OurStage Blog

Last week, we caught up with Ashley Matte, Annie Bethancourt, Terra Naomi and Xolie Morra to hear about their experiences performing at the 2010 Lilith Fair. This week, we are featuring the latest batch of Lilith winners and their stories. In case you haven’t heard, OurStage partnered with Lilith in April to give aspiring female solo artists and female-fronted groups the opportunity to play at the famous festival on stops across the US this summer. Since last week, OurStage winning artists Sarah Swenson, Katie Todd, duo Amanda Lucas and Audrey Cecil, and The Airplanes have all performed their sets, and we caught up with them afterward to hear how things went. From their stories it’s clear that each artist had a unique experience, but what they share in common is the increased exposure to new fans and the chance to stand side by side with some of the world’s top female performers.

"I was the everday girl hanging out with rock stars for a day." —Sara Swenson

Singer-songwriter Sara Swenson performed at the Kansas City stop of the festival alongside artists the likes of Emmylou Harris, Heart, Sarah McLachlan, and Ingrid Michaelson. “It was an unforgettable experience, from the buzz of interviews and excitement of fans beforehand to the fun photos and feedback afterward,” recalls Swenson. “It was a dream to be on the same bill as Sarah McLachlan and the other ladies on the Lilith Tour, and both playing a set to an attentive and enthusiastic audience on a secondary stage and sharing the big stage with all of the headlining artists for the finale were experiences I’ll never forget.”

"We had an absolute blast being part of such a high-profile event; it’s something we’ll never forget." —Amanda Lucas & Audrey Cecil

Recently, singer-songwriters Amanda Lucas and Audrey Cecil combined forces to perform and write as a duo. At their Lilith performance in Indianapolis, Cecil and Lucas played songs to “the largest crowd on the tour for the first performer of the day.” “Playing at Lilith Fair has created more of a buzz than we have ever experienced up to this point,” commented the duo. “By the time we were two songs in, our stage area was packed. Since returning from Lilith fair, we have had constant fan requests/chatter on our social networking sites and web page.” In the upcoming year, Cecil and Lucas have plans to record their first album together and hit the road to play dates in many US cities.

"Performing at Lilith was pretty much one of the best things that has happened in our short career so far." —The Airplanes

At the end of the day, each winning artist had the opportunity to perform a special finale on stage with all the other acts on the bill. Katie Todd, winner for Chicago, recalls the experience: “I really enjoyed the sense of camaraderie amongst all of the musicians. For the finale, Sarah McLachlan had all of the artists who performed that day up on the main stage singing ‘Because the Night’ by Patti Smith, and I’m still on a high from that experience.” You can watch a video of Todd onstage with McLachlan, Heart and Mary J. Blige, to name a few, here.

Throughout the month of July, artists have been battling it out in the “Drake Thank Me Later” competition for a shot at opening for the Canadian hip-hop sensation at the Caribana concert in Drake’s hometown of Toronto. The competition was opened to acts in the alternative hip-hop, hip-hop, rap, R&B and soul genres at the start of July and since then, more than 3,000 artists have entered their music. Chosen from the top 30 entrants, Lokz aka Yuri Koller stood out to Drake and his team as most worthy of the grand prize. In addition to scoring an opening spot at the concert, Lokz will receive four free tickets to the show so his friends can join the crowd of thousands in cheering him on. Standing by to cover the whole event from backstage will be Megan Sumpton, winner of the Backstage Correspondent component of the “Thank Me Later” competition. Megan will receive VIP backstage access to the show and, in addition to chronicling Lokz’s experiences, she will be responsible for interviewing Drake and other artists at the show.  Megan was chosen from a pool of more than 300 applicants, who all submitted audition videos to prove they had the right stuff for the job. She was also hand-picked by Drake and his team for the job. Check out the links to hear Lokz’s winning song and Megan Sumpter’s audition tape.

Winning Artist Lokz

Winning Backstage Correspondent Megan Sumpter

While searching for the next talented artists to feature on Soul Searching, the band Edge quickly came up on our radar. Their music seems to have influences from multiple genres, so defining them strictly as an R&B or soul band would be unfair. Edge describes their own music as rock/soul with influences ranging from Dave Mathews Band all the way to gospel music. After listening closely, we think you’ll find that their lead singer, and a few of their chord choices, are undoubtedly soulful. Not being able to place their music into one genre is what makes them unique and a very cool band to listen to. Edge is played on radio stations including KVTT 91.7 FM, 89.7 PowerFM and a few others. They’re also high up on the OurStage Best Of Charts for R&B and have been there for quite some time!

Edge’s lyrics are both uplifting and positive. The lead singer, Colin Edge sounds similar to Adam Levine of Maroon Five, with hints of Robin Thicke (especially on the song, Meant to Do sung mostly in falsetto). Take a listen and let us know what you think!

Its been a big 12 months for Moog Music. The electronic instruments company has purchased a new $2.5 million property to house new offices and serve as a musical tourist attraction in Asheville, NC, and it also won the MIX Foundation TEC Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement, Musical Instrument Category. The award joins a long list of Moog achievements, including Guitar Player’s Reader’s Choice Award, Electronic Musician’s Editor’s Choice Award, Popular Science’s Best of What’s New Award and NAMM Best In Show honors. And while rambling off a list of accomplishments similar to these is probably very exciting for industry insiders and instrument enthusiasts, there’s another list from Moog that this festival-goer for one is more excited about.

This past Tuesday, Moog was supposed to release the official lineup for 2010’s MoogFest, a 3-day festival slated for Halloween weekend celebrating the life and vision of the sonic pioneer and grandfather of Moog Music, Robert Moog. The festival has since moved the deadline back to August 10th, saying that still “need a little more time to put it all together”. Headliners Massive Attack, MGMT and Thievery Corporation were announced earlier this year and set the stage for such a synthesizer-heavy gathering, a genre quickly revolutionizing the indie roots of rock and pop. It makes sense, as Moog was one of the first companies to develop the synthesizer and went on to develop some of the most popular synthesizers ever.

MoogFest will take place at multiple venues across downtown Asheville, among them being the Asheville Civic Center Arena and renowned, world-classclub The Orange Peel. According to Moog’s site, the buck doesn’t stop with late-night sets coupled with the undoubtedly stunning lazer shows that accompany this kind of music. Patrons will also be able to attend workshops, engage with artists in panel discussions, take in visual art exhibitions, installations and film screenings and indulge their own musical creativity using an array of Moog instruments. No doubt a weekend providing a stimulating assault on all the senses. Tickets for MoogFest we also supposed to go on sale tomorrow (July 30th) but have been pushed back to August 13th. As always, we’ll keep you posted.

Every recording artist out there knows about “mastering”. You want to bounce down your audio and create a final “master” to duplicate the track to your CD’s so that it is of similar volume and quality to the rest of the tracks on that album. Today, though, “mastering” is a broader topic. Whether for an album or an MP3 download, mastering is a means for preparing a file for its distribution and final format destination. If you recall the Generation DIY post about mastering, you know that it is an art. It’s very tough to master but there are resources for artists that aren’t comfortable doing it themselves. This week, we’ll focus on how to make your final track sound better within the mastering phase. We’ll give you some clear-cut steps to mastering your audio, explain some of the formulaic techniques behind the process and, finally, give you some insight into the different approaches when you’re mastering material for different applications. If you aren’t experienced in the mastering phase and require more of a “step-by-step” process beyond this discussion, please access this great article.

How To:

Without getting too complicated or hypothetical, mastering has a few key steps and some simple tricks. While you may not be a professional mastering engineer, the steps can be used to simply put the final touch on your mixes. Our top three  steps are compression/normalization, equalization and reverb. As far as the tools are concerned, it’s common to go with software. Whether you choose an audio editor or a DAW, you’ll achieve similar results. DAW’s seem to work a little better because you can assign real-time plug-ins and adjust them to taste during playback.

Equalization is usually the first step when to improve the quality of a final mix. Even after all of the notching, panning, boosting and shaping done in mixing, the tracks can often lack a little punch. Therefore, it’s good to have a nice graphic EQ with a lot of bands so that you can use some subtle shaping on the final mix (i.e. make it a little more bass-heavy, or a little brighter, etc).

Compression and normalization for rock/pop applications will essentially just make your track louder. In today’s music industry, tracks are compressed and normalized so much that they are as loud as possible for the entirety of the song. Compression basically sets a volume threshold on an audio file, and any time a signal comes in at a louder volume than that threshold, it dampens it to the volume you specify. Therefore, it flattens out the dynamic range of a file, allowing you to boost the entire thing even louder without clipping. This boosting to maximum volume is called “normalization”. See pictures of both an uncompressed and compressed audio file for the same portion of the same song below:

Uncompressed, Normalized

Compressed, Normalized

Our final step is usually adding a touch of reverb on the final mix. Even if ambient spacing and subtle reverb was added during the mixing phase, it’s good to apply a small amount to the final mix to give the entire song a “space”. This isn’t a common practice with some “do-it-yourself” mastering engineers, but we think it gives songs a bit of an edge (especially in a band or singer/songwriter setting). Be careful here; a little goes a long way because too much will muddy things up.

Applications and Technical Information:

Even if you already know about these steps,  you might still be unsure how it all works. You may also be wondering the best way to master a free Mp3 download. First, let’s briefly clear up the difference between MP3s and CD-quality files. Traditionally, CD’s utilize uncompressed, raw audio files. Whereas, MP3 files are compressed and altered using an algorithm that eliminates certain parts of the spectrum. Let’s go further. An MP3 utilizes “critical band” information to determine which parts of the audio file can be eliminated without losing much quality. Simply put, our ear picks up certain frequencies within the same range (think about a band on an EQ). Therefore, if a loud frequency and a quiet frequency are heard by our ear within the same band, we won’t hear the quieter one that well anyway. So, the MP3 algorithm eliminates it entirely.

iTunes MP3

What does this all mean for the final song? While the difference is sometimes tough to hear unless you have high quality speakers, MP3s have a decidedly thinner sound. They don’t have all the dynamic range and nuance of, say, a WAVE or an AIFF file (for the algorithmic reasons specified above). So, we need to take this into account when mastering and bouncing the mix. As is the case with many technical topics, this could become an extremely lengthy explanation. However, we’ll give you a few tips. When mastering a WAVE/AIFF file that is, in fact, going to remain in its original format, be sure to record, edit and master at 16 bit, 44.1 kHz  for CD quality. You can also master intuitively. What you hear while mastering is what will be heard on a CD since the format won’t change.

However, if the final file will be in MP3 format (and in today’s industry, chances are it will be), record the raw audio at a higher bit-depth or sampling rate to help compensate for the lost data when converting to MP3 (making sure to keep it at the highest possible quality until the last conversion stage). We would also recommend some more compression and a higher boost in bass, as many people will probably listen to your track on ear buds and you need to compensate for their frequency/dynamic shortcomings.

Overall, when you get to the mastering phase of your recording, there is a lot to it by way of  “tech-related” information. Do some Google searches or check out the article that we linked you two in the first paragraph. There are many people out there writing other articles but keep in mind that mastering is the final stage. Whatever you do here will be heard. So compress it as much as you like, add as much high-end as you want. It’s the final touch before sending it off into the world.