Procopy's Music Industry News

Vale Wayne Smith - Chapple Magnetics

WebMaster — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:09:19 +0000

It's a sad day when you hear of the passing of a work colleague and no more so than good friend Wayne Smith from Chapple Magnetics in Melbourne

I was contacted by Simon Murphy from FujiFilm this morning who passed on the sad news.

I only spoke with Wayne a few weeks ago and he was his normal vibrant self, no hint of a problem and we discussed catching up at this year's Entech as our paths don't cross as often as they used to with the massive changes in our Industry.

Although we were to some degree competitors in business our friendship surpassed that and I'm sad to hear that he passed away on Friday (cause yet to be determined). 63 is way too young.

I raise a glass to you Wayne,

and condolences to your family

RIP my friend

Mark Whitehouse

Manager

and friends at ProCopy

How does the oldest surviving English Style Grand Piano Sound?

WebMaster — Sat, 18 May 2013 03:08:54 +0000

How does the oldest surviving English Style Grand Piano Sound

The oldest-surviving English grand piano, one of the first ever made, was built by the piano maker Americus Backers in London in 1772 and has now been returned by English Heritage to the home of its former owner, the Duke of Wellington.

The Today programme's reporter Tom Bateman went to hear it being played by Pianist and composer Professor David Owen Norris.

Link to the audio of the oldest surviving English Style Grand Piano here

Does Mp3 or m4a processing affect my music?

WebMaster — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:24:50 +0000

It's taken a while to put this article together! However we've compiled a practical demonstration of what "data compression" does to your music.

In this article we've compared two of the most popular formats "Mp3" and "m4a" with a WAV file extracted from a CD.

Read the full article with audio examples here:

We think most people will be surprised by the impact of some of the processing & hopefully this demonstration goes some way to giving you an explanation why we insist on the best quality masters you can provide for your CD projects.

ISC announces 2012 Winners

WebMaster — Wed, 01 May 2013 07:17:18 +0000

ISC ANNOUNCES THE 2012 WINNERS

GRAND PRIZE AWARDED TO JOSHUA HANSON OF YELLOW RED SPARKS
FOR THE SONG "MONSTERS WITH MISDEMEANORS"

Click here to see the complete list and to hear the winning songs.
Congratulations to all winners!

April 30, 2013 – The International Songwriting Competition (ISC), widely recognized as the world's premier songwriting event, today announced its 2012 winners. ISC's Grand Prize is awarded to Idaho native Joshua Hanson of the band Yellow Red Sparks for his song "Monsters With Misdemeanors," entered in the Folk/Singer-Songwriter category. The Grand Prize winner is awarded $25,000 in cash (US) and an additional $40,000 in merchandise and services. A total of 68 winners from 119 countries worldwide were selected from over 20,000 entries, and for the first time ever, more than half of the winners are from outside the USA. Past ISC winners include Gotye, The Band Perry, Kasey Chambers, Amanda Palmer, Gin Wigmore, King Charles, Kimbra, Passenger, Andrew Bird, and many more.

"ISC's mission is to inspire and promote greatness in the field of songwriting," says Candace Avery, Founder and Director. "It is humbling to hear so many talented songwriters, and it is gratifying to play a part in the growth of the winners' careers." Established in 2002, ISC awards more than $150,000 in cash and prizes to amateur and professional songwriters around the world and provides a platform for them to have their songs heard in an international arena.

What did Alexander Graham Bell Sound Like?

WebMaster — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 05:18:33 +0000

Ever wonder what Alexander Graham Bell sounded like? Thanks to the hard work of the Smithsonian institute in the USA they have now recovered a voice recording made over a hundred and twenty years ago.

Here's the full article and recovered Alexander Graham Bell Voice audio.

This is the kind of work that gives us the inspiration for many of the audio restoration projects we do at Procopy.

More details of our audio work here:

Call us on 1300 4 PROCOPY with any audio restoration needs

Are you looking to do some filming work?

WebMaster — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 05:34:02 +0000

ProCopy has substantial filming and editing capabilites and get many calls and emails about video recording projects. There are endless variations for this work depending on your needs and type of programme that you are producing.

In order to give you a budget here's some of the info that we will need to know that you could provide us in order to understand your project and quote accordingly:

1/ Length of programme(s) to be produced,

2/ Format - Interview style? presentation style, music clip, educational, training, etc

3/ Requirements 1 person interview, 2 people or more, Show style?
4/ Single or Multi use eg, Web, presentations, TV Broadcast (such as West TV) onsale or DVD distribution

5/ Single camera, 2 camera or more

6/ ProCopy Studio or location shoot. (Metro or Country areas)

7/ Anticipated budget

This information is important in determing how to best achieve the product you desire.

Call us on 9375 3902 or 1300 4 PROCOPY to discuss your next filming project.

Tips to promote your music more effectively through social media

WebMaster — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 02:55:49 +0000

Indie bands need as much help as they can get these days so here's some quick tips to help with your music promotion through social media avenues such as Twitter.

Click this link to learn more

Promote your music more effectively through social media

Flash memory price increases due to shortage in production

WebMaster — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 08:30:31 +0000

In the last few weeks there have been massive increases in the cost of flash memory.

This continues to affect the prices of USB's on a global scale. It has largely affected small chip products in the 1GB and 2GB range but is across the board to some extent.

The increase in prices is due to large purchases of flash memory by consumer companies (typically new phone and tablet production). This has resulted in a shortage of smaller capacity chips which is forecast to continue for sometime.

Quotes for the forseeable future will be on a weekly basis until the supply issues are resolved.

Sony discontinues MiniDisc Players

WebMaster — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 04:42:03 +0000

Recently Sony have announced that they are discontinuing the production of MiniDisc players
Sony has announced that they will stop making MiniDisc players next month (March 2013).

The highly anticipated MiniDisc format was launched in 1992 as the intended replacement for cassette tape. This was around the same time as the ill fated Philips DCC or Digital Compact Cassette (digital recordings on an audio cassette sized fomat compatible with analogue tapes)

MiniDisc has had a surprisingly long run given intense competition in the last few years from MP3 players such as the Apple iPod. It gained a lot of fans for backing tracks, sfx effects playback (due to the text information for easy identification of tracks) and as another generation of Walkman style playback.

Portable MiniDisc players were discontinued in 2011. The company has stated that it will continue to manufacture MiniDisc media.

ProCopy can transfer minidiscs to other digital formats including CD Audio, Data discs as Wav files, mp3s, Aif etc, or portable hard drives. Please call 1 300 4 PROCOPY or 08 9375 3902 for more information,

Do you need Video Copy protection on your DVDs?

WebMaster — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 03:29:08 +0000

Video producers that are reliant on income from sales of physical product have suffered for the last few years by having their Masters copied or illegally pirated.

At ProCopy we have an effective method of copy protecting your DVDs so that you can maintain or even increase your sales.

If you are producing DVDs of Weddings, School Balls, Concerts, Sports matches, corporate presentations or other entertainment programmes you should consider protecting your income.

We can copy protect from 1 to thousands of copies.

Call ProCopy on 1300 4 PROCOPY or 08 93753902. for more details.

ProCopy Quick Tip:

Before supplying any reference copies or completed masters to your clients make sure you only give them a copy protected version. Once there's an unprotected master out there it's much harder to control the sales of your projects.