How Hollywood Scoring built a scoring stage for the modern movie businessEveryone knows Hollywood is where movies are born, but Hollywood’s reputation for music is just as strong as its reputation for film.
Jaws’ foreboding two-note ostinato was recorded at Universal and 20th Century Fox. Jack Sparrow’s swashbuckling theme in Pirates of the Caribbean came to life at Sony’s scoring stage. The hallowed halls of The Culver Studios hosted the recording of Disney’s musical epic, Fantasia.
Hollywood Scoring is not only keeping this culture of music alive, but it’s also keeping this business in Los Angeles.

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“I’ve always been enamoured with the studio system of the Golden Age of Hollywood. You would have a whole music department, a full-time orchestra on staff, staff composers, staff orchestrators, copyists, and mixers — end-to-end, full production for music. That creates a wonderful landscape for creativity,” says Noah Gladstone.
Gladstone is one of the four principals in charge of Hollywood Scoring (HS), a full-service music production studio in Los Angeles that opened in 2011. While HS doesn’t employ full-time staff in the same way as the Golden Age, they have the facilities and network to offer end-to-end production.
They contract for composition, recording, mixing, mastering, and performance (including full orchestras) in various forums. The music they have shepherded has been placed in numerous television programs, video games, and live spaces.
Image: Press
One of their consistent clients, Riot Games’ League of Legends (LoL), encapsulates all three. HS produced music for the game, the Netflix TV show in the LoL universe, Arcane, and they were the driving force in producing, contracting, arranging, orchestrating, and engineering the LoL world championship celebrations from 2012-14 and 2016-22 (which were viewed by millions of people).
Gladstone met Edouard Brenneisen, one of the other principals for HS through LoL. The other two principals are Michael Barry and Adam Michalak. All four of them have considerable experience in the music industry.
Gladstone is a professional brass player and project manager who has been contracting musicians for visual media since he was a student at USC, working with student composers. He also oversaw a scoring stage called The Bridge Recording prior to HS. Brenneisen has composed for video games such as Overwatch 2 and television programs such as Yu-Gi-Oh!. Barry has worked on scores with John Williams while also writing for Imagine Dragons, and Michalak was the house recordist at Sony Scoring for 16 years.
All four of them built careers in music within Los Angeles, which led to natural collaborations time and time again. HS is their way of allowing other artists to do the same thing: build a network and remain employed as the looming shadow of AI grows larger and larger.
Left to right: Michael Barry, Edouard Brenneisen, Noah Gladstone and Adam Michalak of Hollywood Scoring. Image: Press
“Every second that you’re thinking about the music, you’re thinking about what we are trying to say with this moment. Whether that’s communicating to the first violins to play more legato, or having a trumpet stick out, or having a bassoon go down an octave. It’s all of those little choices that the average person might not notice, but that’s part of the art,” Gladstone says.
“There are opportunities that show up when a bunch of really skilled people come into a room together — ‘I’m seeing something I didn’t imagine before, let’s chase that’,” Brenneisen says.
Though HS works in a longstanding media format, the team embraces new forms of technology. This intention is apparent in the modern projects they’ve produced, but also in how their facilities function. After working at Sony for over a decade, Milichak (to whom Gladstone refers as “The Mad Scientist”), was expertly familiar with how the Sony Scoring Stage, one of the most famous scoring stages in history, operated on a technical level. He was also well aware that following the same model for a new studio was impractical.
“The way recording studios used to be built and wired—even if we’re recording on computers—is still a very analogue process. There’s a lot of analogue audio cable running between the live room, the control room, and the converters into the Pro Tools system. Most of the studios in LA and across the country followed that topology because the infrastructure has been in the walls, in a sense, for a very long time,” Milichak says. “If you didn’t have any of that infrastructure what would you do today? It quickly became apparent that we don’t want to do that.”
Image: Press
One reason they didn’t want to do that when they opened their Los Angeles facility in 2018 is price. HS has two scoring studios that can fit dozens of musicians each. The cost of building the infrastructure to enable both of those rooms to record simultaneously with that analogue process would be considerable.
To boot, using both rooms simultaneously is a beneficial offering for HS. Isolating groups of instruments like strings and brass to avoid sonic clashing makes for a clearer, more versatile mix.
So, to use the HS facilities to their maximum potential, not only do the two rooms need to send audio back to the single main control room, but the two rooms must communicate with each other, all with zero latency.
Milichak’s method of addressing this was Dante, audio over IP. By using Dante-enabled equipment throughout HS facilities, all of the audio runs on a few Cat6 cables. Said audio includes the music being recorded into their Pro Tools rig in the control room and the audio entering the numerous pairs of headphones among the musicians recording live in the studios, essentially acting as a monitor mix to ensure both rooms are perfectly in sync.
Image: Press
The studio is also wired with video as well. With this tech, HS can stream video and audio to external sources, so clients can observe sessions from anywhere in the world, providing feedback in real time even if they’re not in the room.
“Audio over IP had taken a foothold in broadcast and live shows due to the ability to deploy hundreds of channels. And you’re not dealing with ground loops running hundreds and hundreds of feet. But it really hadn’t taken hold in a recording studio yet,” Milichak says. “[We thought], ‘We pioneered this. We’re going to build a scoring stage, and the whole thing is going to be Dante. All our audio is going to be audio over IP and we’ll go from there.’”
Investing in Dante was a fiscal choice, but it was also functional. In an entertainment business where music can be created completely synthetically by a single person, for someone to contract HS’s services, they need a technical setup that can deliver perfection.
Everything either has to function without any errors or if there are errors, they have to adapt and finish the session on time. During one session at HS, the power went out, so Gladstone went to a film studio down the street, borrowed a generator, brought it to their studio and they still finished the session on time.
Image: Press
“There are so many people who have so much money and time invested in the project, it has to go perfect,” Gladstone says. “You’re on the clock and every second is costing money because you have all of these skilled people in the room together to work on this collective goal in this set amount of time and in the end, it stops.”
As a working composer, Brenneisen often contracts Hollywood Scoring for his different projects. With their technical capabilities, network of musicians and professionals, and commitment to the craft, he is assured of their capacity to deliver exactly what he needs in a set amount of time.
“I know what I’m going to get, and one thing that’s incredibly powerful is I can name the sound I want,” Brenneisen says, referring to the tightknit group of musicians who frequent HS sessions.
But the musicians are just one section of the people involved in running a successful scoring session. There’s also the crew setting up the space, the engineer, the recordist, the runner. “Usually that stuff is pretty hidden from me. I’m dealing with the technical part that I like, which is having conversations with my engineer, Adam, so we can get the sound I’m looking for,” Brenneisen continues. “During that process, it remains creative.”
Image: Press
“That’s when it gets exciting,” Gladstone adds. “Your plan is changing in real-time. The musicians, the engineer, the conductor, and everybody is going with it. Most of the time you end up with something you did not expect. That may be the best part of the whole process.”
That part of the process, which can only happen when skilled people are working on a collective goal, is what Gladstone, Brenneisen, Barry, and Michilak are preserving. When clients come to Hollywood Scoring and see the music evolve from idea to product through the hearts and minds of dozens of creatives, they realise that the music, and everyone involved in the process, is a vital part of entertainment.
“That’s the kind of magic that we’re fighting for,” Gladstone says.
“The magic that takes a project from being inert to being alive. We’ve all been touched at some point in our lives by the brilliance entertainment can bring,” Brenneisen says. “That’s what brings people back into movie theaters and that’s what creates trajectories in people’s lives. That soundtrack is going to become my soundtrack.”
The post How Hollywood Scoring built a scoring stage for the modern movie business appeared first on MusicTech.

Effortless drum layering with Cableguys Snapback Cableguys have teamed up with electronic music pioneer BT to create a new plug-in dedicated to crafting layered drum sounds.

New Toys: Adam Audio D3V Active Desktop Monitor System Celebrating their 25th year in professional audio, Adam Audio speakers are distinctive in their design by employing ribbon tweeters. The ribbon tweeters are hand-folded and give Adam speakers a warmth and clarity that is unique in the field. Their new D3V Active Desktop Monitor System is a compact, yet powerful speaker set designed for hi-fidelity audio reproduction with a small footprint.

The D3V is designed for songwriters, audio and video producers, office workers, and music lovers who want great sound as conveniently as possible. They sound clean, loud, pleasing and powerful. The 2-way speakers feature an active aluminum 3.5” woofer and ferrite magnet system driven by 80 W low distortion amplifiers, and the treble is handled by D-ART 1.5” hand-folded ribbon tweeters with 40 W amplifiers driving each unit. Low frequency response is further extended by dual-sided passive radiators for bass extension down to 45 Hz and maximum SPL of 96 dB SPL. 

I hooked them up to my MacBook Pro via USB and the computer instantly recognized the D3V as a sound output device. Positioning them on both sides of the laptop, there was no effect on the computer screen, so they are properly shielded. They sound great in a room and if you are using them for mixing, you will want to position them in a way that you are in the sweet spot of the tweeters. Aiding that, the speakers come with detachable angled monitor stands or can mounted on mic stands with an optional interface. 

The D3V is feature laden with input options and digital EQ configurations. As mentioned, direct USB-C input enables immediate plug’n’play connections to computers, mobiles, and tablets, and a USB-C to USB-A cable is included. Alternatively, the D3V also has 1/4” balanced analog inputs for traditional audio applications. DSP Room Acoustics switches compensate for common problems arising from speaker placement and feature speaker position, desk size and room treatment compensation.

Most of the controls are on the back of the left speaker and a single cord connects the right satellite speaker. The volume knob is on the front of the left speaker and controls both speakers—and ensures that your left-right balances are equal. Pressing the volume knob button toggles status including mute, standby mode and the audio inputs. A front panel headphone miniplug mutes the speakers.

Available in black or white, the D3V is a high-quality monitor system that does not disappoint. $299.99

adam-audio.comThe post New Toys: Adam Audio D3V Active Desktop Monitor System  first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

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Simple PCB Repairs Keep Old Vehicle Out of the CrusherFor those of us devoted to keeping an older vehicle on the road, the struggle is real. We know that at some point, a part will go bad and we’ll learn that it’s no longer available from the dealer or in the aftermarket, at least at a reasonable cost. We might get lucky and find a replacement at the boneyard, but if not — well, it was nice knowing ya, faithful chariot.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though, at least if the wonky part is one of the many computer modules found in most cars made in the last few decades. Sometimes they can be repaired, as with this engine control module from a Ford F350 pickup. Admittedly, [jeffescortlx] got pretty lucky with this module, which with its trio of obviously defective electrolytics practically diagnosed itself. He also had the advantage of the module’s mid-90s technology, which still relied heavily on through-hole parts, making the repair easier.
Unfortunately, his luck stopped there, as the caps had released the schmoo and corroded quite a few traces on the PCB. Complicating the repair was the conformal coating on everything, a common problem on any electronics used in rough environments. It took a bit of probing and poking to locate all the open traces, which included a mystery trace far away from any of the leaky caps. Magnet wire was used to repair the damaged traces, the caps were replaced with new ones, and everything got a fresh coat of brush-on conformal coating.
Simple though they may be, we really enjoy these successful vehicle module repairs because they give us hope that when the day eventually comes, we’ll stand a chance of being able to perform some repair heroics. And it’s nice to know that something as simple as fixing a dead dashboard cluster can keep a car out of the crusher.

Release details
Release title:
Nascar
Main artist name:
Plexine
Release date:
18th Oct, 2024
https://publme.lnk.to/Nascar
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #experimental #hiphop

Artificial Intelligence Runs on ArduinoFundamentally, an artificial intelligence (AI) is nothing more than a system that takes a series of inputs, makes some prediction, and then outputs that information. Of course, the types of AI in the news right now can handle a huge number of inputs and need server farms’ worth of compute to generate outputs of various forms, but at a basic level, there’s no reason a purpose-built AI can’t run on much less powerful hardware. As a demonstration, and to win a bet with a friend, [mondal3011] got an artificial intelligence up and running on an Arduino.
This AI isn’t going to do anything as complex as generate images or write clunky preambles to every recipe on the Internet, but it is still a functional and useful piece of software. This one specifically handles the brightness of a single lamp, taking user input on acceptable brightness ranges in the room and outputting what it thinks the brightness of the lamp should be to match the user’s preferences. [mondal3011] also builds a set of training data for the AI to learn from, taking the lamp to various places around the house and letting it figure out where to set the brightness on its own. The training data is run through a linear regression model in Python which generates the function that the Arduino needs to automatically operate the lamp.
Although this isn’t the most complex model, it does go a long way to demonstrating the basic principles of using artificial intelligence to build a useful and working model, and then taking that model into the real world. Note also that the model is generated on a more powerful computer before being ported over to the microcontroller platform. But that’s all par for the course in AI and machine learning. If you’re looking to take a step up from here, we’d recommend this robot that uses neural networks to learn how to walk.

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Elektron Digitone II announced Elektron have launched a reimagined version of their popular FM instrument which they say takes its synthesis and sequencing capabilities to new heights.

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Play For The Vote seeks 5,000 Musicians to perform at Polls on Election DayNon-partisan Play For The Vote is enlisting 5000 musicians to perform at polls on Election Day Tuesday November 5th.
The post Play For The Vote seeks 5,000 Musicians to perform at Polls on Election Day appeared first on Hypebot.

Minimal Audio launches Current 2.0 with 50% off for a limited time
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