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Thursday, August 30, 2007

 

HMHS 82 Fast Cakes - Nice

An excellent bouncy pop song here from Fast Cakes aka John Hodgson.

John writes:

I go under the name of Fast Cakes, and this song is featured on my forthcoming album, "LIVEYOUNGDIEFAST" which is released on September 1st. I played and sang everything on the track, and it was recorded in my home studio (Imperial Digital) using a Roland VS2480 as the main desk.

A link for John's CD

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

 

How's them Songwriting Apples

Just learned about the Songwriting Apples/ site. An interesting site focusing on motivating people to set and complete songwriting goals. There is no competition and not much review more just a group of people trying to motivate each other to make progress on their songs.

You can read their charter and please make sure to visit the site. Let them know you heard about it here (if you did :)

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

 

Line 6 reveals it's secret - Big wowee the Spider Valve

After weeks of teasing everyone with "you'll never believe it" ads Line6 has finally revealed it's secret product

The Spider Valve Amp

If they want to give me one I'll take it, otherwise no thanks :)


Spider Valve delivers 12 channels of amp modeling - combined with several flavors of built-in modulation, delay and reverb – driven by an all tube, all Bogner amplification design boasting 6L6 power tubes, 12AX7 preamp tubes and premium Celestion® Vintage 30 speakers.

 

My Music Update: August 28th 2007

Not much going on in my musical world. I think I have too many song ideas in my head and not enough focus. I have completed lyrics and ideas for around 5 songs and 2 songs based around musical hooks. The fact that I'm watching too much TV has nothing to do with it and neither does the fact that my daughter keeps hijacking my studio to do Hannah Montana impressions.

 

Free Stuff: Stereoizer 2.6 is released

Always one to promote the free stuff. Nugen has released a new version of it's Stereoizer plugin. Read about it and download it at NuGen Audio

NuGen writes:

We are pleased to announce the release of Stereoizer 2.6 in both Mac and PC formats.

With and updated GUI and several control enhancements the unique sound of Stereoizer has never been more accessible. If you haven’t tried Stereoizer yet, maybe now is the time - don’t just take my word for it.

Now with a new set of utility controls Stereoizer has evolved into a mature and stable product worthy of professional acclaim. Grab a free demo here and give it a whirl.

New features:
- New GUI
- Dedicated Bypass control
- Undo
- Redo
- A/B memories
- A/B memory recall
- Integrated peak-hold level meter
- Level margin
- Numeric parameter readouts
- Direct numerical parameter entry
- Mono-collapse feature
- Primary algorithm on/off control

Monday, August 27, 2007

 

HMHS 81 - Roger Davis - Hard Act To Follow

Welcome back to the show for an old regular Roger Davis with his cool and rockin' song Hard Act To Follow.

Check out Roger's stuff here at Soundclick

Roger is a member at Taxi and has had success there.

Roger wrote this after I asked him for some info:

For the song I used my POD, EZDrummer, Trilogy and Behringer mixer. All parts performed by me and recorded in my home studio.

Let’s just say I have had some success with TAXI.

I’ve signed songs with publishers, music libraries and film production companies. I’ve had songs on major TV shows and also feature films. The money from individual placements is not that much, but the idea is to put together a catalogue of many songs, each earning an upfront fee and/or royalties down the road. That takes years, but it can be done.

I produce everything in my home studio and all my equipment is your basic music store stuff… Home built DAW, POD, Behringer, etc. Nothing special.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

 

(Repost) HMHS 80 The Miskicks - Sagittarius Rising

(reposted due to download errors)

A great song from my friend Tim De Ferrars (source of the famed HMHS graphic). Over the years Tim has written some great songs but has sometimes struggled with his sounds and mixing (and perhaps his confidence most of all). Well on this one he's got it all right.

Lots of info from Tim:

This is the first song I have recorded with
my new Epiphone “ES335”. I was getting single-tracked into the Strat sound,
and the new guitar is very liberating. I wrote the song around the bass
hook, oddly enough, followed by keys, drums, vocals and only then guitar.


TECHO STUFF:
Epiphone semi-acoustic through Laney 50W valve combo
Vocals and slave guitar through AudioTechnica AT2020 condenser mic
Fender ‘62 reissue Strat through POD XT
Roland E-70 synth
Beta Monkey drum loops
Cheapo bass
Tascam US-122 with POD XT
Cubase LE
Melodyne Uno (vocals)
Harbal (EQ)

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

 

HMHS 80 The Miskicks - Sagittarius Rising

A great song from my friend Tim De Ferrars (source of the famed HMHS graphic). Over the years Tim has written some great songs but has sometimes struggled with his sounds and mixing (and perhaps his confidence most of all). Well on this one he's got it all right.

Lots of info from Tim:

This is the first song I have recorded with
my new Epiphone “ES335”. I was getting single-tracked into the Strat sound,
and the new guitar is very liberating. I wrote the song around the bass
hook, oddly enough, followed by keys, drums, vocals and only then guitar.


TECHO STUFF:
Epiphone semi-acoustic through Laney 50W valve combo
Vocals and slave guitar through AudioTechnica AT2020 condenser mic
Fender ‘62 reissue Strat through POD XT
Roland E-70 synth
Beta Monkey drum loops
Cheapo bass
Tascam US-122 with POD XT
Cubase LE
Melodyne Uno (vocals)
Harbal (EQ)

Monday, August 20, 2007

 

HMHS 79 - Jeff Yankauer - The Last Word

A great new song from an old show favorite - Jeff Yankauer. I've always liked Jeff's stuff because it has a style of it's own but this song is really good in my humble opinion.

Check out more from Jeff at his Soundclick page.

Jeff writes:

I used PowerTracks Pro to record the guitars and vocals. I used Band-in-a-Box for the bass and drums, with extensive manual editing to tweak those parts. Shure SM-57 mic was used for vocals. Electric guitars tracks were recorded directly and I used freeware JCM900 amp emulator VST plugin. Computer is a PC with an Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ with 2 gigs of ram running Windows Vista.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

 

Not much to report

A busy weekend before the children go back to school followed by two weeks of intensive stuff at work so you might not be hearing too much. I have some songs to post so I should be able to do that.

Spent about an hour on Saturday trying out some ideas, not really making much progress. I seem to tend to have my songs too similar from beginning to end and I need to find a way to insert some changes and differences. I think this comes from writing along to a pre-chosen drum loop, perhaps I need to get an idea for a song then choose the loops first.

Friday, August 17, 2007

 

Making Money from Music Libraries

I've been doing a lot of research on music libraries for us home musicians.

What is a music library you ask ? In summary it's a catalog of music that is made available to movie, TV and internet companies that may require music from 1 second to full song. All that music in those commercials, or that song playing in the jukebox in the background of a scene form CSI or the music on a news show, all of this could have come from a music library.

One way to get your music into a library is through a service like Taxi and Taxi has a produced a lot of videos on this available at youtube.



You can find a lot of great videos at the youtube Taxi site

Many of these videos talk about how they may only use a few seconds of a track but that this can generate a nice income. One example was a snippet used that offered only $3 per airing, but that ran on a cable channel constantly through the day for weeks generating $3k for the songwriter in a single quarter.

Another, free, service is Pump Audio I went through their signup process and it's a lot of work but who knows if it could be worthwhile.

I really recommend watching the youtube series of videos called "Earning Your Living with Film & TV Placements" from the Taxi set. They are very interesting and talk a lot about how, with some attention to quality and some effort, you rally can make money from your hobby.

 

HMHS 78 - Sucrepop - un p'tit rock and roll

Another song today (I don't plan to do one song a day forever) this time from our old friend Phil aka Sucrepop. "un p'tit rock and roll" (meaning a "A little rock and roll" ) is a fun little bouncy song. Phil releases a free song once a month so check him out at www.sucrepop.com

Phil says that it's in french and was recorded at home on with a Toneport Kb37
Guitar solo was made using Sampletank

Thursday, August 16, 2007

 

HMHS 77 - Joe Pop - Poor Excuse

Time for another song from our old favorite Joe Pop / David LePlante. Check out the excellent and fun Joe Pop site at joepoptoons.com

Joe talks about the stardust plug in, find it here

Joe provided the following update:
I have been working with bassist Joe Payne in Tampa Florida. We are about 3 songs away from a new finished CD. I realized that I didn't want to duplicate the sound of what I did last year so I decided to make changes to the studio. Joe had talked me into switching to the Cubase software and going to a USB interface. I ordered the Lexicon Alpha interface which comes with the Cubase LE software. It is advertised as being Windows 2000 compatible but when I got it, the software and the drivers for the Alpha were XP only. After just spending 100 dollars on the interface I didn't want to spend another couple hundred on Windows XP. I like my Windows 2000 Pro and I hate XP. I sent the Alpha back and ordered an ART Tube MP preamp (non-USB) and then I upgraded to the Mixcraft 3 for about twenty bucks. Now I'm all set. The new Mixcraft is great. It's close enough to the earlier version that I didn't have to re-learn everything but it has a whole new layout and more features. It's also compatible with the ASIO drivers so I can go USB sometime in the future. The new ART tube preamp is great. It is hiss free. I get more background noise off my keyboard now than I do off my mic (and you probably remember how much hiss I used to have).

I still wanted to get a little crazy so I downloaded a whole bunch of new plug-ins. I found a mastering plug-in called "Stardust" absolutely free. It includes compression, a limiter, stereo enhancer, bass enhancer and high end enhancement all in one effect so it doesn't overload the resources on my PC.

All the results can be heard in the latest track we have just finished. I think some of the new songs show some musical growth and even some in my singing. I'm using a lower register on this song. The latest track is called "Poor Excuse" It's about abuse of power. I am handling the usual assortment of keyboard, guitars and vocals. Joe Payne is on bass and his wife Jenny Payne is doing some very cool backup vocals. Joe doesn't have much free time and the recording of these has been much slower. It has given me time to be more of a perfectionist and for other things like my cartoons. It's good to have the Homemade Hit Show up and running again. I will be back as a regular.

 

My Wednesday Music Report

Nice start, sent a mass email and got lots of songs and comments sent. Always appreciated.

Spent about 2 hours on my music tonight. I started by trying some vocals on a tune I have recorded. The family were out and I tried to get something done but I'm not sure it worked, I'll leave it a few days and see. This is a song I have musically complete but I wrote it as a verse/chorus structure without any lyrical ideas, now I'm trying to come up with something. Maybe I'll post it and get some readers to send some ideas in.

Next I tried Zoetrope's idea of opening Last Man Standing with a copy of the chorus but it really doesn't work, the transition from the rocking chorus to the mellow start is just too rough. I liked the idea but I couldn't pull it off

Finally I spent some time on an idea I have. A single repeated piano note, with a crashing guitars, drums, keys hook every couple of bars. Just an idea for now but it sounded good.

Oh yeah and Last Man Standing already reached #1 in the Pop/Rock charts at Soundclick. I must be doing something right, very little cheating is going on these days (from me) but I've had 3 songs reach top 10 and stick around there for a couple of months. I realize it doesn't mean a lot but it feels good. Give it a listen and vote here: The Tones at Soundclick

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

 

HMHS - First New Song From Gary Davies

Welcome to the new format. My first song is played without actually asking for permission (I'm sure he won't mind). This is from a true home musician Gary Davies and his song Fall From Grace.

Check out more by visiting Gary at Soundclick

You can hear the song by clicking the link, using the player at the top of the page or by subscribing through iTunes.

 

The Home Made Hit Show Returns

New approach, new format. Read my ramblings and hear the songs sent in. Listen on the player above or have them downloaded into iTunes.

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