AC Blog

Hi everyone,

This is my first entry on the Audiocourses blog - I’ll try to post here regularly with my thoughts on music and production as well as other things that are happening in my life which may be vaguely interesting.

I decided today to spend an hour or so creating a tune in a genre that I don’t usually work in - Drum’n'Bass. Every now and then I like to do something like this as it really freshens you up, especially if you only work in a few genres usually.

Now electronic music isn’t new to me at all - I first got into music production about 13 years ago using a Commodore Amiga 512 (later a 1200) and a copy of OctaMed. At the time I was using 8-bit mono samples and had no MIDI keyboard. everything was put together in the most unmusical way possible. OctaMed was certainly very basic in it’s user interface but somehow I created some of the most innovative music I have ever produced - at the time I didn’t even play an instrument so I was just making it up as I went along with no idea of music theory.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time trying to write songs in the style of Westbam and Slipmatt. A lot of the music of this time was what we would later call ‘jungle’ and this in term obviously had a huge influence on the later genres of ‘Breakbeat’ and ‘Drum’n'Bass’. I drifted out of the ‘jungle’ so to speak and became more interested in the slower, funkier sounds of House and the party-friendly, and now dated, rhythms of ‘Big Beat’.

In recent months I’ve felt a yearning to go back to my roots of electronic music production and so hence my decision today to have a crack at drum’n'bass. Firing up Propellerheads Reason I ramped up the tempo to 168bpm(!), at least 35bpm more than I’d use for house, and a tempo twice as fast as the last band project I worked on. I had a quick listen to some tunes from the genre, namely the fantastic Bodyrock by Shimon & Andy C (which inadvertantly started the whole ‘clownstep’ debacle on internet forums) and tunes from the likes of DJ Zinc.

Anyhow I had a great time layering bass sounds, doubling up loops with programmed drums and applying far more effects than I’d usually dream of. Although it’s not quite the standard of Pendulum, the current darlings of D’n'B, I hope to continue working on it just for practice. Have a listen to an 8-bar section here.

Right that’s enough from me, I’m going back into the jungle…

ben m

Hello everyone! hope your having a fine week!

As some of you already know Northfork Recording Studio has been going through some major changes recently. We bought another complete house just to house the new studio. Contractors were 1 month behind schedule which has put me behind on my schedule. The new studio will be up and running and ready by the end of September of this year. For the rest of the month we will be dismantling the Old Studio and relocating to the New studio with some very unique equipment and programs. As an example my video display is a large 72″ wide screen, I’ve finally mastered the use of the Waves plug-ins which can enhance any music creation at the mastering stage. I’ve been licenced to use E-jay dance projects, Magix music Studio 10 and which I ‘ve just increased my samples library from 10,000 to 20,000 clips. These are samples to enhance country, rock, hip/hop, dance and many other genres of music. We are still ahead of the midi field with the new processors which will compliment the studio.

For the artists that are waiting to be recorded I sincely appoligize for the delay and any inconvience to you and the band. One project I will continue to work on though is Armand’s piano playing of 36 songs. This artist is very unique that at a young age of 75 has never taken a lesson. I recorded him live on the piano that he started to play on at the age of 10. He plays from memory and with feeling.

With the Studio we will continue to give courses in basic audio engineering which we started last year. This year we will introduce another course on the basics of recording with a computer. We’ve had many calls on this course and just waiting to get the right amount of persons on the right nights. Both courses are given starting from the nitty gritty. Both these courses are designed for the beginners. One must have some basic knowledge of Windows XP. These are also centered around the pentium based/windows platform computer. We haven’t developed the Mac based course because we haven’t had any interest even though Mac with G5 is good platfom if you were to use one. If interested in Mac we can refer you to someone to call.

We can’t wait to get things Rocking again so till then

Have a good month

Mike Lahaie (graduate of audiocourses.com)

Do you own a recording studio in Minnesota? - if you do we wish to hear from.

Please forward your information to us regarding your Minnesota recording studio address and details and we will get in contact, and feature you here.