Marc Urselli

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  • Marc Urselli in O’Reilly Digital Media

    I recently mixed a song for “The Desert Mothers”, a project by west coast musician Spencer Critchley. This song was recorded and mixed using exclusively the eSession.com service with musicians from everywhere in the country submitting their tracks online. I too received the files and submitted my mixes online.

    An article published in O’Reilly Digital Media by Spencer Critchley himself describes the entire process and highlights the advantages of the eSession platform.

    http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007/12/13/esession-online-recording-for-all.html

    Mentions of me are on page 7 and 8.

    The finished product is also available for listening and purchase at The Desert Mothers‘ website. You can buy a download of the track or you can buy an enhanced CD (including instrumental and ac-cappella mixes, chord charts, lyrics and art) from CDBaby.com

  • The Future of the Music Business (part 3 of 999)

    Another interesting article about the subject was written by Jim Brett and courageously published by DiscMakers (a company who, pending a re-invention, is bound to disappear along with the disappearance of CDs):

    http://www.discmakers.com/community/resources/ffwd/2007/CreativeMarketing.asp

    I also want to point out that in this article Mr. Brett looks at Radiohead (not surprisingly), The Eagles and (surprise surprise!) Mieka Pauly, a great artist I have loved, followed and blogged about before and for a while. Good bit of promotion for Mieka there!

  • The Future of the Music Business (part 2 of 999)

    My friend Shion from RockOn sent me another interesting link for this series.

    Check out what marketing specialist Seth Godin has to say about the topic in his Music Lessons article.

    Enjoy.

  • The Future of the Music Business (part 1 of 999)

    While my friend Antonella from the San Diego based band AntiQuark is trying to figure out whether she will put out her next record herself or though a record label, she sent me some very very interesting links she stumbled on while doing her homework.

    These are articles that talk about the future of the music business and of music consumption as we know it. They say things I have been repeating to people who ask me for advice and some of these things I keep hearing at music conferences and panels. So I want to post these links for everyone’s reading (and listening, you’ll see why!) pleasure and I am glad that more authoritative figures such as David Byrne, Thom Yorke, Brian Eno, Robert Levine spoke at length and in a very clever and organized way about this topics.

    So here we go:

    David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastar
    This article is just great, it says it all, tells you about your options and offers six different scenarios of how to go about making your music available to the public.

    The Death of High Fidelity
    The one other problem nobody (sadly) seems to talk about (enough) nowadays is the way the loudness wars and MP3’s have ruined music, and I am NOT talking about file sharing thing but about the QUALITY of music today. Luckily Levine attacks this subject and exposes the differences with actual audio examples for everyone to hear.

    Throughout the pages of these two articles I have also found at least four other extremely interesting links that I’ll be checking out myself before saying anything about them here (you know, check your sources first!).

    However, as the ‘part 1 of 999’ bit in the title makes clear, I plan on writing more about this subject. Chances are I’ll be doing so after I finish “The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution“, a book I’ve heard good things about and that I have already bought as a present for people even before buying my own copy (which I just did). I also found out that the author of this book, Dave Kusek, runs a blog about the subject that I encourage you to check out at www.futureofmusicbook.com

  • Texas Blues

    I recently returned from a business trip to Texas where I was hired to produce and engineer the long-awaited new record of blues singer-songwriter Michael Hardie.

    Lucky Run StudioThe recording took place in the outskirts of Houston, in a beautiful studio on a gorgeous ranch called Lucky Run. Lucky Run Studio was thoughtfully designed and built by LA-native engineer/producer Michael Mikulka and is equipped with a great collection of pre-amps and microphones. The Digidesign Icon-centered room has two large booths on the sides and a window in the front that provides natural light, beautiful sunsets and views of the green plains of Richmond/Fullshear with horses and cattle roaming around. Quite a change from the studios I have been to until now.

    the bandMichael Hardie‘s band was comprised of himself on vocals and guitar, his NY-based talented daughter and singer/songwriter Myla Hardie on piano, her Brazilian percussionist husband and published book author Eduardo “Duda” Guedes on drums, the revered Texas bluesman Milton Hopkins on guitar (previously with B.B. King and related to the late and legendary Lighting Hopkins) and the accomplished hired gun Chuck Rainey on bass. In the picture from left to right you see Milton, myself, Michael, Myla, Duda and Chuck.

    Michael & MiltonThe sessions went smooth and in three days we recorded 12 songs at 24bit/88.2k with everyone playing at the same time (old school, baby!) and, except for the drums, pretty much in the same room too. We’ll be doing more production, overdubs and mixing in my studio EastSide Sound in NYC.

    After this great experience Myla, Duda and I drove to Austin for a few days to research and soak in some of the blues/country/western/folk roots of the town and the surrounding areas. I stayed at the pretty and mexican-styled Austin Motel on South Congress, right across the street from the Continental Club, a staple of the local music scene since 1957, which pretty much became the last stop for me every single night before hitting the sack. During my time there I lived by the Austin Chronicle music listings (which coincidentally that week happened to feature my friend Steve Bilich on the front cover, who directed the award winning documentary “Native New Yorker”) so we hit as many concerts as we could (up to 4 per night! the way I dig it!), including but not limited to Warren Hood (talented and young country/blues fiddle player and singer) @ Momo’s, Dale Watson (oh shit, wait, did I just see Elvis walk by?) @ Continental, Lou Ann Barton (blues singer) @ Antone’s (which is the other legendary joint in town), Chicken Strut (fusion/rock band) @ Antone’s, Alan Haynes (great blues guitar soloist) @ Momo’s, James McMurtry (awesome singer/songwriter with a powerhouse-band behind him) @ Continental, Michael Hardie himself @ Gene’s (just a few blocks east of the Texas Music Museum)… and the list goes on…

    Milton & MarcI had a great time in Austin, a beautiful little city and an oasis of individualism, weirdness and liberal thinking in an otherwise conservative cowboy-land neighboring territory. You can feel the love, people seem to know how to have fun and love to dance (there are a lot of great dancers there, somewhat of a lost art in NYC)… However after 4 nights there I realized that it seems to be a closed community and a closed circle of musicians… I kept seeing the same faces on the dance-floor and I saw some of the same musicians sitting in as guests in multiple places. Yes there is an unusually high concentration of venues for live music (which is awesome!) but what good does that do to the local musicians if it is an excuse for them never to venture outside of Austin? And if there are no great studios, not too many labels, no producers/publishers/music supervisors and industry personnel in general, how are all these great bands going to be discovered? Austin is great for live music and for people who love it and play, but that same greatness can become a self-restraining limitation for those musicians who get too comfortable and fail to realize that there are bigger ponds to swim (and hustle) in…

    Michael & MarcXmas week might not have been the best time of the year to be there: not too many shows that weekend and a lot of places were closed, so I didn’t get to see some other clubs I wanted to check out (Emo’s, the Alamo Drafthouse, the Waterloo Ice House etc). However, with Xmas around the corner, all the cool stores were open for customers, so I got to check out the coolest record store in town (Waterloo Records) and the coolest music souvenir shop in town (Wild About Music), both on historic 6th Street. Also we missed some cool shows (Pinetop Perkin, to mention one) because everything starts so early and ends so early, at least when I compare it to my night-owl-ish life in NYC. But that’s Texas for you… people are relaxed, always late and go to bed early… drives me crazy but what can I do?

    Either way, with all the music I ingurgitated and all the Mexican food I savored, I feel like I’ve had a pretty good Texas experience after all… I think the only things I wanted to do and didn’t get to were riding a horse, riding a bull (even a fake one at a Rodeo bar!) and shooting some beer bottles on a white fence with a rifle!

  • from ASCAP’s Toastmasters Club to the Deems Taylor Awards

    ASCAP Toastmasters ClubIt was with great pleasure that I recently accepted an invitation to be a guest at the ASCAP Toastmasters Club for an interview conducted by the cheerful club president Jo “Laurie King Live” Liu.

    Toastmasters is a worldwide nonprofit organization whose goal is to improve communication skills by teaching its members how to speak more effectively in public and improve presentation skills; and they do so in a horizontal and team-work based environment. The conundrum (word of the day, that day) of speaking well in public without speaking as if you were speaking to the public, lead me to Toastmasters. After reading about it somewhere, in an attempt to improve my own public speaking skills to offer a better service at all the conferences I am speaking at, I had sought out what seems to be the only music-related Toastmasters club in NYC: the ASCAP one.

    I was greeted by a very receptive and attentive group who welcomed me and was extremely cheerful and enjoyable to be around. One could tell that they are a very close team who probably works well together and tries to have fun while doing so.

    In the picture you see (from left to right) Grammarian Adrian Ross (whom I asked for mercy, based on the fact that I am not a native English-speaker), General Evaluator Todd McKinney, Joy Wynter, Jokemaster and talented singer Nikki Blair (whose joke about a nerd in a strip club asking for a laptop I loved!), myself, Table Topics master Dana Thorpe, Greeter/Moderator/Toastmaster Lance Pope, Speaker Marshall Tarley (who gave a beautiful speech about change, touching on science, music and more), Richard Fairfax, Timekeeper Christopher Dobbins and Speech Evaluator Andrew Shreeves (who got me good with a trick question about Louis Armstrong playing his flugel trumpet). The lovable Jo Liu is not in the picture because she was busy pressing the shutter.

    Indeed I had a great time at ASCAP and I hope to be invited back soon.

    Before and after my “toasty” experience, I met with Senior Vice President Seth Saltzman (whose music I am looking forward to hear), Loretta Munoz (who every year does a tremendous job organizing the ASCAP Music Lounge at the Tribeca Film Festival as well as other Film Festival related music happenings) and Jim Steinblatt who does an amazing job at organizing special events such as the Deems Taylor Awards.

    The 40th annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards took place yesterday at Jazz at Lincoln Center and was a great (albeit a touch lengthy) show to celebrate book, article and liner notes authors and publishers as well as radio and TV broadcasters: a very important award, given its nature and the fact that a lot of these formats are at risk of extinction in the current state of industry.

    The ceremony included some peculiar performances, most notably a throat singer utilizing a singing technique described in the Béla Bartók Award winning book Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond by Theodore Craig Levin and Valentina Sϋzϋkei (Indiana University Press) and a violin duet performance of a piece illustrating microtonality, written by one of John Cage’s students, Ben Johnston who wrote the honored book Maximum Clarity and Other Writings on Music (University of Illinois Press).

    Personally, this morning I Amazoned (yes I am indeed pioneering the use of this verb, just as other people say “googled” or “fedexed”) three books that were honored at yesterday’s ceremony: Joe Boyd‘s White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s (Serpent’s Tail), Steven Mithen‘s The Singing Neanderthals: the Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (Harvard University Press) and Lorraine Gordon & Barry Singer‘s Alive at the Village Vanguard: My Life In and Out of Jazz Time (Hal Leonard Trade Books). I am a slow reader (too busy, what can I tell you) but when I get through with these I plan to amazon myself (that’s right!) at least two more awarded book: the Debra DeSalvo book about the etymology of the blues lingo The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu, published (Billboard Books) and John Gennari‘s book about jazz critics Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (The University of Chicago Press).

    Also honored were several articles and liner notes. Amongst the articles, a few that caught my attention where Francis Davis‘s “The Singing Epidemic” (The Atlantic Monthly) and Ted Panken‘s “Smalls Universe” (DownBeat), the latter of which unfortunately I couldn’t find online (if there is a link I don’t know of please add it to the comments of this article).

    Last but certainly not least (indeed it is the very why I attended in the first place), in the Television Broadcast category ASCAP honored American Masters – Les Paul: Chasing Sound, which aired on PBS and contains one or two scenes in which you can actually see my ugly mug, mixing with the much prettier Les in my studio, EastSide Sound. John Paulson, the capable director, accepted the award and to the delight and surprise of everyone introduced the unique Les himself, who told another one of his amazing stories (about how he came to New York) and even refrained from dirty jokes (strange indeed!).

    A great event I was pleased to attend and that I hope will see many more editions.

  • Teraesa Vinson (with Tom Dempsey) “Next To You”

    Next To You by Teraesa VinsonI just got my copy of this beautiful record by the talented and gifted upcoming Harlem singer Teraesa Vinson (whose equally great debut CD I had mixed a few years ago). The album is simple and beautiful: just one voice and one guitar! It features the opening title-track, written by Dempsey, and 11 jazz arrangements of tunes by Jobim, Stevie Wonder, Ellington and others.

    We recorded the entire thing in one day and mixed it in another day. Pure and unadulterated signal path (great mic and pre-amp on her and two mics on the guitar) a little reverb, a little overall compression and virtually no editing (with musicians like these words like comping vocal tracks, auto-tuning etc luckily are never even uttered).

    Vinson’s drummer Dion Parson produced the record and you can buy it at CD Baby.

  • October Conferences Marathon

    Wow, it feels like I haven’t posted in ages!!! Of course it doesn’t matter because I am not some popular blogger like Arianna Huffington, Beppe Grillo, Guy Kawasaki or David Lawrence… Other people write blogs for themselves and their mothers: I don’t. I know that because my mother doesn’t read my blog!

    I swept through October like a hurricane. The pace of the best runners at today’s NYC Marathon (taking place as I write) hardly compares to the pace I set for myself during the month of October. The reason? Hundreds of concerts, dozens of panels, large exhibition floors, movie screenings and of course the ever present work!

    Les Paul, Marc Urselli, Geoff EmerickFirst of all there is the AES Convention. A geek fest of colossal proportions which gathers audio aficionados from all over the planet inside the Javits Center of NYC every other year. This year’s 123rd edition was bigger than last year’s and rich with exciting educational opportunities, new hardware, software, services, award shows and after parties. I attended as many panels as I could to further my knowledge, but the most exciting talk was probably the one where the legendary Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick (see my post about his amazing book!) commented the scenes of the the BBC documentary “It was 40 Years ago Today” about the re-make of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album by some of Britain’s most popular rock bands. Seeing these bands grapple with having to get it right to tape without the luxury of Pro Tools and stuff like that was inspirational to say the least. Razorlight, Kaiser Chiefs, The Fray, Stereophonics, Travis, Magic Numbers and Bryan Adams were among some of the bands involved in this re-make, which took place at Mark Knopfler’s personal studio, with the original Beatles engineer and assistant and the original Beatles gear (4 tracks and all that cool stuff). The documentary is an initiative by Bob Geldof, whose production company shot it, but unfortunately has only been aired in the UK (on BBC). If you look on the internet you can actually find it (I did), but you won’t find the specials features contained in the DVD version (which is not and probably will not ever be released). These features include interviews with Emerick and other people involved in the original recording sessions of the historical Beatles album as well as tech talk about the equipment being used back then and being re-used for this re-make (if somebody does find these features online please contact me – I would love to see them!). Seeing these chapters and hearing Emerick comment on them was an absolute treat, considering that they’ll most likely never see the light of the day due to contractual issues and due to the fact that there were too many parties involved (BBC, Geldof, the Beatles estate, the Lennon estate a.k.a. Yoko Ono, the producers etc). At the TEC Awards dinner and show (hosted by the great and funny Will Lee) I was talking to Les Paul and his son Rusty when Emerick came over to say hi to Les, so I actually had the pleasure to get my picture taken with Emerick and Les Paul at the same time, which was like being in the middle (literally and figuratively) of two of audio history’s most influential, unique, ground-breaking and revolutionary characters! What a treat!

    A week after AES, CMJ 2007 took place downtown. I was a speaker at one of the panels and I attended as many other panels as I could, because you can never stop learning! Of course I went to plenty of shows as well, as many as I could fit in my schedule. I didn’t go see any of the movies, but CMJ is always a great networking opportunity, so I walked away with cards and contacts. I am not going to talk about CMJ at length because I actually was asked to write a full report about it, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Recording Magazine (along with another article about Vocal Recording that I wrote for the same magazine). Of course as soon as it is published I will post that news here in the blog so anyone can go out and get a copy of the mag to read my article and all the other interesting features. In short, however, I will say that some of the bands on the CMJ bill that you should look out for are Raining Jane (LA), The Section Quartet (LA), Mieka Pauly (NY/Boston), The Hard Lessons (Ferndale, MI)… There were of course many other very valid bands but I could only be in some many places at any given time, not to mention I spent some of my evenings checking out some of the more established acts that this year’s CMJ pass allowed badge-holders to see (Zakir Hussain with Mickey Hart and Giovanni Hidalgo, Holy Fuck opening for UNKLE, M.I.A. and some others).

    Finally, since I do have a passion for photography, at the same time of CMJ (of course!), there was also PDN happening, the big photography convention at Javits Center with plenty of cool gear and stuff for the visually-inclined. I sprinted (literally) through the looooong aisles of Javits’ huge exhibit floor (bigger than AES!) on Saturday morning and then catapulted myself back downtown to see more panels and shows!

    So that is what kept me busy and away from blogging… we’ll see what my excuse will be next time!

  • Marc Urselli to speak at CMJ panel

    I’ve been invited as a speaker to the 2007 CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival. I am excited to be sharing the podium with such esteemed fellow panelists such as Engineer and Producer Ethan Allen, Mastering Engineer James Cruz, DJ Rich Medina. More info on the panel and the panelists here: http://cmj.com/marathon/panel_show-template.php?panel_id=58

    The panel will be moderated by Producer, Arranger, Keyboards, Composer Jason Miles and is scheduled to take place Thursday, October 18th at 1:15pm.

  • Wyland’s eco-conscious CD “Rhythms of the Sea” out now!

    WylandA few months ago I recorded a beautiful jazz album featuring some of NY’s top jazz musicians (saxophonist Vincent Herring, Saturday Night Live trombonist Steve Turre, pianist Anthony Wonsey, vocalist Paulette McWilliams and more) and incredibly charming and gorgeously performed music with lyrics written by Wyland, an amazing environmentally-driven American painter and visual artist whose humongous and larger than life art you probably saw at least once in your life somewhere in the US.

    As a Hawaii resident and lover of the sea, Wyland has always been extremely dedicated to the conservation of the aquatic fauna (the subject of his art), so he decided to explore and reach out to different types of arts to promote global awareness. As an environmentally-conscious person myself (not to mention avid kitesurfer and lover of the sea), I felt absolutely honored and privileged to work on this magnificent album and I can’t wait to hear it and see it (I hear the artwork is amazing, which is pretty obvious and expected at this point, isn’t it?).

    The album just was announced a few days ago and is available on the Home Shopping Network and in selected stores. You can preview some tracks excerpts here: http://www.wylandstudiostore.com/index.cfm?ProductID=2274&do=detail

    Here is the official press release:

    Debut Release From Wyland Records
    New Jazz CD Gets in the Swing of Conservation

    NEW YORK, NY — Renowned marine life artist Wyland has assembled the brightest jazz talents in New York City to create, “Rhythms of the Sea,” a new collection of “eco-conscious” music set to the artist’s
    lyrics.
    The 13-song CD album (Wyland Records — $15.95) is a unique extension of the artist’s mission to bring
    awareness through art and is dedicated to inspiring conservation through music. Rhythms of the Sea, was
    recorded in New York City with saxophonist Vincent Herring, Saturday Night Live trombonist Steve Turre, pianist Anthony Wonsey, vocalist Paulette McWilliams performing as the Earth Jazz Agents.


    “With this debut music project, Wyland’s goal is clear as the turquoise water of a South Pacific island,” says said Laurence
    Donohue-Greene, managing editor of AllAboutJazz-New York.

    “We can only hope that future collaborations between marine life and earthbound musicians continue along these paths.”

    “Rhythms of the Sea” was arranged and produced by Herring, who called upon other collaborators, including as trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, pianist/keyboardist Nat Adderley, Jr., cellist Akua Dixon, and two-time Grammy Award winning engineer Marc Urselli. Noted for his fine Cannonball Adderley-inspired alto work, Herring also performs on soprano sax and flute From “Flow”, “Sacred Seas”, and “Ocean Paradise” to “Turtle Time”, “Rhythms of the Sea”, “Ocean of Light” and “Endangered Species”, vocalist Paulette McWilliams connects Wyland’s environmentally-conscious thoughts and words into song. Wyland himself composed lyrics for six of the seven songs that McWilliams sings and even makes a brief cameo on “Endangered Species” by adding spoken word over the backing vocals of Andromeda Turre’s repeated refrain of “Protect our Planet.”

    Turre bridges the worlds further with his musical mastery of the conch shell. His composition “Flying Fish” is a celebratory number, from Herring’s high-spirited alto lines leading to trumpeter Jeremy Pelt’s Hugh Masakela-influenced smears, blasts and bent notes, trombonist Turre and Wonsey’s soulful upbeat piano.

    “Whale Song” pairs composer Turre’s overdubbed conches and Dixon’s arco-played cello with the as-credited “backing vocals” of a recording by the humpback whales of the Silver Bank.

    “Rhythms of the Sea” is available at www.wyland.com

    About the Artist
    One of the world’s most recognizable artists, Wyland has developed an international reputation for his commitment to marine life conservation, most notably his monumental marine life murals, the Whaling Walls. He is considered one of the most successful working artists today, with galleries throughout the United States, and more than half a million collectors around the world. Each of his works speaks of our beautiful but fragile marine ecosystem. Dedicated to saving our water resources through art and education, his non-profit Wyland Foundation seeks to further that end.