Well my M-Audio BX5-A Deluxe near-field studio monitors came on Friday. I built desktop stands to raise them up to the "sweet" spot and had them set up by that same evening. Dang what a difference in the clarity of the sound. I immediately began to hear problems in my mixes that were not evident before. So yeah, so far I love them. Of course they are the first good-quality studio monitors I've ever owned so I don't have much to compare them to.

And after reading on in the Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio book by Mike Senior, I've come to realize I have a number of studio no-no's working against me. For example,  my studio monitor placement is too close to the wall which will cause too much bass reflection, and I'm positioned too close to the corner which will skew the left to right stereo mix since I'll have more reflection on the left than on the right.  AND, my room is very square which is not desirable for studio mixing. The good news is we're just renting and hope to move within a year, so I'll be more educated when selecting my next studio space.

I'm an Ebay junkie! Most of my experiences with purchases have been really good. On two occasions I had a purchase that was backed out of by the seller. The payment on both were through PayPal, so the seller refunded the payment through them.

What really chaps my hyde is how PayPal puts refunded payments on HOLD! So essentially you lose access to your money until they finally decide you've suffered long enough and they finally release the funds. I complained about this to them and their response was CLASSIC! They said and I quote "The funds are placed on temporary hold because the funds have not cleared the bank yet". Unh HELLO! I complained on the 21st and the funds cleared my bank on the 17th! The seller never received payment because he reversed the sale before collecting, so the funds are not hung up in his bank!

They also said this which I find very telling; "We really want to help you resolve this issue. We tried to call the phone numbers you have listed on your PayPal account but only got voice mail." HELLO AGAIN!!! I checked my paypal acct phone numbers and they are both current and correct, and nobody called or left voice mail so that was an outright lie! Either that or they're looking at the wrong account, which I certainly hope is not the case.

Another good one they said in their response, "The funds status will say "placed" until they have cleared at which time the status will change to "completed".  HELLO TO THE 3RD POWER! The status of the funds are already "completed" and have been since the 20th. Believe me, I sent my "HELLO" responses to them promptly, and have not heard back as of yet. Maybe this time they decided they should review the file before responding; who knows!

I'm not saying PayPal is all bad because they have made online buying a breeze most of the time. But this refund area is really ripe for some serious quality improvement!!!

Over the weekend I did a bit of research on speaker monitors for the recording studio. There are SO many choices out there and the price ranges vary from $50 bucks to $5000!  So how does the budget-restrained shopper go about finding the best bang for the buck in this sea of choices?

I got this book MIXING SECRETS FOR THE SMALL STUDIO and they point out how important it is to have accurate near-field monitors to accomplish a good mixdown. They recommend brands like Blue Sky which they categorize as low-cost, however these fall into the well over $1000 dollar range. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I can get a sweet Les Paul for that! Now I'm thinking maybe I'm just too dang cheap with my budget set at around $200. That seems a reasonable price for speakers to me; I mean we're not talking rocket science here! 

I know they have to be powered with separate amplification for the woofers and tweeters. The speaker cone materials should be advanced (not recycled cardboard), And the enclosures should be properly insulated, baffled, and electromagnetically shielded.

I asked a few people their opinions, and I finally settled on M-Audio BX5A Deluxe monitors. Reading the literature on them, they seem to have everything that makes a big difference, so I'm hoping they will work out well for improving my mixes. Got them on Ebay for $189, and should be test driving them by this weekend. I'll let you know how it goes!!!

SONGWRITING 101

By Reggie Michaud

October, 2009

Introduction:    Everybody has their own opinion when it comes to what makes a good song. Music is a very personal thing. Different people like different types of music. So how do you find a way to write a “good” song? I believe there are certain principles to good songwriting that apply no matter what the genre may be. In this short course, I will try to pass some of what I’ve learned on to you. You can take it with a grain of salt, or you can set out to disprove my theories. Either way, I hope this will encourage you to dig deeper into the creative process and begin to find your own methods of producing new expressions of sound. Music is a very powerful medium of communication and who knows, you might just change the world with the right combination of catchy words, memorable melodies and hot licks.

Song Types:    Metal, Rock, Blues, Country, Folk, Punk. Every generation has its own contribution to the seemingly endless number of song categories floating around these days. That’s a good thing. No, it’s a great thing! Because music is a reflection of the culture we find ourselves in. So as a songwriter in these diverse times, you have plenty of options when choosing a song type. Chances you’re going to write what you like, so make up your mind how diverse a songwriter you want to be.

Listening:         If you want to write Country songs, then you’d better be listening to them at least part of the time. Here are some tips:
·         Learn to be a critical listener. As a songwriter you will find yourself listening on a whole new level.
·         What is the song structure?
·         How are the dynamics going up and down?
·         What instruments are coming in and out and when?
·         You may not like everything you hear- how can you improve it?
·         Learn other people’s stuff, but add your own style to it.
·         Learn how other instruments sound and what you like so you can communicate that to band members or emulate it in the recording studio.

Melodies:         The melody is one of the most basic and necessary building blocks of a song. Whether it is simple, complex, light, or dark will set the tone for all other aspects of the song.
·         The dominant note in a melody will normally determine what key the song is in.
·         The key will determine what other notes sound good and “work”. If a note doesn’t belong to the key it won’t “work”, or you could say it will sound dissonant. This is where knowing your scales really help you to find all the notes for a given key.
·         A riff contains a melody but a melody does not always contain a riff.

Chords:           Once you determine what key your song will be played in, there are certain chords that will “work” for that key.
·         A chord progression is chords strung together in a particular order to form the structure of a song.
·         Chord progressions normally start and end with the chord of the key the song is written in.
·         Chord progressions may be different for different song parts, like verses and choruses. Or not.

Exercise 1:      Okay, so you have this cool riff you came up with- what next? Try this:
·         From the riff, determine what the melody is.
·         From the melody determine what key the riff is in.
·         From the key and melody combined, determine what chord(s) should accompany the riff.
·         This may be the beginnings of your first song. Think about how you can develop it further.

For next lesson:  Words & Lyrics:         

Last night, I spent the entire evening trying to figure out what was wrong with my Cubase 6 MIDI sound generator HALion Sonic SE. I kept getting messages that the plugin was not loaded and cubase kept crashing due to cascading error messages. What a nightmare!  I'll cut to the chase; here's what I discovered:

• Cubase 6 comes with a  "Trial Version" of HALion Sonic (among others), VST plug-in, and the program defaults to this when adding instrument tracks.
• Once the trial period runs out the program starts giving you errors that HS is not licensed.
• Then if you try to load HALion Sonic SE (which comes with Cubase 6) you start getting tons of errors telling you presets are missing.
• THE FIX: I had to uninstall HALion Sonic, then reinstall HALion Sonic SE, then when the preset errors come up, click the remove button about a hundred times and VOILA... HALion Sonic SE now loads and works perfectly!

Thanks Steinberg for this fricken VST nightmare! I suspect this issue is engineered failure to make users throw up their hands and shell out the $250 bucks for HALion Sonic!