Three students enrolling on the BA/BSc (Hons) Music Composition & Technology course at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) have been awarded UCA’s Women in Music Scholarship, with one also selected to receive equipment from music technology specialists, Audient.

Eleanor Hobby, Rael Kōiv, and Alison Wade-Gudgin, all entering their first year Music Composition & Technology course, were selected to receive £5,000 each, plus industry mentoring, with Eleanor also receiving an iD14 audio interface and 8-channel mic preamp, ASP880.

Eleanor said: “It’s nice to be recognised for my music and it’s great to have a scholarship that focuses on women, I’ve never heard of that before. It’s thanks to Audient I’ll be able to use the equipment to produce high quality songs and sounds and professionally mix my tracks.”

Scholarship applicants were asked to submit a portfolio of work alongside their academic record, and assessment was based on their creativity, originality, technical skill, contextualisation, and potential for development.

“We were impressed with Eleanor’s subtle and meaningful song writing. Her production draws upon musicians like Christine and the Queens, Björk and Imogen Heap with an open authenticity that we found really exciting,” said senior lecturer on the BA/BSc (Hons) Music Composition & Technology course, Dr Harry Whalley.

Eleanor and her fellow students will be learning their craft on an Audient ASP8024 Heritage Edition which sits at the heart of the UCA recording studio, alongside a selection of iD4s and a few iD44s. “I am particularly excited to hear how she can continue to grow as an artist, and I’m delighted Audient and UCA are supporting her to achieve this,” added Dr Whalley, who cites ‘design and reliability’ as the basis for choosing Audient products.

“We feel very passionate about helping to increase opportunities for women in audio, and are already working with many similar initiatives around the world,” said Audient’s marketing director Andy Allen. “We are delighted to continue on this road by partnering with UCA Farnham to offer this incredible opportunity to Eleanor – a very talented and deserving student. We champion inclusivity and are happy to help ensure everybody has the opportunity to be the best they can be in this industry, regardless of gender.”

The scholarship is part of a wider UCA Music Composition & Technology initiative, encompassing talks, workshops and mentoring, which not only celebrates pioneers in electronic music technology such as Ada Lovelace, Björk and Daphne Oram, but also seeks to inspire a new generation of music makers. Statistics released by Women in Music show the gender divide in music is heavily imbalanced with a split of 70% male to 30% female. On top of this, women only represent 20% or less of registered composers and songwriters in Europe. UCA’s Women in Music Scholarship aims to reduce this industry gender gap by supporting women at the start of their music careers.

https://www.uca.ac.uk/study/courses/ba-music-composition-technology/

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AMI recently spoke to Jeff Bloom, founder of Synchro Arts, about the company’s 25-year journey creating award-winning audio tools for film, TV and music production…

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Jeff Bloom’s background weaves in and out of music and technology. While doing a Physics PhD at the University College Cardiff he started exploring psychoacoustics, which involved manipulating sound with very primitive computers. From here, he started thinking about digital recording studios and how to build one, engaging in conversations about how digital audio could be used in the film industry – especially in ADR – and coming up with algorithms. Together with a friend, he created a machine for lip syncing which they tried to sell to a number of big film studios, a task that proved tricky at the time.

Jeff went on to start developing other digital audio equipment, including early DAWs such as SoundStation. After a number of business conflicts, he left that company in 1994, and with the technology that he was able to take with him, founded Synchro Arts. The algorithms had to be rewritten, and Jeff met technical director John Ellwood around that time, who has also been with the company since.

By 1995, Synchro Arts was showing the first VocALign product at NAB and AES shows, and were one of the first Digidesign plugin partners. Initially aimed at the film industry, VocALign then started being used by music professionals for doubling vocals and tightening backing tracks. It was used on some big name albums from the likes of Steely Dan and Black Eyed Peas, as well as lip syncing on shows like Friends and Seinfeld and movies like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

Around 2000, Jeff started revisiting some ideas about the consumer side of the industry, and came up with Revoice Studio. He showed it to Dreamworks who thought it might be useful on a bonus feature for Shrek. The deadline was tight but Jeff got a team together. The feature allowed users to record their own voice and lip sync it to the characters in the film, which ended up being a big hit. A year later, Jeff got a phone call from Dreamworks’ lawyers saying they were being sued for infringing some patented technology about image replacement. The lawsuit was eventually scrapped a number of years later, but at the time Jeff had to strip the company back and focus solely on the pro audio business.

Jeff was forced to think about what the company could do differently now, and started looking at how to transfer and align pitch effectively and in time. By 2004, Synchro Arts was back making web-based consumer products for correcting vocals.

He showed the technology to producer Tony Maserati in LA, who asked if it could be used professionally, and it turns out that the music industry needed it more than Jeff thought! From 2012, Synchro Arts started rolling out Revoice Pro, which essentially takes the timing and pitch of an in-tune voice and transfers that to one or more tracks, so that users can double and compress backing tracks using APT (audio performance transfer). With Revoice Pro’s pitch transfer, users can take the intonation pattern of a voice and transfer it onto a completely different person – essentially manipulating the inflection – which is especially useful for those doing voice overs in post production. By this time however, due to the rise in bedroom music producers, 80 per cent of the company’s business was in music and the other 20 per cent in post production.

The latest version of Revoice Pro, 4.1, is very flexible indeed. With the latest version, users can group tracks into one control panel and tweak and tune them as a group of processes simultaneously. It also streamlines workflows by automatically creating an output track, and is constantly getting smarter, easier and faster through a combination of DSP changes. At the time of interview, Jeff had recently been on a trip around the US to showcase these simplifications to professional users, including Grammy-winning recording engineer Darrell Thorp. During his time on the road, Jeff saw Revoice Pro being used for exactly what it was designed for: tightening up double tracks and backing vocals, and making double tracks where there wasn’t any to begin with.

With the emergence of streaming services, there’s a big need for fast turnarounds and faster technology to help users carry out these really mundane jobs like lip syncing and lining up music tracks. On the consumer side however, Jeff believes the technology can be used effectively for language learning tools in the future.

Around a year ago, Jeff was contacted by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) about having a category at the Technical Emmy awards called Automatic Sound Conformation. He put forward one of the company’s older products, Titan, that had been around for 22 years. Titan was being used on a huge list of big TV shows including Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and House of Cards, much to Jeff’s surprise, and Synchro Arts bagged its first Technical Emmy as a result.

Most recently Synchro Arts has collaborated with Celemony, the company who created Melodyne, on ARA (audio random access), which helps the plugin talk to DAWs with a streamlined interface and takes a lot of the legwork out of the process. They’ve worked with a number of DAWs to implement this method, including Cubase, and are planning on integrating it with Logic and Pro Tools in the near future.

www.synchroarts.com

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From insightful, business-advancing professional development sessions and networking events, to the latest in new gear from established and emerging brands, the music products and pro audio industries convened in Nashville last week for Summer NAMM (July 18-20), the industry’s annual mid-year gathering.

“Summer NAMM seemed to highlight the important role of both the manufacturer and the dealer in maintaining a strong musical ecosystem,” said Joe Lamond, NAMM President and CEO. “While the marketplace is evolving rapidly, our manufacturer and retail members are adapting and finding strength in better understanding each other and finding new and innovative ways to work together to better serve the music-making community.”

The industry cross-section of retail and commercial members spanning music products, pro audio and technologies welcomed 16,001 members, a 7 per cent increase in attendees, and notably, accounted for a 32 per cent increase in international attendees.

For audio professionals, TEC Tracks returned on Thursday and Friday with sessions designed to help professionals take their careers to the next-level. Notable sessions included “Deconstructing a Mix,” where Grammy-winning engineer Craig Alvin (Kacey Musgraves) walked the audience through how he builds a hit album; “The Making of Willie Nelson’s Grammy-Winning ‘My Way'” with producers Matt Rollings and Buddy Cannon, along with engineer Steve Chadie, who shared the stories behind the songs; “Immersive Audio and You,” which featured pro audio gurus John McBride and Greg Penny, who explored the world of simulated reality, natural-sounding sources and environments; and “The Pro Audio Entrepreneur Mindset,” with Sean Giovanni, owner of The Record Shop Recording Studio and Production Company in Nashville, who shared new ideas for audio professionals to improve their success in entrepreneurship, career development, finding and maintaining clients, and building multiple revenue streams.

Exclusive to Saturday, A3E (Advanced Audio + Application Exchange) presented the fifth annual Future of Audio Summit, featuring the technologies and ideas that are driving the evolution of musical products, pro audio and music-making. Highlights from the day ranged from “The Future of Production: Gamifying a Supergroup  with The Fell” to issues of rights and licensing, with “Why Is Music Free and How Can We Get Back on Track,” and “Data Collection Is Key to Maximizing Earnings,” as well as others. 

The music instrument, pro audio, and event technology industries will again gather January 16-19 at The 2020 NAMM Show in Anaheim, California. The 2020 NAMM Show campus will welcome the Entertainment Services Technology Association (ESTA), the Audio Engineering Society (AES) and others, for four days of business, networking, and events. Registration will open at the end of August.

NAMM.org

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London based creative music technology start-up, Vochlea Music, has launched the Dubler Studio Kit, a highly innovative, live vocal recognition MIDI controller.

Vochlea Music are graduates of the Abbey Road Studios music technology incubator and winners of the SXSW 2018 Pitch Competition.

The kit offers a method for musicians to translate their musical ideas into reality using just their voice. Capturing musical ideas using traditional instrumentation and MIDI inputs can be challenging and requires know-how, even for the most accomplished musician. Vochlea Music’s vocal recognition AI technology unlocks the power of the voice, allowing musicians to create music and control sounds quickly and intuitively.

The Dubler Studio Kit allows artists to hum a synth pattern, beatbox to trigger a virtual drumkit, or manipulate effects and filters with a “hmmm”, “laaaa” or “oohhh” sound — all in real-time straight into a DAW. Pre-launch beta testers of the new technology include Mercury Prize Nominated MC and producer Novelist, alongside a number of other musicians and producers.

The kit comes as two parts. First is the Dubler software, a virtual MIDI instrument for Mac and PC that’s compatible with any DAW. Second is the Dubler microphone – a custom low-latency USB mic – tuned for the Dubler software.

“The Dubler Studio Kit unlocks musical expression, fuels creativity and is generally a lot of fun. It speeds up the traditional music creation workflow by allowing the user to control and manipulate MIDI outputs through audio inputs,” said George Wright, Vochlea Music CEO and founder. “Essentially meaning you can lay down melodies, drum loops, effects tracks… whatever you want, directly from voice to DAW.”

Using all of the timbral qualities of the voice, Dubler Studio Kit allows musicians to trigger samples, control synths, manipulate filters and effects, track pitch, pitch-bend and control envelopes, velocity and MIDI mapping values simultaneously, based on the way they make their unique sounds.

The Dubler Studio Kit launched as a Kickstarter project this week and is looking to raise £40,000 over 35 days. During the campaign, backers will have the opportunity to pledge to be amongst the first Dubler Studio Kit users. Kickstarter backers will receive fulfilment priority when the kits are delivered in mid-2019.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vochlea/2044359653?ref=763509&token=dee3df6a

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WSDG Walters-Storyk Design Group has recently completed a world-class Music Production & Education Complex for the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music (ZJCM) in Hangzhou, East China.

Housed inside an ultra-modern 8000 sq. ft. two-story building, the new facility features a 3200 sq. ft. Live Room with a 26 ft. high ceiling. It is believed to be one of the world’s largest recording studios dedicated to educational projects, able to host sessions of 100+ member orchestras.

The conservatory’s twelve academic departments provide nearly 5000 full-time students with professional educational programs on composition, conducting, vocal and musical instrument performance, recording, and technology. Completed in 2016, the campus includes nine concert halls, 102 rehearsal halls, 842 practice rooms, and six small studios.

Led by WSDG founding partner John Storyk, and partners Sergio Molho, Renato Cipriano and Silvia Molho the firm’s 50+ member, creative and technical design team contributed to the collaboration. “A project of this scale requires extremely well coordinated design and technical input,” Cipriano said. “Our Basel, Switzerland and Berlin, Germany offices developed sophisticated 3D room modelling and electro acoustical surface predictions which were invaluable in establishing an extraordinary acoustic environment for the large live studio.

Equal attention was devoted to the 650 sq. ft. Control Room, which features a panoramic floor-to-ceiling window view into the live room. Our Latin office provided extremely accurate renderings, our US and Brazil team performed brilliantly on overall design and the creation of innovative acoustic solutions. And, our Miami- based Partner/Art Director Silvia Molho made a major aesthetic contribution with her interior design talents,” he added. “We also developed a noteworthy and cost-effective variable acoustic treatment for the live recording studio. Each of the expansive live room’s four walls was fitted with a 26 foot-long floor-to-ceiling, absorbent curtain hung from heavy-duty, silent, motorised tracks. Deploying these curtains can provide as much as a 50% modification of the room’s average reverberation time.”

“We were committed to providing ZJCM with an outstanding technology package,” said DTM technical director, Johnathan Wang. “For the audio system, we recommended the top-level SSL Duality console and PMC QB1-A flagship monitor speakers as an unparalleled sound system. Considering ZJCM’s ‘World Class’ goals for their new studio exquisite décor details and superb acoustics and isolation design were critical.

“Our collaboration with WSDG has been extremely satisfying,” commented ZJCM deputy dean music engineering department, Mr. Huang Xiaodong. “Their design work was impeccable, their communication with our staff and contractors was exemplary and the acoustic and aesthetic quality of the completed studio complex has met our highest standards.”

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Audient has unveiled details of the Women in Music scholarship, an initiative at the University of Creative Arts aiming to reduce the industry’s gender gap by supporting women at the start of their careers.

The scholarship coincides with the installation of an Audient ASP8024 Heritage Edition desk in a new studio at the Farnham UCA.

Three £5,000 scholarships will be awarded along with industry mentoring to three women enrolling on the BA/BSc (Hons) Music Composition & Technology, Farnham Surrey in 2019, with a single prize-winner also receiving equipment from Audient.

Dr Harry Whalley, course leader of the BA/BSc (Hons) Music Composition & Technology, said: “As well as offering financial support, the initiative will encompass talks, workshops and mentoring that not only celebrates innovators but also seeks to inspire a new generation.

“We embrace the true plurality of music in terms of the tools, styles and people involved in the invention of new music. We want students to follow their individual passions while also learning the skills required to become creative practitioners today. We are committed to positive change in music education and the music industry, and are excited to be forging new links which will further support women in music.”

All students on the course will be learning their craft on the new Audient desk, which will also be used for postgraduate study and the Audio Research Cluster at UCA. “We have 24 channels of ASP8024-HE going in with DLC, live room and tie lines down to the TV studio if we want to do orchestral recording,” explained Whalley. “We also have iD4s for all our Macs – and a few iD44s. We like the D.I on those.”

Marketing manager for Audient, Andy Allen added, “With strong partnerships in education, Audient is delighted to support the initiative. We champion inclusivity and are happy to help ensure everybody has the opportunity to be the best they can be in this industry, regardless of gender.”

Applicants to the scholarship scheme are asked to submit a portfolio of work and will be assessed on their creativity, originality, technical skill, contextualisation and potential for development, alongside their academic record.

Check out the UCA scholarship page for more information or click through to read more about the UCA Music Composition & Technology course.

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Valencia College in Orlando, Florida is using an audio-monitoring infrastructure made up of Genelec Smart Active Monitors in its studios.

The rooms – one of which is Dolby Atmos certified – offer Sound & Music Technology students a 7.1.4 monitoring environment, including four overhead/height channels.

Two of the facility’s six studios and listening environments, Studios A (the facility’s “flagship” room) and B, utilise 7.1.4 arrays using seven Genelec 8350A’s for their L-C-R and surround arrays and four Genelec 8340A’s as the height array. Both of these rooms also employ a pair of the Genelec 1234A’s as a separate main set of farfield monitors for full-range monitoring.

Mixroom 1, which is Dolby Atmos-certified, uses Genelec 1238A’s for its L-C-R and 8340A’s for the surround arrays, while four 8330A’s are used for its height array. Mixroom 2 is setup in a similar fashion, but uses 1237A’s instead for its L-C-R. All four studios are also equipped with dual subwoofers using either Genelec 7370A or 7360A Smart Active Subwoofers.

Joe McBride, the Teaching Lab supervisor at Valencia College’s Sound & Music Technology programme, housed in Valencia College’s new Film Production and Sound Technology Building, believes Genelec was the only choice for these rooms: “Having Genelecs throughout the production rooms means that mixes can translate accurately between rooms,” he said. “The way something sounds in one studio is how it will sound in any of the others, which is the way all leading sound facilities are designed.”

McBride also relies on features like the Genelec Loudspeaker Manager (GLM) and Genelec’s AutoCal, which automatically measures, analyses, and adjusts speaker settings. “These features are a way that we can have the studios designed to serve different purposes yet always provide a consistent listening environment for our students,” he explained. “Genelec is what professionals use at the highest levels of this industry, so it’s what our students experience when they’re here. Genelec gets them ready for the real world.”

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Karim Fanous, innovation manager at Abbey Road Studios, has been at the company for seven months and runs the incubator. He explains why the Red innovation initiative is important to the company: “Knowledge sharing is important to us," he says. "We want to position Abbey Road and Abbey Road Red as a key part of the debate around trends in the music business, especially in terms of innovation.”

Fanous says that an important part of this is putting on events that covering core topics. “The last one was on the science of A&R, while previous Red talks have covered spacial audio, interactive audio, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and generative composition and the roles they play in production.”

The incubator was launched in 2015 because the team at Abbey Road noticed there was a lot of talk of the potential for entrepreneurship happening around the audio business. “We saw that as an opportunity to start an incubator,” says Fanous.

“Abbey Road is perfectly placed to nurture this as there’s such a rich history of innovation here, including the original record and engineering development department who created the first Redd console and developed Automatic Double Tracking (ADT) technology. We want to help people create the next set of universally adopted music technology in much the same fashion as our predecessors had done at Abbey Road.”

Mirek Stiles, head of audio products Abbey Road Studios says that Abbey Road Red is definitely a throwback to the history of the company.

“EMI used to have these huge R&D facilities in factories over in Hayes in west London.” Hayes is somewhat of a veteran at Abbey road, starting as a runner and then becoming involved in recording, video, audio hardware and software and now, other forms of innovative audio technologies.

“Abbey Road was always seen as a bit of a field testing facility. The work we did with the plug-ins, the software and the hardware with (the company) Chandler gave us a sense of this history, as did going through the old archives for the schematics of classic equipment – so we thought, wouldn’t it be great to ‘get Red back together’?”

The company discussed how to implement a contemporary version of this kind of low level early research and Initially started getting involved with academic institutions. “We still are doing that,” says Stiles.” There is a lot of great research happening in this country, especially with regards to music technology.” Stiles and his team began to develop relationships with potential start-up companies. “We noticed that there were quite a few incubators around but nothing specifically targeted at music. I think at the time we were Europe’s first music-focused incubation programme.”

“Some amazing start-ups have come through the program,” says Fanous. “Initially, we’d work with companies on areas such as spatial audio or automated mastering and concentrate on people-networking and finding collaborators and equipment.”

Fanous says that AI is becoming more and more important. “Machine intelligence is pervasive and the last few start-ups that have come through the program have machine learning and machine intelligence at the very core of what they do. So, for example, we have Humtap which is a generative composition platform and Vochlea a ‘machine learning microphone’.”

At the time of writing, Abbey Road Red was about to announce their thirteenth start-up incubator, joining a programme that has a collective valuation of over £100 million.

“They’re pushing the boundaries,” says Fanous. “It’s amazing to work with these company founders, to feel their passion and to see them literally living out their life’s work and to be able to help them.”

Stiles says that when Abbey Road Red started to exploring how they would engage with start-ups, it was new territory for them, and there was a quite a bit of apprehension. “But that proved completely unfounded,” he says. “We really enjoyed being involved and embracing the tech community and the academic community and, luckily, they’ve embraced us as well. The Abbey Road Red incubator runs over a six-month period.

“We feel that this is the right amount of time,” says Fanous. “Three months would have been too little time to make a difference and anything beyond six months you kind of tend to lose your focus on the path that you’re taking together.”

Abbey Road Red has an ‘onboarding process’ where they work with start-ups before they actually join the incubator programme. “We’ll have been developing a relationship for a long time with them already, so we tend to know the teams and their platforms and technology quite well,” says Fanous. “Then we have a formal process in which we sit them down with the team here at Abbey Road and look really hard and see what any barriers to development there might be, how their business case is looking, what their potential is and how we can help them unlock that potential.”

Fanous adds that Abbey Road Red has moved away from ‘fixed intake periods’ to a rolling intake that allows for a more natural development of the start-up. Potential collaborators are found either from direct contact via the website or through the networks Fanous and Stiles have built up.

“We work very hard to make sure we’re out there talking to people and building relationships and making people aware of what we do,” he says. Fanous adds that a lot of company founders approach the team directly, but they also do a lot of active searching for possible collaborators.

“We always make sure that we’re out and about talking to people and going to key conferences and so on,” he says. With the Abbey Road brand involved, the incubator is able to attract some of the most innovative talent to work with – and it’s obviously bearing fruit. Abbey Road Red builds on the studio’s well-respected legacy in the audio industry and brings it slap-bang up to date by helping to nurture the next generation of audio innovators.

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We Are Robots, London’s new future-minded music tech festival, is set to take place on 11 October at 93 Feet East.

The event, curated with the consideration of future global music scenes, will feature a one-off talk from the Audio Engineering Society (AES) on VR, AR & immersion, and live music from Queen Mary University London’s Augmented Instrument Lab.

SAE Institute, ROLI, Source Distribution, Red Dog Music and Teenage Engineering will also be on hand, showcasing the latest tech as well as the classics in pop-up exhibits on Dray Walk, exploring the ideas and movements that are propelling the future of music.

Visitors can experience first-hand the new technology in music creation; discuss and attend talks about current and future practices, and learn how to hone their skills through innovation workshops with leading brands.

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A3E (Advanced Audio + Application Exchange) is organising a professional-development programme within the framework of this year’s Musikmesse and Prolight + Sound trade shows.

The first ‘Future of Audio + Music Technology’ conference will be held in Room ‘Entende’ on Level 4c of Hall 4 on Friday, 13 April 2018 and shine a light on subjects that are impacting the global music industry. The conference will be held in English and admission is free of charge for all Musikmesse and Prolight + Sound visitors.

A3E is an industry resource dedicated to the future of advanced audio applications and new music technologies.

The key topics to be covered by the conference include:

• The global musician – next generation cloud DAWs for worldwide collaboration
• Wearable technology for musicians
• Designing products for the wireless musician
• Virtual & augmented reality for studio production and live performance
• Touchscreen apps and controllers for the studio and stage
• App integration for traditional instruments
• Artificial Intelligence & machine learning

“We are delighted to team up with A3E, an organisation that enjoys a first-class reputation among professionals in the audio segment, to implement a high-grade educational conference,” said Michael Biwer, group show director in the ‘Entertainment, Media & Creative Industries’ business unit of Messe Frankfurt Exhibition. “’The Future of Audio + Music’ programme is aimed at developers of audio solutions and at musicians, producers and sound engineers. Thus, it represents a perfect addition to our trade-fair duo.”

“Europe has always been a major force in the advent of new music technologies, and provides all the key resources and communities that are essential in driving next generation audio development,” said Paul Sitar, A3E LLC president and A3E show director. “Musikmesse and Prolight + Sound will provide an amazing base for A3E to help bring thought leadership together to further advance the Future of Audio + Music Technology.”

Further information about Musikmesse and Prolight + Sound can be found at www.musikmesse.com and www.prolight-sound.com.

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