Category: Business - General

On February 4th 2008, legendary audio recording engineer Elliott Scheiner (Beck, The Eagles, Steely Dan, Van Morrison, Fleetwood Mac, Natalie Cole, Bruce Hornsby, plus others) spoke at East Coast Music Mall about his record producing experience and take on the music industry today.

I was lucky enough to attend this free recording workshop and had my trusty portable recorder with me hence the following four clips from that evening - enjoy!

Part 1 - The Music Business Industry and Trends

This audio clip is 10 minutes in length and 4.9 meg mp3 file - click here to download the clip … Some of the points Elliott discusses in this clip include: How he got started as New York’s first freelance recording engineer; Where to find the most work; Why The Eagles did not release their album on iTunes but went with Walmart instead; The reality of copy protection; Radio Head’s experience selling albums; and, How our culture has completely failed musicians and artists.

Part 2 - Working with Recording Artists

This audio clip is 12 minutes in length and 5.7 meg mp3 file - click here to download the clip … Some of the points Elliott discusses in this clip include: Common denominator in working with great artists; Getting the unique piano sound for Bruce Hornsby; Tracking vocals for Toto and how technology has made artist lazy; Crazy guitar players and their signature sounds; and, Getting work that is just fine vs good or great.

In my opinion, the story Elliott shares about Bruce Hornsby is really powerful lesson for all business people - it is one about the power of creative-tension, working with people who don’t get along, and the difficulty in selling something new - in this case, a new piano sound - and one that would go on to break the charts!

Part 3 - Mixing, Mastering and Surround Sound

This audio clip is 14 minutes in length and 6.8 meg mp3 file - click here to download the clip … Some of the points Elliott discusses in this clip include: The amount of time it takes to mix a record; Working with samples; Mixing Steely Dan’s Gaucho in surround sound; Mixing with satellite speakers; XM and Sirius codecs changing the surround mix changes the copyright; Monitoring levels and speakers; Kids and bass today; Loudness wars; Getting country music to sound great; Order of mixing instruments; and, the importance of hiring mastering engineers.

Part 4 - Audio Recording Tools, Technology and Techniques

This audio clip is 20 minutes in length and 9.5 meg mp3 file - click here to download the clip … Some of the points Elliott discusses in this clip include: Going digital vs analog; Software effects and EQ vs their hardware equivalents; Being a minimalist and using mics properly; Not depending on compressors and having the artist work the mic; Salvaging old reel-to-reel tape recordings; Consoles; Tips for people running project studios; Watching the levels in a mix; Cost of building analog room vs digital room; and, the cost and risks when working in new rooms.

In AlwaysCreative, I argue that property rights as currently advocated in North America are a human tragedy in their current state.

Balancing cultural needs with artists' and inventors' rights has been an ancient issue and one that our Founding Fathers spent a great deal of time in drafting a suitable framework, which as time has moved forth, has been all but lost.

U.S. property rights seem to resonate the greatest with those rooted in greed, stinginess, insecurity, and/or paranoia. Often found hiding behind soulless bureaucracies, these Darwinian life forms continue to advocate tinkering with a system mostly for their own profits while failing to consider the overall culture's needs (e.g., Fair Use, Public Domain).

Why is it the man most responsible for cementing the democratic framework has been so ignored in this department?

Thomas Jefferson realized that a balance between cultural need and artistic need could be solved by offering the artist limited rights for a period of time. The U.S. Constitution states:

Article 1, Section 8 - "The Congress shall have Power…To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries… Amendment I - Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…"

Even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights via the United Nations (1948) places cultural needs above artists' rights:

"Article 27 - 1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits."

Michael Hart's Project Gutenberg newsletter, March 1997, states:

"Copyright in the US was originally proposed by Jefferson to be 14 years - which was extended to 28 years immediately, then 56 years to defeat the first steam and electric powered printing presses of a century ago, and to 75 years to defeat the Xerox machine. Now they are trying for 95 years to defeat text made available via computer networks."

Hmmm.

I've heard intellectual property experts argue that patents are the highest form of absolute protection under U.S. law; they are above trademarks which are above copyrights. The U.S. Patent Office, created in 1836, legislated in 1790, offers patent recipients only seventeen (17) years of free reign. This is only three more years than originally proposed by the great frameworker, Thomas Jefferson, son of the Republic, for copyrights! What's more is that many patent attorneys will confess most patents don't make money. So why the stranglehold on copyrights - greed hidden behind the soulless!

Consider the Grateful Dead, Dave Matthews Band, and The Black Rat's approach to intellectual property rights.

Both bands allow their customers to tape the live concerts and share those tapes with friends and family. During an interview with Charlie Rose, Dave Matthews even went so far as to suggest this sharing strategy was a huge part in their growing popularity. And during another interview, Grateful Dead lead guitarist, Jerry Garcia commented, "My responsibility is to the notes. Once they leave my guitar, they have a life of their own."

Yet, The Brothers Grimm who a century before Walt Disney came on the scene, wrote about folklore and fairytales, many of which became the basis for Disney motion pictures. The reason we have the Sony Bono Copyright Act which extended copyright protection another twenty years on average, is chiefly because the Disney corporation's home turf was in Sony Bono's district when he was serving as a Congressman.

So even though the Disney organization (aka The Black Rat) has enjoyed so many cultural heritages leveraged from the likes of the Grimm Brothers, the Disney position can only be viewed as being about money and greed. Apparently, then Disney Rat Pack CEO called Congressman Bono and said, "We're going to loose Mickey if you don't do something. Under current copyright law, Mickey is about to expire and enter the Public Domain."

So here we are with yet another round of unnecessary copyright extensions that prohibit all of us from truly participating with our contemporary cultural heritage for the balance of our foreseeable lives.

But there is a bright spot and a reason for hope despite the misguided government action and corporate one-sidedness, and that is with the work being championed by the Creative Commons.

Viva the intellectual property rights' rock stars among us!

And here's hoping a new breed of government leaders will emerge in the near future and help course correct back to Jeffersonian wisdom.

PS - Here is link to Cathedrals and Open Source: Bazaars of Rights - a chapter from AlwaysCreative that further explains why copyrights are out of control

This audio interview is approximately 35 minutes in length and an 8.6 meg mp3 file
If you don’t have flash player click here to download mp3 file

Some of the Themes Discussed in This Interview with Howard Include:

• Why capitalism should be re-invented …
• The ethical imperative of saving neighbors …
• Institutional growth in the record industry ala Warner Brothers vs CBS …
• How to feel great about your work no matter where you are or who you are working for …
• The cost of ripping people off and Enron reflections …
• Selling commodities versus selling novelties …
• Getting to the heart of art, science, and everyday things …
• Saving Western Civilization and the miracle fabric of kings …
• The protest industry …
• And, the truths behind Vision Quest Live that will change your work life forever plus more …

About Howard Bloom
Howard Bloom, a Visiting Scholar at New York University, is founder of the International Paleopsychology Project, executive editor of the New Paradigm book series, a founding board member of the Epic of Evolution Society, and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the National Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, The International Society of Human Ethology, and the Academy of Political Science. He has been featured in every edition of Who’s Who in Science and Engineering since the publication’s inception.

Bloom has taken an unusual approach to the study of mass moods and cultural convolutions. He started out normally enough, building his first Boolean algebra machine at the age of twelve, becoming a dedicated microscopist that same year, codesigning a computer which won a Westinghouse Science Award before he left grade school, and being granted a private brainstorming session with the head of the Graduate Physics Department of The State University of New York, Buffalo, at the age of thirteen. By sixteen he was a lab assistant at the world’s largest cancer research center, the Roswell Park Memorial Research Cancer Institute, where he helped plumb the mysteries of the immune system. And before his freshman year of college he designed and executed research in Skinnerian programmed learning at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education.

Then came an act of academic heresy. After graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from New York University, Bloom turned down four graduate fellowships and embarked on a 20-year-long urban anthropology expedition to penetrate what he calls “society’s myth-making machinery”–the inner sanctums of politics and the media. During his foray into “the dark underbelly of mass emotion” he edited a magazine which won two National Academy of Poets prizes, founded the leading avant-garde art studio on the East Coast, was featured on the cover of Art Direction Magazine, then gave up listening to Beethoven, Bartok, and Mozart to become editor of a rock magazine. Using correlational studies, focus groups, empirical surveys, ethnographic expeditions into suburban teen subcultures, and other scientific techniques, Bloom more than doubled the publication’s sales, and was credited by Rolling Stones’ Chet Flippo with having founded a new genre–the heavy metal magazine. Seeking still further ways to infiltrate modernity’s mass mind, Bloom formed a public relations firm in the music and film industry and won the confidence of those whose territory he’d invaded. The payoff in knowledge proved invaluable.

Bloom worked with Michael Jackson, Prince, John Cougar Mellencamp, Kiss, Queen, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Joan Jett, Diana Ross, Simon & Garfunkel, The Talking Heads, AC/DC, Billy Idol, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Run D.M.C., Simply Red, and the heads of many a media conglomerate. He was adept at spotting new subcultures, entering them, and helping their members achieve their goals…a skill which gave him an inside role in the rise of rap, disco, and punk rock.

This audio interview is approximately 15 minutes in length and the file is a 3.5 meg mp3 file
If you do not have the flash player click here to download the mp3 file

About the Interview
Here we talk with Mike Jaffe - a Life, Career and Performance Coach

Mike encourages us to be congruent, move thru negative space, fuel a gentle fire, take small steps, set goals and break through walls.

As you’ll hear, a seemingly small decision to have breakfast with his wife and one-year old daughter the night before 9-11 made a huge difference in his life.

Some of the other themes and issues discussed include:

• Life is a gift…
• Negative space vs positive space…
• Hitting walls are where breakthroughs come from…
• Getting in touch with our passions and natural abilities…
• We all share common limits…
• Gentle fire and setting goals…
• We are all making it up - the positive and the negative …
• Intentional actions, set goals and take small steps…