AudioMinds Newsletter:
Issue #1 - June, 1st 2004

Contents:

1. Introducing the new Audiominds.com
2. The Faces Behind Audiominds.com
3. Your Good Friends I, ii, IV and V - Part I
4. Mac's Humor
5. Cyp’s Outboard Thinking

Dear Audiominds member,

We're proud to bring you the first issue of the new AudioMinds.com Newsletter. Our regular AudioMinds visitors will notice that some big changes have been made of late. This newsletter is only a small part of the new look. We have been hard at work in trying to develop AudioMinds.com into the fastest growing home recording community on the World Wide Web. You and every one of our trusty readers constitute the largest part of our success.

This is our our very first newsletter and we would like to extend a hearty thank you and a great big "Welcome Aboard!" to you.

--Your AudioMinds crew.

1. Introducing the new AudioMinds.com

Before we go any further, we'd like to thank Jon Marr for the incredible job he did in redesigning the main section of the site. Jon gave us a fabulous new look and much improved functionality. Thanks, Jon!

So, what’s different between the old and the new AudioMinds.com? A lot! AudioMinds was started by a few members of the n-Track Studio board. The intent was to provide a single page which answered the most basic questions the novice home recordist might ask. It soon became apparent that this concept was well accepted by users of all digital recording software. This surely has to do with the fact that we didn’t limit the site to n-Track Studio in the beginning but strived to remain as 'DAW independent' as possible. So it was only a matter of time before AudioMinds.com grew into something big. As you read this, AudioMinds is getting 1000 page visits per week and growing quickly.

Our goal at AudioMinds is to be a dynamic, living community: not just a static homepage. This means that the integration and interaction of our members is a big part of the vision. The first step was to set up a forum to serve as the meeting point of the community. Everyone is invited to ask and answer questions, to create new friendships, and to chat with others: in short, make yourself at home. Of course the articles available at the old Audiominds.com were kept, and we've worked hard to enrich it with even more valuable information. We've added a Search Engine to help you keep instant track of everything on the new site!

But that's just the beginning. Since musicians of all genres and all parts of the world meet regulary at AudioMinds.com, we've decided to introduce a brand new Classifieds Section! A Classifieds Section may sound strange on a help site at first glance, but the idea behind it is simple enough: while it's possible to sell anything to anybody on conventional sales and auction sites, the AudioMinds Classifieds will enable you to target exactly the audience you're looking for - Recording Engineers and Musicians! Another advantage is that our classifieds section is free of charge for any AudioMinds member! After registering, you get 20 free ads. If you need more all you have to do is e-mail or PM any of our moderators, and we'll set you up. It couldn't be easier!

There are more improvements in store; we're currently working on Mac's Corner (an online troubleshooting, repair and sales shop), Song Contests (where you can get your music heard, rated, and win valuable prizes), Online Music Theory lessons, Do-it-Yourself Projects for the home studio enthusiast, Instructional Tutoring online sessions, Product Reviews, Shootouts and many more fun and exciting projects are planned in the months to come. Stay tuned to Audiominds.com for the latest news!

2. The Faces Behind AudioMinds.com

Donald Endriss (KingDon):
"A little about KingDon, born and raised in Staten Island, I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years now. Back in the 90’s I was making lots of progress with my music, I released a CD project where I wrote played and produced every sound of every instrument. That might not be a big thing today, but 10 years ago, it was quite an accomplishment. I had everything moving smoothly when one day at work, this huge steel hatch cover came down on BOTH my arms, crushing them. Needless to say the next 18 months I spent in rehabilitation regaining the use on my arms and hands. After that I had to relearn how to play the guitar. It’s been a long road back from there, learned a lot about myself and how strong I really am. Now I’m coming back to the music world for a second chance, at my first shot.

So how did AudioMinds.com come to be, well when I was on the N-track forum one day last year, someone made a post about how all the information that we were sharing needed a home, a permanent area to store all this knowledge. Well it just so happened that I had bought AudioMinds.com, and building a support site for digital recording was also a direction I wanted to go. I started working with Tj and VA VOOOM, we started kicking an old web site template I had around in November. Next thing you know by January everyone was helping with suggestions, graphics, you name it, our members came together to build something special. Now we’re getting almost 1500 unique visitors a week, and our forum is filling up with real solid members. Like many other musicians out there, I have a pretty decent computer, and I know with a little education, I could learn to make my own recordings. A few hundred dollars later I’m recording my music and able to burn CDs of my work for others to hear and listen. This is the greatest project I have ever worked on, and I wished that I had something like AudioMinds.com to refer to when I started, it would have saved me a lot of time searching through endless web sites filled with junk. But I’m happy now to be working with others who enjoy sharing this knowledge, and also holding the lamp to help guide the way for those who are beginning this journey. The future of music is happening right now using computers, and AudioMinds.com is the fastest growing FREE digital recording support web site on the Internet. They say 'Great Minds think alike'. Our community thinks 'Great Minds think Audio, AudioMinds.com'."

TJ Higley (teej813):
"I'm Tj, born in 1953. I'm married with one son (he's 27 and living in Michigan). My wife teaches chemistry at a university near our home in Indiana. I work in IT (at a different university, also near our home). I've played drums since 1965, bass since 1992, and bought my first acoustic 2 yrs ago. My music career has always been a hobby that paid for itself. I've played rock, country, big band, disco (don't tell anyone), and light jazz (not my forte). My recording experience started when my uncle willed me his Ampex 4-track tape machine. That would have been 1987. But i didn't really get into recording until i stumbled upon n-Track in 1998. My band had just decided to record demos for promo purposes, and i started researching what it would take. N is the only multi-track software I've used.

I consider myself a pretty good, steady, non-flashy drummer. My strengths are dynamics and listening (matching what others are doing). My weaknesses are power-drumming, solos, and funk. I have a good ear, but very little musical training. My voice, once pretty good, has faded with age; but i can still sound pretty good on the right song.

I guess people would call me the webmaster of Audiominds.com. I don't think I've ever actually mastered anything, but it is me who handles updates to the main site and writes much of the content. Oh, people ask about my current avator: Bob Ross is my hero! :)"

Clark McDonald (Mac):
"Born in 1951 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I've been involved in music from a very early age, started piano at the around 3 years of age and Trumpet at 8, adding guitar at around age 12. The trouble with being a child prodigy is that one day you grow up and what you can play is then just de rigeur... Today I am still having a wonderful time at the craft. Veteran session man on several instruments, I miss the heyday of the session recording where things moved fast and new tricks were learned by the second.

My brother Marshall is a member of the Count Basie Orchestra (alto sax, clarinet and flute) and the following words are Marshall's description of yours truly... "I can remember being a small child and hearing my brother, who was a child prodigy, practice his trumpet. My mother told me that as a baby I would sing what my brother, Clark was practicing and he practiced the Vivaldi and Haydn trumpet concertos so much, I can still hear the tones of his trumpet to this day. My brother went on to play with the illustrious Air Force Academy Drum and Bugle Corps ,while also teaching himself, piano, bass and guitar and after the stint in the Air Force freelanced for many years in the music and recording business. He's presently working on his own compositions and recording. Clark and my parents were my first music influences and to this day my brother remains one of my greatest music inspirations." --Marshall McDonald

Thanks, Marshall.

I have worked in orchestral, jazz, rock and pop settings, church music, and of course, up until very recently used my home studio to create Commercial and Industrial music for hire. Jingles. An incurable lifelong tinkerer and inventor with main emphasis on Electronic Engineering yields a "day job" that is quite compatible with the Home Recording scene. I am an active Amateur Radio Operator."

Dennis Schulmeister (Elwood Blues):
"Hi, this is El Bundy. Friends either call me El, Elwood or Dennis. You can choose which one you like best. I live in Karlsruhe - Baden in Germany and am the only non-US moderator. Seems I always have to be special because I'm also the youngest moderator: I'll turn 18 in three days. This means that I'm still unmarried for the next years until I finished school and got a job.

My hobbys are music, keyboards, programming and food. That's it. It was way back in 1995 when I began to play keyboard at the age of nine years two years after learning about computers and nine years after being fascinated by cassette decks and everything which makes noise. After a long period when programming was my number one hobby (this was when my dad died and I was eleven) music more and more became important for me. It all began with our first band with which we produced a CD in a real studio and went on with the second band and now I'm merely a solo project producing his own music in the own studio at home. I was so fascinated from multi tracking back in 2001 that I didn't rest until I found n-track Studio which offered a tremendous amount of features at an extremely low price. Now I have the joy of having my own music room in the house. A circumstance which is very valuable.

Being a keyboarder there are many styles of music I like. My taste covers nearly everything from classical music, oldies, rock, pop, 60s, 70s, 80, 90s and jazz. What you don't find in there is commercial chart music. I'm simply no fan of those days where commerce is everything in the music business. When asked what I like more live music or studio recordings I always answer live music because there's a special flair coming from it which is impossible to recreate in a studio.

Regarding Audiominds.com I'm - like I said - one of the moderators and so your partner if you're in need of something. Also I try to help here and there e.g. by writing the newsletter for you. Err, now I ran out of words. ;-)"

We also want to thank two other gentlemen who've helped us on our way with this project. The first is Steven Priddy. Steve is an avid Audio Enthusiast and has worked with the sound systems of local bands in the Rockingham County. He even does private installations. But here at AudioMinds.com, when things go wrong with the site, it's Steve Priddy to the rescue, he's our website programmer and all around handy man.

Another member who gave above and beyond the call of duty is Jon Marr (uhhhh.. he's the one in the hat). Jon is an N-track user who found our site and fell in love with the concept of helping others. A few months ago Jon felt the need to give back to the community that helped him learn more about digital recording. Jon decided to take his web designing talents and donate them to our site. He took the work of many and polished it into what you now see.

It's members like these that come through our doors each day. They take knowledge, share knowledge and help to build a future for those who will need this knowledge. We believe this to be the highest purpose of the Internet, and AudioMinds.com will be that corner where anyone can learn about home digital recording for free.

3. Your Good Friends I, ii, IV and V - Part I

It's not uncommon to start a new composition with a simple chord progression or maybe a simple melody line. Of course there's nothing wrong with starting this way as long as you know what to do with it and where to take it. But first things first: If you're a guitar player and know about keyboards as much as about rocket science please forgive the fact that I know about guitars as much as you know about keyboards. I'll try not to get into too much keyboard detail, but of course I can't avoid them entirely. I've also included some MP3 samples which should make it easier to understand what I'm talking about.

Being a keyboard man I give all my examples in C since it's the easiest root on the piano. For universal transcription I also give the root-less version of every chord with Roman numbers. The system of 'studio notation' in short: Every Roman number from I to VII represents one chord. The root of the chord can be found by the appropriate note on the well tempered major scale. In C-major this would be the white keys of a piano. Capital letters mean major chords (e.g. I, IV, V), small letter indicate minor chords. Extensions like 7, 9# or sus4 are simply added to the numbers. A few examples and the corresponding chords in C-major: I, V7, ii, VIj7 read: C, G7, d, Aj7. You see I also use capital letters for major chords and small letters for minor chords here. That's all folks.

So let's assume you just came up with a simple progression like c, f, G7, c which reads: i, iv, V7, i. At the moment it sounds pretty boring and you want to search some better progressions: Example 1. Stop, don't give it up so fast. I think we can use this pretty boring pattern and jam around on it: Example 2 and Example 3. So where do we want to take the song. Let's decide for the first idea because our master plan is to write a number one world-class tune for funky tuba. Now the funky feel of the progression is a good idea but the chords themselves sound yet too boring. You know there's no definite rule but let's try to find some guidelines what we could do with the chords:

Our chords take their tones form the same scale, the C-minor scale. So one thing we could do would be to add extensions to them. This is basically a very good thing to do but we have to do it with some intellect. Therefore let's try something: How about some bass work? Take the i and play a kind of a walking bass using the i in order to form the other chords as long as possible. This leads to another useful thing: A especially pleasant sound can be formed if two following chords share as many notes as possible. (a very popular technique among jazz musicians when it comes to choosing substitutes ;-)) So let's try how it sounds: Example 4. Not bad. Let's analyse this one: The first chord played is a simple i. Now the others get interesting: iv7-6 with a third in the bass followed by a plain iv7-6 and a V-aug. (aug means three major thirds) So I played in c-minor: c, f7-6/Ab, f7-6, G-aug, c. How did we get those chords? The principle used can be seen in this notation: c, c/As, c/F, cj7/G (i, i/6b, i/4, ij7/5). Those are surely nice chords but they still sound too equal. No problem, we simply take them and start replacing some notes. First of all the bass note doesn't need to be played twice. So we either leave it out in the right hand or change it to something else. If we change it only by a half or two halves an additional tension will occur. Than we replace some notes of the chords so that two following chords share max. two notes. After some experimentation I came up with this: Example 5 Finally we transformed i, iv, V7, i into i7, VIb-6, iv7, V7-aug reading: c, Ab-6, f7, G7-aug.

Now listen to the following extract of a song I did nearly three years ago: Example 6. Besides the repetitive guitar melody which either emphasizes or leads to certain extensions I used the same tricks like above. First of all I took the basic chords I, vi, vi, V | I, vi, II, V, I | and enhanced them with several notes so that they share some notes and yet sound interesting. The result became: I-9, iv7, V-sus4, V7 | I-9, iv7, II7, V-sus4, V7 (sus4 means a quart instead of a third. There's also sus2 which equals a second instead of a third). Since the tune is recorded in Eb-major the full written chords read: Eb-9 (Eb, G, Bb, F), c7 (C, Eb, G, Bb), F7 (F, A, C, Eb), Bb-sus4 (Bb, Eb, F) and Bb7 (Bb, D, F, Ab). See how the same notes appear in every chord just like leading tones?

The same can be heard on the next part of the same song: Example 7. Now the melody become more lively played by a flute on another chord progression: I-9, IVm7, ii7, V7 or Eb9 (Eb, G, Bb, F), Ab7 (Ab, C, Eb, Gb), f7 (F, Ab, C, Eb), Bb7 (Bb, D, F, Ab). Did this ring a bell?

Now let's end this article with one last technique found in the song - the heavy use of dominant chords. Listen to the progressions during the (halfway poorly played) guitar solo: Example 8 The chords here are: iii7, vi, ii, V7. No fancy extensions in there but lot's of dominants. Fully notated the chords read like: g7, c, f, Bb7. The g7 (iii7) acts as a dominant to c (vi) which again acts as a dominant to f (ii). f again is the dominant of Bb7 the V7. Saw that? Every chord acts as a dominant to the next chord. This gives the feeling of a very smooth progression because the quint is deeply rooted in our western world and music. You also saw that the dominant of the dominant in any scale will be the second. This could be heard on all examples from that song. As a result there were many ii-V-i-connections in the song. Progressions like the ii, V, i (or I) connection are like the 'sixteen, twenty-five connection (I, vi, ii, V) and so on essential material for every musician who's only slightly into jazz or any modern music genre. Take a closer look to the chords of your favorite songs. I bet now they'll jump right into your eyes. And this is the reason why the second article about chords in the next newsletter will be about ii-V-i-connections written by our valued member Mac. In the meantime spend some happy hours with some creative chord progressions.

4. Mac's Humor

5. Cyprians's Outboard Thinking

Now that you've entered your secret listening space and have tuned in this special program, we are ready to start the show. First let's set the stage. You are sitting in a call center, 120 different voices all babbling. You hear Army Reservist PFC J-Dub spring his April Fools joke on everyone he can. It goes like this.

"Yeah, you hear that they have activated my unit?" He asks the trusting but naive people that inhabit the call center.

"No, when do you go?" At this point the women start to mist up and the men get that I feel your pain look on their faces.

"Thursday, but I am throwing a party after work tonight," Ah, J-Dub has the set up. If the ladies weren't crying, they got the tears flowing now.

"I'll pray for you," the victim of his prank offers.

"You know, April Fools."

I heard J-Dub pull that about forty times on April Fools Day. Why is this significant and what does it have to do with music? Ta da, da ding, the clue is I heard it. Even with 120 voices chattering away, some reason my mind could track this little con game (that and he sat across from me in the half cubes). This became a theme among the chaos with the occasional punctuating phone call in my head set.

Music, evil music, is what the call center sounded like to me. I could hear the different rhythms and sonorities. Even in what some would call chaos, my mind was trying to order it and even tune it. If I could just get that girl over there to do all her calls in that high pitched wine and that guy over there to speak with a cha-cha-da-bing-cha rhythm, then I could have music. A 120 voice free jazz orchestra gone Godzilla. I could be the Sun Ra or Alan Silva of my call center, harnessing the energy of the beast with the occasional J-Dub "surprise" phrase (that, and for a nickname of J-Dub, he was clueless to what Dub music was or even what constituted rhythm). Yes, I am nuts to even think of it this way, but that is the curse of having ears. Ears, they are not just for jewelry anymore. They are the instrument that connects outside sound to the mind. One can play the ears just like any other instrument. Can you play your ears? Give us a solo in Bb 7/11 time. I can just imagine 10 different little ear solos happening right now.

Seriously, the ears are the thing. I can describe my relationship to my ears like this: I feed them with sound, they listen. Over time this has become an intuitive process. Ask me to make a chart of what my ear thinks is good, and I'd probably draw you some abstract picture of a nude ascending a staircase or something. I realize not everybody's mind works this way, but the ear needs to be practiced and played like any other instrument. Have you ever just wood-shedded the ear? Get a bunch of albums you like, put them on and let the ear go wild? Or, sit down with a bass guitar loop and a compressor plug in and put the plug in through the paces? Both exercises allow your ear to develop context to sound.

Aha, the important part of this whole rambling, context of sound! Your ears need a reference point, a baseline to understand what they hear. Now, we develop a cognitive informational filter as children (it is part of the survival imperative), but we don't automatically develop musical context. That is why so many times we are asked the ubiquitous questions of the musical struggle (i.e. "Why does my song not sound good?" or "Why does my tone not bring forth the ghost of Kaiser Soze?"). Sometimes, I just want to answer "Go listen to a garbage disposal for 20 minutes, and then go back to your music." Why the garbage disposal, because it is a "pink" noise (i.e. weighted noise with frequency) and it has rhythm (especially when you try to get it to eat a spoon or something). Listening to grinding monster of the sink might even clear your mind to go back to your music. Then, you might realize you need to do more listening of closer cognates (i.e. similar things). I admit, a garbage disposal may not give your ear context on why you mix honks, but experimenting and teaching your ear will give you that context.

I can't tell you everything to experiment on, though it starts with the tools you have on hand. Play with those things! Do things with that the magazines and charts say aren't right. Abuse them, twist, turn and tweak them, starting simply and get more complex from there. Your ears will hear what is happening and they will remember. You'll be building a context of what your tools will do. The same for the physical writing and arranging of a song. Listen, analyze, transcribe, study, create, do all these things with the actual music. Hear something and then do your imitation of it. Again don't be afraid to beat the heck out the musical elements or the ideas. This isn't about creating end result product but about building context for your ears.

John Cage wrote 4'33" to emphasize that the sound around you is just important as the sounds performed for you (and hehee, he even scored it, go i-ching go). Don't overlook the sound of weather, the sound of conversation, the sound of traffic to build context for your ears. But, you can overlook the sounds of a call center, I pardon you from that prison.

So it is all about exercising the ear to give it context and turning J-Dub into his unit commander. Yes, I got J-Dub to tell me what unit he was with. Maybe J-Dub didn't realize that next training session the April Fool's Joke will be on him.

Come back next time to the dark interiors of your secret listening station, when I examine the intricacies of the meta-redundant-mind-a-lizer

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