Click Repair - a handy little application.

Every so often I come across something not directly related to being in a band or music production but is still of interest to people who may want to do more with their computer based recording studio and generate a little extra cash.
ClickRepair is an application to assist you in restoring the sound archived from old records (vinyl or shellac). It is cross-platform, currently available as a normal "double-click" application for Mac OS X and Windows.
I purchased this application earlier in the year and then advertised my services converting old records and tapes to CD.
This little program paid for itself several times over, and the finished recordings were cleaned up nicely.
If you are into either restoring old recordings for friends or customers or you want to add a recording sample to your own material (minus the crackles and pops) then this is an effective, affordable product.
http://wwwmaths.anu.edu.au/~briand/sound/

The musician's most valuable assets.

Last night's - early morning gig brought up topic I wanted to talk about.
I came in for packdown late Saturday evening for what we expected to be a quick job but turned out to take much longer than we expected.
The band (15 piece jazz with a nice brass section) had finished their playing which was great (the crowd was a huge mining company listed on the stock exchange and this was their annual ball so a large number of guests were on the dance floor).
Then came the DJ and disaster.
We had the crowd climbing on stage and dancing away - whie we were trying to pack mics, leads, front of house speakers and foldbacks.
Result- we didn't get the quick getaway we were hoping for.

All that aside we noticed the DJ doing some things you should never do.
His system was pumping out so much sound it was painful and he was running the amps to overload - slowly cooking his electronics.
Louder is not better.
Guys and gals, pleas ,please, please, please remember this (so many bands make exactly the same mistake this DJ did and wonder why they are not taken seriously by the professionals in the music industry).

Two of your most valuable assets are your hearing and then your gear and you need to look after both.
Both can cost you greatly if you arc up the sound to high levels.
Ease up on the volume and you'll save your hearing which can quickly become impaired and even permanently damaged, and don't run your amps at maximum or they will cook and fail at the time you need them most.
Also if your levels are lower, you'll get a much cleaner sound that isn't dominated by bass and guitar which has a tendency to muddy up vocals if it is simply too loud.
Avoid the overkill, keep your ears, your gear and look after the health and happiness of your fans.

Helloworld Version 5 is now online.

Some of you may remember a previous post about VM direct and Helloworld.
I am happy to say that most of the features are now in place and people have already begun posting their music videos in preparation for future voting and the chance to get some quality exposure.
It is early days but I firmly believe this will be a huge boon for independent musicians and performers and anyone else who has desired the opportunity to showcase their talents both on the Net and TV.
I have been involved with VM direct for over a year now, both as a customer and affiliate, and have watched them bring in some exciting new technology and concepts that are very good news for us as artists.
This will give us the tools to empower us in our music promotion.
Sounds a bit like a revolution...

I'm personally going to be adding my own material in the future (I'm working on something really special as I want to do justice to the high quality video encoding they use on the site).

Note: this is a paid service for a powerful suite of products (that are only really limited to a person's creativity).
Some people may want to consider "Youtube" if they want something basic for "free" and plastered with adverts - but I personally believe if you want quality results and a professional image, then a paid service is the only way to go.
Check out the product examples and the musicians "Open Mic" video webcast.
Direct link to Version 5 of Helloworld is here.