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How SONAR user Bobbi Tammaro won a SESAC award over many Major Label Artists

Respect and credibility

A few weeks ago SESAC announced their 2013 Jazz Award recipients, and SONAR X3 user Bobbi “Funkeeboy” Tommaro was one of the well-deserved artists on the list.  I have been fortunate to get to know Bobbi in the last few years on and off the SONAR playing-field, and the first word that comes to mind is “respect.”  These days considering the state of the music industry, the word respect has more meaning than ever and Bobbi has earned it from his music peers along with just about everyone else that hears his story.  Besides respect, he has earned much credibility in the Smooth Jazz world from being a repeat-offender on the Billboard charts as an independent artist.

Bobbi who is also PKA “Funkee Boy” has amassed an impressive amount of credits throughout his music career. At the young age of 15 he was already making a name for himself winning the Connecticut State Organ Championship and also opening for national acts such as Spyro Gyra.  As he progressed he scored numerous chart hits across multiple music genres, as well as, several top Billboard chart hits/Top 5 Smooth Jazz hits, and licensing deals on television networks such as ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS, SHOWTIME, VH1, etc.

Before making his own records his music has [and continues to in terms of residuals] appear on some of the most popular and well respected shows ever such as Beverly Hills 90210, General Hospital, All My Children, Sunset Beach, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Love Boat, One Life To Live, Young & The Restless, They Call Me Sirr, Soul Food.  Stepping out from behind the scenes as a songwriter/producer & into the forefront as a Smooth Jazz Artist, Bobbi’s track record progressed and continued to impress.

Most recently, starting off 2014 by releasing his 3rd CD “Soul Purpose”, the smooth jazz keyboardist/producer combined his talents with assembling a stellar line up of A-List recording artists. The newest award-winning record “Soul Purpose” features guest appearances from Warren Hill, Najee, Bob Baldwin, Cindy Bradley, Nick Colionne, LEILA, Surface, Lamone, Timmy Maia, Tevin Michael and more!!!

Chalk one up for the hard working jugglers. 

A few key elements set Bobbi apart from the pack that keeps him successful.  The obvious one is the raw talent of songwriting and performing his instrument, but if you go a few levels deeper, you will find a multi-instrumentalist, producer, mixing and mastering engineer.  Peeling back a few more layers exposes an organized machine who literally “does not need a label” to hit the Billboard Top 5 Smooth Jazz Chart.  In fact Bobbi has had many labels approach him and has respectfully declined any offers to do business.  Why?… because he has cracked the code and found a formula that works for himself as an independent artist competing in the major leagues.

It’s not easy

Hitting the Top 5 on any Billboard Chart is not an easy thing to do.  Besides the songs and production alone (which he does ALL in SONAR INCLUDING Mastering), Bobbi also has to oversee the efforts for Radio Promotion, Publicity, Social Media, Sales and Marketing.  If you ask me, this is a very rare skill-set to have as an artist considering just the time it takes alone to write and record a [great] full length record.  Bobbi does have help from his wife Leila who is also a very credible artist, and the two of them seem to have a great formula for getting the music out to the masses as if they were a Major Label.

Cakewalk:          It’s pretty amazing that you do so much to get your music out, can you describe the short-form version of a typical record release?

Bobbi Tammaro:            Sure, it’s hard to keep it short form because so much goes into it… So here goes Continue reading “How SONAR user Bobbi Tammaro won a SESAC award over many Major Label Artists”

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A SONAR/GIBSON CELEBRATION FOR SHAWN CLEMENT AT GIBSON BEVERLY HILLS

Have you ever been to a show and seen someone on stage that makes you never want to pick up your instrument again? Enter… Shawn Clement.  Hollywood Composer/Producer Shawn Clement graciously unleashed his new composition at the Beverly Hills Gibson Showroom tonight to a warm, yet star-studded group of industry folks from all walks of life.  Billed in half as a pre-AES party, many folks were in town to celebrate Shawn’s new work Raw Fungus, Cakewalk’s new path at Gibson, and hard working music-makers in general.

If you don’t know Shawn, his story is unique.  It stems from a long path of crazy influences, crazy talent, and crazy work ethic which has made him one of the most sought after composers in Hollywood. We would like to think he owes it all to SONAR, but we know that is not the case 😉 Continue reading “A SONAR/GIBSON CELEBRATION FOR SHAWN CLEMENT AT GIBSON BEVERLY HILLS”

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The Sound of Console Emulation in SONAR X3

The age of hybrid studios

The day has come where digital audio has caught up to the analog trends of the pre-xyz age. Hybrid (digital/analog) home-studios are more common and the need for more analog flavored plugins is a must. Cakewalk has harnessed these trends in some of the latest software additions to the X-series with their track by track Console Emulation ProChannel plugin.

At a glance

Simplicity is one of the key ingredients in the world of plugin interfaces and the Console Emulator is no stranger to that. It’s an easy tool to use, just turn up the Drive! Each algorithm has the same 3 parameters for locking in the sound, Drive, Tolerance, and Trim. Each version of the plugin reflects the circuitry of 3 classic large format console from the past 30 years. Every board has it’s own sound because each circuit is completely different than the other.

Let’s take a closer listen 

For most part, Console Emulation is about subtle character. If you apply subtle changes to your entire mix it will collectively sound different. One track may not sound all that different in the final mix, but if you apply this effect to the entirety of your session, well then you’ll probably start to hear some differences. These DSP algorithms are tuned Continue reading “The Sound of Console Emulation in SONAR X3”

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Meet the Bakers: Jimmy L

The direction I received for this blog article was “anything goes” and “keep it fun,” so my background story will knock off 2 birds with 1 stone: a blog post that hopefully will not bore readers to death, and a therapeutic time-lapse review for me… 😉 Sorry it’s a bit long, but I am 105 years old…

My weird music industry story:

My name is Jimmy Landry and I am a functioning work-aholic, wait, wait… I mean I am Head of Artist and Public Relations for Cakewalk.  I have thankfully been working for Cakewalk for almost 6 years now (hard to believe).  I have had an interesting career up to this point where I have toggled back in forth from being an artist (signing with EMI back in 2000) to actually working for Major Labels in Radio Promotion, Marketing, A&R and Staff Production (Elektra, Virgin and Capitol Records). I have been a musician since the age of 5 when I picked up my sister’s purple-flowered acoustic guitar she left behind while attending college (– thankfully there are no pictures I know of playing THAT thing 😉 Continue reading “Meet the Bakers: Jimmy L”

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Meet the Bakers: Mike L

I began playing Drums when I was 8 years old after my Dad set up his old kit from the 70’s. I played for a few years until I picked up my first guitar at a second hand music shop in New Hampshire. I played for hours everyday until the noise I was making started to sound like a melody. My friends and I started a punk band at the age of 13. We weren’t the best in my neighborhood, but definitely the loudest. At this point I knew I wanted to play music everyday for the rest of my life.

When I got to high school, I tried to find every music class I could. My first class freshman year was an electronic music class. In this class we used a version of Cakewalk Music Creator. I started becoming extremely interested in music production and wanted to learn everything I possibly could. I started to listen to my favorite albums and try to recreate the sounds I was hearing. To gain some experience, I started recording local bands in my basement by hanging mic cables over pipes for overheads. I remember listening to the album ‘Revolver’ over and over trying to copy what I was hearing.  Continue reading “Meet the Bakers: Mike L”

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Meet the Bakers: Lars W

Music is something I’ve always loved since I was very young. I played a few different instruments throughout school. In third grade I picked up the Baritone horn in grade school and played that through my senior year or high school in the concert band. As I got older my passion for music and different styles of music grew. In high school I started going to local rock shows which is what made me want to be in a band.

Being on stage and connecting with an audience was something I really wanted to do. That’s when I decided to start playing guitar. Not long after that I ended up switching to the bass after the bassist in my first band quit and that quickly became my primary instrument. The more I played shows the more I started to take music more seriously. What started as a hobby quickly became my life. In my junior year of high school I went to a 4 week workshop on Recording Studio Technology at the New England institute of Art. After spending a few weeks in the studio’s there I was hooked. Going into my senior year I decided I wanted to pursue a career in music production and engineering. So I made that my focus and took just about every music elective I could and then I applied to the New England institute of Art for Audio & Media Technology and got in.

While I was in school I studied with lots of inspiring teachers and made a bunch of great connection through doing internships and going to the AES Convetions and local AES events. About half way through college I started freelancing as an audio engineer working for various different audio companies in the Boston area doing live sound, studio recording and location recording. I graduated from the New England institute of Art in 2007 and not long after graduating I landed my gig at cakewalk as a customer service representative. Since then I’ve expanded into tech support as well. Continue reading “Meet the Bakers: Lars W”

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Meet the Bakers: Joey A

How did you get started with music?
When I was about 10 years old, my dad bought this acoustic guitar for himself for $20 or so. I thought it was so cool that my dad knew how to play AC/DC and Kiss songs (correctly or not made no real difference to me at the time), so I asked him to show me everything he knew. I picked up the basic chords pretty quickly and started sneaking into his room while he was at work to play the guitar unsupervised. One day he came home earlier than usual and heard me in my room playing the guitar. He was too shocked at how quickly I surpassed his skill level to scold me, and he said I could keep the guitar. Around the same time, two of my cousins were getting into guitar and I HAD to get as good as they were, so I put in as many hours of practice as I could.

Fast-forward about two years, I was starting to get into electric guitar more and more, and for Christmas I got this multi-fx pedal, and I was quickly obsessed with tone and all the neat things you could alter about a guitar’s sound. This naturally evolved into a passion for the field of audio engineering, and I decided that’s what I wanted to study after high school.

I managed to hone my musicianship enough to get accepted to Berklee College of Music right out of high school, and I took on a Music Business major, a Music Production and Engineering major, and an Acoustics & Electronics minor. During summers I interned for various music-related companies, not the least of which was the world-famous Blackbird Studio in Nashville, TN. It was throughout these college years and internships that I learned a lot about myself, particularly that I knew I wanted to work in the music industry to some degree, but I wanted audio engineering to remain entirely fun for me; I wanted to keep it around as a serious hobby but not make it my full-time profession. Continue reading “Meet the Bakers: Joey A”

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Meet the Bakers: Willy J

Sometime in middle school I started listening to bands like Static-X,Slipknot and Fear Factory and decided to start playing drums as well. My neighbors thought it was really cool. So cool they even invited local law enforcement over to listen to how awesome my high school band was. I got into school band and eventually jazz band and decided that I wanted to try the Bari Sax. I played on a busted old school loaner bari sax that was probably more suited as a gravel scoop than a horn but I ended up loving it.

This is about when my time with Cakewalk products started. Some buddies and I decided one summer that we should record ourselves, because you know – there wasn’t a big enough market for angsty teen rock bands. One friend got a set of drum mics and I end up getting a mixer that came bundled with Logic 5. That was way back in the day when Logic supported Windows. It didn’t work out very well and I ended up buying a copy of SONAR 2 XL. Yes – I actually bought it. I know, unheard of for a teenager that was tech savvy in the days of Napster.

I spent that entire summer playing around with mic positions, effects and learning how to mix. The following school year I was dual-enrolled in a local community college and took a few courses on recording. We used these old Tascam 16 and 32 track machines and would mix everything down to 2-track tape. It was a great experience although sometimes I wasn’t sure if the machine was about to take off like a helicopter. I have yet to have the opportunity to apply my capstan cleaning skills in a real studio. Continue reading “Meet the Bakers: Willy J”

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Meet the Bakers: Craig Anderton

If you want to know about me, including multiple probably surprising facts, One Louder magazine did a pretty comprehensive interview just before I joined Gibson. In fact I’m surprised I was asked to participate in “Meet the Bakers,” because I’m really just an honorary baker…but apparently all these software guys need someone with hardware experience to change light bulbs and fix the microwave, and that would be me. So we’ll just cut to the chase, and deal with the bullet points. Oh, and don’t forget to check out my latest music videos at http://www.youtube.com/thecraiganderton. It’s an eclectic collection, to say the least…from cover versions to French Antilles dance music to EDM to hard rock to a live ambient performance written as a sleep aid for my daughter.

Doing a festival gig with Brian Hardgroove from Public Enemy, as the hard rock two-piece EV2. Eddie Kramer called us “The Black and White Stripes.” I’m quite sure he considers me the white one. Continue reading “Meet the Bakers: Craig Anderton”

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How Eliud “Liu” Ortiz used SONAR X3 for his recent Jennifer Hudson mix (RCA Records)

These days, some professional mixing and recording engineers are doing work for major labels completely missed the analogue age. Others are still mixing on consoles.  We have come to a point where there really is no “right” or “wrong” in terms of mixing.  Some tracks are mixed so perfectly that they are not signed off on by the label because they are lacking something “distinct” or “of a raw nature.”  Other times, indie songs are mixed by a band itself and find their way to the top, where at that point the label just has someone remix the single for mainstream radio. (For example compare the normal and radio mixes of Gotye “Somebody That I Used to Know.)

NYC based mixing and recording engineer Liu Ortiz has seen it from all sides of the music and business spectrum.  Starting out at such a young age of 16 as an engineer, his career has placed him with a perfect balance (at still a young age) with a ton of knowledge in both the digital and analogue worlds.  He has worked on tracks with and for artists such as Mary J. Blige, Pink, Luther Vandross, Christina Aguilera, and even RZA to name a few, and was quite a successful engineer at the Hit Factory in New York City.

Coming from the world of Cubase and Pro Tools, and after hearing all the buzz about the full feature-set of SONAR X3, Liu decided to give SONAR X3 a whirl on a new track by Jennifer Hudson feat. R Kelley for RCA Records.  After mixing the track, he found himself gravitating towards the workflow so he continued the journey onto another project called The Summer Set; a very well established band from Scottsdale Arizona who are quickly making waves internationally.  I recently got a chance to visit with Liu at the new Cakewalk Room which is ironically enough in the old Hit Factory where he often worked.  Liu showed me some of his new mixes, showed me where his picture and plaques were on the wall, and even gave me a few interesting stories about some of the “good ole days” featuring Missy Elliot, Queen Latifah and Sean Puffy Combs [don’t worry Liu – I’ll never tell 😉

Cakewalk Artist Relations:           Since you grew up on analogue consoles, what are there big sonic differences you hear now that you mix “in the box”?

 Liu Ortiz:           Well in the beginning way back when DAWs first started, I noticed that no matter what I did as I progressed with more plugins and inserts of each channel, the mix coming out the box would progressively get thinner; especially with vocals. I couldn’t really do much to fix that problem until not too long ago where technology has progressed with DAWs and computers in general.  Now, I can pretty much faithfully emulate hardware with EQ’s and compressors of pretty much all the consoles I have worked on in the past.

Neve and SSL’s had such distinctive qualities about them similar in comparison to that of Strats and Les Pauls. Since I worked on both extensively, I remember all the little nuances that each series had. So when I am mixing I just try my best to EQ with those particular traits in mind since they were my personal favorites. Pretty much all DAWs now are inherently very neutral, so I can dial in whatever tone I want and don’t have to worry about the vocals or guitars becoming shrill. I really appreciate technology now and just concentrate on crafting the best mix possible.  I must add that it is pretty amazing to me that SONAR X3 has a Console Emulator built into every bus and every track – this blew me away Continue reading “How Eliud “Liu” Ortiz used SONAR X3 for his recent Jennifer Hudson mix (RCA Records)”