Ok, so I'm mental!

Just in case you think this is just me saying that you need this kind of 'killer attitude',

listen to what Joanna Spindler, A&R,

Silver Wave Records has to say: 

"I like to see what the artist has been able to do on their own.  What radio stations have they gotten play on, what music stores have they consigned to and what press/reviews have they been able to garner on their own?  If the artist does not already have a self produced release, are they playing live and collecting radio/media contacts and fan names for a mailing list?  I want to get the feeling that the artist is working hard on their own to get their music career off the ground."-

Last week's huge reaction re. foldback/monitor systems for live performance:

Wow...did I set the Email wires alight...great reaction from David Kilpatrick [hear him talk to me on 'One Minute with Dec - the first Annual' interactive CD's at www.makehits.co.uk/annual.htm ]

Dec - a couple of points about your last 'one minute':

The stage sound set-up described by Ian is more or less what we use for small folk club and theatre (100 seat or less) venues. It works well for solo, duo, trio, percussion free performances. Feedback is a major problem. One solution for the solo artist is earphone monitoring; Pierre Bensusan creates one of the best solo guitar sounds around, and he always uses a headphone monitor. It's a bit restricting and looks naff. In-ear monitoring with one ear insert does not give a stero image of course... and it costs a fortune compared to headphones of comparable quality. Upgrade to wireless operation and it costs even more.

A neat alternative for low-volume solo gigs is to plug a low-cost computer sound amplification kit into your headphone output from the desk - two little powered speakers. You can even fix them to the mike stand. The volume is low, and the sound so directional, that they don't upset the house mix at all, but provide just enough monitoring level at close range. There is a little mike-stand monitor called 'The Fly' specially made along the same lines, to idea being that each performer has this tiny speaker on the stand, below the zone of the hypercardiode mike and just behind it. I've got a feeling you need a desk with multiple 'group' outputs to use these on a 'one per performer' basis.

You wonder why producers do not use more stereo effects like Queen, in production mixes. All I can say is 'beware the home cinema revolution'. Yes, you can do a 5:1 mix for Dolby Surround Sound and there is a strong argument that all master studio work today should be undertaken for five-channel surround sound, and not for stereo imaging. However, most recordings below a certain budget are still made initially by mixing the master down to stereo, and most CDs are normal stereo.

In the listener's home, the DVD amplifier or home cinema surround sound system should of course be switched to MUSIC whenever MTV comes on, or a CD gets put in the player. But it is often not switched to that - it stays on THEATRE with full five-channel simulation. What happens than is that your stereo imaged recording using sweeps and phasing does some even stranger stuff than a normal recording. Even a regular CD can have the drums or a vocal suddenly drop out of the front speakers, and pop up behind the listener. A recording which uses stereo sweeps can flick between simulated surround sound and normal stereo in the middle of a note!

These home cinema systems, especially the cheap £200-300 ones, are not recommended for serious music listening. But needless to say people use them for this - they will play CDs, and music on TV is important. Hopefully if people buy music DVDs (videos) then full encoding for five-channel is always included, and the sound will never go walkies.

I suspect that many producers are slightly wary of stereo space effects just because they are aware of the problems 5:1 introduces.

David  [read David's great guitar article at www.makehits.co.uk/art007.htm ]

Well, I had to reply: