Frank Zappa And The Black Page

As we were finishing guitar overdubs on the latest Snew album last night, we were talking about musicianship and I was reminded of another Frank Zappa story. Frank was a historic stickler for great musicianship, but if you didn't play with heart and have a great natural feel, that didn't work for him either. But more than anything else, Frank hated anyone with an attitude.

Frank was looking for a piano player, but he needed someone who was a particularly great reader. Steve DeFuria (his then Synclavier programmer and now VP of Corporate Strategy at Line6, and one of my oldest friends) and I knew a piano player from our Berklee days who just moved out to Los Angeles, and we gave Mr. Piano a hearty recommendation. Frank once again cautioned us that he "had to be a great reader" and we told him that Mr. Piano was a former Berklee teacher and could read a fly running across a page. Trouble was that Mr. Piano had a bit of a superiority attitude, which we assumed he would tone down in the presence of someone so esteemed as Frank Zappa.

Just to be sure that Mr. Piano had a fair chance at the reading part of the audition, Frank gave him 2 pieces of music to work on a week before the audition was to take place. One of these pieces is called "The Black Page" which was pretty dense with notes and a real challenge to play. Challenge enough that Mr. Piano kind of gave up learning it as precisely as needed and decided he was good enough to wing it during the audition instead. Fatal mistake #1

When the audition started Mr. Piano gave Frank a little of his natural superiority attitude - fatal mistake #2! Frank's acerbic side reared up and about 4 bars into The Black Page he stopped Mr. Piano as said, "Can you play the song backwards?" Mr. Piano now starts to sweat a little bit as he realizes that he's in for more than he expected.

After about another 4 bars of playing Frank stops him again and says, "Can you switch hands so that the right hand is playing the bass clef and the left hand is playing the treble?" Mr. Piano is now really obviously nervous since he's way deep in unfamiliar waters (Frank Zappa's natural environment), his playing is completely inverted, plus he's still attempting to play the song backwards (from end to finish). As a result, his attitude comes back to earth in a sudden crash, just where Frank wants it.

After another rather limp 4 bars Frank comes in for the death blow. "Can you play the song without using your thumbs?" Now Mr. Piano is a quivering mass of jelly and can't even get a bar through when he stops and says to Frank, "That's impossible. No one can play it this way!" To which Frank replies, "You're a pretty good player, but you're not that good. I know 3 drummers who can play this with no problem."

And with that, Mr. Piano player was on his way, his ego definitely in a different place than when the day started.

But to show the other side of Zappa's love for musicians, Frank was playing a gig at the Cobo Arena in Detroit when one of the janitors came into the green room with a guitar before the gig. "I just have to do this," the janitor said with an "Ah, Shucks" kind of attitude. Frank gave him the go sign and Mr. Janitor did a couple of songs. Frank thanked him and asked for his card. The band chuckled, thinking that would be the last time it would touch Franks's eyes, but six months later Mr. Janitor Ike Willis was on an airplane out to Los Angeles to sing on a record with the esteemed Mr. Zappa. And he sang on almost every record Frank made until the end.

Music 3.0 Book Released

My latest book "Music 3.0 - A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age" has just been released and is currently available in book and music stores and online.

Although we've touched on some of the issues here in recent posts (the book was actually born from a post here about Guns n' Roses almost a year ago), I've decided that the subject needs a blog of its own. Therefore I'm devoting an entire new blog to the subject called appropriately "Music 3.0", that will cover more of the business side of the music business. This blog will cover more of the production and music side of things from here on.

Music 3.0 is an aggregation of concepts on the new music business that I’ve been following for some time. These concepts include Seth Godin's "Tribes", The Theory of 1000, Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail", and "The Economics of Free" among others. The book looks at how these concepts pertain to the marketing and distribution in the business right now.

It also contains the guiding insights of some of the music industry’s brightest minds about where the industry has been, where it is now, and where it’s going (see tomorrow's post on the Music 3.0 blog for a list). With so much information currently available, I wanted to do what I do best - collect it, organize it, and present it in a way that hopefully everyone can understand.

I'm really proud of this book, and I hope that its readers find it as helpful as some of my other books.

Horned Audio Territory

Now for something completely different.

Acousticians have known since even before the beginning of speaker design that horn loaded speakers are the most efficient way to amplify audio That's because, unlike most of the cone loaded speakers that we're used to, horns are very directional and don't waste energy pointing sounds in a direction other than where the audience is seated. Who cares if the spider on the ceiling is hearing a playback as well as you are?

While horn-loaded speakers come in and out of style, they're always with us in some form. The latest foray into horned audio territory for the home is the La Grande Castine speakers (pictured left), designed by the French company Musique Concrete (can't find a website for them). Their large size and acoustic shape allow them to deliver sound in the 108dB range with a mere 3 watt amplifier. Now that's efficiency! They'll cost you though - about $100,000 per pair.

While we see speakers like the La Grande Constine occasionally used in the home (not that often because they tend to be on the large size), horn-loaded speakers are usually found in a professional setting. The reason why horn-loaded speakers have such a place in our sonic history is the fact that when film's first changed to "talkies" in the 20's, amplifiers were in their infancy and only rated around 5 watts at best (by comparison, today's theater amps are usually over 1000 for just the woofers in a large theater system). In order to cover the entire theater with sound, the speakers had to be the most efficient possible, which is why horn-loaded ones were chosen. Altec was the leader at the time (although RCA made the first ones) with their "Voice of the Theater" line (pictured left).

Usually you'd find a set of three of these speakers set behind the screen. The bigger the theater, the larger the speaker. In fact, in many large theaters that project Sony's SDDS format films, you'll find an array of five sets, although they'll probably be from JBL since Altec has regrettably left this area of the business some time ago.

When I was a kid in a few of my first bands, we used a pair of Altec A7 speakers (pictured left) in our PA system and always got raves for how great they sounded (the speakers sounded better than the band sometimes). Altec has now reissued the venerable A7, but at a $4000 per speaker price, which is totally ridiculous. They were good, but not that good, and there are a lot better choices available today for a lot less money than an old A7.

Probably the most widely revered and sought after horn-loaded speaker is the oldest - the RCA "Ubangi," which was used in the original theater sound systems until about the 60's and latter utilized as the primary piece of Allen Sides famed studio monitors of the 80's and 90's. Since almost all theaters that used these have either closed or upgraded to newer gear long ago. If you have any pictures of a Ubangi, please send it along.

I'm not sure how this post became the brief history of horn-loaded speakers (very, very brief), but it sure was fun, and I didn't even get into some of my very favorites. We'll leave that for a future post.

The Copyright Time Bomb

If you are a record label or publishing exec, you knew this day was coming. Still few made plans for what would happen when some of the provisions of the U.S Copyright Act of 1976 came due until now.

What's the problem? Only that the act gives authors or their heirs the ability to terminate copyright grants, which means that the lucrative catalog income (the only major income stream for some record labels these days) could come to a crashing halt.

So why does a law passed way back in 1976 strike fear into the hearts of industry execs today? Under the Copyright Act, if an artist or author sold a copyright before 1978, they or their heirs can take it back 56 years later. But if the artist or author sold the copyright during or after 1978, they can terminate that grant after only 35 years. That means that record labels could lose any sound recording copyright they purchased in 1978 beginning in 2013. For music from 1953 and before, those grants can already be terminated.

Many superstar acts (including the powerhouse The Eagles) are already preparing termination notices that they intend to file by the end of the year, according to Law.com (there's a five year window in which you can file notices). While superstar acts may be better off going it alone without a record label since many already have distribution infrastructure in place, many B and C level acts will probably just renegotiate for a better deal and leave their copyrights in place, which is what the labels are hoping for. Still, it's going to cut into their income stream big time, just when they can least afford it.

The Copyright Act isn't just about music though, it covers any type of copyright, so every facet of the entertainment industry will be affected. But the entertainment lawyers are already smiling since their big payday is just beginning. If you ever wanted to go to law school, now is the time.

The Two Secrets Of Soundproofing

While much of the art of acoustics is found in the design finishing touches that determines how a room sounds and feels, the hard science is in the basic construction which starts with some acoustic principles that provides the soundproofing ("isolation" is the more scientific term) that every studio needs.

Because most musicians and engineers aren't able to hire a real acoustician to design their rooms, they usually apply the only the finishing touches when they attempt to do it themselves while overlooking the basics, and their room never meet their needs in terms of isolation as a result.

That leads to the first question that both musicians and engineers ask regarding acoustics, “How can I make sure that my neighbors won’t hear us?” Here are the "secrets" of soundproofing, although they're really some basic acoustic principles.

First, all it takes is mass, which is our first principle. Simply put:

Acoustic Principle #1

The more mass your walls have between you and your neighbors 
(that includes walls made from cinder block, brick, wood, drywall, etc), 
the more you’ll be keep the outside sound from getting in, and the inside sound from getting out.

One of the ways that most pro studios accomplish soundproofing is by building a room within a room, which is done by putting the floor on springs or rubber, and building double or triple walls with air spaces in between on top. Needless to say, this gets really expensive and is impossible to do if you start out with a small space like a 10 foot x10 foot to begin with. But there are other ways to improve your isolation that can really be effective (though never as completely soundproof) that are quite a bit cheaper. All it takes are some construction tools and a little time, so here we go:

Step 1 - Add some mass to the walls and ceiling to increase your isolation. The least expensive way to do this is with 3/8” cement backing board. This is the same thing that’s used in showers and is sometimes called “Cement Board”. Home Depot sells 3 or 4 kinds and it does a great job for just a little bit of money. Plus, it doesn’t take up a lot of space and is way more efficient than regular drywall. It usually comes in 5’ x 3’ panels, but they weigh about three times what a panel of 4’ x 8’ drywall weighs (and you want all that extra weight to increase the mass, and therefore, the isolation). Make sure that you both glue and screw the cement board to the existing wall, since anything that isn’t absolutely tight will either rattle or give the room an unwanted resonant ring later, and defeats the isolation (see Principle #2).

Acoustic Principle #2

Think of air like water.

Any space between any construction joint lets the air out (or in)

and acts the same as if the room was filled with water,

so the idea is to make sure that there are no air leaks.

Step 2 - Get the thickest solid oak door that you can afford, then make sure you get a doorjamb. The trick here is to make sure that there are no air spaces around the door, and you do this by applying weather stripping around it on both sides. Most commercial studios use a double door “airlock” with a door attached to each side of the wall to maximize the isolation. You might get by with just a single door as long as you eliminate all the air spaces around it (see Principle #2).

Step 3 - Glue and screw some strips of ¼” low grade inexpensive industrial plywood to the cement board, and then glue and screw ½” regular drywall on top of that. The drywall is there primarily so there’s an anchor to attach the wall treatment outlined in step 4 in a later post.

As you've noticed by now, these 3 steps just aren't possible in a lot of home recording situations, but they're the only way that you can ever hope to truly isolate yourself from your neighbors and them from you.

Are Music Game Sales Coming Back To Earth?

Last week's video game sales report had many in both the gaming and music industries thinking what was once thought to be unthinkable - music games have finally run their course. Not a single music game could be found on the top twenty in the game charts, a far cry from when Guitar Hero and Rock Band ruled.

In October 2007, when the Guitar Hero craze was at its height, Guitar Hero III moved 1.4 million copies in six days, then sold another 1.9 million the next month. Compare that to September 2009, which saw the launch of both Guitar Hero V and Beatles Rock Band, where the combined sales of these two games sold just a tad less than 1.1 million copies over nearly a full month.

But there’s another completely new game missing from the October charts that's a big surprise to many people — Activision’s DJ Hero. During its five days of availability, the game sold a mere 120,000 copies across all four platforms. Considering how widely anticipated and marketed this game was, its feeble sales comes as a surprise. So why did a game that supposedly had so much going for it meet with such weak sales? Many theories abound but it seems like industry insiders agree on a few things:

• It isn't a great party game. It's a game for single players. The DJ culture is not collaborative in the first place, so the game isn't conducive for multiple players.

• It's expensive. As Ken Kuchera states in his post on ars technica - "The Renegade Edition of the game was $200. The standard edition, $120. That's a tough sell in a market where price point is so important. For $80 more you can get yourself a Wii or an Xbox 360 Arcade model. Right now at GameStop you can spend $20 less and pick up a game, a guitar, a microphone, and drums with the $99 Rock Band 2 Special Edition. The music is more accessible, you can pay with friends, and you get more hardware for less money. The turntable included with the $120 DJ Hero release is a high quality accessory; you won't feel ripped off if you buy the game. The trouble is that at that price, with only one accessory, not many people are going to be willing to find that out."

• You probably don't know the songs because they're all mashups. DJ Hero has name artists, but they were free to chop up the tunes they worked with at will. Innovative maybe, but not exactly what the average game player wants. What fun is playing a music game if you don't know the songs?

• Does the average person know how a turntable works? Everyone knows how a guitar or piano is played even if they can't play it. Not so with a turnable.

• None of the famous DJ's are even featured on the box. Why spend money on big names if you're not going to take advantage of their brands?

Game revenue has become an important income stream for many artists, so a slowdown in sales of music games is the last thing anyone needs. Are we witnessing a true waning of interest in the genre, or is the market just waiting for a new evolution in music gaming? Only time will tell.

The Most Revolutionary Musical Instrument In 60 Years?

According to the company, the Eigenharp Alpha is “the most revolutionary musical instrument of the last 60 years.” Don't know if that's true, but the instrument is truly unique and one of the most unusual that we've seen in some time. It combines breath and finger input in the form of a bassoon, but with the extended physical control that comes with having a computer interface and custom software.

That being said, the Alpha doesn't have an internal sound source of its own. The breath input comes from a mouthpiece just like a bassoon, but that's nothing more than a controller (remember the DX7 mouthpiece?). When combined with the finger control from either the touch strip, a fretted light-up keyboard, or keys, it's said to have much more expression than a physical instrument.

At about $6,500, I don't know how soon we'll be seeing the Alpha show up on a stage near you, but it's about the only instrument worth a notice in a long, long time.

Here's an interesting piece on the Alpha from the BBC entitled Do you drum it, strum it or stroke it?

Billboard Magazine Shows Free Concerts Online

Billboard Magazine has launched a new website to allow fans to watch concerts by major artists online, and believe it or not, it's for free. Maybe the best part about the new site is that it also allows viewers to choose from five different camera angles while watching the show. And they've also made the concert application available for iPhone, although I can't imagine anyone sitting through a couple of hours of phone watching.

Upcoming BillboardLive.com concerts will feature performances by Alicia Keys, Usher, David Archuleta, Daughtry (who's next up on the 19th) and other artists yet to be announced. Fans will also be able to interact with Twitter or Facebook during the concert without leaving the performance website, which is a pretty good viral marketing tool for the artists (as long as they don't have a bad night).

Since Billboard is an industry insider magazine, it's interesting for them to try to brand themselves in consumer land. They're also up for sale (they've been shedding subscribers and advertisers for some time due to the industry downturn), which probably indicates that this is a motion to increase their sale price. That being said, it's obviously not a revenue generator, and chances are it never will be. Given how badly their Billboard Live clubs venture went, it should be interesting to see how this one plays out.

Digital Music Gaining Steam

Already this year, four artists have broken Rihanna's sales record of 9.9 million for digital tracks that she sold in 2008 according to Soundscan. The artists that passed her are no surprise since they are particularly hot these days:
     Michael Jackson (11.3 million),
     Lady Gaga (11.1 million),
     Black Eyed Peas (10.3 million)
and Taylor Swift (10 million)

Next week, the 2008 digital album sales total of 65 million will be broken, as well as the mark of 1 billion total track sales, which shows that despite what some industry pundits had predicted, the digital side of the business is still growing.

But CDs are still selling, with 5 artists this week (Carrie Underwood, Michael Jackson, Andrea Bocelli, the cast of Glee, and Sony Music's That's What I Call Music compilation) over 100k.

Speaking of Michael Jackson, his “This Is It” companion album — which is really an album of hits — sold a little over 200,000 copies last week and went gold, which means that it’s sold over 500,000 copies in two weeks. This makes you scratch your head a little since another greatest hits album from Jackson, “Number Ones,” sold about 33,000 copies as well. At least for now, people can't get enough of his music and are willing to part with their cash for both hard and soft product.

So That's What Tone Controls Are For!

As a general rule, most musicians (especially guitar players) have no idea how to use anything that adjusts the frequency bands of their instrument, meaning the amplifier tone controls. The reason is that they're never taught what tone controls are there for, and there's not a lot of information in the manuals that comes with amplifiers either (if anyone actually reads them).

There are 3 general reasons to use the amplifier EQ:

1) Many instruments (like bass and guitar) have dead spots on the instrument where a few notes can drop in level. A bit of EQing can help smooth things out if you can zero in on the frequency band of the notes that are dropping out.

2) You need to compensate for a wide range frequency deficiency. This could mean a situation where a Strat might not have enough bottom when played through a Marshall Jubilee so you’d add some low end with the tone controls to compensate. On the other hand, a Les Paul through the same amp might be too bottom heavy so you’d subtract some bottom. And then that same Strat might just have a mid-range that’s like an ice pick through the eardrums on certain notes, so you’d back off on the mid-range a bit and pull the pick out of the ears.

3) And finally, to keep the instruments from clashing in a scenario where 2 players use the same model instruments and amplifiers (like two Les Paul into two Marshalls). In order to fit well together frequency-wise, one player would adjust his tone to have a bit more bottom and maybe scoop out the lower midrange while the other player would go for more top end with a midrange peak just where the other guy scooped it out. There you have it - instant blend.

Of course things are never quite that easy in real life. Most guitar players never get to audio nirvana with their sound in the first place (it's like finding the perfect wave - it's out there but rarely experienced), and once found, it's difficult to get them to deviate from anything they’re comfortable with, even if it makes the band sound better. But if a player hears how successful the above techniques work in a controlled environment like the studio, they’re usually a bit more open to experimentation afterwards. Of course you can always tell them that xxx (fill in their favorite artist) does it that way to get his or her attention, because he probably does.

Whatever the method used, a judicious use of the amplifier tone controls can make a huge difference in how a band blends together both on-stage and in the studio.

Competition For YouTube?

VEVO, the music video portal backed by Sony Music and Universal, is scheduled to launch before the end of the year, according to an announcement by both companies recently. Over the last six months there's been quite a buzz about Vevo, which is intended to be a premium content site that’s been called by those in the know a ‘Hulu for music videos’.

While you might be thinking that the world doesn't need another video portal, what's interesting about VEVO is the fact that the majority of funding came from the Abu Dhabi Media Company, which makes industry insiders believe that the company will have deep enough pockets to go after YouTube.

So it appears that VEVO is meant to be a revenue generator, unlike YouTube (although it now generates revenue, just not enough revenue), and the fact that both Uni and Sony have a deep catalog of not-yet-seen videos means that they probably won't need the massive viewership of YouTube to be successful.

About the only thing we haven't seen yet is the final user interface, which as we all know, will be the key to its success. You can have the best content, but if people have a hard time finding it or a bad experience using it, you're doomed. We'll see about VEVO soon.

5 Predictions For The Future Of Music

An article on The Atlantic Wire called 5 Predictions For The Future Of Music has it all wrong. Granted, this is just a compilation of recent blog posts from around the web, but I think that some of these miss the mark. My comments in italics.

• The End of the MP3 - Web sites that allow users to play (or stream) music files for free have been around for years, but one called Lala has been making noticeably larger waves. Lala has developed an application that will allow users to stream their entire music libraries on mobile phones (beginning first with an iPhone app). The company's co-founder says it will replace MP3s as the preferred format for digital music. Ironically, this puts Lala into direct competition with Apple's own iTunes music store. As Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk notes: "LaLa claims it already earns an average of $67 per user. That's 300 percent more than what the iTunes music store brings in, according to a 2008 Forrester study. If that figure is accurate, Lala is already proving that drastically lower pricing for music could spell higher profits for the record industry and more tunes for the people at the same time."  

I agree with the basic premise of this post - the importance of MP3's will diminish greatly in the next year or so, especially as subscription services become accepted by consumers.

• Refined Music Search - Search companies are listening to users' complaints that finding music online is a chore. Last Wednesday, Google debuted a much-hyped new search function that allows users to play and purchase audio files directly from a search results page, thanks to partnerships with several burgeoning music services (Lala and Myspace's iLike, to name a few). The move comes a year after Yahoo partnered with Rhapsody to create a similar playable musical search function. Still, as PC World's Ian Paul finds, music search is far from perfect: "When I searched using song lyrics, Google often came up short...Yahoo's search results were less robust than Google's in my tests. I could only find music samples when I searched for artist names, not song or album titles. But if you're looking for a simple way to sample a particular song, either service will work just fine." The L.A. Times' Jon Healey is similarly unimpressed with Google, and doubted the contention of some bloggers that the service would help grow legal music downloads: "It can help expose millions of people to legitimate Internet music outlets, which will help those companies compete with free (and, in many cases, unauthorized) sources of music online. Whether consumers will actually spend more on music than they've been doing, however, is a whole 'nother question." Meanwhile, Microsoft has begun its own talks with MySpace to host a comparable service.  

Once people get used to music search (especially with Google Music) it will change the way that people consume music. Although the journalists mentioned above don't seem too impressed, try it for yourself. Type in any partial lyric, song title, or artist into Google Music and see what you get. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

• Audio Algorithms  - The creation and production of music is also undergoing a revolution. At Discovery News, Robert Lamb inspects uPlaya, a Web site launched earlier this summer that uses an algorithm to determine the "hit potential" of any audio file a user uploads. By mathematically comparing a song's features to past hits across multiple genres, the company claims to be able to predict its viability, allowing artists to adjust their new music to appeal to the widest possible audience. As Lamb explains: "Think of the technology as the artificial intelligence counterpart of Simon Cowell, except with more stats and less sarcasm." He also says that it has achieved an 80% success rate. Meanwhile, over at EurekAlert, Luke Barrington reports on a new project at UC San Diego that also relies on an algorithm to generate automated music playlists. Test users preferred the UC playlist to Apple's Genius recommendation system. Barrington suggests the technology will help bring new artists to the forefront: "Genius currently ignores relatively unknown songs because it lacks adequate wisdom from iTunes customers about how these songs connect to other songs. Systems like the auto-tagging music algorithms developed at UC San Diego could be useful in filling in the 'blind spots' in Genius and other collaborative filtering systems that rely on the wisdom of the masses to generate playlists." And yes, the Malcom Gladwell devotees are correct in thinking that the popular journalist caught wind of this trend years ago. 

Music "discovery"is the holy grail of online apps according to every expert I've spoken with. While it seems that having an app that will predict a hit might be desirable, it's actually counterproductive in creating new music. A prediction app is just another step in the homogenizing of music (and we have enough of that now already). Most of the best new music and music trends go against consumer tastes, which can't be predicted.

• The Music Gene - Over at the Huffington Post, self-proclaimed "provocateur" Gail Zappa offers her eccentric take on the state of the music industry and an outlandish prophecy of the future. Recalling an incident in which her husband, musician Frank Zappa, was blacklisted in San Francisco, she argues that modern music corporations have enough power to tell an artist "you'll never work on this planet again," and actually enforce it. She bemoans the increasing availability of recording technology and the sorry state of copyright enforcement as a result of Internet file-sharing. Finally, she predicts that "Scientists (?) [sic] will prove that there is a 'music' gene," which will bring about a cure for deafness and vindicate the notion that listening to music "is exactly like sex." 

I read Gail's post and couldn't figure out her point exactly. It's true that most copyright owners are petrified about the state of copyright protection these days, but it sounds like Gail is still fighting the last war. She's a very smart and passionate lady, but all over the place on this one.

• Radio Revival? - Over at the Guardian, Nicholas Lezard celebrates new figures suggesting that nearly 90 percent of people in the UK listen to radio at least once a week: "For those of us bewildered and appalled by the march of modernity - in other words, those of us over 40 - this return to bygone days is so welcome it almost induces tears. We may be being badgered to buy HDTVs, iPhones, nanowotsits and any amount of technocrap, but against all this babble we can erect a solid wall of good sense and bullshit-free information..." The only trouble is that the British station leading the charge is BBC Radio 4, which specializes in just about everything but music. However, the number of listeners for classic music station Radio 3 is also up 12.6 percent to 2.19 million listeners, suggesting that for at least a certain genre of music, radio still holds sway. 

There will always be an audience for radio, but the only scenario that I can conjure is a return to something like early FM radio, which was totally about music discovery that was provided by the freedom the DJ's had. Unfortunately, corporate radio controlled by Madison Avenue ad dollars makes that an unlikely possibility. As far as music is concerned, radio is quickly becoming a non-factor in an artist's success.