Skating Dog Productions – - – - ||| – - – - Media, Music, Gear, Concepts

Celemony’s Melodyne featured on german TV. Just have a look.
Video gucken!

http://www.musotalk.de/event-reports/video/article/music-tools-made-in-germany/

Präsentiert von Pioneer, Beatport, DJ Magazine und Let’s Mix

Tonium AB, Stockholm Schweden // 15. Dezember, 2009 (ictw) – Heute starten einige der innovativsten Marken in Sachen Dance Music Technology den internationalen „Next Generation DJ (NGDJ)“ Contest. NGDJ hat zum Ziel neue, noch unbekannte DJ-Talente zu finden und ihnen mit hochwertigen Preisen einen „Kickstart“ für ihre Karriere zu geben. Um teilzunehmen müssen sich DJs die ihren X-Faktor beweisen wollen einfach auf der Music-Mixing und Social-Networking Platform www.letsmix.com anmelden, mindestens einen Mix hochladen und sich dort entsprechend „So läuft’s Bisniz-mäßig!“ promoten um auch ihre Geschäftstüchtigkeit unter Beweis zu stellen.

NGDJ erhält dabei tatkräftige Unterstützung von starken Marken! Pioneer hat die DJ Technologie revolutioniert, mit ihren DJ CD Playern das Auflegen für immer verändert – und die nächste Revolution erfolgt mit dem Lauch der digitalen CDJ2000 und 900 Plattform. Tonium brachte mit Pacemaker das weltweit einzigartige, komplette HandHeld DJ-System auf den Markt. Beatport ist weltweit die erste Adresse für den Kauf von elektronischer Musik und das zu Hause des einflussreichen Beatportal DJ Blogs. DJ Magazine schließlich ist „die“ internationale Autorität in Sachen Musik u.a. mit dem ‚DJ Mag Top 100’-Poll.

So geht’s!
Um heute ein erfolgreicher DJ zu sein braucht es viel mehr als nur perfekt an den Plattentellern zu sein. Man muss sich als Marke aufbauen und etablieren, immer wieder das Profil schärfen und sich vielseitig promoten. Das sollen die Bewerber für den NGDJ unter www.letsmix.com unter Beweis stellen. Zur Teilnahme am Contest ist es erforderlich dort ein Profil anzulegen, einen DJ Mix hochzuladen und von dort aus ins MusicBiz einzutauchen: sich promoten, den Mix in allen Social Networks und Blogging Platformen plazieren. Diejenigen 100 mit den meisten positiven Kommentaren kommen ins Finale. In einer weiteren Runde gilt es dann zu einem bestimmten Thema zu Mixen. Die Resultate werden dann von einer hochkarätigen Jury bewertet und anschließend die Sieger gekürt.  Die 100 Finalisten müssen also schonmal im internationalen Scheinwerferlicht „braten“.

Als Preise winken den Gewinnern Pioneer CDJ2000 Desks, Mitgliedschaft in der exklusiven Pioneer DJ Group, ein Pacemaker, ein Media-/ Promopaket über DJ Mag, Beatport, LetsMix und vielen anderen, ein Compilation Release auf Beatport und nicht zuletzt Flug nach und Hotel in Miami zur Winter Music Conference mit vielen Gigs bei der Beatport Pool Party der DJ Mag Eröffnungs- und Abschiedsparty im Shelborne.

Dem Gewinner schließlich winkt ein Managementvertrag mit einer der weltweit größten Agenturen für DJs. Der Next Generation DJ wird dann in der ganzen Welt spielen!
Also auf zu www.letsmix.com!!!

Steven, please tell our readers who you are and what you do!

My name is Steven Drozd, and I am mostly a multi-instrumentalist in a band called “The Flaming Lips”. We are recording artists on Warner Bros. and have several records out. Our last record was called “At war with the mystics”, it came out in Spring 2006 and “ta-dah!!” we won a couple of Grammies for that record. One was for best non-classical engineered recording, and the other one was for best Rock Instrumental, which was the second time we won that category.

Wow, congratulations. Did you use Reason for the production of “At war with the mystics”? And when did you discover Reason for yourself.

Yes indeed, we did. And it was pretty much because Reason was the first thing I learned on how to do anything on the computer. I was completely computer-illiterate until November 2002 when a friend of mine bought me a PowerBook. I just was learning a little basic stuff with it like, to do email, iTunes and things like that.
Then, Dave Fridman, who is the guy who produces our records with us, told me about Reason. He told me that if really wanted to go into this digital programming, sort of computer based editing and creating music kind of thing, I should check out Reason. He added that it has a user friendly interface especially for someone who never used a computer before. So it was the first Music Software thing I started to figure out on a computer. I didn’t even have a MIDI-Keyboard for the first 4 months. I was just typing and programming beats and was not playing any instruments. For me it was a cool way to learn how the stuff works. The sounds were great: the reverbs and the delays, everything, basically.

Since when did you use it for your music productions?

Since early 2003 on everything we have done, there is some Reason in it, when we put out a couple of EP´s in 2003. I think I can’t name a song where there is not some part that was done with Reason. One thing I like a lot is that I can build orchestration and things like that. And keep it all in Reason, always ready for some editing when we go to Pro Tools. We put it into slavery to Pro Tools, that’s how we mostly do it. Yeah, we use it a lot.

Do you use other software or hardware as well?

No, not really, I build all the tracks with Reason here in my house in my little studio just on the computer. Then the “Lips” take it up to Dave Fridmans Studio, and there he runs it into Pro Tools, by the way, he is a master of Reason as well. I do a lot my stuff at home. Reason is just so straight forward and also complete. I don’t have to patch or plug in anything, I use just an Edirol USB-Keyboard that plugs into my Powerbook, I’m running Reason and I have a couple of Mackie speakers. That’s all I need at home.

Do you have some particular tips and tricks you would like to share with the community?

Oh no. What I’m doing is pretty the same as anybody else. Really, in some way I feel like, I learn some things very fast and in other ways just like a dummy because I only realized very recently that I can actually mute and un-mute tracks and things like that with the keyboard controller. Also I recently just figured out how to do some of those automations and stuff like that.
So, I really don’t know if I have any good tricks for anybody. Well maybe – what I usually like to do, before I do anything is, I open up a new session and create a mastering suite and a scream device. Before I even set up the mixer I set up the Scream with one of the saturation patches. I just always have a little bit of distortion on my mixdown. The thing with the “Lips”, what I’m just trying, what I’m doing technically, is we’re trying to sound like real strings and real old instruments. And for that a little bit of crispy distortion is always kind of nice. When it sounds a little bit dirty… yeah, I love it.

What kind of sounds are you using? A lot of ReFills or do you create your own sounds? Tell me what’s in your rack?

I’d say it’s about 90% of the Reason soundlibrary. I first look there if I can find anything to start a track with. Only sometimes we use samples from other places and maybe sometimes just some samples that I create myself. The perfect example of how we use Reason is on our new record. The song called “Vein of Stars” is what the Propellerhead people will love to hear because at the beginning of the song the only thing you hear is Reason running by itself. There is no other stuff, nothing else is going on, it’s 5 tracks pure Reason. There is the flute, there is the clarinet, in a section there is an african oboe and there is another sound like a Mellotron, I think. Four of the sounds are from the Reason soundlibrary. The other one is an Optigan sample I have imported.
You can listen to it and hear what kind of beautiful music you can make with it. Most of the sounds are Reason sounds. And generally, just tweak it a bit and do whatever you want with each actual sample. There are so many different things you can do to make the sounds your own in a second.

Do you use reason live on stage as well?

No, we don’t and that’s not necessary because of the way the Flaming Lips do a Liveshow. Here is what we do: four of us are on stage playing live and then there are some tracks from the productions we can’t play live. These are synced with a video that we use for projections up on screens. Audio and video is played back together from just a DVR tape. Like we do when we play “Vein on Stars”! What you hear in the beginning are actually Reason-tracks but it’s not Reason running live. But there is also an exception. We do a lot of radio shows, just Wayne the singer and me, the two of us going by ourselves. And there we want to hear more than just acoustic guitar and acoustic piano. For that I build some backing tracks or some basic drumbeats with some cool synth bass. I just take the stereo feed out of my computer into the radio station’s DI-box and we just run it out life on the radio.

Is there anything you miss from Reason at all, you have some wishes?

Oh, I’m quite comfortable with it. But one thing is that some of the bigger orchestra string sounds could be better, but I know that the Propellerheads are working on it all the time. And also for Reason now there are loads of libraries with strings available. And they are getting better and better. Everybody is getting better in creating realistic sounding strings, but what I told you before, for me the point is that it is so easy to use the interface and that I know it so well. I can very quickly put 24 tracks of orchestration together in no time. The thing about a lot of recording and programming for me is it takes you away from the excitement, because you’re trying to figure out, what you’re supposed to be doing and not just having the idea and doing it. That for me is probably the biggest thing I like about Reason, I can have the idea and immediately work with it instead of figuring out how to record, or route, or edit or anything like that.

Softwarepiraten der Welt und legale Anwender – teilt Euch mit! Weltweite Umfrage zum Diebstahl von Musiksoftware unter www.imsta.org

IMSTA, Toronto/ Hamburg 21. Oktober, 2009 (ictw) - Die International Music Software Trade Association (IMSTA) führt auch in diesem Jahr wieder eine weltweite Umfrage zum Diebstahl von Musiksoftware durch. Auf der Website der IMSTA werden ALLE Anwender von Musiksoftware aufgerufen an dem Survey teilzunehmen. Alle, heißt in diesem Falle legale und nicht legale Anwender. Das Ziel dieser Umfrage ist es, einen Überblick über das Rechts- und Unrechtsempfinden der Nutzer von Musiksoftware zu erhalten. Zum anderen ist die Umfrage gleichzeitig die Gelegenheit für Anwender völlig anonym ihre Sicht der Dinge mitzuteilen.

Die Ergebnisse dieser Umfrage werden im Rahmen der Internationalen Musikmesse NAMM Show im Januar 2010 den Mitgliedern der IMSTA präsentiert. Die IMSTA macht sich für Copyright Marketing stark und sammelt Daten, damit die Unternehmen bessere Entscheidungen treffen können.

Jeder Teilnehmer der Umfrage kann einen von 18 ausgeschriebenen Preisen gewinnen, gestiftet von den IMSTA Mitgliedern.

Piraten der Welt – teilt Euch mit! Natürlich anonym!

Die Umfrage ist zu erreichen via: www.imsta.org/imsta_survey.html

Pressekontakt:
Deutsche Botschaft der IMSTA
integrative concepts – Public Relations, Marketing and Media Services

I did it, now, like 20 something years later. Early wisdom realised too late. What am I talking about here? I am talking about guitar sound, great guitar sound. And a life full of false beliefs and struggle and disappointment. But now i have come full circle, embrace the old and the new and am bold enough to tell you: “DON’T BELIEVE THE F…….g HYPE!”

My first tube amp was a Radio, which my Grandma didn’t use anymore. It had great distortion, decent sagging and a very soft sounding speaker that i blew much to fast. It wasn’t loud but incredible for practising. When you dialed down the volume of the Les Paul copy i used (what my mates then said I was not supposed to do, you loose treble!) then you got soft crunch and further down the volume gave me clean sound – everything on Living Room level.  I was very happy with that and exercised my guitar playing every minute I could spent. But it was not supposed to be like this (that’s the mates again, who didn’t know shit but that’s how it was in the heydays of rockmusic in germany and for me it was much much later to find out).

To reach the next level as a player i needed to play with a band and that required something louder, obviously. After three weeks of hard work in gardening during the holidays i got a HiWatt 100 Watts Top and a selfmade 4 x 12 Cabinet with celestion speakers which I built with the help of my grandpa who was a carpenter. My only FX device then was an MXR Distortion Plus. I got that because i liked the sound, very close to how my grandma’s radio sounded: real tubes plus that extra kick. With this rig i got my reputation as a guitar player in the city to a decent level quickly. But then all the mates again said, that’s not how it is supposed to be … you need more FX, Distortion Pedals are bad, the real thing is an Amp, and, it is the 80s: “Dude, get yourself a Rack!”

That Top 40 band then one day asked me to join them: “What do you play?”
Me: “I like Ritchie Blackmore, but getting into that funky stuff as well!”
They: “Naw, what do you play like, equipmentwise?”
Me: ” HiWatt and Les Paul copy!”
They: “Yes …?”
Me : “Yes, what?”
They: “Effects? Preamps and stuff!”
Me: “No, just a distortion pedal!”
They: “That is some weirdo, Distortion – get a Mesa Boogie, or a Tube Preamp man ….!”
::: I think you get the idea.

My playing wans’t important in the first place dureing my interview. My gear was. And I must admit, I got washed away, I got weak. Since then, when i got rid of my MXR and the Hiwatt I was too often unhappy with the sound. I had to fight with the gear all the time. Soundwise and breaking down wise because of all the complexitiy.

To cut a life long story short: I am home now. I am back together with my first true love. My MXR Distortion plus. With any decent sounding amplifier, even a digital modeling one, this little box makes you sound. If you can play. I am so grateful to Jim Dunlop that they have reissued the original one. I got it today, it sounds great. And it is dead cheap. Simply kick it, treat your guitar with energy and use the volume knobs.

Welcome back to musicianship, Good bye gear heads!

Here is JDs Demo Video – cool thing!