Stupot

Flash Page Rates are 50 initial charge then 10 per track mixing and mastering. So you can work out exactly what you'll pay. Full CD manufacturing service too. Worldwide digital distribution if that's your bag. PPL, PRS, MCPS royalty registering and collection. Recent successes..we've had two tracks we've recorded picked up for Manny Charleton's Nazareth tribute album. One from Aberdeen outfit The Unforgiven and one from our Swedish rock band Bones Of Freedom.

I would suggest mine, but Lossiemouth might be a little far for you. We have the best prices in Scotland bar none.

You need some kind of mastering if you hope to compete with commercial tracks but it should be applied with an ear to preserving the dynamics of the track. There's too much "loudness" competition going on these days between engineers and it's ruining otherwise great tracks. My final stage in the mastering process is still to run the finished mix through my Studer J37 2inch tape machine. It's always done it for me.

One of my bands (Bones of Freedom) played there recently and were full of praise for the venue. These guys come from Sweden where the anticipation of quality is much higher than in the UK, so that is high praise indeed.

Have a go at this too. On your eq'd copies, insert a pitch shifter into each of them, retune the left to -5 cents and the right to +5 cents and see what it does. You can mess about with the amount of shift until it blends nicely with the track.

Sadly, she'd be unable to change the lyrics to 9 million bycycles as Mike "the fucking wombles" Batt wrote it. She still can't carry a tune in a bucket though.

Eva Cassidy is plainly a zombie. How else could she do a duet with out of tune, eastern european refugee Katie Melua?

I thought everyone was aware that pop is 80% image and 20% talent.

Yes, it's a damn fine bit of software.

For modern sounding vocals you need lots of tracks. A good way of giving a vocal more punch is to double or even triple track it. Put up 3 tracks of unison then suck out all the bottom end and mid from two of the tracks. Use these stripped tracks for your reverbs and/or delays. Leave one track clean apart from compression which should be a ratio of 3:1 with the threshold set to give 6dB of compression at the loudest sections. Raise the gain until you can hear the singer's intake of breath. Leave the clean vox track in the middle and pan the stripped tracks slightly to left and right. You can then fiddle with each track's settings, with the backing playing, until the vocal sits nicely in the mix. Of course, there are countless ways to mess with vocals, like using guitar effects on them for instance.

All great stuff. But where's stripey saying it's all shite and derivative and done on poor equipment and the metalheads/punks saying it doesn't sound like what they play ergo not worth listening too?

This whole music is an artform/selling out crap has been done to death before. Because music is an artform and aesthetic, there is no right or wrong, only many differing opinons, all of which are only as "right" as their respective owners consider. And opinions, as we all know, are like arseholes..everybody has one. I acknowlege only two kinds of music...good or bad..based on my own perceptions of it, which I recognise will be different from everybody elses'. If I got bogged down in what's cool or what's crap or what's emo or what's deathpunkscreamo funk, I would cease to enjoy music and I would cease to be able to do my job properly. This week for instance I will be recording a death metal band followed by a Japanese Zen flute player (who is gorgeous!) My opinion on their respective genres is...they can both play well and I'll enjoy working on it.

I've found the best way is to set glitch up in a stereo effects group and use aux sends from different tracks. You can then automate when it comes on and off. Never tried to put in a series of patterns but I'm pretty sure it can be done within glitch.

Exactly. In the real world of artists who actually possess the talent to make some kind of living out of music, market forces come into play and they find themselves having to adjust to the trends and fancies of the market to keep on making a living. Kylie and Madonna being prime examples of this. I'll change my statement though: selling out AND artistic integrity-only for amatuers and no hopers.

Glitch is a bit of a bitch in cubase, especially cubase 4. It can cause the DAW to crash so make sure you save often if your using it.

It is if you rely on it for your living. If you're a leisure, hobby musician, then of course you can make the music you like. If you're signed to a label or management company, just try it and see how long you keep your deal for. Radiohead is a bad example. They've been building their fanbase for years, making shedloads of money in the process. They can afford to do what they like these days. You'll never hear anyone who actually works in the music industry, as opposed to wishing they did, talking about selling out.

Biffy are professional musicians, it's their job, ergo they can't sell out. If they change their material to appeal to a broader market, it's economic good sense. They'd be stupid if they released stuff that everybody hated. Selling out...the last resort of the untalented, the amatuer, the purveyor of outdated 19th century political thought and the child.

Yes really.

Selling out is a phrase used entirely by kids and amateurs.

I run both protools and cubase and invariably reach for cubase for mixing as I find protools clunky. I certainly can't hear any diffrence between the two as regards sound quality. The best thing about protools is that I can send projects to virtually any studio and know they can open it and vice versa.

Does being a graduate of the brit school count as homeless?

No no. It makes me constipated and turns me pale and weedy but with enough superhuman strength to fight ten coppers. My veins also collapse and my wife leaves.

Fairly terrible to compare listening to james blunt to smoking crack, even if does have a similar effect on me!

Well, you like what you like and if enough people like what you play, you sell records, if they hate it, you don't. It's always been a simple to understand concept. People still like and listen to music that was composed hundreds of years ago. Stupid arguement really and an indication that deep down you don't understand music beyond a very narrow genre. All this wailing and screaming about people like James Blunt for example, is just childish tantrums. I hate Blunt's music and voice but I'm adult enough to know that many other people actually like it. Dylan himself doesn't do much for me but I like some of his songs and I actually like Johnny Cash. Talent, put in the right place at the right time and with the right support will find a market.