Scott Burton
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This month I interviewed Primal Scream's (commercial music prod. house) "go to" guy, Scott Burton. Scott is highly regarded as a music producer, mixer and sound designer. Originally from South Texas, he came to Los Angeles shortly after graduating the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA and has been working in post production for almost 10 years. Some of his credits include producing, sound design and mixing music for clients such as Home Depot, Hyundai, Comcast, Lexus, YWCA. I consider him to be a digital-media guru and always learn something new from him... Read more here.
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RECENT PLAYLIST
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1. Band of Horses "Everything All The Time"
2. Sonic Youth "Rather Ripped"
3. Gnarls Barkley "St. Elsewhere"
4. Jets to Brazil "Four Cornered Night"
5. Solomon Burke "Don't Give Up On Me"
6. Snoop Dogg "R & G"
7. Neil Young "Living With War"
8. Dr. Dooom "First Come First Served"
9. Wolfmother S/T
10. The Raconteurs "Broken Boy Soldiers"
11. The Dead 60s S/T
12. Prince "3121"
13. T-Bone Burnett "The True False Identity"
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 This is our first newsletter. It's a work in progress. It's also about a week and a half late. C'est la vie. Thanks for signing up! This is meant to be interactive... please feel free to shoot us ideas, thoughts, questions, or whatever contribution you so desire.
Our www.soundbitesdog.com site is almost done. It is being designed by the incredibly talented Andrew Enoch. Hopefully it will be up by the end of this month. Until then, Myspace more than suffices.
I also wanted to point out that we are mentioned in the August 2006 issue of MIX MAGAZINE... check it out at the bottom of the page. Mucho thanks to Mix and Barbara Schultz. More press to come...
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Charting
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 I received an odd question the other day from a prospective client (?) and wanted to share it with you.
The question: " I don't recognize any of your past clients, are any of them charting?" My response: I don't know and I'm not sure how much mastering has to do with "charting", but I can assure you that most of the tunes that are "charting" were mastered by 1 of 15 mastering houses that charge 5 times or more what I do and whoose end-results alone do not guarantee commercial success. I cater to indies who have varying degrees of success both regionally and nationally... some do it full time and make a good living, some are shopping for record deals, others are hobbyists. Ultimately, my only concern is that the music sounds better after I've worked on it and that the artist is happy. Where it goes and what it does after that is not up to me.
If "charting" is what's important to you, I encourage you to make great music, hire whatever level of mixing/mastering engineer you can afford, and shop it around for a "deal". Afterall, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to push a track to radio and majors are the only ones who can really afford it. My personal feeling is that traditional FM radio is a thing of the past (a zombie, a la Shaun of the Dead) and certainly doesn't reflect the majority of hard working, talented and successful musicians out there making music. But then, I'm only judging by the fact that everyone I know self-produces their music and regularly listens to MP3s, internet radio, podcasts, or satellite. Who knows? I might be a little ahead of myself on this assessment but give it some more time. To reiterate, there are plenty of artists doing quite well within the afore mentioned formats who have no need for traditional radio and major labels (Fugazi sold 2 million, self-released albums over the course of 20 years and I don't think they ever charted).
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Q & A: What is ISRC?
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 ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is a free, unique, digital "fingerprint" for each track supplied by either the RIAA or IFPI (for international) for the purpose of collecting royalties. This information is encoded within the metadata of the song-file during the mastering stage. No matter where or how the digital file is reproduced, this metadata remains tied to the track. Most of my clients do not opt to do this (although that's starting to change), but if you wish to, I advise you to apply for the codes ahead of time and I can insert them during the mastering process. It usually takes about 3 biz days to get your codes once you've submitted the proper paper work. More info here.
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Heres to many more...
Hans DeKline
Sound Bites Dog
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