Earlier today I posted the Elliott Scheiner audio clips and am now in the process of archiving the project files when I came across a handwritten note to myself -
Mono Wins
The note was written in the middle of the night when the computer was busy rendering the master files and was a reminder to me for the next morning as to where to pick-up and which files would ultimately get published and streamed on this web site.
The original recordings were 44.1khz stereo wave files and I did all the editing at this resolution yet knowing I was ultimately going to kick it down and go to the web with mp3 clips. Thus part of the compression issue became one of stereo vs mono and balancing finished compressed file size with server-bandwidth costs and audio-quality.
Consider the fourth clip - Part 4 of 4 - it was the largest master file weighing in at 212 megs as finished stereo wave cd quality. I knew I wanted FM-radio quality for the mp3 versions (not CD but not AM either) thus rendered all four wave files first to stereo 96kbits 44.1khz for a total file weight of 40.9 megs as compressed mp3s … then I rendered separate versions to mono 64kbits 44.1khz for total weight of 26.9 megs.
While the audio quality is slightly inferior, the mono version was the winner because most of the audio is speech - thus the need for preserving sonic spectrum wasn’t truly necessary except for the killer sonic bug at the beginning of each clip that features me on keys, Jeff Wells on Sax, and Kasha (my 19 month old Labrador Retreiver - or perhpas better stated, “my wife’s Lab …”).
Sonic branding is a term I first heard a couple years back when talking to a staff composer for one of the most successful Soap Opera’s on air. We were talking about his business and skills when he said, “You know Chuck, the best shows on TV have Sonic Brands - that signature ditty that you can hear from another room and know that someone in your house just tuned into Cheers, Seinfeld, Taxi, American Idol…”
He went on to add that from his perspective, not enough American corporate managers are even aware of the importance of this branding let alone using or managing it effectively.
Point noted and ever since our discussion, I’ve been mindful about developing and managing my own sonic brands as well as those for clients for whom I’m retained.
Previous to my discussion with composer friend, I had composed a neat ditty for many of the CoolTea and GoBoardRoom audio clips - one which I referred to internally as “Purple Guy” but when I found myself selling a variation of this mix to a client, I was then at a cross roads for developing a new, more updated, more me, kind of signature for ChuckingIt.com and ChuckScott.com branding.
Hence the ditty, aka Sonic Brand, you hear in the Elliott Scheiner clips.
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 33 minutes in length and an 7.6 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 Birgitte Include:
The global loss of vision and role of artists and poets
The media industry as a cultural force and its current cancerous state
Good money vs bad money and how Wall Street needs to change too
How Michael Angelo never would have made a David if he did media research first and the slippery slope of research metrics for those who lose touch with their art and audiences
Green Washing vs Blue Washing and the real job of media
A call for everybody to be active media consumers and aware
and how content is not king but is queen and perception is king
plus much more …
About Birgitte Rasine Birgitte Rasine, CEO, LUCITÀ Inc. The founder and primary driving force behind LUCITÀ, Birgitte Rasine is a writer, producer, journalist and a tireless thinker and innovator. Deeply committed to positive change in the media industries, she drives and personally oversees all of LUCITÀ’s major inhouse projects and initiatives, such as the recently published report The Colors of Perception and the upcoming Project Tsunami. A passionate speaker on socially conscious media and related topics, she has most recently spoken on a panel on social responsibility in the media at New York’s Stern School of Business, and gave a keynote on the topic at WIN 2004 in Geneva, Switzerland. She has been interviewed by NPR in the U.S., and the Australian national radio.
In line with her diverse media career that spans film production, journalism, publishing, marketing and public relations, Birgitte has worked with civil society, business, government and the scientific community. In her previous career, Birgitte wrote for two of the media industry’s top publications, The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety. Her articles have also appeared in Business Week and Diálogo Mediterráneo. Prior to that, Birgitte was a visual effects coordinator, camera assistant, and electrician on Hollywood and independent feature films. She worked for companies such as PDI/Dreamworks, ILM/Universal Studios, HBO, and Disney, and credits them for giving her time in the trenches.
An award-winning poet, Birgitte speaks 5 languages and has lived in 6 countries. She holds a BA in Aesthetics of Film from Stanford University and has completed a professional graduate course in cinematography at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, and a professional masters degree program in International Relations at the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset in Madrid, Spain.
This audio interview is approximately 17 minutes in length and the file is a 4.2 meg mp3 file
If you don’t have flash player click here to download the mp3 file
Earlier today I posted the Elliott Scheiner audio clips and am now in the process of archiving the project files when I came across a handwritten note to myself -
