David Cramer Lyon Audio Engineer Mixing·Mastering·Tracking

It’s been a tough day here in Minnesota. Our favorite son is gone…

I had the privledge to watch Prince record his demo tapes at Moon Sound Studios in Minneapolis. My good friend Chris Moon called me one day and said he had “the next Stevie Wonder” in his studio, and needed to borrow a guitar for him to use. I grabbed my 1964 Fender Stratocaster and headed on over to the studio. What followed was a couple weeks of watching a teenage musical genius create the songs that would become his first album. He would compose the instrument parts as he went, and never needed more than 1, or occasionally 2, takes to nail the track perfectly.

And I understood on the first day, that I was a witness to the beginning of a music legend. It was quite an honor.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/26/health/mental-health/music-brain-science/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

I’ve always held the belief that music is integral to life itself. We can no more live without music than we can live without sunlight, sleep, or human touch. New insights are discovered frequently on the ways we are unconsciously connected with music. I recently found this article by Elizabeth Landau about the upcoming conference in Chicago of the Association of Psychological Science. One of the topics of the conference is ‘Music, Mind, and Brain’, and among the speakers is renowned bassist Victor Wooten.

Internet piracy is a complicated issue. The recent debate over the SOPA legislation is a good example of just how complex it is. Whether it’s software, music, movies, or literature, there is no doubt that it causes lost revenue. And not just for corporations, but for individual writers and creators as well. What isn’t clear is just how much money is lost to piracy. I’ve always thought that the losses claimed by the entertainment industry were highly exaggerated. Which begs the question of how can you realistically solve a problem when you can’t accurately identify the scope of the problem in the first place? Here’s an interesting video from TED Talks that demonstrates how the losses claimed by the entertainment industry are hugely inflated