The Physical Effects Of Music

There was a great article recently on truefire.com by Charlie Doom about "The 7 Effects Of Music On The Body." You can read the entire article for yourself, but I thought repeating a few of the more stunning facts would be appropriate.

• A Canadian study found that listening to music at levels of 95+dB SPL can reduce your mental and physical reaction times by up to 20%. This supposedly only applies to operating heavy machinery (like a car), but you can probably expect your car insurance to go up if the insurance company discovers that your hobby is "car audio."

• When the SPL level in a bar goes to 88dB, patrons drink at least one more beer during their stay, according to a French study. This explains why the juke boxes and background music is always so loud.

• The human heart automatically tries to synchronize its beat with the tempo of a song, according to several studies. OK, that explains hit pop songs but what about punk music?

• Music acts like a drug, according to some German research, in that it increases your level of seratonin when you hear music that you like. Seratonin is a neurotransmitter responsible for "good feelings." That's no surprise to most musicians, who already know they're hard-core junkies for the music they love. Of course, listening to unpleasant music has the opposite effect.

We inherently know that music is extremely powerful. Now there's true scientific research to validate what we already knew.

Click here to read the entire "7 Little Known Effects of Music on the Body" article.

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6DEC/    

"What's Goin' On" Marvin Gaye - Multitrack

Today we'll take a look at the individual tracks of the multitrack of Marvin Gaye's seminal hit "What's Goin' On." The song was recorded at a low point in Marvin's career. Depressed over his partner Tammi Terrell's death, he was about to quit music and try his hand at pro football with a tryout with the Detroit Lions, when Obie Benson (of the Four Tops) presented him with the germ for the song.

This is the song that has one of the greatest recording session stories ever. Marvin was anxious to record the song, and after gathering the other Funk Brothers in the studio, found legendary bassist James Jamerson drunk in a bar. Jamerson was so hammered, in fact, that he couldn't sit up without falling down. He would up playing the song laying on his back on the floor of the studio. What's even more amazing is that the part he played was written, and he read it down like the legend he was. Here are some things to listen for.

1) Marvin's vocal is, of course, great, but listen to how shaky the background vocals in the intro are. Marvin's football friends from the Detroit Lions were among the singers and participated in the crowd noise that occurs later in the song.

2) The kick, drum kit and congas are on three separate tracks, which was normal in 16 track recording at the time. The configuration provides just enough flexibility for the mix however.

3) Listen to how the two guitar interact with each other. A Motown trademark, each play a complimentary part and have different sounds, but when put together they make a single bigger sound.

4) The vibes played by Jack Ashton outline the chord changes, which is another Motown trademark.

5) Eli Fontaine's soprano sax part wasn't written into the arrangement, and was a first take run-through that Marvin liked so much he kept in, and it became the signature line of the song.

6) Marvin's two vocal takes were left in the song after the engineer misunderstood what he was asking for. Marvin liked the effect so much that he used it on many of the subsequent songs that he recorded.

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Human Beatbox Gives Hip Hop History

Whether you're into Hip Hop or not, this video is worth checking out just for the sheer brilliance of French human beatbox Eklips. It's amazing that he can have so many parts happening at the same time, and he's so good that after a while, you think you're actually listening to a drum machine that's accompanying him.

The Hip Hop history lesson would've been better if there was a lower 3rd identifying each song and artist, but it's a great video anyway.

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"Who Are You" - The Who Isolated Synth

Last week we took a listen to Pete Townshend's guitar on The Who's hit "Who Are You." Today we'll have a listen to the isolated synthesizer, as well as a few other tracks like acoustic guitar, handclaps, background harmony vocals and piano thrown in. Here's what to listen for.

1) The arppegiated synth serves several purposes. It outlines the guitar part, serves as a pedal note, and pushes the rhythm. No wonder Townshend used this trick on so many of his songs.

2) The claps sound especially big. There's a fair amount of a nice long delayed reverb that separates them from the other instruments in the track.

3) Next time you listen to the song, hear how Townshend's acoustic guitar during the chorus both pushes the rhythm and makes the color of the section different.

4) The piano flourishes by Rod Argent (yes, that one) during the bridge and out chorus are great.

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UJam - Innovation Or The End Of Serious Music?

Don't have any musical skills but want to write songs? Now you can with a cloud-based online platform called Ujam, which, as there site says, "empowers everybody to easily create new music or enhance their existing music talent and share it with friends."

The platform does what it says, according to the demo. You can sing a melody into it and it will come up with a pretty good sounding backing track with a wide range of styles to choose from. You can even tweak the chord changes and melody, change your voice into an instrument, change the sound and pitch of the vocal, and just about anything else you can do with a DAW or Garageband.

That being said, UJam doesn't seem to be Mac friendly as it wouldn't run for me on Safari, Camino, or Firefox, probably because I have Flash selectively disabled (it's a resource hog). Perhaps some of you will have better luck at trying it out than I did.

As a musician, I'm not sure how to feel about UJam. On one hand I admire the technology and the ability to create a song so easily, even if it's generic. It could be a good tool under the right circumstances. On the other hand I'm appalled at yet another instance of skirting the hard work of learning your craft to turn mediocre or no talent wannabe's into "songwriters" and "singers." I think many will agree with me that the whole idea of making music so easy that you don't have to pay your dues has undermined the quality of much of the new music that we hear today, and is at least partially the reason for the current music industry woes.

Check out the video below or look at the UJam site and tell me how you feel about this.

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Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook Contest

Enter to win a copy of The Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook.

My latest book (co-authored with Rich Tozzoli) provides an intensive overview of why electric and acoustic guitars, amplifiers, speaker cabinets, and effects, sound the way they do, and shows you how to get the sound you've been searching for. Also loaded with recording and production tips, interviews, and a DVD.

Click here to learn how to enter.

"Who Are You" - The Who Isolated Guitar

We haven't done an isolated track for a while, so here's the guitar track from The Who's hit Who Are You. The album, the last by drummer Keith Moon before he died, was released in 1978 and reached number 2 on the Billboard charts. An interesting aside, this was to be the debut of keyboard player John "Rabbit" Bundrick (who's been the band's keyboard player ever since), but he broke his arm falling out of a cab right at the studio door and never performed on the album as a result. Here are some things to listen for.

1) Quite the contrary to the precision of guitar parts in today's productions, there are lots of guitar noise, mis-fretted chords, and ghost notes in the song. We'd probably never let a lot of these things get by today, but it certainly didn't hurt anyone's enjoyment of the song in the 30 plus years since it's been recorded.

2) Pete Townshend's guitar has a nice long delayed reverb on it that really sounds good.

3) Listen to the dynamics of Pete's playing; everything from a whisper to a power chord, all on the same part. Once again, this is probably not the way we'd do it today, as we'd use multiple tracks with different passes and maybe even sounds instead.

4) This track sounds pretty much like a single take except for the audible punch at about 3;00 coming right before the bridge out of the solo

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NAMM 2011 Report Part 4

Here's my final report from Winter NAMM 2011.

The Sonnox Fraunhofer Pro-Codec is another significant product that appeared at NAMM (sorry I didn't mention this sooner). This is a mastering tool that enables the engineer to compare multiple encoders both visually, numerically and audibly in order to tweak and pick the best one. In other words, if you wanted to make an MP3 file, you could immediately listen between the audio of the original file and the encoder (without having to actually encode the file), listen to the difference audio, and make any minor level adjustments so there are no overloads (encoders are notorious for outputting hot). Plus you're able to do 5 encodes simultaneously and enter a ton of meta data. It's the best tool for mastering online audio ever. Plus, it will only be about 500 bucks, and available as a PC or Mac plug-in for virtually any DAW.

For some reason, this show featured a lot of small guitar tuners and this Snark was one of them. I especially liked the Abbey Road reference.

The Soft Step by Keith McMillan Instruments is a USB foot controller that's different because each key provides pressure, side to side and up and down motion, as well as rotation information. As the sales literature says, "It's a mouse at your feet."

I actually saw a "Sound Control" guy walking around with an SPL meter, although it was obvious that he never stepped foot into Hall A (the drum hall), which was so loud as to be disorienting sometimes.

For those of you who want the coolness of tatoos without the pain or the potential social stigma that goes with it (let alone trying to cover up at work), we have the "tat sleeve." All you do is slip it on and you instantly become a bad mutha for the gig.

Most vocalists are hip to Entertainers Secret, which has been a singers secret for keeping moist vocal cords for ages. I've always been surprised that there wasn't a competitor, but it looks like there is now, with Superior Vocal Health coming out with a whole line of products designed for the vocalist.

And finally, for the geeky techy engineer in your life, comes the Vari-Ohm from Magneto Audio Labs, which allows you to correctly match the impedance of your microphone to you mic preamp. Sometimes you can hear a big difference when you do this, and sometimes you don't, but it's way worth it when it works.

That's it until next year. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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NAMM 2011 Report Part 3

Here we go with Part 3 of my Winter NAMM 2011 report. Once again, the order is totally random depending upon how the pictures came up.


OK, we've tried every other material for a guitar body, how about glass? That's just what this guitar is made out of. I'd be really afraid to drop it. Looked good though.

This was the year of the iPad and iPhone accessory as they were everywhere. While iRig seemed to get all the publicity, there were probably a couple of dozen similar devices like this one from Sonoma WireWorks, although you can plug a mic simultaneously with a guitar in to it.

For you guitar players who can't get enough of fingering practice, here's a mini-neck that you can take everywhere you go.

And speaking of mini, for you bass players that just have to have that SVT sound, here's an Ampeg Micro-SVT amp and cabinet. It's small but packs a wallop with 200 watts into two 10 inch speakers.

This isn't a product, but I thought it was pretty cool. It's all 4 players of a band, each on their own individual display. It was so much more compelling than watching them all together on the same screen for some reason.

Paul Reed Smith came out with their own amp line, which sounded great in the demo. They also had one pulled apart on a bench in the their demo room. Take notice that it's point to point wiring, just the way the old Fenders and the like were made.

Tascam came out with their version of their groundbreaking Portastudio (complete with cassette tape) for the iPad. I wonder if it sounds as bad as the original?

The pickguards on these guitars change design and color about every 5 seconds. Unfortunately, the video that I took didn't come out too well. I wonder how distracting that would be for the player or the audience?

This is actually a musical device. The Reactable is a new way to make electronic music by placing different sound and control blocks on the table. It gives you instant visual feedback, but I have no idea how long it would take to really be able to make music with it.


The last part of my report will be tomorrow, and it will contain at least one significant product that I previously overlooked.

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NAMM 2011 Report Part 2

Here are some of the other things that I spotted at Winter NAMM 2011. Most of these are sort of oddities that may be amusing only to me, but a few things were really cool as well. Let's begin, in no particular order.

Here's a must for every DJ. It's the All-In-One DJ System from DJ Tech. Believe it or not, this thing is supposed to have 3000 watts worth of power, which would probably make it catch on fire long before it became annoying. On second thought, maybe that's a good thing.

Down stairs in Hall E is what we affectionately call "Inventors Row." This is where you usually find the startups that have an idea and a dream but barely enough money to exhibit. It's also where you find the most unusual stuff. This year it was a reemergence of traditional analog synthesizers complete with real patchcords, just like we used to use way back when. The difference now is that most synth modules are digitally based so that they're small and more reliable, and a commonly used backplane system has been devised that's similar to the API Lunchbox, so that modules from different companies can be freely interchanged. There were 9 companies that adopted this system (all in one booth) and a lot of excitement around the movement, at least in that one booth.

Shameless plug, so look away if you're not interested. My new book (along with co-writer Rich Tozzoli) called The Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook was on display at the Alfred Music booth. I also gave a presentation about it on Thursday which was well attended. Thanks for those of you who stuck around.

The Korg booth seemed curiously odd this year because they're no longer distributing Marshall. That being said, they gave a lot of space to the new Blackstar amp line, which was started by 6 former Marshall employees. I've been told by independent players that I trust (i.e. not salesman or reps for Blackstar) that the amps sound great. Couldn't tell at the show because most amps sound good on the floor.

Just like the CES show, Chinese companies were everywhere, not just in the Asian section of the hall. In fact, it was interesting that so many had 40 by 40 or larger booths. Most of the companies no one has ever heard of outside of China. Someone has too much money, apparently, but I'm sure NAMM is happy to take some of it.

You never know what you'll find at NAMM. Here's a CNC machine for carving guitar bodies, should you decide to join the 5,000 other guitar manufactures exhibiting at the show.

There were a lot of crossover between traditional instruments and amplifiers, and LEDs. In this case, this speaker cabinet had a ring of LEDs around the cone that changed color every 10 seconds or so. I'm sure it improved the sound by at least a factor of 10 as a result. Didn't you know? LEDs make everything sound better.

Some version of the Fairlight company introduced the 30th anniversary edition of the original CMI. The new CMI is updated with current hardware and even has a space for an iPhone (look down at the right end of the keyboard). I can't image that a new CMI like this can be better than any number of much cheaper software and hardware combinations, but it does look cool and "vintage." Check out Fairlight Instruments for more info.

And speaking of updates, Gibson sort of reissued a version of their famous Firebird guitar, calling this one the "Firebird X." The only problem is that this is the most confusing, incomprehensible guitar ever made. It has so many controls and configurations that I couldn't get the thing to make more than a single sound (there's a tone modeler on board). I admire when a company tries to take a classic instrument into the future, but come on Gibson, if a technie like me can't get it going, you have a problem.








That's all for today. More tomorrow in Part 3.

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NAMM 2011 Report Part 1

NAMM 2011 in Anaheim is now over, and unlike a great many previous shows, there were actually a few products that I would daresay are significant. I'm sure I missed a whole lot of cool new items, but these couple really caught my eye as something special.

Anyone who has ever dealt with drum samples knows that the cymbals are usually the weak link in the whole concept. If you're a drummer triggering samples, you know that the cymbals just don't react the way that real cymbals do, and if you're a composer programming drums, you have the same problem. A variety of the best drum libraries get close, but never really capture the essence and feel of the real thing.

So it was quite a surprise when Zildjian introduced their Gen16 line of cymbal models and controller. The fact that a 400 year old company (yes, 400 years) that was never considered electronically hip could disrupt their own business model certainly came out of the left field.

Gen16 looks like a cymbal and acts like a cymbal, but that's where the similarity ends. As you can see by the picture on the left, the unit is perforated and has a blue glow thanks for a ring of blue LEDs under the bell. The controller isn't meant to be tonally active, so it's made for strength rather than tone. Apparently even a heavy hitter like Kenny Aronoff can't break them.

How do they sound? Just glorious and everything you'd expect from the Zildjian. And they act like really cymbals too. You can play on the bell or on the side, or choke them and they act just like you'd expect.

I think the Gen16 cymbals are going to change the way drummers and engineers use cymbals, both live and in the studio. I don't think we even know how significant this is yet. Get more information on Gen16 here.

While the next item isn't as groundbreaking as the Gen16, it is significant in it's own small way, especially for the way we track in the studio. Peterson (the strobe tuner people) just came out with something called the Body Beat Pulsating Metronome which is an absolutely brilliant way of keeping time yet eliminating the click track.

With the Body Beat, you clip the vibration clip onto your belt or shirt (seen on the bottom of the picture on the left), and you can feel the beat instead of listening to it (although you can still listen to it as well if you want to). But what really makes this cool is the fact that you can sync a bunch of them together via BlueTooth, and have one that's a master that receives clock from Pro Tools or your favorite DAW via USB.

This is so cool for many reasons. For any player that hates playing to a click, or performs stiffly to a click, feeling the pulse of the song is a lot more natural. For doing string sessions, you can eliminate the headphone leakage by just letting the players feel the pulse instead. Maybe this will even work for drummers who need unbearable loud click in their phones too. One more thing - the units are on $129 retail.

This is one simple yet useful device that clearly falls under the heading of "Why didn't we think of this before?" Discover more about the Peterson Body Beat here.

Tomorrow, more of my observations from the 2011 NAMM show in Part 2.

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Don't Smack Your Guitarist - Hire The Right Guy

Here's a video that's both funny and sort of sad at the same time. It shows a lead singer so fed up with the solo that his guitar player is playing that he smacks him in the head. Take a look.




I've gone over situations like this before in various posts and especially in my book How To Make Your Band Sound Great, and it always comes back to professionalism.

1) The guitar player may or may not have deserved it, but take any argument off the stage. Regardless where you're at in the entertainment food chain and how outraged you are over the performance (or lack thereof), iron out your dirty laundry somewhere else.

2) This wouldn't have happened if the band rehearsed more and determined the song wasn't ready, or made sure that the guitarist could play something that made them all look good.

3) This wouldn't have happened if the band hired the right guy in the first place. Too many musicians settle for players who don't fit the direction or musicality of the band.

Playing music is more than just playing music. It's about entertainment, and unprofessional behavior is not entertainment. How do you learn professionalism? Having a mentor is the best way, but if one isn't available, you can learn a lot just by looking at any act that's making a living from music. They don't get to that point by shoddy performances onstage in any way. Remember, how you act is how you're perceived.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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