Inara George
The Bird and The Bee
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Inara George is a LA based singer/songwriter and the daughter of the late, great Lowell George (Little Feat). She has been a member of the bands Merrick and Lode, released one solo album ("All Rise") and also makes up one-half of Blue Note recording-artist The Bird & The Bee with producer and keyboardist Greg Kurstin. Her songs have been featured on Grey's Anatomy, Free Single of the Week on iTunes,
as well as topped the U.S. Hot Dance Club Play chart. My buddy Bryan Cook engineered and mixed her first solo album and turned me on to her long before she was the queen of heavy
rotation on KCRW (she deserves it). I
caught Inara in between a multitude of shows and appreciate her taking the time to answer a few questions...
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Recent Playlist
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1. The Blow "Paper Television"
2. Manu Chao "La Radiolina"
3. Ratatat "Classics"
4. Kanye West "Graduation"
5. Laura Veirs "Salt Breakers"
6. The Aggrolites s/t
7. Jawbreaker "Dear You"
8. Buck Owens "The Very Best of Vol. 2"
9. Timbaland Presents Shock Value
10. Heavy Trash "Going Way Out With Heavy Trash"
11. Tim Armstrong "A Poet's Life"
12. Cannonball Adderley "The Definitive Cannonball Adderley"
13. Chicago Public Radio "This American Life"
14. !!! s/t
15. Deadline "8/2/82"
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Musician's Resources
(Useful Links)
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 No, I have not been in jail. Of course missing 3 months of zine deadlines might lead you to believe that... but I'm "innocent of anything." Please see my client list.
Recent SBD client Divisible
just wrapped up an EP recorded and produced by Tommy Walter of
Abandoned Pools fame. They also
performed 3 shows at the Popkomm Festival (comparative to SXSW or CMJ) in Berlin, Germany.
Another SBD client Joy Askew, recently signed with NY indie label Red Parlor Records,
home of Chris Whitley, M Shanghai String Band, David Olney, etc. Her
new album was mixed by Grammy winner Malcolm Burn and mastered by yours
truly.
And lastly, Sara Melson's debut CD on Nettwerk Records (home of The Submarines, BT, Neil Finn, Sarah Mclachlan, Sum 41, etc) was mastered here and will be released Feb 26 '08.
A few helpful links: If you're shopping around for online mastering, you'll notice that your options are increasing exponentially on a daily basis. Before you hire a yahoo like me or anybody else... Massive Mastering's John Scrip has written an excellent article that I think everybody should read here.
For anybody who's tired of weird Pro-Tools crashes and then having to search for and discard all of the preference-files, mix engineer Bryan Cook (Gary Jules, Inara George) forwarded me a link to this great shareware application. It doesn't completely crash-proof your sessions but it certainly helps get everything back up and running smoothly with a minimum hassle.
Music News: Lots to tell and some of it is already old... Sadly, last issue's interviewee, Sonny Kay has announced the dissolution of his record label GSL. Hopefully our interview wasn't the last straw! The back catalog will continue to be available and I'm sure Sonny has new and improved plans for the future.
Radiohead's turning heads again with the online release of their new album "In Rainbows" at the rock bottom price of whatever you decide. If you think it's worth nothing, so be it. The songs are available from Radiohead's website in MP3 format, with a future CD release planned in early 2008. They are also offering a special edition boxset containing extras and other goodies. In a similar vein, Nine Inch Nails and Oasis have announced that they will no longer be represented by major labels anymore. These are interesting developments from bands who have no record label, no need for one, and make most of their money off of existing album sales, tours and publishing. They certainly grabbed headlines, which in this business is more than half the cost of doing business. And people called Prince crazy for doing this 10 years ago... He is, just not for this reason.
Amazon is now the third largest digital-music retailer in the country (right behind iTunes and e-Music respectively). Wow, that was fast... didn't they just launch this in September?
R.I.P. Joe Zawinul, a jazz fusion keyboardist and composer who was the founder of the Weather Report and had played with Miles Davis. Lance Hahn, an Austin-based musician, label owner and journalist who was best known for his bands J. Church and Cringer. He also played guitar with Beck in the mid nineties. Rapper Pimp C of the influential southern rap-duo UGK known for his appearances on many hit singles including Jay Z's "Big Pimpin" and Three 6 Mafia's "Sippin' On Some Sizzurp." Kevin Dubrow, lead singer of Quiet Riot. Ike Turner. Respect. If you don't know who he is then you obviously haven't seen "What's Love Got To Do With it?" Kidding. Seriously, check him out.
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The RIAA: Another Trade Group You Love To Hate
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 Everybody's talking about the first
US jury trial regarding illegal music downloading. Up until now,
people sued (rightly or wrongly) by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) have chosen to settle
out of court, opting to pay a few thousand dollars in fines instead of
taking their chances.
Not Jammie Thomas, a 30 year old single mother
from Minnesota who is now looking at a 220,000 dollar fine for sharing
24 songs online. More than 26,000 other people are looking forward to
similar treatment... Punishment fit the crime? Short answer, no. Long
answer, if you walk out of Virgin Records with 2 CDs (consisting of 12
songs each) and get caught... you're probably looking at paying a civil
penalty of $600 and having no charges filed as long as you play ball.
Obviously the RIAA was out to make a point. And it didn't help that Jammie admitted no guilt and that the 24 songs in question were distributed/available to as many as
2000 people online (which is hard to prove but apparently the jury was
convinced).
So who and what is the RIAA? It is a trade group founded in 1952 to protect intellectual property rights, defend free speech, and establish and administer technical standards for music recording and reproduction (ie the equalization curve for vinyl and ISRC). Like most trade groups, the RIAA primarily represents and protects the interests of the few (ie the major corporate players in the music business who are paying members of the RIAA) and usually ends up standing in the way of the very things it claims to represent. Some of the things they've resisted include the commercial availability of recordable cassette tapes, establishing guidelines for online music distribution, and setting a standard for music royalties used in Podcasts. And now lawsuits against music fans...
I'm not going to get into a huge policital debate on the RIAA's track record nor on the pros and cons of fan sites and music blogs, but for me, the bottom line regarding this recent court case is this: artists deserve the right to determine whether their art is worth something or not. Not the RIAA. Not Jammie Thomas. And certainly not some jack-ass music blogger (such as myself). heh heh.
Happy holidays to ya and thanks for another great year!
-Hans DeKline
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Q & A: What are stems or separations?
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 Mix stems or separations are just stereo bounces of soloed sub-grouped instruments from your mix. That's it. Nothing special, innovative or earth shattering about it. Nobody invented it (despite what one 6th-tier ego-maniacal mastering engineer says) unless you want to credit the guy who designed and built the first mixing board. It's a common practice in TV/Film post production because sound is often handled by a lot of "cooks in the kitchen" (ie dialog, sound efx, folie, music, composers, etc). It's also very similar to live set ups where engineers rely quite heavily on sub-groups and bussing.
Stems are easy to make. The only difference during the mix stage is how you perform the final stereo bounce or layback. Once you've finalized your mix, you highlight the length of the song (this maintains sync between the stems), solo the groups of instruments for each stem (stereo mix), and bounce to disk. For instance, the vocals, backups, and vocal reverbs would be one stereo bounce, drums, percussion, and their reverbs on another, guitar, bass, keys on the last. This would produce 3 stereo stems that can be blended during the final mix/mastering stage, depending on what you're going for.
There are a few advantages to working like this. 1) If you're committment-phobic or just don't trust your ears and monitoring enviornment, it's a great way to leave the final eq-ing and balance to the next guy down the chain. 2) If you're having a problem and can't figure out what it is or how to solve it, it's easier for a mastering engineer to make adjustments on separated tracks, then have to perform restoration on a complete stereo mix.
My personal feeling about stems; making decisions and committing to them is good... even if you have to learn from them after the fact.
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