Changes Everywhere! Where do I begin??

So, it has been a while since my last post, sorry. Lots of new and great changes have happened in my life. I finally completed my Master’s degree and now we just wait for the diploma to arrive. On the front of the wave of change is my new employment at Blackbird Studio here in Nashville. It is quite possibly the start of my dreams coming true! My partners and I are also looking at two possible music production jobs with some really great talent. Most recent, I have become a published author! My new book encompasses my love for photography and my desire to write some type of book. I have taken a compilation of photos I have taken over the past few months and put together “Photos of Life” a twenty-three page paperback with highly detailed, full color photos. I know anyone who loves photographs, nature, life, love, or any of the above, will love this book! Go check out “Photos of Life” and see what all the commotion is about by clicking this link: http://www.lulu.com/product/lulustudio-photo-book/photos-of-life/18715836
Hurry now while supplies last, they are flying off the shelf! I also want my followers to know that more pro audio blogs are on the way, now that the fallout from the cultural explosion is subsiding we can get back to business. Thank you for all of your support, until next time…

A Great, Affordable, Small Recording Set-up!

I know many of you out there are just starting out in the recording business. I am all about continuing to spread information from generation to generation. Someone took the time to teach me and I think it is my duty to continue to learn, and give the knowledge I gain to someone else. In this blog post I will give you some opinions on how to build a very affordable recording rig that is also able to capture great audio. To start with, interfaces, which one? I am particularly fond of the Digidesign 003 Rack+.

There are eight mic and line inputs, each able to engage phantom power. The pre amps are decent and smooth. Obviously you can do better, I run a Neve Portico 5012 myself, but you could do a lot worse. Now, there are two channels of SPDIF and eight channels of ADAT input available to the 003, this means we can use another interface with equally decent pres to increase your inputs to 16 or 18 with SPDIF. This is more than enough to track a small band of power three piece. So I found out that it is not recommended to stack two 003s to achieve this, so I started looking for affordable choices.

I stumbled across the Focusrite Octopre MKII. The Octopre LE preamps offer 5dB lower gain, they are capable of 96kHz audio and there is an ADAT i/o. On the higher priced Octopre MkII Dynamic, you will have all the functionality you’d see on an ADAT expander. As well as a compressor-limiter on each channel, you get both ADAT in and out (again at 24-bit, 96kHz). I also talked to other colleagues that said they and people they know have used the Octopre to add eight channels to their home rig. In the Dynamic version of the MkII you get a compressor-limiter on each channel. So what I do is hook up my 003 Rack+ to my Apple Mac Book Pro. I run all of my sessions off of an Avastor HDX 500GB hard drive and leave the processing up to the CPU. I have two channels of Neve pres and if I need more pres I have the 003 and Octopre to turn to. The Octopre is connected to the 003 via ADAT light pipe and the 003 is the master device when clocking. This gives me sixteen channels of i/o and two high quality preamps along with sixteen decent pres. I have a variety of mics to choose from, but honestly one of my go to mics is the AT 2050. I bought and made my own XLR cable and ¼” cable and I was able to do it at a fraction of the cost of buying pre-made cable. The Octopre MkII Dynamic is $699.99 and the 003 Rack+ is being phased out, but you can get the Complete Rack in the plus version for about $1750.00. The Portico 5012 is about $1725.00 and a great starter mic pack that includes two Sampson C-12 pencil condensers, the AT2020, and the e-609 for $399.99. So, for about $4575.00 you can have a very mobile, very decent recording rig that is capable of recording anything from stand-up comedy to bands to voice-overs. I have used this rig for years with much success and I didn’t invest near that dealing with Sweetwater. They have worked with me on every purchase to help get closer to the numbers I have in my budget. I can’t say what they will do for you, but I lucked up and got a good friend on the inside and he treats me very well. This is just one option, but this is a great bridge between affordability and quality. It is a good medium. If you have more in your budget I would suggest going a different way. I hope you enjoyed the blog this time and learned something from it. Check out the links to see some of the gear I found and make your own mind up about it. Until next time…


http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/5012DuoMicH
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar10/articles/focusriteoctopremkII.htm
http://www.focusrite.com/products/saffire/octopre_mkii_dynamic/

Finance...no, that is not an audio term...

Before we begin with this installment of The Summing Amp I must clear the air for all of my faithful pro audio followers. I am aware that there are some discrepancies between what this blog is supposed to be about and lately what we have been supplying to you. I have received some confused emails asking me, “What does this have to do with pro audio?” Well, I will first apologize to you for all of the confusion. I am required to write about specific topics for the completion of my Master’s degree and those topics are very rarely about pro audio. I do hope we only have one more of these unrelated topics to write about and then I should have total control over the content of “my” blog. After that it will be all and only pro audio related topics, thank you all for your continued support.
Ok, now that that has been cleared up we can talk about financing; yes that is what I said. There were ten websites I had to review and answer some questions about. On these websites financing is directed towards the Clinton administrations goal of providing financing options for distressed communities across our nation. These vehicles are called CDFI’s or Community Development Financial Institution Funds. In 2002, the CDFI’s moved from Philadelphia, PA to the nation’s capitol in order to maximize the organization’s visibility with federal policy makers. They also established independence as a nonprofit charitable organization and elected its first Board of Directors and officers. Some of these institutions represent over 100,000 loans directed toward low-income and low to moderate-income borrowers.
There are two more specific institutions, namely First Nations and the Oweesta Program that focus specifically on the Native Indian community. Regardless of what is offered to any other special interest group, for whom I believe should be on the same level as the rest of the nation, this particular group is the only one that deserves this special treatment, taking their and our history into consideration. All opinions aside, these institutions wish to boost local and global economy. Most of these loans and investments range from $100,000 to $3 million, in terms lasting from 3 to 10 years.
For those in my audience who are interested I will list the sites at the bottom of this blog. On these sites you can find the terms, mission statements and history of each site. You must fit one of their profiles to be considered for funding. To reiterate what I said in the beginning of this blog, only a few more and we are back to pro audio. I do appreciate the emails; even of they were not so complementary, trying to redirect me toward the title and topic of this blog. At least I know you are reading if you are complaining. Stay in touch with any more ideas, questions, or improvements you may have. Until next time…


Here are the sources that were supplied to me:

www.opportunityfinance.net
www.microenterpriseworks.org
www.cdfi.org
www.cfed.org
www.cdvca.org
www.ncif.org
www.natfed.org
www.eda.gov
www.firstnations.org
www.oweesta.org

A Graduate’s Retrospective.

I can still se myself sitting in my garage, wondering what I was going to do with my career. One of my wife’s friends had gone back to school years before and he went to Full Sail University. I thought it was worth checking in on, when I did I found a University with my own set of interests. I decided to get information about the school and my wife though it would be cool too. After researching the school and our financial capabilities, my wife and I decided to drop the hammer. We sold our 12,050 square foot house in coastal North Carolina and our Volkswagen Jetta and move to Orlando Florida. I think everyone who knew us also knew we are very strong people, but I think they might have had some reluctance to see us off.
After our first year, we accomplished some very great things. I received numerous course director’s awards and almost straight A’s throughout the entire Associate’s program. We had planned to continue onto the Bachelor’s of Entertainment Business program, however a wonderful opportunity presented itself close to the end of the first year. There was a Bachelor’s of Recording Arts now available and for me it was a completers’ course. We headed into year two and the Bachelor’s of Recording Arts program. We had many goals set from the very beginning and we blew past them in the first year. At the end of the second year I had risen to the top of my graduating class and received many more course director’s awards than the previous year. My wife and I had joked with each other during the first graduation, “What if I was chosen to give the commencement ceremony speech next year?” I said I would be like Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School, we laughed. To my surprise, during one of the last class meetings with career development, the graduation staff came in and we were voting for that very gift. I was shocked to find my name within the running for giving the commencement speech for our graduation. I was blown away to hear that I was eventually chosen to give said speech. Then the realization of actually giving that speech came to me and I stressed for the remainder of the time in the program. I typed a speech I though appropriate and we headed off to my second graduation. As I stood in cue to go on stage and receive our diplomas, I was pondering on what I would say when I gave my oncoming speech, especially since the young lady in the graduating class before me had already given three out of the four quotes I had in my speech. Talking about having to think on your feet. Somehow I made it through and with flying colors again.
We embarked on the final destination late last year, the Master’s of Entertainment Business program at Full Sail University. As you may guess, we are pretty insane by now. When I think about all I have learned over the coarse of my tenure at Full Sail and the many journeys intertwined within said journey, I feel a great sense of accomplishment and wonder where this road will intersect with another. I have learned not to have any preconceived notions about life, just when you think you have it figured out and can follow that concrete plan you’ve spent so many hours concocting, boom, you’re picking up the pieces. You have to take all of the information flying at you and value the valuable, while ejecting the trash. The last stop, the runway, the breaks are slowly drawing to, we are so very close to finishing what seemed like an insurmountable task. We have only one more month to go and we will have completed the Master’s of Entertainment Business degree program at Full Sail University and we are the better for it. We have grown as individuals, we have grown as professionals, and we have grown as a couple. I am so proud of my wife for being supportive no matter how uncomfortable the situation was. She has and will always be there for me and I her. I have said it many times, but now I know, there isn’t anything my wife and I can’t accomplish together. We will now put all of the planning and learning to work and soon start our business together. I look forward to a successful future together with my wife doing the things we love to do for support of our lives together. With God, anything is possible.

Business Plan Tips from the Masters!

We will take a look at the business behind it all this post. We will be looking at who I consider the top three entrepreneurs in America today; Donald Trump, Mark Cuban, and Warren Buffett. These businessmen have a proven track record of starting and perpetuating very successful entities for many years. In my own short experience with running businesses, I have noticed that a good plan in the beginning will help lock you into a successful track. Disorganization is one of the biggest killers of new businesspersons.
According to an interview by associatedcontent.com, Donald Trump listed business plans by saying,” Solo practitioners are probably the worst offenders of this. Without a plan, it is a plan to fail.

It is too easy to become distracted, or find the newest thing to promote. With a business plan, there is a direction and a focus.” I remember back in the 80’s, Donald Trump went broke! However, he had a distinct focus and a plan for getting through it and return to his once prominent status. While the argument remains weather a prominent upbringing produces a prominent well being or not is still under discussion, but either way the production and execution of a strong business plan is key to success.
Many people are very aware of Trump and Buffett, but not so many are aware of Mark Cuban.

Mark was only born in July 1958, which makes him fifty-three, but he is also the flamboyant owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team, and Magnolia Pictures just to name a few. On Mark’s personal blog site blogmaverick.com, Marks lays out his idea for a business plan and most direct road to becoming rich. He says, “First thing not to do is use credit cards. Save as much money as you can, put them in six month CD’s. Remember, cash is king. Be a smart investor, invest in things you like and can enjoy. Do a lot of reading on the subject of business and finances, become knowledgeable. The main message is discipline, especially in the first years of business.” Mark created his version of a successful business plan and followed through with it to create a mega-empire for himself.
Last, but not least is Mr. Warren Buffett. In 2008 Buffett was ranked as Forbes richest man in the US, only to be toped by Bill Gates as of recent. For Buffett it was always about keeping the overhead low and the revenue high. That simple business practice made Buffett only a lot himself an annual salary of $100,00 and continue to live in the same house he bought in 1957.

Truly Warren Buffett believes in a strong business plan as he stated in his Annual Report, I found it on klariti.com. Buffett had nine steps to effective business and they were listed as follows. Customer Focus, facts like sticking to the facts in what you know. Include technical and legal document as attachments meaning having the information you may need in a Appendix to be easily referenced. Jargon, which is writing in a professional tone avoiding slang, jargon and acronyms. One page max meaning to try to keep your business communication down to pone page in length. Proof the letter, checking and having a trusted colleague double-checking all forms and letters that leave your desk. See the big picture, this is what is considers taking a good look at all the possibilities before you even began. He suggests using short words and not trying to sound more intelligent that you probably are. Not meaning you are not intelligent, but no Nobel prizes were handed out for emails. Finally, structure your letter, this means before writing a letter, make a list of key points that you need to cover. As you see, Warren Buffett was much more about structure with his business plan. He was in a way much more involved on a paper trail level than Trump or Cuban.
According to a 2009 article from the New York Times, there are five things potential investors are looking for in a business plan. First, investors want to see your background in the industry and business experience. Second, they want to see a need for the product or service you are inquiring about funding for. Most do not want to invest in little ideas. Third, no matter how unique your product is, show that you know your demographics and will reach your target market in an ongoing manner. Fourth, they want to see that you have researched and know your competitors very well. They also want to see how you plan to contend with your competitors and how you will distinguish yourself. Lastly, investors expect to see a return on their investment. They want to see realistic financial projections that show how ling it will take for the business to show a profit and for them to recoup their initial investment.
Keep all of these items and ideas in mind before you begin to start your business. Remember, many of the most important things you need to do as a new business owner start long before you ever are actually selling a product. Creating a business plan and not becoming distracted from that plan is one of the most important things to practice. I hope you received some information that you didn’t think about before. If you want to read more about these powerful businessmen, or want to see the articles that inspired me to write this blog, check out these sites:

http://www.nytimes.com/allbusiness/AB12322189_primary.html
http://www.klariti.com/business-plan/warren-buffets-nine-steps-to-effective-business-english/
http://blogmaverick.com/
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1634723/ten_donald_trump_business_tips_for.html?cat=3

Sound Absorption..Oh yea, I forgot about that!

So much of being a practicing audio engineer is critical listening. So many times I hear other engineers talking about input signal, differences in gear, and how to deal with the artists, but I almost never hear about different techniques on sound absorption properties and room reflections.

Think about it, if this job relies so heavily on our ears, wouldn’t it be rather important to spend some time training our ears and studying the millions of characteristics that make the room you are monitoring in sweet or dissonant? Well, in this blog post we will spend some of that critically important time on this very topic.

Believe it or not, almost all materials have some sound absorbing properties. Incident sound energy that is not absorbed must be reflected, transmitted, or dissipated.

According to Merriam-Webster, a coefficient is a number that serves as a measure of some property or characteristic as of a substance, device, or process. It can also mean any of the factors of a product considered in relation to a specific factor; especially a constant factor of a term as distinguished from a variable. Wow, that is a brain full isn’t it? Well, a material’s sound absorbing properties can be described as a sound absorption coefficient in a particular frequency range. As audio engineers we deal with said coefficients on both sides of our input stage and in every task in the studio. There is an obvious correlation of numbers where complete absorption is 100% and 1 % is very minimal absorption. This means 100% is an almost completely “dead” room, while an absorption factor of 1% will have lots of reflections zipping around the sound field. Incident sound striking a room surface yields sound energy comprising reflected sound, absorbed sound and transmitted sound.

A good sound reflector will prevent sound transmission by forming a solid, impervious barrier and tend to be massive. Most good sound absorbers transmit sound and are typically porous, lightweight material. Taking this basic thought into the practice arena, this is why sound transmitted between rooms is hardly affected by adding sound absorption to a wall surface. When talking about sound absorbers there are three basic categories: porous materials typically made of matted or spun fibers, panel or membrane absorbers having an impervious surface mounted over an airspace, and resonators usually made by created holes or slots connected to an enclosed volume of trapped air. Don’t forget, the effectiveness of the above absorbers will dramatically change according to the mounting method you use.

Porous absorbers are commonly made from carpet, draperies, spray-applied cellulose, aerated plaster, and wool or glass fiber.

Most all of these materials will allow air to flow into their cellular structure where sound energy is converted to heat. Remember the Law of Conservation of Energy from Physics class, “energy is neither created nor destroyed.” The thickness of the porous material also plays an integral part to its absorptive factor. If there is a thin layer on a hard surface it will not make an efficient sound absorber. However, thicker materials will provide more bass sound absorption or damping. This is why most bass traps you see in the corners of a room will be made out of such porous materials.

Panel absorbers are non-rigid, non-porous materials that are placed over an airspace that vibrates in a flexural mode in response to sound pressure exerted by adjacent air molecules.

These absorbers include thin wood paneling over framing, lightweight impervious ceilings and floors, glazing and other large surfaces capable of resonating in response to sound. These types are most efficient in absorbing low frequencies. You will see this mostly used in orchestral applications where thin wood paneling traps most of the bass sound. If you need to remove some warmth from a room, this is the way to go.

Lastly, resonators typically absorb sound in a more narrow frequency range.

These include perforated materials and other materials that have openings like holes and slots. One classic type is the Helmholtz resonator. By the way, if you have ever encountered the dreaded cicada, their abdomen closely resembles this type of resonator and that is how they make that ear-piercing hum when they grace us every thirteen years. For those of you who have never seen or heard a cicada, this resonator is shaped like a bottle. The resonant frequency is commanded by the size of the opening, the length of the neck and the volume of air trapped in the chamber. Just like when you were a kid and blew into the top of a glass pop bottle and it makes that distinct drone. These resonators typically only absorb the mid-range frequencies unless you take very special care to design the face to be as acoustically transparent as possible. Slotted resonators usually have very similar acoustic response. If you lengthen the slots you can absorb some low frequencies so pay close attention to rooms with long-slotted resonator absorbers. Especially in music production, you don’t want to kill the low end because you will most definitely over compensate in the mix later.

I hope this has cleared up some confusion about room acoustics and the proper way to treat each type of problem you will face. As we all know, nothing is certain in the audio industry. There are an infinite number of possibilities including the weather and percentage of humidity in the room you are treating. I know of a great studio owner and audio engineer who purchased his own electrical transformer and pole to put it on. This resulted in a 10dB quieter studio than any other in town. I know we are not talking about cleanliness of electricity this time, but you get my point. The best thing to do before spending money and time treating a room is to do some preliminary research and talk to lots of more experienced persons than you. If you enjoyed this blog please contact me and let me know. If you love The Summing Amp, pass the joy along to ten of your friends or colleagues. This will help us grow and bring you more interesting and informative blogs in the future. Until next time…

If you want to read more about sound absorption check out the sites I like to read:

www.mixonline.com
www.soundonsound.com
www.aes.com

The Legendary, Bill Putman

How many engineers out there have used any of the listed: echo chambers, multi-band eq’s, the 1176, Universal recording consoles, or any UREI products? Well, let me answer that question, tons of us!

For those of you still in the dark about Universal Recording Electronics Industries (UREI), brought to us by “the father of modern recording,” Milton Tasker “Bill” Putnam. Born in 1920, Bill was a well-respected audio engineer, songwriter, producer, studio designer and businessman who is responsible for most of the tools we all use to produce pro-level recording sessions. Bruce Swedien, engineer on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and former colleague of Bill’s described his achievements by saying, “Bill Putnam was the father of recording as we know it today. The processes and designs which we take for granted – the design of modern recording desks, the way components are laid out and the way they function, console design, cue sends, echo returns, multitrack switching – they all originated in Bill’s imagination.” (mixonline, 2007)

Universal Recording in Chicago, one of America’s first independent recording studios, was founded by Bill in the 1950’s and quickly grew a reputation by recording such artists as Patti Page, Vic Damone, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Little Walter, and Dinah Washington.

During this period, Universal had a number of firsts, including the first use of tape repeat, the first vocal booth, the first multiple voice recording, one of the first to use 8-track recording, the first use of delay lines in the studio, and the first release of half-speed mastered discs. (mixonline 2007) By the mid-1950’s, Putnam was one of the most sought-after engineer-producers in the United States, Universal Recording subsequently became so successful that clients, including the great Quincy Jones, began urging him to open a facility on the west coast. In the late 50’s, he sold his interest in Universal Recording and with support from Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby established United Recording Corp. and moved to Hollywood. He began to utilize his new technologies and inventions into the new facility, expanding and re-designing the existing studios, incorporating much larger studio control rooms.

Bill was known to have tremendous foresight, in the early days when Universal Recording was founded, stereo recording was still very new and not widely excepted for major releases. Bill did however see the importance and at his own expense, he began making simultaneous stereo mixes of recordings produced at United Western and stockpiled these recordings. In the early 60’s when stereo was taking off as a consumer audio format, major labels found themselves without any back catalog of stereo recordings. This placed Putnam in the most advantageous position. Cleverly, Putnam charged for the (much more expensive) studio time used in the mixing of the stereo versions. Allen Sides, Putnam’s former partner said at the time the studio was bringing in around $200,000 per month in studio billing. In 1961, Putnam acquired Western Recorders on Sunset Boulevard, remodeled it and incorporating it into his existing complex, which he then renamed, united Western Recorders. In 1985, Putnam sold the studio to his partner Allen Sides, who then renamed it Ocean Way Recording, this is the one most people know about. There is no doubt, without Bill Putnam we wouldn’t make music the same way we have grown so accustom to. His genus is what has fueled the imaginations of many generations of engineers and even more to come in the future.

I hope this has given you some insight on where this industry has come from. If you didn’t know about Bill Putnam before reading this blog, hopefully you now know about the brilliance, ingenuity, and gusto that propelled one man at the speed of sound, on the crest of a foreign swell, barreling toward the unknown.

If you want to read more about Bill Putnam, go check out the sources I did at:

http://mixonline.com/recording/business/audio_bill_putnam_2/
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/bill_putnam
http://www.uaudio.com/about/our-story

Pictures from www.uaudio.com, 2011

In the clouds?

Have you heard the term “Cloud Computing?” More accurately, it is called cloud-based file exchange and storage. Well, it goes back a bit in history, lending its lineage to the point-to-point data circuits to VPN services of the telephony industry. The actual concept has been around since the 1960’s, however it has taken shape in the present to offer a wider variety of benefits to the recording and entertainment industry. Existing today are some sites allowing musicians to collaborate, offering some rudimentary mixers and effects, mostly in real-time. However for professional recording, there is still a large bandwidth issue with this concept. I know my partners and I use Dropbox and Google Docs on occasion to share files, ideas, and mixes because we live 700+ miles apart. I remember the day, and some others of you might also, when you had to physically mail a tape to your friend, maybe to arrive three or more days later, unless you paid the extra for overnight delivery. Nashville producer Robert Venable uses this approach to songwriting, utilizing Google Docs and updating files in Dropbox. This is the new way to collaborate with other professionals, breaking down the mileage barriers once keeping millions from doing business together. Bandwidth can still plague some applications; this is a problem that will soon come to an end. There are a number of producers and engineers using these cloud-based sites like Dropbox, Mozy, YouSendit, and Google Docs to interact with more professionals than ever before. These systems also help streamline a process that needs to be completed as quickly as possible, remember, time is money. As technology increases and bandwidth follows, we will see a tremendous rise in the number of professional applications of these cloud-based services. This only increases and strengthens the industry as it breaches further into the digital age.

References:
Kenny, T. (2011, May 1) Editors’ note: are you in the cloud? Retrieved June 15, 2011 from, http://mixonline.com/recording/tracking/editors_note_cloud/

If you want to read more about being in the cloud, or more about the professional audio industry, go check out mixonline.

Revenge of the Synth

Hey all you synth lovers out there, does the name Tom Oberheim twirl an oscillator? In April of this year, Tom announced two new additions to his line of resurrected SEM analog synthesizers! That’s right, I said analog. The SEM-PRO incorporates 21 mini-jacks for signal access, the SO4V, or Son of 4 Voice, the return of the vintage ‘70s design. My focus is on the SO4V, 100% discrete analog, no chips what so ever. It can be used as a 4-voice polyphonic synth or as 4 individual synths under MIDI control. If that wasn’t enough, two SO4V’s can be daisy chained to create an 8-voive. There are two LFO’s that are MIDI sync capable, generating multiple waveshapes including sample and hold per voice. Each voice has two programmable ADSR envelope generators, selectable master tuning for detuning very large unison sounds, polyphonic portamento with linear or exponential response. By the way, portamento simply means; “glide.” There are independent mix and pan controls for each voice. The SO4V will be available May/June 2011 and go for about $3,495 so be on the lookout. Now, it goes without saying, even the most beautifully designed pieces of gear have some frustrating points. What some may find a bit frustrating is that the MIDI version of the SEM responds to note on/off and pitch-bend, plus a choice between velocity, aftertouch, or a single user-defined MIDI CC number. This is quite the limitation to preserve the architecture of the sound of the original. Also, there are no patch memories; you can only store a single setup. However, to keep costs lower it is sometimes more important to focus resources in other areas. Regardless, for the price and the quality that Oberheim synths always offer, it is a must have. Despite the insignificant issues one may find with these new synths, the Oberheim SEM analog synths are worth every penny and will recreate some great synth sounds for today’s music.

References:
Reid, G. (2010, September) Tom oberheimsem, Retrieved, June 15, 2011 from, http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep10/articles/tom-oberheim-sem.htm

For more on Tom Oberheim, visit: http://tomoberheim.com/

Three Legal Liabilities that Plague My Company

In this blog I was instructed to watch three podcasts about entertainment law as it pertained to my emerging company. First, I found www.reelseo.com and an interview with Entertainment attorney Gordon Firemark. Mr. Firemark is an industry specific lawyer who deals mostly in entertainment industry related cases. With the increased distribution of art on the Internet, the entity of law is having some trouble keeping pace. Mr. Firemark doesn’t see this as a problem because law is overinflated as it is. If the courts tried to stay side-by-side with the ever-changing entertainment field, it would be bloated with changes and new laws as fast as we get new artists. One of the largest issues I face as a new company surfing on this digital wave is how to monetize my creations and perpetuate business. Dealing with individual’s privacy rights like slander, labial, and copyrighted materials could result in litigation my young company cannot afford to deal with. You can loose your investment capitol quickly if the proper research is not completed about which legal steps to take, and in what order. Mr. Firemark instructs new clients to choose their lawyer like they would choose their doctor. You have to have a gargantuan amount of trust and communication with him or her. Gordon says another huge problem for a young company is focusing on the bottom line when it comes to hiring said law professional. Sometimes the larger price tag results in the work being completed faster and much more accurate, budget shopping for lawyers is not a recommended practice at all. Mr. Firemark also spoke on gaining the proper permissions when producing these very personal works. Word-of-mouth is not good enough when your company is making better revenue, this is when people feel exploited and demand compensation. Transactional lawyers like Mr. Firemark will even help with the negotiation of these permissions as to make the acquisition of said permissions attainable. Knowing which licenses and permissions to obtain, and in which order is of the utmost importance to the future success of my new company. Secondly, I found a podcast on Entertainment Law and the Challenges of Celebrity from www.legaltalknetwork.com. It was briefly discussed about the aforementioned permissions as being a very important step in the process. The reasoning from this podcast was the production process for most of the forms of art takes ample time and effort. Gaining the licenses and permissions will only ensure the investment from the artist is not in vain. After that taste of redundancy, they did cover the topic of intellectual property and the common mistakes people have when thinking of I.P. Most people have the, “I’m not making any profit” defense when using another individuals I.P., this excuse leaks water faster than the Titanic. Most individuals also through around the term “Fair Use” and have no concept of it’s meaning. According to www.law.com, fair use is the non-competitive right to use of copyrighted material without giving the author the right to compensation or to sue for infringement of copyright. Ok, I know this means almost nothing to most of you out there and I apologize. Simply, if a teacher copies sixty reproductions of a Time Magazine cover of a natural disaster to help illustrate to his or her students the effects of such an event, that would be fair use. If The Discovery Channel copied the same pictures for its new book on natural disasters, that would not ne fair use. This is the simplest example I could think of, there are many other iterations of varying degrees. Basically, get to know what fair use is before you claim it. One of the most misused tools from the Internet is the countless graphical and pictorial images we so callously adorn our websites and social media pages with. Make no mistake; you must acquire a license for the use of most any image you find on the Internet. This comes back to bite people more times than not, it is a hard lesson after implementing efforts and finances that may not return to you. Finally, I found Mr. Gordon Firemark’s podcasts on www.entertainmentlawupdate.com. You may remember me mentioning Mr. Firemark at the top of this blog. This site is his very own, as he is asked to interview on countless others. We all know about downloading material from the Internet, this is an old subject that gets older by the minute. As with fair use, Internet downloading is a “white whale” for most individuals. I believe knowing the laws pertaining to your business is the most important thing one could spend their time learning. Sometimes, permissions are not needed and you could spend more time and effort than you need to. However, contradictions prevail in the institution of law, the following is no exception. Eminem is a famous rapper and we all know that. What you may not know is even the hardest of rappers still has to rum his or her business tight as a drum. Eminem signed a deal with FBT in 1998 for the master license of his material for their use. Over the years, the initial deal was pushed up through many more labels as they were merged, purchased, and otherwise shifted around. Distributed material online was not being treated as single copy sales. The label said because of this they were entitled to half of royalties because it was still under the original master license. Here is the contradiction to the rule. ASCAP lost the same fight for a polar opposite ruling. The 2ns circuit court ruled against ASCAP stating that downloads are not public performances. According to them, a public performance is when you hear the works as they are happing live. This ruling makes it so ASCAP will not receive any royalties for any downloads over the Internet. For those of you who are songwriters or musicians out there, this means all of those iTunes downloads you are so excited about, guess who pays you for your songs? That’s right, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, you get the idea. Sad but true, the Internet has changed the way a hard-working musician takes in revenue, you had better “pay” close attention to who is watching your back for you legally. I know this seems like common knowledge, but if you are going to dig dirt, make sure you have the strongest and most appropriate shovel. These liabilities along with others will plague my emerging business in the near future. Knowledge is most definitely power, strike hard and strike deep. Until next time…

Check out the podcasts I watched at:
www.entertainmentlawupdate.com
www.legaltalk.com
www.reelseo.com

The fair use definition comes from:
www.law.com

Don't fight the law...the law will win.

In our newest journey together I have been instructed to research some legal issues that may cause a problem in the future of my, or any emerging business. I know this is not audio related, I beg of you audiophiles out there to be patient with me on this one. You never know, you may learn something you didn’t know before. After extensive thought on the matter, I have narrowed all of the possible legal liabilities I may have in the launching and operation of my business. My personal top three liabilities started with my works being based on interviews with my clients. Because of where my partners and I are with our business, I cannot divulge any information about exactly what out product consists of. I can tell you that it is musical in nature and involves out clients on a very creative, personal level. We will be conducting an interview-style session with our clients to aid in the production. Because of this action, preparing a life story rights agreement with the subject of our production will be a definite. With this document in place, our company cannot be sued at a later time if monetarily we are reaping success. As I was researching this liability, I found a real-life story about this very problem. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina a young black teenager was accused of murdering a 25-year-old white woman. He was charged and convicted of the crime. The young man’s lawyer had exhausted all legal possibilities to free his client, except to find the murder himself. He actually completed this gargantuan task by finding the real murderer. After nearly two decades of incarceration, the wrongly convicted man was released with nothing but forgiveness in his heart for his accusers. As I read this story, I kept thinking how impossibly crazy it must have been for this man to have lost the prime of his life to the injustice system. If this story wasn’t made for a Hollywood movie, no story will suffice. Filmmaker Ricki Stern and co-director Annie Sundberg did secure said rights, not only for themselves for the ten-years of research dedicated to following the case, but for their subject Darryl Hunt. So many times these rights are not thought of or secured and later litigation will disrupt any positive momentum gained. Hand-in-hand with this liability is the fact that our product will rely on interviews, not only with the subject, but also with the family and friends. The same rules and problems remain with this liability that existed with the last one. Our unique “interview” process gathers information required to produce the product. The life story rights agreement will prevent all unnecessary litigations from occurring. My last and possibly most dangerous liability would be that of sub-contracting other musicians and songwriters to help with the musical workload. If the musician I use were an employee of our company then our company would own the rights to any material written for the company. In my company’s case, we would be sub-contracting most of the work rather than to hire on more employees. In this situation, we would need to have a work for hire agreement or license between the contractor and us. In the case of Playboy vs. Dumas, drawings and paintings by the artist Nagel were being fought over and reached litigation. In that specific case, the court decided that the work for hire agreement was not specific to the beginning of the project. Even after the works were complete, they deemed them works for hire. Of course there are always exceptions to every rule. In the case of Schiller & Schmidt, Inc. vs. Nordisco Corp., the court decided in reverse favor of having the work for hire agreement before the work starts. This goes to show that there are no definite answers, but the intelligent person would view this as a warning. If you are operating your own business or decide to open one in the future, know your rights along with the rights of the people you are working with. It is a confusing, hairy business, I guess that is why not everyone can and will do it. Good, more room for me, until next time.

References:
http://www.documentary.org/content/whose-story-it-anyway-obtaining-subjects-life-story-rights
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/work2.html

The Recording of The Beach Boy's "Pet Sounds"

I don’t know about you, but I love The Beach Boys. I love the music, the vocals, and feeling I get from the music. All of the frequencies mix together in such a perfect way; I am mentally and emotionally transported to a hot day in the sand. Coincidence? I think not, but it does make you wonder what it was about those albums that were so great and so different from all the other material out there. After having passed the half way mark of my graduate studies, I tend to believe everything has been pre-planned and thought out extensively. I think The Beach Boys are the best example of this theory. What seems so effortless and free is actually very calculated and strategic. I began to study some of the early history surrounding The Beach Boys to gain a better understanding of their production style, and a grasp of what I imagine their overall goal as artists would have been. First, let me address all of the die-hard fans in my audience. This single blog post would have to be my entire life’s work to even begin to shed some light on all of the happenings that led to, what I believe to be the pivotal point in the band’s career. I will however focus on the eleventh studio album “Pet Sounds”. Widely recognized as one of the most influential records ever released in pop music and has been ranked number one in several top music magazines’ lists of greatest albums of all time. Rolling Stone ranked it number two in it’s 2003, 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. Ok, now that we are all on the same page about the album we can get down to business. How was the thing recorded that made it stand out among the already stellar Beach Boys catalogue? Curse my inquisitive mind, I had to start digging. Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys principal song writer and future mega producer, was in the song writing process with a few other gentlemen including; Tony Asher, Terry Sachen, along with Al Jardine, Dennis Wilson, and Mike Love between 1965 and 1966. The backing tracks were recorded over a four-month period in major Los Angles studios like; Gold Star Studios, Western Studios, and Sunset Sound. Brian Wilson had developed his own production methods over the years, but an obvious major influence was Phil Spector and his respected “Wall of Sound” technique for recording. Wilson even stated that he named the album using Phil’s initials “PS”. Wilson was using the new Ampex 8-track recorders to layer sounds. Wilson’s production on “Pet Sounds” was to record the instrumental backing tracks as a live ensemble direct onto a 4-track recorder. Brian Wilson’s engineer Larry Levine has stated that Wilson would typically mix these tracks live, as they were being taped. Wilson would often double instruments like bass, keyboards, and guitar, blending them with reverb and echo to make unique sounds. Wilson always mixed the final versions of his recordings in mono, as did Phil Spector. He believed that mono mastering offered more control sonically over the final audio product, regardless of speaker placement and sound system quality. Oh yea, he was also mostly deaf in his right ear. I find it very interesting, the majority of the most beautiful music ever created, were all written by people with a hearing disability. The backing tracks he had recorded were then dubbed down onto one track of an 8-track. This was done at Columbia Studio because at the time they were the only facility in LA with an 8-track. I found a very cool quote by Mike Love, one of the great long-time members of The Beach Boys saying, “We worked and worked on the harmonies and, if there was the slightest little hint of a sharp or a flat, it wouldn’t go on. We would do it over again until it was right. (Brian) was going for every subtle nuance that you could conceivably think of. Every voice had to be right, every voice and its resonance and tonality had to be right. The timing had to be right. The timbre of the voices just had to be correct, according to how he felt. And the he might, the next day, completely throw that out and we might have to do it over again.” I think the point is crystal clear here. I admire and respect Brian Wilson for these reasons; I also found the answer to my question. What made all of those Beach Boys albums so great? What made “Pet Sounds” stand out from all of those great albums? One thing is the conscious, unstoppable, unwavering effort to capture the most perfect audio possible. Another thing is having the ears and the audio knowledge to know when a take is good or bad. When those takes are great, but not perfect, having the bravery to take it all over again. All of these, plus the talent level only given at birth, oh yea! I suggest going back to those older Beach Boys albums and working your way up to “Pet Sounds”. Try and critically listen to what is actually going on with those recordings. There is way more than just great songs there, some of the most brilliant engineering and audio capture ever in the history of recorded music. I hope you find this topic as interesting as I did and go find out more about the classic recordings of the great artists some of us were so blessed to have been able to enjoy. I will be there this weekend at Universal Studios in Orlando Florida to see The Beach Boys live in concert, I can’t wait! Good vibrations everybody, until next time…

The most important lesson any up and coming audio engineer should know.

Now, I can get a bit more back on topic. I hope everyone is doing great out there, following your dreams and all that jazz. I was following mine the other day and one thing that continuously arises is this concept of a PLN (personal learning network). I, like many of you now didn’t know what a PLN was. It basically is the handful of websites, magazines, TV shows, or wherever you stay up to date on the topics that interest you. This also relates to us on a professional level, keeping our finger on the pulse of our respective industries. One site I frequent is www.mixonline.com, the online version of Mix Magazine. Mix is a professional publication focused on audio engineers and the like. There are always great interviews from legendary producers and engineers and they talk very candidly about their careers and tips for younger upstarts. I found one in particular by George Massenburg, legendary equipment designer and manufacturer, engineer, producer and educator. Mr. Massenburg is an advocate of innovation and the development of the very tools we engineers use to help usher the industry into the future. He greatly pushed the “use your ears” message in more ways than one. As he sees it, the gap present that separates the quality recording from the past and the newer volume war fodder is education. After all, how do you train an audio engineer? What is it an audio engineer does anyway? Well, first I have to very respectfully agree with Mr.Massenburg. I think listening in this day is a lost art. You don’t see young engineers going out to listen to GOOD musicians in different acoustical environments to receive that crucial audio training. Watching and listening are the two most important things a young, up and coming audio engineer needs to master… yes, even more important than signal flow. Signal flow is very important so let me just go ahead and get that out there, I don’t advocate ditching flow knowledge for being a wall flower. However, some of the most important lessons that can be learned go by in a flash and are lost forever. Critical listening in an appropriate, controlled acoustical space is the exact prescription an engineers ears need to sustain a long and prosperous career. Remember all of you engineers out there, our job is to capture audible brilliance from a talented artist, analyze and treat the audio so a listener ten years later from a different part of the world can audibly travel back in time and sit right in front of that artist, enjoying that piece of music. We really shouldn’t get in the way.

Negotiations and Deal Making in Entertainment

Recently, I spoke to Ms. Misty Wright, a friend of mine who is a freelance Entertainment consultant. She was kind enough to give me a few minutes of her time to discuss negotiations and deal making as it relates to her everyday dealings. Ms. Wright has assisted many top entertainers over her thirty-year career, and the tone that rings truest in her opinion is total unpredictability in human beings. Due to this phenomenon, a constantly changing approach to negotiating is needed to continue doing business at the upmost potential. I was told a bit about leverage and power in negotiations. Some new tips Misty had for me was to always believe, at least in my own mind, I have the power and ultimate leverage. This mental empowerment will project in your attitude when dealing with other professionals. I asked, “So if all or most professionals are practicing this method, doesn’t it kind of cancel each other out?” Misty giggled and said, “Yes, but remember that most forget.” That statement resonated with me. It is true; most professionals don’t continue to practice the craft of negotiating or the simple action and reaction scenarios that play out in most of those negotiations. The second major tool she empowered me with was the concept of status. Misty said, “Always remember how hard it is to build a solid reputation, and how quickly it can be destroyed.” This is also a very true statement because people that are worth dealing with are only going to deal with others that possess a solid reputation. In the real world, dealing with negative emotions or people that just seem to want to ruin someone’s day as soon as they roll out of bed is just a sad fact of life. She reminded me, “You are never forced to listen to B.S. so always deal in facts.” If you have a basis of factual information backing you up, it is hard to win against you. This is not a foolproof method because one does not exist. The unpredictability of human beings trumps any method you may try to adopt fully. The real answer is to be like silly putty. You are moldable, shapeable, and are able to transfer images from one source to another perfectly, but you are somewhat firm and have a shape of your own as well. When you are being pulled in every direction you are able to give in all the appropriate areas with out breaking into. This is the consistency you should strive for as a human that has chosen to constantly deal with other humans. Case-in-point, the best defense against getting burned is to be burned many times. Wow, life is tough, it is an ever changing, ever learning, every day reality TV program with the craziest cast of characters ever imagined. The only solace is the ending of the program, though it might not seem so, is truly up to you.

Some basic, but valuable audio concepts that is guaranteed to improve your recordings.

Ok, I have recently been given total power of my blog information. What does this mean to you? Well, this blog is more of “me” than any of the previous ones. Thank you for being patient and continuing to follow The Summing Amp. Something I find extremely fascinating is sound wave propagation. It grabs me because of the enormous effect this information has on my recordings. Recently I spoke of using your ears and how important it is to really know sound, to use the room as a tool and shy away from the saturation of plug-ins and I stand behind every word. However, there is a never-ending fountain of information about audio capture and vessel of knowledge that can never be filled. Most of us know about different mic placements and even digging into that bag of ingenuity to invent weird ways to capture audio, but sometimes overlooked is the use of multiple mics to capture audio sources. Again, if the information I am giving is old to you I apologize. Sometimes starting at the very beginning, regardless of how many years you have been engineering, is the best way to gain proper support for more advanced techniques. Ok, I am off my soapbox now. The 3:1 rule of mic placement states; when you are using two mics to capture a source, you should place the second mic three times the distance away from the source as the first mic. In an easy to understand example, if your first mic is one foot away from the source your second mic should be three feet from the source. Easy enough, right? To go a bit deeper down the rabbit hole, monitoring the audio you have captured is just as important as capturing the audio. There is the concept of 1/8 space which states; when a speaker or sound source is placed in a corner, near three surfaces like the junction of the two walls and the floor, the source is said to be in 1/8th space. Taking the same concept, a source against one wall is in half space and a source between two walls in quarter space. When a source is near a wall or solid reflective obstruction, the sources spherical propagation quickly arrives at the obstruction and leaves generating more energy forward. Think of a splashing pool of water against a retaining wall or a dock pillar. When the water hits the wall, it splashes and makes waves in the opposite direction and sound is closely related. When the source is in 1/8th space for example, it yields an increase of approximately 3dB more than quarter space, and 6dB more than half space. Take this concept into consideration when you are setting up your listening environment. I would strongly suggest researching any books or articles on acoustics, critical listening, and sound propagation for a deeper look at the endless amounts of information on the subject. Staying within our sound environment, there is another rule called the 2:1 rule of ambience. Now check this out, to capture an equal amount of room ambience, a Cardioid mic must be placed twice as far away from a sound source as an Omni directional mic. Keep this in mind when you are trying to capture a sweet sounding room’s natural sound to mix in later. These are just a few, and very basic concepts and rules for properly capturing sound. I urge you to do your own research, along with following The Summing Amp, to further your knowledge of audio and to greatly improve the quality of your recordings. I promise, each blog and the blog site will improve with each post from now on. Thanks Ron, and thanks to Todd Childress and many others for my invaluable knowledge of audio. I am forever changed…

Don't Forget About Your Ears!

I stumbled upon this YouTube video of famed mix engineer Eric “ET” Thorngren talking about recording and some of the ways he goes about capturing audio. Eric has mixed tracks for Bob Marley, The Talking Heads, Joe Strummer, and Robert Palmer just to name a few. I enjoyed him because of his extremely charismatic way of painting his verbal pictures, and in this way he supported his ears over making audio mixing an exact science. I know what some of you are saying, duh! Really, how many times have you caught yourself with a measuring tape and a calculator trying to capture the best audio possible? I know many times I am guilty of just that. Lately, I have been researching any source I can find to try and expand my mental boundaries with the whole recording process. I have noticed as of late, my mixes are really sounding at least eighty percent better than they were and it made me wonder what I had done differently. I will tell you what it was, the way I was capturing the audio in the beginning. Simple things like gain staging and input levels; along with trusting my ears have made a noticeable improvement in my mixes. It is true that the most important step in recording is the capturing of audio, that is the foundation for your future mix. I started researching older engineers and the techniques they used on the classic albums before and during my youth. The Beach Boys, Robert Palmer, Kenny Loggins, Motown, and all the 50’s and 60’s bands were the sounds that surrounded Mike the kid. All of that older class and great music mixed with my love of the 80’s bands that were closer to my generational taste have produced my personal musical pallet. It surprises me that even with the ease and comfort of recording and mixing in the digital realm, the newer engineers in the industry don’t employee the older techniques more. That long story brings me to the present; I took this though process and started analyzing the rooms I was recording in to optimize captured audio according to the frequency response in different areas of the room. I focused on the frequency diagrams of the microphones I have at my disposal. Recently, I have been recording a lot of voice-overs and radio spots and I used an AT2020 with two Sampson CO2 pencil condensors to pick up sweet spots in the room. I haven’t used more than a peppering of a plug-in style reverb unit in weeks, the room will provide all the reverb you need. These older analogue techniques along with using my ears to do more than numbers and formulas have worked out in spades. However, I agree with what Frank Zappa said, “You must first know the rules before you can break the rules.” I think you should know the ways audio reacts with our environment to be able to make the decisions about the room you will need to make. In the case of Mr. Thorngren, I think sometime the question is best answered by tuning in with your ears, even if you can’t quite explain it in words. Hope you enjoyed this blog, I have grown as an audio engineer by thinking more about this and the way it affects my work. Until next time…

The Audio Engineering Society - Producing success with knowledge.

In the audio engineering and music industry, few organizations hold the prestige and professional clout as the Audio Engineering Society (AES). Founded in 1948 and currently boasting over 14,000 members worldwide, AES is the standard society for professional Audio Engineers. AES holds conferences throughout the year and typically the attendance is a staggering 20,00 plus. In my particular field, AES offers many different educational and research tools I can use to further my career. On the AES website, there are 133 tutorials ranging in topic from recording techniques, equipment, and functionality to music business related topics and industry specific issues. AES caters to the students, who are about to enter the audio industry and need knowledge, guidance, and most importantly jobs. They have made sure to include a section of the website strictly devoted to students, and they offer students an extreme discounted membership to AES. In this section, new comers can find jobs, network, learn more, and get better at the art they practice. I am impressed that they offer all of these tutorials, most of the networking potential, and some job listings without being a member. This shows me how important the industry is to AES and how they have planned to keep it going through this digital transition we are all facing. There are also many forums to discuss current topics in that are categorized by what your particular focus might be. In this way students can converse with other students, while working engineers can contact other employed engineers and it works wonderfully. This is so important to myself because in order to perpetuate my career fully to the end, there must be a career to practice, right? AES’ tireless efforts to continue the traditions and knowledge passed on from generations of successful engineers and acousticians are a rare and great gift from AES to myself. Thank you AES! I will be renewing my student membership to escort me into the beginning of my long and prosperous career ahead. Please, tell me what you think about AES, and if you have a society that has changed your career for the better I want to know about it. Hope you have enjoyed the blog so far, improvements are soon approaching! See ya….

Julian Treasure on the 4 ways sound effects us

I was recently viewing speeches on TED.com came across a great one by Julian Treasure on the four ways sound effects us. For those of you who don’t know about TED, it is a website devoted to displaying speeches from a very diverse group of professionals about very interesting subjects. These subjects range from inspiring messages of life, to more exact explanations of scientific studies among many disciplines. Mr. Treasure has obviously studied sound and its effects on the human life. He had a very calm approach about the information he was giving to his audience. This mirrored the message behind his speech perfectly. He wanted to make his audience aware of how impactful sound was on not only their personal life, but also on their employees, brands, and businesses. Most sound around us is accidental and unpleasant and this makes our relationship with sound mostly unconscious. Julian played lots of audio clips as he was talking to help make his point apparent. You could hear the audience laughing and really understanding his message because they were actually experiencing the effects mentioned by Julian. There are four effects sound has on the human being, and knowing how to shape these sounds can dramatically change the outcome of situations. One effect is physiological, like when you hear an alarm or a buzzer. These sounds and the harmonics series and overtones that make them will actually produce cortizol, the “Fight or Flight” hormone. These sounds will also increase heart rate, breathing, and brainwaves. Knowing that approximately 12 cycles per minute resembles the breathing of a sleeping human further these sounds are very calming to us. Another effect of sound is psychological. Good and bad sounds have a profound effect on our mood and attitudes. The next effect is cognitive, like when two people are talking and your brain must choose which conversation to focus on. To the sound engineers in the audience, this is better known as the “Cocktail Party Effect” and it is due to the very limited bandwidth our auditory sensory system functions on. I found it very interesting that in an open plan office space, this phenomenon actually reduces productivity by 66%. Having a separated, quiet environment to work in will improve productivity by one third. The last effect was behavioral, and in my opinion the most noticeable effect. It was very interesting to hear Mr. Treasure say that most retail music is very inappropriate and in this way they reduce sales by 28%. He mentioned and I strongly agree that music is the most powerful sound in existence. The reason for this is music is easy to recognize, and it is easy to associate with. The summation of these will produce power. As a musician and a sound engineer this makes me feel an unimaginable sense of power of my fellow humans way of life. It also employees a greater sense of responsibility wielding said power. In a room filled with very intelligent and powerful businessmen and women, giving an informative speech is an almost impossible task, but Mr. Treasure’s calm domineer and solid statistics definitely impressed the audience. He left them with the four golden rules for commercial sound; make it congruent, make it appropriate, make it valuable, and finally to test it and re-test it again. Julian has devoted himself to the study of sound and its effects and he had spent some time with public speaking as well. I have a deeper understanding and appreciation for sound and I know I will be more aware of its effects on myself and those who I decide to market my wares to in the future. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did and more importantly I hope you learned something about the sound that surround you every day. Until next time . . .
Here is a link to the actual speech on TED.com
http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_the_4_ways_sound_affects_us.html