A Primedia Property
December 8, 2004



Table of Contents
A Touch of History, Part II
In Session With Eddie King of Megatrax
How mSoft Is Bringing the Library Business Together
Loops and Beyond
Coming in December


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What's New
A Touch of History, Part II
Okay, we caught a few of you folks dozing off in the middle of Part I of our Production Music History Lesson, and we also received a query wondering if it was going to be available as a book on tape. Really, is that sort of sarcasm necessary? The answer, of course, is yes, with James Earl Jones generously volunteering his services.

But seriously, when we left off last time, silent movies had given way to "talkies," and companies that had once specialized in selling sheet music for incidental pieces designed for films were beginning to switch over to that exciting medium that would make such a mark on 20th century culture: phonographic discs, aka records. By the '30s, too, it wasn't just cinema that was hungry for production music--radio was reaching into households all over the world in a way that film did not, and there was suddenly a massive new market for music on disc. To read the rest of this article, click here.

What's on your mind? What would you like to see in The Sampler? What can we do to make your job easier or brighten your day? Let me know!

Blair Jackson, Editor
blair@blairjackson.com
Or call me in the San Francisco area: (510) 465-0494



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Inside Info
In Session With Eddie King of Megatrax
Megatrax recently released a 6-CD collection called Sensación, which offers a huge collection of Central and South American music styles, ranging from traditional rhythms of Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and other countries, to hot Latin dance numbers, to cutting edge contemporary hip-hop and other street grooves.


Eddie King

It was, as you might imagine, quite an undertaking: the recording and mixing sessions spanned three months and involved some of the finest players in L.A. Producer Jorge Calandrelli helmed three discs: "He's very cultured, a great arranger and sort of an old school romantic," says Eddie King, chief engineer for Megatrax. The other three, more contemporary sides, were produced by Byron Brizuela, who King describes as "a real Mexican music expert, old and new." To read the rest of this article, click here.

How mSoft Is Bringing the Library Business Together
A remarkable thing happened at NAB last April: Seventeen different music libraries shared a single 20x20 booth space to show off their wares. That's a lot of competing products, not to mention the salespeople to go with them. What brought them together was mSoft, the Woodland Hills, Calif.-based company that makes a widely used Digital Asset Management System that allows clients to tap into multiple libraries using just a single server.

"What happened was mSoft had a pretty big booth, so we decided to give some of the libraries a chance to share the space with us," says Doug Perkins, mSoft's VP of sales and marketing, who conceived of the NAB plan. "We had a whole bunch of computer stations that were devoted to libraries where someone could enter in a password and automatically bring up our system, but with their logo and graphics and limited to just their music. In other words, to get to their music they had to use our system and that way they showed their music and their customers might have seen a system they wouldn't have seen otherwise." Among the libraries participating were APM, DeWolfe, Aircraft, Megatrax, Master Source, and others. To read the rest of this article, click here.



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Skill Building: Reviews and Tutorials
Loops and Beyond
By Frank McMahon
Music software gets better each year. Advancements make songs easier to create and allow more control over scores. You may have experimented with Sony's Acid Pro 4.0 (or the less-expensive Acid 4.0 available at www.screenblast.com) or hit the loops with Apple's Soundtrack or the budget version called GarageBand. They allow you to crank out broadcast-level music that that can slide directly into your desktop productions. With so many loop collections available on CD and DVD, you would probably never run out of new sounds or ways to alter your music, as these loop programs include numerous ways to bend, swap, pitch, and finesse your scores into new creations.


Nuendo, the desktop production studio version of Cubase
SX, includes 10.2 surround sound, networking, audio
restoration, Dolby Pro-Logic and AC-3, and TimeBase.

But what if you want to go beyond the loops? It might be time to look into MIDI, virtual instruments, and scoring software. Via MIDI, you can create sounds with a MIDI controller feeding digital notes into any virtual instrument for limitless possibilities. There are many high-powered scoring packages to look into. The best software programs can start you on your journey to professionally scoring productions, even if you have no prior musical experience. To read the rest of this article, click here.

Next Issue
Coming in December
Production music makes it into Scorsese's The Aviator.


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