6 Best Music Apps

Here's a link to an article by Tara Swords about the 6 best music apps. I actually use one of them quite often (Shazam).

http://www.everydayconnected.com/papajan/play/best_music_apps/index.html?source=Outbrain

Sony’s letter to Congress provides timeline for PlayStation Network breach

Late last week, a Congressional subcommittee sent a letter to Sony's second-in-command Kaz Hirai pressing him for more answers to the massive PlayStation Network security breach. Today, Hirai has responded with an eight-page letter that not only addresses each of the subcommittee's questions one-by-one but also provides some more details into the Sony Online Entertainment breach and volleys a not-so-subtle jab at Anonymous, a hacking group he calls "conspirators or... simply duped into providing cover for a very clever thief." Yeah, it's a great read. The biggest takeaways and a full timeline of events after the break.

A Timeline of Events

Tuesday, April 19 at 4:15PM PDT: Sony Network Entertainment America network team noticed several PSN servers in the San Diego, California data center re-booting when they weren't scheduled to do so, and that "unplanned and unusual activity was taking place on the network." Four servers were taken offline and an internal assessment began on the quartet. This continued through the evening.

Wednesday, April 20th: SNEA expanded the internal team to continue assessment of these four servers. By early afternoon, it discovered "the first credible indications that an intruder had been in the PlayStation network systems" and identified six more servers that might've been compromised. Additionally, there was "evidence that indicated an unauthorized intrusion had occurred and that  data of some kind had been transferred off the PlayStation Network servers without authorization," but it was unable to determine exactly what type of data has been transferred.

Later that afternoon, SNEA retains a "recognized security firm and forensic consulting firm to mirror the servers to enable forensic analysis to begin." The letter here notes that many hours were needed to simply mirror the servers — by the afternoon of Friday, April 22nd, nine of the 10 servers were completely mirrored.

Thursday, April 21st: A second "recognized computer security and forensic consulting firm" was brought in to assist.

Friday, April 22nd: SCEA's general counsel provided the FBI with information about the intrusion. "The forensic experts that Sony Network Entertainment America had retained had not determined the scope or effect of the intrusion at the time the FBI was contacted. A meeting was set up to provide details to law enforcement" for Wednesday, April 27 — five days later.

Saturday, April 23rd: Forensic teams confirm that intruders had managed to "obtain unauthorized access, hide their presence from system administrators, and escalate privileges inside the servers." deleted log files to hide the extent of their work. The PlayStation Blogblames the downtime on an "external intrusion."

Sunday, April 24th (Easter): Now that Sony "knew it was dealing with a sophisticated hacker," it retains yet another firm. "Specifically, this firm was retained provide even more manpower for forensic analysis... and, in particular, to use their special skills to determine scope of the data theft."

Monday, April 25th: Sony is able to confirm "the scope of the personal data that they believed had been taken but could not rule out whether credit card information had been accessed." Sony still could not determine if credit card information had been accessed — "while no evidence existed... we ultimately could not rule out that possibility entirely based on the reports of the forensics team."

Tuesday, April 26th: Sony makes its first public announcement, outlining what was taken and warning that credit card information might have been compromised. Seeing million or so fingers pointed in its direction, hacker collective Anonymous denies responsibility ("For Once We Didn't Do It"). SNEA notifies "applicable regulatory authorities" in New Jersey, Maryland, and New Hampshire of the criminal intrusion. Sony says some services are expected to be restored "within a week," which would've been May 3rd.

Wednesday, April 27th: SNEA notifies the regulatory authorities in Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Puerto Rico. The PlayStation Blog publishes its first Q&A followup.

Thursday, April 28th: Q&A number two for the PlayStation Blog. It's revealed both theDepartment of Homeland Security and FBI are investigating.

Friday, April 29th: The US House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade — send a letter to Hirai along with a list of questions and concerns.

Saturday, April 30th: Sony announces a press conference for the following day.

Sunday, May 1st: Kaz Hirai holds an afternoon press conference in Tokyo to outline what portions of the PlayStation Network will be restored this week and do introduce the forthcoming "Welcome Back" program. The investigation brings light that Sony Online Entertainment was also breached.

Monday, May 2nd: SOE servers are shut down. Later that afternoon, the company issues a press release announcing the extent of the breach.

Tuesday, May 3rd: Blueberry pie! No, not really.

Wednesday, May 4th: Hirai sends an eight-page response to Congress.

Who's your favorite?

Vote for the Billboard.com Fan Favorite Award

"The first-ever Billboard.com Fan Favorite Award will be presented to the musician who receives the most votes in our exclusive Billboard.com readers poll. There'll be no chart statistics, airplay data or ticket sales influencing this decision. Your vote and your vote alone will decide the winner!

The poll will be open from Monday, May 9 through Friday, May 20. The winner will be announced on May 22, the day of the Billboard Music Awards."

Vote for your favorite artist here:

billboard.com

GOOD MORNING!

Metric Halo's Channelstrip on sale 50% off

Metric Halo's Channelstrip was the first channelstrip plugin on the market. It has stood the test of time and is currently on sale for 50% off at http://mhlabs.com/metric_halo/products/channelstrip/

Here's an earlier review I did on the Channelstrip:

This was used on Kardinal's @KardinalO song "Mi Nina" produced by SupaDups @SupaDups .

The Metric Halo Channelstrip plugin ($345) was one of my first plugin purchases. I've used it on many projects over the years. The Channelstrip consists of a dynamics section (gate/compressor) and a six band eq section. 

Each eq band can be parametric high cut, low cut, low shelf, high shelf or band-pass filter type with each band capable of 20hz to 20khz frequency selection. This allows you to do drastic surgical eq or broad enhancement of sounds. There are two additional eq bands that are used as sidechains for the gate and compressor section. 

A nice feature of the compressor is the auto gain button which automatically adjusts the volume for the amount of compression that's dialed in with the threshold and ratio knobs (the SSL console dynamics section works in a similiar fashion). 

The plugin doesn't have a "color" to it as some others do but I see this neutral sound as a plus and makes it an excellent choice for sonic surgery. It works well on a large variety of sounds including drums, guitar, strings, brass, vocals and synths. The meters and graphs on the right side of the interface come in handy when making adjustments and you can actually grab the points on the graph and adjust the eq if you prefer.

PSP oldtimerME compressor plugin - $79 until May 31st.

I've been a fan of PSP (Professional Sound Projects) for years and their oldtimerME compressor plugin will definitely be added to my plugin list.
From the website:

"PSP oldTimerME (Master Edition) installer includes two versions of the plug-in:

• PSP oldTimerME  a vintage-style compressor designed for demanding track and program compression, limiting and mastering processing.
• PSP oldTimer a vintage-style compressor designed for track or program compression and limiting.

Our goal in developing these plug-ins has been to provide you with versatile compressors that offer detailed control and an exceptionally musical sound. PSP oldTimer plug-ins are not based on any specific hardware, rather they are inspired by vintage circuits and we designed them to emulate our favorite characteristics of such compressors.

The PSP oldTimerME version of this compressor combines advanced features such as the option to process left, right, mid or side channel exclusively while being very simple to set up - which makes it hard to go wrong! In case of PSP oldTimer our goal was to provide a simple compressor that offers an exceptionally musical sound while requiring a minimum of tweaking. PSP oldTimer is so simple and so easy to use, that it's difficult to make it sound bad even at extreme settings! These compressors offer soft and smooth compression in most applications, however they may slightly color the sound with their tube emulation on transients when heavily driven internally by high compression values."

Here's a pic of a setting i came up with in less than a minute for a song I'm currently mixing.

This was placed on the drum buss. I was able to dial in the sound I was looking for very quickly.

I especially like the HPF filter and the fact that there are Hi, Mid and Low settings for the Valve emulation.

For transparent compression set the Valve switch to clear.

As with some of PSP's other plugins the oldtimerME allows you to do parallel compression very easily. You can also turn off the wet and dry mix by clicking on the words DRY and WET above the knobs (notice the line through Dry in the pic).

Go to PSP oldtimer download the demo and try it it for yourself.

Tired of the Loudness Wars? Visit this site & get a free Dynamic Range Metering plugin

From the website:

The Pleasurize Music Foundation began operations in January 2009 and is a nonprofit organization based in California, USA. Their aim is to re-establish dynamics as an essential part and important means of expression of all genres of music.

"DR (or Dynamic Range) is a term for the degree of dynamic variation within a piece of music or album. Low values (e.g. DR3) reflect a high abuse of compression.  Tracks that are DR3 have a range of three decibels between the average and peak program signal.  A natural recording, with a low amount of dynamic processing, would have a much higher DR value (e.g. DR12+).  The DR system is intended to avoid black and white judgment of dynamic quality. While DR7 is low for rock music or very low for Jazz, it is quite acceptable for electronic club music which has nowadays often values below DR4. All values above DR12 have generally a high dynamic quality."

Visit the website and watch the video: http://www.pleasurizemusic.com/

Thanks to my good friend and fellow engineer/producer Frank @Alphabeatmusic for bringing this to my attention.

Waves C4 Multiband Compressor On Sale for $99

Waves is currently having a sale on many of their plugins including the C4 which is one of my favorite plugins for processing vocals.

For a limited time only, get the C4 Multiband Compressor  at a great price.

A multiband dynamics processing powerhouse, the C4 does it all: Four bands of up and down expansion, limiting, and compression, plus dynamic and standard EQ. Combining technologies from our acclaimed Renaissance Compressor and the powerful C1 Parametric Compander, the C4 gives you unprecedented control over the contours of your tracks, with maximum clarity and transparency.

Download over 70 free custom C4 presets for vocals, drums, bass, guitars, problem-solving, mastering and more, direct from some of the hardest working engineers in the business.

• Alex Pfeffer
• Anthony Lannucci
• Chuck Zwicky
• Dave Kelly
• Dean Landon 
• Dean Stairs
• Jack Hale
• Niels De Groot (Motoko)
• Nathan Rausu
• Nick Hemingway 
• Nokolaj Vinten
• Paul Mills
• Mark Den Hartog (Zownd)

Here is a review i did previously on the Waves C4:

I used this for Joss Stone's hook on "Young At Heart" produced by Salaam Remi for her album "Mind Body & Soul". 


The Waves C4 Multiband Parametric Processor is a versatile plugin that's included in the Platinum, Diamond and Mercury bundles. It's transparency and flexibility has earned it a prominent place in many engineer's toolbox. To quote the manual "You can think of the C4 as a dynamic equalizer capable of gentle compression, expansion, limiting and EQ, independently and simultaneously." 
The C4 can be used on the stereo buss, group auxes or even individual tracks. It works exceptionally well for vocals where I usually place it on the aux master for the backgrounds.


The C4 is complex but it's interface makes it fairly easy to use. The controls (see pic) consist of Threshold, Gain, Range, Attack and Release for the four individual bands and a master controls that affect all bands at once (right side of interface). I especially like the solo and bypass for each band that allows you to zero in on any problem frequencies with ease. The Threshold works in conjunction with the Range control in that the amount of gain reduction is half the range value (-6.0 Range means -3dB reduction). The gain control allows one to adjust the output level of each band independently. The Range control serves a dual purpose. When the values are negative(-) it's a compressor when the values are positive(+) it's an expander. The attack and release behave the same as a standard compressor. 
The master controls will change all the values at the same time so the interaction between the bands will not change. On the far right of the interface we have the Release, Behavior and Knee controls. The Release allows one to choose between Waves ARC (Automatic Release Control) and manual. The ARC works best in most situations. 


The Behavior control lets you choose between Electro and Opto compression (similiar to the Rennaisance Compressor). Electro has slower release times at higher compression settings and Opto (think LA-2A) has faster release times at high compression. The Knee control can be set to soft or hard or values in between if needed. The crossover points can be changed by dragging the small grey handles at the bottom of the display or clicking directly on the Low, Mid, and High value boxes and entering the numbers with the keyboard or mouse. The Q (bandwidth) setting is global.
(Waves tip: For “tighter” sound, adjust the Q to a higher setting.) Finally the output fader sets the final output of the C4. 

If you play and/or record acoustic instruments you need this $13 item.

My friend Karl who plays guitar introduced me to the Snark Tuner, He showed me first hand how easy it is to use and at a cost of just $13 (Amazon ) owning one of these is a no brainer.
The SN-2 (red) is an all instrument (chromatic) tuner and the SN-1 (blue) is a guitar/bass tuner.

Snark SN-1/SN-2 Features:

• Full-color display
• Display clip rotates 360 degrees
• Stay-put clip
• Fast and deadly accurate
• Tap tempo metronome
• Pitch calibration 415-466 Hz
• Transpose feature (± four half steps)
• Mic/Vibration switch (SN-2 only)

Here's a link to a review of the Snark Tuner  by Barry Rudolph:
http://www.barryrudolph.com/newtoys/toys7/snarktuners.html

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Here's a link to 15 songs dedicated to all the Mom's on Mother's Day. (via Billboard.com)

http://www.billboard.com/#/column/viralvideos/dear-mama-15-mother-s-day-videos-1004089570.story

Music Biz 101 - Things you don't learn in school

My good friend Carlisle Young has a blog where he offers a lot of insight into his life and the music business.
This is an excerpt from his latest  blog post:
"At age 16, I finally accepted that I outgrew visiting Jamaica and I was growing up extremely fast as I was starting the growing process and learning what it took to make it in life. I used to think Jamaicans only made reggae/ dancehall music and that they only lived in Jamaica and then I started to meet alot of them that were in the hip hop, house and reggae music scene in New York. Of all my friends that were into music, I was the only one that wanted to learn producing and mixing so I started to meet all these non Jamaicans that were into hip hop but they never really took to me because they thought I was a monkey. At that time they were right because there’s a lot of truth into stereo typing......."
Read the read of his post on Tumblr 

Electrix Tweaker Performance Controller

The Electrix Tweaker looks like a great DJ controller but I can definitely see this being put to good use in the studio as well as on the road. I think Producers and Remixers will add this to their list of go to devices.


Features:
• USB powered
• Midi In/Out
• 8 Velocity Sensitive Pads
• 32 LED Backlit Rubber Pads
• 2 Channel Strips. Each with a fader, 3 pads and push encoders.
• Crossfader
• Large Four Way Encoder for browsing.


http://www.electrixpro.com/tweaker.html

Sonimus Satson Buss (Console Emulation) plugin only $39

Satson Buss seems like an interesting take on Analog Console emulation. It's based on two high-end analog consoles, and for the price it's definitely worth a look. I can see using this on individual tracks as well as the stereo buss and group/buss masters.

From the website:"Satson is a Plugin designed to emulate the workflow of the consoles on your computer and get better and faster mixes.
It has a VU meter carefully modelled and calibrated, high quality high-pass / low-pass filters and analog console like saturation (includes stereo crosstalk)."


Features:

● Use the Gain control like a “trim”.

● Use the Gain and VU Meter to level the tracks (0VU = -18 dBfs).

● With FAT you can reduce the dynamic range (and get more evident distortion

effect) which works great on drums.

● With OFF switch you can bypass the saturation, but the Gain, the VU Meter and the filters will still work.

• OUTPUT COMPENSATION: This will automatically turn down the output as you increase the GAIN. This makes the gain function as a drive knob.

• SUPER GAIN: This increases the range of the GAIN knob to -24/+24.

• DUAL-MONO: This switch turn on/off the stereo crosstalk.

Note: When you make changes on the back panel of the plugin it's not a global setting but only applies to that one instance.

$39 direct from Sonimus website