Ari Hest
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This has not been a good year for major labels, but, really, who's complaining? Certainly not singer-songwriter Ari Hest. After canceling his major label contract in 2007, Hest sought to take his career into his own hands, eschewing the standard formula for forays steeped in new technology and new opportunities within the industry. The result of his quest is 52. A year-long project, the effort was a test of the changing industry as much as Hest's own talents, requiring the tunesmith to write, record and release for sale, via his website, one new song for every week of 2008. Remarkably, as the year comes to a close, Hest has passed the test with flying colors, proving once more that artists can be successful without a hand from the majors. Hest recently gave contributor Natalie B. David a ring to recap the year's challenges, benefits and forecast his plans for 2009. Read here.
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SBD's Recent Clients
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Hans' Recent Playlist
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1. The Breeders “Mountain Battles”
2. The Night Watchers "See You In Magic"
3. Santogold s/t
4. The Lions "Jungle Struttin"
5. Public Enemy "How You Sell to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?"
6. Ratatat "LP3"
7. The Ravonettes “Lust, Lust, Lust"
8. Mastodon “Blood Mountain"
9. Tom Petty “Wildflowers"
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Show Your Bones"
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Musician's Resources
(Useful Links)
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 Happy Holidays!
I hope everybody has what they need and maybe gave a little too.
I want to thank all of you for another great year (our best one yet). Hopefully you can slip out of your family obligations this holiday long enough to geek out with me for a few minutes....
Our interview with Ari Hest is cool, if for no other reason than it's an interesting and ambitious goal to write and release a new song every week for a full year. I've always believed that being good at something is more than just talent. It's certainly half the battle, but the rest is "practice, practice, practice."
Please take a second to place your vote for the best album of 2008. I combed through the critic's "best of" lists and distilled their choices down to just 10 albums... let me know whatcha think.
Music News: Warner Music, who was the first major label to officially ink a deal with Google's You Tube back in 2006, has now yanked all of it's content after failed revenue sharing re-negotiations. The word on the street is that Warner had a crappier deal than some of the other labels that signed on after them. I'm sure they'll figure it out.
The RIAA has finally decided to stop suing individual downloaders and file-sharers. I guess single mothers, dead people and 13 year old girls turned out to be too much of a public relations nightmare. Now they are switching tactics and working with ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to identify and locate potential offenders and threaten them with suspended service or canceled accounts. A little less draconian.
Good Links: According to this blog, Dresden Dolls lead singer Amanda Palmer recently battled with her now-former record label Roadrunner over her "fat belly" in their latest video. If this is true, I don't find it at all surprising given the fact that when I was an artist on a major label (11 years ago), it was suggested that I should lose 10 lbs for an upcoming photo shoot. I was (and still am) 5'10, 175 lbs, so I can only imagine the pressure female artists feel. I do find it interesting however that one of the groups spearheading a "belly protest" is asking for donations to help pay their domain registration and "other neat ideas." Ah capitalism. Not to be cynical, but this would be a great publicity campaign too.
R.I.P. Eartha Kitt Odetta Holmes.
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Sending and Managing Files Online
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 If you're thinking of hiring an engineer online to mix or master your recordings, here's a few handy
tips to help cut down confusion and improve the quality of the work
done for you.
1. Name and number your files and avoid adding spaces or punctuation.
Some ftps, large file-sending services and web browsers have trouble
with anything other than letters or numbers. If you've decided the
sequence, it's helpful to include it in the file name as a two digit
code (01 through 14 or whatever) because the files will automatically
line up in sequence no matter where they're viewed. For example; if your first song is called Can't
Buy Me Love, it should be labeled 01cantbuymelove.
2. Make sure that you have identified yourself (email address
and name) when you're sending your music through a large file sending
service (like yousendit.com).
Sometimes I receive files from people that I have had lengthy
conversations with on the phone, but have no way of connecting their
name with a random email address like assclownhero@yahoo.com.
3. Try
to limit all of the relevant session info (ie band name, album name,
isrcs, misc notes and your address) to one email so that it's easy to
see and retrieve. You have no idea how handy this small detail is (especially when I receive hundreds of emails a week).
4. Zip your files or folder before
sending. This is easy to do and strongly advised. "Zipping" is a file
compression technique that's analogous to that one person in your family
who can pack a car for a road trip like nobody's business. Nothing is lost; the information is just sealed up in an efficient wrapper to help avoid data loss or errors during transmission. Things can still go wrong but it's a lot less
likely.
5. Try to send your mixes in only one folder named "Your Name or Band Name MIXES."
This goes for stems too (ie cantbuymelovedrums, cantbuymelovevocals,
etc). There's no need for subfolders for each song or stem as this is just an extra, unnecessary step when importing the files into a new session. The only exception to this is if you're sending active
song sessions which already contain separate folders for audio, fades, etc (normally reserved for mixing and not mastering).
6. If you send a new version of a mix, make sure that you label it differently from the first mix (ie, mix.wav and mix2.wav).
7. After the work has been done, be careful not to mix-up finished mixes or masters with your original un-mastered or unmixed files. Believe it or not, I just had a client do this and was totally confused when I got an angry phone
call saying the work was not done. Not fun. And we spent an unnecessary hour sorting it all out.
In short, communication and organization are key. Some of these things may seem
obvious, but you'd be surprised how much extra time is spent during a
normal session sorting out mislabeled, misplaced, or missing
information instead of working on the fun stuff; your music.
Love you guys,
Hans Dekline
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Q & A: Can You Recommend Any Converters or Summing Boxes?
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 I've had a ton of questions lately pertaining to summing boxes and audio converters and while I don't do product reviews, I thought I would share my thoughts on a few ways to drastically improve the sound of your mixes without buying anything new.
First off, summing boxes. The reason these things are so popular is that they remove the burden on your computer's processor. The harder your computer's working (measured by total track count, sample rate and plug-in usage), the less detail and focus your mix will have. To help take the load off, keep your DAE buffer around 128-256 samples. The higher your buffer setting goes, the crappier your mix is going to sound. This may seem counter-intuitive given the fact that DAW manuals always suggest higher buffer settings to avoid audible clicks and pops, but even with the possible clicks and pops, your mix's imaging, phase and depth will be noticeably improved. If you start to run into DAE errors or clicks and pops, print (audiosuite) your effects and combine tracks to lesson the load. Make tracks you're not using inactive or "save session as" and delete unwanted tracks. You can also bus tracks using the same plug-ins to a single auxilary track with only one instance of the plug-in to conserve power.
Another thing you can do is avoid bouncing your mix to disk. Mixes that are recorded onto another stereo track within your session and then exported sound measurably better than those bounced to disk. Or, even better, print (record) your mix to an external device.
Last but not least, keep your fader volumes low. I know I keep harping about this, but it's true. The less head room you have on your mixes, the less you need to worry about hi-quality, expensive converters and summing boxes. They won't help until you've stopped clipping your software's mix bus.
Hans DeKline
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