Your monthly update for news, course information, performance and work opportunities & recommendations…

MUSIC AT GLOS

MAG – fanzine for the county providing gig listings and reviews. Click on the cover to read the latest issue.

BBC Introducing in the West BBC Introducing presents the best in new and unsigned music from around the UK. Click on the picture to have a listen to the latest show and get involved.

Popular Music Awards 2013 Friday May 3

rd @ Soundmusicvenue, from 7.30pm

We are pleased to announce our first ever off-campus end-of-year Awards and Party - and you are all invited. It's at the end of Week 3 in Soundmusicvenue and we want to make sure we have a "bit of a do". The schedule runs as follows: 7.30 Reception and Fizz 8.00 First and Second Year Awards (see the POM Facebook page and your recent emails for details) 8.45 Your favourite Waltzes and Polkas with DJ Wilson 9.15 Third Year Awards 10.00 Ambient drillcore classics from DJ Soper 10.45 Onwards, faster, faster... 11.45 "Carriages" They have a bar, we'll be laying on some food, people can dress up, and the work that wins Awards will be broadcast and shown (where possible), so it's a fine opportunity for all 90 of us to see the best of what's been happening this year. And meet each other: it's rare to get us all in one room and crack open the bubbly. Remember the First/Second Year Awards are submitted by you and voted on by you - terrifying levels of democracy: your deadline for submitting is the Sunday before, so keep an eye on FB for all details. Tickets (£3) will be on sale at Online Store, which is here and if you want to come for free with a couple of beers thrown in, then volunteer for the party organiser’s group - 4 people needed, contact Tom.

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Mike Bamford By Tom Soper Two new guest speakers have been announced for early on next term. On Monday April 29th, Mike Bamford - who gave a fascinating Open lecture last year in TC007 about writing music for advertising - has been invited back to do a more practical full day with us. There is nothing like seeing someone work on the same software we all use, listen to him describe what he's doing and why, and get an insight into the pace and quality of sound design, editing and production at the top level. EW009 can host 2 groups of 35 to see his presentation and soundtrack-from-scratch sessions, and then 20 can stay behind to do a practical task on the Macs with Mike on hand to advise. There are two sessions from 10.00-12.30 and 13.30-16.00, first come first served: sign up on the Facebook events page for April 29th by clicking "I'm going." In the big-tiered lecture theatre, TC014 on Wednesday May 8th, Martyn Harries, an Emmy and BAFTA award winner for his post-production on BBC successes like The Life of Birds and The Human Planet, will be hosting an Open lecture in the afternoon. (Time tbc, but expecting 13.15). He will present on the process he goes through, showing us on screen and speakers how visual and audio have been worked upon to reach the final product, tell some tales, and take questions on any topic you care to raise.

Course News

Fancy contributing? Any news, info or promotion you provide, we’ll share. Contact alansley@glos.ac.uk

By Tom Soper Number One Remember as you all work towards 2nd Semester and the big end-of-year projects that if you are struggling with your work or impending deadlines for any reason whatever then contact your Module Tutor or the Student Helpzone. Do not bury your heads in the sand - contact the right people and talk about it. Number Two When we move into the middle and end of the Summer Term there is more space in the studio and more time for Tutors and ARTs to work with you on your own business - inc. having a look over EPKs and CVs, advising about Summer work etc. Number Three: The UK wants entrepreneurs! Whether musical, or media-related, or neither: consider The Student Enterprise Network It might be a far better use of your time to engage with these ideas rather than look exclusively for short-term paid work over the summer.

Guest Speakers

Announced

Jim Lockey & the Solemn Sun return from US tour

Alumni Jim Lockey, Chris Capewell & Simon Cripps have just returned from the United States following a successful stint supporting the Dropkick Murphys on tour of the East coast. Not wasting any time, the band have returned to the UK to play a number of rescheduled dates from their previously planned domestic tour. Shows throughout 2013 and the promise of a new album to follow up the 4K rated “DEATH” means the boys won’t be slowing up any time soon!

Thinking Aloud: Music Apps for mobile devices

By Simon Turner

I thought it might be useful to share a few thoughts I have on apps. I use an iPad 2 and an iPhone 5 and I have loaded both with some very handy music and sound apps. Here are a few of my recommendations: Audiofile Engineerings FIre It's a deceptively simple recording app that I use on the iPhone, which gives some amazing results. Use this to record surprisingly good audio on your phone, then simply transfer to your computer via iTunes. Animoog has to have a special mention, as it is one of the best iPad synth apps around. There are plenty of software synths to choose from, but this is a unique, iPad-specific synth built on Moogs ideas of workflow and sonic structure, with a built in four track, effects and endless editing. A genuinely inspiring bit of kit. Auria turns your iPad into a Pro Tools clone, compete with waveform editing, PSP plug ins and so much more. If you have a decent interface for your pad, then this is probably as good as it gets for tracking on your IOS device. It's not cheap, but it is a fully-fledged, professional application so worth checking out. Samplr is a brilliant app that offers real creativity and allows you to play samples in a highly intuitive, musical way, which other samplers simply cannot do. You can record your own, import from other apps or recordings, and endlessly edit and modulate to get some amazing results. I love it for soundscape and experimental work.

More next time, and do suggest your own favourite apps which we can include in future editions.

Need the Studio? All resources for booking the studio are now available online. All students can now view the available dates in these areas and submit an email to Marcus to book the appropriate times they wish. Click here to email Marcus for a booking, use the buttons below to see the slots.

POP PROCESSING vs RECORDING (Lefsetz) "This is about pop processing as opposed to recording... Once you start straightening out the beats and the dynamics on the drums, once you hyper-compress the guitars so they sound like they are coming out of an iPod already, once you Autotune/time correct the lead vocal so there are no flaws, once you create impossible one second dead silences in the middle of songs, once you go for 15 different mixes to take care of fragmented radio niches....then you are into pop processing. The music no longer sounds like a bunch of people could possibly have turned up to a studio, set up, plugged in, played and sang and an engineer set up a bunch of mics and recorded them...then you are into plastic, temporary, a bubble that bursts ten seconds after it is exposed to the air".

Isn't that the point of pop, though? To be transient, to give you a quick fix to make your day, to not be taken too seriously? I’m honestly not sure myself, as I still

have a hangover from my youth where the charts were filled with the most eclectic range of music you could ever imagine, where Bowie was immediately followed by The Wombles, and each tune was stamped with its own production style so that you never really heard the same production idea twice. Great producers were and are those who strive to find something unique in a track and bring it out. What seems to happen now is that a lot of people simply say "that'll do" rather than something special. No wonder everything is squashed and homogenised - no one seems to have the time or inclination to spend long

hours getting it just right, exploring the sonic landscape and experimenting. It's all about working to the software’s limitations rather than seeing how far we can

push it. As a result the production process has sped up considerably, with formatting for platforms that demand converting to MP3 and compressing the hell out

of everything the norm. How many of you mix for CD rather than Soundcloud? How many of your listeners get to hear, outside of the live venue, your music in its full sonic glory? Probably very few. But if the song is good enough, then surely it makes no difference? Is more and more music being engineered to death? I don't think so. All that's happened is many more people are making music, and the expectancy of dynamic range has lowered as a result of the tech we use to listen to it. Spotify can't stream at WAV quality, otherwise it would not work. Its still brilliant though.

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, but we should always bear in mind that any art form is best experienced in its most original format - that's why we

prefer art galleries rather than looking at photos of paintings, and those that say photos are just as good are missing out on something very special. You pays your money.....

BBC @ UoG April 25

th sees a unique

event for both the BBC and UoG when we collaborate on the first multi-band, multimedia cross regional broadcast.

Click on the Introducing tape to check out the event...