Music (Album Version)

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Don't Stop The Music

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Memories of the Eighties - Fashions, Music, and More

Eighties style finds new converts

The '80s inspired clothing has been a big hit in 2009, with parents snapping up the brightly-colored individualistic fashions that make an eighties statement. The Washington Times even did an article about the return of '80s style in 2009. They recognized that the best known designers were 'playing an ode to the decade.'

Stonewashed jeans, jellies sandals, parachute pants, IZOD shirts, shoulder pads and neon colors were all a part of the era. Now, in the U.S. and Great Britain, kids with well-off parents are plucking down serious mulla for updated versions of all of these retro styles.

The acid-washed denim jacket, sequined sweaters, Members-only jackets, polo shirts, Swatch watches, leggings and penny loafers were all a part of the '80s and have all been adapted to the current generation.

The eighties had its own identity

Video games and music videos were both making their presence known in the eighties. Super Mario Brothers was a forerunner of many generations of video games. Some memorable moments came from music videos by Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince and Jennifer Beal. All were monumental videos. Can anyone forget Courtney Cox coming out of the audience to join Bruce on stage?

Most of what drove the music video craze in the '80s was the growing popularity of MTV. During the eighties, MTV was all about music videos. It changed music, outside of a live concert, from a purely audio experience to a visual experience as well.

The big screen was entertaining in the eighties also. Movie theaters were showing Ghostbusters, E.T., Nightmare on Elm Street, Naked Gun, The Breakfast Club and Dirty Dancing. Dirty Dancing was the only one of the six that made anyone at the time think about fashion.

In the eighties, New Wave meant something much different than changing the way you move your hand as you depart from other people. Music during the eighties was diverse and appealed to numerous subgroups of music fans. Cultural trends also included a distinct personality type referred to as a 'valley girl.' We discovered that Velcro was useful and large sharks should be avoided.

Eighties style technology

The Internet was still in its infancy in the eighties. Sure, we had computers, but their main purpose was to act as a word processor, run some relatively simple games and spreadsheets. 'Car phones' were gaining popularity. As a matter of fact, technology was gaining a new foothold and would never turn back.

Games like laser tag, garbage pail kids and Atari were popular. Fantasy Island and The Cosby Show were fun shows while Knight Rider, MacGyver and The A-team provided enough action for action fans. Saturday mornings meant the Smurfs and the Care Bears.

If you were in your teens or twenties during the eighties, you may have particularly fond memories of Flashdance, Up Where We Belong, We are the World or The Lady in Red. Music was all over the charts during the decade.

It's no wonder that baby and toddler clothing that celebrates this decade has been so popular. Adults have rediscovered the joys of eighties style as they reminisce about the unique music, movies and TV shows that were the eighties.

The Retro Baby was founded in 2004 and quickly gained an enthusiastic following. The TheRetroBaby.com website soon followed. We have built TheRetroBaby on the philosophy of customer satisfaction and original, unique products.

From our humble beginnings, and the expansion of our warehouse and shipping operation in south Florida, The RetroBaby developed our original offering of hip, trendy clothing for babies and toddlers. Our clothes hearken back to the days of Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and the Stones; clothes that you won't find on the baby next door. You can pay tribute to the greats of rock and roll and popular culture with our unique clothes.

Purchase Cheaper iPods - Great Way To Enjoy Music

Portability is everything. The new generation of your adults is now vulnerable without them. From mobile phones to their audio players, they are nothing but lost without their mini portable gadgets. No more constraints of those ugly cable or wires. The powers of satellite, Bluetooth, infrareds and lithium ion batteries give amazing benefits to the world of the portable gadgets.

Apple's iPod is the most coveted of the portable wireless devices ever made. This gadgets does ways with brining a CD player that's bulky. Plus the CD player needs constant changing it's CD. This can be very annoying to the user. Not the iPod, this gadget can store up to 500 songs in one small compartment. It is the best alternative technology has to offer the audio freaks of this century. But, it is rather nasty on the budget. When it first came out, it was sold for $399 USD. This limited the users to the upper classes. But, like all products that are in demand it will not be long before competitors come up with their own version. Any engineer or computer wizard can dissect it and come up with a new version that does not come as expensive.

Cheaper version then flooded the market soon afterwards. These versions are not exactly imitations of the original iPod. They are unknown brands which use less expensive materials and were not highly invested on product development and research. That is why they are more affordable than Apple iPod. They come close to the original as far as memory capacity is concerned. Storing up to 120 songs, they come with a 512 MB like the shuffle.

Being low on budget is no surprise to everyone. Buying gadgets are always rivaled by the necessities of everyday living. That's the purpose of having the more inexpensive MP3 portable audio players. They come for only $70 USD and they also have nearly the same features as the iPod. Now, having to own a portable audio player will not be denied to the public.

Of course, in any marketplace or profit generating commodity competition is a must. These cheap iPods are not new to this arena. They junk down their prices to have a taste of the market share. Finding a nich that are hungry to have a piece of the original iPod, it was phenomenally successful. Within their own right, they too compete with each other. A variety of memory capacity is another way to beat one another. As well as, size and stylishness of their design are also great vantage point to contend as rivals would. More and more, these cheaper versions reached a certain apex of respectability.

Inline with this competition, there have been advances relating to these cheap versions. The makers contrive to make their own line of products better than what Apple iPods came up with. Take for example the Shuffle, their version are smaller and less heavy with 1GB for its memory span. Almost the same yet a little better, this is what keeps these cheaper versions good at what they have come up with. It may not be branded as what the real thing is, yet it can walk side by side with it head on. Some can even trick the naked eye with its appearance. They really don't intend to claim that they are iPods but they have physical similarities that are watertight. This is tagged at a hundred US dollars. Still, it is a far cry from the three hundred US dollars of the actual cost to buy the original. For 240 playing songs, this is by far a good find.

Saving a buck or two is always a good thing. When luxury is limited to the buying public because of its exclusivity or price range, rest assured that it will not be long before an ingenious plot to destroy it is concocted. Technology is suppose to be indiscriminating and for everybody's disposal. That's why breaking monopoly is never a crime. This is the best rule of thumb that any economist lives by. Where there is ample opportunity to generate money there's always competition to get the gear of development going.

This is the best thing that can happen to any consumer who would like to strike a balance between enjoying the small comforts of what techie gadgets can offer and not completely becoming bankrupt in the process.

Abhishek is passionate about Ipods and he has got some great Ipod Secrets up his sleeves! Download his FREE 68 Pages Ebook, "Maximizing The Performance Of Your Ipod" from his website http://www.Fun-Galore.com/13/index.htm. Only limited Free Copies available.

Baby Genius Favorite Nursery Rhymes w/bonus Music CD

This outstanding collection of Baby Genius DVDs includes themes about playtime outings and little children interacting in the events and places around them. The focus is on entertainment and teaching children in an environment filled with fun and adventure. Animation is combined with children’s songs and includes fun-loving Baby Genius characters like DJ the Dinosaur, Vinko the Dancing Bear and more.

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Elmo's World - Dancing, Music, and Books

Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 06/03/2003 Run time: 50 minutes Rating: Nr

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How to Mix Music - Using Compressors - The Basics

In the mixing stage of music production, there are a variety of hardware that we can use. These hardware generally fall into either processors or effects. A processor is a hardware that takes the complete signal and manipulates it entirely, completely changing the original signal. An effect however, only takes a part of a signal, applies effects to the signal, then returns the effected signal mixed in with the non-effected signal to produce an effected sound.

In general, a compressor is a processor to regulate the dynamics of a musical performance. It's used to create a more consistent and clear sound. And as in any hardware, there are parameters we manipulate to shape and form the sound character that we want. The parameters of a compressor are:

1. Input Gain. This parameter functions to increase the signal coming into the compressor. Because compression is used to regulate dynamics, raising the input gain knob can increase the silent parts of the signal so we can hear it more clearly without raising the loud signals too loud because of the compression that happens. Which brings us to:

2. Threshold. The threshold is the value where the compressors starts kicking in. In digital music production, the loudest signal is 0 dBFS (decibel Full Scale). So for example, if we set the threshold at -24 dBFS, any signal that is louder than that will be compressed and any signal below that will maintain its original dynamics. How much compression happens is determined by the next parameter:

3. Ratio. The ratio determines how much compression happens by using a ratio such as 2:1, 4:1, and 8:1. What the numbers mean is this: for example, a 2:1 ratio means every 2 dB of signal that's higher than the threshold will be decreased to only be as loud as 1 dB. The same for 4:1, every 4 dB of signal higher than the threshold will be decreased to 1 dB (a stronger compression ratio). Combining threshold and ratio, if the threshold is set at -24 dBFS and a signal peaks at -16 dBFS, with a ratio of 4:1 the signal will be compressed to peak at -22 dBFS instead.

4. Attack. Attack determines how fast the compressor reacts to a signal that crosses above the threshold. Attack is usually determined in milliseconds. For example, a fast attack setting would be around 5 ms: meaning, 5 ms after a signal crosses the threshold the compressor starts to compress the signal. An example of a long attack setting would be 100 ms. The fast and long attack settings determine the character of the transients (or the very early part of an audio signal): fast attack settings mean the transients get compressed also, while long attack settings mean the transient is allowed through while the body of the signal gets compressed. Transients are usually preserved for percussive instruments, such as the early "snap" of a snare.

5. Release. Release is the opposite of attack, and it determines how long the compressor maintains the gain reduction achieved after the signal returns to a level below the threshold. A short release means the gain reduction is let go immediately after the signal drops below the threshold while a long release means the gain reduction stays longer even though the signal is no longer above the threshold. For example, a longer release is usually used to maintain a sustained sound for the decay of a bass guitar.

6. Output Gain. The complement to input gain, output gain (or sometimes make up gain) is used to bring the audio signal back to it's level in the mix after compression. Usually we want to use compression to even out the sound, but not make the sound smaller in the mix. That's when we use the output gain to bring the level back to before compression.

Depending on the hardware or software plug-in that you use, the compressor might have more or less parameters than the four above (there are even compressors that are designed only with a single knob!). Such parameters might include high frequency or low frequency cut, a gain reduction meter, or others. Since each hardware of software has it's own design and characters, the most important quality a sound engineer or mixing musician can have is the spirit of experiment! You never know until you hear it used in the mix.

Hopefully this article can help you to use compression better to make better mixes of your music.

To your compression excitement,

Endy

Endy Daniyanto is a music production teacher who produces his own music from the comfort of his modest home studio. Read more music production tutorials on his website:

[http://music.endydaniyanto.net/ezine]

Audio Production Software - Make Music With Your Computer

If you are looking to produce music with your computer you should first considering having a computer with the necessary capabilities in order to run the audio production softwares smoothly. Nothing ruins the music making process as much as delay and insufficient virtual memory to run all the necessary modules for your music software. As for the actual softwares there are many to consider. ProTools are the industry standard but these setups usually start at least $10000. However for a consumer level there are alternatives that are in much reasonable prices, for the PC you can consider, ProTools Le, Sonar, Cubase. For the mac Garage Band and Pro Logic are also highly popular choices.

In addition to the actual hardware of the computer, you may need to consider looking at the additional hardwares that can be incorporated into the music making process. For instruments you can consider keyboards and guitars, for recording purposes of course a microphone would be suitable. Many production setups incorporate a keyboard that can produce many sounds. On the more expensive side of these keyboards we call them "synthesizers" and what these can do is actually have built in sequencers in the keyboard. Packed with a lot of built in sounds and room for expansion through memory card slots you can actually do the whole recording process in your keyboard by itself. On the cheaper side of things we have keyboards with none of those functions, but its main use is to connect to the computer to act as the controller for all the sounds that you have on your computer. Both are advantageous in their own right and it comes down to personal preference. Finally buying an interface allows you to link all these sound sources and translate them to a signal that the computer and your music software can understand.

With all the software & hardware in place you can begin the recording process. One approach is to record through your mic, so that could include vocals, guitars sounds, piano or any other instrument to your liking. When recording with a mic, usually a condenser mic is a lot more popular when it comes to recording vocals. Where as a normal mic is cheaper and may be effective in recording instruments such as guitars. With the interface after you plug in your mic a lot of these interfaces have built in phantom power which is needed to power these mics. Another popular option is instead using the keyboard as a controller and allowing it to instruct "sounds" from your music software and allowing you to record it. The large advantage of this approach is that with simply a keyboard you have access to unlimited sounds as with music production softwares there is a lot of room to experiment with different sounds and effects to your liking. Even with different sounds, you can record with different effects live so that you can hear it in real time. This is gaining popularity because not only is it cost effective but it packs a lot of functions into one computer.

Will C has been producing music for a number of years, in his free time he is also a junkie for home improvement. Check out his website on kitchen unit doors

About Music Production Software

You probably are either not aware of what software is out there to help you in a music production endeavor, or do not know where to start. There is a lot of software out there for creating and editing music, many of which are very professional. When it comes down to it, the software you will end up using will mostly depend on your particular taste in music production software. Although similar, most of the programs you will encounter have significant differences that will greatly affect the outcome of your music.

Propellerheads Reason 

Propellerheads Reason is a very unique software, turning your computer into a complete studio. If you are already familiar with making synthesized sounds and using a sequencer, Reason should not be anything out of the ordinary, and the learning process is very small. Reason comes packed with different synthesizers (including the powerful Thor Polysonic Synthesizer) and effects all at your disposal. For years, people have used this software because of its simplicity and professional organization. Another feature you might like about Reason is its ReWire feature. ReWire is a protocol developed by Steinberg and Propellerhead that lets you remotely control digital audio software through a host application. For example, Propellerheads Reason can be used as a slave application providing sounds to Steinberg Cubase's tracks using ReWire. 

Steinberg Cubase

Since April 1989, Steinberg GmbH has been developing a revolutionary project called Cubase (originally called Cubit). Today, it is among the most renowned music production software in the industry. Its long-standing innovations have helped the musical community flourish and quickly move from live recordings of instruments to sampled electronic instruments. Along with its reputation comes its use by film scorers to produce crystal clear and realistic orchestral scores, making it cheaper to produce soundtracks for movies now. Its clean and professional-looking interface lets you see what is what, and lets you work smoothly and quickly, if you are under time constraints.

Cakewalk Sonar

Produced by Yamaha, Cakewalk is another of the industry's leading music production programs. If you have worked before with software sequencers, you probably have had to deal with computer resource constraints from time to time and had to accommodate for them. Cakewalk goes around this by offering hardware that will handle the number crunching for the computer system, while it only worries about sending and receiving signals, and playback. Cakewalk has been around since 1987, when its first release for DOS was put forth. Learning to use Cakewalk is not exactly easy, but when you get around to it, you will be mastering music production shortly after.

Pro Tools

Produced by Digidesign, Pro Tools has been hitting big since 1989, when it first released as Sound Tools. Along with Steinberg Cubase, Pro Tools is another software that film music producers enjoy using. Sometimes they use both, like Hans Zimmer. Pro Tools' interface has very little fancy things cluttering the screen, giving you plenty of editing space. Most of the features are accessible through the menu. Just like many other programs of the same nature, Pro Tools implicates the ability to use hardware routed to the computer in order to do the heavy number crunching that eats up the computer's resources normally. However, unlike other programs, Pro Tools actually requires at least one Digidesign hardware component in order to run. If you have a high budget, Pro Tools is a good option for you.

Miguel Leiva-Gomez is a freelance writer, freelance computer engineer, programmer, musician, and song writer. His passions are music, computers, technology, and educating people. He has always strived his best to explain things in the simplest possible terms to make people understand what he has to show the world. His voice has been heard in cities like Miami, and even in places like Oradea, Romania. Blog: [http://mercuryarticles.servehttp.com/blog/]

Music Production - The Software

Music Production Software is properly in most studios the home of the studio, if it wasnt for Fruity Loops, Reason, Logic Pro or even Pro Tools many studios could not function. If your thinking of becoming a producer or starting a music production studio, the software is very important. Don't pick a software you feel is going to slow down your studio or is too much for your studio, pick what you feel is right and what you are comfortable with.

The most popular music production software out there right now is Fruity Loops, it is used by almost every new producer out there. It is very easily accessible and can be found floating about on the internet or bought from a local PC store. Reason 3/4 or even Logic Pro 8 made by Apple for mac are amazing and give your music amazing results, they are very popular choices made by producers as sequencers because of the amount of things that come with the software to enhance your music.

You should pick something that works well for you. You should sit down for a week and test of the demo versions. Be comfortable within what ever software you use to produce music, it will show in your music production. You should pick something to suit your level and skills too, i wouldn't recommend a newbie producer to start with logic pro if they have never made a beat before. Do you research before you make the purchase of any music production software, watch tutorials and read reviews on the software you think would be best for you.

For more information visit http://www.musicproducerpro.net

Good luck

J.Baileyy

How to Start Recording Music at Home

It's perfectly possible to make very high quality recordings at home with today's computer technology. However, you will need to spend a fair bit of money on software, and hardware (such as high quality microphones and soundcards) in order to achieve this. BUT DON'T WORRY! It is entirely possible to make recordings at home that are very respectable in quality whilst spending only a relatively small amount of money! Even better news...it's all pretty easy to do!

I like to think of my home recording set-up like an artist's sketchbook. It's somewhere to play around with my ideas, record a few vocal takes, put down a basic bass line, some simple drums and maybe a guitar track behind it. It's then that the magic really starts. On pretty much all music software you can just copy and paste individual parts (or whole sections) around, just like you would do in a word processor. This makes it really easy to swap verses around, try a new drum beat on a different section...anything you can think of really.

Home studio software usually has a good selection of instruments built in, so you can add piano, strings, brass, synth and many more sounds to your songs. If you're an accomplished keyboard player you can play all these different parts in via a (music) keyboard. If not, you can just play the notes in on screen (and you can change them really easily if you play a wrong note).

Like I said, if you want to do this all at a really high (studio quality) level, then you'll need to think about investing some serious cash. But most software and hardware manufacturers have realised that there are loads of people like you and me out there, and have produced some really good 'Entry Level' cut down versions of their studio quality kit.

What you'll need to get started.

At the most basic level, all you need for recording at home is a microphone, a sound card and a computer running some recording software. Lets look at the hardware first.

Microphones

You can use the same microphone you would use for live shows for basic home recording (the Shure SM58 is a tried and tested classic), but you'll want to think about getting a studio quality condenser microphone if you want to record higher quality vocals.

Pop Shield

Pop shields are an inexpensive device that attaches to the mic stand, and stops loud blowing and popping noises from reaching the microphone. Singers make these noises mostly when singing 'P' and 'B' type sounds. You can make basic pop shield by stretching a pair of tights over a wire coat hanger! It won't be as good as a professional one, but it will do the job pretty well!

Sound Cards

The majority of sound cards that come with computers are not designed for use with music programs. If you try to use them for recording music the quality will be much lower and you will experience large delays which will make recording impossible. If you want to do home recording then you will need a soundcard that has been designed for this purpose.

There are several different types:-

Internal Cards - If you have a PC that has a spare internal card slot, then you can get a relatively inexpensive sound card that can be used for home music production. If you know what you are doing you can fit them yourself, but if you're in any doubt then please (for your own safety) get someone who knows what they are doing to fit it.

USB / FIREWIRE - there are some great sound cards that attach via USB/FIREWIRE. They usually cost a little bit more, but are really easy to transfer between computers if you use more than one.

Another thing to consider when you are buying a sound card is whether or not it will directly accept the signal from your microphone. It will almost certainly tell you this on the package / website where you buy it from, and may say something like 'Mic Preamp'. If it doesn't then you will need to connect it via your mixing desk.

Now lets talk about the software

On the most basic level, the software works by recording each channel of music (e.g. Vocals, Guitar, Drums etc). You can then alter the volumes of each of the different tracks, just like you would do live on a mixing desk. Each separate channel can be chopped up and moved around (just like you can copy and paste text in a word processor). This is what makes recording on computers much more powerful than old style tape recordings. Finaly you can add effects like compression, reverb and delay to individual tracks (or to the whole mix) then your track is about finished.

I've always used software from a company called Steinberg. It's very powerful software and it's pretty easy to understand. Steinberg produces a very high quality studio program called Cubase 4. They also produce a cut down version for the home user called Cubase 4 Essential, and another piece of software aimed at total beginners called Sequel. There are several other companies that also make great quality, affordable software for home recording.

Once you've got the basics set up, you just need to get recording, and try out new things. Make sure you read the user manual to get full benefit out of these powerful pieces of software.

Good luck, and above all, enjoy your music!

Gemma King is a Professional Singer, Songwriter, Vocal Coach and Artist Consultant. She regularly writes for her newsletter which is a must read for both amateur and professional singers alike.
Gemma has also written a book on how to become a singer which is available on her website now.