It's a crazy octagonal Popsicle-licking world out there, and everyone and their least-favorite Goonie now has access to an internet-machine, whether it be a telephone, a mobile satellite, Snooki, or the rusting corpse of Johnny 5. (Short Circuit reference here people, try to keep up)
(not so alive now, are ya, punk?)
Regardless, everyone knows that to gain authority and respect on the sea of knowledge I now dub the, "interwet," you can't be no tuna, you gotta be a narwhal, because narwhals have a giant spike tooth, and it looks like a unicorn horn, and the internet runs on unicorns, as we all know.
(The Internet - Circa 1982, guess it wasn't the last one)
(What, you're telling me you people never watched The Last Unicorn as a kid? Man, I rocked that OG on VHS, you can't front on Mia Farrow, punk.)
So how do you convince the tuna that you're a narwhal who's read "Interview With a Vampire," more times than I watched that GIF of that dude who can sit really well?
(This tike right here went on to travel back in time and become Bill Gates. Then traveled forward in time, got hammered on Space Rye and accidentally blew up the planet, prompting him to go even further in time and create the Matrix, so he could get Neo to figure out a solution, becuase, like, that dude's The One, y'know? It's standard future history we're talking here.)
Well, I'll tell you how to do that thing that I forgot I was talking about thanks to that tangent!
Step 1: Gain 1 internet.
It's easy. Just walk into a busy office, say you've just come from corporate, and if they see that anyone's been on Facebook that day, they'll get fired. Someone will come, plead with you to save them, offer to take their computer and hide it in the janitor's closet until the boss is gone. They accept.
Step 2: Access the CIA's secure internal server.
Look, just don't ask questions. Hey, HEY. I said I'll get you to the internet, we just need to make this little pit stop first. No, no, stop crying. You're not going to prison. Everyone knows that's not a real place. Just go ahead and select everything and hit copy... okay good, now plug in this flash drive. No, stop- uh, you have it upside down. What? Oh, I guess it was right the first time. Stupid USB... Okay cool, now hit paste. Alright, let's go, I don't feel like going to prison. Oh yeah, I lied, it's a very real place, with very real personal space violations. NOW DRIVE.
Step 3: Get on a blog site.
Look, I'm sorry about back there alright, I just needed to be sure the moon landing was real. I can't stand the thought of lying to my kid. Okay, so now you're on the interwet. Soon you'll be spearing people with your epic Narwhal horn of knowledge. So, do it. What do you mean what? Write a thing. Y'know, like, tell people how to do something.
Well, think of what you're good at. Can you make a dreamcatcher? Those things are sweet. Can you play an instrument? Guitar? Cool, play Freebird? OH. Well excuse me for assuming you weren't a talentless hack, Mr. Bieber.
Okay, so you can mostly play guitar. Cool, so write a blog about it. Tell people about chords or scales or whatever nonsense you music types know. Just make up whatever you're not sure of.
Step 4: Post-it.
Alright, you're just about swimming in the stream with all the big fish. Serious, you're about to become more popular than every character in the movie Shark Tale combined.
(Definitely not worse Finding Nemo)
So just hit that little button that says "Post," or "Publish," or "Save," or "Delete System 32?" I'm sure they all do the same thing. And there, great you did it. You made a how to, now you're almost as cool as me. And that's a pretty big thing right there. I'm the guy who played Chunk in the Goonies.
You're kidding. Chunk was the one you thought of when I said, "least-favorite Goonie."
Well then.
I'm gonna go...
Collect whatever's left of my soul.
You enjoy this "INTERNET." you've built up around yourself. It's all lies and Facebook posts anyway.
You've changed, you never used to care about "blogs," or "fish," or "how much Chunk blows chunks." Goodbye forever. I'm gonna go make a million Youtube videos. I'm sure at least one of them will be good.
Back to the Future references aside, it's a fairly accurate title, because the topic of today's blog is about the future of the media. So let's get back to that. (Ah? AH? ehhh...)
So let's face it, media is constantly changing. Every time we turn around there's a new device, or rather, an improved device, that makes the ability to instantly transfer data even faster and easier. What does this mean? It means we get stuff fast. Even as far back as 10 years ago, a nightly newscast was really the best place to get the most up-to-date information, but flash forward to today, and we see that the top stories of the evening are often summaries of what's been posted on their websites or Twitter feeds throughout the day.
We're in a transitional time, where slow, human-based media is getting consistently outrun by the mobile, fast-paced, and instant communication that has bloomed thanks to the internet, smartphones, and the growing impatience of the human race.
Where will media be in 10 years from now?
Well, it'll probably be scary. Let's face facts, if almost everything we do that's technology related is connected to the internet, it won't be long until nearly EVERYTHING, is connected to the internet, and we'll likely have some sort of connectivity integrated into our bodies somehow, which will probably lead to intrusions of privacy by everyone from the government to mischief makers. Everything we care about will be integrated into a Facebook style stream where things like videos we subscribe to, posts from people we care about, news, and other google ads style interest pieces. Will radio be necessary? Will TV be necessary? Well, that depends entirely on the consumer. Just like it always, the biggest component in media will be the consumer, how people are choosing and wanting to receive their information will be the ultimate decider of the most popular format.
Vinyl's making a comeback. Maybe the telegraph will too.
Police responded to a complaint this morning regarding two women having an altercation at the main entrance to the Brandon RHA complex this morning. Both women were questioned by police, but so far no charges have been laid. The conflict began when one woman, who declined to comment or provide a name, parked her vehicle in the patient drop-off zone at the RHA's front doors and proceeded inside. The other woman, Jenny Spool, was waiting near the patient waiting zone, and witnessed the other woman proceed into the hospital and go directly into the Tim Horton's kiosk within the main atrium of the hospital. Jenny was waiting for her parents to arrive. She was there to assist her father, who suffered a heart attack earlier this year. Jenny, although she was waiting at the patient drop-off zone, had parked in the paid parking lot further away from the building. Her parents had just arrived at the patient drop-off zone when she noticed the other woman heading back to the car, holding a cup of coffee, and having done nothing else in the hospital but secure her caffeine fix.
It was at this point that Spool confronted the other woman, using a harsh tone to remind her that the patient drop-off zone was reserved specifically for patients, nurses, and family members assisting those people. The woman responded in kind, gesturing towards the empty parking spaces nearby. The two began to argue, and the conflict continued to escalate until finally the police arrived. After some more quiet discussion, the pair dispersed, Spool went back to help her ailing father enter the hospital, while the other woman entered her car, and left the parking area.
"This space isn't here just so you can grab your coffee," says Spool, "This space is for people who have specific health issues. If they can't park here, they may have to walk across the parking lot, and that can put certain people in danger."
The Brandon RHA recently addressed concerns voiced by the public about parking. The group recently opened parking specifically for customers of the Tim Horton's located inside the hospital. It is located near the Victoria Avenue entrance to the hotel's parking lot, and uses paid parking meters, that must be filled with change if one does not wish to risk a ticket.
Since the hospital Tim Horton's opened up in Brandon a few years ago, there have been many discussions about the negative effects the location has had on parking at the Brandon RHA. Many argue that a private business should not operate within a government-owned facility, and that the congestion of parking around the patient drop-off zone puts patients and nursing staff at risk. People speculate that many people still park in the patient drop-off zone for coffee, despite the designated parking zone put in place by the Brandon RHA.
As anyone who reads this blog will know, I'm all about music. It's my drive, my passion, my hobby, my hopeful career; and a part of music that I find invaluable, that many people gloss over, is the art of recording.
Now I'm going to preface this right now in case the title doesn't do the trick. I'm not a professional. I'm currently in school working towards my goal of becoming an audio professional, but as it stands right now, I am not a professional. That being said, I'm no dummy. On top of having a job working as a live sound engineer for a while, I have been recording largely by myself for over 5 years, about as long as I've been writing music really.
I feel like I've learned quite a bit during my hours spent pouring over songs, trying my best to make the sound in my head come out of my computer speakers by unskillfully and blindly manipulating audio with whatever program I had at the time. So here it is, my recording tips for the bedroom rockstars, the people with almost no money, no gear, and only the base requirements for a real recording.
The first tip I have to share is one of those ones that feels like it should be obvious, but if you're simply starting recording on your own, it can be overlooked. The tip is thus: No matter what software you have, no matter what magic plugins or effects you have access to, no matter what mic you're using, you CANNOT get any sort of decent recording, if the actual thing you're recording doesn't sound good. I'll admit, there's a million and one great editing programs out there now, and even most of the free ones have decent equalization and compression effects, but no amount of gloss can make a polished recording from something that sounded terrible to begin with. When you're starting out, this can be a tough hurdle to leap, you don't have great guitars, great amps, great drums, or whatever, but if that's what you have, you also need to understand what can and can't be done.
For example, in almost all of my earliest recordings, I was using a Crate GX100H guitar amp to record all of my guitar. It's a good amp, and actually appeared on a couple studio recordings with one of my father's previous bands. So I was lucky in that I had a good amp right from the get go. The pitfall though, was that the amp didn't have a built in speaker, and the only thing I was able to buy in my price range at that time was an amp cabinet for a bass amp.
Recording those songs went pretty well, and the overall sound quality was decent considering my only microphone at the time was actually the microphone that had come with the video game Rock Band. What I noticed instantly when it came to editing though, the guitar had far too much bass in the signal, as a result of the bass cabinet driving the sound. I assumed of course that equalization, turning the bass signal down and boosting mids and treble, would fix the problem. Well, it would have, if the speaker had been putting out an abundance of those frequencies. What happened when I made this adjustment was that I had a quiet, wimpy, and non-harmonious sound, because almost all of the pertinent signal was residing in the bass frequency.
So that was the first lesson, it has to start good to end good. And also, you can't make something from nothing. If there's a lacking element in an incoming signal, digitally filling it in will never cut it.
Next up: Always, always, ALWAYS, use a metronome. It's the drummer's bane, a little click in their ears telling them when their beats should be sounding. Many argue that a metronome kills feel, and I will admit, a metronome makes it hard to do odd things with your time signatures or purposefully slow down to a grind to make emphasis to something, but it really is necessary if you're recording by yourself, or on a part by part basis. If the drummer's loose with his playing, and the guitarist is putting his part over the drums at a later time, he'll end up having to guess exactly what's happening in terms of time. When people are actually jamming in a room together, loose time is easy, because eye contact and body language convey what's happening. A waveform does not. A metronome will make it so that assembling parts will be as easy in Pro Tools as it is in Garageband, because the exact moments where edits and splits should be made will be obvious, not just audibly, but also visually on the screen. Metronomes may hamper feel, but they're a better headache cure than Advil.
Speaking of headaches, whether you're producer, musician, engineer, or all, in a recording situation, remember to always be patient, understanding, and just generally kind (especially to yourself). We never realize how much we suck as musicians until we try to record a perfect take. Sometimes it's going to take 10, 20, maybe even 50 takes to get exactly what you're looking for, and I'm not going to lie, it's a grueling experience, it's frustrating, and you'll want to quit playing your instrument and take up stamp collecting, but it'll be worth it in the end. And remember, everyone struggles, not even the Beatles could nail a track in the first take. Or even the 10th sometimes.
Next: Work within your restraints. This goes from microphones and recording, to writing. If you're recording your 4 piece band, and you decide you need 4 guitar parts in a specific part of the song, remember that anyone who hears the recording will want to hear those 4 parts live, and if you can't pull it off, you're ultimately lying to your audience. There are too many bands that only sound good on recording, don't be one of them. Also, if you're strapped for time or equipment, do what makes sense. There's a recording on my Soundcloud page that I made with my late friend Avery Hall, that's simply him and I jamming on a song we were writing. We didn't have a lot of time to spend on the project, so the recording setup was literally one microphone in the center of the room. This is by no means a great sounding effort, but it did exactly what we needed it to at that time, and honestly, the recording has a lot of character.
Now I want to talk about every novice's favorite thing: Effects. Yipee! You can make the vocals sound like they were recorded in the largest church of all time, or that the guitar was underwater, etc. This is all great, and it can add tons of feel and depth to your sound. My advice. Don't use them.
Or at least, use as sparingly as possible, and when you can, use real life effects rather than their digital equivalents. The underwater guitar thing is cool, but the general audience likely wants to hear a four minute song where the guitar sound warbly and over produced.
This brings me to what's probably one of my most sacred recording ideals. Be truthful. If you're recording alone, this isn't so much an issue, but if you're producing a band, don't embellish it. Don't make a 3 piece band sound like a minor symphony of guitars playing in a grand hall. It's true now with advanced recording software, that we can make anything sound good, but that isn't the point of music. I'm sure if Black Sabbath could have their first two albums re-recorded in completely crisp, digital HD, I'm sure they'd say no, because the inequalities and the minor hiccups were part of the sound. If the musicians themselves aren't perfect, there's no reason that the recording should be either.
So, that's it, the tip of the iceburg. There's a lot more I could divulge, but that's not the point of this post. This post is to give you the basics, some general rules to follow when tackling your first few projects. It took me a few years to accrue this knowledge through my own experiments, but it's the sort of thing we should all have from the outset.
Home recording is one of the greatest things to happen to musicians over the course of the past 100 years, and it's come a long way in the past decade, but despite this, don't expect your noodling to yield a studio quality recording.
Remember: It's not great sound that makes a great record, it's great songs. People still love a great record that sounds terrible. But nobody likes a terrible record, no matter how good it sounds.
Here's a link to my personal Soundcloud page, and the song referenced in the post:
Today's video is a demo version of Pretty Pictures by Blinker the Star. Jordan Zadorozny recorded this entirely by himself with his home recording setup in 1997. Just a taste of what home recording can achieve. The studio/single version is also linked for comparison.
C. J. 106, I'm Eric Jaworski, and I'm seriously asking, are you bored? Is there nothing exciting happening right now? Well, that's where you're wrong, thing's are going to get magical here at the Winter Fair later today, because there is an illusionist in our midst. I know for certain because I had a whole bag of cotton candy here not even a half hour ago and now it's all gone. That has to be magic. But if you want to see some more serious magic, you can catch Ted Outerbridge performing his magic show: "Pure Illusion," in the convention hall at the Keystone Center today, and I gotta say, he must be a real magician, because he's appearing TWICE today, at 1:45 and again at 6:30, now if only I had that power. So if you're looking to see something cool, or rather, to not see something, come catch Pure Illusion at the Kinsmen Hall at the Keystone Center today, it's all part of the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair, running all week until Saturday, and I'll be here the whole time, keeping you up to date with what's happening and what's cool. I'm Eric Jaworski, and you're listening to CJ. 106.
CJ106 That was (variable) with (variable). I'm Eric Jaworski and I'm here at the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair, broadcasting live, giving the scoop on cool stuff that's happening throughout the week. Today there's a really cool event taking place, that I think even an experienced fairgoer really shouldn't miss. At 12:30, in the Kinsmen Arena at the Learning Stage, there's going to be a Superdogs performance, but this isn't the same show they're putting on in Westman Place, no this event is called The Science of the Superdogs. What it is, is an informative presentation about how the Superdogs live, from their training, to their homes, to their handlers, and everything inbetween. If you, like me, have ever been mystified by those canny canines you're sure to have a good time. So come check out the Kinsmen Arena at the Keystone Center at 12:30 to see a real great show, and make sure when you're done to stop by the CJ106 booth and tell me how cool it was. But for now, here's some great music on your alternative edge. I'm Eric Jaworski, and you're listening to CJ106.
CJ106, I'm Eric Jaworski and I have just one question for you Brandon. What. Is. Happening? What're you doing? Got any plans? You bored? Well if you're answers are nothing, no, and yes respectively, I have good news. The Royal Manitoba Winter Fair is on all week, and I'm gonna be hanging out all week giving you guys updates, and ideas about cool stuff to do. But today I'm reminding you of an all time favorite. Doodles the Clown is back again this year, and he's been around long enough that I remember seeing him perform back when I was still in Elementary School, and he's just as good now, if not better. He'll be taking the stage at 5:45 today in the convention hall, but if you miss him, don't fret, he's gonna be around all week. And so will I, so pop on by CJ106 booth and say hi, I'll say hi right back. We have more music coming your way next, I'm Eric Jaworski, for CJ106.
