Promedia Blog - Page 15 

Disc Makers, the nation's leader in high quality CD Duplication, partnered with ProMedia Training this week. Not only will ProMedia Training students get additional discounts on CD duplication, but ProMedia will provide a resource of Pro Tools Training and Audio Education to Disc Maker's client base. We will be hosting and developing webinar training, tutorials, online blogs and an assortment of various tools to allow aspiring artists and engineers to improve the quality of their music, mixes and production. We are excited about our partnership and our mutual commitment to making great music and getting it heard.

Disc Makers is not only committed to flawless duplication and artistic presentation, but also committed to helping it's customer base maximize the tools available to make better music. Disc Makers knows ProMedia Training is the #1 Training Center in the U.S for Authorized Avid and Pro Tools Training and Certification, with 7 Locations Nationwide for hands-on instruction in the areas of Pro Tools, Music Production and Audio Engineering Education.

Whether you are a singer/songwriter, musician, producer or aspiring engineer, ProMedia Training has classes that will take your skills to the next level. ProMedia also offers high-level private and on-site training to Industry Professionals who are looking to increase work-flow productivity and stay on the cutting edge of new technology. References include, "The Voice," "CNN, " "NFL," "Turner" and many more available upon request.

Auto-Tune is one of the most widely used plug-ins in music production. This tutorial shows you the power within this amazing audio processor.

How many of you want to share your studio work with other people?

As we start expanding the scope of our work, each of us will find ourselves at some point needing to share work across other DAW software or sessions such as Logic, Nuendo, Studio One, etc. There are many reasons you might share your projects, such as working with collaborators, sending your song to a mix engineer, or having to integrate your work with other material, such as a video. For whatever the reason, the transfer of information between platforms is happening at a fast and furious pace and understanding some basic procedures will make things flow a lot smoother for you.

Let’s first look at some of the scenarios you might encounter in the course of working on a session. You have a partner or group of people you collaborate with and they are using different DAW’s in their own studio. The keyboard player might be using Logic, the drummer might be using Pro Tools, and the Singer/Guitar player is using Nuendo. You will have to put all these different pieces together in order to give them to the Mix Engineer who might be using Pro Tools. This type of thing is very common in the musical landscape. Another scenario might involve transferring material between video editing systems such as Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, Premier, back and forth to Pro Tools so you can do the Audio Post Production. Each of these situations might require a slightly different workflow, but in the end the same goal is being accomplished - sharing information across different platforms.

Being an Avid educator, the long anticipation and months spent on web gossip sites has all come to reality now regarding the new release of Avid Pro Tools 11. There are many new features in Pro Tools 11 that will be released upon us, and what a beast it is.

Steven Tyler to Take Part in Keynote Interview at ASCAP EXPO

WHEN: ASCAP Expo Event Los Angeles April 18th -“ 20th, 2013
WHERE: Loews Hollywood Hotel, Los Angeles, CA

ProMedia Training will be attending as a sponsor and exhibitor at the ASCAP 2013 event this year, so we look forward to meeting our potential students and associates there. Co-founder of ProMedia Training, David Frangioni, will plan to attend event and share some of his early stories of breaking into the music industry as a pro tools editor and engineer for Steven Tyler in the 90’s, which led to becoming an established and recognized technology expert for multiple renown recording artists.

NOTE: There's also a link to download a Pro Tools session with one already created for
you using RTAS plug-ins so that everyone can open it.

If you are using Safari, you must right-click to download link.

Waves Linear Phase Multiband compressor

Michael Bernard is the Pro Tools Engineer, Music, and Sound Editor on the hit NBC TV show, "The Voice." Join us now for this VIDEO BELOW for a one-on-one interview conducted by Mihai Boloni, Director of Expert Avid Training at ProMedia. Whether having to record and edit for over 600 songs per season, or punching in live while 12 million people are watching, the pressure is on and the workload is immense for Mike Bernard, the Band and brilliant Musical Director, Paul Mirkovich. ProMedia Training was brought in to consult and train on how to maximize this massive workflow after Paul Mirkovich wanted to maximize productivity to the fullest possible extent. The talent it takes to arrange and produce this volume of music is incredible on behalf of Paul, Michael, the crew, and the rest of the musical team.

Amongst the myriad of features relating to editing and recording is a very powerful tool known as Elastic Audio. This feature gives us the ability to treat our audio as if it were a rubber band, hence the name, Elastic Audio.

Recently, fellow Pro Tools Instructor Dan Faber and I had the pleasure of working with legendary music songwriter/ producer Mark Hudson (Aerosmith, Celine Dion, Ringo Starr, Ozzy, Cher) on a truly wonderful and challenging recording session at Studio Center Miami. Within a few days, we had over 26 guitar tracks and 20 background vocal tracks alone; we were soon at 116 tracks!

In this article, we will demonstrate and specifically show you several specific examples of how to produce and arrange background vocals in a modern pop song. In today’s musical landscape, we are witnessing one of the most eclectic and diverse array of songs to ever be on the charts at the same time. As of January 20th, 2013, we have artists such as Pink, Bruno Mars, Maroon 5, Alicia Keys, Rihanna, A$AP Rocky, etc… and that’s just in the Billboard top 20. While there might be differences in the "genre," there are a few fundamental musical components that each one of these songs have in common: Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony, the three fundamental components of modern music. While Rhythm and Melody usually get all the glory, Harmony, specifically in the role of Background Vocals, can take an ordinary song and turn it into an anthem. Background Vocals can enhance the listener’s experience in a way the Lead Vocal could never do on its’ own.

Before we get into the hot -˜n heavy, I do have to point out the creative application and placement of Background Vocals can differ based on the specific genre. In music, harmony is defined by the use of simultaneous pitches or chords and often times referred to as the "vertical" aspect of music. There is no real "right" or "wrong" way to produce background vocals, as so much is dependent on the production style and taste involved; however, in listening to any modern song on the charts, you can quickly pick up that there is a lot going on, which usually means quite a bit of work editing in Pro Tools. Luckily for us, this type of work and associated workflow is what Pro Tools does best.

Recording Background Vocals (BGV’s) is pretty straight forward as is all recording in Pro Tools- set up your microphone, create some new tracks, and viola! Grammy Time! Sound simple enough, keeping in mind that you have planned out what the background vocal lines will be and your vocal talent has rehearsed their parts. Pro Tools can’t help you with a singer that doesn’t know the lines. Once you have the creative part ready to go, it’s time to create some tracks in Pro Tools.