Album Studio Blog 2010 Week 27

[Greg]

Week 27 of "Hot Wire" Album (06/09/10) - Making my way through editing the video footage from our ABC2 piano/vox gig ... only a few still left to do ... What a great gig it was! I had to let u guys see this version of "Violently" ... Pat is so on it! ... One of the best versions we've ever played.

... eh?, not bad ma Bro :) ... it's gonna be a great DVD!

I'm going to put some inserts between each of the songs ... photos / images / video footage that set up the songs ... I was out at my mum's going through old photo albums looking for stuff to use and found this ...

The photo on the cover of our first album "Seduced and Abandoned" was taken by Jean Baptiste Mondino in Los Angeles, 1986. As you can see he took individual pictures of Pat and I, then loaded the negatives into two separate projectors, projected them onto a piece of card and then photographed the image on the card ... pretty inventive! ... very "pre-Photoshop"
I'm not going to put any of these images between the songs on the ABC2 DVD, I just thot I'd share them with you. I'm collecting all the "behind the scenes" stuff I can find on all our albums and by the end of the year I'll bundle what I've found with the download versions of our complete back catalogue on our Bandcamp site. Bandcamp allows you to include 100 Mb of "bonus material" with every album ... It'll be a kind of surprise package when you download the album ... all for £4.99! :)

OK. back to video editing ... my last week ... hurrah!

The Red Book Standard.
I was mastering the first album of my wee bro's new band Toy Tin Soldier this weekend. Its a really good record ... very alt country ... and I got to thinking about the audio CD standard "Red Book"
The audio CD was invented by Philips in the early 80's and Philips receives a royalty from every CD, CD and CD player sold in the world due to the fact that they license the technology to the manufacturers ... nicely done Philips :)

The basic "Red Book" specifications state that
1. Maximum playing time is 79.8 minutes
2. Minimum duration for a track is 4 seconds (including 2-second pause)
3. Maximum number of tracks is 99
4. Maximum number of index points (subdivisions of a track) is 99 with no maximum time limit
5. International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) should be included

It also specifies the form of digital audio encoding: 2-channel signed 16-bit Linear PCM sampled at 44,100 Hz. This sample rate is adapted from that attained when recording digital audio on PAL videotape with a PCM adaptor, an earlier way of storing digital audio.

And in a few years it will be obsolete :) ... Good riddance too ! ... The record companies deceived the consumer by saying the Cd was a new technology that was expensive to manufacture ... that was a lie! ... They and Philips conspired to suppress the fact that CDs were cheap to manufacture ... so they charged premium prices for Cds ... but we, the artists did not get anymore money! ... so glad we're out of that! ... Our own company Blairhill Records gets all the profits from our new albums now and you only pay £9.99 as opposed to £15.99!
There's a great book call "Music 3.0" by Bobby Owsinski that explains it in greater detail ... a must read!

[Vinny Vero]

Thanks for the reply, Greg. In my excitement, I referred to Bandcamp as Bootcamp, which is a program we use internally at my job. Perhaps I should proofread! Glad to hear there is going to be a ton of bonus material. Best of luck with the new album. We're following every entry here on the way to its release.

[Greg]

Thanks for the offer Vinny ... if we need any help, I'll definitely give u a shout. What Bandcamp allows bands to do is to do it for themselves ... ie we can price the downloads lower 'cause there's no one between the fan and the artist taking a cut! ... My plan is to include a commentary about each album from Pat and I, behind the scenes photo's, reviews, producers notes, etc as part of the 100mb bonus material ... I'm collecting all the data as we speak. G

[Vinny Vero]

Thanks for "Music 3.0", Greg. I'm gonna run out and get it. Well, I point and click online, actually.

As for the H&C back catalog, I've researched it for years in the hopes that one day I would be able to reissue the first three Circa/Virgin albums with a bonus disc of b-sides, remixes and demos. Cherry Red and Edsel/Demon are doing great work on those types of catalog reissues. I used to run the catalog division of EMI for six years and have worked closely with Rhino, Time Life and other companies on developing reissues. I'm dying to get someone to let me issues "S&A", "Remote" and "SCD".

When you upload everything to Bootcamp, will you be issuing the first three albums with bonus tracks from the relevant sessions? I've done this kind of stuff for a living over the last 20 years. If you want a hand, just give us a shout.

[Tracey]

With songs and performances like that no wonder 20 years on I remain a big fan of you guys.............thanks x

[Darren]

That track never ceases to give me goose bumps.

[Andy P.]

Great version of the song Pat was in the zone by the looks of it...lovin the video editing at 3.32 well done Greg.