[This just in from PreSonus Artist Olesya Star, who recently completed an unusual duet.]
As an independent artist, people always tell me that to survive you have to take 2 steps left whilst walking forward or you’ll go in circles, so I always keep an open mind to new ventures, avenues and pathways through this minefield called the music biz. One such diversion presented itself to me recently in the form of a country duet, originally meant for Dolly Parton, but sung by Tim Rose. Tim was an original American troubadour who was a founding Greenwich Village folk musician in the 1960s, and former band member with the likes of Mama Cass (Mamas and Papas), and later in life Andy Summers (The Police) and Mick Jones (Foreigner). Sadly, I never met Tim Rose before he died in 2002, but by pure chance I was asked by an old friend of Tim’s if I would supply “Dolly Parton-like vocals” and work the track, originally recorded in 1988.
The tracks were originally recorded on 2″ tape, so the tape needed to be baked and digitized prior to landing on my studio desk. I had 24 tracks to play with that had been encoded at 24bit/96khz, which I brought immediately into PreSonus Studio One Professional v2. The job of identifying the microphones that were used in the original recording was completely irrelevant with Studio One, as it was far simpler just to make the recording sound how it should by using the simplest included Studio One features: Channel Strip, Compressor, Pro EQ, OpenAIR reverb and, my favorite by far, the Mulitiband Dynamics effect on the Master channel which glues the track together—sometimes much better than using summing mixers that cost in the thousands.
I recorded my vocals through the PreSonus AudioBox 1818VSL, dropped the majority of unnecessary channels/recordings, and sculpted a rough mix before handing the final session over to my producer/mastering guru, Adam Mills. Adam added some heart-poundingly heavy kick drum and a sprinkle of the missing magic by adding just 2-3% OpenAir in the Mastering/Project section of Studio One, as an insert, with a tight room preset— and no more pre-delay than 15-20ms. There you go, now I’m even handing out secrets!
The result is “You Can Hurry Darling (And I’ll Walk Slow)” which now sounds like I was in the room with Tim Rose at the same time, All thanks to Studio One and PreSonus. Here’s a sample, the full single drops Feb. 14!
So, we’re growing. Like, bursting-at-the-seams-growing, and have become a little too big for our britches. Sure, all the jambalaya and Mountain Dew consumption around the Baton Rouge office is clearly a factor, but the real issue is that we’ve simply hired a lot of people to do a lot of work, and now there’s too many people to fit into our current facility. It’s like a pro-audio clown car up in here. We’re gonna need a bigger boat.
In my role as the Social Media Manager for PreSonus, I work from my home in the passive-aggressive capitol of the world, Seattle. Fact is, the only reason I haven’t moved to Baton Rouge yet is because Ron says “We’d love to have you here, but there simply isn’t anywhere for you to sit.” So, I’m glad to see they’re workin’ on it, because I’m overdue for some Crawdad and Three-Cheese Baked Macaroni and kindness from strangers.
While this might appear to look like some concrete in a muddy field, this is a big step toward arriving in our new home. Look at it as the architectural equivalent of having gotten our drums tracks committed to tape, and we just called our first-call bassist to come do his job.
We’re hiring for more positions to come, by the way.
Big thanks to MultiTracks.Com for their NAMM 2013 coverage of the StudioLive 32.4.2AI!
Not to brag or anything. But this is newsworthy, right? Fact is it’s nice to be noticed, and it would seem that we turned a couple heads at NAMM. We got so many trophies and atta-boys that we couldn’t even fit them in our suitcases to go back to Baton Rouge, and they had to be shipped separately.
Here’s what we’ve won recently:
On the table, from left to right:
Visual Grand Prix Audio Excellence Award 2013, DAW category: Studio One 2
Electronic Musician, 2013 Editors Choice Award, category “Feature Creep Can Actually Be Good”: AudioBox 1818VSL
Music & Sound Retailer, 2013 Music & Sound Award, category Best New Mixer: StudioLive 16.0.2
Pro Audio Review, 2012 PAR Excellence Award: StudioLive 16.0.2
On the wall:
ProSoundWeb & Live Sound International, Readers’ Choice Awards 2013: StudioLive 24.4.2
ProSoundWeb & Live Sound International, Readers’ Choice Awards 2013: Studio One Professional 2
ProSoundWeb & Live Sound International, Readers’ Choice Awards 2013: Virtual StudioLive
ProSoundWeb & Live Sound International, Readers’ Choice Awards 2013: ADL 700
Music & Sound Retailer, 2012 “Show Us Your Tubes” award: Zombie attack video
Not in the photo but awarded at or immediately after NAMM:
AudioMedia Gear of the Year: Studio One Professional 2
Music Inc., Best in Show, Companies to Watch: PreSonus
SonicScoop Pick for NAMM: Sceptre CoActual monitor speakers and the StudioLive 32.4.2AI.
Church Production’s NAMM Top Five for Live: StudioLive AI PA speakers
Not a bad haul! We also were nominated for four TEC Awards but we didn’t win any. Again.
This just in from a friend of a friend… They spotted a StudioLive 24.4.2 in use at the Big Game’s Media Party! Thanks!