Sound Design - The Need For Speed

The Need For Speed

Code masters gets on the Grid with DPA

Words Paul Watson

The sound designers at game developer, Codemasters, chose a kit bag of DPA miss to capture the plethora of intricate sounds needed for Grid: Autosport, which brings them back to the racing game sector with a bang.

It's not just about the growl... Recording racing car sounds is a complex process. There are a series of parts involved in creating the fusion of harmonics, squeaks, knocks, and wind noise that you hear when a car shoots past. To capture each of the elements accurately, you need kit that will be able to deal with unpredictable and rigorous conditions in and around the car when driving at high speed, such as heat, knocks, turbulence, and vibration.

To accomplish this on Grid: Autosport, Codemasters used DPA's d:dicate 4011ER, 4018ER, and 4007A condenser mics, along with d:screet 4062 miniatures, placing them in and around the body of the cars to get a true representation of how it sounds, both to the driver, and from various external viewpoints.

Turn It Up

A selection of DPA mics were used to capture each car's sound: the cardioid d:dicate 4011ER was mounted on a cable preamp for the smallest footprint and SPL handling; the 4018 capsule provided a super-cardioid polar pattern when needed; and the d:dicate 4007A Omni was ideal for recording noisy drive-bys and stationary engine sounds, or sounds within the cockpit due to its low noise floor, and very high SPL (155dB peak) before clipping. 

The low sensitivity d:screet SC4062 miniature mics were used for creative placement in and around the body of the car, as not only can they handle higher sound pressure levels, but their tiny omni capsules are particularly good at capturing crystal clear audio at the sound source. 

According to a review of Grid: Autosport on driving.co.uk:

"Codemasters has much more accurately reproduced real engine noises, right down to the pop and crackle of exhaust over-run. Up to 16 microphones were attached to the real cars in order to record the sounds, with specialist equipment being used to avoid the mics near the exhaust melting."

And credit where credit's due... Codemasters were also kind enough to include DPA Microphones and Sound Network in the Grid: Autosport game as decals to apply to your favourite car! Check out the official Grid: Autosport trailer video, and see if you can spot the Sound Network logo around the 01:08 mark!

www.dpamicrophones.comwww.soundnetwork.comwww.codemasters.com

Como Fazer Um Plano e Gerenciar as Finanças De Uma Banda Em Turnê

How To Pre-Plan & Manage Your Band's Tour Finances

First of all thanks to BY:  CHERIE NELSON

for this article.

When indie music duo Pomplamoose went on 28-day tour in fall 2014, they sold just under $100,000 in tickets. With merchandise sales and a sponsorship from Lenovo, they pulled in a total of $135,983. However, after paying for publicity, payroll, production, hotels, food, travel, commissions, merchandise manufacturing, and other costs, total tour expenses added up to $147,802. Pomplamoose ended up putting $11,819 on credit cards to cover the cost of their own tour.

Fortunately, Pomplamoose was expecting a loss on their tour and had a plan to cover their losses from other sources of income. But for most bands, breaking even on tour can be challenging, and it’s easy to go over budget. This can hurt not only your music career, but also your personal finances. To prevent this, following a few guidelines can help you stay on budget and protect your money.

Separate Your Business & Personal Expenses

Jamie Davis-Ponce, who has experience both as a musical professional and as a finance and operations manager, recommends that one of the first things musicians should do to get their accounting in order is to set up separate business bank and credit card accounts for your band. This will help you avoid maxing out your personal credit card while you’re on the road. It will also make your accounting and tax preparation easier, protect you from personal liability for debt and make it harder for identity thieves to get at your finances. Set up a separate accounting spreadsheet to keep track of band-related expenses, and make sure you only use your business card for business purposes.

Plan Your Budget

Plan out every major expense and make sure your pre-determined income will be sufficient to cover it. Basic expenses that you should factor in include equipment, rehearsal rental space, production, promotion, travel expenses, hotels, food, crew member payroll, agent commissions and merchandise. Bandzoogle’s Dave Cool provides a checklist and sample spreadsheet you can use. A business budgeting app such as QuickBooks Online can help make handling your budget easier.

Don’t forget about your personal finances while you’re focused on your tour. Create a separate personal budget and estimate expenses such as mortgages, car payments and bills that need to be paid back home while you’re on the road.

Cover Your Bills

While you’re on a road tour, making sure you paid your monthly mortgage or your band won’t be the first thing on your mind. Both you and your band have bills that will need to be paid while you’re on the road, and missing payments can cost you late fees or create other hassles. To avoid late payments, financial service providers such as Bank of America recommend setting up automatic online bill payments. You can schedule payments to be made ahead of time, and you can also sign up for alerts to let you know when a bill has been paid.

Protect Yourself from Identity Theft

Identity thieves like to target people who are away from home, and band members on tour are no exception. To avoid this, take precautionary steps. Remove credit and identification cards you won’t need from your wallet before leaving home, and store them in a safe place. Keep your band’s credit card in a safe place while you’re traveling. Alert your credit card company that you’ll be on the road. Keep updated on the latest identity theft scams and avoid Wi-Fi hotspots such as hotel networks and public computers that identity thieves may be targeting. Only use ATMs that are monitored by cameras or security guards.

Track Your Expenses

While you’re traveling from San Francisco to New York City, it’s easy to forget your band spent $100 on food at the airport in Chicago. Make sure you keep track of receipts and other expense-related data such as gas mileage so you can include them in your expense report and write them off on your taxes. An expense-tracking app such as Expensify can make it easier for you to capture receipts and update your expense reports while you’re on the road. Sign up for the free trial before you head out on your tour, so you’re ready and tracking from day one.

Agora Você Pode Tocar o Menor Violino Do Mundo: Sensores Do Google Detectam Pequenos Movimentos Para Reproduzir Música

Now you can play the world's tiniest violin: Google sensors detect tiny movements to play music

System only recognizes movement that represents playing a violin 

Taught system which movements to accept and which to reject 

Music will stop play if users stops moving their fingers 

Playing the world’s saddest song on the world’s tiniest violin is no longer just a sarcastic dream.

Using a tiny-radar based chip, the team at Design I/O built a device that detects the movements of this unsympathetic gesture and transforms them into a violin solo.

This innovation is based on Google’s Project Soli, which uses invisible radar emanating from a chip to recognize finger movements and broad beam radar to detect movement, velocity and distance.

Scroll down for videos 

Silo works by using the 60Ghz radar spectrum at up to 10,000 frames per seconds.

These movements are then translated into commands that mimic touches on a screen.

The 'World’s Tiniest Violin' is a ‘speed project’ that uses Googles technology, according to Creative Applications.

Design I/O detects if the user’s hand is making a motion that resembles two fingers moving together – as if they’re playing a mini violin.

Users simply place their thumb and forefinger over the device, start rubbing them together and a tune using just the string instrument will play – which some might deem the saddest tune in the world.

And when you stop ‘playing’, so does the Soli.

To build this tiny violin, the team first taught the Wekinator different finger movements that represent the playing of a violin and which ones are not acceptable.

Using the software, the team recorded different movements and assigned an output value of 1.0 on the Wekinator slider.

Then they set the slider to 0.0 to record gestures the system should reject.

‘After a few minutes of recording these gestures, the ‘training’ was initiated and they were then able to send back an animated value ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 representing how much the hand looked like it was trying to play a tiny violin,’ says Creative Applications.

And the final step mapped the number to the volume of the violin ample that was being played back by the openFrameworks app.

Google unveiled Project Soli last year, which was the brain child of Ivan Poupyrev – technical program lead for the search giant.

'Using a tiny, microchip-based radar to track hand movements we can now track the minutest movements and twitches of the human hand to interact with computers and wearable devices,’ he told MailOnline.com.

+3

To build this tiny violin, the team first taught the Wekinator different finger movements that represent the playing of a violin and which ones are not acceptable. Using the software, the team recorded different movements and assigned an output value of 1.0 on the Wekinator slider

The whole world is becoming a gadget that we interact with, with software everywhere, which raises the question how can we react with the entire world?'

The Russian inventor's reply is to track our finger movements creating virtual dials, touchpads, and more.

Google's Project Soli uses invisible radar emanating from a microchip to recognize finger movements. 

In particular, it uses broad beam radar to recognize movement, velocity and distance. 

It works using the 60Ghz radar spectrum at up to 10,000 frames per seconds.   

The team said its biggest challenge was to shrink a shoebox-sized radar - typically used by police in speed traps - into something tiny enough to fit on a microchip.

Inspired by advances in communications being readied for next-generation Wi-Fi called Wi-Gig, Poupyrev's team shrank the components of a radar down to millimeters in just 10 months, while working with German chip maker Infineon.

6 Trilhas Sonoras De Video Game Para Aumentar O Nível No Trabalho

6 Video Game Soundtracks To Level Up At Work With

All of us have at one point faced the following conundrum: it’s distracting at the office so we want to put on some music to help us focus, but any music that we put on is distracting and makes it difficult to focus as well. As it turns out, there’s a great solution to this problem that comes from one of your favourite pastimes that you never imagined would actually help you be productive.

Video game soundtracks are a great option to listen to when you’re having a hard time getting your work done. They typically have no lyrics, are long scores as opposed to constantly-changing 3 minute songs, and are often eclectic mixes of various styles that keep things fresh. Above all, they’re designed to keep you interested and engaged while you focus on doing something else. Only now, instead of slaying a dragon and rescuing a princess, you’re updating contact information in a 3000 line Excel spreadsheet. But who says that can’t feel just as exciting?

Now, I know that any discussion about video games can get very intense very quickly, so let me clarify: this is not all best video game soundtracks to boost productivity, it’s just a few ones. As in, there are definitely other ones that have not made the cut that are perhaps even better than the ones here. If there’s any that you like to listen to, please share them with others in the comments! But for now, here’s 6 of my personal favourites:

Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Composer: Koji Kondo

Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64 is considered by many to be one of the greatest video games of all time. Released in 1998, it was ahead of its time with its massive open world to explore and epic adventure to journey through. When listening to the orchestral stylings of the soundtrack, those who have played it will instantly be taken back to riding a horse through the rolling pastures of Hyrule. Interspersed throughout the soundtrack are whimsical numbers pertaining to the many different villages & puzzles found throughout the game, which help to keep the soundtrack fresh.

Chrono Trigger

Composers: Yasunori Mitsuda & Nobuo Uematsu

Look at any “Top Video Game Soundtracks” post and inevitably you will find Chrono Trigger on most results. It’s got great melodies and has many distinct parts, but is never too overbearing. Fans of the iconic lo-fi Super Nintendo sounds will definitely want to check this one out.

Quake

Composers: Trent Reznor & Nine Inch Nails

Before he would go on to win an Academy Award for his soundtrack to The Social Network, Nine Inch Nails frontman, Trent Reznor, got his start creating scores in 1996 with Quake. It’s everything we’ve now come to expect from a great Trent Reznor score: ambient, industrial, and very atmospheric. The soundtrack can be divided into 2 parts: the first half is a collection of sounds that create an eerie and dark mood, while the second half consists of songs ranging from orchestral to metal.

Final Fantasy X

Composers:Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu & Junya Nakano

The Final Fantasy X soundtrack has a diverse arrangement of instrumentation and styles, ranging from rock to electronic to cinematic. Though quite lengthy, the soundtrack changes styles fairly quickly, which makes it easy to listen to for a long period without beginning to sound repetitive.

Bastion

Composer: Darren Korb

Though one of the more recent entries on this list, 2011’s Bastion has a soundtrack that many believe to be one of the greatest video game soundtracks of all time. Like any great game soundtrack it’s got a wide range of styles, which composer Darren Korb describes as “acoustic frontier trip hop.” Though some small portions of the soundtrack have vocals, it was too good to pass up for this list.

Mass Effect

Composers: Jack Wall, Sam Hulick, Richard Jacques & David Kates

The Mass Effect soundtrack is the most cinematic of any of the entries on this list, which makes it great at setting an overall tone of adventure and tension. It’s largely orchestral, though it also has very creative uses of synthesisers to keep things interesting.

Assista Ao Gif 30 Anos da Evolução Da Indústria da Música!

Watch The American Music Industry Splinter Into Bits Over 30 Years In 30 Seconds

Digital Music News' Paul Resnikoff has put together a pie chart GIF showing 30 years of U.S. music industry change in 30 seconds. 

Not only is it unrecognizable from what it looked like in the '80s and '90s, its unrecognizable from even five years ago, as Spotify and Pandora had yet to enter our lives. 

You know how we feel about pie charts — but the ugliness seems well suited to that particular data display:   

Data from RIAA. We saw this on reddit.

Kronos Quartet Quer Distribuir Suas Músicas De Graça Para Você! E Vai Ensiná-lo Como Tocá-las!

Kronos Quartet Wants To Give You Free Music — And Teach You How To Play It

Irish composer and violist Garth Knox recently wrote a piece called Satellites, which, he says, tries to express sounds he imagines coming from outer space. At a Carnegie Hall rehearsal studio, he explains how to play the piece to four 20-something musicians from San Francisco who call themselves the Friction Quartet. Knox says that to create these extraterrestrial sounds, he used an unconventional approach.

"The small techniques that are overlooked in classical music," he says, "and the little bow noises you can make by doing things not quite as your teacher showed you — but what you do when he's not looking. You can find amazing things. Bows and strings can work in many different ways."

Four days after the workshop, the Friction Quartet performed Knox's Satellites in a concert at Carnegie's Zankel Hall. It's all part of a project by the Kronos Quartet called Fifty for the Future. The group is commissioning 50 works from as many composers. It will premiere each piece, and then hold workshops with the composer and young musicians. Then the score will be posted on the Kronos website, free for anyone to download, along with performance and instructional videos.

Knox was paid for the commission, but the 59-year-old says he doesn't mind giving away the copyright in return for hearing Satellites performed around the world. "I'm very happy that people play my music," he says. "It's a delight for me. I want as many people to play it as possible. There's nothing secret about what I'm doing. I'm very happy to share it. And I find this whole project very generous; a show of generosity."

The 25-year-old violist in the Friction Quartet, Taija Warbelow, says the project is a boon for young musicians.

"When you're starting out in chamber music, you often play Mozart or Haydn or things like this," she says, "and you don't get exposed to new classical music until much later in your career. It would have been great to have these pieces they're commissioning now when I was younger, because you learn a whole host of new techniques, and you help support the music that is being created now if you're exposed to it younger."

The five-year project has a budget of $1.5 million, funded in part by Carnegie Hall. Along with Satellites, the first group of commissions includes a piece for electronics and strings; quartet music from Serbia and Mali; and composer Wu Man's Four Chinese Paintings.

Wu is a virtuoso of the pipa, a pear-shaped, four-stringed instrument sometimes called the Chinese lute. And she wants to get that sound from a string quartet.

"I'm not trying to imitate the bow sound," she says. "I'm hoping bowed instruments could imitate my plucking, the pipa sound — the kind of bending the note, the slide, that's on the left hand. So that brings a different language, very different from European music."

Wu came to New York to show three young quartets how to play the piece after Kronos premiered it.

Kronos Quartet led a workshop for young professional string quartets to explore new works commissioned as part of "Fifty For The Future."

Stefan Cohen/Courtesy of Carnegie Hall

Kronos violinist David Harrington says when all 50 of the commissions are delivered, the result will be a mosaic of what is possible in string quartet music, available for anybody to learn. And Fifty for the Future has some big names on tap, including works for string quartet by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

"What I hope will happen is that the art form is just going to expand," he says. "And the explorations that will be possible from this body of work will just bring a lot of new energy into the field."

Uma Gravadora (Matador Records) Teve Que Destruir Todos Novos Vinis! Por Causa De Uma Música Do "The Cars"

Why a Record Label Crushed a Batch of Vinyl Records

Matador Records scrambles for a new pressing after it recalled a Car Seat Headrest album that used parts of a Cars hit

Singer Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest performed during the Do512 SXSW party on March 14, 2016 in Austin, Texas. PHOTO: SCOTT DUDELSON/GETTY IMAGES

Manhattan headquarters of Matador Records, employees chucked thousands of brand-new copies of an acclaimed album into a garbage truck, which crushed the CDs and vinyl records and carted them away. 

It was a rudely physical coda to a dispute over intangibles: a song’s lyrics and melody. Matador artist Will Toledo, an indie rocker who records under the name Car Seat Headrest, had woven elements of a 1978 hit by the Cars, “Just What I Needed,” into one of his songs. Mr. Toledo and Matador believed they had secured the necessary approval to release the Car Seat Headrest album featuring the hybrid song. But a publishing company representing Cars songwriter Ric Ocasek denied them permission after learning that some of Mr. Ocasek’s lyrics had been changed.

By that time, about 10 days before the May 20 release of the Car Seat Headrest album, “Teens of Denial,” all physical copies—about 5,800 vinyl LPs and 3,700 CDs—had already been shipped to distributors and record stores. Matador issued a recall, the first in the label’s 27-year history, and scrambled to salvage the project. Mr. Toledo created a version of the song without material from “Just What I Needed.” Matador swapped it in to get a digital version of the album out on time. In between documenting and destroying the recalled recordings, the label fast-tracked the vinyl pressing of the replacement album, a process that typically takes several months. 

Mr. Toledo, who is 23 years old, is Car Seat Headrest’s singer, guitar player and sole songwriter. The four-person group has built buzz since Mr. Toledo started putting out music while in college in Virginia. His album snag reflects broader forces in the music industry, such as the revival of vinyl records and the antiquated factories that make them. Vinyl sales, which have risen for 10 years, amount to just 6% of total music retail, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. However, at $416 million in 2015, vinyl sales were higher than revenue from ad-supported music streams on services like YouTube, indicating the lingering importance of physical releases in a world dominated by digital.

Mr. Toledo’s run-in with the rocker behind some of the catchiest hits of the ’70s and ’80s also underscores the power of music publishing, which encompasses the rights to songs as written compositions. It’s a hugely important piece of intellectual property for songwriters trying to supplement sales and streaming revenue with fees from, for example, placing their music in TV commercials or movies.

For veteran acts such as Mr. Ocasek, with a thick catalog of familiar songs, publishing rights not only can supply lifelong profits, they also can be used to promote music to new generations of fans—or shield it from unwelcome uses.

In the original version of Mr. Toledo’s song (previously titled “Just What I Needed/Not Just What I Needed”) he played a syncopated guitar riff borrowed from the Cars hit. Then, after some verses of his own, he quoted the Cars tune but changed Mr. Ocasek’s line from “It’s not the ribbons in your hair” to “It’s not the way you cut your hair.” 

Mr. Ocasek controls his songs through a company called Lido Music, which relies on Universal Music Publishing Group to administer access to the catalog. Universal said the original Car Seat Headrest request that was approved didn’t disclose that the lyric had been changed. After learning of the lyric change, Lido Music said in a statement, the song was blocked because “it is our policy that no lyric changes are ever approved.”

Mr. Ocasek declined to comment.

After his request to use Mr. Ocasek’s work was denied, Mr. Toledo said, he re-recorded the introduction to his song. He replaced the Cars lyrics with a snippet of one of Car Seat Headrest’s songs from a previous album, played backward. The new title: “Not What I Needed.” 

Matador Records expects to lose at least $50,000 on the effort, including what the label had paid to ship the original LPs from a German pressing plant, at about $2 per unit. “When we do the final P&L on this project, it’s not going to look great,” said Rusty Clarke, vice president of sales for Beggars Group, which comprises six record labels, including Matador.

Before a recent performance in Brooklyn, Mr. Toledo said he regretted Matador’s financial hit but didn’t mourn the destroyed records. Before signing with Matador, he self-recorded 11 releases—initially using his car as a recording studio, hence his moniker—and released his recordings independently through the music site Bandcamp. “I grew up releasing music digitally, and I never put out physical records before signing to Matador, so this album release in all practicality looks about the same as what I’m used to,” Mr. Toledo said.

Still, the recall leaves him empty-handed on tour, where he could be selling the new LPs or CDs to fans at concerts. 

The vinyl stock of “Teens of Denial” is expected to be replaced in early July by Independent Record Pressing, a plant near Trenton, N.J., that opened last year. Making IRP’s job more painstaking: the fact that “Teens of Denial” is a double LP. The pressing company will save and “quarantine” the records (featuring sides C and D) that didn’t include the offending song. After IRP presses the replacement records (featuring sides A and B), employees will insert them into the new sleeves (with revised credits) and seal them for shipping. 

IRP, built around six refurbished presses from the ’70s and ’80s, produces about 4,000 records a day and is about to double its output by adding a second shift of workers, says general manager Sean Rutkowski. 

“I think we’re turning a corner, production-wise. For years, people were nervous to invest in it” because they expected the vinyl fad to die down, says Cameron Schaefer, head of music and label relations at Vinyl Me, Please, a subscription service that delivers an exclusive LP to members each month. Launched in 2013, the Boulder, Colo., startup had worked with Matador to create a special edition of the Car Seat Headrest album—750 copies on yellow vinyl.

Copies of Car Seat Headrest's LP ‘Teens of Denial’ sat in a box in the Matador loading dock, waiting to be destroyed PHOTO: COLE WILSON FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

For collectors, however, the more coveted edition of “Teens of Denial” is the recalled original. After hearing about the recall, Steve Gray, a photographer in Bangor, Maine, went online on the album’s release date and searched the inventory of a regional chain of brick-and-mortar record stores called Bull Moose. He hit the Bangor location just after the doors opened at 9 a.m. and found a single copy of the LP, for $26 plus tax.

Later, he poked through the shrink wrap just enough to verify that both LPs were inside. He posted a picture of his score in a forum on the Vinyl Me, Please site, where a handful of other members claimed to have received copies of the recalled record shipped by Amazon.com.

To protect his find, Mr. Gray doesn’t plan to play it on the turntable he got for his birthday a couple of years ago. Instead, he’s been streaming “Teens of Denial” on Spotify.