1,729 thoughts on “General Questions”

  1. Art put this up as a poll (Thanks Art!) but I’d also like to post it as a question to hear what a lot of you have to say.

    Do you put your tracks in multiple re-title libraries or do you treat each non-exclusive for a track as if it were exclusive?

    What are your thoughts?

    • Right now, as I am relatively new to this, I am in 8 non-exclusive RF libraries. I don’t re-title my tracks and not every library, except for two, has all of my tracks. Have not had any exclusives as of yet.

    • Bump…. I wanted to bump the question:

      Do you put your tracks in multiple re-title libraries or do you treat each non-exclusive for a track as if it were exclusive?

      Thanks

      • Check the Poll results (link on navigation menu). Currently 4 votes to 1 that composers do not treat non-exclusives as exclusives.

  2. Has anyone here ever had much trouble with tinnitus? Iv had tinnitus for about the last 8-9 years. Im at a point now where im starting to get a little worried about it as it seems to be getting slightly louder over the past year or so. maybe cos im mastering my own work now and the audio level is louder when i master. Its only noticeable when its quiet and when i go to bed but Im 28 now and im worried that by the time im say 35 ill be tortured with it.Has anyone here been through any experiences with tinnitus?

    • Yep, I have it. Mine is always there, sometimes worse than others. Mine is more of a hiss than a ringing. That website that Art pointed you to is great. Caffeine and ibuprofen really seem to bring it on.

      A friend of mine has it and he gets his ears cleaned out by a doctor, he says it helps but I’m not sure I want my ear flushed out, just a little nervous it would do more harm than good.

      Did you have your wisdom teeth pulled? This can also cause it.

    • Hi Euca,
      my boyfriend (who is also a musician) has tinnitus too. He says it helps him to stand next to running water, cause it has a similar frequency and somehow makes the tinnitus sound go away.
      Personally I never tried it, cause I thankfully dont have tinnitus. But I thought I share this little trick, maybe it helps a bit!

      • I bet he pees a lot, Ulla. 🙂 Just kidding. Seriously, whatever works! I don’t have the condition but I hear it can be very delibitating.

          • Thanks Art ill check that link out. @ euca No havent had any wisdom teeth out but i do drink loads of tea when im writing so maybe the caffiene in there is having an effect(never knew that). Iv had a stuffy head recently aswell which seems to have coinsided with the hightened tinnitus. when writing, sound seems to resonate more in my head when its stuffy/sinusy.

            Thanks for the comms.

            • @hysteria-yep, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol all make it worse. But l do drink coffee when I’m writing. I know what you mean about the stuffiness, last year I got an ear infection that actually blew out my ear drum, took about three weeks before I could even listen to music. All this right after I upgraded my studio, it was killing me not to write.

              @ulla- thanks for the tip. It does seem to help a bit!!

              • I spend on average 6 hours a day in front of speakers. It used to occur often when I was working as a full time engineer, along with iritability and fatigue. Since making the switch from coffee to green tea a few years back, I’ve only gotten it a few times. Also, keep your mixes at 85db and try to work with less volume unless
                setting up tracking eq/comp and mixing.

  4. anyone know a good WAV to AIF converter? Is there any auido quality difference between the two? Iv heard that when converting WAV to MP3 that audio loops dont loop properly anymore. Is there anything to look out for like that when converting to AIF from WAV? Is there a freebie that does the job well?

    • Audacity on a Mac. No difference in sound quality, double check wether the recipient needs aif or aiff. They are the same just append the file suffix. MP3 dont loop correctly beacause they add a tiny piece of blank space at the start of the file.

    • I’ve been using “Switch”. I’m on a PC. I like at as you can “batch” the files. BTW JD can iTunes “batch” the files? In other words, more than one at a time?

      • Hmmm? I usually do one at a time, but I think you can create a “playlist”, highlight (select) all of the tracks and convert them all at once. You just have to setup your “import settings” first. (BTW, I’m on a mac.)

    • I don’t know if this addresses your issue exactly, but I am seriously looking at the Sonnox Fraunhofer Pro-Codec plug-in that was recently introduced. The Sonnox website has a video on it.

  5. Looking for advice.
    I don’t have a website for my music yet and think it’s about time. I have a pretty lame site for my small (one man) Sound Reinforcement Company with a domain name through Yahoo Small business. I did put up a page on it that could only be accessed directly, no links from the live sound site. Unfortunately the cues were downloadable and I really don’t want that. I don’t see an option in my Yahoo site builder program that can prohibit downloads. I’m considering watermarking my cues with “sample” or something every 15 seconds, but that seems kind of lame/paranoid to me. Ideas?

    I just opened a soundcloud account but haven’t put any cues up there yet. Would using soundcloud for my “artist page” seem to amateur?

    Any other ideas for a non-HTML’n composer that are fairly painless, professional looking, and won’t cost me a fortune or a month learning web design?

    Art,

    Your Cue Demo Reel page is great. What playback system is that?

    • Hi AlanF,

      I build all my sites using WordPress (free). I’ve finished my own music library site and just uploading the music files now. If you are willing to learn WordPress it’s all pretty low cost. The web hosting is about $10 per month. I’m using Amazon S3 servers to store all the files which (at this point) is pennies per month. The shopping cart plugin was $40. All the other functions use plugins that are free. The audio plugin (where that demo reel is) is called AudioPlayer. Of course you need to be running a WordPress site to use it.

      The only real cost I will have (which I could not find a plugin for) is a Playlist feature that a client can use to build multiple playlists. That will cost me $500 but I think it’s worth it, though not necessary.

      • Art – as always thanks for sharing.
        Would love to see your music lib site when it’s done. as I’m looking for a viable solution myself.
        Could you please post the URL?
        A step by step tutorial would be so valuable, guess I just got to dig in and learn wordpress.

        • At some point I’ll do a basic tutorial and also post a URL when it’s finished.

          You should also learn how to work with a spreadsheet and the basic functions of phpMyAdmin. You can usually find it in your cPanel in your hosting account. It’s a great way to quickly upload and update data into the WordPress MYSQL database.

  7. Not worried… I think my participation in the bottom end of the food chain is safe for now, LOL! 🙂

    But you never know… A computer won a Jeopardy tournament. I’ll take “Car Chase Scenes” for $40, Alex!

    😉

  8. I need some advice on foreign movie placements. A fairly major motion picture in Brazil licensed an instrumental of mine and as far as I know they will be using the entire piece (4 + minutes).

    Fortunately usages in movie theatres in foreign countries do pay royalties. I’m pretty confident about my PRO(SESAC) handling the writers share thru the Brazilian affiliate PRO (UBC) but I am also administrating my own publishing and have never had to handle the publishing. I’m thinking it may be in my best interest to find a Brazilian sub-publisher to handle the publishing.

    Anyone have experience with foreign movie backend from a publishing vantage point (or for that matter writers royalties as well)? If so please weigh in. Thanks!

  9. It’s so funny that as soon as I saw this email about Juke-bot(and watched the video), I quickly jumped to MLR to post a question about this, but you’ve all beat me to the punch.

    I must say it makes me nervous. Do you guys really think we don’t have anything to worry about?

    • I don’t think so. As I mentioned Sony had a similar program a few years ago but I don’t think it caught on as I can’t find it searching the net.

    • I was half joking. But…I think that writers whose skill set and sound sources do not exceed what juke-bot can create, and who mainly sell cheap tracks (like for $1.00) may have some concerns. In other words, IMHO, it’s most likely to affect the bottom of he market, if at all. I do not think that juke-bot will compete effectively with higher quality material.

      Plus…there are a lot of editors who pride themselves on selecting and editing music.
      It’s part of their creative process.

        • Hehe, I was waiting for this answer! 😉

          What I meant was of course – how did they get my and your email addresses? What list are we all on that we get that email? Who gave them our email – a PRO, a music library, the illuminati or the freemasons?

          Anyway, not a big deal, I was just curious 😉

  10. Have you guys seen this yet? http://juke-bot.com/

    It sounds a little primitive right now, and I don’t really understand exactly how it works, i.e. is it just finding appropriate music, or actually generating new music?

    This kind of technology might be the future of music for low budget projects… all the more need for composers to create original, fresh and unique sounding music (that an algorithm or AI could never come up with).

    • I got one of those e-mails this morning also. Sony had a program like that a few years ago. I had a demo copy and it was pretty interesting.

    • Interesting, but flawed. I could think of a dozen different ways to score a scene of people riding horses and none of them would be as simplistic and/or repetitive as what the algorithm spit out. Not to mention that the program is not likely to contain the thousands of dollars worth of high quality sounds that we use,

      Of course, the bottom of the food chain should be a little nervous. It will appeal people who are looking for cheap, not necessarily good. I could see some library writers using this software to flood the low end of the market with $.99 tracks.

      Don’t look for the hipster and his pal on Oscar night. They can’t tell the difference.

      Just MHO.

    • If you scroll down you will see that this will be available for iPhone and Android. This kinda gives
      an indication of how low brow this will be. The video was deliberately vague as to how this works. Does it just take existing tracks and time stretch them to fit?

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