Folk rockers Delta Rae recently worked in studio A with engineer Aaron Keane on their 6 song ep. Singer songwriters Eric Holljes and brother Ian wrote the material, while sister Brittany and Elizabeth Hopkins also sing. Drummer Steven Coffman was tapped to play drums on the recording, while the band members handled other instrument duties. The band has a unique sound, partially Gospel, partially acoustic Folk but all Soul. Another interesting note, Eric Holljes co-wrote the song “Cooler than Me” with Mike Posner, which is currently #6 on the Billboard charts. Check out tour dates and news athttp://deltarae.com/

Virtual Heroes recently called on Blazing Music + Sound to provide music, sound design, and dialog for NASA’s  Astronaut: Mars, Moon and Beyond, an ambitious, educational massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) aimed at sparking young people’s interest in science and math. Blazing teamed up with Virtual Heroes in the past on a number of games and interactive learning products all powered by the Unreal Engine developed by Epic Games.

Clay Aiken recently dropped by for an ADR session for an upcoming appearance on Disney Channel’s hit show “Phineas and Ferb”. A recent LA Times article describes “Phineas and Ferb” as Disney Channel’s first breakthrough original animated series with ratings that rival Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants. Most episodes feature a musical number and in this episode, which is slated to air in August, Clay ends up singing a duet with R&B legend Chaka Khan. Blazing’s Executive Producer Eric Johnson had the pleasure of working with Clay many years before his American Idol success and Clay has done a number of sessions at Blazing over the last few years.

http://www.firstrunfestival.com/awards#ug_awards

http://www.firstrunfestival.com/films/detail/106?browse=title&letter=wWake

This year I had the great fortune to go to the entire conference. Interactive, Film and Music. By far the panel discussions at the Interactive conference were the most engaging. Panels on Open Science, The Digital Divide, Informational  Graphics and even the interactive key note by Daniel Ek of Spotify were remarkable. Most of the panelists were very smart and their scope was surprisingly varied. Other panels of interest included discussions on music licensing, remixing/ mash-up culture and a great music key note by Smokey Robinson. His advice for people entering the music business, “Keep your feet on the ground and grow some thick skin”.

Twitter helped to make the interactive panels truly dynamic. Each panel would have a hash tag and those at the conference (and also off-site) would add commentary, ask questions and post links relevant to what ever topic was at hand.  By following along on Twitter I was able to widen my view as well as identify people who had unique perspectives and then meet up with them later for more in depth discussion. Very cool.

I had a hard time fitting films in to my schedule and was only able to see a few.  The stand out is Thunder Soul, a truly wonderful doc about the Kashmere high school band and it’s leader Conrad O. Johnson. This was a wonderful story about how one teacher can make a huge impact on children’s lives. I had the great fortune of seeing the 28 piece band play the night before I saw the film. This film/ band is a must see.

I saw some 40 odd bands that week. There were many highlights. Raphael Saadiq, Kashmere, Freelance Whales, Craze, Bisco Smith, Eisley, Daniel Martin Moore with Daniel Sollee and my favorite of the week was definitely Brooklyn based band Hurricane Bells. They have an unusual indie rock sound mixed with a powerful soulful rhythm section. I saw them at a venue too small to accommodate  the bands huge crowd. I would suggest checking them out if you get the chance.

Twitter feeds to check out, there are loads of good links. Check them out soon as the feed will eventually disappear.
Open Science #opensci
Digital Divide #digitaldivide
Daniel Ek key note #tuesdaykeynote
Informational Graphics #infographics

Links:
information graphics
http://nowsourcing.com/2010/03/17/social-media-infographic/

Open Science:
BirdSource.org
Scienceforcitizens.net
galaxyzoo.org

Thunder Soul
http://www.cinematical.com/2010/03/14/sxsw-review-thunder-soul/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B000FVGLDY/ref=pd_krex_listen_dp_img?ie=UTF8&refTagSuffix=dp_img

Hurricane Bells
http://www.myspace.com/hurricanebells

I’m just returning from the 2010 Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco….probably the largest collection of game developers in the world. I was there specifically to attend the sessions on audio and music for games but I was also able to sit in on sessions dealing with educational and serious games, mobile gaming, and games for advertising. Pictured above is Wayne Watkins from Wake County Economic Development and Dr. Kai Wang, Director of Wake Tech’s Simulation and Game Development department. Many people are not aware that the Triangle area of North Carolina has become a major hub in the video game industry with over 30 game and interactive companies including the developers of some of the industries top video game titles. Here at Blazing Music + Sound we’ve had the opportunity to provide dialog recording, music, and sound design for a number of games and have worked with Virtual Heroes and Red Storm Entertainment locally and recently recorded dialog with world famous BMX athlete Dave Mirra for Codemaster’s Dirt 2 video game. My history with game/interactive audio dates back to the early 90’s as I worked for then Cary, NC based Virtus Corporation on their Walkthrough program. Virtus went on to form Red Storm entertainment with Tom Clancy in 1996.

At our first meeting, Donna met with Ian Krabacher (Serious Robots) and me.  The three of us sat down to watch the current cut of the film.  Overall, Donna was very pleased with the content and shape of the film, but she was looking for our help with several aspects of the audio and video post-production.  Regarding the audio, she asked us to do a final mix, with an emphasis on enhancing some of the narration and dialog tracks.  After further discussion, we also developed a plan for accentuating a few key scenes by allowing the music to be more prominent.

Regarding the narration, the first challenge was that the film had two narrators, each recorded in a different session.  The two recordings had different levels of reverb, room tone, and mouth noise.  Donna asked us to minimize these differences so that the two recordings would feel more cohesive.  We were able to do that by adding a touch of reverb to one of the recordings so that it sounded as if both recordings had been done in the same size space.  We then removed as much mouth noise as possible so that the recordings both sounded clean.  Finally, we minimized the level of room tone, resulting in two very similar-sounding recordings.

Our task with the dialog tracks was more straightforward; we leveled the dialog across all the different interviews, smoothed out edits, and cleaned extraneous noise wherever we could.

Next, we gave the music a more dynamic roll in the mix, allowing it to really swell and support the strong visual images of the still artwork, but then smoothly ebb under the dialog.  This echoed the emotional significance of the artwork and also carried the viewer from one section to the next throughout the film.

Overall, this project presented several challenges, but we succeeded in improving both the consistency and the quality of the audio. Most importantly, Donna seemed very happy with all of the improvements we made.

IntraHealth International’s Special Projects and Partnerships Advisor Heather LaGarde asked me to help with an exciting remix project to benefit ‘OPEN’, a new initiative created to address the most critical issues in Africa by putting the latest open source technologies directly in the hands of health workers. Great cause right? Before I knew what she wanted of me I agreed to help out. Then she told me how Youssou N’Dour was donating a song including the individual musical elements for the project. Artists such as Peter Buck of REM, Duncan Sheik, Hawke, NAS and others would remix the song and the results would be offered for free, with an option to donate, to raise awareness for OPEN.  I was very excited to be part of such a great project.

My first task was to sort through Youssou’s song  “Africa Calling”, create a neat package of tracks for the artists to use in their remixes and also provide technical help for anyone that needed it. The tracks offered to the artists included Drums, several layers of percussion, kora, guitar, bass, horns, organ and many tracks of vocals. Each artist could use any of the elements that they wanted and likely add and or change the existing material to create a new song.

Later Hawke asked me to do a final mix of his track, which was a lot of fun. His remix was made with dozens of layers of percussion and synths, which presented a challenge to manage. I mixed the song in my studio at BMS, emailing mp3 files on which to base his comments and in the end we ended up with a great sounding track. Hawke was happy with my work as he then asked me to mix his next album, which was a great honor. View.

I had been working on my own remix just for fun, as with the star studded personnel that were slated to do remixes, I didn’t think mine would have much of a chance of getting used. I pressed on anyway. I set out to create an ambient and beautiful sound-scape. But as I went on with my re-mix I realized that I was making a banging dark Hip-Hop track, not at all in the direction that I intended. I used a few of the instruments for the remix package such as the Kora and some of the percussion. I changed the tempo of the song and added layers of beats and some new bass parts and also chopped up the horns to create a new hook for the chorus of the track. Heather had tapped NAS to do a remix but as the final due date loomed he did not have time to create a track and limited his participation to vocals. She sent my track to him and he agreed to use my instrumental bed for his vocal. He recorded his vocals in Los Angeles and emailed me the vocal track for final mix.

The OPEN Remix was released on Rhapsody, Amazon MP3 and iLike and is now available with additional tracks at (link – will get that to you tomorrow new site goes up next week.) The response was fantastic with the songs being downloaded from countries all around the world raising the profile and funding for this important work.

Less than a month ago Heather asked me to recut my NAS track for a video IntraHealth OPEN was submitting for an international competition answering the question “Why Could Africa Do with More Broadband?” http://seacomblog.com/competition the video got over 11,000 votes in one day.

The OPEN Initiative is creating broad alliances, supporting health workers and local innovation and contributing to the critical end goal — lives saved.

Music really can make a difference.

For the shoot on the ice at the RBC center in Raleigh, we used a recording system that utilizes a 96k sampling frequency, which allows the sound to be slowed down in post production and retain maximum fidelity. Similar to the detail gained from using 500 frames per second with the camera. Goalie Cam Ward, Forwards Eric Staal and Tuomo Ruutu made the difference by throwing themselves into the process and performed over and over, not only for the camera, but also for my microphone.

In post production I used various audio processes the individual sounds to be as dramatic as possible. I created a library of sounds and gave them to Lead Sound Designer Willie Elias to put it all together. Add sounds that he made, further processing and final mix.
While Willie mixed the spots I worked on some music. For some of the commercials, Executive Producer Eric Johnson had a great idea of using a huge piano chord reversed so that the beginning of the spot we would barely hear the reverberant sound of the backwards piano and as the spot went on the sound would build to the dramatic climax of the attack of the piano abruptly ending.   One of the commercials has goalie Cam Ward making a series of dramatic saves, while the voice over talks about a fans reverence. I had an idea for a small orchestra and choir underscoring each of his moves with a dramatic bass figure, angelic choir building to a crescendo of timpani drums.

The most rewarding part of the process was the opportunity to collaborate with a team excited about audio. Everyone had very high standards; from Ben Aycock and Pete Sotto of the canes, Craig Jackson from CJ and P, Director Garye Costner, editors Ian Krabacher and Scott Roy.

RALEIGH, N.C. (Nov. 10, 2009) – Eric Johnson, executive producer at Blazing Music+Sound in Raleigh, was elected president of the Society of Professional Audio Recording Services (SPARS) at the 127th  Audio Engineering Society Convention in New York.

Johnson has served since 2004 on the board for SPARS, a national association that addresses issues related to the ownership, operation and management of professional recording facilities.

“Seismic changes are happening in the way music is produced, licensed and delivered to consumers, and this has a significant impact on our members,” said Johnson. “My goal as president of SPARS will be to help redefine our role in supporting not only recording studios, but also audio post houses, equipment manufacturers, educators, students and sound professionals in emerging areas such as the video game industry.”

As executive producer at Blazing Music+Sound, Johnson leads a team of professional composers, sound designers and engineers. His team composed the original music and provides audio post production for TLC’s hit series “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” along with working on shows for Animal Planet, Discovery, FLN and other networks.

With more than two decades in the music and sound production business, Johnson has worked on a wide range of projects including commercials for GM, Sony, Travelocity, Audi and LitterMaid; film and television documentaries; and remix projects for Atlantic Records’ recording artist Brandy and Virgin Records’ Beenie Man (on a track featuring Janet Jackson).

In other SPARS board appointments, Sherri Tantleff, director of industry outreach with Full Sail University in Orlando, Fla., was elected secretary. Kevin Becka, director of education for the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Tempe, Ariz., and technical writer for Mix magazine, was elected treasurer.

In addition, the board welcomed two new members, Kirk Imamura, president of Avatar Studios in New York, and Tony van Veen, CEO and president of Disc Makers and CD Baby in Pennsauken, N.J.

Blazing Music+Sound, a division of Trailblazer Studios, provides all aspects of music and sound production, including original music composition, voiceover recording, and sound design. Clients include cable networks, advertising agencies, independent producers, and video game companies.

The SPARS community includes audio recording and mastering facilities, manufacturers, engineers, producers and multimedia specialists – from single-operator studios to large multi-room facilities.