Nov 16, 2009 Composers and Teamsters Meeting

Tonight went to an informational meeting regarding possible unionization of composers, with the Teamsters. About 400 people attended. The main speakers at the event were Composer Alf Clausen, Composer Bruce Broughton, Steve Dayan of the Teamsters Local 399, Gary Zuckerbrod of the Casting Directors Union, Composer James Di Pasquale, and Composer Alan Elliott. A lot of successful composers in the house as well as entry level and working composers, orchestrators, music editors, songwriters, and musicians.

The meeting was hosted by the Association of Music Composers and Lyricists

The general vibe seemed to be that everybody wants to see composers organize and collectively bargain, but that it will take a lot of work to get the whole national/global cross-section of composers and lyricists involved. All parameters will have to be talked out and worked out in a democratic way, over time.

11/14&15/2009 West L.A. Music Expo

Saturday and Sunday went to jam-packed recording expo at West L.A. Music in Santa Monica. Lots of amazing new gear, learned about latest versions of Sonar and Digital Performer, Talked with Ableton Live rep about grid-style controller. Met Eve Anna, Owner of Manley Labs, makers of high end tube mics. Met Paul Hudson rep from IK Multimedia, and Justin Vencel who's starting a website called recordingquestions.com. Saw demonstration of the Digidesign Eleven, which is a ProTools interface with fx inside, so it can be used as guitar stage fx into your amp without a computer. Another interesting item was a Presonus DAW, very new but very simple workflow. fx, instruments, etc can be dragged and dropped anywhere. Went to a clinic on Digital Performer 7, and messed around with pitch correction feature.

Went to Experiemental Film Screening Series at Un-Urban Cafe: Pictured here are filmmakers Ben Balcom & Josh Weissbach being interviewed by Gerry Fialka

Un-Urban Cafe - Friday Open Mic

11/06/2009 Went to Un-Urban Cafe tonight for the open mic. This is a great place to hear original songwriters, a very anything-goes type atmosphere. Steve Narahara is the M.C..

I played "7 Years" on guitar, and then "I'm Trying to get Close to You" on piano, which I've never done live, but they have a great, slightly out of tune piano. As you can see it's almost wider than the stage. If you look closely in these photos you see bluesman, Mark Philips, waiting for a bus across the street from the Cafe. The performer on stage is Kai Anderson of the band "The Parlor Room"

Capitalism, a Love Story at DGA

Wednesday, Went to see Capitalism, a Love Story at the Director's Guild Building. Great film. Michael Moore must have a great system of gathering and organizing content. Really cool version of Louie Louie during opening credits. The lyrics are paraphrased to make a reference to filmmaking. Who recorded that?

Original Score by Jeff Gibbs, who's composer music and co-producer on other political documentaries.

Nov 2, 2009, I had the privilege of being present at a scoring session for Dante's Inferno Game, at Martinsound Recording Studio. Pictured here are Composer/Conductor Garry Schyman, Contractor Ross DeRoche on Tuba, Concert Master Belinda Broughton, and about 15 other players. The main scoring sessions for the game happened at Abbey Road a couple months ago. Here they added some tracks, and in the afternoon they recorded a choir, which I regrettably couldn't stick around for.

Also of interest, Martinsound is the company that invented the technology; Flying Faders, which they exclusively sell and rent to other studios.

Dante's Inferno is due out February 9, 2010

Steal This Dulcimer!

Just in time for Halloween, I recorded and uploaded 49 minutes of improvised bizarre sounds and techniques on the hammered dulcimer, using hammers, percussion mallets, and fingernails.

Download it (here), Cut it up, create loops, create sample maps, make some great music with it. Warning, do not listen to this without watching the audio wave going by in your computer. Some of the attack really jump suddenly in volume, and some of it is so quiet and whispery you're going to want to turn up the speakers. It's not meant to be a finished product, just the raw ingredients.

The compressed file is 351.2MB. The AIFF is 494.6MB, appropriately. It was recorded at 44k16bit, with a Samson condenser mic, and no compression or effects.

Enjoy

STAR TREK The Sound Show

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20th, 2009
Panel discusion on the sound from the movie Star Trek
Samuel Goldwyn Theater at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
8949 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA

On the panel were Director J.J Abrams, Supervising Sound Editors Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin, Picture Editors Mary Jo Markey and Maryann Brandon, and Re-Recording Mixers Andy Nelson and Anna Behlmer.

As you can see they had the stems projected on the big screen, in ProTools HD 7.4.2, on what appeared to be a laptop, although it could have been accessing resources on another computer. They played sfx, and score separately, and with picture.