You’ve probably heard about the spat between YouTube/Google and the Performing Rights Society (PRS). The PRS have launched a new site - fairplayforcreators.com - which aims to highlight the issues of online earnings. Pete Waterman is quoted as receiving a massive £11 for over 100 million views of ‘Never going to give you up’, while poor old Mark Kelly from Marillion only made 0.6p from 10 million views of his band’s videos. In the meantime, Google continues to make revenue from advertising on the very same pages as these videos. Gone are the days when videos were promotional tools to encourage album or single sales - those sales are through the floor. In the newly-emerging music business these digital channels will all take-on new significance as potential income streams for artists. If music video has value to Google in driving ad revenue then it is a resource that should be rewarded fairly. Without seeing the figures it is difficult to determine what that rate should be, but given some of the headline figures we’re hearing you can’t help but feel that at present music makers are getting a raw deal. If you’re involved in creating music, make sure your voice is heard.
Archive for the ‘Guitar’ Category
PRS fights back
Thursday, March 26th, 2009Take the amp sim test
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
Electronic Musician have a very interesting article up comparing real guitar amps versus their software pretenders. Basically, they got a few classic amps in a studio and knocked up their equivalent patches in a few different software amp sims, before presenting the lot in a blind test to a few ‘name’ producers. The results are interesting, the take-home message of which is it is pretty much impossible to reliably distinguish an amp sim from the real thing. In addition, even if you spot it the amp sim may give you a ‘better’ or more useable sound, not to mention all the benefits of total recall and all that jazz. If you’re not convinced, check out the listening test and see if you can spot the real amp. The experiment is described here, and you can check out some discussion about the results in a video.
The audio gear industry is chock-full of opinion and ‘wisdom’ rarely based on hard evidence. This kind of testing really appeals to the scientist in me, as did the Focusrite Liquid Mix Challenge. At the end of the day if it sounds good it is good, whether it’s vintage valves or the latest DSP, and you should always be open to having your preconceptions challenged.
Guitar Rig 3 updated to v3.2
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
Native Instruments have announced the release of Guitar Rig 3.2 Update. Most of the update is around 64bit compatibility for Vista users, but there are a few minor feature updates too, including a MIDI input filter. I’m hoping the latter might allow me to correct the expression pedal input when using the wah wah (I’m using a Boss EV-5), as at the moment it’s backwards. I actually just got Guitar Rig 3 a couple of weeks ago. It still has, to my ears, noticeable digital artifacts on some distortion sounds, but there’s a lot of power under the hood for tweaking and the range of effects on-tap is fantastic. As ever, the presets don’t really do the software justice. For clean sounds I have no hesitation in using GR3 straight, but for more exposed dirtier sounds I’m currently experimenting with disabling the software speaker simulator stages and outputting the feed into the effects return of a Trace Elliot 2×10 combo, which is then mic’d up in the traditional manner. Initial results are encouraging - it’s one way of losing that subtle high-frequency fizz which is so often an amp-sim give-away, whilst still being able to take advantage of the great range of different amp flavours on offer. Oh yes, and you’ll definitely want to engage the ‘HiQ’ button whenever you use Guitar Rig 3 - the improvement in sound quality is noticeable.