Saturday, August 23, 2008

Common Format Of A Wedding Reception

The following article can be copied but you must keep about the author section.

Common format of a wedding reception:

Arrival of guests at hall

Introduction of wedding party

Introduction of bride and groom

Blessing

Meal

Cake Cutting

Toasts

Bride & Grooms First Dance

Father & Daughters Dance

Mother & Grooms Dance

Special Dances

Bouquet and Garter Toss

Dancing and Fun

Arrival of guests at reception site

Typically, a wedding lasts about 15 minutes. However, some guests do arrive early to the reception. Therefore, be sure all reception to-dos are complete by the start time of the wedding. Also, all wedding vendors should be wearing proper attire for early arriving and late staying guests. All tables should be set-up including cake table, entertainments table, sign-in table, food tables, and tables with chairs for all guests. If you have a seating arrangement, all seating lists should be at the reception with everyones name with where they are sitting.

Introduction of wedding party

This step is not mandatory, but it is nice for everyone to know who the wedding party is as many have not met before your wedding. Create a Reception Planning Guide and give this to your master of ceremonies prior to your wedding. This details, among other things, the order of entrance into the reception site with their names and titles. The order of entrance is as follows: parents of the bride, parents of the groom, ushers with bridesmaids, flower girl and ring bearer, special guests, best man, maid/matron of honor, bride and groom. In addition, review the pronunciations of the wedding party's names with the master of ceremonies.

Introduction of bride and groom

This is always the last of the introductions. Everyone should stand before the bride and groom enter. In addition, a special song can be arranged with the music entertainment and a special announcement made to punctuate a true grand entrance. Also, inform the master of ceremonies how you would like to be introduced: Mr. and Mrs. Smith or John and Jane Doe.

Blessing

This is another step that is not mandatory, but for the religious couples makes a nice setting. If you invite the person who performed the marriage ceremony to the reception, I would recommend having them conduct the blessing. If they are not able to attend, a parent or family friend is a good idea. Lastly, the master of ceremonies could give the meal blessing. Be sure to communicate with whomever is giving the blessing in advance so they are prepared to give a personal touch.

Meal

It's time to eat! Bride and Groom, be sure to stop and take a moment to eat. This may be your only chance in the day. In addition, it is customary for the bride and groom to start the food line. Most guests know to wait until the bride and groom start the food line. So don't be late!

Cake Cutting

This is the traditional bride and groom making the first cut on their wedding cake. Then, the bride feeds half of the piece of cake to the groom and the groom feeds the remaining half to the bride. The cutting of the cake is a ceremony intended to symbolize the caring and sharing for one another. Forks may be used as they make the image very attractive for the photographer. Forks may also minimize the possibility of someone being hurt with the more playful squashing that sometimes happens.

Toasts

The toast is when the bride and groom toast each other then interlock arms and drink. Immediately following, the best man and maid/matron of honor make toasts to the bridal couple. Be prepared for other family and friends to follow with their toasts too.

Bride & Grooms First Dance

The Bride & Grooms Dance is the first dance between a bride and groom as a married couple. The dance is also commonly known as the "First Dance". The timing of the bride groom dance can vary in the evening based on your preferences. The first dance can be done immediately following the grand entrance with the wedding party circling the dance.

Father & Daughters Dance

The Father & Daughters Dance or the Father Bride Dance is the dance between the father(s) of the bride and the bride. Brides, if you have more than one father in your life, one can tap the other on the shoulder in the middle of the dance so you can dance with both of them. If you do not have a father, a common substitute is a father figure or even your brother would make a very nice gesture.

Mother & Grooms Dance

The Mother & Grooms dance is the dance between the mother(s) of the groom and the groom. Grooms, if you have more than one mother in your life, one can tap the other on the shoulder in the middle of the dance so you can dance with both of them. If you do not have a mother, a common substitute is a mother figure or even your sister would make a very nice gesture.

Special Dances

There may be songs in your life that mean dear to your heart. You can ask the music entertainment to play these songs during the night or immediately following the formal dances. An example would be: If someone dear to you passed recently, you may ask the music entertainment to play Angels Among Us by Alabama.

Bouquet and Garter Toss

The traditional tossing of the bouquet is when the bride tosses the bridal bouquet to all single women in attendance. Immediately following the bouquet tossing, a chair is set in the middle of the dance floor. The chair is for the bride to sit and the groom to remove the bride's garter from her leg. The traditional tossing of the garter is when the groom tosses the bride's garter to all the single men in attendance. The people whom catch the garter and bouquet are said to be the next one to marry.

Dancing and Fun

This is what you pay the music entertainment to do...get people to dance and have a good time. Give the music entertainment music examples and limitations of what type of music you want but dont give them a list of 100 songs they need to play.

About The Author: Matt Campbell is the owner and webmaster for Weddingmuseum.com. Weddingmuseum.com is a place to plan, book and rate your wedding day. You can email him at matt@weddingmuseum.com or visit WeddingMuseum.com

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Brains, Children and Piano

All that matters is your child's experience at the piano. It doesn't matter what other people think, what others expect, even what the piano teacher thinks is irrelevant.

What matters is that your child has a chance to experience playing the piano, however humbly, and enjoys what they are able to do. Even attempting the piano is a success.

Looking at children at the piano as a group, with statistical expectations that one child will live up to someone's ideal of a musician, is actually destructive to the child.

No one in their right mind expects their child to play at Carnegie Hall: what we're looking for is hobbyists and aficionados, not piano virtuosi and superstars.

Let me assure you that if your child has what it takes to play Carnegie Hall, it will be so obvious that no one in the piano business will miss their cue. The number of children that have that in the cards for them are so few, that it is not even a real number.

Take all the wildly talented children, divide by 10,000, and then pick one. That one child has a 1% chance of a successful career as a piano soloist. But all children, properly nurtured, have a 100% chance of playing simple songs at the piano, feeling great about it and adding to their general education and intellectual skills.

It's more productive to think in terms of your child as an individual. Let's get that individual child to play as well as they can, without stress, without wildly unrealistic expectations.

In fact, the point of early childhood music education is not expertise, but exposure to the intellectual and abstract concepts inherent in music that will help their minds grow.

To demonstrate the proposition that children's piano lessons increase mental powers, we need to look at the human brain itself.

The brain, divided into two sides, controls each hand with the opposite side of the brain. The left brain controls the right hand, while the right brain controls the left hand.

The two sides "speak" to each other via a huge superhighway of nerves and ganglia called the "corpus callosum." The reason the piano is so beneficial for children intellectually is that the piano, in having both hands work together in similar ways, forces the brain to use both halves of the brain simultaneously. There are very few activities on earth that excite the "corpus" like music and piano.

And so piano activity demonstrably produces better handwriting, better math skills, better abstract skills and higher self-esteem, all through having the two sides of the brain talk to each other, over and over until the nerve path is physically thickened.

That's right, there is a PHYSICAL result in your child's brain as a result of playing the piano, even attempting the piano. It is a known medical fact that the "corpus callosum" (that nerve path between the brain's two sides) of musicians is up to 90% larger than that of people who are not musicians. And starting piano at an early age begins those benefits early in life.

So if your child is not destined for Carnegie Hall, they may still be destined to enjoy, appreciate and create music. And have a thicker corpus callosum!

The saddest part of music education today is that piano lessons are, as they always have been, designed to produce candidates for Carnegie Hall, not fully rounded and nurtured individuals who try to play piano to the best of THEIR ability.

Children who, with a little care, could gain all the benefits of a piano education are made to feel like failures because they cannot live up to a curriculum developed hundreds of years ago to produce professionals.

It's time to let kids be kids and not rob them of the benefits of piano because they don't fit some misguided teacher's idea of accomplishment.

Start looking at the piano from the child's point of view.

By John Aschenbrenner Copyright 2000 Walden Pond Press. Visit http://www.pianoiseasy.com and see the fun PIANO BY NUMBER method for kids.

John Aschenbrenner is a leading children's music educator and book publisher, and the author of numerous piano method books in the series PIANO BY NUMBER.

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The Stunning Kecak Dance Of The Beautiful Bali

One of the most famous Balinese Dances is The Kecak dance. The stunning voice of the dancers in musical rhythm is used as a background for them to dance in trance. Over 100 bare-chested dancers are swaying their body and hands. The sound of cak-cak-cak imitating the sound of monkey sounds gives the exotic and dynamic ambience. Because of that chanting noise of "Cak-cak-cak", then the dance is named Kecak.

What makes the Kecak such a fascinating dance to watch are the fifty or so men in the checkered pants. They are both the choir and the props, providing the music for the story in a series of constant vocal chants that change with the mood of the actors. They don't sit still, either, they wave their arms to simulate fire, and reposition themselves around the stage to represent wind and fire, prison cells, and unseen hand of protection from the gods.

The dance is played in five acts and lasts roughly 45 minutes. It taken from the Hindu epic Ramayana, which tells the story of Prince Rama and his rescue of Princess Sita, who has been kidnapped by the evil King of Lanka, Rahwana and somehow with the help of the white monkey army, Rama rescues his wife and defeats the evil King Rahwana.

As Bali is famous for its breathtaking nature, the culture is even better; completely astounding. It is very exotic and unique. The culture is a blending of spiritual, dynamic and elegance. Attending a Kecak recital is a must for any visitor to Bali. It is a wondrous experience, and a window into the musical and artistic culture that make the Balinese a special people.

Various hotels in Bali hold Kecak Dance performances and often deal providing dinner and tickets to the performance are offered at the main hotels in Bali. Ask your hotel for further information. Read more article about Bali at eTourTravel: Bali

John Soffer writes articles about tourism, travel and leisure for various websites. Read his articles at http://bali.etourtravel.info

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Greatest Artists and Songs

What would current musicians be without the foundation set by the legendary bands and classic artists that came before them?

Vivian Scott at Epic Records spoke the truth when she said that "There would be no new school without the old school". The status of "Legendary" and "Classic" when it comes to music is reserved for the best of the best. Even with thousands of bands with great music, there are always those that stand out from the rest.

If you want to discuss timeless music, Chuck Berry is one of the best places to start. Berry's hit song "Johnny B. Goode" in 1958 is so well known that I doubt any of you read the song title without singing it or hearing it play out in your head. This came from the same decade that brought you "Hound Dog" by the King himself, Elvis Presley, and "I Walk the Line" by Johnny Cash. But don't misinterpret this as age solely defines if a song is a classic. As new generations of music are ushered in, their best artists leave their mark as well. So move forward in time and you'll find: Aretha Franklin ready to teach you a little "Respect"; Van Morrison telling you what we use to sing in "Brown Eyed Girl"; and The Who, reminding you what this time period is all about with "My Generation".

With hundreds or maybe thousands of classic songs out there, no list could do justice to the these great bands. The fact that each decade has left behind it's own legends provides that generation the ability to interpret who should be on that list. Mash-ups and songs covered by newer artist prove the ability of the current generation's ability to represent the legends that inspired them. For example DJ Danger Mouse combined artist Jay-Z's "The Black Album "with The Beatle's "The White Album" to create The Grey Album; and you've probably turned the radio up as you heard the intro to Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" only to find out that it's a covered version by The Ataris.

But don't forget, many of these bands are still alive and some of them have continued producing music. You can always pick up Guitar Hero III and battle Slash from Guns N' Roses or look up tour dates for Metallica and Sting. In the music industry, it's possible to be a living legend. Just ask The Rolling Stones what it was like to rock out with the dinosaurs when you're at their next concert.

Music was once defined as the food of the soul.

Alltimemusichits.com is a web site that allows the various visitors to watch music videos and lyrics of their favorite songs.

The web site covers a large number of genres of music including rock (Red Hot Chili Peppers), metal, psychedelic rock (Pink Floyd), pop (Tina Turner), grunge (Nirvana) and various other artistes as well.

All time music hits is a site that is reserved for true lovers of music and is thus recommended to all true and genuine music lovers.

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The Beauty of Salsa Dancing

There is nothing like watching salsa dancers. They are so confident, sexy and dynamic. The music makes you want to get out there and dance too. So let's go. Yes, you! You can do this! Everybody has a little Salsa in their soul.

Like its culinary namesake, the Salsa is spicy and complex in flavor, yet surprisingly easy to create. Salsa can combine elements of several different dances such as the Mambo, the Cha Cha, the Rumba, Jazz and Latin Ballroom, among others. Salsa is a free and expressive dance that is continually evolving as newer and more diverse elements are incorporated into the style. Salsa has become extremely popular all over the world. You can go to a Salsa club just about anywhere you go now. From Sydney to Shanghai, everyone is learning to Salsa.

When you first become drawn to Salsa and begin to think about taking some classes, you may be a little intimidated. Salsa dancers with years of experience can make the most complex footwork and turn patterns look effortless, but that's not how any of them started. We all start at the beginning, and the beginning is just as fun as the more advanced moves you see in competitions. You don't have to learn any of the more elaborate moves to feel right at home in a Salsa club.

In a beginning Salsa class you and your partner will learn not only some basic steps and other body positions, but how to feel the music and begin to express the music through your body. There is a basic body rhythm and some easy footwork that will become second-nature to you very quickly. Rather than being a little unsure when you go out Salsa dancing, you will be able to go out on the dance floor right away. You will be surprised to see how a few simple movements will make you fit right in at any Salsa club.

Watch the other people at the Salsa clubs when you go out dancing after you've taken a few Salsa classes. You may be really surprised to see that some of the moves that seemed complex a few weeks ago don't look quite as difficult that you once thought. That turn that looked so difficult the last time you saw it is just a modified version of the turn you learned in class. It will just take a bit of practice. You and your partner will probably be able to learn some more advanced moves just by having fun at the club.

Once you learn the basics and get more comfortable at the Salsa club, you can take some advanced classes and learn more elaborate footwork. Then you'll really be able to show off your dancing skills when you go out with your friends.

No matter whether you just take a few classes to learn the basics of Salsa or go on to advanced classes, the enjoyment you will get out of learning to Salsa is something you will have for the rest of your life.

Want to learn to dance? Wish you could move your body confidently on the dance floor? Or would you just like to have a great excuse to get out and meet people? Well for all of the above come and visit Dance Vogue where professional dancer and teacher Natalie Beck show you how to take the next step.

If you have your wedding around the corner and are worried about that first dance, Natalie has a lot of experience helping couples get confident and looking great dancing together in a short period of time. Have a look at her wedding dance lessons to get up to speed.

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What is Curry Karaoke?

Karaoke is the act of singing along to recorded background music; it originates from Japan and in Japanese means empty orchestra.

It is rumoured that karaoke was invented In Japan in the 1970s, when a Japanese musician was asked by fans to provide a recording of his performance so that they could sing along on their vacation. Realising this potential the musician then developed a machine that for 100 yen would play his songs; the machine was originally leased out and not immediately available in stores as they are nowadays. Unfortunately for the Japanese musician a Filipino businessman recognised the potential market for such a machine and patented a sing-a-long system to be sold in stores along with the music.

Karaoke's popularity has lasted since its invention in the 1970's and has continued to be a popular form of entertainment and it has reached great success across the globe. Many bars, restaurants and clubs install karaoke machines into their venue, or hold karaoke nights to capitalise upon its popularity.

The concept Curry Karaoke was developed in Glasgow; combining the nations two favourite things, Indian food and karaoke, with such CurryOke nights happening across the city it is no wonder that Glasgow has been named the Curry Capital of the UK. With the Ashoka restaurant on Elderslie Street offering a Curry Karaoke package of a private function suite, large Indian buffet, karaoke, party games and fancy dress outfits it sounds like Curry Karaoke is the ultimate in party nights. Providing an excellent alternative to your average birthday party or staff night out a Curry Karaoke night will provide endless fun, good food and some brilliant photo opportunities; most definitely a different kind of night out.

Visit the Ashoka Website for a menu and photographs from the many Curry Karaoke nights that they put on.

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Essential Advice For Choosing Your Wedding Music

Musical entertainment can enhance any special event, for instance, ceremony and reception piano music sets the mood and will reflect your joyful celebrations. Special music, if done correctly, has the ability to provide you with a lifetime of memories of your rehearsal dinner, wedding ceremony, reception and dancing. Keep in mind that your own personal requests, whether performed by vocal performer, solo musician, string quartet, function band or DJ are extremely important in ensuring a successful event.

Musical options for a wedding ceremony may include: traditional organ music, harps and flutes, soloists, string quartets, as well as alternative musical arrangements.

A Master of Ceremonies or a band leader can lead and direct the reception entertainment. Bands can feature any music you choose, from oldies to top 40 - and maybe some rock 'n roll. Remember that if your budget is tight, a DJ can provide music whilst using digital tracks and CD's. Quality DJ's are generally extremely flexible in accommodating special requests and will dovetail these into their own tried and tested repertoire.

During the reception, when would you want to include live music? The options available include playing during the: arrival line up, wedding meal, at the end of the speeches or during the cutting of the cake. It goes without saying that you will want to have music during the first dance and throughout the latter part of the evening reception.

What additional advice can we offer on hiring musical entertainment for your special day?

Firstly, we recommend finding out where your band, string quartet or DJ performs - and personally visit them prior to booking. Listen to their demos and tracks online or even better during a live performance. Remember to find out how long your band have been playing together and how experienced they are at playing at weddings. Hearing your entertainers play live music will help you select the best choice of songs for your special event.

From experience, we recommend ensuring that your chosen band does not drink while they perform. Drunken musicians will ruin any event quicker than anything else - and the memories will leave you with a hangover that will last for years. Also ensure that your band has 'back up' musicians in case of illness or indeed for any unforseen reason.

It's essential that you arrange an agreed arrival and start-up time with the band leader and make sure you get a contract specifying exactly the amount of time you will be getting for your fee. it's also important that you're comfortable with your bands deposit and final balance policy - and that you have everything printed and mutually signed in a written agreement.

Run through your musical requests with the band leader well before the special event. This will ensure that everything will go like clockwork on your wedding day. Plus it's essential to work out the timings exactly and blend the music in with the ceremonial and other events that will happen in quick succession on your big day.

Organizing your wedding day entertainment is frequently an activity that most brides and grooms leave to the last minute. Yet it's potentially the service that can cause the most problems if organized incorrectly. Most good bands and ensembles are booked months in advance - particularly during popular summer Saturdays. From experience, we recommend contacting and reviewing at least three different styles of music before you make a final decision on the type of entertainment you want for your wedding. Once you've chosen your personal style of entertainment, get three quotes from different bands and ensembles in that sector. Read testimonials, listen to tracks, and if possible visit a venue locally to hear them playing live.

Remember, preparation is the key to delivering quality entertainment on your wedding day. Get organized, do your homework and deal with the finer details well in advance. By doing this, the chances are that your special music will sound great when it matters most.

Anthony Coogan provides classical and popular music for weddings and special events throughout the UK. For the last 20 years he's played the violin in ensembles and with Scotland's Ceilidh Band. String Quartets Live came about through his classical music contact and knowledge of the wedding entertainment sector.

Want more information on string quartets and string quartet wedding ensemble music? Click on the link above.

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Making Love With Words - Learning Spicy Spanish For Your Latin Lover

Do you have a Latin girlfriend or boyfriend? Then you know what it feels like when they unleash their words of passion in Spanish during your private moments.

Would you like to give it back at them?

You don't need to speak fluent Spanish. Learn to ignite the fire of your lover with some sexy and romantic phrases in their own language. Heck, you can even turn on lovers who don't even speak Spanish with a few well timed passionate phrases.

Here are a few ways to use this hot, sexy language to your advantage.

Learn a Few Phrases

The first step is to learn some sexy or romantic Spanish words and phrases. Here's a couple to begin with.

My love. Mi amor. (mee ah-mohr.)

I've never felt this way before. Nunca me he sentido as. (noon-kah meh eh sehn-tee-doh ah-sEE.)

I've been thinking about you. He estado pensando en ti. (eh ehs-tah-doh pehn-sahn-doh ehn tee.)

I can't live without you. No puedo vivir sin ti. (noh pweh-doh vee-veer seen tee.)

I want you. Te deseo. (teh deh-seh-oh.)

I love you. Te amo. (teh ah-moh.)

Kiss me. Bsame. (bEH-sah-meh.)

Make love to me. Hazme el amor. (ahs-meh ehl ah-mohr.)

Pronunciation and Accent

Knowing the words and phrases is a good start. But they will be most effective if you say them the right way. Before you attempt to melt your lover with words, practice.

Number one, pronounce the word correctly. If you know someone who speaks the language, ask them to demonstrate the word or phrase for you. If you don't know someone who speaks Spanish, find a book or website that "spells out" each word phonetically.

Also, really try to understand what each word in a phrase means. Actually knowing what you are saying when you say it, and actually meaning it, will put more power behind the words.

After you have gotten the pronunciation down, practice saying the word or phrase over and over again. Do it whenever you are alone and have a free moment, like when you are riding in the elevator, putting gas in the car, washing dishes, and so on. You want to practice so much that, eventually, the words roll effortlessly off your tongue.

Spanish is one of the sexiest languages around. And, by learning a few simple words and phrases, you can begin to master the art of making love with words.

Jsson Vachon lived in Latin America and is the author of Hook Up Spanish, a guide to hooking up, dating and romance in Spanish. For a free mini-phrase guide to these subjects click the following linkhttp://www.hookupspanish.com/ebook/

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Art And Culture

The origin of the word "art" can be traced back to the old English "thou art" which means "you are". Again, art as in "fine arts" owes its root to the Latin "ars" or "artis". However, in comparison to the dual meanings in which we may express the word, the second meaning has remained unchanged with the process of time. The word "culture" however originated from the Latin language. It said to have a Latin base "colere" which means to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor. Broadly it can be said to be a human activity carrying several meanings and definitions.

The two distinct words "art and culture" if linked with each other, it exhibits two distinct concepts
  • Art may be a product of the extensive culture (cultivation) of human sentiments.

  • Culture of different strata of society at different places at different time has been expressed in art.
  • Art can be said to be a "result" of extensive culture of human emotions, sentiment and thought of an artist, supplemented with the artist's skill. It is a product of an artist's cultivation of different strata of society at various moments. Thus if one can culture on society at different situation, he can generate a good piece of art .So we may say that "art is a reflection of society" at different time.

    Practically time being the dictator in the evolution of society; it also influences a product of art. The classical period was a period of reason, order and rules.
    Art has thereby exhibited such meanings at that time.

    The Romantic period being a period of reasoning, so the dominant subject of art was emotion, adventure and imagination. Art in its cultural form gained impetus during the renaissance. Again, the 19th century culture was the theory of truth and beauty thus the form of art that came up during this period was based on "truth" and "beauty".

    Early 20th century culture brought forth the concept of modernism -this is the time, when the human nature was undergoing turmoil. The bizarre mundane society was undergoing a deviation from humanity at this time. The late 20th century is the postmodern period The puzzled society is now trapped in such a ditch that an exit from this phase is next to impossible. Men are said to have been transformed into robots. Junked up with work pressure they have little or no time to cherish their emotions and sentiments .The work of art that comes up at this stage are to call up an attention to human sentiment and art at large. The overall disjointed sentiment when cultured by an artist; it is reflected in the works of art through abstract expressions, images, ideas and concepts.

    Besides, a piece of art may also echo a specific culture. We may find several piece of art vividly exposing the "Byzantine culture". Again a work of art might focus on "Iranian culture", "western culture" or "modern culture" and so on. Moreover the art of working in a particular place at a particular time is the work culture. Likewise we have club culture or organizational culture.

    Actually art in its own form has developed itself with its multicultural heritage over time. Thus, it is worth saying that both art and culture are complimentary to each other and an overall support to each other to attain some sort of fulfillment at large.

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    Timing - How To Dance Cha-Cha

    Cha-Cha music is 4/4 time, and also has 4 steps to a bar of music. The last bar screams for you to step to the left and close your feet so this step has the characteristics of moving the foot to the side and closing the feet, which in turn produces the "cha-cha" sound, which is the name of the dance.

    If you are having trouble understanding the basic movement of Cha-Cha which is usually said to be slow, slow, quick-quick, slow, then rephrasing it to "rock, rock, side-close, side", makes it far easier to grasp.

    Most Latino dances consist of moving your step on the second beat and change the weight from one lef to the other between beats, but in cha cha your feel always move only on the first, second and fourth beats of the music. This little switch of weight makes the look and feel of the dance occur on the first and second beats, then on the third and halway through the fourth and first beat.

    Count from the second beat of music to make it simple. Count "Two-Three, Cha-Cha, One" - if you know the basic movements you'll soon see this becoming meaningful.

    There are more than one part to timing, TWO. There is a static metronome beat that flows though the entire track, which in turn dictates when it's time to move your feet. Another one is the actual tempo of the song. The tempo is what makes you take a certain step, pause for a period of time or how fast you should spin and turn. Understanding this will make you a preferable cha cha dancer.

    You can't mistake a Cha Cha beat in a song. You hear the two slow beats and the three quicker beats. Then when you hear the quick beats you move side and close, cha cha cha.

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    Music Production and Mixing Tips & Tricks

    What makes a pro recording pro? What is the "sound" that the pros get and how can you make your recordings sound more professional?

    The simple answer is - there's no simple answer. But with careful listening and a little experience you can create excellent results with modest equipment.

    Good mixing starts ear

    The first and most important item of equipment is - who knows? Anyone? It's your ears! Sorry to tell you this, but listening to ten hours of Rave at 110dB will do nothing for them and you might as well give your mix to a turtle as try to mix with misused ears.

    Listen to commercial recordings of mixes you like, analyse them, listen for the effects and get to know what constitutes the sort of sound you're after.

    Mixing secrets

    There's no hidden secret to getting a good sound, but if we had to sum up the secret of mixing in two words it would be this - EQ and compression. Okay thats three words.

    These are probably the two most important tools used by professional producers. However, like any tools, if you don't know how to use them you'll be carving Habitat tables instead of Chippendale chairs.

    That's where your ears and experience come in. Here we have assembled some production ideas, suggestions, tips and tricks but they can only be guidelines and need to be adapted to suit your material. There are no presets you can switch in to make a bad recording sound good. And if your original material has been poorly recorded not even Abbey Road could salvage your mix. But follow these suggestions and see how much your mixes improve.

    Get the level right

    You can't push the levels when recording digitally as you can when recording to tape but you still want to get as much signal into the system as possible. This means watching the levels very carefully for clipping, and recording at an even and constant level.

    Some recording software lets you monitor and set the input level from within. Some expect you to use the soundcards mixer while others have no facility for internally adjusting the input level and expect you to set this at source.

    Monitors

    Your ears are only as good as the monitors they listen to. DO NOT expect to produce a good, pro mix on tiny computer speakers. It may sound fine on a computer system, but try it on a hi fi, in a disco and through a car stereo.

    Oddly enough, you don't necessarily need the most expensive Mic. Many top artists use what some might call "average" Mics because they work well and get the job done. You can spend a wad on a large diaphragm capacitor Mic (yes, they're good for vocals) if you have the lolly but check out dynamic Mics which are much more affordable and can be turned to several tasks.

    Mixing MIDI and audio

    One of the great things about computer-based recording is that the parts can so easily be changed, edited and processed. It's also so easy to combine MIDI and audio tracks and many musicians use a combination of sample loops, MIDI parts and audio recording.

    Audio recordings are generally guitar and acoustic instruments such as the sax and vocals. Incidentally, the best way to record guitars is by sticking a Mic in front of its speakers. You can DI them and process them later and this may be cleaner but for a natural guitar sound a Miced amp is hard to beat.

    It's not necessary to record drums live and, in fact, it's difficult to do and retain a modern sound. You can buy off-the-shelf MIDI drum riffs and audio drum loops, or program your own. The quality of the gear which makes drum noises these days is such that anyone with a good riff can sound like a pro.

    Mixing MIDI

    As MIDI and audio parts appear on the same screen in modern sequencers, it's very easy to arrange them into a song. However, when you come to mix everything down there's another consideration. If you are recording to DAT you can simply route the audio and MIDI outputs through a mixer and into the DAT machine.

    However, if you want to create a CD you must first convert the MIDI parts to audio data. The entire song can then be mixed to hard disk and burned to CD. Converting MIDI to audio can have another benefit and that's the ability to process the MIDI tracks using digital effects.

    Effects

    There are three positions for effects known as Master, Send and Insert. Use the Master for effects you want to apply to the entire mix. These will often be EQ, compression and reverb.

    Although giving each channel its own Insert effects is kinda neat, each one uses a corresponding amount of CPU power. So if your computer is struggling and if you're using the same effect on more than one channel, make the effect a Send effect and route those channels to it.

    Many pieces of software let you apply an effect Pre or Post fader. With Post fader, the amount of sound sent to the effect is controlled by the fader. With Pre fader, the total volume level of the signal is sent. Post fader is the usual default and the one you'll use the most.

    EQ

    EQ is the most popular and the most over-used effect. Yes, it can be used to try to "fix a mix" but you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear as me Gran used to say and what she didn't know about mixing could be written in the margin of the book of honest politicians.

    But before you start messing with EQ - or any other effect for that matter - make sure you have a decent set of speakers. Have we said that already? Oh, must be important, then.

    There are plug-in effects such as MaxxBass which can psychoacoustically enhance the bass frequencies to make it sound better on smaller speakers. However, this is by no means the same as getting a good bass sound in the first place by observing good recording principles.

    EQ can enhance a mix to add gloss, fairy dust, shimmer, sheen, a sweetener or whatever you want to call it to the final production. It can be done with enhancers and spectralisers, too, although these tend to mess with the harmonics which some producers don't like. However, don't dismiss them out of hand.

    General EQ lore says that you should cut rather than boost. If a sound is top-heavy, the temptation is to boost the mid and bass ranges. But then what usually happens is you start boosting the upper range to compensate and you simply end up boosting everything and you're back where you started - only louder!

    The reason why cutting is preferred is that boosting also boosts the noise in the signal which is not what you want. Try it. Boost every frequency and listen to the result. If you think it sounds okay, fine. What do we know?

    But when you're fiddling, do keep an eye on the output meter. Boosting EQ inevitably means increasing the gain and it's so-o-o-o easy to clip the output causing distortion which does not sound good.

    Finally, check EQ changes to single tracks while playing back the entire piece. In other words, listen to the tracks in context with all the other tracks. It may sound fine in isolation but some frequencies may overlap onto other tracks making the piece frequency rich in some places and frequency poor in others.

    Reverb

    Reverb creates space. It gives the impression that a sound was recorded in a hall or canyon instead of the broom cupboard. Recording lore suggests that you record everything dry, with no reverb, so you can experiment with a choice later on. You can't un-reverb a track once it's been recorded.

    The more reverb you apply, the further away sound will seem. To make a vocal up-front, use only enough reverb to take away the dryness. Vocals don't want to be mushy (lyrics can be mushy) so use a bright reverb.

    A common novice error is to swamp everything with different types of reverb. Don't - it sounds horrible!

    Mixing down

    You've done all the recordings, done the edits, applied the effects and now it's time to mix everything into a Big Number One Hit! Before you do, go home and have a good night's sleep. Have two. In fact, sleep for a week.

    Yes, we know you're hot and raring to go but your ears are tired. They're falling asleep. Listen carefully and you might hear then snore!

    There is a phenomenon known as ear fatigue and consistent exposure to sound, especially the same frequencies, makes our ears less responsive to them. Goes back to the bit about spending your life in a Rave club - you'll never be a master producer. If you try to mix after spending a day arranging, your ears will not be as responsive, so do them and your mix a favour by waiting at least a day.

    Now, go forth and mix! And dont forget - you get better with practice. For more information about mixing, pick up a FREE copy of Creating The Perfect Mix at www.making-music.com.

    Ian Waugh is one of the UK's leading hi tech music writers and creator of http://www.making-music.com. He has written for most of the major - and not so major - hi tech music magazines in the UK and many general computing titles both offline and online.

    His output numbers over 2,000 articles, features and reviews and he has written several books and albums. He is author of the "Quick Guide to..." series which includes the Quick Guide to Dance Music, Digital Audio Recording, MP3 and Digital Music, and Analogue Synthesis.

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    Unicode Primer For The Uninitiated - Internationalization Article

    Among our friends and clients at Lingoport, we regularly see ranges of confusion, to complete lack of awareness of what Unicode is. So for the less- or under-informed, perhaps this article will help. The advent of Unicode is a key underpinning for global software applications and websites so that they can support worldwide language scripts. So it's a very important standard to be aware of, whether you're in localization, an engineer or a business manager.

    Unicode Growth

    Firstly, Unicode is a character set standard used for displaying and processing language data in computer applications. The Unicode character set is the entire world's set of characters, including letters, numbers, currencies, symbols and the like, supporting a number of character encodings to make that all happen. Before your eyes glaze over, let me explain what character encoding means. You have to remember that for a computer, all information is represented in zeros and ones (i.e. binary values). So if you think of the letter A in the ASCII standard of zeros and ones it would look like this: 1000001. That is, a 1 then five zeros and a 1 to make a total of 7 bits. This binary representation for A is called A's code point, and this mapping of zeros and ones to characters is called the character encoding. In the early days of computing, unless you did something very special, ASCII (7 bits per character) was how your data got managed. The problem is that ASCII doesn't leave you enough zeros and ones to represent extended characters, like accents and characters specific to non-English alphabets, such as you find in European languages. You certainly can't support the complex characters that make up Chinese, Korean and Japanese languages. These languages require 8-bit (single-byte) or 16-bit (double-byte) character encodings. One important note on all of these single- and double-byte encodings is that they are a superset of 7-bit ASCII encoding, which means that English code points will always be the same regardless the encoding.

    The Bad Old Days

    In the early computing days, specific character single- and double-byte encodings were developed to support various languages. That was very bad, as it meant that software developers needed to build a version of their application for every language they wanted to support that used a different encoding. You'd have the Japanese version, the Western European language version, the English-only version and so on. You'd end up with a hoard of individual software code bases, each needing their own testing, updating and ongoing maintenance and support, which is very expensive, and pretty near impossible for businesses to realistically support without serious digressions among the various language versions over time. You don't see this problem very often for newly developed applications, but there are plenty of holdovers. We see it typically when a new client has turned over their source code to a particular country partner or marketing agent which was responsible for adapting the code to multiple languages. The worst case I saw was in 2004 when a particular client, who I will leave unmentioned, had a legacy product with 18 separate language versions and had no real idea any longer the level of functionality that varied from language to language. That's no way to grow a corporate empire!

    ISO Latin

    A single-byte character set that we often see in applications is ISO Latin 1, which is represented in various encoding standards such as ISO-8859-1 for UNIX, Windows-1252 for Windows and MacRoman on guess what platform. This character set supports characters used in Western European languages such as French, Spanish, German, and U.K. English. Since each character requires only a single byte, this character set provides support for multiple languages, while avoiding the work required to support either Unicode or a double-byte encoding. Trouble is that still leaves out much of the world. For example, to support Eastern European languages you need to use a different character set, often referred to as Latin 2, which provides the characters that are uniquely needed for these languages. There are also separate character sets for Baltic languages, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, and on and on. When having to internationalize software for the first time, sometimes companies will start with just supporting ISO Latin 1 if it meets their immediate marketing requirements and deal with the more extensive work of supporting other languages later. The reason is that it's likely these software applications will need major reworking of the encoding support in their database and functions, methods and classes within their source code to go beyond ISO Latin support, which means more time and more money - often cascading into later releases and foregone revenues. However, if the software company has truly global ambitions, they will need to take that plunge and provide Unicode support. I'll argue that if companies are supporting global customers, and even not doing a bit of translation/localization for the interface, they still need to support Unicode so they can provide processing of their customer's global data.

    Unicode

    We come back to Unicode, which as we mentioned above, is a character set created to enable support of any written language worldwide. Now you might find a language or two lacking Unicode support for its script but that is becoming extremely isolated. For instance, currently Javanese, Loma, and Tai Viet are among scripts not yet supported. Arcane until you need them I suppose. I remember a few years ago when we were developing a multi-lingual site which needed support for Khmer and Armenian, and we were thankful that Unicode had just added their support a few months prior. If you have a marketing requirement for your software to support Japanese or Chinese, think Unicode. That's because you will need to move to a double-byte encoding at the very least, and as soon as you go through the trouble to do that, you might as well support Unicode and get the added benefit of support for all languages.

    UTF-8

    Once you've chosen to support Unicode, you must decide on the specific character encoding you want to use, which will be dependent on the application requirements and technologies. UTF-8 is one of the commonly used character encodings defined within the Unicode Standard, which uses a single byte for each character unless it needs more, in which case it can expand up to 4 bytes. People sometimes refer to this as a variable-width encoding since the width of the character in bytes varies depending upon the character. The advantage of this character encoding is that all English (ASCII) characters will remain as single-bytes, saving data space. This is especially desirable for web content, since the underlying HTML markup will remain in single-byte ASCII. In general, UNIX platforms are optimized for UTF-8 character encoding. Concerning databases, where large amounts of application data are integral to the application, a developer may choose a UTF-8 encoding to save space if most of the data in the database does not need translation and so can remain in English (which requires only a single byte in UTF-8 encoding). Note that some databases will not support UTF-8, specifically Microsoft's SQL Server.

    UTF-16

    UTF-16 is another widely adopted encoding within the Unicode standard. It assigns two bytes for each character whether you need it or not. So the letter A is 00000000 01000001 or 9 zeros, a one, followed by 5 zeros and a one. If more than 2 bytes are needed for a character, four bytes can be combined, however you must adapt your software to be capable of handling this four-byte combination. Java and .Net internally process strings (text and messages) as UTF-16.

    For many applications, you can actually support multiple Unicode encodings so that for example your data is stored in your database as UTF-8 but is handled within your code as UTF-16, or vice versa. There are various reasons to do this, such as software limitations (different software components supporting different Unicode encodings), storage or performance advantages, etc.. But whether that's a good idea is one of those "it depends" kinds of questions. Implementing can be tricky and clients pay us good money to solve this.

    Microsoft's SQL Server is a bit of a special case, in that it supports UCS-2, which is like UTF-16 but without the 4-byte characters (only the 16-bit characters are supported).

    GB 18030

    There's also a special-case character set when it comes to engineering for software intended for sale in China (PRC), which is required by the Chinese Government. This character set is GB 18030, and it is actually a superset of Unicode, supporting both simplified and traditional Chinese. Similarly to UTF-16, GB 18030 character encoding allows 4 bytes per character to support characters beyond Unicode's "basic" (16-bit) range, and in practice supporting UTF-16 (or UTF-8) is considered an acceptable approach to supporting GB 18030 (the UCS-2 encoding just mentioned is not, however).

    Now all of this considered, a converse question might be, what happens when you try to make your application support complex scripts that need Unicode, and the support isn't there? Depending upon your system, you get anything from garbled and meaningless gibberish where data or messages become corrupted characters or weird square boxes, or the application crashes forcing a restart. Not good.

    If your application supports Unicode, you are ready to take on the world.

    Adam Asnes founded Lingoport in 2001 after seeing firsthand that the niche for software globalization engineering products and services was underserved in the localization industry. As Lingoport's President and CEO, he focuses on sales and marketing alliances while maintaining oversight of the company's internationalization services engineering and Globalyzer product development. Adam is a frequent speaker and columnist on globalization technology as it affects businesses expanding their worldwide reach. http://www.lingoport.com

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