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Check out this great WorkStation keyboard from Yamaha. It has great sounds from samples of real instruments. A sequencer records your MIDI data and it also records analog audio from a mic or guitar. It can be integrated with most computer DAW and works especially well with Cubase where it becomes a  control surface.  Come in today and check it out!

Dear Valued Customer,

Don’t miss the Yamaha Live Sound Clinic at Easy Music Center King St. this Thursday at 5pm!

John Schauer will cover “How to Mix the Band.”

We will have a live band on-site. You will get to see in person what a sound guy needs to do to be successful on the job. This is the first PA clinic we have ever done that was like this. Don’t miss it! There will be a special discount on all Yamaha products for those who attend this clinic.

Who: Yamaha’s John Schauer and Easy Music Center
What: Live Sound – Mixing with the band
When: Nov 19th, Thursday, 5pm to 7pm
Where: Easy Music Center – 1314 S. King St. G1
Why: We’ve gotten repeat requests from customers to cover this great topic at our clinics. Don’t miss out. John kicks butt and is a very easy person to understand. His clinics have been fun and exciting in the past.

Professional Biography of John Schauer

With more than 25 years of professional audio experience, John is a 22-year veteran of Yamaha Corporation of America. He has worked with many professional sound companies, sharing with them both his technical expertise and experience. Having provided audio for television, corporate, theatrical, and concert events earned him the responsibility of providing audio support for all of Yamaha’s corporate functions. He is instrumental in advising many of Yamaha’s retail dealers in planning church and school installations, helping them select the proper equipment. His seminars to end users, product specialists, and salespeople alike are very well received. In his product demonstrations, he explains complex theories and other hard-to-understand topics by breaking them down into easy to follow terms. His past experience in Yamaha’s service department has helped him maintain very close contact with customers to help them through installation questions, setup, and operational issues. In his current role as product manager, he is instrumental in developing products that the professional audio market requires.

Let’s hear it for the Band!

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I just finished going through one of the events, Hawaii Music Works performance.  They had 4 bands (!!!) perform that day, 11 songs total.  We recorded everything through our PreSonus StudioLive 16 channel mixer; it records 16 tracks separately to our computer. I also had 2 cameras shooting video from the event.  I got all the tracks from our computer last night and uploaded the video to my computer over the past week (500 gigs of video, 2 hours worth!).

So I started with the audio, mixing everything in Cubase 5. I compressed and gated the drum tracks and got a good mix on just the kit. Then I added the bass guitar, other instruments, grouped everything, then tackled the vocals.  There were 4 bands and all the players play differently, so I had to create different mixes for each band, sometimes each song too. One of the best parts of Cubase 5 is the new Reverb effect. It just adds so much depth to the sound and makes it really sound like it’s in a room, and not directly in your face.

I’m continually surprised at how well the audio comes through that PreSonus StudioLive.  We have some issues with the drums being so close to the vocal mics, but other than that, it’s very pristine and sounds really good. And with 16 separate tracks, I can really get each part to sound its best (assuming I know what I’m doing!).

After mixing the audio, I export each song to its own WAV file (48kHz, 16 bit for video) and then dump it into Final Cut Express, where my video is waiting.  I align both cameras and sync up all the audio, then I make my 2 camera cuts.

Here’s what my computer usually looks like running all the programs:

After all this editing, I can finally render the videos. We use YouTube for our video hosting, and they allow up to 10 minute videos, so I have to decide where to chop my hour long video so it makes sense when viewing the smaller chunks.

All in all, I had about 2 hours of raw video (x2, 1 for each camera) and 2 hours of raw audio (x16 tracks!) and I had to make them all cohesive and sound good.  I’d say the audio mixing took me about 3 hours, the video editing took 2 hours, and then the proofing and exporting takes another 3-4 hours.  Rendering all that video takes a while.  I’ll be posting the resulting videos on our YouTube and linking them to this website, probably later tonight at home after they upload. I usually upload a batch overnight, since each video can take up to an hour to upload as well.

I have one more clinic to do from that day, and I have to hurry up because we have another clinic coming up on Tuesday! So I have to clear my drives and cameras to make room for the new data.

We will soon be offering this process as a service to any band who wants to make a quick album or video.  We’ll share the details of that later, but know that the service is available!  You can do video with audio, or just audio. So let us know; we have a few people here who can mix down the audio for you.

– Chris