thecreaksmikes friend's blog entries from MI7

New song added: Theme for An Imaginary Mindmovie from Mindmovie

Mindmovie — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:36:03 GMT

This will be the opening title of my upcoming first solo album. If you find some time please take a listen and if you want to feel free to leave me a comment. Audio quality is below my normal standard as the song is 8 minutes long I had to go down with the bitrate to 160kb. Anyway I hope you may enjoy.

New Song added - Moonmaiden from Mindmovie

Mindmovie — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:43:23 GMT

A rough mix of one of the songs which will be on Mindmovie's first solo record - your feedback is most welcome

New Song added - House Of Love from Mindmovie

Mindmovie — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:17:03 GMT

Although This side is now soooo painfully slow that it is no longer a real funny thing to upload something - here is a new song. Welcome to any visitor who wants to leave a comment about the music. This title features Sara England on vocals - she as well as myself have discovered what it means when you a re trying to build a "house of love" with the wrong person. That's what this song is about.

Planet Passion IV from Mindmovie

Mindmovie — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:54:30 GMT

A collaboration with Andres Rexach a guitar magician from Spain. Check his profile on myspace this man is a guitar and sitar monster.

"Between You & Me" sneak-peak track from OmarHash

OmarHash — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:59:57 GMT

http://www.cavecybernation.com/popsmash/content/omarhashpages/ click the first track in the playlist.

Plugins are your best friend and a dangerous enemy from Masterbox

Masterbox — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:53:05 GMT

I've noted a tendency among a lot of DAW users: They're are more interested in graphics and mousing around with parameters on fancy GUI's than actually to listening to, what they do to the audiosignal. Joe Meek's old saying: "If it sounds right, it is right" seems to support such a simple approach to adjusting the parameters on your plugins. But is your choice of settings actually good or just easy? I say: Know your plugins!

Especially dynamic processing such as EQ's and compressors are beeing extensively marketed to be DSP-versions that are hardly distinguishable from legendary analog audio equipment. They're getting closer by the minute (this is not an outcry of "I think analog equipment sounds better") and I use plugins for mastering purposses more and more. As an example the Powercore based CL1B Tube Tech compressor is excellent as is the native SSL bus-compressor from Waves. But I only use them with moderate settings just as I doo with analog compressors and EQ's. The reason is simple: they sound better and more true to their origins.

I've seen sessions with Pultec inspired plugins gaining 10 dB here and there and compressions settings of 10:1 and a low threshold setting on an acoustic Martin D28 recorded in a great room with good microphones. The result was not in ballance with the instruments real sound, and in the mix, it sounded almost artificial. Lifting vocaltracks with a +12 dB high-shelf starting at around 5 kHz will just let you have problems with the highs of all the other sources in the mix. Putting a 5:1 compression and makeup gain on an accordion just isn't musical and it will for sure only boost those clicksounds you don't whish to be hearing.

The best way to improve sound quality is to work with the recording and the acoustics in the recording situation, but after that, you could improve the "musicality" of your mix drastically by setting your processing to more moderate settings and be more true to the sound of the program material. I'm sure that if you were using hardware, you would never use it with such insane settings, simply because they don't sound their best. By using more musically tuned settings, I think you will be surprised, how much you will hear plugins improve your results.

computing humor from rodney

rodney — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:10:46 GMT

Quotes of the day:

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up. ...The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)

Now you're thinking "oh God, another Linux zealot going off about Windows"... until you see who wrote it: Bill Gates. Full story at Gizmodo Note: this is actually an old story about Windows XP. Vista, as we all know by now, is even worse.

Symbian is Free Software from rodney

rodney — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:07:47 GMT

News just in is that Nokia have bought up Symbian, and intend to release it as Free Software (under the Eclipse Public License) as of today. As far as I'm aware Symbian is currently the most widely used Operating System in the world - there were 100 million phones running Symbian in 2006 - so this means that as of this moment Free Software is now more widely used than proprietary software. That's a pretty significant shift in the way of things, especially considering Symbian own 67% of the smartphone market, with Windows Mobile holding only 13%...

Real World stuff from rodney

rodney — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:42:03 GMT

Oh, forgot to mention in the last post: I've been spending some time recently talking with The Cedars, winners of the MI7 Real World contest. Looks like the plan is for me to produce the session at Real World Studios sometime next month, if all goes well. I'm very much looking forward to it, they are a great band, and I think we could create some damn fine tracks there. Let's see...

back from being a hermit from rodney

rodney — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:36:40 GMT

I haven't been posting much in the past couple of months, mainly because I've been taking time to work on a new book and get some personal business stuff out of the way.

Things are looking interesting though... we've been approached about a new record deal, and asked to play some more festivals at the end of the year / beginning of next year. So the plan is to spend as much time as possible in the studio over the next few months and finally finish off all of the things that have been sitting on the hard drive for ages in a half-finished state.

So someday soon I might even get round to putting some new songs on the music player! :-)

New website from Live Ullmann

Live Ullmann — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:23:49 GMT

Check out www.liveullmann.com

Go Robyn! from Perkalars

Perkalars — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:57:19 GMT

The other day I was reading an articly about Robyn, swedish singer/composer/artist who on her own label now sells more albums in the US thanthe latest release from Madonna. Way to go! It shows what you achieve on your own with iron determination. I just hope she would become a member here as well, hint, hint...

Shoutlet.... from Perkalars

Perkalars — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:28:17 GMT

Anyone who works in marketing and adressing social media? Probably the hottest topic in marketing anywhere today. I can really recommend everyone interested in this topic to have a look at www.shoutlet.com

We will be taking care of this product and the european customers over here. Anyone interested to find out more, feel free to contact me...

New album coming up soon from Live Ullmann

Live Ullmann — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:05:25 GMT

Please have a taste.

Moving offices.... from Perkalars

Perkalars — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:38:09 GMT

We just moved our offices last week to Skanör a village 30 min outside Malmo. This is the first day up and running. Everything has gone smooth so far but we still have tons of boxes everywhere. Feels great though with a brand new place... expect us to be up to full speed again over the next few days....