Morph Productions

**** UPDATE**** I originally did this blog posting December, 2010.  My 2 tb drive recently died and I decided to try a 3 tb drive in the time capsule to get even more space.  Of course the net and the boards all have a lot of contradictory information but enough people said that the WD Green 3tb drive ( WD30EZRX )  worked fine.  I bought the boxed/retail kit version and had no problems.  You can scroll down to the bottom for a link to one on amazon.com).  Anyway, enjoy the post! Any business that has client's projects stored on it's hard drive should have a few different backup systems for said files. Hard drives do eventually fail and while there's ways to get files back those methods are expensive and not guaranteed. Hard drive space is so cheap now that there really is no excuse not to have multiple backups of your files. A few years ago Apple came out with Time Machine and it's hardware counterpart, the Time Capsule . Time Machine is Appl...

Since Logic Pro has switched to 64 bit people have been asking me about 24/32/64 bit audio. I'm going to make this 24/32/64 bit thing a lot easier for you by giving you a bit of an explanation. When Logic is saying that it can run in 32/64 bit mode they're referring to the bit rate the program is running and processing at, not what your audio is recording at.   Those are two separate things.   You will still be recording your audio at 24 bit and running logic in either 32 bit or 64 bit mode. The advantage of 64 bit is that Logic will now be able to access all the ram available that you have in your system. In a 32 bit system a program can only access about 4 gigs of ram (even if you have 16 gigs, it won't be using more than 4). This doesn't sound bad for most programs but when you consider that all the plugins running within Logic are included in that 4 gigs you can see how you could run out pretty quickly! I switched over to 64 bit and am pretty happy overall...

Just made a modern take on the public domain Christmas song "Joy To The World" in the hopes of getting it licensed to TV/Film. If you hit this post looking for something like that you can go here: Ashton Price Composer Page It's track number 4 on the mp3 player. It's a dancy, fun remake that I think would fit in a lot of different productions. If you're interested, feel free to email me here: ashton@Morphproductions.com If you need help with your productions, mixes, or voice-over projects, feel free to reach out! Ashton Price www.MorphProductions.com ashton@MorphProductions.com Instagram:  @Morphpro Morph Productions logo

I was just updating some plugins and was shocked when one of them, East/West's Play engine disappeared after an update. After a moment of panic I remembered how 32 bit plugins can't be authorized while Logic is in 64 bit mode. To get it to show up again I simply loaded Logic in 32 bit mode and then closed and reloaded in 64 bit mode, presto! I guess we'll wait and see when all these plugin makers start switching their plugs to 64 bit mode. Logic's 32 bit bridge is not as light on the CPU as Apple claims. Hats of to Native Instruments for their conversion of Guitar Rig 4 to 64 bit mode. They're my first plugin (out of many!) to switch to 64 bit. From what I understand Melodyne will be later in October or early November. I'm sure Waves and East/West will end up being last on the list... If you need help with your productions, mixes, or voice-over projects, feel free to reach out! Ashton Price www.MorphProductions.com ashton@MorphProductions.com Instagra...

If you do business in the United States, you may have heard that U.S.-source royalty income can be subject to 30% withholding by default. For Canadians, the process is not always as simple as “get an ITIN and the problem goes away.” In many cases, the first form that matters is Form W-8BEN , which is given to the U.S. payer or withholding agent to claim any treaty benefit that may apply. An ITIN may still be needed in some situations, but whether you need one depends on your exact circumstances and what the payer requires. I’m not an accountant or tax lawyer, so use this as a general guide only and verify the details with the current IRS instructions before relying on them. Step 1: Find out whether your payer needs Form W-8BEN, an ITIN, or both If you’re a Canadian musician receiving U.S.-source royalties, start by asking the U.S. company or payer what documentation they require. In many cases, treaty benefits are claimed through Form W-8BEN , which is the ...

Many people are unsure of the separate roles a producer and engineer play in the recording process. While a lot of times in modern recordings these roles have been blended together it's still good to know what the different roles do. An engineer handles the more technical aspects of the recording process such as mic and mic placement, what type of processing (eqs, compressors and reverb/delay) to apply to the sound. The producer is in charge of the big picture and making sure that the sounds the engineer are using work for the production he/she is trying to create. A good way to describe this in very simple terms is that the producer can say "I'm looking for a U2 "Streets Have No Name" guitar sound" and the engineer figures out the best way to technically achieve that. The producer comes up with the idea of what he/she wants to hear and it's the engineers job to do it. It's important to note that the producer is in charge of all the pieces...

Ever since I've been using Logic 9 I've been getting "Low Memory Errors" every so often which is pretty typical of Logic 9 so I hear. More disturbing though is Logic sometimes gives me an error message saying something like "The document "x" be saved". Not too cool if you haven't saved in a while! A quick way out of this mess is to get rid of all your melodyne plugins (you can't just bypass them, you have to get rid of them) and save the file as something else. This seems to work well. I have a feeling it's more a logic problem than Melodyne but hopefully they fix this issue. If you're not using Melodyne and you have that problem just get rid of whatever memory hogging plugins you're using, usually big audio sample instrument plugins like the ones that East/West makes. If you need help with your productions, mixes, or voice-over projects, feel free to reach out! Ashton Price www.MorphProductions.com ashton@MorphProduc...

Just a little tip about the API 512c preamp. I've been using one for about 10 years now inside an API Lunchbox. It's my "go to" preamp to record vocals alongside my Neumann u87. The API 512c has a notorious hot output which makes you have to lower your pre level (there's no output level on this preamp). Unfortunately this means you can't drive the transformer in the pre as hard as you'd like. The work around for this is to get some sort of attenuator. Based on a recommendation I got a Shure A15AS attenuator. The advantage of this one is that it's adjustable in 5db increments (-15db to -25db).      This thing is always attached to my 512c unless I'm recording a  professional voice over or audio book where I want as clean a sound as possible. It's nice having the extra control and the option of more sounds from the API 512c that this little device allows. If you need help with your productions, mixes, or voice-over projects, feel fre...

There's no question that hip hop is as big as it ever has been right now and I've seen no shortage of young local MC's wanting to making a living off of it at my studio .  I wanted to write something to those people who are seriously trying to be successful and make a go of it. MC, rapper, hip hopper, whatever you call yourself there's a number of things to consider when approaching your craft.  First and foremost, like any artist in the music industry you're going to need the right songs.  Next you're going to need a unique voice that will be recognized on the radio as being you.  Lastly you're going to need lots and lots of bling.  Just kidding, haha, what you're going to need is your own unique message.  Basically you need something unique to bring to what is an overly crowded market.  This of course applies to any artist in the music industry but applies to people in the hip hop world a little differently which I will explain below. 1. Hit Song...

I've spent a lot of time reading books about the music industry and I've always found them helpful, especially years ago when I was just starting out.  Since I'm always telling people who are looking to get started to read these books anyway, I figured I'd do a quick blog post on some of the books that I think have some great info in them. "How To Make and Sell Your Own Recording" - Diane Rapaport I remember reading a version of this book when I was 16 in the early 90's and it really helped give me some ideas as to how an indie artist has to promote and build their own career.  The book has been updated since then of course but anyone who's recording their own music and plan to sell it should definitely pick this up and read carefully. "Confessions of a Record Producer" - Moses Avalon I read this book about 8 years ago when I was still in the thick of my Sony publishing deal and I remember continually thinking, "yep, that just happ...

There's a bunch of fake harmony plugins out there and if you've tried any out (or worse, shelled out cash on them like me) you've likely been pretty disappointed with the results. I've found a pretty good way to create harmonies using Melodyne. The obvious way to make a harmony with melodyne is take your lead vocal, select the scale snap option (with the scale properly selected in Melodyne of course) and move all the notes up/down a 3rd, 5th or wherever you want it. Certain notes won't work being at that exact interval and will have to be moved up/down a semitone to fit with the melody and under the chords you have. This method does work ok but does sound a bit phony because while the pitch is different from the melody, the performance is exactly the same and this tends to make the harmony track sound robotic. A way to make your harmonies sound a lot more realistic is to record an entirely different vocal singing the original melody and then using that to dr...

Below is a press release from Factor regarding their funding situation with the Feds. Good news indeed! For those of you who aren't aware Factor provides funding for recording projects for Canadian citizens. Factor has it's new deadlines and applications up. If you're looking for a studio to do your project and need some help filling out these forms let me know. Here's a link to my site detailing my services: www.MorphProductions.com Here's the press release: Canada Music Fund Renewed! For Immediate Release St. John’s, Newfoundland- 04/17/2010- The Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, today announced that the Government of Canada is renewing sustainable funding agreements with FACTOR to administrate programs from the Canada Music Fund. “Our Government is pleased to continue supporting the Canadian music industry and building on its success, by renewing sustainable funding agreements with our trusted partners FACTOR, MUSICAC...

The other day I realized my website had a really bad flaw that could only be viewed in Internet Explorer. Since I'm a mac guy and only use Safari and Firefox I had no idea that all the text on my pages were right justified. Apparently it's been like that for over a year which is definitely not business enhancing! While I was working trying to figure out where the issue was I found an incredibly handy online app that will allow you to see your page as if someone was viewing it on Internet Explorer. This tool is invaluable to anyone who's a mac user. Due to Internet Explorer long being discontinued for mac the only previous option was having a PC to test your work or running Windows via bootcamp on an intel mac. Pretty convoluted! Here's the link to the online emulator/renderer: http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer If you need help with your productions, mixes, or voice-over projects, feel free to reach out! Ashton Price www.MorphProductions.com ashton@MorphProduc...

I just made a little page dedicated to my work as a songwriter/composer for Film/TV and Video Games. It has my composer bio and a bunch of songs available for licensing in addition to some underscore I've done for various projects. You can check it out here: https://www.morphproductions.com/composer/composer.html I'll probably put up a demo reel eventually too. Just have to go through the footage. If you need help with your productions, mixes, or voice-over projects, feel free to reach out! Ashton Price www.MorphProductions.com ashton@MorphProductions.com Instagram:  @Morphpro

So I've been using Logic 9 at the studio for a month or so now and I'm really loving it. They've really fixed a lot of the bugs from Logic 8 and added some incredible features. I've already went over Logic's new flex time feature and here's two other favourites that I'm really digging: 1. The gain tool in the region inspector. Basically with this new feature you can pick an object and adjust it's gain independent of other objects on the same track. Sure you can do that with automation but this makes it a lot easier in a lot of situations. I'm using this every day and loving it! Here's a pic of it, look for the hand pointer: 2. Next tool is the slowdown/speed up tool. Before this was such a pain in the ass to do but with this new tool it's become incredibly easy. It's now as easy as doing a fade in/out. Select the object or objects you want to affect and click on fade in or fade out and there is now an option to switch to slow dow...

So I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard and was having troubles getting Toontracks EZDrummer to work. The first time I installed it, it supposedly installed fine but gave me an error when loading the samples. The second time I installed it on a different computer it gave me an error during the install. Here's a work around: Obviously you've made backups of your system drive before installing Snow Leopard, right? RIGHT??? Well here's all the places where the installer puts files. Takes these from your backups to the appropriate folders on the new system drive and you'll be up and running in no time. Here's the files and folders you have to move: /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/Components/EZdrummer.component /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/VST/EZDrummer/EZdrummer.vst /Library/Application Support/Digidesign/Plug-ins/EZdrummer.dpm /Library/Application Support/EZdrummer /Library/Applications/Toontrack Once that's done you should be able to load EZdrummer on your Snow Leo...

I'm not going to go over the whole process of timing drums with Logic Pro's Flex time. I'm just going to go over a few quick things that others haven't really covered. First off here's a link to Apple's explanation of how to time drums: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3656 I'm use to timing drums in Pro tools with beat detective so I'm going to try and translate that process from Pro tools to Logic Pro. Pro Tools LE won't allow you to fix the timing on multitrack files so to get around that you bounce out a track of the kick, snare and toms (the things you typically focus on when timing) as a stereo file and get your markers based off that file and apply to all the individual drum tracks. While Logic Pro does allow you to work with multitrack files I find locating the hit points on the kick/snare/toms separately tedious so I tried doing the mix down like I would with Pro tools and this worked out great. Lots of time saved! So here's a few other ...

Many times when I'm working with people the subject of mixing vs mastering has come up. I figured I'd take a second to explain the difference between the two here. Mixing is taking a multi-track recording and balancing them using volume, eq and effects such as reverbs, delay and compression. The end result of this process is typically a 2 track format (stereo file that can be played on your mp3 player, cd player or dino-phone). Mastering is taking a finished mix and using processors (generally eq's and compressors but sometimes others) to make the mix sound louder, fuller and cleaner. The mastering engineer is the last person who works on your project before it's released to the public and therefore it's important you get the right person for the job. Now on a lot of studio blog postings this is where I would be shamelessly saying that person is me haha, but no, it's not. Generally speaking the person you want to do the job is someone who has (for s...