WallyKazam! is nominated for a 2016 Daytime Emmy! The show has been nominated for Outstanding Pre-School Children's Animated Program, whose audio was produced and recorded with our partner Rhumba, and with Dubway owner Al Houghton as the Sound Production Supervisor for the series. Here's to the great work done at Dubway & Rhumba!
Congratulations to Wallykazam! creator/executive producer Adam Peltzman, Co-Executive Producers Koyalee Chanda, and Dave Palmer, and Producer Sara Kamen!
Back in Logic version 2, you could enter your own key commands for nearly every function in the application. This led to a lot of confusion, but it was fun. Mac OS X allows users to add key commands to installed applications, but the process is a little inflexible, and system maintenance can easily erase your work. To address this problem, Keyboard Maestro has become a favorite tool of professional artists. Keyboard Maestro runs as a background process and takes almost no CPU power. I rely on it heavily while using Pro Tools. Here are some of my favorite custom commands:
command-r: Show/Hide Clip Name
option-d: Delete Fades
control-r: open Pitch 'n Time Pro
I’m in the middle of a project that has caused me to become an Izotope RX ninja. You can automate the process of getting from Pro Tools to RX and back:
shift-c (clicks on an open Audiosuite plug-in for RX Connect): RX Connect Send
shift-d (sends the audio back to Pro Tools, waits 0.5 seconds for the application switch, and then renders the audio by hitting the Audiosuite plug-in): RX Connect Render
This greatly speeds up insanely tedious tasks. Here’s a screenshot of my custom key commands. I regularly update these depending on what (tedious) task I’m doing:
All of this is no substitute for learning all the key commands that Pro Tools already has. So for a little bedtime reading, here’s the official shortcut guide. Be careful when adding commands, because if they overlap with existing commands, the computer might yell at you.
Rhumba, Dubway's music composition partner, recorded a song in the mezzanine for Mattel's new animated TV series, Barbie Dreamtopia. Here's a video of the song "Roll With It" featuring singers Erica Rabner and Leslie Shannon.
Roll With It! from Rhumba on Vimeo.
TV personality Jason Silva was in studio recording voice-over for Origins: The Journey Of Humankind, National Geographic's newest show to air on March 6th.
Jason Silva is a media artist, public speaker and filmmaker focusing on philosophy, science and art. He created the web series Shots of Awe which has been viewed over 13 million times, and is the Emmy-nominated host of National Geographic's hit TV series Brain Games.
Hosted by Silva, Origins is a new series on National Geographic that "rewinds all the way back to the beginning and traces the innovations that made us modern."
Watch the official trailer below.
Another one for the books! Dubway's own Chris Montgomery engineered the music mix for another installment of the Live From the Artists Den series – this time for popular rock band OneRepublic's performance at Park City Live in Park City, UT.
OneRepublic is an American rock group from Colorado Springs, CO lead by major hit pop songwriter and producer Ryan Tedder. The group is acclaimed for producing smash singles after smash singles in popular music, including "Apologize," "All The Right Moves," "Secrets," "Good Life," and "If I Lose Myself." Their latest album Oh My My was released in the fall of 2016 and debuted at #3 on the Billboard Top 200 Album chart.
Lady Antebellum performing at United Palace Theater for "Live From The Artists Den"
Engineer Sam Palumbo preparing the audio recording for the interview portion of the episode
This February, Dubway had the pleasure of providing the audio recording for another installment of the Live from Artists Den series. Engineers Sam Palumbo and Bea Go went to the majestic United Palace Theatre in Washington Heights, NY to record seven-time Grammy-award winning group Lady Antebellum's performance and interview. Dubway engineer Chris Montgomery is mixing the music for the episode.
The Artists Den is a critically acclaimed television and digital music series best known for presenting small, secret concerts by extraordinary artists in non-traditional, often historic settings for the TV broadcast. Live from the Artists Den is broadcasted nationally on public television, and internationally in the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Australia, Canada, Israel, and Latin America. Dubway has recorded and mixed audio for the series' previous episodes featuring Imagine Dragons, The Lumineers, The Killers, Marina and the Diamonds, and Sara Bareilles.
Lady Antebellum's interview took place in the lobby of United Palace.
Lady Antebellum, the country trio based in Nashville, TN, has sold more than 18 million album worldwide, earned six PLATINUM singles, nine chart topping hits and countless other awards including Billboard Music Awards, People’s Choice Awards and Teen Choice Awards, while also taking home ACM and CMA "Vocal Group of the Year” trophies three years in a row. Their upcoming album Heart Break is due for June 9th of this year.
Stay tuned for the release of this episode in 2017.
Acoustiguide, the prestigious developer of interactive tours for museums and tourist attractions worldwide, came to Dubway to record the voices for their latest project - the official guide for visitors to NYC's Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, featuring the foundation's President, Stephen A. Briganti.
Dubway's Nathaniel Reichman worked on the surround mix for the performance of David Lang's "the public domain" commissioned by Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival.
"the public domain" is a performance piece written by Pulitzer-Prize winning composer David Lang, performed by the public on August 13, 2016 at Lincoln Center's Josie Robertson Plaza. Inspired by "the theme of the collective knowledge shared amongst us all," the event brought 3,000 volunteer amateur vocalists together on a hot summer day to perform this piece, conducted by Simon Halsey, Choral Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, The video of the Mostly Mozart Presentation went live on PBS on Friday, February 3rd as part of the network's Live From Lincoln Center program.
This week, actress Kirrilee Berger came to the studio for an ADR session, on the new Amazon Prime TV Series, Just Add Magic. Kirrilee also does voice-over work for Nick Jr.'s Butterbean.
Just Add Magic is a half-hour children's series about three girls who discover a mysterious cookbook whose recipes are far from ordinary – they're magical. Based on the popular book of the same title by Cindy Callaghan, the series follows the three girls as they attempt to use the recipes to release their grandmother from a powerful curse. The series is available on Amazon Prime TV.
Kate Mulgrew, popularly known for her roles as "Red" in the hit Netflix original series Orange Is The New Black and Janet Elridge on Cheers, was in studio to lend her voice to record the audiobook for The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia, a memoir by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, to be published by Penguin Random House in February. The session was engineered by Sam Palumbo and directed by Paula Parker.
Dubway engineer Adrian Thorstensen recently engineered a VO recording for CBBC's television show, Officially Amazing. The session involved recording Al Jackson in NYC, with directors at Crow TV studios in London, via an ISDN connection.
Officially Amazing, now in its sixth season, is a television show airing on CBBC, showcasing "officially amazing" people trying to break world records across the globe. CBBC is a British children's television network (formerly Children's BBC) aimed for older children between the ages 6 and 12.
Last year, Dubway had the opportunity to produce the audio — location recording, ADR, foley, SFX, mixing — for Christopher Piazza's short film, Olfactory.
The science fiction drama surrounds an experimental product "Olfactory" that allows users to re-experience memories, starring Kieran Mulcare, Alison Barton and Molly Camp.
Olfactory was recently selected as an official entry to be screened at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival in February.
Watch a 30-second trailer of the science fiction drama, written and directed by Christopher Piazza, below.
Christopher Piazza is a director and camera operator in New York City, whose notable works include commercials for Volkswagen, DirecTV, Nike, Pandora Radio, and many other brands. As a camera operator, Piazza has worked alongside Dubway on the Live From The Artists Den series, as well as operating for the Governor's Ball, Coachella, and Bonnaroo festivals for acts like Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen. His work can be found via Panopticon NYC.
Last fall, the novel and audiobook for Simon & Schuster's The Girl From Venice by Martin Cruz Smith was published and released. The audiobook was recorded at Dubway Studios last summer by engineers Sam Palumbo and Zac Suskevich, read by Zach Appelman and directed by Tara Thomas.
The Girl From Venice is a novel in the historical fiction genre from the New York Times bestselling author Martin Cruz Smith, set against the dangers of Italy in World War II as a young couple must outrun the Nazis to protect their forbidden love.
Last summer, the novel and audiobook for Simon & Schuster's Nothing Short of Dying by Erik Storey was published and released for purchase. The audiobook was recorded at Dubway Studios last summer by engineers Sam Palumbo and Stephen Kurpis, read by Jeremy Bobb and directed by Tara Thomas.
Nothing Short of Dying is a novel in the thriller genre that features a drifter with lethal skills, whose mission to rescue his abducted sister pits him against a ruthless meth kingpin and his army of killers.
Simon and Schuster is a major international publishing company founded in 1924, whose titles are published globally, and its products — of bestselling and critically acclaimed fiction and nonfiction for readers of all ages and every taste — are distributed in more than 200 countries around the world.
A long time ago, Avid (then called Digidesign), allowed 3rd-party MIDI control surfaces to move the faders and the pans in Pro Tools. JL Cooper made a bunch of these surfaces. They were awful. Shortly after, Mackie and Digidesign collaborated on an improved system that used MIDI in a smarter way, called HUI. HUI is still in use today, and is the main way that 3rd-party companies make controllers for Pro Tools (SSL, Tascam, etc.). But MIDI is awful, and Digidesign then built their first serious control surface, ProControl. ProControl looked and felt like a real board, and used a proprietary language over ethernet called DigiNet. DigiNet powered ProControl, Control | 24, C24, and all the ICON boards like D-Command and D-Control. For the small-budget crowd, they made Command|8 , Digi 002 and 003 all of which use MIDI in a smart way like HUI.
When Avid purchased Euphonix, they got something special, EuCon. EuCon was the only serious competitor to DigiNet at the time. Avid promptly ended development for DigiNet and put all their resources into EuCon. The Artist series (we have an Artist Mix and Artist Control), MC Pro, Pro Tools | Dock, S3 (picture below), S5, and S6 are all built on EuControl. And EuControl is compatible with Logic, Nuendo and Pro Tools (and many more apps, too).
With Pro Tools 12, Avid released a free iPad app, Pro Tools | Control. This uses EuCon over Wi-Fi (or via the Lightning port) and is incredibly useful.
Avid's Pro Tools | Control for iPad.
So that’s history. Here’s the lesson: EuControl uses ethernet and/or Wi-Fi and looks on the network for all available EuCon devices. Go to “EuCon Settings” in the menubar and you can see a window where you can grab any available surfaces on the network. When you move the Artist Mix and Control from room to room, remember the following:
Artist Mix and Artist Control plug into the ethernet switch (small black box), and the third cable on the switch goes to the Mac. All of our Mac Pro’s have (2) ethernet ports, and they automatically recognize that our LAN and the internet is on one port, and EuControl is on the other port. Ports are interchangeable. If you have time, fire up the controllers and experiment. It’s easy to get stuck in the habit of using only the mouse with Pro Tools. As soon as you break that habit, you’ll discover all the fast and intuitive ways you can run a session and shape sounds with a surface.
Take a look at Avid’s current line-up. These surfaces range in price from almost free to over $100k (!).
Last week, Dubway engineer Zac Suskevich recorded singer Julia Murney for Paul Schrader's newest film First Reformed.
Paul Schrader, Zac Suskevich, Julia Murney and Jake Falconer at Dubway Studios.
First Reformed is a new indie thriller by writer-director Paul Schrader produced by Arclight Films and Killer Films. It follows a former military chaplain (Ethan Hawke), who struggles with his faith after the loss of his son. He befriends a parishioner of his Church (Amanda Seyfried) whose husband is a radical environmentalist, and discovers "his church's complicity with unscrupulous corporations."
Paul Schrader, an American screenwriter, film director and film critic popularly known for writing and co-writing screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, attended the singing session for First Reformed.
Last fall, Dubway engineer Adrian Thorstensen mixed Gruber Pictures' latest advertisement for Samsung's SmartCam with Privacy. Watch the ad, aired last month, below:
