In a previous blog I spoke about recording vocals at home and in general terms, how to get a good quality sound. In today's blog I'll talk a bit about trying to figure out which mic to buy. When it comes to home vocal recording there is no one answer to which mic you should buy, only some guidelines for you to follow. The first question we often get is, dynamic mic such as a Shure SM58 VS a Condenser mic such as a MXL V89. Generally speaking, the larger, more sensitive diaphragm of the condenser mic will deliver a nicer, more balanced sound. Next question is alway, why should I spend more money on a more expensive condenser mic? Well, the answer is, because they tend to sound better and have less signal noise. That said, you do not have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars, probably less then $250. Here is what I suggest, spend some time setting up your home studio so that you can record the same vocal phrase over and over. Even better, have some bed tracks recorded so you can hear your vocal tracks in context. Then, buy 3 or 4 microphones from your neighbourhood store ranging in price and from various brands with the provision that you can return most of them after a weekend or a few days. Then, record the same thing with all of the mics and then compare. Your ears will tell you which one to get. Don't forget to get and use a shock mount and a good pop filter. Trying to fix low frequency boom sounds and wind pops after they are recorded is nearly impossible so don't be cheap, you have to have them.

Bottom line, you can buy an incredibly good sounding microphone for less then $200 these days and a pretty good one for around $100. At the risk of sounding old (which I kind of am) I can remember (and my memory is not that good:) when a decent condenser mic went for over $500. These days, you can get an awesome sounding mic for half of that.

Sometimes, when you least expect it you get a blast of inspiration from someone or something. Whichever form it comes in, it's always welcome and always a treat. Last night we hosted a small concert event in our store featuring a Canadian Folk artist named John Wort Hannam. Now that its over, I'd love to take credit for it but truthfully the credit goes to a customer of KAOS and friend of mine name Jayne Mitchell. She approached me months ago about the possibility of me becoming involved in co-hosting some small shows featuring various folk artists. Even though our clientele is not overly folky in nature I thought, sure. Any good music is good music and truth being told, Jayne was doing most of the organizational work so it would have been foolish to say no.

Well, boy am I happy I didn't because I would have missed the opportunity to meet two of the nicest and pretty inspirational guys that I have ever met. Maybe it's the smaller city upbringing, maybe Alberta is just different then Ontario but Scott Duncan (the fiddle player) was not only a monster player but one of the nicest, most considerate guys you'd ever get to meet. He's been playing all of his life so you'd expect him to be good but his abilities would be hard to equal by any player not to mention his delightful disposition. John's story is even more unique. Having taught english up until the early 2000's he had never played guitar let alone written a song. However, one day he decided to retire from teaching, take up guitar and become a song writer. Now.. he's either the most courageous guy in the world or maybe the dumbest but either way I'm impressed. All kidding aside, the amount of courage needed to drop a teaching job to become a songwriter is enormous and very inspirational. Even more incredible is how good he is after only 10 years. The best part of it all is that when you point all of this out to John he seems genuinely puzzled, like somehow the scope of his achievements had never occurred to him.

Anyhow, on a lot of different levels, both of these guys did a lot more then just entertain us last night .. They inspired me at least and I suspect everyone else in the room as well. Thanks guys ..

Home recording is easy these days. All you need is a decent computer, a decent audio interface, some cheap or free software and you're good to go. NOT!! The parts about the computer, interface and software are true but anyone who has tried home recording knows that getting a good result has a lot more to do with just owning the gear.

Drums in particular are the most challenging of all of the instruments to record at home for the obvious reason of how many mic's that you need and the number of audio inputs required into your recording software. However, there are some very practical tips to be used in order to capture a very good if not, KILLER drum track at home.

Step one, start with good drums. I'm sorry to be the guy to tell you that no digital magic exists to make your crummy drums sound good after they have been recorded. A Hybrid Kia is not going to go as fast as a Ferrari no matter how wicked its paint job is. Nothing wrong with a Hybrid Kia, they're just not that fast. Similarly, crummy drums are fine, they just don't sound that good recorded.

Step two, make sure your kit has recent if not new heads and that the kit is tuned up to your liking or more importantly, like the kit you are hoping to sound like.

Step three, get an audio interface that accepts at least 4 microphone inputs. Most people who already own an audio interface have a unit with either 1 or 2 mic pre amps which just is not enough to get a GOOD recording. You really need to, at a minimum, capture a separate kick signal, snare signal and have two over heads to attempt to capture the toms and the cymbals. Having an interface that accepts 8 inputs will give the ability to separately mic the hi hats and all of the toms which would be significantly better. However, this blog is about doing this on a budget.

If you only have 4 mic's to work with I would suggest dedicating one to the kick, one to the snare, one overhead placed somewhere between the second tom and the floor tom and the final overhead between the hi hats and the first tom. This way you can capture the majority of the groove (the kick and snare) first hand and hopefully get enough of the hi hats to make it sound good. You will have difficulty making the toms sound good this way so I would suggest not depending on them much in your arrangements. Again, if you can mic them separately that is way better.

Now, your signals. For recording, adjust your input gain to something less then you might regularly. In other words, if you set your input gains for each mic such that they are about as hot as they can be you are almost guaranteed to overdrive your interface while recording thus capturing a distorted signal. Drummers always play harder during the real recording then they do durning sound check. Always leave yourself some db room to add compression or other effects after the fact. Once you record distorted signals, you are finished and the only solution is to re-record.

Popular opinion these days is to record with no processing (ie: compression or limiting) during the tracking stage. If you want to add this type of processing after the recording you are free to do so without any limits. If you record with it, you can't take it off if you don't like it.

As for microphones, this is a huge topic but on a budget I would suggest using what you have first and adding only what you need. A Shure SM57 will work for every drum in your kit, so use them if you have them. If you have some vocal mic's such as a Shure SM58, they're not perfect but they will work. If you don't have mic's or you don't mind spending a few hundred dollars, you can buy a 4 or 6 mic kit from many different manufacturers for $200 - $400. These kits come with a dedicated kick mic, some condenser (more sensitive) overhead mic's and clip on mic's for the actual drums. For the money you can't beat these drum mic kits.

In the end, a new 4 input interface will cost you about $300 and a full set of drum mic's about $250 (if you even need new mic's at all). The key to good drum recording is universal, you've got to capture good source recording in the first place. The better your mic's, how well they are placed and how well your input settings are will determine this. You don't need a ton of gear. You do need a few key pieces but more then anything you need know how and experience .. All of which is free, just takes time. The university of YouTube has most of the information that you will need and your neighbourhood KAOS Music always has time to help you with tips and tricks. Go ahead, spend a few hundred dollars and start making some awesome drum tracks.

Good Luck .. Bill

Regular readers of my blog know that I am involved (via KAOS Music) with Show Choir Canada, the organization that hosts Canada's only national show choir championship for high school aged kids. This years event took place last weekend and once again I left the Sony Centre with a full dose of incredible feelings of optimism and Glee .. sorry I couldn't resist.

It's a little tough to articulate here but I'll try my best to explain why this event always leaves me feeling fantastic about performing arts and young people. The competition itself is awesome, 13 schools do a 20 minute set competing for the final top 6 spots and a chance to win. On the final day, the 6 final choirs do their set again to a full house (3000 or so people) hoping to entice the 5 judges to award them the top score. The performances are almost unbelievably good not to mention that the music (which is close to pro level) is performed by student bands. That alone is inspiring enought but not really what I'm talking about here. The parts that really get me are the moments (and there are many throughout the day) when a young soloist steps up to the mic and delivers a life changing performance. You just know that those young people are experiencing perhaps the best moment of their lives, the energy is incredible. It's not often that one gets to witness someone realizing a real life dream and I find the experience pretty powerful.

I have nothing but admiration for my friends at Show Choir Canada as they have done much more then just organize a cool competition .. They have created an environment for teenagers to work towards and in many case realize a real life dream. Something that many kids, especially art'zy kids might never get the chance to do. I'm getting that feeling again just writing about it.

Dreams .. they really do come true sometimes. Thank you Show Choir Canada, you're doing a great thing!

Although, Glee and showchoirs are not my usual subject matter in this blog, there is an event coming up in a few weeks that is way, way cooler then you might imagine. Millions of people watch the hit TV show Glee each week, its popularity is undeniable. That said, millions of other people don't think that its that cool. Wherever you sit on that fence, let me tell you what I think is cool.

Teen aged kids performing their hearts out on a Broadway sized professional stage .. basically living a dream. Having witnessed this spectacle last year in this competition's first year I can tell you that there is a pretty palatable magic in watching young performers get this opportunity. Their already significant talent was elevated by being on the big stage, under the big lights basically performing in the big time. It was really really cool and very entertaining.

A good friend of mine is one of the founders of Showchoir Canada and has put a mountain of work into this project and has achieved many successes, the most notable is having created an opportunity for these young performers to live out their dream of performing at this level, giving them the pinnacle to strive for in this competition. It is very admirable work and I hazard to say that I'm a bit proud of him .. but don't tell him I said that.

That said, the finals on the April 14th are wildly entertaining, not expensive and something that you and perhaps some of your families would really enjoy. You won't believe the incredible energy this event has. To find out more you can visit their website here.

These days, we deal mostly with guitar players. As such, we don't often get a chance to talk about sample player workstations. Now if you're a guitar player you might be thinking .. Ya the less I talk about sample player whatever's the better. While it's true, sample playing workstations are not for everyone, they are one of the least expensive, most versatile ways to take your home studio to another level.

First, what is a sample playing workstation. It's less scary then it sounds. Basically, it's a plug in that works inside of your recording software, in this case inside Cubase VST. Simply put, it's kind of like a really powerful (yet easy to use) keyboard that lives inside of your recording software. So, for example, you can take a track of your song and turn on this plug in. Now that track turns into a sample playing keyboard track that you trigger from USB keyboard controller or any MIDI keyboard. This gives you access to over 1400 sampled and synthesized professional sounds to use in your songwriting. Be it an awesome sounding drum kit or drum loop, an authentic sounding bass sound or a full orchestral string section you have a lot of choices and that library is expandable by purchasing additional specific libraries. With the ability to run up to 16 tracks, each with a different sample you can really spice up your songs.

The highlights of Steinberg's Halion Sonic are that while it is really simple to use it is quite powerful in terms of editing. Also, at well under $300 it is down right cheap when you consider what you get. Lastly, Halion Sonic is no enthusiast level product. The sound quality of this product is pro for sure. See for yourself at the Steinberg website. For some of you, this will be one of the best things you could add to your set up and certainly not the most expensive.

Talk to you next time .. Bill Read More...

As a 25 year veteran of the music business, getting excited about new products is sometimes not as easy as it was, well, 25 years ago. It could be my advanced age of 45 :) or it could just be that technological advancements have significantly slowed in the past 15 years.

In the world of keyboards, most big, fancy, super powerful keyboard workstations have gone the way of the VCR. Their awesome power is simply not that in demand any longer because their super powerful computer cousins have taken their place in many ways utilizing advanced software. That said, one segment of the keyboard world that seemingly has no end in sight is that of the digital piano. The piano seems to have consistently found a place in modern music and is the cornerstone of pretty much all jazz music. As a result, players all over the world continue to have a need for a good portable piano to play live. Also, the digital piano has largely replaced its acoustic sibling as the less expensive instrument of choice for a large percentage of families getting involved with piano lessons for the first time.

Read More...

The March break madness that I am referring to is not MEGA Blowout Sale, rather it is a sort of business owner madness. Nothing too serious but definitely something that repeats each year, time and time again. Mid March is a funny time of year for retail businesses in Canada. Not only because of the fact that many people make social plans that take them away from the city or at least do not include shopping. The madness I'm referring to is a kind of combination of really slow business for a few weeks, something that makes any retail business owner feel sad, and a turning point from old to new.

It is a bit tricky to articulate to be honest. It kind of feels as if a depressed shopping period has ended and a new better, brighter period will begin shortly after the March Break. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that many of our industries new products start to arrive in April. For whatever reason, mid March definitely feels a bit like a black hole separating a bit of a lull from after Christmas and a nice boom heading into the nice weather. Whatever it is, my experience during the March break is always the same. I usually enter the week feeling a bit down and depressed which is consistent with this week and I end the week loaded with new plans for the next 4 months which leave me feeling super pumped up and ready to tackle the spring head on.

OR .. Maybe I'm just a bit nuts. :)

Bill

A few blog posts ago I shared with you guys that I had taken on a new project by starting a new company called Masterclass Video. Well, in the past few weeks I have finished up the first video featuring Phil X and have just finished up the first incarnation of the www.masterclassvideo.com website. The journey from the original idea to today has been really really fun and I thought I would share a few of the details of the things that I enjoyed so much. Firstly, making the video was a lot of fun for me. As you know, I make all of the videos for KAOS but I wanted this project to have a considerably more professional look to it so I hired local videographer Rocky Nash. Rocky brought the whole process up into the pro level and in the process taught me a ton about video. On the day of the shoot, being on the set of a Phil X video is a lot of fun and very very loud. I was the director and I had very little idea of what I supposed to do so I only got to kind of enjoy the process of watching Phil play guitar as only he does. While Rocky did all of the editing, I was involved in the decision making part of putting the film together. Again, I learned a ton about the process as I jumped into the role of executive producer HA HA what a joke... Again, with Rocky's help I think that we put together an excellent looking video.

Putting together a website is not really that new for me as I handle all of the website duties for the KAOS site but I did get an opportunity to learn a lot about streaming video on demand. This is a relatively new technology and there is a fair bit to learn, which I am still doing. Nonetheless, as with all of these new things, I know more about it today then I did yesterday. Maybe the most difficult thing about this project is understanding and estimating the reach of the various social media's. The success of this venture is based on how people who follow particular celebrates will react to the offering of a teaching video by one of their heros. I have my theories and over the next few weeks, I will find out how right or wrong I am about it.

That said, while enjoy the challenge of formulating an idea and a theory about how to market it, I can't say that I have ever enjoyed the waiting period that I am in now. Waiting to find out if the idea will take off or crash is my most unfavorite thing. Oh well, it was all mostly fun. If you would like to check out the preview for this video you should visit www.masterclassvideo.com . The concept is a great one so I am hopeful that it enjoys some success.

Thanks for reading .. BIll

For the past month or two we have been pretty busy over here at KAOS Music with various projects, all designed to improve our customer's shopping experience. One such idea was to drastically improve our products (new and used) page. In the past, we had found it difficult to get good photos done much less display them well online, it's trickier then you might think. We also wanted to improve our online sales. For years now, we have been selling products to people all around the world by way of email mainly. However, this is pretty clunky by today's standards so we wanted to update our ability to process sales online automatically. So, we turned to a company called Big Commerce to help us get our products online in a far more streamlined and "pro" kind of way. Big Commerce provides us with a pretty slick template that we can populate with whichever products we like. They handle the check out process, payment processing and shipping estimates. Also, any products on our online website also appear in our Facebook online store which lives inside of Facebook for all those who prefer to do their browsing without ever leaving Facebook. Long story short, our online store is pretty darn cool now.

Now, our customers can browse through our used and some select new products on our store site, all nicely organized with much better photos and zooming ability and ... if they decide to buy something they can go right ahead an do so online. As well, this improved online store services people outside of the GTA much better and hopefully is going to improve our online sales.

We hope that those who utilize our online store enjoy the improvements. Click here to visit the online store now.

Thanks for being such cool customers!!

Bill

Usually, my blog has to do with keyboard, piano or recording equipment. Sometimes I stray off into the area of KAOS business stuff but this past week my attention has been mostly focused on a project outside of my regular role at KAOS Music so I thought that I would share it with you. About 6 months ago I started to refine an idea that I had been thinking about for some time. The idea was to create video masterclasses featuring real life elite level people, musician's mostly but not limited to them. It seemed to me that this level of player rarely if ever made this type of video and that they had large numbers of fans who might really love them if they did and be willing to pay a small fee to see such a video. I added to the formula a charitable component so that a minimum of $1 would be donated from each video streaming sale. Making money is great but giving it away is awesome and I've never really had an opportunity to be overly charitable so this was a great opportunity for me in that regard.

Anyhow, our good buddy Phil X ( famous session guitar player with a huge discography of famous people ) agreed to be the first guy to give this a try. So, last week, Phil fly in from LA to shot the first ever Masterclass Video. The video is going to look great and sound fantastic, now we just have to hope that our theory about his fans wanting to pay $16 to see the final 45 minute masterclass is right. Fingers crossed.

If you're interested you can like the Masterclass video fan page on Facebook so that you will be notified when the video is ready to be viewed. We are shooting for early March 2012. Hopefully, my career as a video director/producer will continue past early March :)

The biggest segment of people using home based digital recording software these days are singer/songwriters. This could look like a 16 year old girl or a 45 year old guy. Styles being recorded range from commercial pop to bluegrass finger picking. The constant among these people is their need for high quality recording hardware and software. Steinberg and Yamaha have been providing people with very cost effective and high quality solutions for years now and they have just taken an existing solution and made it better. The Yamaha CI2 is a 24bit high quality USB audio interface with 2 mic preamps, phantom power for condenser mic's, a function knob and 5 function buttons. Aside from providing superior audio input quality, the knob and buttons add all sorts of convenience when using it with audio software, especially the included Cubase AI6 and Wavelab LE. Up until now, you only got Cubase AI5 with the CI2 but now, Yamaha has started including the upgraded AI6 version of Cubase and Wavelab LE (regularly $99) all at the same $239. Having the improved Cubase is nice and having a version of Wavlab offers users some excellent new mastering abilities and file format options not previously available to them. Bottom line, a great audio solution for a singer/songwriter just got a fair bit better. Drop in any time to see this software in action in our store or read more about it here.

Fresh off my recent trip to Los Angeles for the annual Namm show, I've got a head full of gear to talk about and I look forward to sharing it with you via this blog over the next few weeks. The Namm show is gigantic, it took me all 4 days to literally walk its entire floor. I did have a number of stops and meetings to make but suffice to say, I covered a lot of ground in those 4 days, blisters to prove it. Of all the guys from KAOS who attended, I had the job of focusing on digital music. This meant that I spent a large part of my time in one particular area of the show dominated by digital recording companies. While I was taken by many cool new products the overpowering theme of that area was the iPad. It is clear that the iPad is here to stay when it comes to making music. There were more apps then I had time to see but what I did see was great. Guitar amp modeling apps, digital recording apps, DJ apps, electronic music creation apps, karaoke apps .. etc. Beyond apps, there were tons of new products to enhance how you connect to the iPad. Mic pre-amps, instrument inputs, midi inputs, app controllers just name a few. High quality as well as lighter quality versions as well.

I suppose that every adult looks at their kids technology in envy but I really do think that my kids have a lot more cool stuff then I did when I was their age. Maybe my dad said the same thing. In any case, its a cool time to be into music and own an iPad.

It's no secret that Steinberg's Cubase is one the worlds most popular and most powerful music production software packages. We've been selling it for close to 20 years. It might be just that fact, that we're so used to this software that we sometimes forget how unbelievably powerful it is .. But it is!

This week I'd like to share with you one of the least talked about but most powerful features of Cubase. First, let me ask you, which weakness, more then any can ruin a good recording? The answer, at least from my perspective is a sloppy drum track. Producing super tight drum tracks is hard, even for seasoned drummers but a loose drum track can really make an otherwise great recording sound, well crummy. Cubase has the enhanced ability to analyze your drum tracks and establish what it calls hit points. Hit points are basically beat lines usually broken into 16th or 32nd note resolutions. You as the user have the ability to manipulate these hit points to ensure that they are accurate. Once established you can have Cubase slice up your drum parts into dozens of individual segments each being a single drum hit such as kick drums and snare hits. Once sliced up, Cubase can use its quantize feature to tighten up the timing of less then perfect drum tracks. It is worth pointing out here that I am not advocating making your drum tracks perfectly quantized and unnatural sounding but I am an advocate of making them sound rhythmically consistent.

If this sounds all a bit un-musical, you're right it is pretty nerdy and technical. However, there is nothing musical about a bad drum track and lets face it, most of us don't have Neil Peart as the drummer in our weekend band or as our songwriting partner. So, start with solid bed (drums and bass) tracks and your song stands a much better chance of sounding good.

For more information about Cubase 6, Click here. Read More...

Back in the day (like 15 years ago), owning a high quality microphone for your home recording studio was only for people willing to spend $1000 or more. Condenser microphones, tube microphones and ribbon microphones were all that expensive leaving the home studio owner left to use microphones such as Shure SM58's and SM57's as well as a host of many other less expensive microphones. Now, don't get me wrong, Shure and many other companies make very nice microphones but for high quality recording you really needed at least a nice condenser microphone which most of us couldn't afford.

Well, times change, manufacturing in other countries gets more popular and prices come down. These days, it is common place for home studio owners to have at least one decent condenser microphone if not more. While many companies are involved with making nice quality, low cost recording microphones one in particular is MXL. These guys have a huge line of amazingly good sounding recording microphones at remarkably low prices. One of my favourites is a model called the V69ME. This particular microphone is a tube condenser mic, wired exclusively with Mogami (really high quality cable) cable with an external power supply to further enhance its quality and reduce any power noise. Sold at under $400 it is incredibly hard to beat. So, if you're recording with a cheap mic and would like to dramatically improve your recordings sound quality, look at buying a new mic. The MXL products may or may not be what you end up buying in the end but they are definitely worth checking out.

You can check out a review video that I did on this mic a little while ago on YouTube here .. http://youtu.be/3o_Eu9Tt_g0 Read More...