Podcast: Episode 6

Introduction

Hey light audio recordists!

Are you well? Because you’re looking well. This is Ronan Fitzgerald from light audio recording dot com and it’s Thursday February twenty eighth, twenty nineteen. This is episode six of the light audio recording podcast.

I hope you’ve had a good week so far, and you’re ready to get over tomorrow, and record some tunes this weekend.

In this episode, we’ll look at BandLab’s latest update, an impressive deal on a Chromebook, and some other odds and ends.

Item one

Last week on their blog, BandLab declared their biggest update yet, with version eight point zero.

In this update, they have a thing called Creator Kits. This looks essentially like a drum pad for your phone. Given how awkward some light audio recordists find actual drums, this might be a very helpful feature.

One of the best things about using BandLab in light audio recording, is that BandLab masters your track to CD quality for absolute free. Up until now, this was only available through the desktop browser version, but they’ve now rolled it out to their app.

We haven’t done much with MIDI to date in light audio recording, but if you’re that way inclined, as of version eight point zero, you can edit MIDI in the app.

Last month, they unveiled their Creator Connect function at NAMM, starting with iOS, but there hasn’t been any sign of roll out to other platforms yet.

Item two

I think Lenovo gets frowned upon a little bit as a tech brand.

But, if you’ve been looking at a Chromebook for your light audio recording, their brand new fourteen e Chromebook can’t help but catch your attention.

Let’s start with the most basic thing – the cost. Well, it costs two hundred and seventy nine dollars, which is very reasonable.

Let me go through some specs so you know what else is going on with the fourteen e.

First, its name is derived from its fourteen inch screen. It claims to have a battery life of up to ten hours, and that fourteen inch screen is touchscreen. Lovely!

It comes with a two point five gig AMD processor, and up to sixty four gigabytes of storage.

And if you’re kind of a clumsy clutz like I am, you’ll be pleased to hear that its casing is ruggedized.

Friends, all of this sounds like a smashing consideration for light audio recording purposes. Check it out when it’s released in March.

Item three

Over on the gear side of things, TC Electronic have unveiled a bass amp head that caught my eye.

But only just, because this thing is tiny!

TC Electronic have a solid record of reasonably sized and priced bass heads, but this one is next level stuff.

The BAM two hundred is a two hundred watt bass head, that measures a paltry one and a half inches high by just over six inches wide, and weighs two pounds.

It has a three band EQ, a headphone jack for practice, and an XLR output.

If you’ve been following the recording posts of the light audio recording blog, you’ll see that I just DI the bass straight into the audio interface.

While it certainly gets bass, the tone is a bit lifeless, so something like this could give it a little bit more oomph, without taking up any major real estate.

I want it. It’s currently available for pre-order.

Item four

And finally, way back in episode one of this very podcast, SoundCloud were after announcing that artists could now monetize their music on their platform, if they were using paid versions of it.

Well, now, if you’re eligible for monetizing your music through SoundCloud, they’ll also look after getting your music on other platforms.

Most significant of those is Spotify. Which is kind of an interesting move, because Spotify are currently beta testing their own function for artists to upload directly to their platform.

It makes SoundCloud look like they went the opposite direction. The whole point of Spotify’s direct upload function was to make music aggregators a things of the past.

But now it looks like SoundCloud are looking to fill the gap in the dying music aggregator market, as if it was two thousand and eight, or something.

Let’s just trust that everybody concerned knows what they’re doing.

Wrap up

And that is all I have for you this month. You’ll get to hear my dulcet tones again in a month, at the end of March twenty nineteen.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the light audio recording blog at light audio recording dot com, where you can follow my exploration of recording music in an affordable and compact way.

You can also find light audio recording on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

I’m Ronan Fitzgerald, you’ve been listening to episode six. Have a great weekend recording your music, and I’ll catch you next time.