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How Chris Standring Used SONAR X1 to Hit Two #1 Chart Positions

The success of SONAR X1 user Chris Standring’s groundbreaking 2010 CD Blue Bolero, which topped several year-end lists and produced a No. 1 single, made it tough for him to create a follow-up record; but all early indicators are showing that he managed quite nicely with the new Electric Wonderland recording which came out yesterday.

As of this morning, Chris woke up to find out that Electric Wonderland has hit #1 in its genre on the Amazon.com sales chart, as well as #1 on the BDS Radio Tracking Chart (Billboard) for the same genre.  I would say that’s a setup for a pretty great day, especially considering the “sales” climate of the music industry in general.  Electric Wonderland is a 10-song CD of original songs that fuses elements of the last record Blue Bolero’s orchestral touches with a deft jazz-pop touch that’s been a hallmark of Standring’s stellar career.

One of the changes Chris made on Electric Wonderland besides going from SONAR 8.5 to X1 was mixing the record on his own.  Continue reading “How Chris Standring Used SONAR X1 to Hit Two #1 Chart Positions”

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How Building Cost Effective Acoustic Treatment for the Music Studio Will Help Your Music Production; Part 3: Wall Panels

[Click on any picture for higher resolution] For the last couple of weeks I have been writing about how I’ve been building custom acoustic treatment panels for my new project studio which is running SONAR X1 Producer Expanded.  I started with the sound cloud over the mix position and then showed how I basically cut out all the corners of my room (a square room unfortunately for me) by building corner traps.  This week I’ll dive into probably the most important component; the wall panels.

The wall panels are really important for me for a few reasons.  (1.) They absorb the first sound reflection from the speakers so that the frequency waves are tamed down, and (2.) They absorb the sound in the room in general to control echo and reverberation.  I do a bit of professional moonlighting work on the side including songwriting/production for ESPN Sports Center as well as other commercial stuff, so it’s important for me to have a controlled environment to listen to my mixes and productions on SONAR so that what I deliver is the real-deal.  As I stated before, it’s pretty much impossible to create a perfect listening environment unless you are building a room from scratch (floating room, sound proofing inside the walls, etc…,) but it is possible to greatly improve your surroundings.  In my own opinion, I think the way to look at it is to figure out what it is you are trying to accomplish before you purchase or build anything.  I think some of the important questions to ask are:

*How much can I afford to put into the project?

*Is it important for the place to look professional?

*Will a vibed-out room make you or whoever is using the room feel more creative?

*What are the basic sonic trouble elements to the room?

*Will the room be used for mixing or recording?

*What genre of music will the room be used for (i.e.> Hip-hop with a lot of low end, Jazz, etc…) Continue reading “How Building Cost Effective Acoustic Treatment for the Music Studio Will Help Your Music Production; Part 3: Wall Panels”

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How Building Cost Effective Acoustic Treatment for the Music Studio Will Help Your Music Production; Part 2: Corner Traps

So maybe you have SONAR X1 Production Suite running on a killer computer, and now you might have a sound cloud over your mix position; what’s next?  Last week I exemplified how I built and installed a hanging sound cloud and this week I will go into detail how I built corner traps to help tame my unorthodox (square) production room.  Before reading this post, you may want to visit my article from last week which goes into some detail on room shapes.

My room, unfortunately for me is dead square.  This is about the worst case scenario so I had to do some research and talk to a lot of friends who are acoustic professionals such as Gavin Haverstick of Haverstick designs.  With my room being about 13.5’ x 13.5’ and 7.5’ ceilings, he has my mix position at 62” off the front wall.  So with my positioning about right, and a sound cloud overhead to take out the first ceiling reflections, the next thing to do was try to knock out the corners of the room where bass frequencies could become a big problem.

I decided to make custom corner traps based on my personal situation.  Once again, every room and everyone’s needs are different, so if you are on a tight budget, I think it’s best to first figure out what’s important to YOU.  For my situation, here were my goals for corner traps:

  • Cost effective
  • *Less square footage (I will discuss this below)
  • Aesthetically pleasing to the eye
  • Effective bass trapping
  • Light-weight

Continue reading “How Building Cost Effective Acoustic Treatment for the Music Studio Will Help Your Music Production; Part 2: Corner Traps”

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From the Temples of Syrinx to your drum tracks, get the sound of Rush for Session Drummer 3!

 

Sonic Reality’s Neil Peart Drums SD3 for Cakewalk’s Session Drummer™ 3 features samples of the authentic Drum Workshop® Signature “Snakes and Arrows” kit of drum legend Neil Peart from the band Rush. Recorded by producer Nick Raskulinecz (Rush, Foo Fighters, Alice In Chains) this powerful stereo kit offers the ultimate high fidelity rock sound with incredible realism! Coming from the acclaimed Drum Masters 2 and Studio ProFile series Sonic Reality has now integrated this legendary kit into Cakewalk’s Session Drummer 3 format so users of SONAR X1 Producer can enjoy one of the finest sampled kits in the world. Continue reading “From the Temples of Syrinx to your drum tracks, get the sound of Rush for Session Drummer 3!”

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NAMM 2012 Videos and CakeTV Live Webinar

Recently we released our NAMM videos to CakeTV. The six videos contain over an hour of footage of SONAR X1 demonstrations narrated by a combination of Cakewalk staff and Cakewalk artists. And there’s certainly a lot of interesting and useful information to be seen (and heard).

However, due to circumstances beyond our control, the video’s audio quality didn’t turn out quite as expected. With our booth in the Roland arena, and with so many adjacent demo booths within direct earshot, said audio contains not only what’s in the demo being filmed but also a lot of what’s going on around it.

Seth Perlstein at the tail end of one of his SONAR X1 demo at NAMM 2012

Continue reading “NAMM 2012 Videos and CakeTV Live Webinar”

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How Building Cost Effective Acoustic Treatment for the Music Studio Will Help Your Music Production; Part 1: Sound Cloud

(Part 1: Sound Clouds)

Just as important as having a killer DAW such as SONAR X1 Production Suite 64bit running on a good machine, one needs to take a good hard look at their recording and mixing environment.  If you are starting to get to the point where the word “professional” (as in making some money) comes into play, you should probably start to think about your sonic room environment as well as your environment’s presentation.

The beauty of the music industry today is that you CAN make extra money as a part time job utilizing tools such as SONAR, but there comes a point in time where you need to step it up if you have what it takes to succeed on certain levels.  In my personal situation, as a writer/mixer/producer I take on some decent paying side jobs once in a while when time permits such as recent tracks that I sold to ESPN Sports center, but I can tell you that if I didn’t have SONAR X1 Producer Expanded and a decent mixing environment, there’s no way I would have been able to deliver those tracks.

In the upcoming weeks I am going to be talking about, as well as be demonstrating how I recently treated my new music studio room with great looking acoustic treatment panels.  I built all the custom panels myself so it cost me a fraction of what it would have been to order these panels online; and in my opinion they look better because I elected to design them with exposed natural wood where the cheap ones online are just basically fabric-wrapped.

The three types of panels I built which will be discussed on this blog were wall traps, corner traps and sound clouds.  Today I will go into detail on how I built the sound cloud that goes over my mix position. Continue reading “How Building Cost Effective Acoustic Treatment for the Music Studio Will Help Your Music Production; Part 1: Sound Cloud”

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NAMM 2012 Backstage Pass: SONAR X1 Music Production Live Demo

Live from NAMM 2012 at the Cakewalk booth in the Roland arena, Cakewalk’s Mike Trujillo demonstrates creative music production and recording techniques with SONAR X1 Production Suite.

Mike’s demo features SONAR X1 Producer Expanded’s Browser, Track Templates, Matrix View, FX Chains 2.0, ProChannel, Session Drummer 3, and more. Plus he lays down tracks with Rapture and Z3TA+ 2, records guitar, and captures a Matrix View performance in this dynamic, unique, up-beat demonstration that’s packed with information for the initiated and uninitiated alike.

Upgrade to SONAR X1 or or find a dealer to become a new user today.

 

 

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Shawn Clement: On A [Quantum] Quest with Intense Music

Award winning SONAR user – composer/producer Shawn Clement is at an exciting point in his “intense” career: 

  • His credentials and track record have allowed him to open an office/SONAR studio at the heart of Paramount Pictures.
  • He just had a major successful event at The Kennedy Center in DC where his music was premiered during “A Tribute to the Wounded Warriors.”
  • On July 29th he will be hosting a score party at Paramount Pictures for his original music in “Quantum Quest, A Cassini Space Odyssey 3D.”

Little did he know, when in 1996 Shawn Clement took on a “gig,” that he would be stapling a movement to the universe’s musical bulletin-board.  “Reality TV – what’s that? Who’s going to take interest in that?” These were some of the questions flying around the conference rooms of major television networks back then.  Well it just so happens that still to this day 95% of us get sucked into the inevitable antics of The World’s Wildest… The World’s Scariest…  The World’s Most… You know, those shows that catch your eye when you’re flicking through the channels and catch a quick glimpse of a Corvette being severed in half by a semi-truck; and there it is – wham – a half hour later and you have neither moved from that channel, nor your seat for that matter. Continue reading “Shawn Clement: On A [Quantum] Quest with Intense Music”

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There's Been a Murder (FM) on SONAR X1

Friday, April 8 – Dallas, TX

“Deep in the Heart of Texas,” a song you most likely will not hear at a Murder FM show, but it is a location where you will find the band pounding out amazing material using SONAR X1.  In terms of work ethic and sheer determination, one will rarely find a band more in tune with what it takes to be a successful organization.

Based out of Dallas, TX, Murder FM (comprised of Norman Matthew, J6, Matt X3r0, and Brandon Arpin) has been performing sold out shows from coast to coast in the The United States while sharing the stage with some other notable bands such as Korn, The Used, Dope, Sick Puppies, Cavo, Red, Domain, 69 Eyes, The Birthday Massacre and Trapt amongst others.  Lead singer/guitarist (and producer) Norman Mathew has been relentless in the past recent years setting up and maintaining the bands success.  “It’s a real balancing act nowadays,” Norman says.  “It’s a lot different than it used to be where you could just work on your music and let things fall into place.  Now it’s a matter of working on your music just as hard, but on top of that you have to be on your promotional and business game as well.  That’s why I have been so stoked on SONAR for my career because it really allows me to zoom in quickly and efficiently on my creativity.” Continue reading “There's Been a Murder (FM) on SONAR X1”

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Jon Lee: Capitalist Turned Composer

profile picSo how does one of the top television-scoring professionals in the business get to where he is today? 

If you’re Jon Lee, first you run a hedge fund for 15 or 20 years…

Huh?

You’ll have to forgive Jon for not taking a more traditional route to the top of the film and television-scoring business. He found his true calling a bit later in life than most. But that hasn’t stopped him from making quite a name for himself in the field.

Although Jon started out in finance, it became a job he ended up “totally hating.” During his last few years in the business, he decided to do something about it and began pursuing his avocation: learning to play music. He took piano lessons, which eventually led him to composing. With the music bug firmly in his system, he soon enrolled at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, where he studied with many well-established composers.

Jon got his Graduate Certificate in Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television, marking the formal end of his career in finance, and set out to land some initial gigs. He soon connected with fellow USC alum Timothy Michael Wynn, a hardcore SONAR user who co-founded the music production company Sonic Fuel. Jon went to work with Tim and his partner Chris Lennertz for about a year, “’til they kicked me out and said ‘go get a career,’” as Jon jokingly recalls.

Continue reading “Jon Lee: Capitalist Turned Composer”