Record ALL the genres!

Recently Mike (guitarist/roommate/guy with long hair) and myself have been doing a lot of recording/mixing/production work and I’ve got to say, it’s been going awesome. I really think the key to how awesome this whole thing has been is just the diversity of stuff we’ve been working on.

The majority of the time we’ve been living together we’ve been working on our own stuff which obviously is amazing to work on and I feel blessed we get to do this ourselves everyday, but we got into formulas. I have a certain way I like to do drums for us. Mike has certain way we do guitars and so on and so on. But lately we’ve had hip hop tracks (Vinnie 1000 shout out) and we’ve had indie tracks and metal (more metal than ourselves) tracks. Trying all sorts of new styles of mixing and editing have been incredibly rewarding so far and I definitely think they will continue to be.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Dave, I hate [insert the genre you hate here, probably country] and I NEVER wanna work on that.” I then will say, “Hey guy, I hear ya. Or at least I did and now I think you should stop whining and try it.” Yeah you may hate that style (if it's country, I agree, can’t stand it) but that certainly doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer you from a learning standpoint. OR lets think best-case scenario, you bring something to a country mix that you learned recording hardcore yodel punk (probably not a real genre) and it’s the coolest thing anyone in country music has ever heard. BAM! Your album goes platinum. Don’t hold your breath, but hey, it could happen.

Regardless of that ridiculous scenario, everything’s worth doing once because if nothing else, you’ll learn something from it. 

Finished Projects and You

So recently my band Gunpowder Temple finished our first full release (you can find it here). Since then surprisingly, I haven’t been able to listen to more than one song in a sitting. The idea of going back and listening to these mixes is just an awful thought. Something about finishing the EP was so satisfying, but now that it’s done, it’s not so much. After talking to a few other engineers, I realized that this is not an uncommon phenomenon. I busted tail for a month before the release, editing and mixing and going over every detail of each song and basically all it did was completely ruin my own work for myself. So I wanted to address this issue in my blog because as I’ve recently come to find, this is a good thing.

A mix engineer’s job is never done. You could mix forever and never truly be happy with what you’ve put out. This could be because of your mood or just how you feel that day. Either way I’m here to say, “it’s okay.”

Just last week we started recording drums for a set of three songs we plan to put out in a few weeks. The drums tones and workable tracks are so much better than anything we got on the EP and of course this makes looking back on the EP even harder. If only we knew then what we know now.

I’m a firm a believer that every 5 years you will look back and realize how stupid you were 5 years ago. This philosophy applies to everything, even mixing, and honestly can help keep you grounded. I find that knowing this, when I listen to the EP and can’t stop knit picking and wishing I did things differently, what it really means is, I’m growing as an engineer.

Recently I was forced to sit down and listen to our EP all the way through on a home theatre system (ouch!) and thought the whole 30 minutes was pure torture. But looking back I’m glad I had to do it and have learned every time I now re-listen I can think of new techniques and ideas for new projects. Anyway, despite the rambling, the lesson here is, don’t sweat your old mistakes.

Online Resume: Dave Nelson Mix Engineer

Dave Nelson

dave@gunpowdertemple.com

Objective

Highly motivated individual looking for an entry-level position in the music industry to utilize my experience and education in the recording arts and music business.

Qualifications

Proficient in Pro Tools 9 and Logic

Experience in Audio Post-Production for film and

video games

Proficient in MIDI programming

Experience on SSL Duality, SSL 9000J, AWS 900+, Amek9098i, and Control 24

Experience in soldering/cable repair

Avid musician with extensive musical

background, including:

- Five years in Lead Vocals

- Six years playing guitar

Professional, hard working, fast learner, and works well with others

Education

Full Sail University, Winter Park, FL

Bachelors of Arts in Recording Arts 2011

Studying for a Masters in Entertainment Business with expected completion in first quarter of 2013

Academic Experience

Full Sail Studios A and B: SRD Group Project

Recording/Mix Engineer

- Tracked a 4-piece band to tape through an Amek 9098i. Used a Studer Tape Machine. Project was mixed on an AWS 900+.

Full Sail Audio Temple and Studio B: ASR Group Project

Recording/Mix Engineer/Producer

- Tracked a 5-piece band to Pro Tools through an SSL Duality and SSL 9000J. Project was mixed on an AWS 900+.

Full Sail Mastering Suites: DMS Project

Mastering Engineer

- Mastered a 5 song EP and prepared it for printing/distribution.

Related Experience

Gunpowder Temple (gunpowdertemple.com)

- Orlando, FL

Singer/ Producer/ Recording Engineer/ Band Manager with Gunpowder Temple

- Orlando, FL

Recording Engineer/ Mix Engineer/ Mastering Engineer for Gunpowder Temple “EP”

- Available at gunpowdertemple.bandcamp.com

Work Experience

Spin Street, Mohegan Sun, Uncasville CT June 2008 – February 2009

- Worked in inventory, customer service, and cashier

Hypocritical Rantings About a Contest I'll Probably Enter

So I just came across this article about Universal and Ubetoo pairing. For those of you who don't know what Ubetoo is, don't worry, no one else does either. It's a site similar to CD Baby and offers artists self-publishing and distribution options. Anyway, Universal is partnering with them to basically run a huge contest to find bands to sign. I'm finding the whole thing a little weird. 

Ubetoo's main selling point is that it allows the artist keep 100% of the royalties from their music. Yeah, you read it right, 100%. So the idea that people are gonna compete to get a record deal so they can receive maybe 15%, seems odd to me. You venture to Ubetoo to experience self-distribution and to have a completely different model than a conventional label. And while you're at Ubetoo you can compete to win a chance to be involved in what you went to Ubetoo to get away from? I don't know, seems funky. 

I get that maybe some aren't out there searching for self-distribution because they don't want a record deal, but because they can't get one, but still. 

Anyway after all that ranting, I'll confess that I'll probably give it a shot. I mean GPT is trying to do the self-publishing thing, but I'll take the cut in royalties for some power behind our record. Lets face it; they have connections, marketing ability, and money we probably won't ever see. 

I suppose you could do worse than Universal as well. At least it’s not like Fueled By Ramen or some other indie label that’s probably using Ubetoo for their distribution. As a business student, the idea and details I have come to learn about record deals leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but the musician and kid in me wants nothing more than to be a rock star. If I can maybe do it on Ubetoo, I guess I’ll give it a shot. 

You there! Tube it up!

Recently I've been really getting into a lot of these Youtube artists. Ya know these guys and gals who put all their music out on Youtube and have cool videos that go with their songs. This has actually become it's own form of distribution in a way and I think it's amazing. I can't seem to wrap my head around wanting to do it, but it's cool nonetheless. I mean every time you've got a song, not only do you have to write one, but you then have to film yourself recording it and post it up on for all the world to see. And all the world does see it. And comments on it. In one respect it's cool that you're going to get immediate feedback, but you know that half of the comments are coming from jerks who have nothing better to do than talk crap about your videos. Anyway, I digress. 
As far as Youtube for distribution goes, it's not a bad deal. After a certain number of views Youtube pays you and their are plenty of people out there making a living off it. There's vloggers and reviewers and comedy shows that all get payed simply to talk about how they feel about stuff in front of their computer cameras. Talk about a sweet gig. Artists get found all the time, especially hot girls with acoustic guitars (which there seems there will be no shortage of anytime soon.) A lot of times these Youtube success stories can bleed over into the real film and TV world. One of my favorite Youtube acts, Pomplamoose, was featured in a slew of commercials for Honda. One of the members, Jack Conte, does his own side project music that is weird and much more technical and still is surprisingly popular. People just seem to love everything these guys do. 
There are tons of artists doing creative original things like Freddie Wong who does better than movie quality CGI from his home and Trudbol who does 50's style acapella covers. I just can't get enough of any of it. This might just be a gimmick that really isn't so gimmicky. 

Liability Stuff, ugh.

I listened to two separate podcasts dealing with entertainment law and the liabilities that can be found. The first podcast I listened to was a Suffolk University podcast on Overprotection in the IP world. While the podcast itself contained a lot I really want to just sum up what was discussed in his talk. Basically what was being described was the difference between what IP law was set up for and what it has become. When IP law was originally designed it was meant to encourage creation. By protecting work and making it not able to be stolen, people would want to create and receive the credit they were due. Now IP law has become a way for people to never give up their rights, even after death. The big example he gave was how Google, as the physical website, is registered as a design and as a utility. Google as a design eventually would loose it’s copyright and eventually become public domain but since it is also registered as a utility (as long as it’s in use) it’s protected. Another example being the 21^st Century Fox song, which is registered as the companies trademark as well as the sound recording. This means even when the sound recording copyright expires, it won’t as a trademark, as long as it’s in use. For an IP holder this is great. For the public it’s seriously limiting to rights we are owed as a society. IP should be allowed to be used by everyone at some point. This overprotecting fad is just going to allow business to keep greedy hands on things that should belong to everybody for as long as they want. I’m sure Disney is studying up.

The second podcast I listened to was the Entertainment Law Update. The episode was called “Cease and desist, but nicely.” This podcast was over an hour and had much too much information to talk about everything, so I’ll touch a few I liked. The first thing they discussed was a lawsuit with the movie 50/50 from music group with the same phonetic name. The music group said they were infringing on the name and the judge apparently watched the movie. He defined that the name was so descriptive on the content of the movie it couldn’t be infringing. Also, in this case and most others, titles of works are generally not copyrightable. I thought this was interesting because when he first was describing the case it seemed so cut and dry and found myself wondering how they would fix it since the movie was already out. But apparently doesn’t matter movie and the music get to both have the name since the movie did such a good job making the name meaningful to the movie. Win for 50/50 and I’m glad. That movie was dope.

            Another case they discussed that I really liked was this new technology available in NYC called Aereo. It apparently is this little antenna that connects via Internet and gives you cheap cable to all sorts of devices. Now obviously network companies went berserk when they heard and sued em’. In the preliminary trials the big discussion was that it was infringing on their work based on the fact that it’s a public performance of their work. So far the courts have said this isn’t the case. Apparently, since everyone gets their own antenna, this arguments null and void. Courts said it doesn’t count as public performance and, on those grounds, it’s not infringing. I’m assuming that’s not the networks only big gun defense, but hopefully it’ll help a bit. Either way, I love creative technology getting the best of huge corporations. Makes me feel so proud of my generation.

            The last piece I wanna talk about here is more of a morale case. Pretty simple really. Some political group finds a picture of a gay couple making out in front of Manhattan. They take the photo, Photoshop it, and put it in a mailer and send it everywhere. The couple is like, “Whoa, now way you can’t do that.” The political group says, “We can do whatever, people do it to us.” Now apparently the big fuss here is that the political group doesn’t like gays. I have NO idea why they’re putting gay couples kissing in their mailers if they don’t, but that’s beside the point. This case hasn’t been brought anywhere, yet. They’re just spitting fighting words at each other for the moment and I can’t wait to see where it goes.

            Anyway, after listening to an hour and a half worth of podcasts I’ve concluded this: people will sue you over everything. I myself am gonna hire myself a decent lawyer before I do anything.

Some Liability Stuff

For this weeks blog I’m focusing on liabilities within the recording industry and the entertainment industry as a whole.

The first case I came upon was rather disturbing in nature really. A woman named Nicole Westmoreland is suing Cash Money Records because she was allegedly sexually assaulted in the studio’s bathroom. She said she was at the studio to make a business proposal and was assaulted before giving the presentation. Her serious claim to liability was that the alleged assaulter was a friend of the studio owners and they were aware that he was dangerous. I find myself agreeing with the woman in this case that the owners are liable. The owners claim that her story about what occurred is incorrect and that the company “is not liable for criminal acts of an employee, unless they should have foreseen those acts were going to occur.” As owners, they are responsible for knowing who is in their studio and that the people they allow to be there, whether employees or friends, on the company’s property and on the company’s time, represent them. While no one should plan for sexual assault on their studio’s premises, criminal acts are something that should be considered when thinking about liabilities.

The next case I found was much simpler and definitely a cut and dry outcome. Recently, Dr. Dre has been sued by Paramount for failure to pay his bills. They are claiming breach of contract and over a large sum of time that Dre had rented out the studio. The Studio is suing for $1,220,500 and it seems they’re going to get it. These kinds of cases always seem so ridiculous to me. Dre’s got plenty of cash to pay and all he had to do was pay it by July 13^th. Now I’m sure he’s going to have to pay more and he looses a valuable industry relation over money he’s now going to have to give them anyway. Without knowing more details, shame on you Dre.

The third I looked into is more of a movie issue, although the premise is the same across many more media outlets. Back in 2011, the company behind The Hurt Locker (Voltage Pictures) decided to sue 24,583 different people over sharing their movie over the Internet. Now this is by no means a new issue and companies are suing over this torrent stuff everyday, but what I found interesting is some of the defendant actions. ISP information is tricky and has a lot of available loopholes. If the ISP information is stored in RAM it’s not solid evidence what’s its relating to. Some people claim it was others using their Internet that committed the offense. And where the servers are located that provide the files, may make the United States unable to even touch the information. But in 119 motions the judge decided to dismiss all of them. Now I am an avid believer in the fact that downloading is a good thing and unstoppable at this point. The industry needs to learn to adapt and change the way it does business. This is such a horrible step in the wrong direction and simply a money grab. The article states that Voltage is interested in offering settlements to the parties. If half of the people accused accept, the company makes more money off of them then the movie made in the box office. Why not just make them pay double blu-ray rates for the loss? 24,000 people giving up 120 bucks is still almost 3 million. Can they really justify loosing that much? Regardless of how I feel about it, this whole torrent thing isn’t going away. Studios and other entertainment companies should just start to anticipate and compensate.