Kara-Moon Forum

Perhaps some people here think that the project is dead since we didn't post any news here for some time.
It is true that we are perhpas not the best from a point of communication ::) but we worked very hard.
 
The artists that will be on the CD here have been hiding for 6 months in the kara-moon collective section here. This section is hidden and only visible for the kara-moon collective members, in this section we all worked hard to get the first Kara-Moon CD ready, it's called 'In a spin'.
At the moment the songs are done and are been mastered by 2 mastering engineers, one version for the hardware CD and one version for the MP3 download version. Allso the artwork is allmost ready.
The CD will be available for sale mid december.
Expect a preview track of the CD very soon in this public section.

We all have been working very hard on this first CD to make it something very unique and of high quality.
Now  that most of the work is done, you'll see more activity in the public forums

Allso for mastering of songs we are in the process of preparing something new, so stay in touch. We are far from been dead and are preparing some extra services for you all !

k

Yes! We have so much talent at this site it will make your head spin. That's probably where the CD title 'InaSpin' came from!  We have a lot of content on the CD. There will be over 70 minutes of music and even more in the downloadable extras area we will have for people who get the CD. Members here of course will be treated to samples before the release, so stay tuned for that.
  There is SO MUCH happening, and it's all about to come bursting out of the great big bubble it's generating, so be ready for it.

Below is a track list of the content on the physical CD. It is going to be awesome.


Special Place-        Fred Martin
Lookin' in a Mirror- Diatribe (Oren,mharv, and rharv)
On a Journey-        Marc JXP
Irresistible-    -      NeoN and JamesF
Fountains-     -       USB
Maxolino-       -      Max el Belga
Crackdown-     -      Fred S., One, USB
First Spin-      -       Moon
Pourquoi-       -       Kara & Azell
Solstice-        -       FourthMansions
Dreamland-     -      NeoN & JamesF
Serenity-        -       BeatSlaughter
Blessed-        -       One
Moon Amulet-         emptysound
Nightwatch-    -      Wyatt of LiquidSilver
TallShips-      -       JamesF

offthewall is also hard at work on the artwork for the CD, and as I mentioned there will be even more downloadable content from other artists too.
Looking forward to the release,
                                             rharv

*Artists- please contact me if you see any typos, as this list will be referred to for other things.

LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS ONE!  8)

great job guys!


any ideas of when the next project start?
suggestion: collab cd

There's a bubble? Nobody told me about any bubble...

You didn't know Oren, because you're IN it :D
And you're doing such a good job on this that I'm not sure I'll let you out again  :o ;D

k

Well, it's a nice bubble you've got here, Kara!  ;D

So, here's the deal...

16 artists submit a song that they feel is ready for international distribution, to be included on the first Kara-Moon CD. This may be the defining moment in our creative endeavours, and I volunteer to come up with a compilation of these tunes, blended into a "song" less than 5 minutes long. Sure. What was I thinking?

Anyhoo, Bob(rharv) is looking it over, then he'll probably ask me to do about 50 revisions...which I'll happily do because the guy's a genius 8). Then we send it to Kara and Moon, who will undoubtedly see the need for 50 more revisions, but won't say anything because they're so cool :D...

Then you get to hear it. Scary. I told them I don't work well under pressure... :'(

Not to put the pressure on you but I'm REALY looking forward to that preview track  ;D
ok,ok no pressure, I'll give you another day to finish it  ::) ;D

k

Here it is - "In A Spin" in a nutshell ::)

Apologies in advance to those whose songs are not particularly well represented. So much good music, so many styles, and I had to select passages that resulted in some kind of flow...

You guys are good!

Oren.

And Ogg Vorbis... 8)

YOU are GOOD Oren

Great job !
Not easy to squeeze all that music in one track

It sounds GREAT

Thank you for all the effort you & Rharv put into this

k

+1

There's no place for apologies here. Great work !!!
...and I agree: you guys are great and so is Oren. What a team  :-*

Moon

Sounds great Oren, very nice job.

A cool medley ! that's fine

Cheers

Great Job, Oren. A good presentation

Thanks, guys  :)!

I only wish I could get the MP3 to sound as good as the Ogg Vorbis.  :P

When it's time to recommend the download version to anyone, please remind them that the Ogg Vorbis format will give them a superior listening experience.

Oren.

Lovely hat  ;D

k

nice one oren ;)
cheers!

Kara,

I have three fedoras (hats). That's my fancy one  ;D.


Roger,

Thanks for commenting! Getting cold up there in Norway, yet?

Oren.

Nice Guitar Oren... ;)

 NeoN,

That's a model year 2000, G&L S-500 Deluxe.

 1997 was the last year G&L made a really good guitar, but the clear blue finish over flame maple made me crazy, so I bought it. The bridge is of slightly inferior quality, and the fretboard is not as smooth as my older G&Ls, but you might say that guitar is "Irresistible" ;D

Thanks for noticing,

Oren.

Wow, I missed this one. Nice work, Oren!

Marc,

When I was looking for a "benchmark" sound around which to EQ the compilation, yours was the natural choice. You have an excellent sense of balancing sonic components to provide listener-friendly output. Once I had EQed everything into the "JXP" zone ;D, then it was just a matter of selecting representative clips and assembling them in a order that flowed.

Thanks!

Oren.

Thanks! (Now where is that 'blushing' icon when you need it... ;))

Balancing levels is very important to me, I use the Rokit RP5 to monitor my mixes and I'm glad to hear that the things they tell me seem to translate well to other systems. I have to say though that one of my secret mixing tricks remains panning. I tend to pan similar sounds to opposite sides of the panorama so they will stand out clearly and not just fill up the central spectrum of the mix. Can I ask what monitors you use?

Marc- I have four sets of monitors I use while working at home (we use the BlueSky 2.1 system at the recording studio). I use-
M-Audio LX4 2.1 system
JBL 3-way monitors w/Nakamichi amp (10Hz-50kHz) 100watts/channel
JBL 2-way monitors w/Technics amp (15Hz-35kHz) 35watts/channel
and the tried&true MinnieMouses (same Technics amp). The last set is the now out of production Minimus 4" 2-ways from RadioShack that became an underground cult mixing speaker. They are rarely talked about in public because the first instinct is to think it's a joke, but they were very accurate for what they were;desktop monitors for nearfield mixing at low volumes. I caught one of the last versions that was branded RCA before they were phased out.  Huge magnets, heavy little buggers, but they work. I'll probably regret mentioning those..

Anyway- your mixes sound pretty darn good on all of them. The RP5's must agree with you.

Oren uses a few different monitors too. I'm sure he'll chime in soon. I know he was having trouble logging on yesterday (maybe today too?).
Check the video at http://www.yourbestsound.com/home1.html if you want a glimpse at some of our stuff. A short video I threw together when I tinkering with the idea of having an opening flash page..
I'm working on getting a bunch more graphics together to showcase more 'stuff', but it takes me a while. I gotta spend some of my time on actual music.

Marc,

I try to maintain a selection of monitors that represents our listeners' typical equipment.

-The AKG K240DF headphones are the only example of gear that would not     
normally be used by the average listener.
-A pair of cheap Toshiba single-driver speakers covers the boom-box sound
-Skull Candy in-ear Smokin' Buds covers the personal portable players
-B&W 303s powered by a Rotel amp represents the mid-price home stereo
-Cambridge Soundworks "PC Works" powered speakers (sub-woofer and two            satellites) covers the multi-media computer user.

The Skull Candy in-ear units get the most use here because they isolate the listener from outside noise, and reproduce frequencies in a manner typical of current consumer electronics music systems. Comfortable too!

Oren.

Tiens, j'ai raté un truc, moi. Il y avait création d'un disque avec plein de musiciens et j'ai zappé ce thread.
Tant pis pour moi. Bon côté des choses, je vais pouvoir écouter un bon CD !   :)

Wow, I've missed these posts about "Best of Kara-Moon 2007". I'm sorry because I'll be not on this CD.
Sad ? No, because I'll listen a good CD  :)

Daniel Pompougnac

Yes, it is a very good CD. I've been privileged to have been able to listen to it fo a while now. (I mastered it)  Very enjoyable.  It's in my regular CD rotation and fits right in for me.
Nice job by everybody on the songs.

Wow! Our first bilingual post :o

Daniel, 

Be certain to submit a song for next years album. I'm a big fan of your music.!

Oren.

Rharv and Oren: thanks for the info! Always interesting to hear what people mix and master with.

Marc, as is frequently stated on other recording forums- it's not which speaker you use, but rather the fact that you KNOW those speakers.  Experience and practice let's you get familiar enough with how they should sound to allow making other things sound how you want them to sound. I think you are pretty familiar with those KRP's.
 Some people don't like *flat* speakers.  I happen to really appreciate them. I always check my work on a bunch of systems before calling it done (which is why I have so many speaker setups around the house) but I always work on the set I'm most familiar with.  This is the key- being familiar with your speakers.  If you know your speakers you can get just as a good a mix out of $100 speakers as you can out of $1000 speakers.  I'm not saying they will sound the same while doing it, but knowing your speakers allows you to hear what needs to be done (or what you want done in some instances).

 I have many more speaker setups in the house besides those mentioned, but I didn't want to list everything, just what I use as main mixing/mastering setups.
The ones listed are connected to the main music computer, others are scattered about the house.  Drives my wife nuts!  ("Do we really need these speakers in the laundry room?!")  Of course we do  ;D

Very good point, and one that I very much support. Having a relatively linear system is important too. Before my Rokit's I mixed on my computer speakers (which I sometimes still do if the mix is not final and I don't want to switch the RP5's on) and I always had trouble with muddy sounding mixes since they sounded ok on my computer speakers. I'm glad that the Rokit's allow me to hear better what's going on even though I currently suspect that their bass needs to be set lower; they're quite close to a wall and I think that amplifies the perception of the bass levels, resulting in a roll off on the bass in the track.

Marc,

About being over-conscious of bass response due to your speaker placement.....in my opinion: a very good thing.
An educated listener will know when to turn up the bass frequencies for their preference in playback EQ, and will likely have the equipment to handle some punch and rumble without distortion or muddy bottom end. Most consumer audio gear can't handle the really resonant bass tones, and all kinds of nasty sonic conflicts can occur when an average listener is inundated with too much bass.

By all means include those gorgeous low-end frequencies, but mix them at relatively modest levels. Your speaker placement, to my ears is absolutely ideal!

Oren.

Another little item of possible interest to those who use plugins to mix/master their music:

Because I eventually want to do all my work with Linux and open-source software, Audacity is the workstation being used to master the down-load version of "In A Spin".
At first I decided to go up-scale on this one and use the Kjaerhus Audio effects, but found "Classic Master Limiter" to produce some odd dropouts in various places in a song, usually toward the end of a track. So, back to the LADSPA open-source plugins.

The only issue - I can't find an equalizer in th LADSPA collection that can match the warmth and presence brought to the music by Kjaerhus's "Classic EQ". This plug-in has adjustments for "saturation" and "warmth" that take that extra bit of high-frequency content I like to include when mastering for Ogg Vorbis and MP3 and introduce it as a smooth, articulate part of the over-all sonic spectrum.

So our "In A Spin" downloads will be EQed using the Classic EQ plugin, unless one of you resourceful individuals can recommend an open-source alternative with similar capabilities...

Oren.

Are you sure it was the Classic Limiter that caused the dropout, or did it just make it noticable?
 It's interesting to know that Linux has certain plugins that don't play well with it, just like windoze does..I've never experienced that phenom with Classic Master Limiter..

 I could never get used to working in Audacity. Does it have other skins that may make it a more comfortable interface?

Anyway- lookin' forward to the results.  I'm sure you could make it sound good with a spoon and a knife..

I don't know which version of Audacity you've used, but I do know it had a major re-vamp about 6-8 months ago. Also, every time I do an update on my distro, there seems to be another new plugin!

Bob,

Yes, Audacity has quite an uninspiring presentation, and things often need to be accomplished in a somewhat plodding sequence of steps, but given my methodical inclinations, the program suits me very nicely. Think of it as a "style" thing  ::) (or lack of style?) In this little organization, Mr. Harvey has all the panache  8).

I took one of the glitchy files, started with the original artist's .wav version, and applied all of the plugins one at a time, listening carefully before adding the next effect. Classic Master Limiter was applied last, and that's when the drop-outs occur. Undo the Master Limiter, and apply the LADSPA Dyson compressor - big, bold sound, and no glitches. The Classic EQ, however, works like a charm; outstanding "analog vibe".

Will,

I've been inundated of late, so am still working with Audacity in windoze. I think the program is "dummied down" somewhat, compared to the constantly upgraded version that is available to run on a Linux platform. I can hardly wait to get the new Linux computer in action so I can work with the updated programs and plugins, but right now I feel like a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest. Just a matter of time, however... :D