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“You can’t hide behind the screen forever!”: How Pharrell Williams and Johnny Marr inspired film legend Hans Zimmer to go on tourAn unlikely duo convinced Hans Zimmer to go on tour: Johnny Marr and Pharrell Williams.
Per Associated Press, he describes the pair as “absolutely forcing” him to head out on tour in North America. He quotes them as saying, “‘You have to look your audience in the eye, you can’t hide behind the screen forever. You owe it to your audience.’”READ MORE: Justice: “We heard Sicko Mode by Travis Scott and said, ‘Wow, we’re still thinking about music in an ancient way’”
He calls the US “incredibly welcoming and kind and exciting for us,” adding, “Of course, the advantage America has now is that we’ve taken [the tour] across Europe a couple of times so, actually, we’re pretty good at it at the moment.”
The German composer announced a North American orchestral tour yesterday (14 March), his first for seven years and his first since he composed the scores for Dune 1 and 2. It’s set to feature Zimmer and his band with a full orchestra, with suites for movies including not only Dune but The Lion King, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Pirates of the Caribbean, Gladiator, and The Last Samurai.Zimmer says of the tour: “I’m thrilled to return to perform in North America with my wonderful band and excited to share this phenomenal show. I love this feeling of uniting my family of extraordinary musicians with you, the audience. Just an unbelievable group of talents, who in my opinion, are some of the best musicians in the world.
“But nothing would have meaning without the good grace and support of you, the other part of the family – the audience. Ultimately, the music connects us all, and I promise you this: we will always play our best, straight from the heart.”
It’ll begin on 6 September in Duluth, Georgia, and finish in Vancouver exactly a month later. He’s playing New York City’s Madison Square Garden on 12 September – his 67th birthday.
Tickets for the tour go on sale on 22 March at 10 am local time on Zimmer’s website.
The post “You can’t hide behind the screen forever!”: How Pharrell Williams and Johnny Marr inspired film legend Hans Zimmer to go on tour appeared first on MusicTech.“Dr. Dre especially would love if there was a way to have total isolation with live drums”: Trevor Lawrence Jr. on blurring the lines between acoustic kits and drum machinesIn a new video, beatmaking legend Trevor Lawrence Jr. dives into his relationship with longtime collaborator Dr. Dre as well as the latter’s “drum machine mentality” towards acoustic kits.
READ MORE: Justice: “We heard Sicko Mode by Travis Scott and said, ‘Wow, we’re still thinking about music in an ancient way’”
Speaking with Lauten Audio about his creative history with Dre, Lawrence says: [via MusicRadar]: “I met Dre in ‘93, right when he was gonna leave Death Row. He was gonna do an all-black heavy metal band, and I auditioned for it and got it. But then everything happened and it kind of just went away.”
“A couple of years later, he was doing Saturday Night Live and he remembered me, so he called me to go and do SNL. That was like, ‘96. In ‘98 we did it again because he’d released Chronic 2000.”
“Then there was a 10-year gap of just random sessions,” Lawrence recalls. “And in 2008 I’d just done my boy Everlast’s album and I was gonna MD him and go on the road. Then Dre called me for some sessions and was like, ‘Yo, what’s your availability?’”
“I was like, ‘I’m here for a few weeks before I start travelling.’, then it was sort of like the movies, I tell this story a lot. I went in the office and they literally put the cheque down, like ‘No. What’s your schedule?’.
“So from 2008 I was there as a producer, started making records with him and was in the control room. And then I never left.”
As for their approach to sound design, Lawrence explains: “There’s a drum machine mentality [towards acoustic drums]. A lot of times, Dre especially would love if there was a way to have total isolation with live drums. There’s a lot of gating and things, because he really likes everything to be isolated.”
Watch the full interview below.The post “Dr. Dre especially would love if there was a way to have total isolation with live drums”: Trevor Lawrence Jr. on blurring the lines between acoustic kits and drum machines appeared first on MusicTech.
“In the future you’ll go to Spotify, you’ll see The Beatles, and The Beatles AI”: Rick Beato shares his worries about AIIf there’s someone who knows his stuff, it’s Rick Beato. The YouTuber often has interesting things to say, and this time he’s talking about AI.
READ MORE: “It’s like we’ve invented fire and the first thing we’ve thought to do with it is to burn down our house”: Lex Dromgoole thinks we shouldn’t jump to the worst conclusions with AI
In November 2023, Beato testified at a Senate hearing about the technology, and almost four months later is speaking on it again, this time in an interview with News 8 WROC – and he’s got mixed views on the matter. He says, “There will be things that people like, that are created by AI, and there will be people 20 years from now, [saying], ‘Oh, I much prefer AI Rolling Stones than [the original] Rolling Stones. That’s just gonna be a thing.”
He continues, “People, companies – whether it’s Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Warner Music, UMG, Sony – are gonna have all their own AI-generated music. Those are the downsides. Who’s gonna hold the copyright on it? What are the songs that the models are gonna be trained on? I believe, in the future, you’ll go to Apple Music or Spotify, you’ll see The Beatles, and The Beatles AI; Led Zeppelin, and Led Zeppelin AI.”
That said, he does have some good things to say about AI. “One of [the benefits] is on the display in the new Beatles song they did [Now and Then], where you can use AI to separate things like [the track where] John Lennon sang and played the piano,” he says. “You can separate the voice from the piano without any artefacts, which you could never do before. You can’t hear any of the piano in his voice, and you can’t hear any of his voice in the piano. That’s a really great thing.”
In the interview, Beato also looks at the current trends in music that he’s noticed. “Country and rock have taken a turn up, and hip-hop has gone down in popularity over the last four years or so, which I thought was interesting,” he says.
”I noticed on some of the Spotify countdowns that I do, that there’s a lot more country songs [among the top 10], more rock songs, more songs with organic instruments like guitar, less autotune, less programmed beats. There’s definitely a change happening in popular music, and I don’t know if it’s a trend; we’ll see what happens. Usually, it takes a couple of years to see things through. But there are some trends that are happening, [and] that I think are really positive.”
You can watch the entire interview here:To hear more from Rick Beato, head to his official YouTube channel.
The post “In the future you’ll go to Spotify, you’ll see The Beatles, and The Beatles AI”: Rick Beato shares his worries about AI appeared first on MusicTech.RELEASE DETAILS
Release title:
Moving Hollow
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Release date:
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Release title:
Banjo
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Release date:
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Release title:
Palestine anthem
Main artist name:
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Release date:
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#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #experimental #Psychedelic21 UK festivals called off, postponed or cancelled altogether – with over 100 in danger of disappearing without immediate actionAs the 2024 festival season approaches, the UK is witnessing a concerning trend: 21 festivals have either been cancelled, postponed, or scrapped – with many more in danger of disappearing without immediate action.
The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), which conducted the research, said that “The timing of this milestone suggests that the number of festival cancellations this year will far outstrip 2023, when a total of 36 festivals were cancelled before they were due to take place.”READ MORE: “Right now, the economics of streaming are very broken”: sonu.stream co-founder Laura Jaramillo wants to re-shape streaming
The report continued: “Without intervention, it’s expected that the UK could see over 100 festivals disappear in 2024 due to rising costs. Without having had a single steady season since the pandemic in which to recover, the country’s festivals are under more financial strain than ever.”
Affected festivals include Nozstock: The Hidden Valley, which will be cancelled after 26 years this July, as well as Standon Calling, Neighbourhood Weekender, NASS, Doune The Rabbit Hole and Tokyo World.
Last month, AIF launched the 5% For Festivals campaign which sought for a VAT reduction on festival tickets that would save many event promoters from closure. Temporary support from the UK Government – lowering VAT from 20% to 5% on ticket sales for the next three years – is all that’s needed to give festival promoters the space they need to rebuild, said the AIF.
AIF CEO John Rostron states: “It’s with grave concern that we again sound the alarm to [the] Government upon passing this critical milestone. UK festivals are disappearing at a worrying rate, and we as a nation are witnessing the erosion of one of our most successful and unique cultural industry sectors.
“We have done the research: a reduction of VAT to 5% on festival tickets over the next three years is a conservative, targeted and temporary measure that would save almost all of the festival businesses that are likely to fall by the wayside this year and many more over the years to come. We need this intervention now.”View this post on Instagram
A post shared by AIF (@aif_uk)
Earlier this year, Music Venues Trust reported that 2023 was the worst year for music venue closures in the UK, with a whopping 125 venues closed, 4,000 jobs lost, 14,500 events cancelled and 193,230 gigs scrapped as a result.
The post 21 UK festivals called off, postponed or cancelled altogether – with over 100 in danger of disappearing without immediate action appeared first on MusicTech.Tracks with a Spotify Canvas video are 145% more likely to be sharedData from Spotify shows just how much adding a free 3-8 second Spotify Canvas video to a track can contribute to its success. If a song has a Canvas video,. Continue reading
The post Tracks with a Spotify Canvas video are 145% more likely to be shared appeared first on Hypebot.Why every musician and music company NEEDS merchandisingWe dive into the importance of merchandising for musicians and music companies and how it uniquely creates new connections with fans and expands outreach as an artist and music business.. Continue reading
The post Why every musician and music company NEEDS merchandising appeared first on Hypebot.Living Wage For Musicians Act excites many but worries othersA new bill before Congress that would increase streaming royalties excites many independent musicians, but others are worried. Here is why… by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0 If you took. Continue reading
The post Living Wage For Musicians Act excites many but worries others appeared first on Hypebot.21 UK festivals called off, postponed or cancelled altogether – with over 100 in danger of disappearing without immediate actionAs the 2024 festival season approaches, the UK is witnessing a concerning trend: 21 festivals have either been cancelled, postponed, or scrapped – with many more in danger of disappearing without immediate action.
The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), which conducted the research, said that “The timing of this milestone suggests that the number of festival cancellations this year will far outstrip 2023, when a total of 36 festivals were cancelled before they were due to take place.”READ MORE: “Right now, the economics of streaming are very broken”: sonu.stream co-founder Laura Jaramillo wants to re-shape streaming
The report continued: “Without intervention, it’s expected that the UK could see over 100 festivals disappear in 2024 due to rising costs. Without having had a single steady season since the pandemic in which to recover, the country’s festivals are under more financial strain than ever.”
Affected festivals include Nozstock: The Hidden Valley, which will be cancelled after 26 years this July, as well as Standon Calling, Neighbourhood Weekender, NASS, Doune The Rabbit Hole and Tokyo World.
Last month, AIF launched the 5% For Festivals campaign which sought for a VAT reduction on festival tickets that would save many event promoters from closure. Temporary support from the UK Government – lowering VAT from 20% to 5% on ticket sales for the next three years – is all that’s needed to give festival promoters the space they need to rebuild, said the AIF.
AIF CEO John Rostron states: “It’s with grave concern that we again sound the alarm to [the] Government upon passing this critical milestone. UK festivals are disappearing at a worrying rate, and we as a nation are witnessing the erosion of one of our most successful and unique cultural industry sectors.
“We have done the research: a reduction of VAT to 5% on festival tickets over the next three years is a conservative, targeted and temporary measure that would save almost all of the festival businesses that are likely to fall by the wayside this year and many more over the years to come. We need this intervention now.”View this post on Instagram
A post shared by AIF (@aif_uk)
Earlier this year, Music Venues Trust reported that 2023 was the worst year for music venue closures in the UK, with a whopping 125 venues closed, 4,000 jobs lost, 14,500 events cancelled and 193,230 gigs scrapped as a result.
The post 21 UK festivals called off, postponed or cancelled altogether – with over 100 in danger of disappearing without immediate action appeared first on MusicTech.Techno in Berlin officially joins the UNESCO cultural heritage listTechno in Berlin has officially been added to the UNESCO cultural heritage list.
For years, DJs, festival organisers and fans have campaigned to secure the status of the city’s techno scene amidst fears that the culture wouldn’t survive without it.READ MORE: Tidal introduces Circles, a social network for musicians to discuss their experiences in the industry
Clubcommission – a network of Berlin’s techno clubs and musicians – praised the move as “another milestone for Berlin techno producers, artists, club operators and event organisers”.
Berlin techno culture is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site!
This another milestone for Berlin techno producers, artists, club operators and event organizers. https://t.co/Bd1EnvJRN4
— clubcommission (@clubcommission) March 13, 2024Non-profit organisation Rave The Planet, who spent the past few years campaigning for the addition of Techno into the UNESCO list, also celebrated the news on their social media accounts: “Congratulations to all the cultural creators who have shaped and contributed to Berlin’s techno culture,” they said.
“A big thank you to everyone involved who has been with us on this journey since Hans Cousto’s initial idea in 2011. Special thanks to the Expert Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage at the German UNESCO Commission!”
“This is a major milestone for the entire culture, and our joy is beyond words.”We did it! #TechnoCulture in Berlin is officially recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage!Congratulations to…
Posted by Rave The Planet on Wednesday, March 13, 2024According to The Spiegel, Berlin techno is probably the “youngest tradition” to be added to the list of cultural German traditions. The move is likely to bring about increased funding and easier access to government subsidies to clubs. Hurdles and requirements for opening and maintaining clubs could also be reduced.
Per Mixmag, Rave The Planet began lobbying German authorities to apply for intangible cultural heritage status of Berlin techno in 2021. The move came after reports that an estimated 100 clubs in Berlin have shut down in the last decade.
Created in 2003, the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list seeks to protect cultural traditions worldwide as well as raise awareness of their significance. Berlin’s techno scene is one of six new entries to the list in Germany, which features mountaineering and fruit wine among others.
Of the inclusion, Claudia Roth, the Minister of State for Culture, says that Berlin techno culture stands for “values such as diversity, respect and cosmopolitanism.”
The post Techno in Berlin officially joins the UNESCO cultural heritage list appeared first on MusicTech.MPG Awards 2024: shortlist announced Now in their 16th year, the MPG Awards celebrate the best talent working behind the scenes in the British music industry.
Kalide’s Collage 2.0 tries to remove the technicalities from music production — but why?$179 (Launch sale price of $129 at time of writing), kalidemusic.com
Music production can be described as harnessing technology in the pursuit of art. But, as Kalide puts it, “creativity is not a one-size-fits-all” — in other words, there are those who lean towards the technical, and others who are all about the musical art. It’s the latter group who are the particular target audience for the newly updated and overhauled Collage, Kalide’s unique take on a multi-effects plugin.READ MORE: Newfangled Audio’s Recirculate may be the last delay plugin you ever need
Anonymous widgets
Interaction view in the Collage 2.0
Collage’s main view — the Interaction view — comes as a shock when you start loading presets. Each has its own coloured and/or textured background, accompanied by one or more unlabelled, chunky and often unconventional-looking widgets. And that’s it!
Waggling a widget will do something, although it isn’t clear in advance what this will be (and isn’t always clear post-waggle either). Hovering your mouse over a widget opens a chunky label, but the names that are displayed aren’t always helpful. Sometimes, these favour flowery ambiguity over succinct accuracy, but even where a more conventional name is used, it isn’t clear what it refers to — “blend”, for example, could have multiple meanings.
As it turns out, the peculiar widgets are nothing more than artsy knobs and sliders that act as macro controllers, linking to parameters from within the maximum of eleven effects processors that underlie a Collage preset. These processors, accessed from the plugin’s Editor view, can be enabled and disabled as needed and can be arranged in any order.
Editor view in the Collage 2.0
The plugin includes an easy-to-use tool for adding and positioning widgets, and for mapping each to up to three effect parameters. In addition, each widget can be modulated by one of four internal LFOs, adding automatic and rhythmic movement to the parameters they are controlling. There is a large collection of widgets on offer ranging from the almost conventional to the downright bizarre (a knob that looks like a curtain pole finial, anybody…?)
The idea is, of course, that you can create your own blend of the underlying effects along with your own customised user interface for controlling them. The ability to combine parameters from different effect processors under one macro control makes for some interesting performance possibilities too, especially if using a hardware controller.
Controller or no, we strongly dislike the lack of permanent labels. Kalide appears to take the view that this encourages experimentation and focuses attention on the sound rather than the parameter. Unfortunately, we find it deeply off-putting to be presented with screen after screen of peculiar, anonymous widgets, often laid out randomly, against a similarly random background.
Interaction view in the Collage 2.0
Effects and variations in Collage 2.0
Each of Collage’s effect processors handles a particular type of effect — reverb or filtering or whatever — and most offer multiple variants within that type, giving a grand total of 43 different processors to choose from.
Artsiness for artsiness’ sake makes another appearance here in the names of the effects themselves, with examples such as “Starboard” for modulation effects and “Calico” for delay. The type of effect is shown in a pop-up when mousing over, but could just as easily have been included in the static label: “Calico Delay” would be just fine!
This obtuseness continues into the naming of effect variants too, for example “Smear” and “Eskalator” for types of reverb, “Pulley” and “Incidence” for EQs, and “Midas” and “Guardian” for flavours of stereo adjustment.
Interaction view in the Collage 2.0
This manner of naming may make sense to some, but it is meaningless to us. We do not accept the premise that the proper effect names (reverb, delay, compressor, etc.) and effect type names (hall reverb, parametric EQ, chorus, etc.) are confusing or overly technical. Inventing a whole new vocabulary hinders understanding and intuition rather than helping it.
We also feel the editing views, though easy enough to use, are just unpleasant to look at, with overly bright and garish backgrounds, and a hideous, scrawly, Comic-Sans-like typeface. It’s enough to burn your eyeballs — ironic, then, that the plugin offers a high-contrast mode for the visually impaired. On a serious note, it’s very positive that Kalide supports this group of users, but we would strongly advise the brand also includes a skin that is less intense and that uses crisper, more legible typography.
Editor view in the Collage 2.0
Does Collage 2.0 actually work?
Collage’s individual effects sound impressive and the ways you can combine and control them are almost limitless. The main Interaction view encourages real-time control and performance and, if using the right blend of effects and macro configurations, can give some very satisfying results. It is this combining of effects and effect parameters that is Collage’s strongest suit, allowing you to create original and performable effect chains. The unconventional styling aims to encourage experimentation and focus one’s attention on the sound, all of which is perfectly laudable.
However, many of the presets on offer are little more than standard processors — a compressor or an EQ for example — but with only a handful of the processor’s parameters exposed as widgets within the main view; others may combine multiple effects but only expose controls for one — a reverb and EQ, for example, but with only EQ cut/boost controls provided. Such usage fails to take advantage of Collage’s best feature — namely the ability to combine parameters within a single macro, so we struggle to see the point. In such cases, we would always prefer to use a regular-looking plugin with regular controls and accompanying labels.
Assign view in the Collage 2.0
There are a couple of fundamental paradoxes in Collage’s workflow too.
Firstly, the unique styling is supposed to encourage intuitive interaction but, with no commonality of function, layout or design from one preset to another and no permanently visible labels, there is no prospect of developing an intuitive sense of what the plugin’s controls actually do. What ensues, then, is reluctantly loading presets without having a clue what they will do, and then randomly poking at widgets to find out. You may hit on a happy accident, but this is neither a creative nor intuitive way of working.
Secondly, if you wish to take Collage beyond its factory presets, you have to delve into the processes of configuring the effects you plan to use, choosing which parameters to expose and which to combine with other parameters, and designing the user interface to configure the widgets that combine and control those parameters. This is a cool thing to be able to do, but music production doesn’t get much more technical than this!
Design view in the Collage 2.0
Should you buy Collage 2.0?
There will be producers who welcome Collage’s visual quirkiness and (claimed) banishment of technical detail but, for us, it is precisely these aspects of the plugin that we find hardest to get on board with. They just don’t deliver what they are supposed to.
Despite its undeniable versatility and uniqueness, in trying to appeal to our purely artistic sides Collage reduces rather than enhances its accessibility, intuitiveness and, as a result, its creative potential.
Key featuresMac and Windows plugin (AAX, AU and VST)
Fully customisable main user interface for each preset
11 effects processors:Calico: delays
Cloak: convolution processor
Colossus: waveshaping or bit crushing distortion
Crest: gates, expanders, etc.
Equator: EQ
Kilter: filters
Panoply: stereo field processor
Quell: compression processors
Quiver: rhythmic gating
Starboard: modulation effects
Verbal: reverbs43 different effect types in total
4 LFOs that can map to macro control widgetsThe post Kalide’s Collage 2.0 tries to remove the technicalities from music production — but why? appeared first on MusicTech.
