SSL Mix Buss

Here is a great new place to hang out: www.mixbuss.com!

We created Mix Buss as a way to share knowledge about the art of music production; a place where you'll be able to get essential info from engineers and producers, check out valuable tips and tutorials, interact with each other and help us buld a thriving online community of music production enthusiasts.

With more and more of us making music in home and project studios we wanted to provide a place where established producers and engineers can trade info with aspiring ones.

E3 2006: Wii Drums

Some professional drummers were hired to play some drums the whole day using the Wii Drums game and a Wii controller in each hand. It seems to kind of work, but there might be some very slight delay or some other way of synchronizing the sounds that made it sometimes sound a bit unnatural. Watch the video and judge for yourself. I would else think that this kind of game would be simply awesome. Imagine mixing this with Wii Orchestra, Wii keyboard, Wii guitar and more instruments, and imagine if you could create extremely original music this way. Link to movie.

Video: Jean-Jacques Perrey

Here are some great videos about Jean-Jacques Perrey. You can listen to some famous tracks from Perrey at myspace.

Get that sound ...

GetThatSound.com is a nice online resource for fellow musicians who'd like to know what particular gear was used on their favorite songs.

Can you Produce a Hit Song?

Here is an interesting story from Scott Romig. He posted his point of view as one of many replies in a thread titled "Can you Produce a Hit Song?" at gearslutz. Very salutary ...

I think that a "hit" also requires timing in the market place.

I have experienced this from many artist angles. In 1999 my band, Dexter Freebish, was an unsigned band in Austin Texas. We won the Grand Prize of the John Lennon songwriting contest for our song "Leaving Town." The song was recorded during a demo deal with MCA records and produced by a local producer named Dave Mcnair. The demo recording was done with 3 other songs over a 4 day period here in Austin. After winning song of the year we were signed by capitol records and went on to record our Debut Album "A Life of Saturdays." Most of the the album was co-produced with John Travis. But "Leaving Town" was co-produced by John Shanks.

For the Album version we did drums and vocals at Sunset Sounds with overdubs at Shanks' home studio. Tom Lord Algae mixed "Leaving Town" and a couple of other tracks with Chris Lord Algae and Jack Joseph Puig mixing the others on the album.

We spent around $500,000 on the album with another $300,000 on the video. Capitol spared no expense on the radio promotion or marketing. In the end "Leaving Town" was a moderate succes.

We made it to #10 @ AAA, #24 @ modern rock, and #33 at top 40. Moderate VH1 airplay and sold somewhere around 100,000 albums after touring our butts off for 15 months.

In 2000 you will recall that the airwaves were filled with the likes of Britney Spears, Nsync on the pop side and KORN, Limp Biscuit, etc on the rock side. There was not a whole lot of airplay being devoted to alternative/pop/rock.

We had a heck of a time getting any momentum at radio and in the end was shelved when a new label head came to capitol.

Now......maybe "Leaving Town" was a mediocre song OR maybe it had "hit potential." All I know is that the marketing $$$ were flying and yet in the marketplace we were unable to gain a strong foothold.

In the interest of furthering the dialogue I have created a myspace account and posted the demo version and Album version of "Leaving Town" for your listening enjoyment at http://www.myspace.com/motherofdestiny. please download as the streaming quality sucks.

Where are they now?

Capitol payed for us to record another album in 2003. We used Matthew Wilder as producer and worked with Mike Shipley as mixer.

After recording "Tripped into Divine" capitol dropped us because we still did not fit into the radio marketplace and they had no idea how to "market" us.

We ended up putting out the album independently and won another john lennon songwriting contest for the song "prozak" yet were unable to generate enough airplay to "pop"

Since then....the band has folded. I am currently writing/producing/playing alot of guitar, leading worship and waiting for the next "Big Break."

Regards,
scott romig

Tom Green LIVE worldwide show

News from Tom Green: We are heading towards a launch of June 15th, at 11:00 EST, (New York City) for the new show TOM GREEN LIVE. This will be the first LIVE Worldwide SHOW to be broadcast using the internet. Call IN and talk ON THE AIR to Tom and his freinds. Here's the number 1-866-626-4254 Rock on.

The Who online tour

This could be fun: In The Attic and The Who have joined forces to offer the worlds first major global tour - Live and On-line. As they move around Europe, USA and then the rest of the world, you can watch it all happen in comfort of your home. Feel the atmosphere; join the team and their guests on this amazing global event. More info www.thewholive.tv

Apple MacBook R.I.P

Only 2 days ago i got my new (13-inch, 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo, white) Apple MacBook and it just died! Gee, that was short fun ...

This is what happened:
I closed the notebook while running, left it alone for about 45 minutes, opened it again and the MacBook made same very strange noise! Just like it was eating a cd (but no cd in drive!). After that the screen stayed black. I think the screen/display is broken ... for what reason ever ...

Anyway, beside of the fact that it took only 48 hours to break - it's a great notebook. It's fast and very slick! It got hot sometimes, but it was ok for me. I touched the back of the Apple Macbook many times to check the heat - nothing to worry about. "DuoTemp" reported 50-60 C idle and about 80 c while rendering a short movie. When reaching 80 c the fans kicked in and cooled it down to about 65 c. I really had fun while playing arround ...

I will return the MacBook tomorrow.
But I am not sure if i should get my money back or try another one?

Udpate:
I just took the MacBook back and the guys in the store tried for 30 minutes to reanimate the notebook but had no luck. So they gave me my money back. Since all macbooks are out of stock i have to wait for new ones to arrive. Maybe i just wait for rev. 2 ....

The Banned History of Rock 'n' Roll

While listening to the Mellotron documentary from Radio 4 (via Musicthing) i found another interesting show called

"The Banned History of Rock 'n' Roll" (click to listen).

This great BBC radio show reveals the true stories behind taboo tunes: From Elvis's pelvis through Max Romeo's Wet Dream to Frankie's Relax, how can musicians express life between the sheets without facing the wrath of the censor?

Hans Zimmer studio movie - german

Picture shows young Hans Zimmer and an early synthesizer.
Not sure what it is.

This post from Harpya pointed me to a german movie clip about Hans Zimmer. We can see some of his new studio, and hear a few seconds of the Pirates soundtrack, he is currently working on. Here is a quick translation posted at cubase.net:

The first soundbyte says, that even though people have been claiming for ten years that he works on several films at once, he really does them one after the other. He also says how he finished Da Vinci Code at four thirty in the morning and started Pirates the next day at ten. In the long soundbyte in the middle he speaks about his father's death when he was six and how he used the music as refuge. Even today, when he has an argument with his wife, he starts to hum some tunes. In the one shot where he is sitting at his keyboard, he says, that he sits there all day and that it sometimes takes six weeks till he has a little something that means something. During the scoring session he says that this is the best moment, when there are 100 people going in the same direction. That there is something in the air that you otherwise only have with soccer...

.. the last sentence...
There's this story wherby a child says to it's mother "when I grow up I want to be a musician" and it's mother answered with "you can't do both"

Thx Harpya for translating ...

Check the "The Hans Zimmer Worship Page" for more infos.