KraftGear: Music Production. » jc

Friday Fun: Interview Time With ‘The Numbers Guy’ Ole

jc — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:10:48 +0000

After a longish hiatus, we are bringing back our interview series with SoundCloud staffers! As the team continues to grow, we feel like this is a good way for you to get to know us.

This week, I would like to introduce to your our very own Web Analyst wizard: Ole.

What do you do at SoundCloud?

I look into everything data-wise at SoundCloud: what people are using/not using, the apps, the widgets, the connections from the client applications, the website itself, how users interact, how users use their accounts, why people are signing up for Pro accounts, and the most used features–to name a few.

Wow. Is Google Analytics your homepage?

Google Analytics is a big part of my work, and we track many things on our databases. Everything in the back-end is stored there, but I aggregate data from many different sources.

What did you do before coming to SoundCloud?

I worked for Ableton. Before that, I was a freelance consultant doing everything from setting-up small websites for business to offering services to various companies.

What’s your background in analytics?

I come from a very mathematical corner of science, so it came quite naturally for me.

Where are you from?

I’ve lived for almost 30 years in Osnabrück, in Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen). Then my wife got a job in Berlin, so we’ve moved here.

Spare time. How do you spend it?

Well, I have a two year-old daughter, which pretty much takes up all my spare time. But I do enjoy cycling and photography.

Anything else you’d like to say to the SoundCloud Community/the interweb?

It’s really exciting working at SoundCloud. It feels like a real startup. It’s fun to work with so many people, who are really good at what they do. It’s a great environment and I feel really happy to be a part of the company’s growth and success!

Hello my name is SoundCloud, and it sure was nice to have met you!

jc — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:09:02 +0000

Clear skies (no planes), sunshine, foods, drinks, great people, and a deck overlooking Berlin — what more can one ask for on a Saturday afternoon in April? Last Saturday we had a very successful inaugural SoundCloud meetup on the sun-deck of our cloudy Headquarters in Berlin, Germany.

About 50 of you made it out to spend some time with other Berlin-based users and most of the SoundCloud staff to talk about music, production, technology and the interwebs. It was great to finally meet some of you in person after having only known you “online” until Saturday.

We also witnessed an impromptu live session by SoundCloud user Onyx Ashanti who brought his Electronic Wind Instrument (connected to his iPhone for additional effects) and treated everyone with a fifteen-minute Beatjazz live improv’. Watch a short video of Onyx’s performance below:

It was great to catch up with all of you! Make sure to visit some of the attendee’s SoundCloud profiles: Michelle Owen, Gabor Molnar, Bleepstreet Records, Madeleine Bloom, Ric Colair, Santi Hernandez, Walter Marinelli, Shawn Balm.

I want to take this chance to thank all the users and potential users that came out and said “Hej”. See you soon for a second Berlin meetup! Pictures:

More pictures here and here and here!

We just confirmed more global meetups — next up is Amsterdam, London, Barcelona, Brisbane and Lyon. Check out our Meetups page for details and get in touch with us if you want to organize one in your city. It’s super-easy: select a date, a location and we’ll support you getting the word out to other users from your area.

(Photo Credits: Jan Berkel, Willy Rachow, JC Tu)

Everything is Always, Nothing New These Days: Lali Puna and [Their] Inventions.

jc — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:01:26 +0000

Pieced together in Weilheim in Oberbayern, Bavaria and releasing on the Berlin-based Morr Music, Lali Puna’s long awaited fourth album (¡¡six years!!), Our Inventions, is finally here! This is indietronica at it’s best: memorable, yet without pungent after taste. Delicious!

The electronics-, synths-, mallet percussion-, and drum machine-filled Our Invention is very much based on the motif of repetition. But, it does not at all feel repetitive: it’s therapeutic. Like a mantra. Valerie Trebeljahr’s lyrics touches upon the future, technology, and even the financial crisis. The melodies are steady. With confidence, it drives continuously forward. Yet with caution, Trebeljahr’s lyrics buckles down and holds back any teenage bravado. They know what they are doing, they have taken control, and these are their inventions: ”It’s all burnt down, we’re left alone/ We try to have some fun/ All by ourselves/ All alone”. Ok, I will stop rambling, now the juicy part! I had the chance to ask them (Valerie Trebeljahr and Markus Acher) a few questions:

My first itching question: what does “Lali Puna” mean?

Markus: I don’t remember the name of the city where Valerie was born [It's Pusan] right, but I suggested Lali (

Valerie’s nickname) Puna as a band name. Like Lali from Puna. That stayed. It has no further meaning besides that.

What is Our Inventions about? Am I hitting the right chord to presume there is a strong sense of nostalgia and self-reflection in the album?

Valerie: Nostalgia, no; self-reflection, yes. I’m not a nostalgic person. I just want to think about whether everything goes the right way these days. I don’t say that anything was better in the old days. I just say: The future doesn’t look too good right now.

I feel like Our Inventions has a sort of post-chaos feel to it, much less pushy than Faking the Books. What’s the idea behind this? The blurb on Morr Music mentions “consumer age”, “modernity”, and even the “financial crisis”, can you elaborate on this?

Valerie: Our Inventions is less pushy than Faking the Books, right. We wanted to leave the guitars behind. In fact, I would have loved to go into the dance direction, so some of the songs on Our Invention were four-on-the-floor. But we didn’t succeed. So we decided to throw away the dancefloor bassdrums and the songs turned out to be a lot more quiet.

“Out There” is a song about the financial crisis, that’s right. You can read it as you like, but that was my thought when I wrote the lyrics. I always thought: “financial stuff–why does it interest me?” But after the crisis in 2008, everybody had to deal with it, and I was so angry that bills were paid, but of course, not from the people who’ve caused it.

Well, yes, other lyrics deals with the belief in technology, “modernity” if you can to call it. I think there’s quite a big change now. Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Our ways of communication has changed. It’s great, no questions about it–but you have to ask yourself if there are set backs, too. It’s worth thinking about; at least to me.

I am also very interested in your collaboration with the Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Yukihiro Takahashi’s (高橋幸宏) album Page by Page (specifically “Out There” and “Meteor Rain – Leonids on the Morning of November 17th”) and the alternate version of “Out There” on Our Inventions. How did this collaboration come along? Is the last track on Page by Page, “Valerie”, dedicated to Valerie Trebeljahr?

Valerie: To be honest, I didn’t really dare to ask if that song was dedicated to me. I am very happy to have worked with Yukihiro Takahashi! He always works with guests on his records. And for his latest album, his label just asked me if I wanted to work with him on two songs. We decided to include “Out There” as an alternate version on our album, too, because the song and the lyrics are very important to me.

While we are talking about collaborations, I know that each Lali Puna member is also working on many other side projects. How does this affect the “Lali Puna Sound”? Has this solidified? Or do you think this will be forever evolving?

Markus: The members other musical involvements have strong influences on the “Lali Puna Sound”. Everyone of us has a particular taste and preferences in music, and that’s true for all bands. But also, every band has a certain idea or concept and a special sound–an unique way to work, play, and arrange. Though there are similarities between all the member’s affiliated projects, we always try to keep them as unique and separate as possible. We also try to evolve with every differently, with different project, as much as possible.

Ok, after all this serious talk, some quickies from our users:

1. Puppies or kittens?

Markus: kittens.

2. A pigeon with a human face or a human with a pigeon face?

Valerie: very simple, they both look terrible.

3. Noise or silence?

Markus: noise.

4. Pre-1985 influences?

Markus: Ithaca, Bruce Haack, White Noise, Margo Guryan, Hank Williams, Nina Simone, Carmen Maki, Yoko Ono…

5. Why use the name “John Yoko” for that one 7″? Does anyone that Valerie : Notwist :: Yoko : The Beatles?

Markus: Some years ago, my hair was quite long. So, people called Valerie and me “John + Yoko” as a joke. Just beside the fact, that Yoko Ono was the best thing that could have happened to the Beatles, at that point we didn’t think about that relationship. So, when we started to record this folky/duo/cover version, we were looking for a name; that was it. We still use the name and will record some more cover-versions for another 7″, some day soon. We like the name and we admire Yoko Ono.

Valerie: Yes, I really found out about her when mixing the record. Before that, I just know some film work by her. I read Hans Ulrich Obrist’s book about Yoko Ono — so everyone that still have prejudices about Ono should read it!

Check out their inventions:

[update: 12.04.2010]

check out the new album here: http://www.lalipuna.de/shop/

Berlin Mitte Institut + Florian Meindl + SoundCloud = Wow.

jc — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:46:21 +0000

A big hello from this non-heated and rowdy flat near Queens Rd. Peckham, on this non-stop rainy London day. So, the Berlin Mitte Institut für Bessere Elektronische Musik (the Berlin Mitte Institute) got together with Florian Meindl for a four hour long WebTV show to produce a track. We got together with the host Jan Kühn aka Fresh Meat and asked him about this interesting project.

Tell us a little bit more about the project, how did you got to team up with Florian Meindl for this project?

The Berlin Mitte Institut seeks to produce radio and WebTV shows that touches upon new things. The radio landscape in the techno scene mainly focuses on dj mixes, or inviting big names to your radio show. In the end, everybody does the same: One more radio show or dj mix to listen to and download. But we want to take the new democratising technologies a bit further and produce content, which has not been done before and also of special cultural value. You can see this on our shows. We broadcast live track productions, as well as focusing on topics that are normally not covered by the usual techno press. We also produce shows explaining the correlations of booking agencies and the techno scene, along with shows that pin points the relationship between the techno scene and its distributors.

Our next show will be a live broadcast from a Berlin club featuring 8 live interviews, which will be put together as a Youtube Doku playlist. We will interview people from professions go more unnoticed (waiters, technicians, runners, bouncer, night manager etc.), yet are vital to the the club functioning as a whole. We always try to connect the promotion of our guests through our channels with the connection to interesting topics that under the surface concern the techno scene.

We sometimes also produce label (eg. Minus, Bpitch, Get Physical) shows in-between, as this is good way of outreach forbigger audiences. Last year we had a Stil vor Talent showcase with Florian and quickly found out, that we have common interests: Techno and social media. I hit him up asking, if he wants to do this live production show. From one show (creating a loop) we made a second one (arranging the loop) and since the public response is so good, we added a remix competition to involve the users even more, create a productive dialogue between fans and us. We also planned to make a live mastering show sometime soon with a special mastering studio here in Berlin.

How did the production process go? What did you guys use to get the track ready and how did SoundCloud came into play?

The production process lasted two shows–all together eight hours, four hours per show. We produced in our living room studio on a mac, special monitor speakers and a good soundcard. The listers and viewers were always live with us, following what Florian does and take part in the process via chat. All shows, including the final track, are hosted on SoundCloud, so that other people can listen to, share and download the show to their mobile music players and follow it after the live show has happened.

How does SoundCloud help you as a radio show? How do you guys use the service?

We host our recordings on SoundCloud, to make them accessible to everybody, who could not follow the live show. People can listen to it, share and download it to there mobile music players or computers. We also use the groups function now for the remix contest. Soundcloud basically is the central archive, that our fans use to listen to our shows whenever and wherever they like.

Interested in doing a remix? Here are the rules (all taken from the BMI website):

Start: 22.02.2010, end: 22.03.2010 12pm CET. Until 5th of April 2010 we will decide for the two winners
You produce a remix (Wikipedia) using the material Florian provides with the material from his track – it must be noticable, that it is a remix of Florian’s track.
On the 22nd of February we will release the remixing files here on the blog
Once finished, upload your track to the extra created Soundcloud group (Disable downloading, do not upload your remixes anywhere else. We will approve them to the group and add them on the blog!)
Label the track as follows:
BMI_Techno_Seminar_(Remixer_Name_Remix_Name_Style)
In the comment field of the Soundcloud link, answer the following questions:

Which hardware / software did you use for the production ?
Which parts of Florian’s original did you use and how did you use it ?
In producing the general structure and aesthetic of the track, what were your main sources of inspiration ?
How did you break with these inspirations to be more original ?
Which parts of your remix do you like most and why ?
PS: You are very welcome to answer these questions in a short video instead. Video quality doesn’t matter, use your (build-in) webcam etc. You attach this video to your uploaded track on Soundcloud and post the link into the track description.

All sent remixes will be posted on the bottom of this posting, so that everybody can listen to them. Maybe we even implement a rating tool, will see.

The remix files may only be used for the remix competition, copyright is held by FLASH Recordings (Florian Meindl). The rights of the other used sound material must be with the remixer.

Bump it.

London Philharmonic’s Youth Fusion: The Band

jc — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:05:10 +0000

The discovery was unintentional, it just happened. Like most more interesting discoveries.

A few weeks ago, Alec from the Education Department of LPO sent me a message about their dusty old SoundCloud account they’ve just found and haven’t been using. They were even thinking about deleting it.

No.

Alec knew better. As he wrote me, “However I saw how wicked your widget is and it really interested me.” That made me very excited. That made us very excited. We were excited that the London Philharmonic Orchestra found us awesome, as we do them!! So I asked if we can do a little Q&A with Alec and he kindly accepted and took time to answer some of my questions .

Can you tell me in 140 words or less the idea behind The Band? Or maybe just a few keywords?

The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s The Band is a youth fusion group that gives aspiring young musicians from South London the chance to work with members of the Orchestra in creative composition workshops.

How long has the project been going on and is there an end-station?

We’re in to the second year of the project now and we’ve already had three successful concerts in Royal Festival Hall, London. The sessions give the young musicians a space in which they can explore composing in their own musical styles. They experience first-hand the Orchestra members’ skills and expertise, and learn from them what it means to be a member of a musical ensemble.

I know that any music lovers living and/or studying in South London (Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark) aged 15 to 19 can join and the young musicians create their own music (wow!) according to the group’s taste (ranging from classical to bhangra). Can you briefly describe how the creative process in such a diverse environment works? And what are some of the key ingredients that keeps this going? Do many participants go on making music?

Each session is different. Previously we’ve had musicians familiar with Indian and Latin percussion, jazz, dance and folk music working within the group. So we’ve encouraged them to share the music they’re interested in with the group. This year the group are working towards a pre-concert performance, playing before the Orchestra’s evening performance. This concert will feature works by Schuman and Ravel and so we’ll be looking at these two composers over the term sessions.

Each Band member brings their own interests and tastes to the group. Phil Mullen – the musical director of The Band, the Orchestra musicians and the team work with young people to bring these different tastes and talents together in a really positive way. You can hear the results for yourself!

Yes, many Band members have gone on to study music at college or university, some have auditioned for West End shows and some just continue to enjoy playing music in their own way.

How do you think online platforms such as SoundCloud can facilitate education and community projects like the Band?

We are aware that we expect a lot of our Band members. This term for example, we’re going to be creating about 1.5hrs of music over only 10 sessions, that’s 15mins of new material per session. We’re really keen to use the fact that our young musicians are very internet savvy to create an environment where Band members can listen to and analyse the work they’ve done.

What other technologies does The Band utilize?

The Band has a website which has information about the sessions on it and gig recordings. We’re also encouraging people to use our Facebook group where they can look at photos, discussions and listen to recordings (through tasty SoundCloud widgets) in a secure environment.

Do you have anything else to add in roughly 140 words or less?

If you’re in the UK and near London on March 12^th then come along to Southbank Centre – the gig is free and starts at 5.30pm!

Also, if you know of anyone in the South London boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark or Lewisham who might be interested please get in touch.

I will now leave you with one their tracks recorded last year: I ain’t leaving. Wow.

Music Hack Day Stockholm

jc — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:02:17 +0000

A big hej hej from the Doberman HQ in Stockholm. We are very excited to be a part of Music Hack Day Stockholm. We have temporarily “moved” our office from Berlin to Stockholm for the Weekend to join the fun and excitement. (It’s a shame Alex couldn’t join us. We miss you!)

the SoundCloud team at the hackday

SoundCloud, along with other grrrreat companies (Spotify, Last.fm, The Echo Nest, Playdar, and more) and generous sponsors (Sony Ericsson, Spotify, and more), is in Stockholm for “the best #musichackday eva!!“.

In spirit with other Music Hack Days, we are here to explore, conceptualize, develop and present top-notch music applications. Woot. Join us by following the live-feed provided by Doberman!

I (jc) will keep you guys updated with our progress through out the hackday.

Also check out some pictures: here and here.

Sharing is Caring

jc — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:13:49 +0000

We’ve teamed up with some of our friends to offer all Premium users some sweet special offers and discounts. If you have a Premium account, log in and have a look at the new Premium Goodies page! Companies such as Native Instruments, Ableton, MOO.com, Juno Download, and PowerFX are already on board.

Want to have your tracks mastered by the same studio that has worked with big names such as Pink Floyd, the Beatles, or Radiohead? You can do that now, 20% discount included, with Abbey Road’s Online Mastering service.

Need an upgrade Ableton Live or Live Suite? Is garage band not satisfying your needs? Thanks to Ableton’s generous holiday spirits, they are offereing all SoundCloud premium users a 40€/$ discount when you buy Ableton Live or Live Suite (including upgrades). Remember to say “thanks”.

Or maybe try to get more airtime with Jango Airplay, they are offering premium users 100 free plays on their 7 million strong listener base. YouLicense, a leading online music licensing platform, is also offering a free 3 month trial. Let the snowball effect begin and connect with artists, labels, and publishers directly.

With one of the biggest digital catalogs of dance and electronic music, Juno Download–part of Juno Records–has generously offered a 5€ voucher for their online store. Clickclickclicklick. Give TheBizmo a try, while you are at it, and put your tracks on online stores such as iTunes, Spotify, Napster, Amazon, and many more!

Are you stats crazy (I know there are many of you out there, whether you want to admit to it or not)? Try SoundOut–giving you an accurate and objective instight into your tracks. Give these pros a try.

As one of the coolest online printing company, MOO is offering 25% discounts on business cards or MiniCards you’ve designed and uploaded–or designs from their designer galleries.

The creators of Kontakt, Reaktor, Traktor and other awesome creative tools, Native Instruments, have also teamed up with SoundCloud to offer special discounts for SoundCloud premium users. NI is offering the Maschine for 399€ (instead of the original 599€) and the Traktor Duo (download version) for 69€ (instead of the original 99€) at the Native Instruments Online store. Check it out.

The pioneers of digital music samples, loops, and sound effect for download, Power FX is offering SoundCloud premium users a special offers of spending $10 on $20 worth of samples.

Remember, sharing is caring! Now, go get’em at Premium Goodies!!

A big Happy Holidays from the SoundCloud team: kthnxbai.