For Immediate Release:

MODERN BEAT PRODUCTIONS DISSOLVES LLC

For Immediate Release:

 Modern Beat Productions happily announces working on the final phase of production of "D.C. al Fine", the long-awaited, feature-length album produced by the Modern Beat Orchestra.

"It's fitting that this will be the last big project by Modern Beat Productions, as these tracks span a time period of several years - covering a lot of different sounds and styles," says David Jensen, president of Modern Beat Productions. "It has been a joy to produce these tracks, and we'll be happy to get them released after all this time."

Consisting of tracks from the past five years, the album will include all new remixes and unreleased tracks, featuring vocalist Jennifer Anne, Seeley's Girl, and the late, great, Darryl Pandy. Scheduled release date is May 1, 2013. Thank you for your support over the past few years, it's been a great experience!

Today make sure you check out the coolest Google Homepage ever! It is a tribute to Bob Moog's legacy. Make sure to donate to the Bob Moog Foundation! I've had the please of working with them several times, and they are great people dedicated to his legacy, and to the advacnement of music technology education! 

Taken from the Bob Moog Memorial Foundation website: At midnight on May 23rd, Bob Moog’s birthday,  Google released a Moog doodle on their homepage.  For one day only on the Google homepage, you’ll find an interactive, playable synthesizer-based logo inspired by the instruments with which Moog brought musical performance into the electronic age.  You can use your mouse or keyboard on the Moog doodle’s keys and dials to make nearly limitless sounds. Keeping with the theme of 1960s music technology, there is also a 4-track tape recorder so you can record, play back and share songs via short links or Google+.

Hard Drive Setup for Audio / Video Production Workstations
by David Edward Jensen for Modern Beat Productions

It’s been a while, but I wanted everyone to know that I’m back writing again. As things come up, I will start to post more articles ranging from technical to theoretical. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help answer some of your audio and video production questions along the way. The topic for today is hard drive setup, and it applies to both audio and video production. I know this may be something simple, but many people forget to consider how proper hard drive setup can dramatically affect workstation performance.

As always, think about your budget when deciding where to begin. While solid state drives are dropping in price, they still are nowhere near the price per GB as SATA drives. So, something to consider may be purchasing a SSD for your startup disk, and then SATA drives for the other bays. Other things to consider will be the speed of the drives as well as the amount of cache on the drives. You can get a 7200 RPM with 64 Mb of cache with 3 TB of storage for a very reasonable price now days.

Modern Beat Productions is now taking new mastering projects ranging from small to large, with duplication services covering small-run demos to large-scale, retail-ready orders.

"Up until now, mastering services were reserved for Modern Beat Digital Recording artists," said president, David Edward, "however, we have increased our productivity and streamlined our workflow to allow new clients. These clients can range from aspiring artists and touring musicians, to professional producers and post-production facilities."

7 Tips for Creating Big Drums in Your Mix
by David Edward Jensen for Prime Loops
   
Ever wonder how to get those tight, slammin' drum tracks that you hear in dance music? There are many methods to achieve these sounds, but here are a few techniques, ranging from beginning to more advanced to help you get the biggest boom for your drum tracks.

Tune Your Drums - When working with sampled drums, drum machines, or drum machine emulators, make sure to tune your kick to the fundamental frequency of the song. This will allow the kick to sit in a comfortable space that is pleasing to the ear. Also, for most dance music you would want to use more than one kick. I usually use a series of 3 kicks together in the following manner:

1. Sub-bass kick - you can create this with a virtual drum machine such as D-16's Drumazon, where you can emulate the classic sound of a 909, a preset in a soft synth like Rob Papen's Predator, or of course, if you have an analog synth or drum machine you can get your sub sounds from there. Use caution when adjusting the ASDR settings for the sub bass because it can become fatiguing if there's to much sustain on the kick, as it can also be difficult to tame in your mix - A little goes a long way in this frequency spectrum. This usually lies in the 30Hz to 70Hz range.