What is the Dead Presidents Society?

Who are: Don Buchla, John Chowning, John Lazzaro, Ingrid Linn, Roger Linn, Max Mathews, Keith McMillen, Tom Oberheim, Dave Smith and David Wessel?

The founding members of the Dead Presidents Society!

The Dead Presidents Society is a group of friends who share a passion for the influence of technology on music, and who meet every Thursday morning at a coffee house in Berkeley, California. The group’s name was born out of the fact that a number of the members were formerly presidents of electronic music product companies that died.

To learn more about these important people, go HERE.

Videos: The Future of Musical Instruments

The intersection of music and technology is a wild, fascinating frontier. Ever since the first computer-synthesized sounds were created, people have struggled and succeeded — to varying degrees — to reshape how we think about musical instruments.

Today, thanks to innovators such as Ray Kurzweil and Robert Moog, we have a wider range of digital music machines than the inventors of keyboard instruments could have ever dreamed.

To read more, go HERE.

Watch the video below!

Videos: Check out the “LinnStrument!”

Inventor Roger Linn is famous for creating the drum machine as we know it today, so there’s good reason to be excited about his latest creation. It’s a multi-touch surface not all that dissimilar to an iPad. Take a look at the video here to see for yourself.

The instrument — which Linn calls the “LinnStrument” — can take input from all of your fingers, so you can form chords in addition to sounding individual notes. Each space is pressure sensitive to allow for maximum range of expression. Sliding your finger vertically adjusts the timbre while horizontal motions change the pitch.

Read more about it HERE.

Watch the video below!

Positive Press for Gen6!

Read what others think about the new Open Labs Gen6 products!
If you see press that isn’t on this list, please forward it to press AT openlabs.com.

http://musicindustrynewswire.com/2010/05/19/min3023_220826.php

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/new-product-alert/494562-open-labs-unveil-gen6-newest-line-products.html

http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/75400

http://lawontherow.com/2010/05/19/music-biz-news-open-labs-announces-new/

http://www.hispasonic.com/noticias/open-labs-presenta-sexta-generacion-workstation-neko-miko-14804

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2010/05/21/new-open-labs-production-stations/

http://news.hitsquad.com/OtherGear/Open_Labs_unveil_the_newest_line_of_products_Gen6

http://en.audiofanzine.com/misc-computer/open-labs/generation6/news/a.play,n.6793.html

http://rapbeatsonline.info/how-to-get-into-the-music-industry/open-labs-announces-new-gen6-and-q-series-pc-powered-keyboard-workstations/

http://massmediacontent.com/2010/05/19/MMC3388_220826.php

http://www.gearjunkies.com/news_info.php?news_id=5117&PHPSESSID=94f2fbf6ba57e909359acd4d26fe8685

http://www.samplepoolz.com/?q=aggregator&page=1

http://www.audiopronews.ro/2010/05/open-labs-unveil-the-newest-line-of-products-gen6/

http://futuremusic.com/blog/

http://audiobusters.com/news/station-de-travail-workstation/nouvelle-gamme-de-produits-chez-open-labs-la-gen6

http://delicious.com/OpenLabs

http://digg.com/music/Open_Labs_Unveil_Gen6_the_Newest_Line_of_Products

http://openlabs.ning.com/profiles/blogs/open-labs-unveil-gen6-the

http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/OpenLabs/

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=58022979&blogId=534610322

http://www.openlabs.com/blog/?p=1011

PRESS RELEASE: Open Labs Unveil Gen6; the Newest Line of Products

Open Labs, a recognized leader in innovative Music Production Stations based in Austin, Texas, debuted their newest line of Production Stations today, Generation6. The Gen6 lineup includes the Gen6 MiKo QC6, the Gen6 NeKo QX6, the Gen6 MiKo LXD and the Gen6 NeKo XXL. The entire new Gen6 product line offers more power, more sounds and is more affordable.

All products in the Gen6 lineup feature processors from the 2010 Intel® CoreTM processor family and are based on Microsoft’s Windows 7 for true Open Platform Capability. The Q series lineup includes the MiKo QC6 and the NeKo QX6, which offer over 10,000 sounds, full DAW capabilities, a 15” touch screen interface, DVD/CD burning and internet capability and a 37 or 61 keyboard form factor.

The L series lineup, which are the pinnacle of Music Production Stations, include the MiKo LXD and the NeKo XXL. Both production stations offer over 15,000 sounds, full DAW capabilities, a 15” touch screen interface, DVD/CD burning and internet capability and a 37 or 61 keyboard form factor. The L series offers incredible control over production with the Alpha 2 controller, the bankable Mix Edit and the drum pad interface Bump MP. The NeKo XXL also raises the bar in audio by offering 24bit/192khz recording.

“We are very excited to be launching the most powerful Musical Production Stations we’ve ever produced,” said Victor Wong, Chairman and Co-Founder, Open Labs, “with our migration to Windows 7 we have spent months testing and retesting our proprietary software products as well as the most popular third party software and hardware products. We can assure our customers the same level of musical flexibility that they have grown to expect in our Production Stations and with our new offerings we can expand in ways which we have never been able to before now.

“Our software offerings will continue to flourish and our platforms will grow more robust with each release. This is a major transition for Open Labs and our ability to serve our customers and their musical aspirations,” said Wong.

The Q series Open Labs Music Production Stations come with Open Labs Gold Support Services which include: a one-hour “Get to Know Your Machine” session, two hours of technical training and warranty for parts and labor for one year. The L Series come with Open Labs Platinum Support Services which include the same level of Support Services as Gold Support in addition to seven hours of technical training.

The Gen6 MiKo QC6 is available for $3,799 USD and the Gen6 NeKo QX6 is available for $3,999 USD. The Gen6 MiKo LXD is available for $4,799 USD and the Gen6 NeKo XXL is available for $6,999 USD. All Open Labs production stations can be purchased directly through Open Labs at http://www.openlabs.com or through an authorized reseller listed on the Open Labs web site.

About Open Labs

Headquartered in Austin, Texas — at the crossroads of music and technology– Open Labs develops and markets cutting-edge studio and musical instrument technology. Since 2003, Open Labs has been the recognized leader in providing musicians and producers of all genres, with high-performance portable instruments that combine all the equipment found in a professional music studio with unsurpassed live performance capabilities. A-List artists currently using Open Labs products include: Timbaland, Jonathan Davis (Korn), Morris Hayes (Prince), Jesse Carmichael (Maroon 5) and Jimmy Nichols (Faith Hill) to name a few. For more information on Open Labs, please visit http://www.openlabs.com.

Sound quality Takes a Step Back with Digital Compression

…The music business has been the victim of its own technological success: the ease of loading songs onto a computer or an iPod has meant that a generation of fans has happily traded fidelity for portability and convenience. This is the obstacle the industry faces in any effort to create higher-quality — and more expensive — ways of listening.

To read more about how digital compression affects sound quality, click HERE to read the New York Times article!

Learning More About Gigging

How much do you really know about touring and gigging?

Miccontrol.com offers the following advice:

1) Chose the right venue
2) Keep it varied
3) Promotion
4) Invite the press
5) Create buzz
6) Create a mailing list
7) What you do on stage is as important as what you do off stage

To read more go HERE for part one and HERE for part two!

Videos: Keep Making ‘em Because They Work!

‘I feel like the bitter old man sitting on the porch, saying, ‘Back in my day, music video was the most exciting medium to be involved in,’ ” says Samuel Bayer, who directed, among many other hits of the nineties, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Blind Melon’s bee-girl video. “MTV was a cultural barometer, stylistically influential. Whether the director was Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze or Stephane Sednaoui or Mark Romanek, people talked about videos in a way that has disappeared.”

On August 1, 1981, MTV audaciously played “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and for a little over two decades, the cable network just about did that, becoming music’s most powerful tastemaker. MTV not only made songs into hits, it launched the careers of directors, many of whom became as identifiable to music fans as Scorsese and Kubrick are to cinéasts. At their high point, these three-minute videos were as ambitious as mini-movies, with budgets that could run as much as $7 million (e.g., Romanek’s “Scream” for Michael and Janet Jackson).

[...]

But then a funny thing happened: In the last couple of years, music videos came back. “It’s a little bit like the evolution of a species,” says Gondry. “Videos found a new niche that’s habitable for them: the Internet.” And, truly, they have evolved, into a much more aggressive species. The online ecosystem is so overpopulated that the more oh-my-God bizarre a video is, the better the chance it will go viral…

To read the rest of the article, go HERE!

Music News: Last.fm Tracks Its 40 Billionth Song

Music recommendation, tracking and streaming service Last.fm has “scrobbled” 40 billion tracks since it launched in 2002.

The service gathers data from other music services and applications including iTunes(), Xbox Live and Winamp to make a record of every song you listen to. The process is called scrobbling. On average, 800 songs are scrobbled every second on Last.fm.

The scrobbled songs are displayed on your Last.fm profile, which you can share with friends. The site also uses the songs you’ve listened to to make listening and friend recommendations.

To read more, check out Mashable!

Post your music on YouTube and get paid?!

Ok, so these OK Go guys aren’t going to win Internet Emmy’s for this video, but they’re musicians so we’ll cut them some slack.

The big point here is that YouTube has launched a program to pay musicians based on the number of views they get for their videos. If you were going to put your videos up on YouTube for promotional purposes anyway, you might as well get paid too, right?

Check it out!

YouTube’s MUSICIANS WANTED program!