Ask Brooks

Music Royalty Issues

I am planning on adding music to my Photo PDFs, but I don't want to infringe on any copyrights of either the artists or the producers of the music. How does one obtain the rights to reproduce music? Also, are there any "public domain" music sites that will allow reproduction of the music.  I'd like to use Classical, light Classical, and/or Blues and light rhythm.

— Doug

I have to confess, that we sort of cheat — not by breaking any laws or violating any copyrights, but rather by coming at this from a different angle.

There is a sizable corner of the music world known as "loops." These are short segments of musical phrases that can be strung together to write your own music. By combining any number of loops and repeating patterns into a multi-track audio software, you can easily create music riffs for your projects that are royalty free and unique to you — because you are the creator! Another way to express your creative impulses in a project. There are thousands — check that, more like millions — of loops available via download representing every musical instrument, style, key, beat, and rhythm you could possibly want. Most are free; some of the better ones have a nominal cost. Do a Google search for loops or free loops.

Here are a couple of longer experiments where I was just playing with the segments to see what I could do. The first one is from 2001 titled Dharma Greb's. It uses 27 different loops.

Dharma Greb's

Loop Fun Blues

They are certainly not great tunes, but I did have fun with the concept and learned enough to make audio for our products.

Here are a few of the individual loops used in the first composition.

120_arpeg_a_1

120_arpeg_a_7

PW-Flute1a-Short-FadeIn-96bpm-C

PW-Strings3a-96bpm-C-Cascade1

And finally, here are a couple of very simple loop compositions that I made in about 10 minutes of playing around that may sound familiar to LensWork fans.

Marimba - Long Version

LXT intro tabla loop

I first discovered this world with a program called Acid Loops, now Acid Pro 7 from Sony. I now use Adobe Audition to create them. Here's an online software that I've seen mentioned a few times, but I have no experience with it.

Before I discovered loops, I tried — unsuccessfully — to find and buy canned, royalty free music created by professional musicians. They all sounded like business success meeting themes that the corporate world would probably love. I spent countless hours previewing sample cuts on the web and even purchased a couple of CDs of royalty free music. They were all pretty awful — at least for my uses. Who knows, however, they might be a lot better now than when I was looking for something 10 years ago.

I can tell you this: it's a lot more fun to create your own music with loops and a rainy afternoon!

Darkroom Tours

It has been a while since you had a darkroom visit in LensWork Extended. Will there be any coming up this year?

 — Robert Armstrong

We are working to include more videos of all kinds in LensWork Extended. This is part of our conversion to Acrobat 9 and flash videos.

As to darkroom tours specifically, yes. As yet, we've not recorded any more, but we do have a couple of photographers who've agreed to allow us to do it. It's now just a matter of scheduling the time and doing the recording.

BTW, another part of this discussion for us is the logistics of production. All the darkroom tour videos you've seen in previous LensWork Extended issues (except Mark Griffith) were all shot using Mini DV tapes. What a pain. Slow, difficult, finicky, expensive, and giant files sizes — not uncommonly 7-8 gigabytes in a single file. Yikes.

As the technology has continued to evolve, I've been hotly following the use of still cameras that have a video mode. They are really starting to come into their own — at least for the sort of casual videos we produce. I was simply amazed at the quality of the HD (1280x720 AVCHD) progressive scan videos that come from my new Panasonic DMC-ZS3 camera — a pocketable camera I used for snapshots and video in Asia last fall. I researched this class of small cameras and this one seemed like the winner of the group — and it's proven itself worthy of the positive reviews it received. When I've use footage from this camera to make 720x405 videos for viewing on the computer, they are simply flawless. Amazing.

We actually did a number of video interviews in the last couple of years using Canon PowerShot Pro S5 IS digital cameras. For computer resolution videos (640x480) they worked great! We selected this model because it allow us to lock focus and exposure manually — a very necessary feature for top quality videos. We even did three-camera shoots (like the pros) using three different cameras recording simultaneously and then mixing them in Premiere Pro. If you saw our interviews with Rosanne Olson or Bruce Barnbaum (#75), or Jim Laurence (#76), you've seen this three-camera technique with the Canon cameras. All the live videos in our Folios Workshop were recorded with these cameras.

As our skills have improved and as the cameras have evolved, video has become more and more practical for us. So, look for more video content, including more darkroom tours, in upcoming issues of LensWork Extended.

Your Podcast Audio Equipment?

Brooks, I'd like to know what audio gear you use to record your podcasts. Is the Olympus DM-520 unit suitable for that? I have an older Olympus DM-20 recorder that I overpaid for years ago. It would be useful for dictation, but its sound quality would be too poor for field recording of sound I might intend for a polished audio presentation like a podcast or multimedia soundtrack.

— Michael Sebastian

 

I also have a DM-20 and it is a great unit for notes, but I agree not quite up to doing podcasts — or for that matter, gathering field audio for multimedia publications. That's precisely why I upgraded to the DM-520.

I suppose the best way to answer your question is to let you decide for yourself. Here are two audio clips you can compare. I recorded these two clips simultaneously, from the same distance — about 4 inches from my mouth.

Studio audio sample

Olympus DM-520 audio sample

For reference, here are the notes on my studio recording system:

• I record directly on the computer through a Creative Audacity sound card (PC)
• Adobe Audition audio software
• The microphone is a (now discontinued) Audio Technica large diaphram, side-entrance studio mic model AT3035 (pretty similar to the current AT2035 [Amazon.com link]) I suspend from a swing arm boom and have shock mounted.
• But here is the real key to my "radio announcer voice" — not genetics, but another application of technology. The signal from the AT3035 is passed through a Behringer VX2000 Voice Processor that makes me sound far better than I do in real life. This is a fabulous unit (again, unfortunately discontinued but available regularly on eBay) that expands, opto compresses, applies an EQ, de-esses, and employs a tube emulator. It takes some fussing to dial it in, but it does wonders to improve the fidelity of the spoken word. They also make a model VX2496 which was a newer version (also discontinued, also available on eBay) that included a digital converter. I have one of those, too, which I use on an Audio Technica headset mic (ATM75)on occasion. I keep each voice processor dialed for its mic, that way I don't have to change the dials depending on which mic I am using.
• The audio signal path is from the mic, through the voice processor, into the mic-in jack in the back of the computer.

The studio mic, swing-arm boom, shock mount, p-pop filter, and voice processor totaled about $500 because I purchased them all new. Used on eBay, the entire setup could now be purchased for about $250 I'd guess.

Here is a photograph of me recording a podcast using this system at my desk.

Do you need all this stuff? Probably not. I do this for a living, so I want my work to sound as professional as I can. Could the Olympus DM-520 do the job without all the studio equipment fuss and expense? I think so. It sounds pretty darned good in my opinion.