PLEASE: Protect your ears. Wear earplugs and turn down your ipod.

For the love of Pete, wear earplugs in loud situations. I can't stress this enough. Musicians put their ears in danger almost every day, often for prolonged periods. Sooner or later, this exposure will cause hearing loss and tinnitus (ringing in your ears). Hearing damage is permanent.

Sometimes I hear people say, "I hate earplugs! I can't hear the music while I'm playing."

Well, if you hate the sound of foam earplugs when you're playing, invest in some custom molded plugs. They sound better and are more comfortable. They cost between $150-$200. Too expensive for you? Please. Ten years from now, when you can't hear the person sitting across the dinner table, you'll be pretty upset that you cheaped out on your OWN EARS and bought some shoes and a stomp box instead.

Here are some pointers:

1. Get off your high horse.
   
2. Get a supply of foam earplugs, and keep a pair in your bag or pocket when you leave the house. Spread them around in your jacket pockets. You'll never know when you need them; I often end up in loud situations by accident. If it feels too loud, it IS too loud. Don't be ashamed to wear them. Think of the alternative: embarrassment and depression because you can't hear your friends and family when they speak to you.
   
3. Buy custom earplugs, whether you think you can afford them or not. If you're a professional musician, you can't afford NOT to have them. Use a credit card. Ask mom and dad. Your concert experiences will be SO much more pleasurable and your ears won't be ringing when you go to sleep.
   
4. Turn down your headphones when you're in the subway or on the bus. Better yet, wear earplugs. Drowning out the loud trains with loud music compounds the problem. If you really enjoy listening while you commute, a pair of noise-reducing headphones is a must, otherwise your volume is too high. The ambient noise is canceled out, allowing you to listen at lower, more reasonable levels. Shop around for different manufacturers. There are good models that cost under $150.
   
5. Don't set your cell phone volume to 10. Set it to 5 and find a quieter place to talk. Use the speakerphone when you can. Switch ears!
   
6. Read this. Then book an appointment with audiologist to have your hearing tested, and earplugs fitted.
7. Pat yourself on the back, eh?

Check out 4:07 in this video. For the love of Pete!

Brush up on your theory

Scales, scales, scales. Does it bring back old memories? Remember when your Royal Conservatory slave driver made you practice up and down the keyboard, until you were blue in the face? What about your theory rudiments? Key signatures. Scales. Chords. Transposing. Remember doing your theory homework, wishing you were playing road hockey instead? I do. But now I'm glad I stayed in. I'm glad my parents made me sit there and do it. I remember a lot of things from those days. But many years of not practicing have made me rusty. I can't read or write like I used to. Sight reading is lost on me.

It's not too late for people like us. We can brush up. We can go through our old workbooks and scales.

I recently picked up a copy of the same text I used as a kid. The big difference is that now it matters. It's going to help me read, understand, compose, and most importantly, communicate. It's a daunting 300 pages of written exercises. My goal is to finish it by year end. Wish me luck!

Stream the new Wilco album, pre-release.

http://wilcoworld.net/discs/thealbum/

Thanks to my friend Evan at Outside Music for the heads up.

Convert your Apple loops for Pro Tools

If you're a Pro Tools user, you'll find this one handy. I picked it up from the AIR users blog, a great instructional website dedicated to the digidesign AIR series of plugins. Lots of great instructional videos, including this one, which demonstrates how to use a program called Max to convert all of your apple loops (*.caf) to .aiff or .wav, so that you can use them in Pro Tools or any other DAW. Almost all Mac users have a big library of Apple loops available to them, but if you haven't tried Garageband or Logic, you haven't heard them... Until now!

And don't worry, what you're doing is legal. These loops are royalty free. You can use them freely in your commercial work. Just don't use them by themselves as underscore.

Cheers!
Adam

Discover Reason

If you haven't already discovered it, I would be surprised. Propellerhead Reason is a powerful computer program designed to give you an entire virtual studio, infinitely expandable, complete with mixers, synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, effects and a live MIDI sequencer. I should first point out that Reason is not an audio recording program, but it can operate it tandem with your favourite recording platform (Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton Live etc.) via Rewire, a plugin device that synchronizes the transports of both programs and streams the audio between them. This means you can simultaneously enjoy the power of Reason synthesis and drum programming with the audio editing and processing of your main recording software.

Reason is a big can of worms, and you have to open it to know what I mean. At first it may seem daunting, but at its most basic level, Reason is very simple to operate. You assemble your sessions one device at a time, using as few or as many devices as you need. The number of devices is only limited by your computer, and you will find that Reason is very processor efficient. If you have a machine from the last year or two, you'll run out of coffee long before you run out of processor power.

You might just need a drum loop and a synth bass line. Throw some reverb on those drums. Add compression. Play some strings. Add a tambourine. Then, take the blue pill. Go down the rabbit hole. Press [TAB].

Seriously. That's the key command to toggle the rear view of your rack devices. Now you're looking behind your Reason virtual studio, where all the cables are connected. This is when you realize power of the dark side. I mean, the modular design. You can connect the devices in your rack in an infinite number of ways, routing sounds and control voltages between devices, creating new possibilities with every patch and turn of a knob. Take a sound, then distort it, use another oscillator to modulate it, compress it, arpeggiate it, chop, slice and dice it. Only now have you begun to explore the full potential of this software.

Fortunately there are lots of instructional materials to help you delve deep into this world of virtual analog. Youtube is loaded with instructional vids, but if you're looking for more official coaches, the lovely Swedish developers at Propellerhead have an ongoing series of tutorials just for you, called Discovering Reason. And if you're really looking to geek out, check out Kurt Kurasaki (aka Peff), an officially endorsed super-Reason-geek who produces music, software patches, and publishes instructional books on the subject. I have a copy of his book Power Tools for Reason.

I can't say enough positive things about this program. I have used it on a daily basis for 4 years now on all of my personal recording projects and TV gigs. Don't let anyone convince you it's just for electronic music. They are so wrong. Lots of great rock artists use it, e.g. The Flaming Lips. It's an inexpensive way to increase your sonic palette and to make your audio toolbox a whole lot bigger.

Happy patching!