Yekalb

Well when I woke up this morning after a very long fun packed weekend, I didn’t expect that I would be spending my evening in a box at the Royal Albert Hall watching none other than The Killers. Yes its been quite a good day and as usual Brandon and his extraordinary band never fail to impress.

I’ve been lucky in this being the third time I have seen The Killers in the last 9 months, firstly at their debut at the Royal Albert Hall which was one of the most amazing concert experiences I have ever had. Then at the o2 which unfortunately I have to say was a small bit disappointing, yes ok they had a lot to live up to after the Royal Albert Hall but to be fair I don’t think the o2 venue done them any justice something just didn’t seem to work but still considering it was a good show.

So I was more than over the moon to be able to go back to the Albert Hall to see them one more time, this time being the chance they get to film their upcoming DVD, they were leaving nothing to chance they were going for a great show. Yes and it was amazing once again but it still cant beat the first time, possibly maybe it was because I was in a box instead of in the midst of the crowd or maybe it was because there was still space and empty seats (I really cant understand how but there were).

But regardless they captivated the crowd with their strings of hits and you can tell how much 9 months changes the fans perception of the newer material which was pretty much un-heard off when they first played the Albert Hall to now being future hits in the making with their slightly alternate edge.

One final note, they should of left Jimmy Carr at home, don’t get me wrong I love Jimmy I’ve been to see him in his own show and it was great. However I just didn’t get his little crowd warm up role tonight, what was going on there, it didn’t even look like he had prepared he came on with clip board he was reading the jokes off, was he actually meant to be there or was he a last minute filler who knows but it didnt really work.

The annual o2 Wireless Festival kicked off yesterday in London’s Hyde Park there was a light spray of rain as we made our way to the main entrance but thankfully it quickly disappeared leaving us with a glorious day full of sunshine, beer and most important off all music.

What a great day it was starting off with Paul Okenfold getting the party started in the second stage tent which immediately filled up to the brim creating an oven within 10 minutes which got a bit to much to bear. Spent much of the day in front of the main stage with some great performances from Filthy Dukes, Jack Penate and Delphic, popping in out of the second tent to catch pieces of Frankmusik and Tommy Sparks.

Everything really got going with the last two performances on the main stage from Dizzee Rascal and of course the headline act Basement Jaxx. I wasn’t to sure what to expect from Dizzee not really being a fan of his but I was actually really pleasantly surprised, he really knows how to get the crowd going and by the time it got to his final track the new single ‘Bonkers’ the place was going wild.

What better act to finish the night than the Basement Jaxx’s, Londons very own Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe are a live act not to miss, with the massive string of hits they have had transformed into a great live show with a number of singers, even opening with an short opera performance by one of the main singers sisters. As expected they supplied the good with hits like ‘Red Alert’, ‘Good Luck’ and ‘Where’s Your Head At’ in a truly captivating performance which seemed to be over far to quickly.

Overall a fantastic day was just looking a little bit red faced this morning, a bit to much sun and to little sun cream, Wireless Festival continues today with the more Hip-Hop focused day with Kanye West, Tinchy Stryder, N-Dubz, Q-Tip and Alesha Dixon and many more.

Anyone involved in the music industry in anyway would of heard of the name Bob Lefsetz he is a big figure in the music industry especially with his email newsletter which I love reading everyday, it makes the journey to work all the much better. Its great to hear his views on pretty much everything music related and you can see people have a lot of respect for what he has to say. If you havent already seen his newsletter then do pop over to his site and subscribe it really is worth it.

Lefsetz Letter

Here is a bit more info about him taken from wiki:

Bob Lefsetz is an American music industry figure and author of the email newsletter and blog, the Lefsetz Letter. Based in Santa Monica, California, Lefsetz worked previously as an entertainment business attorney, majordomo of Sanctuary Music’s American division and as a consultant to major record labels. Lefsetz deals with issues at the core of the music industry.

Themes explored in the Lefsetz Letter:

1. The diminishing role of the major record labels in current recorded music and corresponding increasing influence and importance of grassroots artist activities such as live performances and direct online relationships with fans.
2. The decline of physical musical formats (primarily the decline of CD sales as alternate online music services such as iTunes continue to flourish)
3. The prevalence of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing as the primary source of digital music distribution
4. The need for a legitimate and licensed Peer-to-Peer or similar distribution service to facilitate the next working business model for the music industry.
5. Lefsetz’s personal reflection on songs, songwriters, bands and industry insiders that have affected his unique and independent outlook of the music industry.
6. Lefsetz’s personal life: his wife, kids, trips, vacations, youthful years driving across country, skiing, and so forth.

Lefsetz was publicly dressed down by singer Kid Rock in an email exchange that Lefsetz forwarded to readers on November 8, 2007, but has apparently chosen not to post to his online letter archive. In the exchange, Rock reacts to Lefsetz’s cavalier “F**k Kid Rock” comment by threatening the industry gadfly with bodily harm and calling him “bitch boy.”

Lefsetz exchanged insults via e-mail with Kiss bassist Gene Simmons in March 2009. Simmons and Lefsetz were both keynote speakers at the Canadian Music Week conference. Lefsetz criticized Simmons’ appearance as only self-promotional; Simmons launched Simmons Records with Universal Music Canada earlier in the year. Simmons responded by calling Lefsetz a “moron”, and wrote, “I won’t stop telling you how great I am. Find someone else for that.” The two debated in-person at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto.

I’m one of these people who like to be able to feel like they are really getting a hands on approach to whatever I may be doing and of course this has always been a draw back with producing music solely on a computer with limited or no external hardware (just a midi keyboard) and not enough money in the bank to buy that piece of kit you have always been after.

So what I was after was a cheap alternative to solve my hands on approach issue by finding a decent midi/usb controller which i could use to completely control the Logic work surface, without the need to be continually pointing and clicking with the mouse. Of course there are a huge amount of options out their as I discovered in quest to find my new piece of kit, so finally I find the Novation Remote Zero SL and managed to pick up a brand new one on ebay for only £140.

Why did I choose the Remote Zero SL?

Considering the price I was amazed at the level of functionality that comes with the Zero SL, it is a stripped down version of a range of different products that range from a full size midi keyboard controller to the Remote version which is just the control surface on its own. Yes also before anyone says anything, this is the older model. There is actually a version 2 out which looks even better but I couldn’t part with the cash for the obviously raised price.

Auto Mapping

One of the main features which sets the Zero SL range apart from its competition is Novations Auto Mapping technology, the ability to automatically map the controls to the software currently being used. This in theory saves so much time and hassle and allows you to control almost everything from one small controller. What makes it even better is the automatic switching between controlling your DAW mixer to a plugin or VST, simply opening any plugin which has a template and the Zero SL automatically switches the control surface to be assigned to the plugin controls. Amazing!

Well there are some slight issues, firstly with Logic 8 when the SL is set to control the mixer channels for some reason it will miss out one or two channels in certain positions. Probably some sort of bug which hopefully will be fixed with a later upgrade but for now I just get around it by leaving those particular channels blank. Secondly the auto map templates which are supplied with the software, are for me personally not setup in the best way there are some odd assignments which I don’t quite get why they have been set like that.

Template Editor

Lucky another great thing about the Zero SL is the onscreen template mapping software which is supplied with the unit, from within a handy control panel you can easily re-map the entire controller to suit your needs. Turn on the learn function and away you go click on a control in your DAW and then push a fader or a button and they are instantly mapped. Yes nothing new to being able to do that with any controller, but with the Zero SL you can then save the template as an auto map and create a number of different pages of settings for each plugin or instrument within each template, which basically means you have an unlimited number of control to use at your disposal. When you are actually using the controller you can easily switch between pages of your template using handy up and down buttons at the top of the unit.

LED Display

So with all these controls and many different templates being switched between all the time how do you keep up with what is being controlled by each fader or switch. Along the top of the unit are two separate LED displays, these allow you to see what parameters the currently selected row is controlling, you can switch between the row being displayed by either pressing the small buttons at the end of each row or by simple moving on of the controllers to automatically display what they are assigned to. It may look small but this really does work and makes the everyday use much simpler well once you have got a rough idea of where everything is mapped to.

Drum Pads

Anyone who loves to program their drums manually will also love the fact that it also comes with 8 velocity sensitive pads at the bottom of the unit, so if you are putting together some new beats or just using them to trigger samples in a live set they are a handy little feature to have.

Overall I’m really loving the unit, of course its not the best but for the price I don’t think there is anything which can match it for features and ability and I have had great fun using it. Finally I can control everything I want on a piece of hardware, which makes tweaking synths and effects a great experience. I will say though it did take a bit of getting used to and getting everything setup how I wanted it but if you are on a budget i definitely recommend this unit.

One of my great loves in my spare time as a hobby is writing and producing electronic music, I have been doing this for a number of years now and as well as studying music tech at both college and university I have also self taught my self how to use many different DAW and music related software.

By far my favorite DAW is Logic, up until recently I had been using Logic 5.5 on the PC which is still a great piece of kit for any studio but with the times moving on and the Logic platform continuing to develop into an even more amazing piece of software I finally took the step to converting to OSX. With out hesitation the first step I took was to get the latest installment of Logic.

I have been using the latest version 8 for a couple of weeks now and have been amazed at some great new feature and user friendly setup that the new format of Logic brings.

As part of my blog running along side I am going to be compiling a number of tutorials to help fellow music enthusiasts taking their first steps into the world of Logic 8. I hope to cover not only advice on how to best utilize the software for its optimum use but to also share my techniques that I use and give general advice on all things production related.

I’m going to try and aim to do at least one tutorial each week and keep a structured progression through each tutorial. The first tutorial will be coming later this week.

The main index for the tutorials will be located on the Logic Tutorials page accessed through the top menu.

Enjoy.

With the ever increasing popularity of twitter the new fashionable internet trend which is spreading like wild fire, it was only a matter of time before there were many new sites appearing with the goal of making twitter users life’s a little easier and at the same time being able to jump on the bandwagon of the current big social network.

Quite an interesting site I stumbled upon yesterday twitfs.com has attempted to take file lockers like Megaupload and Rapidshare into the twitter scope. They have developed their own file hosting site which allows un-registered users the opportunity to upload any files they like up to 100mb, then automatically post the links to their twitter and other social network account.

What a great idea, an easy way to share your content directly to all your followers and friends, ideal opportunity for unsigned artists to easily distribute demos and live sets to their fans, or even just a group of like minded people who simply want to share more than what you can say in 140 characters. What ever your needs may be it will most likely be a handy tool, as long as you are not concerned with who will be able to access your content.

They also have members accounts to improve downloads speed and a paid premium account which gets rid of all the advertising and increases the file size limit up to 2.5gb. The site also supports split file archives to help with larger file sizes.

Although on the obvious side this will undoubtedly be making its way on to the Anti-Piracy watch lists as all file lockers do and even a law suit to follow if it takes off enough. So do make use of this tool but remember do respect the copyright laws and respect the effort the artists have put in to making the music or video and don’t post illegal content.

As the whole world knows on Thursday 25th June Michael Jackson suddenly and unfortunately died from a suspected heart attack, this was a very sad day for the world and the music industry who have lost a true legend and undisputed king of pop an individual who was so great that we will never encounter such an icon again.

Yes his life was full of many accusations and criticism in recent years, he was confused and misunderstood person who was never given a chance of a normal life being forced into the star light from a very young age. But regardless of what may have happened in his life there is one fact that can not be taken away, he was the true King of Pop.

I decided to compile a playlist of my favorite Michael Jackson songs with Spotify please feel free to have a listen.

To open in Spotify click here

Michael Jackson 1958 – 2009

With this years Glastonbury just 2 days away from kicking off and quite an impressive line-up in store with the likes of the great Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Blur headlining, I’m absolutely gutted that I couldn’t go and instead will be forced to watch what I can catch on the TV but it just wont be the same will it.

However good news for any one who is going, Klaxons have just been added to the line-up and are due to play on Saturday evening on the Park Stage. Hopefully this will be a chance to hear some of their new material for their upcoming album, which still is yet to be official confirmed with release dates.

It seems to have been a troubling year for the trio who won the mercury prize with their debut album ‘Myths of the Near Future’ back in 2007 but have been struggling with their follow up album which was recently rejected by their record label as they were told to go back to the studio and re-write the whole album. So this may not be with us until 2010, maybe a good thing that it has been delayed they obviously have a lot to live up to if they want to surpass the quality of the debut album.

For the full Glastonbury line-up click here

Spotify looks set to improve the quality of its service for premium members according to Music Ally today with the announcement of news that premium member will soon have the option to chose between the usual 160kbs or the new and improved 320kbs format to give more incentive for users to upgrade to the full paid subscription service.

Obviously this will take some time to be implemented completely there are talks that this will begin to be introduced later this week firstly with bigger artists as they undertake the huge task of converting the whole catalogue. Although there are still no official updates posted on the Spotify website regarding this.

This should add some extra attraction to the already great Spotify service but is it enough to convert much needed subscribers to the premium accounts?

For the music purists yes this would be a definite persuader to join the ever growing service and upgrade for the added quality, but to the average user I can’t see this having much effect.

Overall though I am a huge fan of the Spotify service and do believe it is the way forward for the changing music industry as a whole, they need to adapt to new technologies faster and realize where and when the consumers want their music. Many believe that these new Spotify models will fail like many have already due to the lack of interest and backing and no hope for any advertising revenue. However with Spotify being built extremely well and being simply a pleasure to use with its playlists and instant playback I think we have finally found a winner in this gap.

Update 25/06/2009: Spotify have now officially announced the improved service on their blog view here

If you are like me and have just started setting up your first blog or are thinking of starting one using the Wordpress system then I definitely recommend checking out a fantastically easy to follow step by step guide written by Angie Bowen over at Pro Blog Design.

Very easy to follow and has some great recommendations on what plugins to install, some very helpful information on setting up Feedburner correctly and security considerations which need to be taken into account. Well worth a read.

Check out the full article