speak with someone ahead of time to make sure they’re on the correct path. It can save a lot of headaches and a lot of cost down the line.

What are some of the questions you’d want someone to ask you if they called you up before they went into production?
What format should my video be? What format should my artwork be? What is the best method to send in my assets? Basically the more questions you have and the more information you can give us the better we can meet your expectations. One important step for DVD authoring is to fill out “The DVD Menu information Guide” and the “The DVD Authoring Checklist” to the best of your ability. They are available on the Authoring House FAQ. These forms provide us with the information to be included in your DVD and also provides information about how you created your project. This information is invaluable. We use it to determine the best way to author your DVD.

You mentioned color correction earlier, what exactly is that?
One of the best lessons I ever learned in college was when a professor told me that every production is a compromise from it’s inception, meaning it’s never going to be exactly the way you see it in your head. There are always issues that arise on the set. Somebody forgot to white-balance the camera, the lights don’t match, you’re using fluorescent overhead lights which are greenish… the shooting conditions are never perfect, so what happens is you have your final footage and there are some things that aren’t very desirable and you want to change them.

For instance, as you’re shooting over the course of the day, the sun changes angle, clouds move in and out, so when you turn around to get the reverse angle, the lighting may be different. Color correction can match shots to make them look like they were filmed at the same time or the same place. You can also do colored effects like sepia tone, bleach bypass, or film look.

You can even just balance colors. For instance, say the green of the trees doesn’t look right – you can modify that. And the sky – one of the biggest problems with the new digital cameras is if the sky’s brightness is too “hot,” it tends to blow out and you can lose all the detail. The better quality camera you use, and the more uncompressed the footage is, the more information we have to work with. So in the example of the sky being too “hot,” if you shot with a high quality camera, the detail in the sky – clouds etc – may be there, but not currently visible. With color correction, it may be possible to bring down the brightness of the sky and see some clouds and other details.

But if you weren’t careful with your exposure and you’re using a cheaper camera, that information is lost and color correction won’t do a thing. The same thing applies to faces. We can stretch out the contrast of an image so that you have white whites and really dark blacks with some detail, and all tones in between, while making sure the facial tones are accurate. With today’s color correction tools I can even mask out a window that’s too “hot,” bringing down the brightness to match the levels in the room.

So color correction can be as simple matching shots or as complicated as trying to pull details out of an image. But again, it’s important to shoot with a high quality camera because if the detail isn’t there, it makes it much more difficult to produce the desired effect.

Do you do evaluations to determine whether Authoring House services might benefit a given project?
Yes, someone might send in a project and ask, “Will color correction help this?” or “Can you do anything with editing?” Or maybe they have a finished DVD and they’re not happy with it and they want to know if we can make it better. Most of the time we can improve on or create a more interesting menu for their DVD. We create all custom design for every project – not cookie-cutter menu styles you might get out of a program – but a custom design that really suits the DVD and matches the quality of your project. We do that a lot. And creating a new custom menu won’t affect the quality of the DVD. We’ll take it apart, but the integrity of the original video quality won’t be affected as we’re just working on the menu and then reassembling the pieces.

In concert with the SoundLab, we will screen the audio to see if the project will benefit from audio mastering. We can also look to see if something like color correction will improve the final product, and we’re going to be honest. If it’s highly compressed, I don’t know that there’s really much we can do with it and we’ll let you know.

Is there a service or two that you’d like more people to be aware of?
Post-production editing, absolutely, and DVD authoring. A lot of times people will come to Disc Makers with a finished DVD master not realizing we can handle the entire project under one roof. I’ve spoken with plenty of people who are surprised to find out we offer post production, color correction, and menu design. Plus, we’re going to guarantee our work, and there’s no fear that your master will not meet the DVD specification and not be suitable for replication. We do this every day and we guarantee our work. We work on many DVD projects that were produced elsewhere and then failed testing when it came time to replicate. Then the Authoring House is called in to tear apart the DVD and rebuild it. If they had come to us in the beginning, we would have guaranteed a master that’s going to work and not cause any problems. In the long run it can save time, money, and frustration.

For more information about the Authoring House at Disc Makers, visit the Authoring House website.

Check out the Authoring House FAQ page for more answers to your post-production and authoring questions, or email the Authoring House at authoring@discmakers.com.

Related posts:

1. DIY Performance Video – Part 2: Post-Production
2. From DV to DVD: Tips for Outstanding Results
3. DIY Performance Video – Part 3: Titles & Distribution

7/14/2010 Steve Bauer interviews Chris Cook from Dice Electronics who normally manufacturers car audio connectivity products about how they have created an off-the-shelf HD radio that uses audible feedback to provide information about whatever you do on the radio, making it accessible to blind and low vision users. 25.1 MB

Cakewalk has just released a free Mac Support Update for the V-Studio 20. The V-Studio 20 Mac Support Update enables the VS-20 hardware and Effects Editor to be used with all popular Mac-based recording software titles. The update provides Mac users with all the benefits of recording with the V-Studio 20 COSM guitar and vocal [...]

Check out this DIY performance video featuring Sugar Water Purple performing "Before This Began."

Last month, I described the pre-production planning process and the DIY video shoot done with the band Sugar Water Purple. Now let’s step through the DIY post-production process used to finish up the video.

First, I wanted to recap a few decisions we made in the pre-production process that came up in reader comments to last month’s story. (See the link at the end of the story to read Pt. 1)

One reader pointed out that we used a stationary camera position for the 5:00+ song and suggested having multiple cameras would have made the video more exciting. While this is true, a multi-camera shoot would have required more time and editing than our project allowed for. The purpose of the video was to see what type of quality we could get sticking to a simple, one-camera, one-take approach.

Another reader questioned why we bothered to record the audio to a separate device, instead of taking the audio mixing board output and plugging it directly into the cameras. While this is an option, the audio recording capabilities of most consumer-grade video cameras do not offer the type of headroom that will make for good audio reproduction. Just look at the thousands of self-made performance videos on YouTube where this approach was tried to hear poorly balanced or distorted audio tracks.< Alternately, using the camera’s on-board microphone rarely results in a decent audio track for a full band. If you are a solo performer with acoustic guitar and vocals, you might get a decent result using the camera’s on-board mic, but using higher quality external mics and a separate audio recorder will always yield a better-sounding audio track for a band. That’s why we chose to do a separate live audio mix to the Zoom recorder and match the audio and video recordings up in post-production. The live mix came out clean and very representative of what the band actually sounds like live. This was one of the goals that the band was looking for, to capture what they sounded and looked like in a live setting.

Post-Production
While the band was packing up their equipment after the shoot, I pulled the SD Memory card out of the Zoom recorder and, using a universal card reader, downloaded the audio mixes for all four complete takes of “Before This Began” to my computer.

At home that night, I plugged in both of our cameras and, one at a time, transferred the video recordings to my Mac. The trick to making this a snap is to first open the iMovie application (which comes free on all new Macs). When I plugged in the camera’s USB cable, the software automatically recognized the camera and asked me if I wanted to import the video files into iMovie.

After clicking “Yes,” it took about five minutes to download the normal resolution video we shot with the Canon F200. Then I repeated the process for the HF200 camera, and that took a little more than 30 minutes to download the larger, high definition video files.

A few days later, Dan and I got together at my house and started checking the audio mixes. All four complete takes came out fine, but as we expected, take four had the best overall audio mix. The audio was saved as 16-bit, 44.1K .WAV files, with the complete song taking 59.7 MB of disc space. Next, we reviewed take four of the video recordings from both cameras. What we noticed was that the tripod we had used under the FS200 didn’t work properly, so each time the cameraman zoomed or panned the camera, there was a slight, but perceptible amount of jitter, which ended up rendering the footage from the FS 200 unusable. All was not lost, however, since our second camera, the HF 200, had a much sturdier, fluid head tripod that performed as expected.

In hindsight, shooting with two cameras was a good safety measure: had we only used the FS 200 video, we would have had to reschedule another shoot. A simple, but essential piece of equipment, such as a tripod, should never be taken for granted when making your own DIY videos.

The second thing we realized was that we had used the high definition mode on the HF 200 and the resultant video had much greater contrast and definition than the footage from the FS 200. So the second lesson is, if you can borrow a camera that is high definition-capable, take advantage of that to capture the original video in the highest possible resolution.

To complete the post-production process we faced four distinct linear tasks. These were:
1. Syncing up the audio recording with the video
2. Trimming the beginning and end of the selected video recording
3. Adding opening titles and the band’s MySpace address as closing credits
4. Posting the finished video to YouTube.

At the start of our post-production session, we had a complete video recording of the song and a separate complete audio recording of the song. The first thing we learned was that iMovie requires you to start the editing process by opening a “New Project,” which would become the finished version of the video. In my opinion, this is one of iMovie’s best design features, because as you edit your video in the new “Project,” your original source video is never changed, so you always have that as a back up.

Step One: Syncing Audio with Video

Keith holding up the video slate sheet with the song title and take number on camera prior to his sync count down.

We had relied on our own DIY substitute for the electronic pulse and SMPTE time code that would have been generated by a professional clapper system. By focusing each camera on me while I held up a sign with the take number and counting down before clapping my hands, we hoped that we could adequately synchronize our separate audio recording to the video. Now it was time to find out if this would really work.

The raw video showing in our project window had the compressed and echo-y sound that was recorded using the HF200’s on-board mic. Dan went to the Edit menu and selected “Detach Audio,” which separates the camera audio from the video. This audio now showed it as a separate colored band underneath the video strip. Since we weren’t going to use any of the on-board audio, we deleted the track.

Next, we minimized the iMovie app, opened the folder with the separately recorded audio mixes, and dragged the audio track onto the computer desktop. Then we dragged the .WAV file over into iMovie and dropped it right over the camera audio track in the project window.

While the audio import was a snap, getting it in sync with the performance proved to be a bit more challenging.

The audio mix landed roughly three seconds ahead of when the video performance actually began. Dan was able to click on the beginning of the audio track and drag it to the right (later in the project window) and after a few tries, we had the visual of me clapping fairly close to the sound of the handclap on the audio track from the Zoom.

It only took about ten seconds of viewing before we realized that we were still out of sync, but by a much smaller amount.

The other thing we noticed was that the newly imported audio volume was a bit low. By double-clicking on the project video, the Inspector pop-up menu box appears, which allows you to fine tune video or audio for your project. Dan selected “Normalize Clip Volume,” which boosted the audio level nicely for the overall audio mix.

Watching the drummer and matching up the sticks hitting his hi-hat and cymbals was one good way to check our sync. The song’s chorus also featured some aggressive chords on guitar, which was another visual “hit” that had a correspondingly clear audio element we could check. The third cue we looked at closely was our singer’s mouth, and the sound of her breathing on the audio mix. What we discovered as we worked to accurately sync up the audio and video was that the original hand clap sync only got us so close.

In other words, the video and audio of the handclap would appear perfectly in sync at the top, but when we closely watched the band’s performance, and the “hits” we were tracking, we found that we were still off by a few frames. (Each second of video is broken down into thirty smaller units, called frames.) It actually took us about 30 minutes of painstaking experimentation before we finally had the sync close enough to move on to the next step.

Although it was tedious and time-consuming, we had proven that we could marry a separate audio recording to the video successfully, resulting in a much better audio track than the on camera mic had captured. Dan and I agreed the extra hassle in recording audio separately and syncing up had been worth it, as our mix was clean and had a full frequency sound that no on-board camera mic would have captured.

Step Two: Trimming the Video Recording

Working in the iMovie environment.

Dan set the spots where we wanted the live performance to begin about five seconds before the music began. The most intuitive way to do this is to use the software’s “Precision Editor,” which shows as a small gear wheel when you roll your mouse pointer over your project’s video clip. Then you simply drag the little handles at the front and back of your project video to determine where the project’s video will begin and end. (If you want more precision, holding down Option and then using the left or right arrow allows you to adjust the Trim Point one frame at a time.)

The day of the video shoot, I had instructed the band to freeze for about fifteen seconds between takes, being sure to mute their instruments completely and avoid talking or making any noise. This proved helpful as Dan set the start point at five seconds before the song started (to allow for a fade in to set the stage) and ended (for the fade out). We played back the entire video recording back in high definition to confirm that we liked the start and ending points before moving on to adding the titles.

Part Three will detail the process of adding titles and publishing the video to YouTube.

Special thanks to Dan Faughnder, Erik Urbina, Ralph Roberts, Middagh Goodwin and the band Sugar Water Purple for collaborating on this project. Thanks also to James Gonzalez, Jeff Crawford, Jace Hargis and Dave Chase for the loan of various pieces of video and audio gear.

Story Links
DIY Performance Video Part 1: Pre-production and the Shoot

iLife Suite of software from Apple (includes iMovie, Garage Band, iPhoto and iWeb) – $79 to purchase or upgrade, will only run on the Mac platform

Windows Live Movie Maker – don’t have a Mac? If you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7, try Microsoft’s free video creation app, which has many similar features to iMovie

iMovie free “How To” tutorials

Glossary of Commonly Used Video Terminology

Related posts:

1. DIY Performance Video – Part 3: Titles & Distribution
2. DIY Performance Video Part 1: Pre-Production and the Shoot
3. Craig Hanna on Video Post-Production and Authoring – Part I

While maintaining a steady web presence is a vital part of any musician’s promotional arsenal, you shouldn’t rely on it as the only way for fans to feel connected to your music. Make sure you’re not neglecting an equally important means of making an impact: real-life interaction with your audience. Opportunities to be face-to-face with your fans – most often at live shows – certainly aren’t going to be as frequent as your social networking communications, but this only serves to make them more special, giving you a chance to leave a lasting impression that you could never achieve online. But what can you do to make sure your audience remembers you after the gig is over? As usual, you’ve got to get crafty and make yourself stand out from the pack.

Portland band Dirty Mittens, when searching for a unique way to both ramp up fan interaction and say thanks to their loyal following, stumbled onto an idea that struck them as so simple they couldn’t believe they were the only band doing it: punch cards. “We’re making VIP punch cards, like you get at the coffee shop,” says singer/guitarist Chelsea Morrisey. “If you come to 5 shows and get us to punch your card each time, you can redeem the card for a super awesome prize. Basically whatever you want: a copy of our album when it’s released, drink beers with us at practice, a shirt, make-outs with any eligible band member, a free show, we come over and make you dinner, whatever.”

They had the cards designed by a friend and handed them out inside demo CDs they distributed for free at shows. They’ve found that not only does it encourage repeat visits to their shows, but it has also shown their fans that they appreciate them enough to give something back. “For the band, it’s our way of saying thanks to the people who come out to our shows and help make playing music something that we love to do,” says Morrisey.

You can check out the Dirty Mittens here.

Do you have a promotion idea to share? Please leave it in the comment section below.

Related posts:

1. 20 Ways To Engage Your Fans
2. What is a Free CD Worth?
3. Sell More Than Just Your Music – 9 Quick Tips to Boost Gig Sales.

Dustypuppy created this video tutorial showing you how to make use of the envelope automation.

Envelope tool is a function to draw or record the automation for your midi and audio track. Almost every parameter can be automated including pan, volume, effects send, and also parameters of the effect or synth inserted on the track.

The new envelope draw tool offers free hand drawing and preset shape drawing.

Cakewalk, Intel, and Ourstage.com have partnered up to launch the Intel Superstars Competition powered by OurStage.com. Beginning July 1, 2010 aspiring rock, pop and country artists are invited to upload their best original song in the Intel Superstars Competition of their genre. The Top 5 artists from each of the three competitions will receive prize packages including [...]

Whether you record live bands and real drum kits or use synthetic drum sounds, quite often you want to add some weight to the kick drum sound without making it sound “flabby” or overloaded. There are a few different ways of doing this, so let’s get started on really making your kick “kick”!

Narrow Band EQ
The easiest way to fatten up a kick drum is using EQ. But rather than just applying a simple “low shelf” type EQ, it is much better to apply a narrow band of EQ boost to the “fundamental” frequency of the kick.

First, choose a fully parametric band in your EQ of choice. Ideally, this should be one which is capable of narrow bandwidth settings (up to 100 is good!). Then, make the bandwidth (or “Q”) as narrow as it can go and set the gain to maximum. It is a good idea to turn your monitors down while doing this, as this technique can easily give some very loud signals while you are working on the first stage.

Using a high boost and narrow bandwidth setting on the EQ to find the fundamental frequency of the kick

Set the frequency to around 500Hz or so and then, slowly, turn down the frequency. As you do this, you will hear certain frequencies which sound much louder. These are the harmonics or overtones. As you keep going lower, you will eventually get to the fundamental frequency; as a general rule this is somewhere between 50Hz and 100Hz. Once you have found this frequency you can pull the gain down to zero and open up the bandwidth a little and then gradually raise the gain control again until you have the required amount of “oomph”. By using this technique you are boosting only the most important and dominant frequency while leaving everything else intact.

Using a narrow band boost helps to bring out the fundamental frequency of the kick without overloading the bass frequencies

Distorted Reality
Another option you can use in some situations is to create of copy of the kick drum track (audio or synth/sampler) and then, on this copy, add some distortion (perhaps using the free Camel Audio Camel Crusher) and a low-pass filter with the cutoff frequency set pretty low (maybe around 100Hz or so to start with) and then gradually raise the level of this distorted sound under the main kick.

You will probably need to adjust the distortion settings and the cutoff frequency of the filter to get a good balance. This effect doesn’t boost frequencies in the same way as the EQ method above does, but it works by adding in another layer which is only low frequencies, thereby effectively increasing the “weight.” Also, by adding some distortion you are actually increasing the harmonic density of the low and lower-mid frequencies which helps to give more “body” to the sound.

Mellow Sub Machine
Finally, you can always use that most simple (and often neglected) of synth waveforms, the humble sine wave. Find a synth with a sine wave option (I often use the Logic EXS-24 but any synth or plugin with a sine wave will work. There are even free ones that you can download), and then set up an amplitude envelope with appropriate settings (fast attack and short to medium decay and release, zero sustain) and then bring up the volume under the main kick. At this point you will need to adjust the tuning of the sine wave until you get the two sounds “in tune”. This really is a matter of trial and error, but you will know when it’s “right” because there will be a really warm and round emphasis of the “thump” of the kick. You may possibly have to remove a little of the real low end from the original kick as well to help things blend but that really depends on the original sound.

Logic's EXS-24 sampler set up as a sine wave generator to create a "sub bass" tone to add weight to a kick drum

This article was originally published at We All Make Music, a website dedicated to helping musicians thrive in a post-label world. The author, Simon Langford, is a professional music producer and remixer whose group, Soul Seekerz, has produced numerous top 20 hits in the UK, including official remixes of hits by Britney Spears, Rihanna, and Kelly Clarkson. He also writes for the UK-based magazine Sound on Sound.

Related posts:

1. 10 Practical Tips For Recording Amazing Guitars
2. Tips to Ensure Success with Mastering
3. Pre-Production and Your Recording

CakewalkInc: RT @LowEndgearslutz: Cakewalk offering Z3ta+ for €19.99 - ends today: Bargain thumbsup Z3TA+ Download http://bit.ly/dv5JCb