Happy New Year to…..well, yes, um…..

So what do I do on New Year’s Eve? Listen to music. And what music do I listen to that blasts me blissfully in to the new year? To set the proper tone for 2014?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGs0g2m2Mxc

Seriously, this cheers me up. A song that should be blasted at full volume to enjoy. Head banging is good on New Year’s eve. Not that I’m advising banging anyone else’s head – that would be BAD. Just your own.

Then watch a live performance video (not great quality video, but the sonics are pretty good). Compared to the albums, the live band was much more punk. Amazing amount of energy!! Which is, of course, what you want coming in to a new year – energy!!  good grief!!! the logic is indisputable!!!! (no, we’re not a cult – sheesh – a few exclamation points and people start to worry).

See!! Happy New Year!!!

 

 

YouTube Channel – Yay!

Yes, we have had a YouTube channel for awhile now, BUT (and there is always a “but”) due to some issues that I would rather not try to explain (it is a long story and not worth the time to type) we lost our previous videos.  They have all been re-uploaded and we will be posting more episodes for the In the Studio after the New Year.

In the mean time, I wanted to say that I heard a great song last night from other bloggers I follow and if you haven’t checked it out previously (their blog) please do so, lots of good music industry updates, lots of good music, and just an all round good place to check out if you are an audiohead (click here>>>Unruly Hearts<<<).  By the way – great song was posted for today (Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here).

Anyways – on with the music.  This song is awesome and I found it over at Unruly Hearts… I’m a lyrics person so the lyrics to this spoke to me (no pun intended):

http://vimeo.com/32156180

…And It’s Free!

Well, thought we’d throw everyone some free swag considering it’s the holidays (any holiday you believe in is fine with me). So we recorded a cover from one of our favorite bands, The Gun Club and put it on SoundCloud for you free. So you can have ‘Ghost On The Highway’ for your listening pleasure as a download (did I mention it’s free?). We had a lot of fun recording it – it’s pretty much a ‘studio live’ version. Hope you enjoy hearing it as much as we enjoyed doing it.

– Pass it along to all your friends – (hint – it’s free)

What Do These Two Things Have In Common?

Well, if you’ve seen this title before, you know the answer – usually nothing.

Anyway….

Some ‘Recent Listening’. Of course for me that doesn’t necessarily mean brand new music. I’ve taken to a lot of older ‘Americana/Rock’ lately. I love the looseness, the ’emotional content’, the space of the instrumentation, great vocals. So I went back 44 years. Driving an empty mountain road and listening to The Band’s second album. The feeling I get makes me remember why I loved music in the first place.

So….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceRg_rxXQ_E

What else do we have? This dude remade the six minute long mall chase from The Blues Bothers with Lego. Seriously. And it’s pretty cool. Found this on the web and the article also has a side to side comparison to the real movie. And a video of how it was made.

http://io9.com/the-blues-brothers-mall-car-chase-scene-perfectly-rec-1475760739

See, nothing in common.

 

 

Walking Abbey Road

I came across a pretty cool page on the internet. Someone has taken old photos from a Beatles recording session at Abbey Road studio, combined them with a few current photos of the same room (not many changes in that studio room – if it ain’t broke, why fix it) and created an immersive walk through environment. I find this interesting on several levels. First, it’s the Beatles in a recording session. You can look around the studio from the point of view of John, Paul, George, Ringo and George Martin. You pick from one of the five points of view then use the arrows to pan left, right, up and down. There is a zoom in/out function. The tech of the photo environment is great all on it’s own. For any studio hounds, there’s a second bonus. You can view the recording set up they were using at the time. Everyone was in one room. Not a lot of mics being used – it was all about the quality of mics and preamps and the art of mic placement. Check out the simplicity of the drum mics. No stacks of huge amps. At the time this was all being mixed down live and going to two track tape. It was certainly as much art as tech. Imagine the quality of sound in a room that large. I sometimes think that the huge amount of tech available today can be more of a distraction than a help. Seeing the setup in this session gives me a lot of ideas to try in our studio. I hope it gives you some ideas and inspiration.

Now, let’s get in to the time machine…….

http://beatlesinstudio.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/virtually-in-studio-2.html